Liberal-Progressive leaving cable channel Current TV, which has been plagued with problems that the whole fuss with Olbermann's leaving the network brought to light (basicially, they were operating it on less than a shoestring, and oversold to Olbermann about how professional of a setup he'd be coming into, and refused to ante up to do better - ( Read more... )

Is it my imagination, but have hard drive prices doubled?  I was looking for a new one for Susan (her graphics take up a lot of space) - say, a 1 TB internal SATA - and the prices were around US $65 - now, they’re twice that and more! What happened?

Susan and I have had a couple of small VISA cards from (BIG ANNOYING BANK) for years; I dumped one account this year because they wanted to charge an outrageous fee for keeping the account open.  Trying to pay both of them off…and yes, (BIG ANNOYING BANK) is one of the outfits that is now skinning everyone for new profits since they took a hit from ( Read more... )

Over the last couple of months, I’ve noticed (1) a huge hike in my electric bill, (2) a huge jump in email and mail offering better rates for power than ComEd, the local (expensive) utility, and (3) a huge number of storms and heat waves - leading to power outages from damage or lack of power available from the grid to your house. So what do you do ( Read more... )

Back when I was young - we’ll say when I was 10, 1967 - gasoline generally cost about $0.32 per gallon.  Gas Wars would occasionally come up where there’d be a thrash over what sort of extras (glasses with a fill-up, etc.) would pull the business in - and sometimes, it was brute-force-drop-the-price.  I can remember seeing an occasional drop to say ( Read more... )

The GM Moraine (Frigidaire)  plant, which employed my mom, dad and grandmother at one time or other and that my dad retired from in the early 1970s, was closed by GM in 2008, and is possibly being re-opened and operated as a manufacturing site (with many different tenants splitting the space).    Details here in the Dayton Daily News story. ( Read more... )

…Toyotoho!  Kohler’s $6500 way-high-tech toilet, with all the gimmicks.  (last two links are to YouTube.)

I’m really tired of the rumbledy-toss of big banks buying small fry - and then going under due to hilarity at the home office.

We use two banks and a credit union; the latter is WAY out of state, and I’d transfer over to that except that we’d never have a local bank.

Bank #1 was Mid-America, which was bought by National City, which was then bought ( Read more... )

AP has a map here (interactive flash) on local economic conditions; my home county (DuPage) has (in the last two years) seen unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies double, and we’re nowhere near the bottom.  Check it out.

Discussion about a bailout bill for newspapers if they reorganize as 501c3 not-for-profits; the President had this to say about it:

Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting - especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his ( Read more... )