allheart55 Cindy E

Gas prices have finally fallen below $2 per gallon where I live, but that’s still a fortune compared to what some motorists in Ohio encountered over the weekend. A computer glitch of some sort made the price at a Pilot Travel Center plummet as low as a few pennies, which attracted opportunistic shoppers. Then the Circle K across the street decided to keep up with their competitors by lowering their prices, too. Was it all a publicity stunt? Some hackers with very small-time goals? All the travel center’s cashier could say was that there was a computer malfunction, and then the other store decided to keep up with its neighbor and competition. “I just filled my gas tank up from dead empty for 26 cents,” one customer told TV station WTOL as he pumped gas. “I told her to put ten on it and she only gave me five bucks and now I need to go get my change. That’s too funny.” He could have given the cashier a dollar and still received change back. This happened in the wee hours of Sunday morning, so not too many people were driving by to take advantage. A writer at Cleveland.com did some historical research and found that the last time gas was that cheap locally was about 80 years ago. The actual average gas price this week near Toldedo is about $1.50. Gas prices briefly drop to 19 cents, 17 cents in north Toledo [WTOL] Gas prices temporarily drop under 20 cents a gallon in Toledo [Cleveland.com] Source: consumerist

In retail archaeology, it’s exciting when an excavation turns up a new type of artifact that has never been studied before. Reader Paris is one of Consumerist’s Raiders of the Lost Walmart, the brave explorers who hunt down retail antiquities in the world’s big-box stores. He found something that we had never seen before: another variety of decade-old MP3 player with a comically high price tag and free downloads from the Walmart Music Store, which shut down in 2008. Just like our favorite ancient MP3 player, the MobiBLU, the Siren was probably released around 2006. Both came out when Walmart was trying to promote its own MP3 download store. Back in late 2008, the store shut down, deactivating the digital rights management on the song files. Few music fans seem to miss the store very much, but it does provide a handy way to tell which devices have been sitting on the shelf for far too long. How long? Well, this player has been on clearance since 2009. Perhaps it’s time to admit that it needs to be marked down a little bit. Just a bit. Source: consumerist

Awesome, Dougie. Great cable management and I love the case too. :thumbsup:

Why don't you post some pictures of your cylinder build, Dougie. I really enjoyed seeing them. You should share them with everyone here.

When it comes to visual aesthetics, Windows 10 is reasonably configurable—but not as configurable as I’d like. For instance, I can’t find a way to replicate Windows 7’s rounded window corners. (If you found one, please add it to the comments section below.) But you can still do a lot to make Windows 10 look better. Let’s start with some basic changes: Select Start > Settings > Personalization. In the default Background tab, you can select the desktop background (I still prefer the old name, wallpaper). You can choose a picture (one of theirs or one of your own), a solid color, or a slideshow made up of various pictures. (If you select Slideshow, you’ll be asked to select an “album.” Don’t worry. A file folder, in this context, is also an album.) Once you’ve made that choice, click the Colors tab on the left pane. Here you can pick the accent color that will fill your taskbar and Start menu, as well as frame your windows. But rather than pick a color, consider turning on Automatically pick an accent color from my background—especially if you set up a slideshow. When the background image changes, the accent color will change to something that goes well with it. Miss the transparent Aero look? You can get part of it back by turning on the Make Start, taskbar, and action center transparent. Aero Glass and transparency for Windows 8.1—and yes, it works for Windows 10 (just make sure you get the 8.1 version, and not the version for plain old Windows 8). The program is free. Be sure to download the installer (it’s an EXE file) rather than the library collection (a 7Z file). The change will happen as soon as you install the program. But it won’t change all windows equally. Modern apps look entirely different from the old-fashioned Windows programs, and Aero Glass’ changes have little or no effect on these. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to turn the Aero look on or off. The easiest way to remove it is to enter Control Panel’s Programs and Features tool and uninstall Aero Glass for Windows. Luckily, it will be near the top of the alphabetical list of installed programs. Source: pcworld

I remember as a kid, having a family doctor that used to make house calls. I even remember his name, Dr. Browndorf. He came out to the house one Saturday after I stepped on a rusty nail. He gave me a tetanus shot and cleaned and bandaged my foot.

The only outage that affected me was the cable television. No problems with the internet or landline. It was literally impossible to reach Comcast by phone this morning or to access the Comcast website.

UPDATE: As of 1:22 p.m., Comcast says: "We have repaired the temporary network interruption that impacted some of our services this morning. Our engineers continue to work on this issue and almost all services have already been restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused our customers." Potentially millions of Comcast customers are dealing with video outages on Monday after a "temporary network interruption" impacted the cable provider in the morning, affecting several Comcast and Xfinity services. According to the internet-site DownDetector.com – a site that documents users' issues with online service providers – problems started at about 6:30 a.m., but, customers flooded the site with complaints of service outages, including Internet, Cable or "total blackout," by 9 a.m., Monday. In a map of where the outages are being reported, the site notes that thousands of users from "Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Houston, Portland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis, and Washington" have reported problems. Contacted Monday afternoon, Jennifer Bilotta, director of public relations for Comcast's Northeast Division – which includes Philadelphia/Southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Northern Delaware – said the issue is being investigated and service is slowly being restored. While Bilotta shared a statement on Monday's outages, she said only video services were impacted by these outages. "We’re continuing to investigate what appears to be a temporary network interruption that impacted some of our services this morning," read the statement shared by Bilotta. "Our engineers have been working on this and services are starting to be restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused our customers.” Source: phillyvoice

Thanks anyway, N3 but I'll have to pass. :help:

I remember fondly most of them, N3.:D I agree with you about the dentist part, Bill.:eek:

I read about the trial caps. One of the cities that they are trying it out in is Chicago, I think.

The majority of the bill is probably the cable TV and the X-1 platform. :eek:

That is part of the problem. I have the X-finity (X-1 platform) package. It includes all of the pay channels, DVR, (everything you record is in the cloud) landline and the fastest internet speeds. So far there is no cap on bandwidth.

I am paying over $370. a month at Comcast for internet, cable and landline. It's ridiculous. I often toy with the idea of switching to FIOS but I hate their menu and their speeds aren't as fast as what I am used to getting.

(Under the age of 45? You probably won't understand.) You could hardly see television for all the 'snow'. Spread the 'rabbit ears' as far as they go. Me cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system. We all took gym, not PE... And risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $99 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a jerk. It was a neighborhood run a muck. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

In recent days, some Gmail users have been wondering and worrying about new emails popping up in their inboxes with a new unlocked icon. Have no fear. As we mentioned on Tuesday, this is just Google's way of telling you that an email you've received isn't as secure as it should be. SEE ALSO: Google offers 2GB of free storage, adds Gmail encryption updates Emails that have not been authenticated by TLS encryption (transport layer security) will show this red unlocked icon, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the sender is an evil spammer sneaking into your inbox. Image: gmail screenshot What TLS encryption does is protect the security of email messages as they travel from sender to recipient. That encryption makes sure that the sender's email remains private, preventing third parties from taking a peek at the message or tampering with it as it makes its way to its final destination. So if you see this icon, and the message has anything to do with sensitive information (finances, passwords, etc.), you should be concerned and take steps to contact the sender about the insecure email. But outside of emails containing sensitive information, that scary lock icon may just be an indication that the email could be compromised or that sender isn't taking its security as seriously as they should be. Image: gmail screenshot Again, if you see the red unlocked icon, don't immediately reach for the "send to Spam" button, just take special note of that particular message. No need to panic, just keep your guard up. Source: yahoo

I imagine it wouldn't take very long.

Hello Joe and Welcome to PC Help Forum.

Thanks for the recommendation, William. :) You should check this one out and see what you think of it, Lina.

I've seen that happen more than a few times.:D Makes me glad that I don't live anywhere near Philly. I like having a double driveway.

:big_ha:

:DThat's a little severe, isn't it? :eek:

A fed-up homeowner got sweet revenge on a commuter who parked on her drive by blocking his car with a one ton bag of gravel. Infuriated Julie Geue parked the bag behind the unwelcome car after the commuter had left his vehicle on her drive in Crowborough, East Sussex, before heading to a nearby train station. Geue’s driveway was due to be gravelled when the man parked in her drive, meaning works could not carried out. So the 48-year-old took her retribution by using the gravel meant for her four-car driveway for an entirely different reason. It was two days before the hapless commuter moved his car. Geue said the driver, who returned to his car after work claimed he was meant to be parking at a friend’s house, but got confused. But Julie said: “The offender in this case claims to have made a genuine error and got confused about which house he should be parking in front of. "Unfortunately, after over ten years of putting up with lazy, obnoxious and rude, often threatening, people doing the this I no longer care if it’s a genuine mistake or not.” She even posted a note, attached to a trowel in the gravel, which said: “Happy digging, at least it’s not raining.” Source: yahoo