Net Sieve

Guest post!

I am so excited to have this week off with my family! Yesterday we ventured to Costco and became members! I love it. We spent about three hours walking around, shopping, and eating all the yummy samples.

Of course my husband wanted to spend most of the time in the electronics section. He found this 55 inch TV that he basically fell in love with. The funny thing is now we have this huge TV hanging on the wall in our living room and we don’t even have cable. I have been looking at all the Direct tv deals and am thinking about signing up. I mean, you don’t just buy a TV and a 55 inch one at that for the occasional movie that you watch on the Xbox.

I just found out that Costco sells travel deals, boats, and so much more. Basically, I have figured out that I can’t let my husband go to Costco by himself! I am actually excited about the TV though. With young kids at home it is nice sometimes to be able to turn on a show for them when I want to get something done like clean the kitchen or actually take a shower in silence so I can hear my own thoughts!

Guest written by our friend Clara Castro

My husband and I bought a new house in Gaithersburg, Maryland a few weeks ago. I am so psyched about moving into it. I’ve lived in Washington, DC for a long time. This move is going to mean a lot of changes for us. We’re going to have a lot more space, and a whole driveway to park in. Sometimes I can’t even believe it! I am so tired of living in a small apartment and can’t wait to have a nice big house and some storage space.

My husband and I both want to set up separate home offices so that should be pretty convenient too. Both of our offices are flexible and since the commute to DC is going to be long, we both plan on working from home sometimes. I hope this arrangement works out. I’m almost done with planning the move and only have a few more chores left. I do have to search wireless internet Gaithersburg so I can see which internet provider we should go with. I’m sure this won’t be much work compared to finding reputable movers. I’m so relieved to have almost everything done for the move. Now I’m just starting to get really excited about our new place.

So about that Touchpad…

Oddly enough, since the bizarre fire sale of HP’s line of tablet PCs happened, I’ve been looking more seriously at the BlackBerry PlayBook. I’m a BlackBerry user already – my smartphone is a BlackBerry and since I’m more of a texter than a talker – the phone is everything I need. So does the PlayBook’s full price beat out the TouchPad? Opinions welcome…

I don’t know what the fallout of HP’s lack of support for the TouchPad OS will be. I certainly don’t see BlackBerry pulling the rug out from under their products.

Does this mean I wouldn’t buy a TouchPad for less than $100 if I found one? No, it certainly doesn’t.

Thanks for the article from Robin Woodard

Before I moved, I made sure to do a lot of research on the utility providers where my new apartment would be. I got some wireless internet information from a local company, and it didn’t take long to realize that was the solution for all my Internet troubles. I found a really good electric provider that didn’t seem to be quite as high at the others in my area, so that was a relief for me. I decided I didn’t need a landline phone, so I just upped my cell service to include more minutes, and while I was at it I contacted my water! and sewer provider to shut off service at the old place once I moved. I had my mail forwarded and made sure to get my renters insurance up to date, and once moving day rolled around I felt totally prepared to leave my home. I only been at the new place for two days, but so far there haven’t been any major issues, I should knock on wood!

Sick of aggressive advertising that takes over your computer and bogs you down with crap? Worried that spyware is tracking your every move and worse?

Then it’s time to download Ad-Aware Free, a tool that scans your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known adware and spyware data-mining, tracking components and much more. When the tool finds malware it lists the results and lets you choose to remove or quarantine the components. It’s a lot more powerful than this review suggests, but the free version has limited real-time protection, only processes are scanned and scans can’t be scheduled

Download Ad-Aware Free

Relax a little, will you? Get on your computer and kill something.

Nexuiz is a 3d deathmatch game project, created online by a team of developers called Alientrap. It is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux (all the same archive). The game is meant to bring death match back to the basics, with fast paced action, perfect weapon balancing, and very excessive battles.

Version 2 of Nexuiz includes a single-player campaign with completely new advanced bot AI, five new maps, new particle effect system, weapon changes, and complete precompiled bumpmapping with GLSL shaders. The first version was released May 31st 2005, released entirely GPL and free over the net, a first for a project of its kind. Since then it has been downloaded over 1.5 million times, and the game is still being updated and developed, currently at version 2.4 and new releases being developed.

Download Nexuiz freeware.

Tired of finding out you don’t have the correct codec for whatever application you’re trying to run? Goes without saying. Here’s relief in a free package: Windows Essentials Codec Pack

Windows Essentials Codec Pack is a collection of the most essential Audio and Video DirectShow Codecs and Filters for Windows, that enables you to play and view almost all music and video files downloaded from the Internet. It adds support for (S)VCDs and XCDs as well as 3GP, AAC, AC3, APE, AVI, DivX, 3ivx, DAT, h.264, x264, Nero Digital, DTS, FLV, FLAC, HD-MOV, MPEG-1/2, M4A, MP3, MP4, MO3, MOD, MKV, OFR, TTA, OGG/OGM, S3M, Vorbis, VOB, XviD, XM, WV, UMX and many other formats. Essentials Codec Pack also includes Windows Media Player Classic. An integrated auto-update can automatically check for updated codecs.

Gets 5 Stars from 5 reviews. No adware or spyware. Sweet. Download your essentials at Snapfiles.

… or lack of actually. No one is gonna fight over this one, especially not the Big Softie. According to techcrunch.com:

Flash Lite for mobile phones might not be good enough for Steve Jobs, but Microsoft is less picky. It is licensing Flash Lite for Windows Mobile. This is an acknowledgment of two things: there are a lot of developers and existing Websites out there that work with Flash, and the mobile version of Microsoft’s own competing Silverlight software is nowhere near ready to be deployed.

You know I’m a fool for free samples and when I get an offer to try something with both “naked” and “natural” in the name – you know I’m signing up for that one!

So the company naked naturals offers a natural shampoo and conditioner with Keravis. (Yeah, I’d never heard of it either.) But clinical trials prove Keravis increases hair strength – the company says it makes hair up to 7 times stronger from the shampoo and 3 times stronger from using the conditioner. Sounds great. Naked naturals also steers clear of most of the crappy chemicals and sulfates. And they are animal-friendly.

I’d like to tell you that my bounteous locks are stronger and more nakedly natural already, but my girlfriend snatched the product out of my hand before I even got it through the door from the mailbox. I know one thing for sure, her free sample grabbing strength is at least 7 times stronger than mine.

So here’s her result: “Hair feels healthier and a good clean. Any company that doesn’t test on animals rules. Definitely buy this stuff for you and yours.” Seriously, I wanted to give her shiny, shoulder-length hair a good yank to see if it was in fact stronger, but that would be uncool. Or so she said.

Give it a try. I know I will as soon as I can pry it out of her hands …

OK, I’ve written before about the Monex companies and their opportunities for you to invest in gold and/or silver. I’ve recently learned about Monaco Rare Coin, which is a member of the Monex companies. This is your chance to get your hands on some cool rare coins without having to dig out your metal detector or learn how to scuba dive for shipwrecks.

Monaco Rare Coin offers the finest rare coins available, but doesn’t expect you to venture into this field all alone. They have many experienced professionals to assist you and they offer a broad range of investment programs and products to fit your budget. Not only can you buy through Monaco, if you’re already a collector, you can sell as well.

If you have any interest in rare coins at all – and who doesn’t? – you should check out their unique offerings.