Tag: commercials

Press N’ Open Book Light

On By Michel McDonaldIn BooksLeave a comment

Have you seen those commercials for the Snuggie Fleece Blanket that comes with a free “Press N’ Open Book light”?  Well, I bought that book light at Albertson’s last week and it’s crap.

Yeah, it’s real neat that you press a button and the light automatically pops out and it looks very cool when it opens but it only shows the page down the middle.  It’s a total waste of plastic.  It was $5 alone at the store and comes free with the Snuggie but I wouldn’t waste any time with it.

A friend sent me a Mighty Bright Cobra Super L.E.D. book light and not only does it show the page you are reading but it also shows the other page so you don’t have to keep moving the light.  It is way better than the crappy Press N’ Open light.

Dead Like Me Movie

On By Michel McDonaldIn Movies, TVLeave a comment

Last night I found out that there was a Dead Like Me movie.  I saw it on Facebook as an ad in the right side.  I thought it was for the tv series that only lasted 2 seasons but it was for the movie.  So I got curious about it and was looking at the Facebook page and saw a video which was a commercial on YouTube.  It looked pretty interesting.

When Dead Like Me first came to Showtime, I saw all the billboards and there were commercials for it on the Sci-Fi channel and stuff but I couldn’t watch it because I didn’t have Showtime back then.  But then one night I was sitting at my desk a few years ago and it was on Sci-Fi channel.  I was finally able to watch it and I watched the entire 2 seasons I think in a couple of months on Sci-Fi.

Now the movie.  I don’t know when they made the movie but it was released on video a few days ago on February 17th 2009.  Why did it go straight to DVD and not go in theaters?  That’s strange.  The sex in the city movie was in theaters.

I for one can’t wait to buy or rent this movie.  I wonder if the Red Box has it at the store?  There was a video on YouTube where Ellen Muth sounded like she was on the phone leaving a message saying buy the DVD, if you download it instead of buying it you are preventing us from making more movies or possibly continuing new seasons.

Ok Ellen, I won’t download it but in this economy I can’t buy it either.  I don’t know how anyone can expect people to splurge on things like buying blu-ray and DVD movies with our economy the way it is.  I mean if you still have your job that’s one thing, go ahead, help the economy out by buying movies.  But mostly people don’t have their jobs anymore so they can’t afford to spend any of their savings on anything but groceries and paying their bills.  I for one am one of the people suffering from this economy so I definitely cannot buy the DVD just yet.

Edit: I just wanted to clarify something.  When I say I don’t know how anyone can expect… I don’t mean any one person in particular.  I mean like the companies who are putting DVD’s out and the companies who are selling DVD’s.  It’s the same with Amazon selling their Kindle 2 for $359.  How can they expect to sell those right now?  Why couldn’t they wait for the economy to get back on track.  They can’t judge how well a movie or tv show is doing by it’s DVD sales because I’m sure DVD sales have dropped 50% or more.

DTV Transition

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

OK, I’ve been seeing these DTV commercials since last year when they first started them.  It’s not only commercials but a ticker at the top of the screen all freakin’ day long.  Thank goodness I don’t have to see that while watching my shows at night.

If you don’t have a TV then you don’t know what I’m talking about but basically it says that if you use an antenna to watch TV you have to buy a digital converter box and you can get a coupon from the government who is forcing this upon everyone for a free box.  The cable companies are even offering a very basic cable for $10 a month which is unusual.  I was paying $55 a month for basic cable which was 2-77 so I’m sure that $10 cable is 2-13 and all the UHF stations like PBS and the Spanish channels.

They were saying that you have until February 19th or somewhere around there to get this box or you will get static on the tv.  Well, now they’ve decided to postpone it until June 12th.  Well, that’s good for all the procrastinators out there but it’s not good for those of us who are well prepared because we gotta hear about it for another 5 months.  Can we please just stop these commercials and tickers?  Or if not stop them just limit them to 1000 times a day lol.  I mean come on, I am so sick of hearing about it.  I get it.  Put billboards up and quit interrupting my shows with your tickers.

A lot of the commercials are from Bright House cable telling me that I am taken care of because I have Bright House Cable but that I need to tell all my Antenna friends to upgrade.  Please stop these commercials lol.  I don’t want to keep hearing about it.  Oh and after June 12th they are going to continue the commercials for another year telling me to tell all the people who don’t get a signal anymore to get cable lol.

They Like US, They Really Like US

On By Michel McDonaldIn PatrioticLeave a comment

Finally, someone stands up for America and it’s Canada. I love Canada, they brought us John Candy, Howie Mandel, Martin Short and many more including the guys from the free credit report dot com commercials. Read this…

Be Proud America

Skype Vs. Vonage

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I’ve been seeing these commercials for Vonage constantly on tv about how they are better than the telephone company because they only charge you $30 per month and you use your current internet connection to connect to your phone service.

What about Skype?  Skype has phone service that works with your WiFi connection and it’s only $2.95 a month.  Since it works with your WiFi connection at home you can also use it at WiFi hotspots like the cloud (whatever that is) and t-mobile hotspots. They have a USB phone, 2 WiFi phones, even a video phone. You can call anyone who uses Skype for free if you only want to call other Skype users.  Or you can also call landlines and cell phones for $2.95 per month.  You get a phone number that only costs $30 per year.  Their best phone is the black WiFi phone that is on sale right now for $129.99.

They have a phone that is currently only in europe right now that uses the 3G network but I guess you can use it like a cell phone because you can make a call anywhere, you aren’t limited to WiFi hotspots like the ones I just talked about in the above paragraph.  I look forward to that coming to the states.

Right now I use Skype on my PSP to make phone calls.  I don’t have a phone number for it but I do have the option and since I am signed up with their unlimited calls to US and Canada they have given me a $30 coupon for a phone number for 1 year.  I don’t want to use it for my PSP because I won’t have it turned on long enough to receive phone calls.

Personally, if I had to choose between Vonage and Skype, I’d choose Skype, especially if I was on a budget.  Also I can take my Skype WiFi phone with me wherever I go because it will work wherever there is a hotspot like Starbucks, McDonald’s, Hotels, Airports, your friends and relatives houses etc.  With Vonage you are limited to only being able to use it at home.

Edit:  Ok I was looking at the Skype phone on their website and was watching a video (take a tour) and it was saying “for just pennies a minute”.  So maybe you have to do the Skype as you go or I don’t know, maybe it works with the monthly subscription.  The only way to know for sure is to get the service and find out I guess.  Skype as you go gives you a bit more freedom to be able to call other countries if you have to call people who are in another country and you only pay a few cents to about 20 cents a minute depending where you are calling.

Rhapsody Music Service

On By Michel McDonaldIn MusicLeave a comment

I’m hoping that someone will see this and respond to me.  I would like to know something about Rhapsody from Real.com that they aren’t telling me.  When you pay the $14.95 per month do you have to pay to download mp3’s?  I see that they charge .99 cents per song or $8.99 for the album.  When you pay their monthly fee do you still have to pay that or is it half or free?  The reason I’m asking is because it says in the description under the $14.99 plan “buy albums”.  It doesn’t say buy full price, half price or get for free.  The commercials say that you get all the music you want for the price of 1 cd per month.  So if that is true then the albums should be free.  Or is that false advertising.

Before I spend a dime I’d like to know.  If it costs $15 a month plus I have to pay .99 cents a song I think I’m entitled to know this before I give them my credit card information because I can just use iTunes and buy the full album without paying a monthly fee.  If someone can please respond to this I’d appreciate it.  Thanks.

Recycling Numbers

On By Michel McDonaldIn GreenLeave a comment

Today we went to turn in our plastic to recycle and found out that different plastic containers have different numbers and they cannot all be recycled together.  See I never knew that.  I found this website that shows you what the difference is.

What do those recycling numbers mean?

I had all these different types of plastics.  I had clear soda bottles, milk cartons, yogurt containers etc. and they had to separate the clear bottles with the rest.  The clear soda bottles had the 1 on the bottom inside that little recycle symbol.  Those get you more money than the other ones which were 2 and up.

We had basically half number 1 and the rest were 2-6.  When the guy gave us the receipt it showed us how much each plastic cost.  The plastic with the 1 was a lot more than the rest.  I think it was $7 something for all the number 1’s but all the rest we got like .45 cents and that’s it and it was half  number 1 and the other half was all the rest and that rest was less money.  So basically it’s not even worth recycling the rest.

They basically told us that it’s a waste of time to save anything but the number 1 plastic as well as even paper.  The reason I am recycling isn’t for the money although it helps in today’s economy but also because those Brita commercials where they say like 30 minutes on a treadmill, forever in a landfill.  Those make me feel guilty for buying anything that comes in plastic or anything lol.  But, you know if they are so concerned with it then they will have a machine that goes through the trash cherry picking all the certain types of plastics and paper etc.  Darrin told me that he read in the newspaper that there is like a mountain of recycled paper that they are having trouble getting rid of, that’s why paper is so cheap to recycle.  That’s probably also why the plastic that isn’t number 1 is cheap.

I’m not saying to not recycle because the CRV items like the soda bottles/water bottles and soda/beer cans give you a lot more money but I’m certainly not going to waste our patio space recycling milk cartons and yogurt containers and other plastics anymore.  I’m going to find out about steel cans too before I waste any more time with those.  I want to save the planet but at the same time if they don’t want to recycle certain things then it’s out of my hands.  I can only do so much by using the cloth grocery bags and recycling plastic and aluminum.

Atomic Alarm Clock

On By Michel McDonaldIn Products I LikeLeave a comment

A few months ago I sent in a publisher’s clearing house thing with a stamp for an atomic alarm clock.  I’m kinda sick of having to set my TV to wake me up in the morning and I wanted something that was atomic because it sets itself via satellite.  It’s not a radio alarm clock and it takes batteries, not plugged in which makes it even easier if we lose power.

As soon as I get it I put some batteries in and it says that it’s 12:00 and it doesn’t update right away like you see on the commercials.  In fact it is still not set right, it says 5:08pm when it’s really 2:06pm.  I read in the manual about how it works and it says that it doesn’t talk to the satellite until nighttime so I pretty much have to wait until tonight for it to update.  It also thinks that today is January 31st lol.  Frankly I don’t know how to set it yet so I am just waiting for it to set itself and hope that it sets the date too.

I Voted!

On By Michel McDonaldIn PoliticalLeave a comment

Well I finally finished filling out my ballot today.  We are cutting it very close because we are a mail only district and in order for our ballots to count we have to send them in early enough but all those props were so confusing that I just couldn’t understand them.  Some of them I could understand like 1a, 2, 3 and 8.  All of those I was able to understand.  Also there were some offices that I had no clue who the people were because I haven’t seen any commercials for them.  They can’t expect me to vote for them if they don’t give me an idea who they are.  Actually, I have seen some commercials but they didn’t put a huge impact on me.  I don’t watch the local debates.

Anyway, finally finished it and it’s going in the mail today, hopefully they will get it tomorrow then it will be counted by Monday so that on Tuesday my vote will count.

Longer, Harder and Uncut

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, Diet, ExerciseLeave a comment

Ok.

I thought the ride would get harder because when you push yourself to go that extra block you use more energy to get there.  Well, when I got to Eye st. I decided to just keep going to Chester and I made it so then I was able to turn right and go back to 3rd.  It was actually easier coming home on Chester than it was going to California on H.  Maybe because I knew I was coming home.

Hmmmm, let’s see, what is uncut…  Well, this blog is, there are no commercials.  So there 😛

By the way, going from Eye to H to California to Chester to 3rd then back to Eye was only 1.6 miles and I’ve been going 1.5 miles turning on Eye instead of going to Chester while on California.  I know, 0.1 mile is not a lot and 2 min extra is not a lot but I started out with 15 min for 2 days then got to 17 min.  Who knows, tomorrow I might do 17 min again or I might do 20 min and 1.7 miles.  The point is that I’m getting my legs used to the work.  The first day my legs were in agony, I could barely move.  Of course today when I came home I could barely walk, I looked like i was an old man using a walker again lol.  But that’s what it takes to get the muscles back into shape.  A little pain at the beginning so I can go the distance with no pain at all.  That’s why they say “no pain, no gain”.

I remember as a teenager riding my bike to school in the morning and not being the least bit tired from the bike ride, then riding home, putting my McDonald’s uniform on and going back out the door on my bike to work.  When I got there I had no pain in my legs because I was so used to riding a bike that my legs were never in any pain from it.  I think because I was so thin back then helped my case because I have 100lbs more than I did 22 years ago.

Also when I was 22-23 years old and I rode my bike from North Hollywood all the way to Hollywood and I did that several times a week too and it would take maybe an hour but it didn’t matter, I was never in any pain.  And I never had a water bottle with me because it wasn’t that hard that I needed water.  Although now that I think about it I probably could have used a water bottle lol.  But that trip was uphill and downhill and curvy.

Oh and when I was 19 and I lived in Canoga Park I used to ride my bike once in a while on the Santa Susanna Pass going to Simi Valley to visit my Aunt Betty at Ralph’s.  That never even phased me.  Although I was a bit winded, I needed water lol.  But I got through it no problem and the ride home was a breeze because it was uphill the entire way there so it was downhill the entire way home.