I have to say that Clear365.com was one of the more impressive news and entertainment web sites that I have visited recently. The thing that stands out right away is how clean and colorful the interface is. It is simply a visually appealing home page and far from the typical bland news sites.

As soon as you hit the site you can clearly see which categories of entertainment you are interested in reading about, listening to or watching. An example of this is if you simply click on Music you are presented with the latest in Digital Music News. You have instant visibility to new releases, top stories, and seeing the single and album top charts. You can search by artists, just browse and listen to variety of music or purchase directly from the site if you want.

For those of you who are addicted to the Latest Celebrity News you can click on Entertainment button and have access to celebrity news, buzz, movie previes, celebrity photos, TV Show lists and watch streaming television episodes.

For those of you looking for pure latest news without any of the frills, Clear365’s Online News Portal brings you all the top headlines, featured stories, global news, business news and science articles.

In addition to all of these, there is a Games section to play all the latest online free games like Bejeweled 2, Risk, Zuma Delux and many more.

One thing even more impressive about the site is if you create an account you can create your own widgets that have a little bit of everything all at your fingertips on your own portal. You can have a few modules of entertainment, a few of music, a few games…etc.

I encourage you to give this site a try you may find it easier to navigate and have more media at your disposal than Google News, CNN or other sites which are very narrow in focus.

-Justin Germino

Back in last May when I bought my wife a new laptop for Mother’s Day, it barely functioned with Windows Vista preloaded. The laptop only had 1gb of RAM and Vista was so sluggish that my wife agreed to try Ubuntu Hardy Heron as an alternative. She learned the new operating system, adapted to Open Office from MS Office and uses Thunderbird and Firefox as her primary browsers. I had most of her programs working with WINE or found the Open Source equivalents on Ubuntu.

But recent problems with visiting certain web sites and the lack of ability to play certain flash and active X stuff is having us consider re-imaging the laptop back to Windows Vista. If I do this I am going to have to purchase more notebook memory at least another gig of ram should suffice.

In the meantime I can’t figure out why she can’t hit MercedesBenz.com from Ubuntu Firefox, it just locks up loading, it works fine on my Windows Firefox, IE and Chrome. I think it is some sort of servlet or something that just wont render right. I know it is flash based, so maybe I am missing a flash plugin or something. I will troubleshoot and if I can fix it, maybe we won’t have to re-image the laptop after all.

-Justin Germino

• Update 12/30/2008

I fixed the flash problem with Firefox 3.x on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I had to redownload and update the libflash-mozplugin from the Ubuntu archives which resolved my issue.

These instructions worked for me:

1. sudo apt-get install libflash-mozplugin
2. restart firefox

As I enter 2009 one of my primary goals is to gain better control of my finances, one way I am going to accomplish this is when the lease on my 2006 Chrysler Pacifica comes up I intend to turn it in and go several months without a 2nd car payment for a while. This way I can save the six hundred dollars per month I spend on my Pacifica Lease and use it to pay off some other bills and play catchup for a brand new refrigerator I had to buy the week of Christmas.

When I am ready for a 2nd car again I don’t know if I will lease a new car or purchase an older model outright something less than seven thousand dollars I would be looking for, on the one hand a new car means full warranty, usually no car trouble, peace of mind and better gas mileage. On the other hand, it means I would have a monthly car payment, instead of a fully paid off car. I have always had new cars and leased vehicles for the last ten years, I have never known what it was like to have a fully paid off car with no monthly payment, so I am curious if saving the money would it be lost in car maintenance?

While I ponder that over the first few months of the year I think that if I don’t get a 2nd car, at least I won’t be needing another car insurance quote for a while.

-Justin Germino

I want to point this out to everyone who is overweight or used to be overweight but worked hard to get down to a normal weight. One of the big disadvantages I found now that I have come very close to achieving my weight goals is I feel guilt and think negatively whenever I indulge in food that I know is harmful to maintaining my weight. One example of this was I was eating breakfast this morning and I indulged in some pancakes, sausage and scrambled eggs probably consuming a thousand calories or more in a single meal. As I sat there enjoying the food I was bliss, the flavor taste so good and I didn’t think about anything but enjoying the food.

After breakfast however when the flavor was gone I started considering how much I ate and how rich the food was and that if I indulged too much like this I would have to consider weight loss products or work out twice as hard again. This is something I notice very much about my new mentality, previously when I was heavy I ate and didn’t care about what it might due to my weight gain or my health. Now I am much more conscious to worrying about it after I have done it, but I still indulge anyway. I do have a system in place where if I indulge in a big breakfast I will cut back on lunch and dinner, I still try to eat only about 2,000 calories per day but I might change which meal is the highest calories for the day. Some days I have a big dinner and I will only eat a 140 calorie cereal bar for breakfast and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch which allows for a 1500 calorie dinner.

Other days a big breakfast means a very light lunch and lean cuisine dinner of only 250 calories or so. I try to keep my calorie intake consistent on days where I might eat too much, I try to eat less the next day. Never do I starve myself I keep it increments if I can, and I only guesstimate calories I don’t go so far as to add them all up in my head to the exact number. This helps keep my weight around 160 pounds even though I still have a section of belly fat I am trying to reduce.

I am sure many readers out there eat or indulge and feel guilty afterward, what are some of the punishments you inflict upon yourself to compensate for indulging in food? Or how do you make yourself feel less guilty or counteract when you cheat on your diets?

-Justin Germino

Why is it that most human beings in general would complain about the way things are but never make a move or action to try and make things better.  This is a really people are looking for support and understanding and empathy, but don’t really know or how to make things any better or what to do, so they don’t bother even trying.

If you are going to complain and whine over and over about the state of the economy, CEO’s getting rich while middle class get poorer, Gas prices (which are dropping radically and shouldn’t be a complaint anymore), Companys offering Black Friday deals and then blaming the companies when the shoppers are the one killing each other for them.

You just mine as well wear an adult diaper and fully regress to infancy at this point.  Take action even a little bit at a time makes a difference.  If you don’t like the way a company does things, boycott that company and its products.  Instead of finding and dishing all the negative people need to start looking for what they can change in their own sphere of influence.  Is the negative really that bad, or is something else the source of your frustration?

I myself can complain from time to time about things but I also have the ability to look at everything in my life as half full as well.  Your buying power affects your immediate sphere, support what you believe in and do not give in to what you don’t.  If you really want to complain about something, do it with a purpose that can lead to change.  If you are complaining just for the sake of someone hearing and agreeing, that is what family and friends are for.

So here is my post complaining about complainers,  hmm..  Maybe I should take my own advice, and with that this is a good time to end this rant.

-Justin Germino

This morning I decided to do some online shopping and see what kind of cyber Monday deals could be found online. I managed to find a few holiday gifts for my wife from Amazon, as well as found some good prices on various toys, though I haven’t purchased anything for the kids yet.

Free shipping is always a good incentive as is discounts, a coworker of mine told me about Microsoft Live Cashback search, where you collect cashback after 60 days based on any item you purchase that is participating. This was an interesting thing and I was going to try and compare prices later today to see if prices are better than local stores. One thing it would seem is that Amazon.com seems to consistently have better prices than overstock.com at least in every item I directly compared.

I did some reading and learned about eBillMe which was an interesting concept and service.  eBillme allows you to make purchases and receive an ebill and pay the bill directly with your online bank account via billpay.  This bypasses the need to charge your purchases to credit cards, and allows you to pay your bills with cash you have in your bank accounts.

In addition there is a contest called shop and confess, where you can win cash prizes.  Here is a video you can play to learn more:

I have a Dwarf Lemon Tree in the yard for over 2 years and it hasn’t yielded any viable fruit yet, I have 2 fig tree’s which my wife turned into fig jam but these took over a year before they bloomed. I would love to try out some genetically engineered fruit tree’s to see how they fare, but I am worried the harsh summer’s of Arizona would kill just about anything I purchase. One type tree that does pretty well out here are the Pomegranate trees. We can see them over people’s yards, did you know there is a Pomegranate bug that can be fairly large, like an inch or two in length with a long mosquito like tube that it uses to pierce the pomegranate skin. They are very common here in Arizona, and my son likes to catch them and put them in their bug tanks.

Citrus grows out here but can be very dry and thick skinned oranges with little pulp and too much skin are common without proper irrigation, what I really want to try are those hybrid trees that grow 4 or 5 different fruits on a single tree. I just don’t know how well they would do here, but I do love the idea of growing my own fruit. We had spent nearly a thousand dollars on tree’s when we first bought this house only to have many of them die during the first winter. When you buy hardy summer plants, they can’t survive freezing temperatures, so we have the worst extremes in Casa Grande, where it can get below 32 degrees in the winter and over 117 in the Summer.

-Justin Germino

In learning new things almost every day I discovered something about Victorinox swiss army watches, there is a whole range of high quality and classic design watches by the same makers as the Swiss Army Knives. In addition almost every watch comes with a Swiss Army Knife and an Exec Knife Pack (which is kind of like a credit card holder with a whole bunch of tools that slide in it).

So if you purchase any watch it comes with $150 worth of free accessories of Victorinox products. Some of the watches are very regal looking and high quality, some with leather wristbands, steel wristbands or combination’s. Free shipping is included with every watch and watches start in the $175 dollar range and up.

I really liked the look of the Victorinox Swiss Army 241123 Chrono Classic Mens Watch, which would be on one of my wish lists eventually. There are over one hundred Victorinox swiss army watches to choose from to fit any budget, and with teh $150 in free accessories, if you should happen to chose one of the sub $200 watches you are getting a fantastic deal.

-Justin Germino

Now I have moved about twelve times over the course of my life and sometimes I have actually moved and left almost all my furniture behind in my sold or rented establishment. Either because I didn’t need it anymore or I had included it in the price of the house that was sold.

On the few occasions I had done this I would have to go out and find discount furniture for my new establishment, and I usually started off with new sofas every time I bought a new house. This would be followed up with new kitchen table, and sometimes appliances if the ones I had were too old and crusty.

One of the houses we bought in AZ came with appliances that were so old we just left them behind when we purchased a new house. Sometimes the right decision is to buy furniture instead of moving your old stuff, but try to re-use what you can.

-Justin Germino

A little history about my past, I was born in Brooklyn and had lived in Brooklyn, Ozone Park and South Ozone Park before moving to Arizona thirteen years ago. Back when I was about fourteen years old we had moved from Brooklyn where we shared a house with my Grandmother and Grandfather to South Ozone Park, which we all bought and stayed at as a family.

It was a two family house with three floors and two kitchens, 3 bathrooms, and they don’t make those type of two family houses common out here in Arizona. I remember several times moving and we always did all the moving ourselves, it would have been nice to have hired movers New York to assist and make the operation smoother.

But you do get stronger moving heavy furniture yourself and you learn the hard way sometimes, my last few moves in Arizona I always go through movies, they pack the trucks better and it gets done faster. So if you happen to be moving anytime in the near future in New York area, check out Shleppers Moving & Storage and see if they can help make it easier for you.

-Justin Germino