Well, Phillips is running some incredible deals on their LCD HDTV’s. My personal “Buy” trigger was a 42″ 1080P TV for < $800.

Well, I just placed an order for a 42″ Magnavox 1080P HDTV and it came to just under $540 shipped to my door! WOOHOO!

—Zach

Woohoo! Canonical just released Ubuntu 8.04! Ubuntu is one of the most incredible free pieces of software that I have ever encountered.

Ubuntu is basically a free alternative to Microsoft Windows. While it doesn’t allow you to run Microsoft Office, it does include OpenOffice.org. A completely free, robust alternative to Microsoft Office. It even comes with a great instant messaging client - pidgin and a web browser that is much more secure than Internet Explorer - Firefox.

For a huge portion of individuals, Ubuntu will do everything you need your computer to do out of the box. For everyone else, you may have to do a bit of work, but you’ll be glad you did. :).

If you want to try it without messing your computer up, check out wubi. It lets you install Ubuntu while leaving windows completely intact, and is incredibly easy to do. Then next time you buy a computer avoid paying the Microsoft Tax and buy a cheap laptop or desktop from Dell with Ubuntu pre installed.

—Zach

With projects like 960.gs becoming prevalent, and grid design becoming more and more prominent in the eyes of high end designers, I spent a little time to work out a formula to generate a single columns width based upon three things. Read the rest of this entry »

—Zach

I’m not sure how many of you use Pandora, but I am highly excited by it each and every time. Pandora is basically a radio service that utilizes the Music Genome Project in order to play music that you will like based upon what songs, artists or CDs you list that you like. It then does some complicated math comparing different attributes of the songs, artist or CD that you inserted and every other song in their database.

It proves for an eclectic listening experience, I’ll give you that!

—Zach

Well I was reading my lifehacker RSS feed, and stumbled across an interesting item - indeed. No, I mean, it’s called Indeed. Indeed is a pretty… Interesting… Web site. Basically they somehow aggregate Job data for all across the United states. They then allow you to search and compare job titles across zip codes. This allows you to do some… Shall we say… Interesting comparisons.

I don’t know about you, but I think I either want to be a dealer, or a bottle washer. They get paid the best.

—Zach

Well, I ran across a blog post from Mr. debtbeater about a new money transfer service called “Revolution Money Exchange.”

It seems interesting, after a bit more reading it turns out that their running the business as a loss leader for their RevolutionCard, a visa/mastercard alternative. Basically they think that if people use their service for money transfer, they’ll be more apt to use their Credit Card, and the more people use their credit card, the more $$$ they make.

Basically I’m signing up, connecting it to my bank account, and transferring the $25 signing bonus to my personal bank account. Free $25 ;). If other people start using this, then I may actually use it to send/receive money. As it stands now it’s a free $25.

If you want to sign up, follow my referral link which gives you a free $25, and me a free $10.

—Zach

I am proud to announce that I have recently taken the jump into dog ownership. Recently being two weeks ago. (Has it really been that long?? I’m a failure as a blogger.)

Anyway, I recently acquired a dog which goes by the name of miles. He is a one year old German shepherd/black lab mix, and he is absolutely adorable.

He just spent his first night out of the kennel in my bedroom last night, which was a rousing success.

—Zach

Ok, lame sk8rboi reference aside, my brother has just started a blog. He, of course, completely failed to inform me of anything of the sort, and I just happened to find it in the shared items of my google reader.

My brother is a nurse. Apparently he has more time on his hands, and can write more blog posts than I. If you are at all interested in following the life of a male nurse, considering going into nursing, or just want to read an interesting blog about nursey things, I’d suggest you read this one.

—Zach

So today I decided to cook. Well, yesterday I decided to cook, but I didn’t have ingredients. So today I actually did cook, since I went shopping yesterday. Last… Wednesday? I had one of my friends and his wife over, and his wife and I cooked Lasagna. She made a passing reference to using tortillas instead of lasagna noodles to make the lasagna, so I figured that’d be interesting…

HOWEVER instead of a simple 1 to 1 replacement of noodlesfor tortillas, I decided to totally mexican-ize the meal.

Now it’s a pretty simple recipe. I mean, come on, I’m a bachelor!

• 1 (20)pack of 6″ tortilla shells
• 16oz cans refried beans
• 2+ cups of taco cheese
• 3+ boneless/skinless chicken breasts
• a packet of taco seasoning appropriate for 1lb of ground beef
• As much Chunky Salsa as you so desire

Preheat the oven to 400 Degrees. Cut the chicken into chunks. Large or small as you’d like. If you do em large, you’ll probably want to use more chicken breasts. I’m of the opinion you can never have too much meat… Brown the chicken in a frying pan.

While the chicken is browning, grease the bottom of a 9×13 baking pan. Then layer it with two layers of tortillas. Spread some of the refried beans over the tortillas.

By now the chicken should be done “browning” cut one of the larger chunks in half to see if it’s cooked through, if so, turn off the heat and stir in the taco seasoning. After the seasoning and the chicken are thoroughly mixed,  add half the meat to the baking pan on top of the tortillas and beans. Spread the chicken and beans evenly over the tortillas. Add half the Salsa and spread it evenly over the beans and chicken. Add a cup of cheese also spread evenly.

Now basically this is the first layer of tortillas, beans, meat, salsa and cheese. Add a second layer and top it with tortilla. Now simply add salsa and your remaining cheese to the very top.

Toss this sucker in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until it is thoroughly cooked.  Let it cool a little bit, and walaa! Mm Mmm! Enchisagna goodness!

—Zach

Yes, I did it! I got my $25 Amazon Gift Certificate as a reward for spending my hard earned dubloons at amazon.com, and so I used the $25 to order myself Jack, and Douglas Adams Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

I’ll  make sure I do a full review after the jump!

—Zach