Tag: blogged

How to Save Money on plane tickets!

Paul
American Airlines Chicago Airport!

Track the Prices!

If you are looking for the cheapest possible tickets that you can buy. You will want to track the prices of the tickets through some website or app. I figured I’d give you a few that will help you in the future:

  • Flights.google.com — I’ve always used this to track flights from one airport to the another. It’s been a really good help for me to see which airports are the cheapest and it even emails you if the prices is going down or up.
  • Hopper — I’ve used this from time to time to find the cheapest tickets also. They have a nice tracking app but it can be spotty at times.
  • Cheapflights — Another website I like to use to check out if I can find a cheap flight to make it less hard on my wallet.
  • SkyScanner –  Is an excellent way to check out prices across multiple airlines and websites.
  • Expedia —  another good one which is Microsoft’s little website.

I know these are just a few. There are a ton of websites out that I occasionally use also to find the cheapest flights. You should start there and work you way around the web and see what other sites might work for you.

Fly on Tuesday or Thursday!

If you are looking to find the cheapest flights, it seems to be a common thing to find the cheapest flights on Tuesday or Thursday. So buying your tickets on Tuesday for a Tuesday flight in the future might give you the best results for cheap flights. Although I’ve seen low price flights on Fridays and Mondays but I find Tuesday and Thursday to be the best time to fly!

Notifications

Depending on which apps you use to monitor flight prices, you should always find apps to notify you if there is a change in prices.   There are many apps that will do that, I like Googles way of emailing you daily if the price goes up or down so you can decide when the right time to buy that ticket.   Kayak and other sites will also notify if you are registered with them so that you can also find the cheapest flight possible.   I already did one blog post about finding cheap flights but I wanted to update it and give you some more information on how to find those cheap flights.

Philippines will probably open up Late this year!

Paul
Dallas/Ft Worth International Airport Photo By Paul Sylvester
All Rights Reserved!

When’s the borders going to open up

This will be a speculative post about when I expect the Philippines to start allowing tourist into the country.   I’ve been seeing some stuff that I wanted to talk about.   I know this might not come true but I wanted to give people some hope in this evolving situation.   I’ve been talking to a few people left these last few days about this possibility.   Take what I say as you wish but who knows.

I’ve found some interesting stuff!

Now onto why I think it will be opening up in the coming months.   I predict it might be early fall to  fall.   I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t close to the Christmas season.   I’ve found flights that I haven’t seen before going into the country.   I’ve found Direct Flights going into the country from other areas other than Manilla.

These types of flights make me think that it will open up in the fall but they have yet to post any new flights to their flight timetable.   Even though these are just the summer schedules, I would love to see the fall or winter timetables and know what they are planning.

Twitter People

I seems that someone is asking the question we are all wondering about.  When do you expect the Philippines to open up to allow foreigners to come into their country.  I agree it is probably going to be later this year.   I however wanted to allow you the chance to see the results and or vote for when you think it will be available:

I really don’t see the Philippines opening up until November or December at the latest because of how the Government is handling the problem at hand.   I however could be wrong but I still wanted to share with you my thoughts on the matter.

Cebu to Open up?

There have been talk about Cebu opening up in the coming weeks to anyone who has a 9a existing visa.   This is something that also makes me really think if it will actually happen in the coming months.  Cebu also seems to be trying to make it easier to get into the country by not requiring you to do the 7 days in quarantine.   The Mayor even seeks to allow entry into cebu if your were vaccinated, I’ve not heard much else about this but the Cebu opening up might be just that.

Vaccinations

According to what I’ve heard they will have mass vaccinations in the 3rd Quarter.   So this means that they will potentially open up in November or December.   These are the reasons that I think the philippines will open up late this year.  I expect the IATA pass to start either just before this or just about the same time.    I just hope they start to open up the app so you can download and register with them so you can get your information in the system for that flight that you might be taking in the coming future.

I know this is just a little bit of the evidence that I think we see more flights and more chances of people getting into the philippines.   What’s your thoughts? Will it be open this year?  Do you think it will open sooner?

 

Reviewing the Acer Chromebook C710-2856

Paul

The New and Old!

As you know my Acer Aspire with Windows 7 was falling apart and I had to figure out a way to keep blogging without breaking the bank.   I happen to fin this nice little system for under 250$ and with the amount of positive reports from people around the globe about this laptop.  I figured I have to try it out myself.  As you know I simply love to buy products from Acer because I believe in them so much.   Every time I buy something from them, they just seem to last and thus I couldn’t resist trying this little Chromebook out.   I also thought this might be something that could be given as a gift to other people since Christmas time is almost upon us.   I just didn’t realize what I was getting myself into with this laptop.   

Specifications

Let’s start off by detailing to you what the specifications are for this Chromebook:

Chromebook With Chome OS:

  • Screen Size: 11.6”
  • Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768
  • Processor Type: Intel
  • Processor Model: Celeron 847
  • Processor Speed: 1.1GHz (Dual core)

Display:

  • Screen Size 11.6’
  • Screen Mode HD
  • Screen Resolution 1366 x 768

Network:

  • IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n (With Fast Ethernet Technology)

USB:

  • 3 USB 2.0

Comes with no optical drives, so no DVD’s or CD can be played with this device.   I am sure someone was going to ask this so I figured it was time to point that out!  Now I can tell you every detail about the specifications but it really doesn’t need to be discussed.  

Pros and Con’s

I am sure some of you are think there isn’t really anything positive that I could say about this laptop but you’d be wrong.   I started using this laptop last month for 3 weeks now and thought it was high time we at least do a review of this and try to talk about my experience.   

Now let’s get to the juicy parts of this article.   Would I recommend this to everyone, I would say NO.  If your doing photo editing or something that requires high processing editing then you might as well go look somewhere else.   The good part of this Acer Laptop is quite obvious but can be oblivious to others.  You can Stream movies and Shows and watch them on the laptop.   Google did a good job of this.   Just like Chromecast, you can stream them from your laptop to the big screen if you want.   

Processing Speed

The speed of the laptop when used with the Chrome OS is very different compared to my old laptop but then again, I am sure it was getting sluggish and probably needed a good clean refresh of the system.  I wasn’t how well I would like this system but I am not disappointed at all with what I expected to be doing with it.   I wasn’t going to be doing much other than blogging, surfing the net, and streaming movies and shows using HULU, CBS, and Netflix.  Let’s not forget about Pandora, which also worked perfectly for my needs.  It works perfectly on this Acer Chromebook.   I had no problems watching shows and movies from all those providers and many more.   

Hard Drive

If your planning on putting a lot of music files and documents on this laptop, think again.   You can however use USB drives to increase it to what ever size you may need but that will impact your time of the laptop if you don’t have it plugged in then you are are going to be using batter power to power the USB HDD.   It comes with a 16 gb Solid State Drive and it is really quite.   You can increase the space to 48 Gb’s by adding a 32 Gb SD card which is helpful for some.  

Screen

Most videos I streamed worked flawlessly and were quite nice to watch on the 11.6’ display.   They say it is High Definition and I believe it is.  I have had no problem surfing the web and checking out other web sites to see if there would be any problem with viewing them on a smaller screen and it was nice and no problems.

Battery

The battery power in this was quite amazing.   It at times has lasted me more than 5 hours on one charge an that has been a record for me.   The size and power alone is something that is definitely big plus to me because I don’t always need to keep it plugged in.   Very portable and can be taken to McDonald’s or any Wifi Hotspot.   I will be discussing this in detail later, and how to setup a VPN on a Chromebook! 🙂  So stay tuned!

Keyboard and Touchpad

Now to tell you I had a learning curve for the touch pad would be understand statement.   You have to understand that it has different gestures for double clicking and right and left clicking.   So when you first start using this laptop you will need to be prepared to go to the Chrome Book Help section to help you out and figure out all those new gestures.  The keyboard is like most other laptops and does a superb job at letting me type.  It all worked out in the end with me because it worked just well for all my needs.

If I haven’t changed your mind and you would like to try this laptop out for yourself you have a few options available to you and here they are:

 

Most of the time almost everyone has this version of Chromebook because it is the cheapest there is.   It is quite responsive and I have no qualms with this laptop.   I even like the size more easier to carry around and not be so bulky.   

*Those nasty disclaimers* Some of the links in the site are for use to help keep my website going and thus any Amazon links are undoubtedly affiliated with my site.

I’ll Explain Why Software filters will not work!

Paul

Wise Eyes

I recently found Covenant Eyes

Use Coupon Code paulstechtalk15 and save 15% off your order!I really wasn’t sure when I heard this service, if it would be a very useful way to keep children from seeing mature material on the internet.   After all, If a child wants to do something they will find ways to do it.   I did however want to touch base on a few observations on why this will never work with some of the kids.   It might work with your kids but probably not all kids!

At first glance!

We see that in order to use this software, as with a lot of other software base monitor services, you will need to install software on the computer(s), Tablet(s), and all Cell Phone(s) you currently have possession of all.  Which is all free as long as you have an account with them.   I do find their methods a little questionable and I understand why it would be rather difficult to uninstall some of this but it just worries me that it will either slow down my Android device(s) or break something.   It is after all another program that I have to keep running on my devices to monitor what my kids are doing on the internet.  

Ownership of the Device!

This can be a bit tricky and could cause major legal issues if you do it wrong or if you do not own the device in question.   After all, the teen may get it in his head to avoid being watched by his/her parents he can just buy a Virgin Mobile, or Straight Talk Phone and not have to install that particular software!  This is one major reason why it wouldn’t work buying this subscription. It just depends on what the law says in your area if you can force your teen who buys a phone to install this software on their phone.  

Probably Easily by passable!

You can easily prevent snooping by using a VPN like Vpn4all to prevent anyone from seeing what you do online.   I am sure like any other software based companies they are utilizing a server to grab all this stuff you are searching and surfing habits.   I am pretty sure just using a VPN on your tablet or even cell phone would prevent the logging and keep people from seeing what you do.   This hasn’t been tested but it does make a lot of sense because in order for any filtering software to report back to the main user it has to be able to see what you are typing and searching for but if it is encrypted, it shouldn’t be able to.   I do not know if they install their own Certificate Authority but it maybe a way they try to get all encrypted data.   Although if it is encrypted before it gets sent out to the CA, then it will still look unreadable.

On a laptop or desktop, it could be as easy buying a USB Drive and installing Kubuntu or Ubuntu as a live CD and Thus they can do all their exploring of the internet without being watched.   The only problem about this is that you as the main Admin would need to password locked your CMOS and prevent any loading of USB or CD drive in boot up.  You’ll have to figure that one out on your own.   Each CMOS is different and there for it is a complicated process!

Reseting a Device!

This can be the easiest way to get that monitoring software off the system in the first place.   I can easily do that with any Android device and you can do a hardware reset without any administration intervention!  You can basically do this to all Android and IOS devices with no help from the admin of the device.   So it really could be a pain to use these types of services for kids who are shall I say AT RISK to do the most exploring.  I’ve pretty much told you everything that could happen if a teen wanted to not be monitored by their guardians or parents.  

As I’ve stated in this post, it is to show how someone could do these things.   I hold no liability if someone uses this information to do what was talked about in this post.   This was a way to open people’s eyes on how it may or may not help your situation.   Each child is different and thus must be judged accordingly.

 

 

Why I don’t click on links in text messages!

Paul

Kathleen's shredded text prints

A strange text message!

VMFreeMsg: Your voicemail has been installed. For your personal security you must update your password and greeting. For details go to http://msg4u.us/vmve

You can do your own research but even I know this was going to happen sooner or later.   When i first got this message, I suspected it might of been an hack account over at Virgin Mobile.   It always seems like that is happening now a days.   I am always worried about security and they claim they are worried about security.   How is sending a link in text message good for security?  Who knows when or if a website or even a company could and will get hacked.   It is bound to happen, maybe not today but surely sometime in the near future someone will get a hold of an account at Virgin Mobile.  

Security and SMS Messages!

When I company claims they are keeping your safe and yet they do something like this.   It kind of makes me wonder who is actually worried the company or the person or sent out that text message.   I still am not sure if this is a legit SMS or not.  I have did a domain look for msg4u.us and it has very little information because it looks like it doesn’t belong to Sprint or Virgin Mobile.  The the tmce.biz is also where the redirect goes to after clicking the msg4u link!  

Where and who are these people?  Why does it not say Sprint or Virgin Mobile on the domains and what do I worry someone has played a cruel joke on me.  Oh and for those who are interested the Virgin Mobile Home page link is a vmobl.com which is a Virgin Mobile, I think!   This makes no sense to me but at least they didn’t worry to much about someone spoofing them if it was Virgin Mobile!   Keep up the hard work of security guys, at least you tried and failed!