An over-the-air HD (high definition) antenna allows you to get your locals (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN, PBS) in HD for free if you have a HD TV. The picture and sound are great, but to take advantage of the HD digital audio, you need to run an optical audio cable to your home theater audio receiver.
Get you a HD television with an integrated ATSC tuner. Vizio TVs are a great value.
Go to your local, non-Home Depot hardware store and get you a 5′ mast pole, a wall antenna mount kit, enough coaxial cable to run from the antenna to your TV, and the coax connectors for each end.
Assemble your antenna per the directions included, mount the mast pole using the wall antenna mount kit, and slide the antenna onto the mast. Do not tighten completely.
Run the coaxial cable from your TV out to where your antenna is and be sure to run the cable through that weather-proof rubber boot that is on the antenna to keep the moisture out of your coax. Twist-on or crimp-on the coax connectors and hook-up the coax to your TV and antenna.
Point your antenna in the average direction of your local stations. You can find out where to aim your antenna by going to antennaweb.com. Depending on where you live, you may need to install a rotor to rotate your antenna to view all channels.
Plug in your TV, turn it on, and go to the menu where you can scan for antenna channels. If you don’t get all the channels that you should per antennaweb.com, simply adjust the direction of the antenna and repeat. Tighten all nuts and bolts completely when finished.
What do you carry in your pockets or on your Batman utility belt? If you choose to comment, be honest and specific. For example, if you carry a pocketknife, don’t just say ‘a knife’, say a Fighting Rooster ‘Fire and Brimstone’ knife. Good luck and thanks in advance.
Finding a twenty in your pocket is fun. Setting up networking in Windows: not so much. It’s usually a pain to get everything working and theoretically you can network between XP and Vista machines. Still interested? Well, good luck with the following:
Be sure your Windows User Account is password protected. If it is not, password protect it by going to Start and clicking on Control Panel. Click User Accounts. Click on your user account. Click on Create a password if you aren’t password protected. Accept the settings and move on. Do this for all computers on the network. Having your user account name on all computers sometimes makes the process easier.
In Windows XP, hit Start and click Control Panel. Click on System. Click on the Computer Name tab. Here you rename the name of the network (Workgroup) to something other than WORKGROUP (all computers on your network should be named the same). When you are finished click Apply, then OK. In Microsoft Vista, hit Start and click Control Panel. Click on System and Maintenance. Click System. Click See the name of this computer to see your computer’s name and domain. Click Change Settings: A new window will be displayed. Here you rename the name of the network (Workgroup) to something other than WORKGROUP (all computers on your network should be named the same). When you are finished click Apply, then OK.
To share a folder, right-click on a folder and click Properties. Click on the Sharing tab. Enable Sharing by accepting any warnings Windows gives you. Type in a name for the shared folder (Videos, Pictures, Music, etc.). Set a password if you wish (I would wish that). Accept your changes and move on.
To share a printer, hit Start and click Control Panel. Click Printers and Faxes. Right-click on the printer you wish to share and click Properties. Click Sharing. Type in the share information as needed and hit OK, Apply, Yes, Sure, Affirmative, or whatever it takes to get out of there. Remember exactly what you name this share because when you want to print over a network, you have to type the printer name in exactly.
To add a network printer, go back to the Printers and Faxes box you visited earlier from the Control Panel. Click on Add a printer. Select Network Printer and click Next. Type in the name of the printer from step 5. Click Next, OK, etc. and… hopefully it worked. If not, restart the computers and try step 6 again.
Hit Start and click Network. Your shares should pop up. If they don’t restart all computers, enter your passwords to log in to Windows and try again.
Once again, I wish you luck. If you need further assistance, Google it.
Real player used to be the way to listen to music online, but thankfully now there are alternatives. I have tried many programs and formats and have decided that using foobar2000 and shoutcast radio stations is the easiest and least taxing on your computer and internet bandwidth. Here’s what you do:
Go to shoutcast.com and browse the different stations and genres. You can even search for a music or type by keyword. For example I searched for ’80s’ and ‘.977 The 80s Channel’ was top on the list.
Once you pick a station, right-click on the ‘Tune In!’ button and select ‘Copy Shortcut’ (Internet Explorer) or ‘Copy Link Location’ (Firefox).
Open foobar and go to ‘File’, then ‘Add Location’. You can also hit ‘control+u’ on your keyboard at the same time.
Delete anything in that text box, then right-click and hit ‘Paste’.
Sometimes foobar will create a list of several addresses of the same link for that station, just delete all but one of those links (it doesn’t matter which one you keep).
Double-click on that address in foobar to start the online radio stream. Once you click on it, it will display the station name instead of the address from then on.
You can add as many as you want and they are all free. I recommend any of the ‘.977′ stations for starters.
Back in college, a friend introduced me to game emulation, which is using your computer to act like or emulate a different game system. For example, I play classic Nintendo games like Zelda and Mike Tyson’s Punchout on my computer. All you need is:
A computer
A game controller or keyboard
ROMs (the digital version of the games like Zelda, etc.)
Emulators (the program that acts like the game system and plays the ROMs)
There is an awesome feature in Windows called a “Recycle Bin.” It works like this, you delete a file and it goes to the recycle bin. When you empty the recycle bin, the file disappears, but the file is still on your computer. The file will remain on your hard drive until the computer needs that space for something else. So, if you have accidentally deleted files and emptied them from your recycle bin and cannot find a copy anywhere or you reformatted your computer and need some of those old files back, you could go to Best Buy and pay the Geek Squad at least $259 to try to find those files, or you could find them yourself using software off the internet. There are many programs to choose from in all price ranges. Undelete by Diskeeper is only $29.95.
Once you purchase, download, and install your recovery program, run a scan and you should see a list of available recoverable files. From what I remember when I had to do this a couple of years ago, the process is pretty straightforward. If you find and recover that deleted file yourself, you just saved yourself about $230.
If you have a few minutes during the day in front of your computer, you have the ability to earn extra money by participating in online surveys. The surveys are quick and painless and I don’t get spammed like I thought I would. In fact, I have never received spam from any of the survey companies I signed up with. There are no commitments and signup is easy. I recommend the following sites that pay cash for completed surveys:
There are referral benefits offered with the above survey companies, so once you sign up from the above links, use your referral links to invite others.
…any computer you purchase new is good enough and fast enough for general-use computing (email, internets, Word). You just need to decide on screen size, hard drive size, etc. Both AMD (Athlon, Turion, Durion) and Intel (Pentium, Core 2 Duo, Celeron) processors are fine. AMDs are less expensive, the way to go for a basic computer. Don’t worry too much about RAM because you can upgrade that easily if needed. 1 gig of RAM is enough for most people.
If you are purchasing from a store, don’t let places like Best Buy, Circuit City, or Staples talk you into unnecessarily spending hundreds of extra dollars in software. For example, in Best Buy recently, I saw a middle-aged woman shopping for an inexpensive desktop computer (a $299 Gateway). She didn’t need a high-end gaming machine, she just wanted to send email, type letters, and surf the internets. I overheard an associate tell her that since she had broadband cable internet, she needed to spend $500 over the price of the computer in software and labor that she could easily get and do for free. Here’s my advice on what to do after you buy a new computer and say no to the Best Buy sharks.
Decide to keep Microsoft Vista or downgrade to Windows XP. If you choose to keep Vista, or whatever your new computer came with, continue to the next step. If you want to downgrade from Vista to XP, click here. So many people are wanting to go back to XP that Dell has started offering XP instead of Vista on their site.
Uninstall any Norton or McAfee software and download and install Avast! anti-virus and Windows Defender anti-spyware. Norton and McAfee are OK, but they seriously slow down your computer.
Download and install PC Decrapifier. This program automatically removes the bloat-ware, program trial versions, and spyware that is pre-installed on your new computer and also seriously slows it down. Amazingly, Best Buy’s Geek Squad charges at least $49 to remove their own spyware. PC Decrapifier is free.
Get your Windows Updates (shortcuts located in the Start menu or in tools in Internet Explorer) and restart your computer. Repeat this step until you get all of the updates.
Find your laptop or desktop computer and make sure you are wireless ready. This means an integrated wireless adapter for laptops or a wireless adapter like the Linksys WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Adapter for desktop computers.
Get you some high speed internets (DSL, cable, satellite, etc.).
Once you have the above items, connect your high speed internet connection’s network cable to the WAN or internet port on the back of your wireless router.
With a network cable, connect your computer to a LAN port (there are usually four of them) on the back of the wireless router and login to the router by following the instructions packaged with the router.
After you have logged-on to your router, find the wireless security settings where you: name your network, choose WPA security, and type in a password. Also password protect the router in the administration settings. These security settings keep others from accessing your wireless network.
Unplug your computer from the router, wait for Windows to detect your wireless network, and enter the password you chose earlier. If you have wireless built into your laptop, make sure the wireless switch is turned on, usually located on the front of the laptop.
Congratulations, you just setup a secured wireless network yourself. Best Buy’s Geek Squad charges $199 in labor plus equipment charges to setup the wireless network. You just did all that yourself in steps 4-7. Now that you saved that money, go do some Christmas shopping on your couch in your undies.
What do you carry in your pockets or on your Batman utility belt? If you choose to comment, be honest and specific. For example, if you carry a pocketknife, don’t just say ‘a knife’, say a Fighting Rooster ‘Fire and Brimstone’ knife. Good luck and thanks in advance.
There is an awesome feature in Windows called a “Recycle Bin.” It works like this, you delete a file and it goes to the recycle bin. When you empty the recycle bin, the file disappears, but the file is still on your computer. The file will remain on your hard drive until the computer needs that space for something else. So, if you have accidentally deleted files and emptied them from your recycle bin and cannot find a copy anywhere or you reformatted your computer and need some of those old files back, you could go to Best Buy and 
for desktop computers.
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