Zane’s Blog

Exactly 4 years and one day ago I exchanged a 19″ LG LCD with a burnt out pixel for a new one (of the same kind). I know that because today I attempted to figure out how to repair it (it broke) and found out the warranty was expired. Not surprising since it is over 3 years old. I opened up the monitor and found what I think was the culprit (a bad power supply). When I found the part online I found out it would cost $83 to buy a new one. Since I was only 80% confident the power supply was bad and the price of a 19″ monitor today was around $100 (wow! old one cost me $579) I decided to get a new one.

Enter the Gateway® FHD2401 24″ LCD. This monitor looks pretty sick. My favorite feature of this wide screen is its HDMI input. You don’t usually find those on monitors today.

Here’s a shot of it:

I found one refurbished at tiger direct for $269.97. Of course I am taking a risk that there might be a flaw in it but I check LCD’s pretty closely before accepting the purchase (try Dead Pixel Buddy to check your next one. If I find a burnt out pixel I’ll send it back (and probably update this post to bitch about how much Refurbished hardware sucks :)).

I also recently bought 2 Refurbished Magellan Maestro 4250 for Xmas gifts at $125 a pop. Both arrived in white cardboard boxes with specs printed on b&w labels but both worked perfectly (they even have Blue tooth to hook up to your phone as an extended speaker phone). I updated the firmware and they were good to go.

In short… given the current economic problems I would look into buying refurbished electronics online if you are thinking of getting something new. From what I have seen so far it seems you can get more bang for your buck. I guess I’ll know for sure on Thursday

If you ever have any questions on where to find refurbished hardware you know where to find me. If you have any good or bad experience buying refurbished post a comment below

Check out…

http://www.amazon.com
http://www.tigerdirect.com

for great deals and refurbished items.

And never forget to check http://www.woot.com/ daily.

I made a little video showing some of my favorite memories of ‘08. I hope ‘09 is just as fun!

Lena Marie Rausch arrived on the planet Wednesday, 12/17 @ 3:15PM. 7lbs! Congrats to the Rausch Family! We love you guys and can’t wait to meet her

Update:
Davin sent pics!

I’m Comfortable Thunder. I need Brian Westbrook to fail tonight to clinch 2nd place in my fraternity fantasy league. Will be watching tonight’s game closely.

(click image to see screenshot)

A few months ago my cousin Rachel (rachelgordonstyle.com) and her boyfriend Tony told me about how they saved money buying eye glasses online. Last week I accidentally broke a pair of glasses so I thought I would purchase a pair online. It took me a bit to figure everything out so I thought I would share my experience on my blog and hopefully help someone interested in saving money.

First lets talk about going to an Optometrist to get your glasses. Yes, you have to go to an Optometrist every once in a while. Prescriptions change and you need to check on the health of your eyes (especially if you wear contacts). Now that I have covered that lets talk about why you should limit your trips to the Optometrist to checkups and prescriptions only. Lets take a look at my last bill to the Optometrist.

Around $400 bucks. Sounds about right. $300 after insurance (I pay for vision insurance with my company). Lets look at the charges.

Eye Exam - $125. Insurance covers $95. Cool.
Eye Glasses Frame - $120
Basic No Coatings Lenses - $75
- Anti Reflective Coating would have cost an additional $75

Contact Lens Fit - I have to vent here. When I was done the exam the Optometrist offered to let me try on a pair of contacts. I thought this was a courtesy. The second I put them in… WHAM, “By the way that will be $80″. $25 bucks a pop for each contact lens and $80 bucks for him standing next to me while I did it! Don’t you think he should have mentioned these charges when he told me to try them on? WTF!

Ok, I am getting off topic. Now that I have reviewed my last experience with the Optometrist lets review my experience today purchasing eye glasses online.

First thing I did was google “Buy Eye Glasses Online”. Eventually I found my way to a good article on 43 Folders called Adventures in $40 eyeglasses. I recommend reading this later as Matthew Haughey has some good information on the monopoly Optometrist and vendors like LensCrafters® have on us. Eventually after reading this article as well as a couple others I found out that you need A copy of your prescription, pupil distance, and Frame size.

• A copy of your prescription can be obtained by calling your last Optometrist and asking them to fax it over (or go there and get a copy). I called mine and he was happy to do it. He seemed to know what I was up to and started throwing me offers. I declined and said I might be back to see him after shopping around.
• Pupil distance can be found on your prescription but it is kind of hard to read. You can ask your last Optometrist or figure it out yourself (see 43 Folders article above for details on doing this).
• Frame Size can be found by looking at a previous pair of glasses that fit. I had the biggest confusion figuring out what each measurement was. This image answered all questions I had on what was what. It turns out your glasses actually have the dimensions written on the inside of the frame (they were written on the left side of mine)

Once you have these numbers you are good to go. I just purchased a pair for $49.95 from GlassesUSA.com. I decided to get the Thin Light Polycarbonate Lenses (+$35.00) with Anti-Reflective coating (+$14.95) –I highly recommend the Anti-Reflective coating as it makes photographs of you better because of less lens glare. Grand total, $99.90 for a pair of glasses that would normally run around $300.

If you are looking for a better deal on contacts I recommend 1800contacts.com. I have been using them for over 6 years now and have no complaints. Keep in mind they do require you to provide an proof of prescription within the year before shipping.

In short. Visit the Optometrist to get your eyes checked out, then buy your glasses and contacts online. You can save hundreds of dollars. If you are worried about choosing a pair you don’t like go to a store and check out the brands and try them on. Then write the brand/type down, go home, google the brand/type and find the same pair for hundreds cheaper.

I hope some of you 4 eyed nerds found this article useful! Write a comment if you did!

I thought this was pretty funny. Today while using Google map to check directions for a business trip next week I noticed that Shipley’s Choice had Google Street view (you can now virtually walk around Shipley’s Choice).

Here is a screenshot of my Parent’s house in Shipley’s Choice.

It was great to be back last week to see everyone. Last night I uploaded pictures from last week to my Flickr account. Thanksgiving in Annapolis is classic. I hope everyone back home has a great Christmas holiday!

Subscriber Memo: You were probably confused to receive an email from admin. I recently updated Wordpress and forgot to change my name and email address. This has been fixed.

Congratulations to Katie and Clifton White on the birth of there first child Finley White. Finley is a healthy beautiful baby girl.

Katie and Clifton have started a blog to share Finley with family and friends.

http://finleyanne.blogspot.com/.

I hope to get Katie on TokBox soon so I can see Finley soon!

Love your new family :). Hope to see you soon.

Recently Karen and I were able to host our entire family for a weekend trip. Even J.P. and Allegra were able to come all the way from London! After spending some much needed family time in Charleston we all decided we needed to work harder on keeping in touch. During the trip Justin and I had discussed the need for our family to get a Video Conferencing solution set up so we could all see the new Baby when she arrives. After spending about a week of trial and error we were finally able to find a perfect solution. TokBox!

http://www.tokbox.com

TokBox is both a web application and a stand alone application (like AIM, MSN Messanger, Google Talk and Yahoo Chat). The stand alone application is great because you can leave it on enabling you to receive calls when you are at your computer and not visiting the tokbox webpage. Here is a screenshot of it in action.

TokBox enables you to easily leave video messages, start a video call and group video call with up to 6 people! This application is going to grow like wildfire. It is free and you can get it right now.

1. Register a user
2. At the bottom of your screen click the downloads button
3. Click the “Get it Now” button under “TokBox AIR Desktop Client” (works on both PC and Mac)

After the Desktop Client installs you are good to go. You have to signin to the webpage to manage things like uploading your picture and searching for friends. You can add me by signing in and typing Zane Perry in the search window found at the upper right of the page. My name will pop up and you just click the “Add Friend” button. Friend requests require approval so you are protected from strangers you don’t know.

Some notes I think users should know about,

1. To set up your camera and mic click settings, click on the camera that works, click next, click the audio that is visually receiving your voice (say “test” and you will see movement in the audio levels if you have a mic hooked up), click next and click done.
2. While chatting with someone there seems to be a bug when pasting a link (it sends html code and you can’t even copy and paste). I have sent them a message in there forum to notify them of this bug.
3. Adding more then one person to your video chat is as easy as dragging the name from your “Buddy List” to the video chat window.
4. If you use AIM, MSN Messanger, Yahoo or Google Talk your in luck. TokBox has built in integration. You can sign into all 4 with the client. You can even start video chats with users who do not have tokbox but I have not had a chance to test this function yet.
5. I would edit your mail settings. Your inbox gets full once you start playing with this. You can edit email settings by signing into the web page and clicking the account link.

I hope you found this information beneficial and hope to start video chatting with many of you soon! Keep in touch!

Great time! Second time Whitewater Rafting. First time on level 5 Rapids.

Boat One (from camera’s perspective)
Left = Mehdi, Hannon, McKenny, Guide
Right = Zane, Ben, Joe, Voluse

Boat Two (from camera’s perspective)
Left = Sam, Seward & Couple
Right = Ben ,Sean, Andy, Joel

Andy found Class VI for the Rafting - and camped at the Mountain State Campground.

Photo’s from the trip.

Most of you know I have been using Flickr to share digital pics for a little over a year. I have used this account since May 2nd 2007 and have a registered user until May 2nd , 2010.

April 28, 2008 You bought yourself a 2 years Pro Account $47.99
May 2, 2007 You bought yourself a 1 year Pro Account $24.95

Total spent on Flickr - US $72.94

The only alternative photo sharing service that I compare to be competitive with Flickr (in terms of ease of use) is googles Picasa Web Albums. Unfortunately I have a little over 40GB of images and using google would cost me $75 a year.

10 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
40 GB ($75.00 USD per year)
150 GB ($250.00 USD per year)
400 GB ($500.00 USD per year)

I still use Googles Picasa to manage my collection on my personal computer and love the “Web Album” button. It makes sharing photo’s online (via Picasa’s web albums) as simple as pushing a button (with Flickr I have to drag and then push a button). For 90% of you I would recommend using Picasa for of ease of use. It has 1GB of free space for initial users and I don’t see many of you having more then 10 GB a year of photos (at $20.00 USD per year). If you are looking for advice and have a questions on either of these services leave me a comment and I will help you get started.

Enough about photo services, what is this blog about.

I recently found a Picasa Facebook Upload plugin that is AWESOME! Facebook should by no means be your primary image hosting site (neither should Myspace). Both compress all images uploaded to their servers. In short, you are only sharing low detail images. The reason I am excited is now I have a tool to use to upload to Facebook quickly enabling me to use Facebook’s “Face Tagging” feature.

Face Tagging is when you see a picture and identify people who are in it. It is very easy to use. You click the “Tag Photo” button and then put the cross hairs on someone you knows face. If that person is on Facebook you only need to type a few letters of the persons name and his name will shows up (assuming you are friends of course). Here is a screen shot of Photo Tagging in progress. In this example I am highlighting Nick Hester who unfortunately isn’t on Facebook

Whenever you are tagged in a picture on Facebook you can see it in a list on your account. Whenever you tag others they get notified. You can tag yourself and other people. Since Facebook is very popular service this feature will continue to grow. I enjoy having friends tag me on photo’s they took and like to be notified by Facebook when a new photo is tagged. All in all, Facebook has nailed “Social Digital Picture Networking”.

I will start uploading more photo’s to Facebook because of this new plugin. If you don’t yet have Facebook yet go and register. It’s about time. Download Picasa, get a Flickr/Picasa web album account and start sharing photo’s!

If you don’t have a Facebook user register one here Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
If you want to use Picasa to manage your images download here: http://picasa.google.com/
Facebook Picasa Upload Button Plugin: http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/

I will continue to use Flickr but keep an eye on Facebook. Hope to tag you in a photo soon
If you have Facebook add me as a Friend .

p.s. This article was written by the user of a PC. I know the Mac has some killer photo sharing applications.