Category: Techie

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Being Thrifty Online (and retail)

In this day and age, everyone wants things brand new.  While that would be nice, it just doesn’t add up a lot of the times… especially if it’s technically aligned items.  Their values hold worse than a car!  😮

So what’s a guy to do?  Be thrifty, that’s what.  Koreans (in Korea) look down on buying used stuff.  I disagree and good chunk of Americans disagree as well.  What’s wrong with paying at least 1/4 to 1/3 off just because it’s been used a bit?  I’m not ashamed to admit that I buy used things.

However, you can’t just blindly go buy things… you have to use your brains still.  So here are some of my own tips.

  1. Check weekly ads (best comparison site is www.salescircular.com)
  2. See what they go for online and retail (My fav. site for that is www.pricegrabber.com)
  3. Then look for how much it goes for on eBay and Craigslist.  (remember, Craigslist is under .org and not .com!)
  4. See who has the best price.
  5. Last but not least, I love one particular online forums site where there’s a LOT of FS (For Sale) traffic… Anandtech Forums.

Some safety pointers…

  1. Check seller’s feedback on eBay.  For other sites like forums, there’s feedback system called heatware.
  2. If it’s too good to be true (on eBay and Craigslist), it’s very likely that it is.
  3. If you are buying/selling something locally, try to meet at a common public places to buy/trade!
  4. If you are selling something online, be sure to get good estimates on SHIPPING cost!!
  5. Sometimes, it IS cheaper to buy at retail stores!
  6. Set a price you want to buy it for and stick to it!
  7. You can haggle online forums and Craigslist.org for lower prices but be reasonable!
  8. When selling, avoid eBay.  Sell via Craigslist first to avoid listing fees, selling fees, AND PayPal fees!
  9. If selling online other than eBay, and you take PayPal, setup a separate PERSONAL account and only accept non-credit card payments (otherwise, Paypal/eBay take another 4 to 5% of the fees!!  🙁

In the end, just use your head and common sense… 🙂  Happy hunting!

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My E-mail & Website got Hacked!

If you get an e-mail from me and I sound terrible (more than usual!) grammatically and all, it’s not ME!  Someone managed to hack into my e-mail account (yahoo one) and sent out spam e-mail to all my contacts with a link to some bogus website to buy stuff!  😡  Erg… it’s my very first time where someone logged into my account and sent out a bunch!!

I’m gonna have to regularly change my passwords now…  🙁  What is the world coming to?!

EDIT: Never mind!!  My website got hacked too!!  😮  WTF?!!  😡

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Water-powered car!!

Japan has developed a water-powered test car!! 😮

It can sustain 80 km/h for an hour on 1 liter of freakin’ water!!! How come we don’t have that already?! I will tell you why… it’s because of those money and life sucking oil companies!! That’s why!! 😡 All those oil companies better get on the right gear ’cause I’m not paying freakin’ $5/gallon!!

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Changing the Driving Habits: Reaction to Gas Prices

Now, gas prices near my area has gone up to $3.70/gallon! 🙁 So in order to conserve fuel as much as possible, I have adapted myself to change the driving habits.

  1. When coming up to red light ahead, I take my foot off the gas pedal and cruise as much as I can.
  2. Use cruise control in highway if weather and traffic permits.  (Using cruise control in rain is not safe!)
  3. Accelerate as mildly as possible.  When you gun it, you force the engine to not fully combust the fuel.
  4. Avoid driving in the heat/daytime if possible.  Driving in heat will make your engine and other things run less efficiently.
  5. Drive slowly.  Or to clarify, avoid driving fast.

The last point is what has been the most difficult.  Yesterday, on my way back from the Montrose Street Outreach, I decided to keep cruise control at 60 mph.  That’s even slow in my book!  😮  But I thought to myself, it’s not like I have people waiting for me at home or need to be in a hurry.  That put the engine speed at 2200 rpms.  Usually, cruising at 65 mph would keep that at higher revs of 2500 rpms.  Just remember, lower rpms the less gas it uses.

I seriously don’t know how much this will save on gas… but as I also bike to work more and more, hopefully, all things will help ’cause it sure don’t seem like gas prices will be coming down anytime soon!  Or at all!

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Skype’s Unlimited World Plan Review

Skype has been around for quite some time now… it has established itself as VoIP (Voice over IP) initiator.  This means that it will allow you to make calls over the Internet.  Now, it has taken another major step towards bigger market.  It is now offering what it calls “Unlimited World Plan“.  What is this?  For just $10 a month (ok, $9.95 to be precise but it’s $10!), you can make unlimited calls to anywhere in the 34 countries!  And it also happens to include South Korea!  😀

So I signed up to test this humongous potential!  I used my Logitech Webcam as microphone.  I call Soojin up as she’s in Korea.  I hear her just fine.  However, she says she can only hear my first syllable… like a bad cell phone call.  🙁  I get frustrated so I hang up.  I call her back with the cheap calling card I have been using from www.fonsale.com

Brian had warned me about this poor quality… so I was about to give up on it… but after few days of thinking, I decided to search SKype’s site for “poor quality”.  What comes up first?  Echo.  That’s right.  First thing it says is that echo can degrade audio quality and that webcams are infamous for it.  So I decided to unplug the USB webcam and plugged into mic port a microphone that I own.  I dial Korea again, and this time, she hears me perfectly!!  😮

Conclusion to this review?  What about this line?  “We have a winner!!”  😛  Seriously folks, if you call one of those 34 countries frequently (and that includes within US, Canada, and Mexico), this is one heck of a deal!!  Just be sure to not use USB webcams!!  🙂

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AMD’s new X3: Tri-core Processor

Gizmodo news

The phrase “a little bit and a little too late” came into existence for a reason.  And that also applies to AMD’s new “tri-core” (read, triple core).  While it sounds cool in theory and with the performance between dual-core processors and quad-core.  That’s fine.

But as Gizmodo also noted, the price is what’s killing this great concept.  Chances are high that AMD’s new X3 isn’t so new… but rather an X4 Phenom quad-core with a failed core.  While it’s a great idea to recoup cost by spinning off a failed X4 as a new product X3, the price doesn’t justify it.  It starts at close to $200 and with only bit more, you can get Intel’s quad-core Q6600.

In my opinion of 2 cents worth, what AMD should’ve done is price the X3 to replace dual-cores.  That would’ve given the consumers more incentive to buy more of AMD’s products than Intel’s.  I don’t want AMD to die.  After all, AMD has been the only major contender in CPU market against Intel.  But if AMD keeps its practice at such terrible pace, it won’t survive the future.  I sure hope AMD sees its faults.  Soon.  Before too late.