Every weekday, our guide to the Web takes care of business, tackling tech topics that really matter to everybody. From topic definitions to topical rants, Dan Gray’s pieces inform as much as they entertain.
While folks in more temperate climates might get a break in their utilities bills this time of year, winter comes at great expense for those who live up north. We have four distinct seasons here at Ranchero Indebto, marked by the movement of the programmable thermostat switch: from cool, to off, to heat.
Spring and fall [...]
Staycation: it’s new buzzword being pressed by the media. “We can’t afford the gas to leave home this summer, so we’re going to have a staycation right here.
The retailers are using the staycation phenom as justification to grab a chunk of our economic stimulus checks.
Staycation sales … what a concept.
I had all intents of using [...]
Who says that money doesn’t grow on trees? Washington has cut the the trees down, printed up a whole bunch of new money … and they’re about to send it out to the taxpayers, in the hopes of jump starting the economy.
So what are you planning to do with your economic stimulus check?
I’m not going [...]
It’s all about the green. We’re all getting squeezed these days. Even if you’re not worried about the environment, you’ve got to be concerned about the green that’s flowing at an ever-increasing rate from your wallet.
Kids can be forgiven for their cluelessness when it comes to wasting energy. Parents are often the ones running around [...]
Faithful Technobabble readers may remember my long-running obsession with space heaters over the years and my decision to purchase the bargain electric fireplace (that turned out not to be a bargain in the long run).
The electric fireplace landed in our sun room, which for many years did double-duty as my home office… that is, until [...]
Winter will soon be upon us, bringing with it the most dreaded of arrivals… those winter heating bills. Here in the northeast, oil is one of the most popular forms of heating. But the cost of heating oil is at a perilous level for many homeowners. The prospects of a winter with $3 per gallon [...]
What do you do when your dishwasher gives notice that it’s ready to head south for the winter? Why you start looking for a new one, of course. The dishwasher here at Rancho Indebto hasn’t packed its bags… yet… but its performance is so abysmal that we’re ready to give it an early ticket out [...]
I’m looking into home surveillance systems again. A recent string of burglaries has made folks nervous around these parts. A pair of local kids was just arrested after allegedly committing dozens of burglaries from cars and garages. These brazen young men hit house after house in a spree that went on for days until watchful [...]
A long time ago, at the peak of the first (and yes, now we can say the first) Web bubble, I ordered my Weber Grill online. Flash forward a bunch of years and here it is, Memorial Day 2007… time to break out the barbecue and sunblock. As I opened up my trusty Weber for [...]
My jaw dropped when I opened the electric bill today. Okay, so I was warned. I just didn’t expect it to be this bad … now it was cold last month, but sheesh … it looks like the spiffy new home office electric fireplace conspired to double our electric bill. Sure, it was on sale [...]
Bring on the cold weather. The office here at Ranchero Indebto has a brand-new bargain-priced electric fireplace! How the heck did that happen, you ask? I never thought I’d own an electric fireplace … they’re tacky, or so I thought. Lo and behold, my search for a suitable space heater ended the minute we saw [...]
A storage shed can be put to many uses - from backyard barn, to pool cabana, greenhouse, or office. But how many sheds are versatile enough to be used for three out of four purposes? That’s what I’m setting out to with my little saltbox shed. I’m looking to carve out a little home office [...]
I first wrote about energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs here on Lockergnome two and a half years ago. Chris just saw “An Inconvenient Truth” while floating around the Caribbean and decided that compact fluorescents are the way to go. Well, yeah little brother! I guess Al Gore is more convincing than yours truly…
We’ve had compact fluorescent [...]
Thinking about adding a shed to your backyard but don’t know where to start? The Internet might present a confusing landscape, but there’s help out there. The geekbooks.com sheds site is a beacon of light … it doesn’t sell sheds … it’s all about helping you make the right choices, whether you’re looking to buy a [...]
So what is it about sheds? In many cases, it simply comes down to this … folks get to a point in their lives where everything no longer fits in the house. The closets are overflowing, the garage is packed, the basement’s full, and the attic’s bulging. Over the years, you’ve accumulated a ton of [...]
You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to cool down your deck or patio. You just need to use the power of evaporative cooling! Under the right conditions, outdoor water misting systems can reduce air temperature withing a specific area by twenty degrees or more. Basic water misting systems do not require pumps, relying [...]
What’s more relaxing than kicking back in the backyard with your wireless-enabled laptop? Okay, so maybe there are plenty of things that are more relaxing, but how do you get any work done when sun-glare makes it impossible to see the screen? Why with a retractable awning, of course! Flick the switch and the retractable [...]
Robot vacuums are all the rage. Led by the wildly popular (and soon to be hackable, they say) iRobot Roomba, the robot vacuum segment surely doesn’t suck …
I’m getting ready to order the materials for the hardwood flooring project I mentioned last month. You can bet that I’ll have this one laid out on the PC long before I dust off the power tools …
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