Lenovo M0520 Speaker

On By Michel McDonaldIn Ad4 Comments

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Lenovo for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

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Let’s face it, the built in speakers on all of your devices suck.  You know it and I know it.  I have a brand new monitor for my desktop with built in speakers and the sound is ok for when I hear specific PC sounds, but I really don’t care about those sounds.  When I want to watch Netflix, I have to plug my computer into my HDTV with the HDMI cable because of how bad the monitor speakers are.  Chips iPhone speaker is ok for hearing the ringtone when someone calls him, but when he wants to watch a YouTube video, he has to hold the speaker up to his ear because he can’t hear it, and then he misses the video entirely which defeats the purpose of watching a YouTube video.

What you need is a Lenovo speaker.  It is (as you can see in the image above) a little red speaker and can be attached to any device that needs a speaker like a desktop, laptop, phone or mp3 player.  The speaker may be small, but the sound it produces is big and bold.  It has 4-watts of power for high-quality full sound, a USB that charges it and it has an energy saving function, and it has a speaker wire that spools for easy storage.  It is also a very a elegant yet substantial presentation.

I would love to have this because it is small enough that I can plug it in to any device that needs it like my Dell DJ, my CR-48 or my Desktop.  Darrin would love one for his iPhone.  I think this would make a great gift for anyone who has a birthday coming up (hint hint wink wink).  Click the link for more details.

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My Dell DJ (Again)

On By Michel McDonaldIn Music4 Comments

YAY I got my Dell DJ back!  Darrin bought this for me for Christmas 2004 and I got it in January 2005.  During the summer of 2005, the battery started dying slowly.  The charge is supposed to last 8 or 12 hours, I forgot what it was, but suddenly it went down to like 6 hours, then 5, then 4 and so on until it wouldn’t keep its charge for more than 5 seconds.  I stopped using it when summer was over and I didn’t call Dell to have them replace the battery because I was too lazy and had given up on it.  It wasn’t until the warranty expired when I decided to call and they told me the battery was going to cost $70.  Well, I thought I had a 2 year warranty, but the warranty that I had didn’t cover the battery.  Yeah, thanks Dell for having your loopholes.  It sat in a drawer for many years.

I decide that I wanted to buy a new battery for it in 2009 and so I found a battery on eBay for like $15 (with shipping) and bought it, unfortunately it wasn’t the right battery even though they said it was.  It worked, it just didn’t fit inside of the DJ.  I did research on how to replace the battery and one website said to remove the wheel which is why it looks dented, because I was trying to pry that MFer off.  I couldn’t get it off so I found another website which told me how to do it and so I made a video and put it on YouTube.

That battery didn’t last very long and so the DJ has sat in a drawer for the last 2 years.  I decided that I wanted my DJ back so I bought another battery from eBay, only it was the right battery.  They have an instructional video on there, guess whose video it is?  Mine!  This battery is the correct one and it fits and is charged up and ready to play.  I’m so glad it fits, I hated that the battery was taped to the back LMAO.

I have wanted to buy Jane Badler’s new album called “Mistaken Identity” so I bought it from Amazon.  I recommend buying it because she is such an awesome singer.

The DJ still sounds really good.  It’s not an iPod, but this Dell DJ cost $200 back in the day when Darrin bought it for me.  He also bought me a remote control for $50 and a 2-year warranty for another $50 and I have felt bad all these years that I only got a good 6 months out of it.  So now that I have it back I can start listening to music again.  YAY!

You Tube Video:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svD_W3PCrSc

Nopalea The Wellness Drink

On By Michel McDonaldIn Ad1 Comment

I heard about this Nopalea (pronounced No-pah lay’uh) last year, but I haven’t tried it yet.  I would like to try it because of the claims on their website.  They say, do you suffer from inflammation and it’s related health problems?  Then they list a few things like muscle, joint and body inflammation which causes joint, muscle and body pain.  Respiratory inflammation which causes allergies and breathing difficulties (which I have).  Arterial inflammation which causes heart health problems.  Digestive tract inflammation which causes bloating, cramps and burning (I assume for women, obviously I don’t get cramps or bloating).  And widespread body cell inflammation which causes overall fatigue.  Well, I have a few of those things, especially the last one because I’m always tired even though I haven’t exerted any energy.

Do you or anyone you know suffer from any of those?  Nopalea contains rare and potent antioxidants that are scientifically proven to help the body reduce inflammation.  When you take Nopalea daily, it can help your body reduce inflammation, cleanse itself of daily toxins and promote optimal health.  I think that is worth buying.  It is not clinically proven to reduce any pain you might have, but it has proven nutrients to reduce inflammation which we all know is the leading cause of pain.  It also contains rare antioxidants (Betalains) that have been scientifically proven to reduce inflammation.

Nopalea has already sold 3 million bottles of its anti-inflammatory wellness drink, so why not give it a try and see if it works for you?  You can get a free bottle (only pay $9.95 for shipping) by calling 1-800-203-7063.  Do your body a favor, try this drink.

Dark Shadows (2012) with Johnny Depp

On By Michel McDonaldIn Movies1 Comment

I have been waiting for Dark Shadows for a few months and I couldn’t wait to go see it.  I never had the chance to see the original Dark Shadows because I wasn’t born when it first began and I was only a baby when it ended, so I never got the full experience.

I actually didn’t even know about it until I saw an episode of King and Queens when it was brought up because there was a convention that Spence (Patton Oswalt) was going to go to but his girlfriend wouldn’t let him go only because Carrie (Leah Remini) told her to stand up for herself which turned her into a crazy control freak.

Darrin told me when we were leaving the theater that this movie had gotten a few bad reviews.  Well guess what, they can suck an egg because this was a good movie.  Anything with Johnny Depp is going to be awesome and I really don’t listen to those reviews anyway.

Netflix has the original series, I don’t know how many episodes they have, but it says they have all 4 seasons.  I looked it up on IMDB and it doesn’t say that it has more than 1 season, it just shows 1966 – 1971.  I tried to watch it on the internet but I could only find 12 episodes which were dated in 1966.  It was a 5 day a week show so there are going to be a ton of episodes to watch, 1225 episodes to be exact since that is how many episodes IMDB says there are, luckily they were only 30 minutes long.  Then go check it out on Hulu because there was a remake of only 12 episodes from the 90’s.  So that should be quite interesting to watch.

I saw an interview on TV where they said that Johnny Depp was in the original series as the little boy.  Well, he was born in 1963 and the show first began in 1966 so it was possible, but he would’ve only been 3 years old.  Well, I scrolled through the list of cast members and his name was nowhere to be seen.  I then went to his IMDB page and his career began in 1984 with a Nightmare on Elm Street.  I know this is not even worth mentioning since it’s not even true, but you know, it’s something they said on TV and well, there you have it.

At any rate, go see this movie because it was very good and it was fun to watch.  Since I never saw the original, I didn’t get any inside jokes if there were any from the original series.  If you never saw the original then you won’t get it either, but it doesn’t matter because the movie was funny enough on it’s own.

When you go, get your picture taken on one of the displays for Dark Shadows like I did…

Homemade Dog Food

On By Michel McDonaldIn AdLeave a comment

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of homemadedogfood.com for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Do you know what is in your dog’s food?  Do your dogs even like their food?  Go look at the ingredients on the bag of dog food, you can only pronounce a few words.  What’s frustrating for me is that no matter what brand or flavor dog food, my dog won’t even eat it unless it is her last resort.

I have a friend who is a chef who told me many years ago that she has a recipe for dog food, but I didn’t have a dog so I didn’t really pay too much attention.  Now that I have a dog, it’s time to find out how to do it so I turn to this website Homemade dog food.  Not only do they have a recipe my dog will eat, but it only has a few ingredients. Ground beef, rice and eggs that you bake like meatloaf.  What more can you ask for?

Check out this Easy cooked dog food recipe.  They are very precise and to the point and even have pictures and a video in case you are unclear how to do it.  The chef also shows how much of the supplements to add when he feeds it to his dogs.  And look at the dogs eating this food, look at those tails wagging.  Those are some happy dogs.  I know my dog would much prefer to eat this dog food.

Take a minute and think about something.  When you see animals in the wild, you don’t see them eating hard round nuggets or bone shaped food, instead they eat raw meat from animals they have killed.  That’s what your dog wants, but of course they can’t go out and kill their dinners because there isn’t any game in your house for them to hunt.  This recipe gives them the meat they desire and the added supplements they require that they aren’t getting from the cooked hamburger meat.  I know that this is what my dog would love to eat so I am seriously thinking about making her food.

It says in the website to fast your dog for 24 hour to flush out the dog food, well my dog doesn’t eat her food, she eats people food which I know isn’t good for her, so she doesn’t have to flush anything, she can go right ahead and switch to this new diet.  This also makes it easier to add worm medicine to her food.  I hate having to go out and buy wet dog food just to add medicine to it, I can just add it to her regular meals now.

From now on I don’t have to share my dinner with her cause she will have her own.  She’s happy, I’m happy, we’re all happy and that is what it’s all about.

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Diabetes Update

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Doctor, Health1 Comment

Last month my doctor gave me a new medication to help lower my triglycerides called Gemfibrozil 600MG that I take twice a day.  I was told to make sure I take them exactly 12 hours apart for it to be effective.  I created a schedule on my cell phone to remind me twice a day, once at 10am, and then once at 10pm to take my pills.  It has worked out so far and today is day 30.  We went to the doctor’s office on Thursday and they drew blood to test it to see if it helped so I will find out on my next appointment which is May 24th.

In the meantime, he gave me a prescription for a blood glucose meter to check my blood twice a day.  He told me to check it in the morning before I eat and before I have dinner at night.  So far it hasn’t been that high.  Thursday night I did a reading and it was 112 then the next morning it was 132, last night it was 100 and this morning it was 112 again.  Why is that so important?  Well, when they did that blood glucose test a few months ago I was near 200, so this just tells me that I have gone way down.  I have been eating a lot of chocolate lately, this just shows me that it hasn’t really affected me as much as I thought it did.  Although now that I have this meter, I have been staying away from the bad foods because I know if the number goes high, it will make me feel guilty.  Perhaps guilt is the kick in the pants that I needed to get me to stop eating so much sugar.

This is my new meter, the One Touch Ultra 2.  I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it because Darrin has a meter, but it’s a different one with different strips.  He couldn’t get the hang of his and he was going to just give me his since he stopped using it, but I didn’t want his, I wanted one of my own because, well I just did :p.

The needles that you use to prick your finger with (in the zippered pouch on the left) aren’t very painful.  The skin on my fingers on my left hand are so thick that even at the highest setting, which is 7, hardly any blood comes out so I have to use my right hand.  I have to really milk the blood out because even at the highest setting it still doesn’t penetrate enough.  So when I say I am thick-skinned, I’m not exaggerating LOL.  My first test was an error because I didn’t milk it enough, but I learned to really get as much blood out as I can so I don’t waste test strips.  The wound heals up so fast that I am only able to get that one little drop, if I try to milk out any more after the test, nothing comes out.  Not that I need to, but I was curious to see if any more would come out for S&G’s.

So this is what it has come to, I have to test my blood every day, as if the constant medication every day for 18 years isn’t enough.  I really hope that the triglyceride medication and the guilt from the meter really helps me lose weight so I am no longer diabetic.  I hope the day finally comes when I no longer have to go through all of this nonsense with health issues, although we both know when that day will occur, and it’s not going to be a good day.  Oh well, life goes on.

R.I.P. Trolls and Cyberbullying on Facebook

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyberbullyingLeave a comment

I know you have heard of cyberbullying, but have you ever heard of R.I.P. Trolls?  I have never even heard of that until today.  Apparently there are people out there with hearts as cold as ice and as small as a grain of sand, no, even smaller than that, so they troll R.I.P. memorial pages and say something nasty to the deceased person.  As if things weren’t bad enough for them while they were alive, they are still being bullied after death.

I have three examples.  Naturally I had to pixelize all of the names and their images, not just to protect the innocent victims, but also to protect the bully.  Yes you heard me right, I wouldn’t want the bully to come after me for posting their name and then turn around and call me the bully for showing their name despite the fact that they are the bullies.

This “Stay at home dad” decided it would be funny to share a page called Zombie… (the person’s name has been in the news and her mother was not convicted of murder, you know who I mean) with an abortion survivor’s timeline.  Who would create a page calling someone a zombie after they were allegedly murdered by their mother who got acquitted?  What kind of person does such a thing?  Well, I went to click on that page to report it and it was already gone, so one down…

This was posted on a justice page for a child who was recently murdered while wearing a hoodie in Florida.  The message is “Taste the rainbow, (name omitted) I wonder what flavor of hollowpoints got dug out of his chest!”  What sick bastard would post this?  I reported that person for posting that image on that R.I.P. memorial page.  Take a look at some of the comments.  The first one says “that’s not funny bitch” and she replied, but the comment is gone now so apparently she thought twice about what she was saying and removed it, who knows.  The second person asked if this was supposed to be funny and the third person laughed.  What is this world coming to when people laugh at a picture like this?

This person was just downright disrespectful to many R.I.P. pages.  What kind of person does this?

I love computers and I love the internet, but when people sit in their house with total anonymity and post hateful things like this, there has to be some recourse.  You can’t just think that it’s OK to be an asshole and nothing will happen.  You can’t go up to a person and start calling them names without being slapped or punched in the face, so why would you go on the internet and type hurtful comments on their Facebook wall, especially after they died?  You wouldn’t like it if you died and someone typed “LOL u died” on your memorial page would you?  Think about other people’s feelings, put yourself in their shoes before you post negative comments like that, because someday that might be your R.I.P. page.

If you want to see who is posting these hateful things, join the Facebook page “United Against RIP Trolls and Cyberbullies.”  Click LIKE and scroll through their page and start reporting the bullies because that is the only way we are going to rid Facebook of all the hate.  When Facebook see’s that people are reporting them, their accounts will suddenly disappear.  Perhaps one day cyber bullies will be held accountable for their actions.

Check this article out.  It was written/posted on April 3rd 2012.  Anti-bully law could turn trolls into criminals.  I don’t believe in censorship because we all have a first amendment right to free speech, even if it’s hate speech, but where do we put our foot down and say that there is a huge difference between the two?  There needs to be a discussion about where we draw the line with hate speech because I just can’t see why the law would protect people who want to insult other people for shits and giggles.

Bully and the National Day of Silence

On By Michel McDonaldIn Anti-Gay, BullyingLeave a comment

I have been invited by two groups here in Bakersfield to see the movie Bully at the Maya Cinemas theater.  I think Bully is an important movie that everyone needs to see because it shows the reality for the victims of bullying.

I myself was bullied in junior high school.  They called me a faggot and a queer and many other horrible names.  Being a bully does not show me how cool you are, it only shows me what an animal you are.  It wasn’t just the kids in school who bullied me, no it was my step-father who began the bullying when I was less than two-years-old.  I suffered at the hands of an abuser throughout my entire childhood so I know all about being bullied.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8kNYV5EAVw

April 20th isn’t just a day to go see Bully, it is also the National Day of Silence.  You don’t have to be silent the whole day, just remember those who were kept silent when they were killed for being gay.  You can celebrate any way you want to, just as long as you remember the innocent victims of bullying.

I finally got to watch Battlestar Galactica

On By Michel McDonaldIn Science FictionLeave a comment

I like to consider myself a science fiction nerd because I like shows like Star Trek and movies like Star Wars.  I actually love anything space related, but I don’t always get to watch them because if I miss even one episode, I feel like I am lost so I just wait until I can watch the series at a later date.

Battlestar Galactica originally aired on the SyFy channel (Sci-Fi back then) from 2004 until 2009 and I missed every episode.  I think the reason I missed it from the beginning was because I just didn’t think I would like it.  Also, if I have a show on the same day at the same time, I’ll watch the one that I was already addicted to and skip everything else.

I got a second chance to see the show from the beginning when BBC America announced that they were going to start showing it every Saturday night and I took advantage of it and I am so glad that I did.  They started out with 2 episodes at 7pm.  Our BBC America HD channel is from the eastern time zone so I got to watch it three hours earlier.  If I missed the episode then I had a second chance to watch it on the non HD channel at 7.

I kick myself in the head for not watching this show when it originally aired because it was such a good show.  I guess it doesn’t really matter that I missed it when it was on because now I have seen every episode from all four seasons.  I feel like I am better educated when it comes to science fiction television so when I am asked a question I will be able to respond with a semi-intelligent response, maybe, probably not.

Hulu has all four seasons of this show, but you have to pay to watch them so that is why I watched it on BBC America.  I also don’t like to watch 8 episodes of a show per day because that is just way too much information for me to take in all at once.  I feel like if I watch too many episodes in one day that I might not remember what happened before, if that makes any sense at all.

Hulu has Caprica too and I could have watched it months ago when they had the full season, but I wanted to watch BSG before I got into that so that I wouldn’t be confused, but apparently they aren’t even in the same timeline so it didn’t matter.  Now they only have 5 out of 18 episodes available.  I don’t see BBC America airing this so I will probably be forced to get Netflix just to watch it.  I really don’t mind, I just want to see it now.

The only thing that I regret about not watching this show when it aired was that I didn’t have anyone to talk to after every episode.  It’s cool to talk to someone about what happened and to get different perspectives and opinions on what we just saw.  Oh well, maybe next time, well, you know, with another show.

Oh well, I look forward to watching Caprica when I get Netflix.  I would love it if they came out with another BSG related show or a facsimile because I am in love with space dramas like BSG, Farscape, Star Trek etc.

Unable to Load The Lord of the Rings Online (SOLVED)

On By Michel McDonaldIn LOTRO15 Comments

I don’t know why but The Lord of the Rings Online just won’t load for me.  I load the game and the launcher checks the files and let’s me type my password and then choose my server and then it finishes that and my screen is supposed to turn black so the game will load.  It hasn’t loaded in maybe a month and half or 2 months.  I couldn’t figure it out.

The only thing that was worrying me was that my house would get locked and they would start charging me fees, so last night I decided I was going to download the game files again and reinstall it.  I installed it over itself, but that didn’t work so I uninstalled the whole game and reinstalled it as a fresh installation and still nothing.

Out of frustration I was about to email the company because I just wanted to get this resolved so I could play again.  Their website gave me a list of links to see if I could find my issue, and I did.

Here is the thread “LOTRO will not launch and there are no error messages” which is the exact problem I was having.  I clicked “Graphics and Performance FAQ’s…” So their advice was to find the User Preferences configuration file which is loaded in My DocumentsThe Lord of the Rings Online.  I double clicked the file and it showed me a text file with all of this gibberish that I don’t understand.  They warn not to change anything because you might screw it up more.  I wondered if I just removed the file altogether if it will create a new file and let the game load, and that worked.  I didn’t delete it, I just moved it to the desktop and there is a new file in its place that has way less information than the original file.

The game launched and I hit C for my character screen which shows my gear and I clicked the House button.  There was an icon of a lock in the bottom right of my screen along with an icon of a letter which told me that my house was locked.  In the character screen I clicked House and paid the fee and then paid the maintenance for my house for 5 more weeks, you know, just in case.

So now you know, if you have issues getting into The Lord of the Rings Online because the game won’t load after you launch it, just remove the User Preferences config file and  load the game.