I’ve been a fan of OnStar since before owning a car equipped with it. New General Motors cars with OnStar (that is nearly all of them now), come with a free three-month trial subscription to the service. I discovered that apparently this also applies to rental car fleets at the major rental companies. So far, … Read more
I want to enjoy the best of driver assistance technology that’s available today. For me, that’s Cadillac.
In November 1992, NBC News did a hatchet job on General Motors during an episode of its “Dateline NBC” program. The key element in the hour-long report was a staged crash of a car into the side of a GM pickup truck. The car hit the truck squarely and a fire erupted from the area … Read more
I’m no stranger to airline award travel. I’ve been gathering miles and (occasionally) redeeming them for nearly-free travel since the 80’s. My AAdvantage account with American Airlines was opened in 1984, the year frequent flyer programs were introduced. Award booking used to be easy Until now, things have been simple. I flew a lot, accumulated … Read more
Before I went to Europe last year, I decided to invest in a portable WiFi hotspot for tablet connectivity for when we were away from hotels, restaurants, etc. I did some web research and decided to give the Keepgo Mobile WiFi Hotspot a try. The hardware is a Huawei E5573C mobile hotspot, and it comes … Read more
The fun of Air Traffic Control on your own PC The Raspberry Pi is a revolution in small computer technology. In case you haven’t heard, the Raspberry Pi is a complete computer system about the size of a credit card and is priced at only $35. It was designed in the UK as an inexpensive … Read more
What do you do with an old PC? Ideally, you will back up all of your personal data from the machine, securely wipe the hard drive, then send it to a recycling facility. Sometimes that isn’t possible, in which case you should at least remove the hard drives before recycling the rest of the machine. … Read more
In Part 2, I wrote about my quest for a decent-sounding audio system that was simple to install and wouldn’t break the bank. The Samsung TW-J5500 powered tower system was my eventual choice. In this concluding article of the series, I praise my TiVo and how it is the ideal video source for my project. … Read more
In Part 1, I wrote about my plan to build a simple home theater on a budget and my process of selecting a projector and screen. This time, the topic is sound. I found out quickly that using the right terminology is very important in searching for audio equipment. In audio, the term “home theater” … Read more
Setting Expectations When we set out to create our home theater for two, we knew we wanted a cinematic experience without spending a Hollywood blockbuster budget. Purists would say that we’re not building a “real” home theater, but my goal was to keep the number of components, and thus the cost and complexity, to a … Read more