Friday, September 3, 2010

New Product Recommendations

I'm laid up with a giant bruise that turned into a bacteria-eating flesh wound of some sort. It's been six weeks now and looks like six more weeks before I am able to go diving again.

I'll recommend a few things below.

1. Western Digital Live Media Player: this little unit is fabulous. I held off on buying one since I figured that an existing PC could hook up to my TV and do everything I needed. After getting a $300 electricity bill the last two months, I am on a mission to reduce the power consumption of my devices. Anyway, this little unit does indeed read Mac-formatted disks, and it does indeed play back files recorded by a Media Center PC! It plays back just about every file that my Mac does. Incredible little machine.

2. I finally gave in a bought a hot tub (made by Sunshine or something like that). The thing costs $100 to $150 per month to use! Granted, I am using it on 110V. I will be putting a 220/240V outlet for this and this should reduce the energy consumption, but still -- this is a lot of money to run a hot tub. Regardless, I've experimented with keeping the water crystal clear. Besides using the shock chemicals about every 4-5 days rather than once a week, I HIGHLY recommend a product called Spa Bright and Clear. I had a problem with cloudy water, and despite keeping the water chemically up-to-date and the filter cleaned, I was still getting cloudy water. One treatment of Spa Bright and Clear made the water completely clear for a good three weeks. The product seems like little more than soap, but it is inexpensive and supposedly binds to small particles in the water, so that the particles can be captured by the filter.

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