How to get a cheap cell phone

I recently acquired a few new cell phones, all of which are working great! My wife's Sony phone was stolen, so I was looking for replacements. Since our 2 year plan had over a year left on it, AT&T's only offering was.

I don't mind getting refurbished equipment. AT&T refurb seems to work as good as new. I found a flip phone that has similar features to my w580i, except its a flip phone. It was $99 plus tax. No thanks.

Next I looked at purchasing a Go Phone. Go Phones are AT&T's prepaid phones and if you pop your current SIM card into one, it works just like any other phone. So I could pop in my wife's existing card into the Go Phone. Unfortunately, this phone wasn't the one I wanted either.

So, I hit Ebay and won a bid on a used W580i. It was about $60.

How to save some money on your cell phone

After debating adding another line to my ATT Cell plan, I decided to investigate how I could do this for less money. I was reviewing my Family Talk plan, which had 550 minutes with rollover minutes. That was working for my wife and I, until my oldest son got his phone. We quickly added unlimited text after he texted about 600 texts on his 3rd month. (Yes, we punished him, yes, I made him pay for it.) All said and done, we were paying about $100 per month for 3 phones and unlimited text.

I signed up for a corporate discount (you may want to check if your company has an arrangement with any cell providers). That allowed me to save a few bucks each month. Next I started checking with other family members to see if any of my single relatives had plans. I found one who was paying $50 per month for himself (no texting included) on the cheapest plan from AT&T. We agreed to add him to my plan as a 4th line. This required I move up to the 700 minute plan (about $10 /month) and pay for the additional line ($10/month). So where is the savings? Between the two of us we were paying $150 per month. Combined, we now pay about $120 per month. Plus, he gets unlimited text too!

ATT Wireless

Zappos.com - Shoes with free ship

Just saved $20 on my size 10.5 Bass Albany dress shoes:
http://www.zappos.com/bass-albany

Zappos allows you to not only ship to you for free, if you don't like them you ship back for free too!

Firefox not staying signed in to Gmail

With Firefox 3.5 I log in to web sites, like gmail and yahoo to read my mail. Many times, I want to stay logged in, so I check the "Stay signed in" checkbox. Recently, my passwords and my cookies didn't seem to be sticking.

I found an article that describes searching for a hidden file called cookies.sqlite. Renaming that file (after closing firefox and killing the firefox process.)

The file was found here for me:
C:\Documents and Settings\Daddy\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\z8honqxy.default

Source of this info:
http://capetownnews.co.za/2008/07/22/losing-firefox-3-web-browser-cookies/

Staining the Deck

After 3 years, we finally decided to stain the deck again. We pressure washed the deck with Aaron's Briggs & Stratton 2300 PSI gas pressure washer. I pressure washed twice, once with 40 degree and once with the 15 degree. The stain chips went everywhere, which the boys later swept and we finally blowed.

Stain was available at Elliot's Ace, Cabot 1608 Medium Tint Base with Beachgrass the chosen color. This is a solid stain and I think it will hold up well.

I had the boys do the trim work with a brush and then I rollered the stain on. First coat went on about 4 days after the pressure washing. I put it on with the grain and a couple days later the second was against the grain. No rain for the whole week, which was fortunate. The deck was wet each morning though, so we waited until evening before applying. First coat was applied in 50-60 degree weather. The second coat was a nice 75+ degree day (Labor day!)

Hotwire

During out trip to Yellowstone we used our laptop with wireless to check hotel rates on Expedia and Hotwire. If you are willing to chance a lousy hotel, the hotwire deals were phenomenal! We took 3 star hotels for 65, 65, 82 and 92. Three were Holiday Inns with decent pools (a couple were being remodeled and a couple were way in the back of the hotel, but it was better than the $99-$149 "best" rate! It also beat the AARP, Entertainment and AAA rates. On our way home, we were about 20 miles from Sioux Falls and decided to check hotwire. A 3 star hotel was $53. We booked it. All said and done, with tax and fees, it was $65! We found out we were in a 3 1/2 star Sheraton which was beautiful. It was a little out of the way, but it was worth the extra 5 miles or so.

In Cody, where we wanted to stay in a particular hotel, I used Expedia to check the rate using the hotel's wireless network!

http://hotwire.com
http://expedia.com

Dishwasher has cloudy dishes

Well, we figured out the dishwasher this week. We ran vinegar through it, dishwasher cleaner, switched to powder and nothing. We took apart the traps and filter. Angel cleaned the upper spray arm out after a simple pull to pop the arm off the top.

Picasa and Facebook

How do you upload photos to Facebook or Google?

I use a free tool from Google called Picasa3 to edit and upload all my pics. You can find it here:
http://www.google.com/picasa/

Once you have installed picasa, point it at your My Pictures folder and it will read them all in. Picasa provides rotating, cropping, red eye fixes, changing to black and white etc. The only thing I don't find in Picasa that I go elsewhere for is more sophisticated filters like watercolor.

The number one reason to use Picasa is that with a simple install to Facebook, you can upload your photos with a couple of clicks. Download and install the picasa uploader. http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/?ref=ts

Now select the photos from Picasa and then click the Facebook button. You will need to sign into Facebook the first time and choose the album name and then the pictures will all upload! The captions from Picasa are transferred automatically.

Let me know if you have questions.

Tom

Resetting a Vonage Router, specifically the Motorola VT1005

I've called Vonage a number of time and get asked to reset my router. Each time they send me to the admin page and have me reset the factory defaults and then reboot the router. I always seem to forget the address, so here it is:

http://192.168.102.1/admin.html

After you are in you need to click Factory Resets, then click on "Reboot".

One catch to doing this, you must be on a PC that is behind the Motorola router, in other words it needs to be connected directly to the port that says PC or to a router that is connected to the PC port.

Figure it Out

I spend a fair amount of time working on solving problems. As I am approaching 40, I feel like I'm spending more and more time trying to remember how I figured something out. Therefore, I'm creating this blog to post things that come up periodically.

Thoughts on future posts: Using Picasa to organize my photos, Using Mediamonkey to handle MP3's, how to backup your important files, why you should use pivot tables and more!!