Business / Vendor Reviews

Business / Vendor Reviews

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Batteries America Terrific selection of batteries. The web site is old looking and ugly; they use Microsoft Front Page which tells me their level of sophistication. I can NOT recommend this vendor for the following reasons. I had to call for a tracking number for my order. I specified three days shipping on their web site but sent the item ground. The items came after I needed them. I wrote an e-mail to ask what was going on but it was ignored. The operation appears to be at hayseed level. Not recommended.

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E-Trade.   We do not recommend this company for anyone.  If your a day trader, you might look at this company but we can not figure out why you would choose it.  For the small investor and anyone who wishes to buy and hold stocks for the long run, do NOT consider this company.  They charge extremely high fees that will diminish your investments over time.

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Glyph Hard Drives Customer support we found to be very good. The sales person was wonderful. Ask them what manufacturer they use in their units if that is important to you. When we purchased, they were using Seagate, not one of my recommendations but Glyph said they would guarantee the drive. Recommended.

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Ham Radio Outlet (HRO) Anaheim I am fortunate enough to live close to this store. The sales people have saved me more than once. I walk in with a problem and they usually come up with a solution which naturally costs me money. Their attitude allegedly is commission sales, like walking on to a car dealer lot, they seem to hear the cash register ring as you enter. They do offer a lot of product, expertise and problem solving when you need it. Some of their jokes are quite predictable. It is a candy store for ham radio operators. Recommended.

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Internet sales. We only recommend Internet sales for items that are not time critical. We only recommend Internet sales for businesses open during shipping hours where the driver can walk into your establishment to make deliveries and pick up items for shipping. Deliveries to homes is acceptable for items that are NOT time sensitive. We do NOT recommend Internet sales to the home for time critical items requiring a signiture for the following reasons:

  • Some vendors do a slow job of building, to order product, thus moving back delivery dates from when you, the customer, think it should be ready.
  • Some vendors do not do a good job of performing expedited shipping. You pay for it but you will not get it in the time you think you should get it.
  • Shippers are usually good at quickly moving product quickly vast distances but delivery to the home is the problem. The recipient is inconvenienced in time and frequently has to spend added money to get the item resulting in additional costs.
    • Waiting at home for a shipment to arrive might take you away from work costing you money. In any case, waiting for a shipment will cost you time, typically LOTS of time waiting and waiting and waiting for the delivery.
    • Missed shipments may require you drive to a local shipping depot to pick your item up at a specified time. This will waste your time and gas.

Investment Business Daily is a wonderful investment advice newspaper.  For that purpose we recommend it.  The opinion section of the newspaper is another story.  We recommend you use those pages for bird cage liner.

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J.C. Penney Department Store seems to be a well run professional operation. I just love their sales. The people who work at the Brea Mall store are very helpful. Recommended.

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LinkSky web hosting. Recommend.

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Mervyns Department Store is not recommended. My father liked flannel shirts. I purchased one for him each year for two years as a Christmases gift. After one or two washings they fell apart. The shirts held the Mervin’s label. I was then treated rudely by store clerks twice. I have never been back. I have never had this type of experience at JC Pennney. Not recommended.

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Current Internet Performance Factor

Current Internet Performance Factor

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A lot of data continuously moves around the world through some major infrastructure wiring. As with any complicated utility, the performance of the total system can change. Good performance is when packets are sent swiftly and reliably. Simplistically, a total performance number can be totaled up for the whole system but its value is questionable unless the whole planet is affected. External factors such as radiation from the sun can, at times, disrupt accurate packet travel. If a major fiber optic cable is cut, this can impact signal flow values in large areas of the planet. Cyber attacks that spew out unnecessary packets can also lower performance. In the graphic below, internettrafficreport.com, has quantized the Internet performance. A low number starting at 0 is bad while a top number of 100 is perfect. The graphic below shows the current performance.


The Internet Traffic Report monitors the flow of data around the world. It then displays a value between zero and 100. Higher values indicate faster and more reliable connections.

A better way to show this level of performance is to break down the world into big chunk sizes typically tied to the large land masses of Earth. To see core down values, just click on the image above.

2008 Election and Statistical Effects Upon.

2008 Election and Statistical Effects Upon.

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Two past historical events have statistical implications for the current 2008 presidential election.  The first event is looking back in history to find the lowest approval rating of a national leader in a democracy.   It appears that Alejandro Toledo in 2004, President of Peru between 2001 and 2006 received single digit rating of 5 to 8 percent.

The reason for this effort in an attempt to figure out what is the lowest level any national leader can go, an artificial cellar floor.  This concept is to figure out what part of a society cannot be moved to vote disapproval.  Put another way, we try to find a statistical amount of people who will still support a ruler under the worst of circumstances.  This group of individuals is either brain dead, disconnected from world happenings, stupid, or honestly finding some redeeming value in the ruler.  We will call this statistical phenomenon, the bonehead factor.  Statistics is all about registering change in people’s attitudes and one can make a really slim case to discount these boneheads because they are cemented into their views.  Once we find this figure, we can then use it to figure out how really bad a particular ruler is by subtracting that amount.  As one convenient example, we have read reports that President Bush’s ratings have slid down to 31%.  We can take a huge leap and bring in the Peru factor of 5 to 8% even though that number comes from a completely different society.  If we subtract 5 to 8 percent points, we then get an actual national approval rating of 23 to 26 percent for President Bush.  This effort is to point out that statistics can be tweaked to reveal a bit more than what is first apparent.  I would not want to stand behind defending that approach, as it is a theory at this stage.

The second example is the Tom Bradley effect, also called the Wilder effect.  A very popular black American who was a successful mayor of Los Angeles ran for state governor in 1982.  He was ahead in the poles but lost the race.  The spread between the polling approval prior to the race and the subsequent percentage loss in the actual voter tally was about 3 percent.  Some people think this is a racial factor, white people not ready to pull the lever in favor of a minority when they enter the polling booth.  The 3 percent in 1982 has apparently diminished but we have not been able to find by how much.

The presidential race of 2008 brings in a large number of cultural, social, political, religious to mention a few.

The Republican Party is infected by Bush’s sick theology of governing and thus loosing large chunks of support in most statistical categories.  The bonehead factor, we first mentioned, might help the Republicans a bit and hurt Obama.  The next factor is the Bradley Effect.  Obviously Obama could loose some statistical percentage points.  Once one realizes these factors the reports one hears takes on different meanings.  It is imperative that Obama run ahead of McCain to thwart the Bonehead and Bradley effects.   This helps explain whey Obama campaign is still blasting full throttle up to the very end of the campaign.  This also explains why McCain camp might be running a really lame, much less energetic run for the presidency.  I for one would be appalled to really find out that the McCain strategists did a halfhearted effort because they counted on these statistical effects.   That would really be boneheaded on their part.  If Obama fails to win because the Bradley effect did come to fruition then that would be really sad for this nation.

The other outcome might take place.  If the poles put Obama way ahead of McCain and the Bradley effect drops his chances to a tie vote and these effects put the race into the courts and the Supreme Court does a replay of their last fiasco, the outcome might not end so peacefully.  This country already has a number of crises going on and to see our people make a move against the Supreme Court would just add another huge crisis for us to face.

Game Of Dominoes

Game Of Dominoes

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The supreme court decision that allegedly took the 2000 year presidential election out of the hands of the sovereign power, the people, and was wrestled away by that very body expected to protect the Constitution and in so doing took the responsibility of the fate of the country away from the people.  The unthinkable happened; the decision was made by the very judges hired to uphold the letter and intent of the Constitution.  The Constitution placed sovereign power firmly into the hands of the people.  This folly led to that putting in place a game of falling dominoes.  The past history has been a series of failures or falling dominoes, one domino hitting the next to fall the next domino next to it in a chain.  The Supreme Court put one domino on the table, that being deciding upon Bush as the ruler of the United States.  That domino began to fall when he trusted the United States into an illegitimate war.  The second domino to fall was that the war was so much an incompetent operation that the military found itself cemented in place, not able to extricate itself.

The next domino was the ruler taking steps to diminish the United States in stature by following ideology instead of seeking out unbiased analysis and devising policy according to facts.  The next domino to fall was the sovereign power, which slowly came around to understanding the ruler appointed by a group of judges had made a mistake and this person did not serve their purposes.  The next domino was the economy, which fell, but not for reasons attributable to the Republican Party but the ruling person, the falling domino was a most convenient explanation.

The 2008 election process is the fork in the road for the path of falling dominoes.  This is where the fallen dominoes will hit one or anther domino lying next in the path.  The two dominoes that are in the direct next path are called McCain and the second domino is Obama.  Let us hope that the Supreme Court does not intervene again and make the wrong domino fall.

Investment Business Daily Falls Far Short In Its Opinions.

Investment Business Daily Falls Far Short In Its Opinions.

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Investment Business Daily, or IBD, is devoted to investment facts and teaching you how to buy stocks and mutual funds.  For that purpose, it does a fine job.   Naturally you would expect a financial publication to have a Republican slant in its opinion section.  This publication, in our opinion, is for all practical purposes, devoid of any practical level of being unbiased in favor of the Republican viewpoint.  For this reason, it is our feeling that the opinion section of this newspaper, is an embarrassment to the field of journalism and the notion that a news vehicle try to provide a balanced viewpoint.   The opinion section allegedly tarnishes the sum total score for this paper.  For investment information we recommend this paper strongly.  The opinion section is best used for bird cage liner or fish wrap.

Apple Repairs Computer That Is Out Of Warantee

Apple Repairs Computer That Is Out Of Warantee

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We have a iMac 20 inch computer that was purchased September 2004.  Beginning the summer of 2008 it began to exhibit some disturbing symptoms.  It would not wake up from sleep mode.  The fans would race at high speed for hours.  Some times the computer would begin to shut itself off.  We took the computer in to the Genius Bar, at an Apple store, September 2008.  The technician looked the computer over and told us they would repair the unit for free even though we did not have any Apple insurance.  It seems that this computer had a serial number that fell within a range of computers with a known problem.  In about a week we got the computer back.  The receipt showed that the logic board and power supply ambient light sensor was replaced for no charge.  We have had the computer running for months now and the repair did solve the problem.   I wonder how many other computer manufacturers would repair a computer 4 years old.