My favorite cake - "Peter Paul Mounds Cake"

Made with a cake mix, coconut filling and chocolate icing.

INGREDIENTS:

* Cake:
* 1 box chocolate or chocolate fudge cake mix

* Filling:
* 14 ounces frozen coconut
* 16 regular marshmallows
* 1 1/2 cups evaporated milk
* 1 cup granulated sugar

* Icing:
* 4 squares unsweetened or bittersweet chocolate
* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 1/3 cup water
* dash Salt
* 1/4 cup butter

PREPARATION:
- Bake cake as directed and split layers.
- Mix milk, sugar and marshmallows; melt. Stir until sugar is dissolved and marshmallows melted. Remove from heat and stir in coconut.
- Put this mixture between each split layer and on top.

Make Icing.
- Melt chocolate with the brown sugar; add salt, water, and butter.
- Simmer 3 minutes. Remove from heat.
- Add 1 teaspoon vanilla; mix well.

Put chocolate icing on top and sides of cake.

US News Article & Rebates

Attention Dallas Friends: If you are available to discuss experiences you have had with rebates being returned, please email daniel ~at~ anyion dot com. You need to live within reasonable proximity of the Dallas metro.

So those of you who read US News & World Report in the print edition have already seen my face this week in the article about "Why Shoppers Love to Hate Rebates". Special thanks to Kimberly Palmer for running across my blog and picking up comments I had made about my experiences with rebates. For those of you online readers, sorry, they didn't include all the photos from the print edition online. Hopefully I can post an electronic reprint sometime.

I've been a rebater for a long time. It probably comes from the fact that by nature I'm a tightwad and by nurture I'm a shopper.

As an update to Kimberly's article, as the article was going to press I received the Toshiba HD DVD player rebate back DENIED again. This time for "failure to correctly complete the form." Now I'm not sure how it could have been incomplete... seeing as how everything was filled in. And especially since I returned it to them with the previous submission, all the UPCs, and their previous denial letter.

In my personal opinion, I think Toshiba's rebate group already knew about Toshiba giving up on the HD DVD market. And they were just denying all the rebates to save having to spend the money on them.

No matter. At least they returned the UPC panel with the denial. So I taped the UPC code back on the box, packed up the Toshiba A20 HD DVD player, took the copy of the receipt and headed back to Wal-Mart with it.

Thankfully, Wal-Mart still has a 90 day return policy on electronics excluding computers. So 2 on a quiet morning at my local Wal-Mart last week, I ditched the Toshiba HD DVD player and its associated rebate hassles and walked out of the store with $100+ back in my pocket.

For those who would like to become rebate nuts like me, here are some other tips that have helped me stay on top of my rebates:

1. For online purchases, always print the rebate out on the spot while you're shopping. You may never find the form again. Sometimes items can completely disappear from a site before you get yours in the mail. I've had this happen to me with Fry's Outpost and QVC.com.
   
   
2. Keep all your rebate forms posted somewhere you can easily see them. I use a cork board for this. I pin rebate forms that are waiting for something to come in or occur to the board near my desk. That way I see them often and they don't fall into the cracks of my mind.
   
   
3. If you have multiple rebates in play at a time like I do, use a spreadsheet or some other electronic organization method to track how much is owed to you, when it was sent and when it was purchased.
   
   
4. Keep copies of everything! I use my scanner for this purpose. (A Brother MFC actually.) I scan and electronically file copies of every receipt I get - even non-rebate related ones. I'm the physical world, I'm a packrat. But in the digital world I'm able to organize that mess into something easily searchable and instantly retrievable thanks to OCR and PDFs. Before I went digital I used to have boxes and boxes of receipts. Come tax time, my account is grateful too!
   
   
5. Don't buy something on rebate that you can't afford at full price. The nature of rebates is that a certain percentage of them are simply going to fail, be rejected or go belly up. At best you'll be floating that money for a good month or two. At worst you'll never see it again. While most retailers will try to accommodate you if the rebate company goes bankrupt or otherwise fails to honor their obligations, it might take you 6 months to a year to get your money back. And in the case of purchases from small retailers or online shops, you might never get any of the rebate money back at all. And if you didn't have copies of all your paperwork, expect to be turned away at the door regardless.
   
   
6. Don't buy something on rebate that isn't a good value before the rebate. This ties back in to #5. If the only reason the price of something is attractive is due to an attached rebate, move on. The manufacturer or retailer is playing a game with you and you'd be best to stay out of that game. Think of rebates as "found money" and treat them as such. A rebate should be an incentive to buy a particular product over a similar product from some other company. It should not be compensation for an overpriced or underperforming product.

Happy Shopping!!

UPDATE 2/25/2008: For those who missed a copy on the newsstand, here is a scan of the article. Hopefully I'll have a real reprint to post soon.

The fat lady sung... HD DVD dead... Wal-Mart picks Blue-Ray

Well... looks like I called one right. Blue-Ray won.

The New York Times is reporting that Wal-Mart will no longer be carrying any HD DVD equipment or HD DVD titles after June 2008.

"HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.

There are no funeral plans, but retailers and industry analysts are already writing the obituary for HD DVD.

The announcement by Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer of DVDs, that it would stop selling the discs and machines in June when supplies are depleted comes after decisions this week by Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer, to promote Blu-ray as its preferred format and Netflix, the DVD-rental service, to stock only Blu-ray movies, phasing out HD DVD by the end of this year."

Now if only the manufacturers will ramp up Blue-Ray production so we can get $100 players on the shelf and decently priced media available to consumers who are willing to pony up for the available recorders.

If they don't hurry up and get players to the market in that magical $100-150 pricepoint, all of the consumer electronics brands stand to lose even the Blue-ray battle to videos delivered via streaming over the internet and to upconversion of standard DVDs.

I know you can't put bits back that aren't there anymore but the upconverting DVD players that hit the market in the past 12 months do a stunning job at putting a pretty image on the screen.

Artificial sweeteners = weight gain

Finally, someone has caught on to what us hypoglycemics have known for years... Artificial sweeteners screw up the body's ability to respond to sweetness.

Several news outlets (including Time linked above) are reporting that artificial sweeteners may actually be one of the culprits in American weight gain. Summarized, the research points to a de-conditioning effect being caused by the artificial sweetness. This means that the body stops revving up the metabolism when sugar is ingested. In turn, weight gain, increased bad cholesterol and abnormal levels in fats and triglycerides seem to be occurring.

I've known this myself for quite a while. There isn't a single artificial sweetener that I can ingest without ending up with a headache. So, early in my teenage years I learned to avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague.

There was no way for me to have known what was causing my headaches when drinking saccharin and nutrasweet sweetened products. No one had ever studied it. But now the research is fairly conclusive... initially people who intake artificial sweeteners experience an insulin spike as if the body was going to be processing sugar. That is what causes my headache - the insulin spike causes my blood sugar drop since no sugar is coming in to offset it.

As people continually ingest artificial sweeteners, their bodies say "fool me once..." Thus begins the process of desensitizing the body to sugar such that problems develop as the metabolism is no longer geared to handle it.

The assumption of the researchers who have analyzed the study results is that consuming sweet with no corresponding incoming calories is what causes what they call "metabolic syndrome". (Metabolic syndrome meaning that the body's metabolism is off-the-tracks and not running at the rate it should.)

Gift cards for groceries... the recession is here

The LA Times is reporting Wal-Mart shoppers are buying more milk and bread with gift cards received at Christmas than they are using them on splurge purchases like iPods.

This is a bellweather for our economy... the canary in the mine if you will. Americans are smart and when grandma and your cousins are using their gift cards to buy groceries the message is clear: The recession is here.

For several years I gave my own grandmas Wal-Mart gift cards and encouraged them to do just that - use them to pay for their medications and groceries. Neither of them would do it and the cards got saved for splurge purchases on clothing and kitchen electrics.

I've seen this change with my own eyes however. Grandmas are using gift cards to buy everyday essentials like milk, bread and eggs. Many of them are the same people who lived through the depression. They're not stupid. It means their personal finances are constrained enough that they have entered a resource saving mode. The same instinct kept their families feed during the depression.

Personally I don't think we'll hit a depression again this time... not unless the drought devastates crops. We are heading into a substantial recession. Younger generations would do well to connect with those in the 80+ club and start learning how to stretch a dollar now. Otherwise those younger folks are going to find themselves going to dinner a lot at grandma's because she's the only one with food left after everyone else blew through their paycheck.

Think Before You Post

Extra credit... Did you know you can mail a coconut?

Well, I'm known for my depth of knowledge concerning all things weird, strange and useless. Today I ran across a tidbit that I thought others might get a kick out of.

Did you know you can mail a whole coconut via the USPS with no additional packaging and no surcharge? Just apply an address and postage to the coconut and deposit with your mail carrier or at the post office. (Remember to use correct postage for the weight.)

Apparently we have the tourist travelers to Hawaii to thank for this unique ability. It was started as an alternative to sending a plain postcard. The ability isnt limited to Hawaii though. You can run down to Wal-Mart or any local grocer, buy a coconut and mail it from your local post office to anyone in the US.

For those looking to send a unique birthday card or promotional item, this just might fit the bill.

Analog cellular shutdown affects more than you think

There are several impending shutdowns that users of wireless devices - not necessarily cell phones - need to be aware of.

1. AT&T, Verizon and Alltel will be shutting down their old analog cellular networks - known as AMPS - in February. For users in rural areas or those who relied on analog coverage when they were roaming, it's time to start looking for alternatives. Verizon is especially guilty of relying on analog roaming when out of their own CDMA coverage area.
   
   
2. In rural areas, there will be some new coverage blackholes created by the shutdown. So expect coverage to get worse before it gets better. None of the carriers are admitting to this but it's definitely the elephant in the room. Also keep in mind that it might be a good idea to stop into your local carrier's retail store and have the update the PRL (preferred roaming list) on your existing phone. Any phone more than 6 months old needs the update. Phones more than a year or so old absolutely need the update. Otherwise your phone will not know about the new digital roaming arrangements carriers have been making to provide coverage for their users.
   
   
   
3. If you have an alarm system of any type that contains a wireless monitoring or notification system, call your alarm company NOW. Most of the systems installed in the past decade relied on the older analog cellular networks for connectivity. Your alarm company will be able to figure out what kind of cellular connection you are using and if necessary can install a replacement unit that will work on the digital networks. It won't be free but without it your alarm monitoring will cease to function in an emergency.
   
   
4. Automobile communications systems that were made before 2005 and in some cases including 2005, may need to have their wireless transmitter units replaced. Of specific concern are OnStar and similar systems. The older OnStar units were analog only and will cease to function after the analog networks cease. That means protections like crash notification and remote lockout assistance will stop functioning along with it.
   
   
5. Older wireless credit card terminals from all of the major credit card networks will also cease to function when the analog network dies. These units were normally powered by the analog networks because the analog networks supported the direct host connectivity the units needed. I don't know of retrofit options for any of them since the communications modem is embedded into the body of the unit. They will need to be replaced with newer equipment, preferably IP based units running over GPRS, 1XRTT, EVDO or UMTS. Hint... go with EVDO or UMTS if at all possible. That will give you the most number of years of service out of the unit and the fastest transaction processing speed.
   

Make your own joke

Well, Christmas has come and gone. The boxes are open, the paper is in shreds and the leftovers are wrapped in plastic. From comparing notes with colleagues and friends, I wasn't the only one who was a little blah about the whole thought of Christmas this year.

For me, I think it came from overexposure. Something about singing Christmas music since October made the whole thing less magical. By Christmas eve the last thing I wanted to hear was Christmas music on the radio. So when I was driving home from our candlelight service at church I popped in a Jump5 CD.

But like me, some of the other people who experienced the blahs this year had that blah punctuated by moments of fun and frivolity. Here's an example:


Now I'll let you make your own joke about the pose. But at least she got out of the ho-hum for a few minutes.

Christmas Weight Limit

Merry Christmas fellow bloggers and blog readers!

PS... I lost 2 pounds this month. Hehe. See ya at the New Years resolution booth.

CIA caught with fingers in the cookie jar

Another fine mess brought to you by a government who has become addicted to hiding the facts, spinning the leaks and getting away with anything they please.

I did it again... Killed another Time Warner 8300HDC

Well my name isn't Brittney but Opps, I did it again! Another "wonderful" Scientific Atlanta product has bitten the dust at my house. Time Warner pushed down a firmware update for the 8300HDC - cable card units - sometime this week. My units picked it up tonight when I power cycled them due to no guide data being available (common problem).

One unit updated itself and came back fine. The other unit still hadn't turned back on 20 minutes later. So I turned the TV on and found this:

The firmware update had stalled at 99% and bricked the cable card. Ghee. Whee.

So here's my obligatory - Time Warner Sucks! for the week.

HIV 101: World Aids Day Weekend

HIV, also commonly referred to as its symptom complex AIDS, is a disease that we know how to get and that we know how to prevent. Yet it remains the greatest challenges facing our modern society. Please take a moment to watch the video below.

This is the weekend of World AIDS day. The Global Summit on AIDS & The Church is taking place this weekend. For more information on how your church or organization can get mobilized in the fight please visit the Purpose Driven community for for the Global Summit on AIDS.

IPTV... I had high hopes for SkyAngel

Those of you in my close circle of friends have heard me talking about my hope for the IPTV service that SkyAngel is eventually bringing to the US. I was hoping they would enable GodTV reaching more people in the US (currently limited to DirecTV only). Well, today my hopes aren't quite as high.

Back in August, I emailed SkyAngel to let them know I'd like to be included in their beta of the new service. I knew they had already successfully lunched the service in Canada and were working on plans for the US version.

Specifically I'd emailed them "I'm a professional IT geek and a blogger. I already have ethernet connections at each of my TVs, use TiVO and have HDTV service. I also have 802.11g and 802.11n wireless networks in my home." I sent my request directly to their VP of Corporate Communications and got an acknowledgment the same day.

Well September, October and pretty much all of November came and went with nary a word from them. So today I sent a follow-up to the same VP. This time it triggered a chain of emails and a call from another VP apologizing for the fact they had dropped the ball and no one ever followed up on my email.

That would have been a great call... except they had already sent all their beta invitations out earlier this month. And each one of them was specially coded for survey tracking... and their IT department was too busy to program in and send out another code.

Now I've been in corporate IT myself. So I understand busy. I understand beta and phased deployments. I understand things getting missed. What I don't understand is why you call someone after they've been forgotten for 3 months only to tell them they were forgotten and there's nothing you can do about it. That just seems asinine.

I've been trying to figure out the possible motivation for that kind of call but really I'm at a loss. How often am *I* at a loss?!

Then later this afternoon I get an email from the VP of Communications apologizing for having dropped the follow-up on my initial email. She also informed me that post launch they're thinking about inviting some media to test and review the service.

Her email settled it for me. This is the same old Dominion Satellite. They didn't learn anything from SkyAngel's satellite service launch, lack of uptake in the broader market, and the experiences (trouble) people had with their service. Common sense in marketing dictates that you want to generate positive buzz before something hits the general market.

What troubles me most is this is a group that represents Christian ethics and morals. I truly appreciate what they're trying to do with religious programming distribution but they are apparently clueless about how the business world works. And that cluelessness has translated into a lack of understanding of the tech world.

Here they're launching the sort of product that all of the tech industry would like to see - standalone IP based TV. Think of it as Vonage for television - SkyAngel TV channels delivered over any viable IP reception method - cable, DSL, T1, etc.

This is exactly the thing that we Christian IT leaders, bloggers and executives would like to put our weight behind. Alas SkyAngel has proven they lack vision for IPTV just like they lacked vision for how to get out into the general market with family friendly satellite service. So instead of Vonage for television, we're destined for SunRocket for television.

I may one day own a SkyAngel IPTV box... I did sign up back in October for notification when it comes out. And it is exactly the sort of service I'm looking for. I just hope I get more use out of it than I got out of my Sunrocket phone before the service dies.

Too bad SkyAngel, a communication company, simply does not understand how to communicate in the 21st century. SkyAngel IPTV service is destined for the same limited market exposure as SkyAngel Satellite garnered.

In economic terms, based on their current market savvy it's unlikely the addition of IPTV to their portfolio will generate enough cash flow to keep the company afloat. Those of who were looking for IPTV to fix the channel bandwidth crunch caused by them losing transponder space on Dish Network appear to be in for sore disappointment. Sorry friends.

SDV coming to TiVo - TiVo here I come!

For those on digital cable systems like those sucky bozos at the Greensboro, NC division of Time Warner, there's good news! TiVo will be getting and add-on module that will allow it to work on systems that have deployed switched digital video (SDV).

SDV is a new feature on some cable systems that keeps the channels that aren't being watched by anyone in the area from being broadcast on the cable coming into your home. That allows the cable system to theoretically add more channels. (Now don't get me started about all of the crap channels that people don't want to watch. If those weren't there SDV would be irrelevant. Duh!) I won't get into the technical limitations of that but I will summarize by saying its a stop-gap measure at best. Spectrum on coax is limited by the carrying capacity of the wire. Fiber is the final and only option that will really be a viable long term solution.

The problem with TiVo, especially HD TiVo, is that it couldn't do the special handshake that the cable system needed in order to say "ok, send me these channels and let me know where they are." Several cable system divisions were using that lacking feature to poopoo TiVos and similar products in order to get people to accept the crappy cable boxes like you heard me fussing about last week. Customers who bought TiVos on SDV enabled systems were often finding the HD channels they were getting cable for in the first place to be inaccessible.

Today's announcement by the NCTA and TiVo puts and end to that madness. I'll be out getting 2 TiVos to replace these 2 B%T$H Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC boxes. (Few things in life I hate... they have managed to get themselves added that list!)

PS... Dad if you had time to read my blog, you have time to put a new electric outlet in the basement!

Let's Say Thanks

I may not like our bozo president. Or the lame war he and his cronies got us into. BUT I do support our men and women who willingly agree to serve in our armed forces - even if they are technically under the direction of said bozo.

Here's your chance to let our men and women in service know that we appreciate them. Xerox is powering a program called Let's Say Thanks (LST). Click over to the LST website, pick a postcard style, personalize the card and poof, Xerox prints it and sends it to a service man or woman for free.

You can also download the kid-drawn art from the cards for use in your own personal cards and letters to those in service you have a personal connection with.

So what are you waiting for?! Let's Say Thanks!

Online advertising... getting a little too personal

For those of you who haven't been tracking the fuss that Facebook started lately, you might want to pay attention. I've linked to an article over at Broadband Reports in the header above.

What's all the fuss about? Simple - technology has caught up with us and internet anonymity is now non-existent. The technology now exists and is in place for multiple sites to all share data with each other about what you've been doing on their sites - what you've bought, what you looked at, who you've talked to, etc.

The reason they're doing this is not so much "big brother" but so they can charge advertisers more money. See the more they can say that they know about you, the more they can charge for putting someone in front of your eyeballs.

Facebook's latest nuclear explosion stems from the fact that they let out a little too much information. Friends don't need to know you went to Overstock and bought a pair of silk underwear. At least not my friends.

I'd encourage you to take a closer look and start tracking where this privacy train is headed. Europe appears to be headed in one direction (legally mandated privacy protection) and the US appears to be headed in another (open season on every tidbit of data someone can get about you - i.e. *no* privacy).

All I have to say about Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving has come and gone. I did a little shopping today... oh alright, a lot. Here's all I have to say about Thanksgiving 2007:


Special thanks to K&W Cafeteria for keeping us out of the kitchen. Now if only they'd hurry up and build one of the new concept K&W Cafe stores in Roxboro.

Soapbox: My take on OJ

I was catching up on some reading and just had to say something about this mess. So here, quote me!

If you are blessed to get away with killing 2 people, you might want to lay low and keep your mouth S.H.U.T, stay out of Las Vegas and hire someone to keep you from doing something else stupid!

Time Warner Cable Sucks

Ok... I've endured the services of Time Warner Cable via their Greensboro, NC division now for 6 months. I can now officially say - They Suck!

Why do they suck? Let me count the ways:

1. Laughable HD DVR. The Scientific Atlanta 8300HD/HDC. I have 2 of them. I hate both of them. I've gone through 5 of them trying to get 2 that work. I still get audio drop-outs on HD recordings (the live versions were fine), the user interface was teleported in from 1985, and recordings just fail to occur for no explainable reason. Tonight was the last straw. I couldn't watch Ch 557 (HGTV HD) or Ch 558 (Food Network HD), called tech support, they did something and I could watch it on the livingroom unit. Went into the bedroom later and it said "Guardian has determined your software must be updated. This may take 20 minutes or more..." Well 2 hours later and a call back to tech support confirmed I just toasted *another* SA8300HDC. Tech scheduled for Monday. I'm going to Best Buy and buying 2 HD TiVo's tomorrow to replace these SoBs! And I'll make the tech use the M-Cards from the 8300HDCs in the TiVo's. Ha!
   
   
2. Inexplicable lack of certain channels. I've never been on a cable system where there were no national religious channels. I mean come on, everyone has TBN - they pay local systems for placement just like QVC! But for some reason the Greensboro market has no mainstream religious programming. No TBN, no Daystar, no EWTN, no GodTV, no nothing. I think we may get some Catholic channel a couple hours a day. I can't believe the churches around here or at least the cable customers haven't complained.
   
   
3. Craptacular HD Channel Lineup. I can't believe they're actually advertising how many they have - 29! They even trumpet it in their on-hold announcements. DirecTV - which I have at one home - has 70 channels. Time Warner doesn't carry 7 of the local HD broadcasts I get on DirecTV.
   
   
4. Limited internet bandwidth. I have the "Turbo" package which is supposed to yield 8mbps x 512 kbps. That's great except Time Warner doesn't overprovision... so you only get ~85% of the stated speed. I've never downloaded faster than ~7.5 mbps. Upload is never over 500 kbps. Compare that to the Embarq service I have... 6 mbps x 896 kbps. I consistently download at the actual 6 mbps and upload around 850 kbps. I miss having 1/2 my upload speed horribly when I'm on the Time Warner connection. I'd like to see them move to 10 mbps x 1 mbps.

Well, I'm off to bed. Can't watch HGTV HD, Food Network HD or a handful of other channels on the fried 8300HDC. The only thing I get now on those channels after an hour on the phone with tech support is a black screen. Whee.