[Hatfield]

[quote=no_such_reality]Frankly, buying SSD is like buying a Ferrari for your morning rush hour commute on the I5.[/quote]

I’m guessing you haven’t spent many hours working on a machine that has an SSD, or perhaps you have the patience of a Zen monk. Also, the Ferrari analogy is not a good one. The vast majority of the waiting-for-things-to-happen on a computer is caused by disk latency and throughput issues. The one piece of hardware that most limits the speed of a PC is its hard drive. Modern SSDs have essentially zero latency and deliver data run fast enough to saturate the SATA bus. The disk is no longer the bottleneck.

I switch tasks a lot, need to compile code, and do lots of other disk and CPU intensive tasks, and I find that removing disk latency from the equation is a huge productivity boost. Need to open an image file for that web design issue? Kablam! there it is. Need to open some hog of an application to fix that document? Boom, done. Those 15-seconds there, 30-seconds there pauses that punctuate the work day add up, and you really notice it when they’re gone. And you REALLY notice it when you switch back to a spinning platter.

The reliability issue requires that you stick to a watertight backup strategy, but i’ve never seen a single-bulled productivity boost like the one an SSD provides.

[Hatfield]

Before taking the plunge into SSDs, you should read this article.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

I’ve been using SSDs for about two and half years now. Three of the four SSDs I have owned failed suddenly. That said, I could never see going back to a spinning platter drive in my MBP. The key is to have a solid backup strategy (which you really should be doing no matter what drive you use).

With the old 5400 rpm drive, boot time from entering a password to having a fully drawn desktop was well over a minute. Moving to a 7200 rpm drive shortened this somewhat. With the SSD it takes about 5 seconds. Application launches are instantaneous. It sounds cliche but it really is a transformative experience. I also had one on an XP machine and the performance boost was similar.

SSDs only have a limited number of erase cycles so performance will degrade as dead sectors are abandoned by the drive firmware. Enabling TRIM supposedly will greatly extend SSD life. There is no TRIM support for XP but it’s built into Windows 7. It’s also available on Macs starting with Snow Leopard, but it won’t enable itself with non-OEM drives. You will need to enable TRIM manually. Google “trim enabler mac” for more info.

[Hatfield]

If your home computer is a Mac, getting an iPhone is a no-brainer. There’s just no beating the seamless integration with MacOS and iOS. But If you use a PC, the story gets a lot less compelling. You could make pretty a pretty good argument for it being a tossup between the iPhone and the new Galaxy.

All sources seem to indicate that the iPhone 5 will have an LTE chipset. it’s inconceivable that it wouldn’t.

[Hatfield]

Yes, that seems way off. The CEA policies on my two little rental cottages are around $100/yr, and our 1900 sq ft residence is $150. All three policies have 15% deductibles.

[Hatfield]

I think Hawley’s Auto Body might fit the bill. They’re on Lytton near Rosecrans, not far from Liberty Station.

I have a Class B RV (ie a fancy camper van) that’s about 12 years old and it’s showing its age. Rust had started to form where some of the body panels had been welded. I just wanted to get it fixed up to prevent the rust from spreading. I explained this wasn’t an insurance job, I wasn’t fixing it to sell it, and I wasn’t in any particular hurry. The owner understood all this, gave me a good estimate, and they did a good job. I would definitely go back there again.

Hawley Auto Body & Paint
2844 Lytton Street
San Diego, CA 92110-4810

[Hatfield]

I stopped going to my optometrist because I got tired of all these games. Even though he takes VSP (which granted is not very good insurance), it was far, far cheaper and I got a better exam to boot at Costco.

I had an old pair of frames re-lensed for $30 from this place, and was so happy with the work I bought a pair of cheap-ass backup glasses for $18: http://www.goggles4u.com/

[Hatfield]

[quote=rent4now][quote=Diego Mamani][quote=Hatfield]apparently if you have cable internet, they don’t have a way to turn off the analog cable TV channels. So we’re still get 60 or 70 channels for free.[/quote]
Don’t you need some kind of box or decoder in order to get those freebie channels to your TV?[/quote]

I just called cox and they said if you only have the internet plan that your basic cable will not work. I pay $15/month for your basic 4-11 channels. Looking for alternatives like rabbit ears but those look so “ghetto”.
:([/quote]

Hmm, I’m not sure what to say other than “well of course they would tell you that.” If I was in their shoes, I would tell people that too.

Here’s what I know: When I finally got around to canceling cable, I had the cable box on, and within a minute of making the phone call, Cox had sent the box some sort of packet to disable it. I returned the cable box and have not paid for cable TV in over two months. I posted this on FB and someone mentioned that if you have cable internet, they don’t have a way to filter out all the analog channels. So for grins I plugged the coax cable coming out of the wall into the back of the TV, and whaddya know? I used the auto-program function on the TV to go find all the TV channels it could, and it found around 80 or so. I am guessing these are all or most of the basic cable channels.

I had no real objection to putting up an antenna. My issue was that this old TV can’t receive digital broadcasts, and we never bothered to get a digital broadcast adapter box when they were practically giving them away. Now they’ve gotten oddly hard to find. They’re like $100 on Amazon or eBay, but for $400 you can get a whole new LCD TV with a digital tuner built-in.

But I didn’t do any of those things. The whole point of this exercise was to stop spending money on television.

[Hatfield]

[quote=spdrun]Most VoIP sounds like shit compared to the phone network, which was designed to carry voice and does it well. It’s not only a matter of speed, but of latency.[/quote]

Understood. Our phone is through the cable, so it’s *already* VOIP. I would just be exchanging one VOIP service for another.

[Hatfield]

The plasma thread reminded me about this thread.

After much dilly-dallying, I finally got around to canceling cable TV a couple months ago. We still have internet and telephone through Cox. Our Cox bill dropped from around $180 to $100, and the best part: apparently if you have cable internet, they don’t have a way to turn off the analog cable TV channels. So we’re still get 60 or 70 channels for free. Not that it does us much good – before the Olympics started I had not turned on the TV in two or three months.

My next project is to drop the landline. I have an OBi 110 box, which allows you to access your Google voice line from a regular old wired handset. I’ve had the same landline number for 20+ years, and I’m thinking about porting it over to Google voice using this method: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/google-voice-a-step-by-step-primer-on-ditching-your-land-line-while-keeping-your-number/10455

[Hatfield]

[quote=svelte]Wow. Have we gotten to the point where TVs are 2 year disposable items?[/quote]

I’m guessing this flat screen TV is a plasma. Plasma TVs are notorious for power supply failures. Before LCDs came down so much in price, my brother was getting blown up plasmas for free or cheap on CL, fixing the power supply, and then reselling them for a $300-400. Many of the sets used the same power supply so he knew exactly what to replace. It was very easy money.

That said, our plasma is a 42″ Magnavox. It probably 8-10 years old by now and has given us no problems at all.

[Hatfield]

The Nolo Press Landlord Guide is the best $30 you will ever write off on your Schedule E. Among other things, it tells you exactly what kinds of questions you can and can’t ask when screening tenants. In response to your specific question, in California anyway, yes you can ask a previous landlord whether the rent was paid on time, and whether they would rent to this person again.

If they don’t give me valid contact info for the last two landlords, the application goes in the shredder. If they don’t list enough non-related personal and job references, the application goes in the shredder. If the credit report shows a history of late credit card payments, the application process stops there. There is a percentage of people who just can’t get their shit together. These are not the people you want living in a house that you own. I’d rather let it sit vacant for another month and find a reliable tenant.

In this example, as soon as I caught the applicant in a lie or a significant misrepresentation, they’re toast. What other lies or excuses will they give you in the future when the rent is overdue? Life’s too short to play these games.

[Hatfield]

I don’t know if he can win without energizing the evangelical vote somehow. They hate Obama but I don’t think they love Romney. To win he probably needs some evangelical street cred on his ticket. Somebody like a Palin but obviously not Palin. And it probably needs to be a Southerner. Huckabee maybe?

I’m not a fan of the modern GOP or of Romney. But his candidacy is like a train wreck that I can’t not watch unfold.

[Hatfield]

Once, I had a tenant who had a barking dog. The neighbor never talked to them about it, they never talked to me about it, instead they called Code Compliance. They came out, made an assessment, and then sent me (the property owner) a letter saying that complaints had been received, and if the problem was not resolved by such-and-such a date, that I would be fined a couple hundred dollars. As it happened, the tenant had already moved out at this point so the issue had already been resolved.

I was curious how the process worked, though, so I called Code Compliance and asked a series of what-if questions. Long of the short of it is: there’s not much due process. Once they make a determination to fine you, you either pay the fine or face leins. I would think there would be some sort of appeals process, but if there is, it’s pretty damn opaque.

So if the situation really is intractable, you might want to sic Code Compliance on her.

[Hatfield]

I love reading the WSJ… as long as I stay off the editorial page. :p But I find the WSJ to be well-written and they cover a lot of stories that nobody else does. These days, most of the major dailies all carry the same news stories off the wire service.

[Hatfield]

I don’t have the balls to short this stock but I can’t wait to see what put options look like.

I suppose they could use their new-found capital to buy a troubled handset maker (RIM, Noky) but I just don’t see a business case for a FB phone.

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