Like most everyone out there times are getting harder. And lately it seems like the standard services we use are costing more and more every month. I’m talking about services like cable and phone services. Most of the time these service providers are rising their prices without any warning. Although the local phone companies have increases, there’s really not much we can do. What I mean by that you can’t switch your local provider out. But with cable companies, you can always order a dish service to fight back. But cable companies fight back by running negative ads against dish service providers to scare you off. In my opinion, if someone’s spending a lot of money to scare you off you need to at lease consider going with a dish company like Direct TV, or The Dish Network. These Dish TV companies require a contract so please make sure you understand the contract and service plan before you make the switch. Do what‘s right for you.

I was poking around on the net today and came across a story about a couple who shoplift toys and other crap to sell on eBay. This couple was on the Dr. Phil show bragging about on they made over $100,000 in selling stolen product. And that’s not even the whole story. It seems that they brought along their three small children. There was even a time they got caught shoplifting with the kids. Now since the story aired law enforcement is involved. Just a week ago the Secret Service and the San Diego Regional Fraud Task Force seized toys and a car, plus other crap. The man accused of this crime is Matthew Eaton, who said that the thefts where “easy money.” This just shows how dumb people are. I would like to ask this guy why would he go on the Dr. Phil show and think nothing would happen to him. This guy and his wife should have everything seized, everything. After all that’s the law.

It’s time to close the wallet and put your money under your mattress.  I’m not kidding; times seem to be getting worst.  During today’s trading, stocks are down again, as of right now.  Some are saying that the Dow will hit 9,000 again.  Yesterdays trading ended badly as well.  The price of oil today has been level per barrel, mostly because the U.S Govt. stated there has been a drop in demand. Let’s not forget that more and more people are losing their jobs during these troubling times.  My advise, stock up and food and have some cash on hand, and stop depending on the U.S Govt.

I have a few questions for all of you. Are your fed up with your hosting provider? Does your site have a lot of down time? And do you feel that your hosting provider could deliver much better customer service? If you answered yes to any of these questions you need to seek out another provider, fast.

If you’re business website constantly goes down it will cost you money, and customers. If you’re a site owner, business or personal, you know how hard it is to find reliable web hosting, which is very critical to your business. As most of you know, when your site goes down you just want to pull your hair out. You purchase a plan, your promissed up site time, then out it goes, drives me nuts. So do what I did, research, research, and research your next provider. Call them, talk to someone on the phone. Most of these providers don’t offer toll free numbers, but that’s not a big problem. They just want to reduce the calls for low level questions. To avoid phone charges, call from your cell phone. I know I’m running on here, but I can’t stress enough, call your provider, and research them. Good luck on your searches.

Most of you already know that I had problems with my web hosting services in the past. My sites would always go down for hours at a time. One time my sites went out for two days. I would send email after email and never got a response. As you can imagine this was very frustrating. And the thing that made me the maddest was I felt trapped. Because feeling trapped meant that I was going to need to start all over again. And I was also afraid of losing some of my site information. But I’m here to tell you not to be afraid and make the move if your hosting provider is failing you. The move wasn’t that bad at all, matter of fact it was pretty easy. So I did a little work and found a hosting provider where you can get reliable web hosting. The web hosting company I came across tonight can meet all your business needs. This web hosting site also offers some of the best ecommerce web hosting I’ve come across. And on top of providing all their great services, you can really depend on them. So don’t be affraid, do your research, and make the right choice.

I can across an article stating that we change our oil in our cars more frequently than we should.  The misconception for years was that you needed to change your engine oil every 3000 miles.  But did you know that with the better oils we have today that most auto manufacturers now recommend changing your oil about every 5,000 to 7,000 under normal driving conditions.  The only time I change my oil is when the car tells me to.  I’m not kidding; both of my cars have a computerized system that alerts me when it’s time.  And I will say this; the car has always been right on.  Check your car’s manual to see when your oil changes are due.  Think how much the price of oil would be if we change our oil when it really needed to be done.

Not to long ago a test was done by Time Warner Cable Inc., which went very well, according to them. The test was charging more to their customers that went over their limit of data traffic. This test was done in one market to make sure their system can charge the right rate and monitor customer usage. I was reading that if you where a customer paying $30 a month you had 5 gigabytes of transfer data. And if you went over that limit you would be charge $1 for every gigabyte over the 5. If you ask me the 5 gigabyte limit is way to low. I would burn through that amount in the first week. I would consider switching to a new ISP if this comes to my area. Time Warner Cable is taking advantage of hard working people, this is wrong. Since they think everything went so well they have choose to role this out to 4 more major U.S. markets. And if your wondering if other ISP are doing the same thing, that would be a yes. But no where’s near the lows of transfer data that Time Warner Cable is giving. The other ISP’s are offering limits starting at 60 gigabyte all the way up to 250 gigabytes. So you can see why I think Time Warner Cable is taken advantage of people. If they try this with me I will leave them and switch to DLS or find another Cable provider. However, with all that being said, not all ISP’s are going to be doing this, so this just might keep the other ISP’s in check.

These storms and flooding across the eastern part of the United States this month has turned a lot of people’s live’s upside down. From my understanding, there has been a few people already killed, many without power, and many hurt. I read that the estimated damage of these storms and floods will cost well into the millions. A few of these states are still recovering from bad snow storms. Not only does the flooding affects the people of these states it affects all of us. Our food costs will be going up because of damage crops and delays in planting crops. We can only hope that the rains subside to reduce flooding. For some it’s to late, waters in some areas of the northeast is 20 feet over flood walls. Hopefully it will stop soon!

It seems that there are a few changes coming about within the Bills. And here’s the surprise, Terrell Owens is getting cut, not really a surprise is it, or is it. He did manage to stay out of trouble for a year, so why cut him? I think the Bills are doing this because T.O. gets in trouble during season 2 with his new team. Now this hasn’t been verified yet, but insiders at the Bills camp say it’s coming. T.O. is a huge problem for any team, and the likelihood of him being picked up by another team is slim, but the Ravens have been asking questions. As good as T.O. is, his career just might be over if he does get cut. And I really don’t think any other team will pick him up, been wrong about that before thought. If he wasn’t always such a trouble maker he could have been one of the best whoever played the game, it’s a shame.

I’m not specking of the show, “The Biggest Loser,” I’m speaking of U.S Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. As most of you know, not to long ago he was he was the New York Fed chief. He also got caught not paying taxes on all his income. He said sorry, paid a small fine, and went to work for President Barack Obama in 2008. If you or I would’ve had the U.S Government come down on us like a bad habit. Not him, he gets to be in charge of the U.S money, something wrong here, what was Obama thinking? Anyway, today Geithner was attacked by and criticized by Democrats and Republicans Wednesday for his role in the $180-billion-plus taxpayer bailout of insurance giant American International Group. Something you may not know, money went through AIG and filtered down to business partners within AIG. The money wasn’t meant for that, and Geither said he didn’t know that’s were the money went, which I think he’s not telling the whole story. The money was also used for trips and bonuses, unreal. They mess up, get free money from the Government, what’s wrong with these people. Part of the problem is that we have people that’s supposed to be looking out for us not doing their jobs. Their really looking out for themselves. What needs to happen is Geithner needs to spend time in jail with the other Wall-Street law breakers. Hopefully some day the truth will come out and Geithner get’s his 4X8 room for a few years.