First page of my worthless blog

Yup, this is Hugh's amazingly worthless blog. I am starting this even though I already have a full web site of my own. Why? Just because I can, and because I am completely nuts.

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APC Back-UPS BE350G: To Beep or Not to Beep, that is the Question!

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One item I wanted for this past Christmas was a small UPS to backup our AT&T U-Verse gateway during power outages. So I ordered an APC Back-UPS BE350G from Amazon which I knew would supply plenty of power for such a small device (and could also help a laptop or tablet or phone running for a while too.) I knew we had ordered APC BE550G units for work before and they have been quite reliable, but I did not need 550VA (330W) for just a gateway, a phone and maybe a laptop. So I ordered the BE350G and knew that would be sufficient for the purpose. So when I received it excitedly on Christmas morning, I knew what I would do later that week, use the PowerChute software to turn off the annoying alarm (like I had done for all our APC units at work) and then peacefully let it backup our AT&T U-Verse modem/router at home. But when I opened up the box, I was in for a sad reality - the BE350G does not have a USB interface and does not let you silence the alarm! All the APC units we have...
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Payday Loan Calculator - A Ripoff Any Way You Look At It

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I actually received an e-mail from the Texas Senate Committee on Business & Commerce looking for a simple payday loan calculator to post on a site they were developing. Being a fan on on-line calculators , and not a fan of payday loans, that sounded like a fun little project to do. I took my old " Find the Missing Value " calculator, and modified it a little so that now it is adapted more for the common payday or auto title loans where you pay a flat fee to receive an advance on your paycheck for a certain number of days. Using a typical $17.50 per $100 loaned amount (from Consumers Union ) if this amount is over a 14 day bi-weekly work period, it would amount to an annual interest rate of 422.8%. In today's market with record low mortgage rates, that is a pretty staggering percentage. Obviously the Texas Senate Committee on Business & Commerce thinks so too!
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St. Louis County School Districts and the Results of Breitenfeld vs. Clayton

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It is going to be very interesting to see how everything plays out this fall for all the school districts in St. Louis County following the ruling of Breitenfeld vs. The School District of Clayton . Essentially now anyone with children in the Riverview Gardens or Normandy School Districts can request to have their children attend any other school anywhere else in St. Louis County. This could be a huge mess if a large number of the 10,000 students in the two districts decide to transfer, with funds having to be transferred from the two unaccredited districts to the hosting districts, and then students being shuttled all over the place, also at the expense of those two failing districts. The southern corner of the Normandy district is actually not too far from Clayton too. That would be a steal to be able to purchase an inexpensive home in Normandy and then be able to send your children to Clayton schools , when folks just a block or two away in University City could not. I know our...
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