Archive for October, 2009

How to get cash without ATM fees!

October 25, 2009

Have you ever needed to get some cash quickly but didn’t want to drive to the nearest ATM because you know you’ll be hit with a $2 fee from your bank and another $2 fee from the ATM.  If you withdrew $40 that’s $4 in fees (10%).

A quick an easy way to get cash, up to $50, without getting hit with any fees is go to the nearest Albertsons, Safeway, or any other supermarket.  Buy some gum, everyone needs some gum for fresh breath,  or anything and use your Discover Card.  When you swipe it on the PIN pad it will ask if you want cash back.  Safeway will let you get up to $40 and Albertsons limit is $50.  This will even work at those self-checkout registers.  They will show up on your statement as a regular purchase for the total amount of the purchase and the cashback as one transaction.  You won’t incur any fees and if you pay your statement in full at the end of the month there’s no finance charge either.

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Posted in Credit Card, Finance, How To, Money | 2 Comments »

How to setup a new hard drive on Vista.

October 24, 2009

As of now you probably have heard of SSD, solid state drive, which is simply your thumb drive on steroids.  SSD have no moving parts and uses NAND flash memory so the have great speed and greater reliability.   With new technology old technolgy gets a discount.  Nowadays a Tera-byte hard drive is less than $100.  You can even find it even less online for around $70.  Recently, I received one as a gift from a friend.

After you install the hard drive, follow the provided installation pamphlet,  you have to set it up on the PC and format it.  Here’s how to do it.

Note: a terabyte hard drive took me a few hours to format the drive so be patience when you are formatting the hard drive.

1. In Control Panel select System and Maintenance and select Create and format hard disk partitions.

System and Maintanence

2.  Now you should see Disk Management application loaded and you should see a disk “Not initialized”.  You wan to right click on the “Disk 1″ area and select initialize.

New Simple Volume Wizard 1 - Initailize

3. If you hard drive is less than 2TB then you would want to select MBR (Master Boot Record)

Initialize Disk

4.  Now you want to right click on the “unallocated”  area and select New Simple Volume

New Simple Volume

5.  New Simple Volume Wizard pops up and you continue through.

New Simple Volume Wizard

6.  Pick a drive letter you would like to associate with that new hard drive.  I picked M for “Mass Data”.

New Simple Volume Wizard 2

7.  Here you want to leave everything as is except for the Volume label.  Change it to whatever your heart desires.

New Simple Volume Wizard 3

8. Now you are done, your new drive should show up when you click on “My Computer”.

New Simple Volume Wizard 4

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Posted in How To, Tech, Vista | 2 Comments »

Dow above 10,000!

October 14, 2009

Yes, the unimaginable has happen. Less than a year ago no one would have thought of the Dow at 10K.   If you miss the 53% gain from March lows you might still have the a chance.  The market will probably dip below 10K for the next few days and that represents a buying opportunity.  The Dow closing above 10,000 has significant meaning.  The  significance of the Dow hitting 10K is that it shows people that the worst is over (at least for now).  I doubt that the Dow will go up another 50% but you never know.

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Posted in Finance, Stocks | 1 Comment »

Ebay feedback rating system is a scam!

October 1, 2009

For Ebay auction to work properly there has to be a trust between the buyer and the seller.  To trust a seller you need to be assured you get what you are paying for.  To trust a buyer you want to be sure you get paid properly without any hassle.  Seller ratings and comments provides this assurance that the item they are selling is legitimate and not some kind of knock-off.  Buyer ratings and comments also provide assurance that we are dealing with someone that has a real interest in buying your item and is going to pay promptly.

Ebay only wants positive feedback left for both it’s buyers and sellers.  Why do this?  This absolutely makes no sense at all.  If everyone has 100% positive feedback then the whole feedback rating system is pointless.  It’s a scam.  You cannot trust anyone on ebay using their rating system.

There is no Negative feedback option.

Posted in Scams, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »