Black Friday Deals - Tablets & eReaders

[Apache]

One side of my house has natural gas heat. The other side has a heat pump. The heat pump side feels warm while the heater is running. As soon as it shuts off that side feels cold. The gas side stays toasty for a good while after shutting down.
Apache

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Grillfiend? Suddenly I feel relieved I have never been invited to a BBQ

Apache

[koland]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Our is suppose to but it seldom does. We had a freon leak this summer and they added 3lbs more I am starting to think it may need more here shortly. We've lived here close to 7 years now and no one has maintenance the furnace or the unit outside. I suspect it needs replaced. Tonight it's 25F out but it seems to be working okay. 68F in here. I got the door taped and the bottom covered with a heavy towel. Our bill runs anywhere from $60 to $150 in the winter I would say $115 is the average. It's all electric.

We are also all elec, but run about $150 all year - I have a lot of stuff turned on, though (computers everywhere, freezers, frigs, stereos (2), etc). Oh, and the hot tub (which reminds me, a pump needs to be fixed... need to troubleshoot that this weekend; hey, it's only 15 years old or so). Two rooms have to use supplemental heat and a/c, as there was no way to run the main system to them and one is quite large; both get enough heat to stop freezing and enough a/c to keep anyone in there from passing out.

Sounds like your system may need to be replaced. The good news is you'll save a bit with it (so may not have to run the place at 68), even on the lower-cost contractor grade systems you see advertised in our paper all the time.

Monkey - Those who didn't plan for that type of surge haven't been paying much attention to the news. It's been only a matter of time, as the low-hurricane activity century drew to a close, compounded by the slow rise in sea level in the last few years (an inch of ocean is still a lot of water). NY and the seaboard have been hit before (there are even photographs of much of the seaboard destruction from a century or so ago) and will again. They were actually quite lucky, this time, as the hurricane was pretty well slowed down by the time it climbed the coast (although that meant it stalled more, the winds were quite a bit lower than they could have been).

New Orleans isn't the only place that is built underwater and the US doesn't have any real ocean defenses for that type of storm (the islands are supposed to be a part of the defense, but we build houses there, too; and cities, which the taxpayers are on the hook to rebuild, exactly as they were before).

How many people in NY/NJ will rebuild their houses hurricane proof and on 14' pillars?

[xendula]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

As my learned colleague mentioned, he and I bought it for $179 as opposed to $199 at Best Buy and Gamestop which has since returned to $249. But here's the thing: In addition to the white PSP and AC:L bundle (with an added 4GB memory card for comic relief), the Sony-Amazon offer included three free months of PS+, a downloadable copy of Battle Royale (which my grillfiend is going to love when I bring the beast to her this weekend), which currently retails for $59, and $10 off a physical copy of AC III whenever one happens to buy it in the next month or so -- including when it's on sale.

All told, that's an additional $69-89 worth of content added to a $70 discount on a $249 device. Perhaps you can see why I couldn't pass that up, even at the expense of a drastically reduced tablet (particularly when the Galaxy Note II's in my cross hair).

Great savings!! My nephew would have loved me had I gotten him that for Xmas - of course my sister would have cut all contact to me in return. She thinks he plays too much, I tend to disagree: he gets a measly 30mins/day allowance. I was thinking of just getting the Crystal one from Sony anyway, but is 11, so the game that comes with it is a no-go. And then there is , again, my sister.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Tragically understandable, as no one else foresaw them either, including New York's mayors and governors of the past two decades.

We've been so distracted (and I think deliberately misled) by the idea of terrorists that no one has been paying attention to the meteorological trending of the past forty years as opposed to that of the previous history of the world. It took decades before the case against tobacco could be made in the face of hired contrarian scientists, but that only affected the individuals who chose to smoke and those who had to live with them. The rising waters that hit us this time might well be back and they are the true danger that threatens the country and indeed the rest of the world.

So sorry to hear of your neighbors' losses as well as your own.

Thanks. I'll admit it's been a grind. But still thankful that for me it wasn't worse. What others are facing is heartbreaking.

Now, we are starting to see conceptual designs of ocean barriers to protect NYC. A whole boatload of money needed.

Originally Posted by koland

How many people in NY/NJ will rebuild their houses hurricane proof and on 14' pillars?

Probably very few. Many are claiming they want to rebuild. "It's my home!" But no one is saying they are making preparations for further storms. A few do want FEMA to purchase their homes.

I wonder how they will insure them after this? Insurance companies are leaving in droves except Lloyd's of London.

[DianNC]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I wonder how they will insure them after this?

Risk pool?

[koland]

Originally Posted by DianNC

Risk pool?

Currently, that's called the American Taxpayer (we'll be funding most of the public rebuilding, plus buying lots of homes for those who don't want to rebuild).

If only we could then turn it all into a free park....

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by koland

We are also all elec, but run about $150 all year - I have a lot of stuff turned on, though (computers everywhere, freezers, frigs, stereos (2), etc). Oh, and the hot tub (which reminds me, a pump needs to be fixed... need to troubleshoot that this weekend; hey, it's only 15 years old or so). Two rooms have to use supplemental heat and a/c, as there was no way to run the main system to them and one is quite large; both get enough heat to stop freezing and enough a/c to keep anyone in there from passing out.

Sounds like your system may need to be replaced. The good news is you'll save a bit with it (so may not have to run the place at 68), even on the lower-cost contractor grade systems you see advertised in our paper all the time.

Monkey - Those who didn't plan for that type of surge haven't been paying much attention to the news. It's been only a matter of time, as the low-hurricane activity century drew to a close, compounded by the slow rise in sea level in the last few years (an inch of ocean is still a lot of water). NY and the seaboard have been hit before (there are even photographs of much of the seaboard destruction from a century or so ago) and will again. They were actually quite lucky, this time, as the hurricane was pretty well slowed down by the time it climbed the coast (although that meant it stalled more, the winds were quite a bit lower than they could have been).

New Orleans isn't the only place that is built underwater and the US doesn't have any real ocean defenses for that type of storm (the islands are supposed to be a part of the defense, but we build houses there, too; and cities, which the taxpayers are on the hook to rebuild, exactly as they were before).

How many people in NY/NJ will rebuild their houses hurricane proof and on 14' pillars?

This has been quite a year hasn't it? This summer when everyone was burning in drought we had so much rain it flooded our area. 140 homes were wash away and damaged. Most were not insured because it's a poor area. We did not make national news so no big name charities came to help. Because housing is so cheap here along with the cost of living the damage did not meet FEMA's 8 Billion mark to step in and help. The solution given is laughable. We're were lucky we live on a hill even though hubby's work got flooded he was only off for a day.

I can't even began to compare our little flood to the devastation Sandy caused. Rebuilding will take a long time for everyone.

[DianNC]

Originally Posted by koland

Currently, that's called the American Taxpayer (we'll be funding most of the public rebuilding, plus buying lots of homes for those who don't want to rebuild).

If only we could then turn it all into a free park....

Ah, I suppose that's a reference to FEMA. We have a regular homeowner's policy (fire, theft, liability, etc.) on an island home through a risk pool, but when it was partially destroyed by a hurricane, FEMA stopped by and offered us an obscene amount of taxpayer money for repairs. They've actually done that on several occasions throughout the years we've owned it (roof repairs due to storm damage, etc.). Probably their SOP throughout most of the country.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by DianNC

Ah, I suppose that's a reference to FEMA. We have a regular homeowner's policy (fire, theft, liability, etc.) on an island home through a risk pool, but when it was partially destroyed by a hurricane, FEMA stopped by and offered us an obscene amount of taxpayer money for repairs. They've actually done that on several occasions throughout the years we've owned it (roof repairs due to storm damage, etc.). Probably their SOP throughout most of the country.

I haven't heard how much I'll receive yet. But I did receive a good price for the boiler installation so even with my $1000 deductible I may come out slightly ahead. However, I will lose out on the content part of my claim as I bought a few things (riding mower) at garage sales.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Grillfiend? Suddenly I feel relieved I have never been invited to a BBQ

That's where you've been missing out. Barbeques with the Grillfiend are that much more entertaining! No more irritating guests asking about the padlocked room in the back (we serve them first), or why the pieces being cooked look a bit like our late neighbor Zed.

Originally Posted by xendula

My nephew would have loved me had I gotten him that for Xmas. . . .

I, too, used to think such things were for nephews alone. But spending a day with novelist and then-professor Michael Joyce at Brown University, learning about hypertext fiction in the 90s, and hearing descriptions of the plots of various M-rated Japanese games from friends in early 2000 made me aware that, compared to the most intelligent narrative games, most movies are insipid and unintelligent:-- bad investments of one's time.

The first games which taught me this were loans from a very literate friend who also lent me his PS2: Rule of Rose, Ico and Silent Hill 2.

Rule of Rose had a soundtrack that sounded like Bartok's chamber music and a visual style which was a cross between Dorothea Tanning and Edward Gorey. Its narrative was a nightmarish rendering of Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" transposed to an alternative Victorian age. Ico looked like a steampunk De Chirico landscape, and Silent Hill 2 was all carnage through fog and amnesiac spiritual loss.

I tried another game as well: Fatal Frame 2, which involved a ruined Hiroshima landscape within a house permeated with dangerous ghosts that could only be fended off with a camera, the protagonist's sole weapon.

None of the games ended happily, as movies usually do, and all were more quirkily written than any blockbuster you might see. And despite the sporadic gore, all were also more evocative than most post-70s horror films. For every Kim-Jee Woon, there's a plethora of hacks making chainsaw xeroxes.

All of this made me realize that the future of fiction in new media will combine film, writing, music and aleatoric elements into a total experience: The logical splice of film and hypertext fiction, in which the reader is also the protagonist, and moves through a kind of dis-gaea: vast spaces which don't exist in the physical world, but may be vivified in the virtual one -- balm for the claustrophobia of modern urban life. In the near future, I expect there to be SIM travel packages for people who lack the money to travel physically: Exact recreations of cities and regions in other parts of the world, where the player may interact with AI citizens in sandbox fashion, without ever being held to a gaming narrative. The idea would be for people to explore those virtual landscapes purely as vacationing tourists.

That already exists now in provisional form (the GTA series, for example), but I expect to see versions in the future for people who would never touch a game.

I avoided games for most of my childhood and adult life because practicing piano, reading books, composing and writing were more important.

Yet my paltry time with gaming has convinced me that games are important and will become more so over time. Ultimately, I expect them not to resemble games at all. As the creation of games gets easier, I also expect more academics and serious writers to create experimental works equivalent to history's avant garde gallery exhibitions.

Gallery of (badly captured) images from Rule of Rose here.

The semi-silhouette above the house is not that of a dirigible but rather a giant floating fish, causing the viewer to wonder whether the fish is airborne or the house is underwater:



The fish is incidental and surreal, and does not threaten or attack.

For the protagonist, exploring the house leads eventually to an entrance to the hull of a Victorian industrial floating ship, hence the metaphor.

Criticism which is closer to the actual texture of the narrative than standard populist or gaming criticism in America tends to get.

[koland]

Originally Posted by Blossom

This has been quite a year hasn't it? This summer when everyone was burning in drought we had so much rain it flooded our area. 140 homes were wash away and damaged. Most were not insured because it's a poor area. We did not make national news so no big name charities came to help. Because housing is so cheap here along with the cost of living the damage did not meet FEMA's 8 Billion mark to step in and help. The solution given is laughable. We're were lucky we live on a hill even though hubby's work got flooded he was only off for a day.

I can't even began to compare our little flood to the devastation Sandy caused. Rebuilding will take a long time for everyone.

Yeah, that's enough to, what, rebuild a half-dozen homes? And only for those both poor and with though insurance to cover half the cost.....

Yes, the fed govt is required by law to rebuild these areas, but there is nothing in the law that says they should be rebuilt to newer standards (or that perhaps some areas should be paid off and then kept buildings free -- just as there are some areas along the Mississippi that flood almost annually, then get rebuilt exactly as they were before, over and over).

[Dr. Drib]

Moderator Notice

Back to our Freebies forum, please.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Back to our Freebies forum, please.

For what it's worth, I don't mind off topic posts in threads I start.

[Blossom]

To get things back on track. Just picked up a 3TB WD My Book External drive for $119 at Office Depot as my birthday gift from Hubby. Sales end tonight. Only available in store.