I’ve noticed that credit card companies from time to time decide to change my credit card number.  They say it is for security reasons, and I can understand them trying to be “secure” and all of that, but it is a huge aggravation on two levels.  OK, maybe three levels.  First of all, I’ve memorized my credit card numbers, and it is hard to “forget” the numbers I’ve memorized and learn new ones.  Second of all, I have the credit card number listed for automatic charges on a lot of accounts, and now I have to notify them all of the change.  On the third account, every single time that they do this to me, the very first billing cycle after the account number changes, there are fraudulent charges on my new account number!  How is that being more “secure?”  So I have to challenge the charges, which is a royal pain in the neck!

A friend of mine sent me a link to a blog that was talking about how someone has found a way to burn salt water, and that the possibility was there to further develop that to actually be able to run cars with that technology.

So I was just googling “fuel from salt water” and was reading the different links about it.

From what I can tell, right now it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel itself would generate, which makes it impractical.  Perhaps someone can refine the process, but I also read that when the salt water DOES burn, it releases a deadly form of chlorine gas, which probably would not be a good thing!

So, I think that quite a bit of “tweaking” needs to be done for that technology to hit the mainstream use of running our cars on saltwater!

For all of the television commercials that I see on television about how great Verizon Wireless is, and for all of our neighbors insisting that Verizon is the company with the best cell phone reception is around here, I have to say that I’m quite disappointed in the dead zone problems that I have with my Verizon cell phone.  I cannot use my Verizon cell phone in my house at all – the entire house is a dead zone.  And whenever I drive from the house to “town” to run errands, the vast majority of the trip to “town” is a dead zone – even if I pull off the road and stand on top of my car.  So, I have to say that I am quite disappointed in the Verizon cell phone service.

I’ve been hearing and reading more cases of families giving up their hard-wired landline in their homes in favor of simply using cell phones.  I can understand the logic, the cell phones are small and they carry them with them at all times, the landline phone is usually larger and more cumbersome.  Yet I question the wisdom of this strategy.  I like having a landline phone, one that is completely hardwired, and corded.  Yes, we have cordless phones, but if and when the electricity goes out (and it DOES go out!) and the cell phones are useless because our house is a dead zone, we depend on the hardwired, corded landline to call the electric company to report the power outage!  And we use it to keep in touch with friends and family during the power outage!  In 1998 we had a huge ice storm that knocked the electricity out for nineteen days, but we had the telephone service every minute!  We could not have maintained cell phones in that case because we could not have kept them charged!

So, in OUR house, anyway, I expect the landline is here to stay.  What about you?

The past couple of days we’ve been getting gift boxes in the mail from my hubby’s relatives. Seems as if they all decided to buy fruit from Harry & David this year! We love their pears, so we are glad to get the gifts. One of the boxes arrived with no message as to who the gift is from, it just said in the message part for my son to keep his hands off of the fruit! I am thinking it is from my sister-in-law, but I’m not sure of that.

Today we got another box, this time from my hubby’s aunt – it had pears and candies and nuts and smoked salmon and baklava and all kinds of great goodies in it! That box cost a bundle, I am sure! The last time I remember eating smoked salmon was right around 1999, and I really enjoyed it, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy that treat, assuming that my hubby doesn’t eat it all before I get any of it!