5 Things We Learned This Week 8 of 2011 (Facebook, teens, animals, Bowling, Survivor)

Facebook Pics

At From Tracy I read her post Why The New Facebook Pages Are Good For Bloggers and finally found out how to change those pictures that are at the top of my profile. If there's one you don't want up there, just click the little "x" in the top right corner. I never noticed it was there!

Freekibble.com

In the "Best Friends" magazine, there was an article about the founder of Freekibble.com and guess what! The founder is a 14-year-old girl named Mimi. When she started the site, she was hoping to be able to feed 20 animals. About 53,000 people play daily. About 1,000 were playing daily just 3 months after she started it. She said "I think it became such a success because it's fun, easy and free and gives people a chance to help homeless animals, especially if they don't have time or money." We play every day, do you?  I have the link in my left sidebar so you could easily play when you visit my blog!

Scottish Deerhound

This is a breed I never heard of before and found out that it is a very tall dog, golden brown, long fur with what looks like sort of a beard when I saw a picture of Hickory at Scottish Deerhound Wins Westminster Best In Show.

Bowling

It is possible to bowl well two-handed like little kids do. Check out my Alternate Bowling Style Lesson post from yesterday if you missed it.

Survivor

I found Jeff Probst's blog about Survivor this week! He also has a Twitter page where he gives tidbits about the show.  I found out about this through Jeff Probst Reveals Secrets About 'Survivor:  Redemption Island' over at examiner.com. 

Find some more Friday Fragments.

6 Things I Learned This Week-#73

A Book With No "e"

Kathy from the Junk Drawer shared about a novel, "Gadsby," written by Ernest Vincent Wright without using the letter "e." I find that amazing since "e" is the most used letter in the English alphabet! Here is the link to the post about it at The Writing Pages: "An Entire Novel Without The Letter 'e'."

Blogger Linking

By accident I discovered that in Blogger if you put a link in the box under your post title when writing your post, the Link Within posts are the ones on the other place that you linked to. When I found the inspiration for posting about my piano experience, I copied the link to a draft post until I was ready to write it and forgot to take it out. When it posted, the link within posts at the bottom were all from the blog I had linked to. When would you ever want to link your post title to something else?

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Out With Cox Cable and In with Direct TV

We finally decided to switch to Direct TV from Cox Cable to get the Sunday NFL ticket. That is the only reason we switched and I hope it's a good move. This is something Gerard has been wanting for a long, long time so I finally agreed when I saw a special advertised through AAA. I called on Wednesday and the appointment for insatllation was set for Saturday.

When I called Cox to tell them we were switching to Direct TV, they pretty much talked me out of it. They have really good sales people in the "Termination" Department. Following are the points she listed:

1. If something goes wrong with their box, we have to ship it in and will be without TV for days since they have no local office here.

2. If it's bad weather where the football game is being played, we may not got a signal so won't be able to see the game anyhow.

3. There's a 2 yr. contract we have to agree to with Direct TV that we don't have with Cox. That's because people want to switch back.
At this point I was having some second thoughts.

I then emailed a co-worker who lives up the street and has Direct TV to see how they like it. She told my then never had any problems with it and if they did lose the signal on occasion, it came back in just a few minutes. She told me they never had to go up to brush snow off it. So at this point, I was convinced to switch over.

I called Cox back and got David this time who was very nice but again who gave me a couple more reasons why I shouldn't switch:

4. They have to rewire everything so if you do want to switch back, you have to have Cox come out to re-install it.

5. It's a big, heavy satelite dish that weighs 45 lbs. on your roof. (So what?)
He was very nice though and said that if I want, we can wait to have them disconnet the cable until after the Direct TV is installed to make sure it's what we really want to do after we see how the Direct TV works. He said if we still want it disconnected Monday, that he won't charge us for the the weekend.

Then I called Direct TV and asked about the weather problem. The lady said it's a non-issue, that she's had Direct TV for 15 years and loves it. She lives in Florida and it's been through lots of bad storms. Knowing Gerard really wants this, I went ahead and kept the appointment I made.

Today the installer was supposed to come between noon and 4:00. Want to venture a guess what time he got here? It was 5:45 and that was after Gerard even called twice to find out what was going on. Of course, it was a beautiful day out and we had to stay home to wait for the installer. The installer is drilling another hole in my house for more wires as I type this and shaking my floor. The big satelite dish now sits on top of my roof, but at least it's in the back of the house. I hope the product is better than their service!

We're really looking forward to football season this year. With being able to see all the games, I'll be a nervous wreck pulling for the teams I picked in my office pool. Time will tell if this was a good decision or not.