Kiplinger.com Personal Finance Advice

It seems like everyone is trying to get a hold of their financial standings with the current  state of the economy.   A great resource, tools, and reviews of banks to take charge of your finical foundation is kiplinger.com.

How Much Power Do I Need For My New PC

If you are adding a triple crossfire to your brand spanking new CPU system and wondering how big of a nuclear reactor you need to power this thing; I got you covered.

Check this site out to calculate how much power you need to run your system by selection all your components from a drop down menu:

eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite v2.5

Test Your Typing Skills at TypingTest.com

Do you want to know how fast you can type?  Check out this site:

TypingTest.com

“How fast can you type? Find out with our free typing test that works in your web browser and takes only a couple of minutes to complete.

Select a time and text to type. After the quick test, you will see your typing speed, accuracy and net speed.”

Bruno is a Hilarious Movie

5 out of 5 stars.

I was going to wait for the DVD as this is that type of a movie, but decided to see it as I am a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen’s characters and the movie was tanking due to negative reactions of movie goers.

I am familiar with the Bruno character from watching The Ali G show and found him to be very funny.  I was surprised that the film was not doing well due to people texting negative comments to friends right after or during the movie. Thus, I decided to check it out myself.

It was as expected: the movie was hilarious from begging to end.

There are two ways you can watch this movie.  One, take it with a blind eye; what I mean is, you watch only Bruno as the main character and focus and react to what he does.  The second way to watch this (and I thing the reight way) is to take the victims of  the movie as the main character and focus on their reactions.  Think what you would have done in their situations.  How would you have reacted to Sacha’s insanity?

Some have said that this Bruno is over the top with what he did with the movie.  But there is no other way for this to work.  This is a hard core comedy and over the top situations are the ones that works for this movie and the most funniest.

In the end, Burno is just a character that this talented actor is portraying.  The point of the movie is to get the reactions of the victims when placed in uncomfortable situations, which Sacha’s a master at.

This is a type of movie I will only watch once for the experience but will remember for a long time.  Just as Borat.

Very nice movie if you have the stomach.  Wait till the DVD comes out, them run and get it.  If you have an open mind and get the comedy you will laugh your ass off.

Free Non-Flash Games (Doenload and Play)

A site I found today for free games you can download and play on your PC:

Davids Freeware Collection

http://www.freewebs.com/jayspa/gamespage1.htm

Watchman (2009) Review

3 out of 5

Why 3 out of 5: A bit complicated and evolved film.

This movie was not what I was expecting.   I saw some trailers here and there and didn’t pay much attention, so I went to see the movie which turned out to be false expectations.  I also did not know about the book from which this movie was derived.

What I was expecting:  A typical action packed super hero movie. This was not the case.

What was different:  The movie was more about human flaws and emotion with deep meninges.  You pretty much have to pay attention and involved with the characters in order to grasp what is being portrayed.  Its a definite duo watch in order to comprehend ideas stated in this film.

If you are going into this film looking for a Dark Knight type of action and drama, this is not it.  Although the basic concept of the film is obvious to the regular movie goer, it does take a thinker to fully understand what the film is trying to say.

If you are the regular movie goer, I would recommended reading some of the reviews from Roger Ebert as a start so you can fully enjoy this movie.

Roger Ebert Review of Watchman 1 Roger Ebert Review 2 of Watchman

The trailer is false advertising: seems like an action packt movie but its not.

Flights for Cheap Website Reviews

Its vacation season and thought that some of you might appreciate a few sites to find great discounts on flights.  The good thing about these sites is that it eliminates going form site to site to search for individual pricing for your vacation.  They will wind all the best hotels, flights, and car rentals for you vacation or travel.  All you have to do is enter the dates and location.

SideStep.com:

This is a good site to start to get good ideas for pricing on air, hotel and car rentals as this site queries all major travel sites for best price.   However, you might get redirect once you clik on a plice you like to the recommended site and have to enter all the information over again.  Sometimes prices might be different in the redirected site than what was originally quoted at SideStep.

Editors Choice!

Kayak.com

Kayak will not allow you to book your vacation. Insted they search all major travel sites including air line databases for the best price.   Kayak has the most up-to-date pricing and, once clicked, will take you directly to that sites checkout screen.
Some other sites to try:

Travelocity

FareCompare.com

Priceline

Expedia

Orbit

For search engine that will search cruise ships try  Smart Travel

Copernic Desktop Search Review

2 out of 5 stars.

I downloaded this free home desktop search software as it was at the top of a recommenced list.

After installation, I found that it took a significant amount of  time for applications to open.  Given, this is a day after installation.  I buffered a day for the the indexing process (for the software to catalog data in order for process searches faster).    This made me frustrated as I require a handful of applications to be open for do day to day functions.  Unfortunately, the more applications I opened the slower they tended to operate.  Excel, Word, pdf editor and Firefox are what I use in a daily basis and seemed to function at a slower pace than normal with Copernic running.

The software did do its job though.  Finding emails was significantly faster than Outlook search.  Filters were fantastic, and easy to use interface.  There are pop up ads on the browser every now and then for other software products at Copernic, but bearable.

This software did not recognize the network and I did not dive in to the settings to find out if anything had to be set up in order for it to find the network.  I had enough of the lag in functioning of other programs to try to remedy any issues. .

Once I deleted this software, everything was functioning as normal as before.

System tested on:

Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz Processor

2GB Ram

Win XP SP3

Flight of the Phenix (2004) Movie Review

IMDB Link

3 out of 5 Stars

The three stars is for the concept of a plane going down in the middle of a harsh desert and what will ensue.

One can say that the meaning of life is to survive and triumph over adversity.  Anything dealing with this concept will garb my attention, so I did like the movie.

Good preference by Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi.  But it stops there.  There were few exciting moments, like when the plane went down, the nomad encounter, and taking off from a cliff dive. When the film was getting to be boring, Giovanni’s character, a mysterious wired little guy, steps up to hold it to gather.

I am told that the acting and plot of the original version done in 1965 is much better.

I would recommend this movie.

Review of Myrtle Beach

5 out of 5 stars for both family and couple trip.

This was my second trip to Myrtle Beach, the first being a few years back as newly weds, and the last week 7 day family trip.

We decided to drive at night starting at 9pm and arriving at the resort at about 4 pm from MD.  The trip was uneventful and plenty of rest stops and late night gas stations along the way.  I was happy and thankful for

that considering there was six people riding with me.

We loved Myrtle Beach the first time and wanted everyone to experience the same things we encountered from the last trip.  Number one being relaxing on a nice clean beach and others included see food buffet, Ripples Aquarium, the alligator farm, and shopping.  The very first thing to do on a vacation like this is to grab a coupon book and brochures at the lobby of your hotel.  You will find valuable coupons and ideas to spend your time. Myrtle Beach has an excellent coupon book called the “Monster Coupon Book.” Its still a good source to find out what is available if you are Mr. Money Bags and don’t need coupons.

The main street at Myrtle beach is Root 17.  All the restaurants and shopping as well as some attractions are located on this street.  There are two Super (has groceries) Walmart within ten miles of each other.   A thing to note is, it seems there are two prices at Myrtle Beach: one for locals and one for visitors.  This is the case in any major vacation spot but I was surprised to discover this at Myrtle Beach by simply overhearing a couple ask for the local price and then got a discount.   Its something to try if you can pass off as a local but I am sure its tough to do.

The first thing we did was of course hit the beach the whole of the first day.   It was the first week of June and the weather held at a nice sunny 80 degrees for the whole time we were there.   If you have the guts, there is a paracailing, super fast speed boat rides, fishing excursions, and general site seeing. The best time to collect seashells is in the morning after the tide is out.  You can get some nice ones before the rest of the people come out.

On the top of our list was Ripley’s Aquarium, a must see if you have not  done this:

It features an automated walkway so you just stand and watch the sharks go by.

Another must see is Alligator Adventure.  Lots of different crocks to see, but that’s not all:  Otters, birds, and some kind of main attraction is always at hand.  When we were there, the main attraction was Bengal tigers.  Before that it was Ligers (largest cats in the world), which I really wanted to see.   There are several live shows throughout the day so you can easily spend a whole day with he crocs.  And yes, they do have a live alligator feedings where they jump up to grab the chicken from the hand.  And yes, its freaking cool!

Seafood buffet is the thing at MB.  I recommend Original Benjamin’s Calabash.  With a name like this and 170 food items…how can you go wrong?!  Each place has its gimmick.  This place boasts a dry aquarium, basically fake big ass fish hanging from the ceiling.  Other restaurants with gimmicks include girls in mermaids costumes in a pool in the middle of the restaurant… to large sea creatures on the roofs of the restaurant.

There are lots of put-put courses with their own gimmicks.  Jurassic Park is one of the favorites.  You will definitely end up going to one of these considering how many you pass by on the main road.

Barefoot Landing is a nice place for shopping. There is a carousel and a mirror maze for the kids.  Broadway at the Beach has lots of kids rides for about $3 bucks a ride.

Shopping is OK.  Mostly you will find yourself window shopping.  Look for going out of business sales at various “bargain” stores.

Another day to spend is at the Brookgreen Gardens where you’ll see the world’s largest collection of American sculpture.  There are also vineyards to explore and taste vine.  Ran out of time for either of this and had to save it for next time.

Leave any question in the comments below and have fun!