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Enjoy reading? Join Booksfree and have book rentals delivered to your home

March 22, 2007 by Tricia

Pretty much everyone has heard of Netflix right? Well, what if there was a company that offered a similar service, but for books and audiotapes? Good news! There is a service that offers book lovers on-line book rentals.

The service is called Booksfree, and it offers it’s members a wide selection of books and audio tapes. They have everything from the latest best sellers to the classics. Members can select from over 88,000 audio and paperback titles, fiction and non-fiction, from over 35,200 authors.

Books are expensive to purchase, and we all have busy lives and sometimes don’t have time to visit the local library to take out new books to read. Why not start a membership with Booksfree and have the audio tapes or books that you’d like to read shipped to you free of charge?

Booksfree offers several membership plans. You could have anywhere from two to 12 books shipped to you at once for as little as $8.49 to $34.99 per month. All membership plans include free shipping both ways, unlimited rentals, no due dates, and of course no late fees.

When you sign up for a membership you can create a list of titles that you’d like to rent and they’ll automatically ship the number of titles that your membership allows you to rent. The remaining titles on your list will be shipped in a future order. Return your titles in the pre-paid shipping envelope and your next title choices will be sent to you. It’s that easy.

A Booksfree membership would be great for an avid reader, a family or even as a gift for a relative. Perhaps you have an older relative that can’t get out as much as they used to, maybe a Booksfree membership would make an ideal gift?

At this time this service is only available to residents of the United States and it’s territories. I’m hopeful that the service will be available to Canadians and perhaps other countries sometime in the near future.

It’s gotta be the pills

March 22, 2007 by Tricia

I tried that new medication again on Friday night. Between trying it Monday night for the first time, and then again on Friday evening I’ve spent just about the whole week feeling wiped out.

I fell asleep on the couch Friday night. I got up in the middle of the night – my eyes so blurry and dry I could barely see. The medication had made me feel so dizzy, woozy and nauseated. It was terrible. I went back to sleep in my bedroom this time round and didn’t wake up until two in the afternoon.

I managed to get up, check my email and spend a bit of time with my husband before I had to lie down on the couch again. My head was just spinning. I almost wished that I’d partied too hard the night before because at least I’d have done something perhaps worth feeling so awful for. Geez … take a pill and feel awful for 24 or more hours? No thanks!

Chris and I watched a movie and then I fell asleep on the couch again by seven thirty in the evening. Wow, I was up for a just a bit more than 5 hours!

I woke up at about 10 pm and we had a very late dinner.

Of course I wasn’t so tired anymore but I still felt dragged out, and I’d get waves of nausea every now and then.

Chris’ mom must have called sometime while I was passed out on the couch Saturday evening. He must have told her I had taken a marijuana pill. I guess he didn’t mention, or she didn’t hear him say that it’s a synthetic form of the drug because he later told me that she was really happy that i was on a “natural” medication. Well … good for her for being so supportive and progressive, but I think if it was natural I wouldn’t have felt so bad for such a long time!

As you can see I haven’t spent much time posting on this site this week. I think the medicine wore off by Sunday but I’ve just had a bad week. Topped it off with yet another medical test Wednesday morning! I’m so tired of medical tests.

I’m really not sure that I want to give this medication a third try.

Has anyone else tried Nabilone? The synthetic marijuana capsule? If so, did it make you feel so dragged out?

How do you feel about recorded conversations?

March 21, 2007 by Tricia

How do you feel when you’re calling an 800 number, or your cable or phone company and you get the line “This call may be recorded”?

Have you come to accept that many of your conversations with businesses that you might have dealt with for years are recorded? Or does it feel like an invasion of privacy every time you hear that familiar message?

Now I know, that when I call some 800 numbers that the message says that my conversation may be recorded for customer service and I assume quality assurance purposes. I guess that’s ok. If the company is monitoring employees to make sure that they are doing their jobs properly, and it helps make the service that I receive when I have to call the company even better, well then I guess that’s a good thing.

It makes me wonder sometimes though, if it’s not just to monitor employees and the customer service that the company is providing, what other ways could they use that information?

Do they keep a record of your phone call in their database? Could information that you give out while you are being recorded be used against you or harm you at some point?

By this I mean, what if their database got hacked and you gave your credit card number out while you were on the phone? Could that be a new way for thieves to steal your information or maybe even your identity?

Now that’s a scary thought isn’t it?

BrickHouse Security sells a number of Phone Recorder that can allow you to tape a phone call for your personal use – such as the telephone recorder that’s displayed to the left.

They also offer a number of products that can not only detect recording devices but block them from recording your conversation.

Now, I feel that I must have a certain level of trust when I talk to my Mortgage company or bank over the phone. Perhaps using a phone recorder to record important conversations with companies such as banks etc might be a good idea. It would certainly be helpful if I was trying to recall important information that they had given to me during the discussion.

However, I don’t feel that level of trust when I call a restaurant for take out or home delivery. Many restaurants have call centers and they record phone conversations. We give our credit card number out over the phone at least half the time when we call to have food delivered. Are their databases as secure as the banks? Probably not. Which is why, if I had a phone recorder that could detect and block the recording of telephone conversations I’d use it when I called places such as restaurants.

I suppose I’d also know when ever a recording device had been activated and I could decide call by call if I wanted to block the recording of my conversation.

What do you think about your telephone conversations being recorded both with and without your knowledge by some of these companies?

Would you be interested in a phone recorder device that would allow you to record conversations or block calls from being recorded?

Act of revenge?

March 21, 2007 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

Don’t you just love this photo?

My sister had two German Sheppard – German Sheppard/ Doberman mix dogs when I used to live with her. A long long time ago …

I remember one day when my sisters husband was going to drive us to work, and then go off duck hunting – he decided not to take the dogs with him. He didn’t hunt often, but when he did, he usually did bring the dogs.

He had decided not to bring them along that day because one of the dogs liked to make a game of things. Every time my brother in law would take a shot, the dog would jump out of the bushes and try to catch the expelled cartridge. Naturally the ducks or geese would see the dog jump out (and I suppose hear the shot too) and scatter. Needless to say my brother in law wasn’t a very successful hunter when he’d bring the dogs.

The dogs knew that my brother in law was going out hunting. They’d watched him pack up his gear. When we left, we put the dogs in the basement for the day.

I think I got home first that evening. I went downstairs to rescue the dogs as soon as I got home so that they could go outside for a while.

Much to my surprise the basement was a mess – somewhat like you see above, but with lots of clothes scattered about too.

The two dogs had taken revenge on my brother in law. They had ripped up some of his clean laundry that had been either folded or hung in the basement to drip dry, and they’d attacked some of his books and other belongings. My sister and I both had clothing and other items that we owned in the basement, but the dogs hadn’t touched anything of ours. Only my brother in laws things were damaged.

Smart dogs huh? They knew who they were mad at and exactly how to get back at him too!

Next time – we’ll have our HDTV flat screen professionally installed

March 21, 2007 by Tricia

Around this time, back in 2004, we noticed that our 29″ Sony Trinitron TV was having a hard time starting. We’d turn the power on, but the picture would be static, and then blurry until the set had warmed up for 15 to 30 minutes. The problem had actually been going on for a number of months, but it was getting worse.

We looked into getting the TV repaired, but found that we could purchase a comparable TV for about the same price as it would cost us to repair our 10 year old television set. So, we decided to take the plunge and treat ourselves to a HDTV ready television.

After spending a couple of weeks doing research on the various types of HDTV ready television sets we decided to get a Samsung. Well, we went through two RCA’s first, but that’s a whole other story!

The following story is one of the main reasons why I have decided that anyone purchasing a flat panel TV should have it professionally installed rather than using the services of companies like BestBuy or Circuit City or trying to do it on your own. Instead, I’d recommend that you get professional TV installation for commercial or residential locations from HDInstallers.com.

The television set and the home theater system that we’d ordered were delivered to our house about a week after we’d made our order at the store.

Unfortunately for us, the company that we purchased our new television set from didn’t offer an installation service. That’s probably a good thing though because I know a couple of people that have used the services of boxstores for their flat panel TV installation and they weren’t all that happy.

We ended up setting up the television and the home theater ourselves. It was very difficult. We have a vcr, a dvd player, a multi-CD player, and a DVD recorder that all had to be hooked up to the TV and the home theater system. It took us at least two weeks to get everything working properly.

If we had used a professional HD installer, the technician would have discovered several of the problems that plagued us right away. You see, we had a weak cable signal. A professional installer would have discovered that as he or she set up the television, home theater and all of our other electronic equipment and they would have either fixed the problem for us perhaps by installing a booster, or let us know that for a better picture we’d have to have the cable company come out for a service call to fix our weak signal.

Having our flat screen television professionally installed would have also allowed us to use our new television within hours of it’s arrival in our home. Instead, it took us weeks to set everything up ourselves.

We wasted time. We were frustrated. We weren’t happy with our TV because the picture wasn’t as good as we had expected thanks to the weak cable signal – and the last thing that you want when you’ve just spent a few thousand dollars on a new TV is to be unhappy with the picture! We also argued quite a bit as we tried to set up the television ourselves. It just wasn’t the new television experience that we’d been hoping to have.

If only we’d been smart enough to contact a great LCD TV Installation and Plasma TV Installation Service Company we wouldn’t have gone through all of that anger and frustration.

HD Installers are Nation wide LCD and Plasma television installers. They service every major city in the United States. The company provides both residential and commercial LCD and Plasma television installation, as well as home theater, projector and screen installations.

HD Installers will install your LCD or plasma television on the wall or table stand for you, plus, they will also integrate all of your audio and video equipment – including a current or new home theater system so that everything works properly. They’ll even program your universal remote control for you.

If you are thinking about getting an HD Flat screen TV or if you’ve already ordered your new TV you might want to visit HDInstallers.com as their article section is a great resource for installing your big screen lcd or plasma television. The articles discuss things that you should consider if you want to install your HDTV above a fireplace, and what cables you will need when you install your new TV, plus many other things that you may or may not have considered.

If you are simply trying to decide what size tv will be best for the room you plan to put your new LCD or plasma TV in then you should read the HD Installer calculator article.

Honestly, after the experience we had when we purchased our flat screen TV I’m certain that we will have our next flat screen professionally installed. I mean, when you decide to have your flat screen TV installed by HD Installers you are working with professionals with years of experience. Not to mention that they also have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, offer a one year warranty, and are fully insured.

Enjoy reading? Join Booksfree and have book rentals delivered to your home

It’s gotta be the pills

How do you feel about recorded conversations?

Act of revenge?

Next time – we’ll have our HDTV flat screen professionally installed

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