TechnoGeekGuy

“No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession.”

[First Lady requires more than twenty attendants, Canada Free Press]

Are we surprised!? And remember, every time the First Lady goes somewhere, like Paris, Chicago, etc, many of these “attendants” must go with her. I wonder if the President’s budget he released earlier this week cuts his wife’s budget?

Also note that the article is published by the Canada Free Press. We probably won’t see this information on Reuters or CNN – though the way the things are going, the press is starting to lose their rose colored glasses.

With the death of the old Dell Demenion 4700 (P4, Windows XP Pro) that was being used to stream video (Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, etc) to the TV in the living room and the arrival of the Dell Vostro 420 (Core 2 Duo, Windows 7 Home Premium), my family has been enjoying Windows Media Center. WMC has really grown up! With the addition of Internet TV channels and Netflix, we find most of our online content right within WMC. Now it is time to add live TV.

In the past, I have used BeyondTV with Hauppauge PVR-150 tuners. These were PCI cards and only recorded analog signals. Now that analog TV is dead I needed a HDTV solution. I could purchase newer Hauppauge cards or try something new!

And that something new is the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual ATSC/QAM Digital TV Tuner. I have known about the HDHomeRun for a couple of years because of my involvement on the BeyondTV forums, but what got me interested this time was a discussion on the The Home Server Show podcast #63, the HDHomeRun was brought up in a discussion and I liked what I heard. So I decided to give it a try.

So what is the HDHomeRun? It is a digital tuner that allows one to take either a OTA HDTV signal or a clear QAM cable signal and watch/record on your computer using WMC, BeyondTV, MythTV, etc. The cool things about this tuner is that it is a network device and does not need to be installed nor connected directly to a computer to work. The model I purchased has 2 tuners in it. Now any computer on my network can stream live OTA HDTV without any additional hardware. With the 2 tuners, 2 different computers can use the tuner at the same time watching / recording different channels.

Setup was quite easy. I had the device out of the box, connected to my OTA HDTV antenna, connected to my network and plugged in within 10 minutes. Installing the necessary software on my Windows 7 box and configuring WMC took another 15 minutes (this includes scanning for channels and downloading the 14-day channel guide). I was watching live TV minutes later and scheduled The Biggest Loser to be recorded that night.

After coming back from the gym and an hour into the 2-hour show, the family sat down to watch The Biggest Loser – fast-forwarding through the commercials! A cool WMC feature is that clicking the FF button once plays the recorded video at almost 2x WITH SOUND! Nice!

I purchased the HDHomeRun from NewEgg.com for $128.99. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a HDTV tuner solution.

Back in August 2008 I posted an article about how my family gave the phone and satellite companies the boot. It’s ~16 months later, so I thought I give an update.

Internet Connection
We are still using a broadband cable connection to the Internet, though it has been upped to 10Mb down and 1Mb up. With 5 computers/laptops and a couple iPods/Zunes/smartphones, the increased bandwidth serves us well.

Phone
The big change here is that I am now using a phone solution provided by my cable provider, but this decision was 100% economic. It is cheaper to have my Internet connection with the phone service than without! Crazy, I know. I elected, though, to have only the “local/state-wide” service and still use Skype-Out for ALL my long distance needs. For incoming calls we now depending wholly on Google Voice. I have been using Google Voice since before it was purchased by Google. Love it! Love it!

TV / Movies / Entertainment
The main change here is that we have dropped Blockbuster and switched to Netflix. I have become a Netflix believer! Incoming vectors for entertainment now include: OTA HDTV; Hulu, YouTube and other streaming sites; and Netflix DVDs and streaming. This is STILL TOO MUCH CONTENT!!!

Email / Productivity / Organization
Everyone in the house is still using Gmail (hosted) for email. While we occasionally need to use M$ Word / Excel / PowerPoint, most everything is done with Google Docs. New this year is that my wife is starting to use Google Calendar. Now that we are using Google Voice 100% and now that Google supports Active Sync (for my Touch Pro2 smartphone), I am centralizing my contact management in Google Contacts (bye bye Plaxo).

Costs
The only cost increase seen this year was the price increase to my Internet connection (+30/mn). I am still realizing savings over what I had 2 years ago!

I cannot imagine going back to the way it was 2 years ago. My family and I do not feel we have missed a thing. I am calling this “experiment” a success!!! Or in Google terms, I am removing the BETA tag 

It was reported in the summer of 2008 that negotiations were taking place that in trade for Hillary Clinton’s support, Obama would help repay some of the “massive” debt the Clinton campaign had incurred [Hillary Clinton in negotiations for Barack Obama to help pay off her debts, Toby Harnden, UK Telegraph]. I just heard on the Rush Limbaugh radio show that the Obama administration has made right on its promise my paying some $5.7M on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Did this money come from the Obama campaign? Nooooooooo …. it came from the stimulus money! Wish means that you and I have helped pay off the Clinton campaign’s debt. Unbelievable!

It seems others are as incensed as I am:

• Obama pays Hillary’s bills with our money

Looking for further articles on this matter.

[Update: Check out http://scottystarnes.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/hillarys-pollster-received-6-million-from-stimulus/]

A once in a lifetime event … unless I drive to the next timezone within the next hour!

Parents take note. Teens are now being sued for posting pictures of themselves that are considered “pornographic”. Once charged, they may be labeled as a sex offender — and even worse, your home address will be labeled as having a registered sex offender living there.

Parents, you need to be aware of what your kids are taking pictures of and what they are posting online!

Read –>Parents fight child porn threats against “sexting” teens – Ars Technica

Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate who now is a plaintiff in one of the many lawsuits seeking to verify whether Barack Obama qualifies under the U.S. Constitution’s requirements to occupy the Oval Office, says the tactics adopted by lawyers for the president confirm there is an issue for the courts to investigate.

Keyes, who was the candidate of the American Independent Party, cited a recent exchange with lawyers representing Obama in which they warned they might seek monetary penalties against those raising the question of Obama’s eligibility under the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural born” citizen.

Keyes: President ‘has something to hide’ on eligibility

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You can follow Senator DeMint on Twitter @JimDeMint

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Want to find out what is in the Obama Stimulus Bill? Check out ReadTheStimulus.org

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