If I posted here every time I read something about Senator Dodd that ticked me off this blog would become all Dodd all the time. I didn’t want that. So I decided to publish another site that would be all Dodd all the time. So without further ado I’m proud to announce Elect Chris Dodd.
It’s I site where I can document the reasons to elect Chris Dodd, at least as I see them. They may not be good reasons to elect a Senator, but they are the reasons. So feel free to head on over and give it a look.
According to the Planet Money blog I just invested $192 in General Motors. Wonder if that employee/owner discount will cover the money I expect to lose on the investment.
It looks like Amazon (at the behest of Random House) has begun to disable the text to speech feature in some Kindle books after they’ve already been purchased. I have to admit I don’t use text to speech and it’s not a key reason I bought the Kindle, yet this bothers me a lot. It just shows that in DRM world we don’t own anything and the big companies can change things on a whim, even if we think we bought it. It would be one thing if they disabled the feature on new purchases (and said it was disabled up front) but they’ve disabled it for people who bought that functionality when they bought the book.
Test to speech (TtS) has been around on computers for a long time and it’s not much different on the Kindle. I also listen to audion books a lot (although a lot less now) and wouldn’t consider the Kindle TtS as a alternative. The only thing I’d envision TtS for is to finish a chapter or article if I have to run out of the house before I finish. I’ve done that exactly never.
Random House is too big for me to say I’ll never buy another one of their books (if I could even keep track of all their imprints), but I will certainly think twice before buying (in reality renting) one of their books.
The big news today is that the Obama’s have a new dog. A Portuguese water dog. Buried in the article is news that Senator Kennedy also has a Portuguese water dog. You can’t make this stuff up.
My power usage has doubled in the last three years. As it would happen, the average temperature in January 2006 and January 2009 were only a degree apart and a relatively mild 32 and 33 degrees. While I technically have gas heat, electricity is needed to force the air around so the more the heat runs the more electricity I use.
So I decided to start with the living room entertainment center which consists of a tube TV, Tivo, Apple TV and PS3. The Apple TV and PS3 didn’t exist 3 years ago so I decided to start there. I plugged the Apple TV, PS3 and TV into a power strip and plugged that power strip into a Kill-o-Watt meter.
All three of those devices remained unused for 25 hours which is when I checked the meter. It had used 0.57 KWh just sitting there not doing anything. This would cost me $2.88/mth and $35.07/yr and my current rate. Well, it’s not exactly true they weren’t in use. The Apple TV did a sync or two when I started iTunes on my Mac, but that’s all. It does give a true measurement as to how much power those things use just sitting there.
The Tivo needs to stay plugged in so it does it’s recording. But the other three can be powered off as they are unused most of the say. In fact, the PS3 will probably be unplugged as it can go weeks between uses. It won’t save enough to be noticeable on the monthly bill since it fluctuates more than a couple bucks a month, but at least it will seem like I saving something. I just won’t think about the possibility that booting the Apple TV uses more power than a couple days sitting idle.
Looks like Senator Dodd has a history of beneficial real estate deals. Not only do the deals seem to fit the “sweetheart” category, but the deals included a convicted of tax and securities fraud. That felon received a pardon that was secured by Dodd. That felon still owed the SEC millions for his violations when Dodd got him the pardon. A pardon that didn’t go through the typical Justice department review process. Big surprise here - Dodd mentions still unreleased documents in his defense.