CreditKarma, Credit Cards and Your Financial Best Interest

We all use them and we all hate them. Lately I have been researching them. I have come across a couple of websites that have some very good information about credit cards with ways to find the best card for your purpose. I have been using a PayPal debit card for years now and did not realize that there were now other banks offering better returns like two and three percent cash back on purchases. One that stands out on top of the list is Bank of America. If you go to CreditCards.com you will see what I am talking about. There is a disclaimer at the bottom of this webpage that tells you that the owner may get compensated for certain company product offerings or advertising. I have spent two days now looking around and reading terms and conditions of different credit cards and what they have to offer. I had not realized that there are different cards for various reasons you may want one. Travel cards, cash back cards, reward cards, gas cards and I forgot what others. I am looking for a better cash back card myself. I pay my balance off each month and never have more than one card with a balance at one time. I do not like paying the banks interest on my purchases. Things are just expensive enough as it is. Besides, like I said above, you can get into the interest debt game and you can be in deep debt before you know it. Okay, if you have a smartphone, you have to get the CreditKarma app. It gives you your credit score within seconds of signing in and you stay signed in and only have to tap the app to see your score at any time. The other best feature I like is it will list all of the accounts you have open on another screen. Using the app it will tell you ways to make and keep your credit score high and in excellent 'A' territory. One rule I learned was never close an account. Credit history is what matters most I believe. If you close an account you just deleted credit history. Never missing a payment is a priority also of course. I have been looking for a new mortgage loan and after applying at three different lenders I find with each there is a credit inquiry that will take two points off my score. These inquiries are known as 'Hard' inquiries. Okay, I lost six points but I am not too worried about it as I am still over 700 and I am fine with that. I will make a decision soon to get a new cash back credit card. It is just a bit hard for me to accept that I will open myself up to yet another bank that will begin to send me more junk mail in my snail mail box on the curb. For years now I have tried to stop what was once an enormous pile of daily junk mail that I would have to weed through and toss most of it into my recycle bin or the shredder. But, now I am about to embark on slowly trying to get my credit score as high as possible. Just to see if I can. I like challenges. Take advantage of banks, don't let them take advantage of you. Have a good credit day! I took the time to search on Amazon a book about how to get the most out of credit cards. Even though it was published back in 2008 I could not find a bad review on the side panel. The electronic or Kindle edition is only $9.00. I may have to buy it and read through it. I have to wonder how relevant it is today though.

Spam Scam Emails, What I Am Getting At This Time!

I have been getting a lot of scam spam emails now with subject lines something along the lines of 'Your Order' and 'Shipping Details', etc. I have been in the habit of opening emails now and looking them over closely just to see what scam they are promoting now. First thing you do before you open the email is to hover your mouse over any word or word phrases that are highlighted in blue. Then if you look down at the bottom left of your screen you will see where the link would send you if you clicked on it. By looking closely at the details of the links you can easily see that if you were to click on the link you would be sent somewhere other than any official company website of which the scammer alludes to in the email. Thinking all this time that you have not ordered anything to begin with, or maybe you have. Clicking on the link can give you any number of things. The worst being some type of malware being dumped into your hard drive and causing you any number of problems from there on. This is where an antivirus program would have a good chance of stopping the threat before it could do any harm. One of the most common I have seen the last couple of years is the one where the malware will send out bogus emails to everyone in your contact list and more. I have gotten good at spotting these emails from contacts. I received one last week from someone I had forgotten about and never email anymore and never receive email from. I opened the email and I knew before I opened it that it was a malware spam message. It was easy to spot from the number of bogus looking email adddresses that were included along with my email address. I used to respond back to 'All' and try to alert those people included with the email but I would get some crazy replys. People giving me hell for sending them the spam and other nonsense. They just did not get it from the start. So, I just leave people alone now and let them learn and suffer on their own. Another note here, there was this information from the government years ago, I think it was the FTC or Federal Trade Commission, can't remember now. But, they had a bulletin that stated that you could forward them any spam emails and they would work to try to stop the barrage we were getting. Well, they did a good job back then as things seemed to quiet down quite a bit but over time spammers from Nigeria and other places began to get busy. Back to what I wanted to say about the FTC bulletin. I noticed that as I began forwarding the spam messages to the email address I was given I would begin to receive even more spam mail and with some really weird stuff too. I think I even clicked on one just to see what would happen and I got a virus that I never could get rid of. That computer was retired long ago. I still have the hard drive and one day think I will reformat it and use it for something else. So, last night I sent a spam email to the old FTC spam reporting email address again just to see what nonsense I get back in my spam folder. I have to wonder if we do not have young people working in that department and they are just harvesting all the emails they receive and then selling the lists to the Nigerians. Corruption is everwhere it seems. Have fun, be safe and do not be so quick to click! Buy antivirus software, it's like insurance for your computer. Yeah, they are not all the same and they are not one hundred percent but it is better than nothing in my opinion. One day I would love to sit down and read a book like this or any of the others shown on this page.

Video On Demand, Any Show That Has Aired, For Only Fifty Cent!

As I laid down to take a short five minute nap a thought occurred to me. Having had the opportunity and the time to record my favorite shows on an old Tivo Series II recorder some years ago and then archving them to tape, had me thinking. Recently I purchased the newest Tivo Series III HD 300 hour recorder for the wife to use in the master bedroom. She has a lot of shows she likes to watch and likes to watch them in bed after a long day of work. I still have my old Tivo Series II running after ten years of great uninterrupted service. I don't use it to record anymore as it is only standard definition. My recorder is a Verizon DVR in the main living room and I hooked up an external one terrabyte hard drive to it which gave me over a hundred hours of high definition recording. But, here is the problem. The thought of having to hook up and connect my old Hi-8 recoder deck to transfer anything from the Verizon DVR and then transferring from tape to the pc for use later just makes me tired thinking about it. With all the current hoopla about Netflix partnering up with Verizon and who knows what other service provider, who cares at this point. Somehow I foresee in the future where these big networks will get a clue and begin to build their own huge data centers to archive and store all their video and then connect the internet pipes and allow anyone to download a copy for fifty cents. I liken this to Apples iTunes service. Their ninety nine cent model for a tune I still cannot see subscribing to. If music and video were made more affordable and more convienant I would imagine the whole country and possibly the world might want to add it to their subscriptions. For now, we are just stumbling along and leaving the consumers with not much to digest for mobile entertainment and enjoyment. I for one would like to be able to download my favorite weekly show, CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, transfer it to my Android smartphone for playback when it's more convienant for me to watch. For now though I just have to hope that the show doesn't get interrupted by the servive provider and the dvr gets to record the full hour and a half show. Lately thought I cannot even find the time to watch the daily evening news that I have been recording let alone my favorite show.

Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.171, update!

I came home to find my computer a bit sluggish. The hard drive led was showing continuous activity. I initiated a restart of the pc. It took a while for the drive to stop it's activity before the pc shutdown. Maybe two or three minutes I believe. I'm finding that I need to reboot about once a week to refresh the memory and clear up any leaks. Even Windows 7 Pro has memory leaks but not as bad as past versions I feel. I cannot remember having on BSD or blue screen of death with Windows 7 since purchasing this Lenovo i5 machine about two years or more ago. It's been a real joy to use. It's fast and dependable and multi-task well. So, the installer only showed that this latest update was 11.6. I had to go into the control pane and pull up the programs listing to see the actual complete version number. I don't concern myself with the details of what fixes or security holes it has cleaned up with it. I just want to get it installed and move on. At least with Windows 7 you only get a malicious software tool update once a month from Microsoft. I am more annoyed now with the constant updating of apps on my smartphone. I took the time a couple of days ago to revisit Google's android SDK or system developer kit tutorials, just to try and get some more understanding of how all that software works. My long term goal is to one day start programming an app or two and get them into the Google App Store to make a few bucks. So, now on to more computer fun today. How's your pc working?

Lottery Winnings!

After reading an article about the Missouri Powerball winners, I just wonder how much money has gone to the government when they take their share in taxes. Ever thought about that? Probably not, but, you have to wonder, will this help our fiscal debt? Or, is this only state governments who takes their share of the winnings? I have not researched this but I wanted to post this quick thought in the hope that I might find a website somewhere that keeps track of this, later on. Can anyone comment on this? Update-5/2/2013, I want to add a quick note about a guy I saw on 60 Minutes who won the Florida Lottery seven times. He has a book on Amazon that I would like to take the time to read. I am not getting any younger and if I can spare a dollar a day from taking my lunch to work, I figure I can blow it on this only form of gambling I would do.

Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.68 (15.11 MB)

I feel like a beta tester for software. I have even taken time to give feedback. Sometimes it was actually taken and updated into the software. You get a feeling of satisfaction when that happens. Especially when you really like the software. As for Flash player, we cannot live without it you would think. But, can we? Can you think of the times it is needed when you are browsing the web? First thing that comes to my mind is 'advertising' or 'advertisers'. I do not know when it has actually served me for anything that I wanted to view. So, this update awaits me. A checkbox is handily checked for me to install Chrome as my default Browser and Google Toolbar. Like I really need another toolbar to have to take up my browser viewing windown. Is Google paying Adobe to advertise this? Every time I get an update notification I always know there is going to be something they are going to try to push on me. There really is just too much stuff on my computer that I feel I have to aware of. Otherwise who knows how screwed up it could get by letting everything install by default. What are you thoughts on all of this?

Java Update 39, wants to install Ask.com toolbar

Yet another Java update. These updates are so obnoxious and interrupts are routine. And, what is this Ask.com toolbar anyway? How much do they pay Oracle to advertise this bloatware anyway? Or, does Oracle own this little company too? I might have to Google this just to see for myself. Yes, I have tried this toolbar long ago and I hated it and I'm sure you have too. Can they really be making money off of some chumps out there in internet land, enough to stay in business? I always visualize some little old lady or man clicking on ads and junk that is offered up in bloat like this and getting out their pocketbook to pay with thier never ending line of credit, card. I am just getting bored with this internet thing lately to tell you the truth. I am an old DOS man, from way back in the days. Give me a utility program where I can get something done, something productive and I am a happy user. Cruising around on the web looking at this and that for nothing more than to pass the time or to think there is really that much interesting going on in the world, somehow I just do not think so. If you knew all the cookies every new web page you land on was being downloaded onto your computer and tracking your every movement on the web, you would be shocked. I keep trying to remind myself to use the anonymouse web browser function of Internet Explorer or Firefox and Chrome. But, somehow I can never think to do it. I know I will eventually get in the habit because my email inbox is loaded up with spam daily. I have had enough trouble trying to get the U.S. mail service to stop delivering junk mail to me. I have opted out of everything I can think of to do it. Yes, that has slowed down but just yesterday I got an envelope with those checks to use as cash again. I love my industrial strength shredder. I like to watch it work on those bank envelopes and those checks. Okay, have I gotten away from the subject? I am about to click through the Java update and I will uncheck the box so I do not get the Ask.com toolbar installed. It would only bring me more spam and ads from companys that I never heard of when I do cruise the web for whatever I happen to need to research at the time. Operating a web browser could be more like driving a car if you think about it. There is so much to learn in order to operate it properly in order to get the most from it. You could eliminate a lot of ads and animated flash driven junk if you only knew how and could get in the habit. An idea just popped into my head now. You know you can drag a bookmark from the address line of your browser. What if you created a default home browser for each function of the web that you wanted to perform. I mean, one for general purpose browsing with everything under the hood set to default, where you wouldn't care about ads or not. Then, one bookmark that you clicked on for banking business and other financial matters. It would be set to only accept cookies from your banking clients and not allow any tracking. This all would take a lot of time to learn but then that would take me away from Facebook. Oh, did I just say that? How much time do you spend on Facebook every day. More than you would like to admit I would bet. Me? I am down to about once a week and that might only be about fifteen minutes. I am just done with it, over it, bored with it. It serves no purpose other than entertainment now and I am just not into that too much either these days. Okay, so back to Java. It is still waiting for me to click through and install it. I remembered to uncheck the Ask.com installation check box. Oh, oh, it found a program running in the background that is using Java and it now asks me if I want to stop it now. Yes, of course. This background program I am not using anyway and that reminds me, I need to turn that off permanently to not waste precious resources like processor time or ram memory. Okay, installing away...it is displaying while doing this that '3 Billion Devices Run Java'. I really needed to know that. I am waiting...I suppose this update is fixing more holes in its security so hackers cannot get into your computer and take it over, or phish for your passwords and banking identities and stuff like that. You got to be so careful using computers today. Look for the 'S' in the address bar, 'https://etc.etc.etc...okay, it now wants me to restart my browser to finish the Java installation. I hope you enjoyed this educational post today. I did.