Post paid gas stations still exist?

On Saturday, we were doing errands and stopped to get gas. The gas station was busy, so we had to wait. The person in front of us pulled up and started trying to pump gas. He pulled the handle and nothing happened; he thing went over to the automated kiosk and looked quite confused. By this time, I saw a space open up, so I zipped around and got to a pump. I went inside, pre-paid for my gas (I decided against using the kiosk that took cash; many of the kiosks around don't take cash).

When I was done pumping gas and got back into my car, the guy still hadn't started pumping gas. At first when we saw him, we couldn't understand how anyone couldn't know how to pump gas (he appeared older than me). While I was pumping gas, my wife was analyzing the situation and saw that he had a Boise State shirt on and surmised that he might have been on vacation.

OK, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. So, the question is, where do you pay for gas after you pump it? I've lived in California for the last 18 years (with a small stint in Portland where you can't pump your own gas) and all I can remember is paying for gas first; my memory could be foggy.

I read some forums and people complain about pre-paid gas when you're using cash as you have to go into the cashier and then afterwards to get change (if needed). I frankly never considered this a problem; maybe I'm just used to this process. Hmmm.

Acura car service clarification

I heard back from the W Hotel today regarding my post about it's complimentary Acura car service. Apparently someone forgot to tell the concierge how it works. It is available on a first come, first served basis, so when I asked for it the following day, the concierge was happy to arrange a limo for us for the $78 fee. I specifically said Acura and pointed at the sign on the desk. A simple, "it is available on a first come, first served basis; just goto the front door to see if it is there" would have stopped this nonsense and made complete sense to me.

If the W wants to stop nasty email messages from ticked off guests, it would make sense to put a sign at the entrance as normally people going to just hail a cab instead of go to the concierge to arrange transportation that is needed right at that moment.

While I guess the W is off my "bad" list, that concierge ranked a zero in my book.

I do contend, however, that the Web site is misleading as there is no asterisk next to this feature indicating that there are conditions for its use.

New blog focus

As some of you may have noticed, I've started writing more reviews of products. While I'm not a huge fan of reviews that some people review (I don't believe their unbiased or fair), I'll let my readers be the judge of the value of my reviews. For the most part, people don't send me products nor ask me to review software. These reviews are for products that I purchase; I do my own research and, of course, read other reviews before purchasing products.

If you have any questions about what I review, please ask and I'll do my best to answer them. I'm quite critical of products as I don't like wasting my hard earned money. If you like my reviews, please use the Amazon link on the right to make purchases.

If you think I own a product that you'd like reviewed, please let me know. I don't review everything I own as I'd bore myself.

If you have a product you want me to review and aren't afraid of my honest feedback, contact me and I'd be more than happy to review it.

Review: PCT 4 port Coax Amplifier

I was having problems with my EyeTV recording digital channels and finally decided to give an amplifier a try. The EyeTV showed I had a signal strength of 20% which seemed low according to all the forums I read. After a bit of research I ended up with the PCT 4 Port amplifier.

It was fairly inexpensive from Amazon, but based on the reviews, I had high hopes for the little box. My only hesitation in getting any amplifier is that a cable tech had told me years ago that an amplifier put inline before my cable modem could cause problems. I received the amplifier about a week and a half ago and quickly plugged it in. EyeTV reported I had a signal strength of between 30 and 32%! That is about a 50% increase in signal strength; I had hoped for more, but that was a decent increase. So far, I have not had one recording that has been blocky and the EyeTV has been working quite well.

Pros

• Inexpensive (a quality passive splitter costs about the same amount)
• Easy to install
• Excellent performance
• Doesn't seem to have affected my cable modem performance

Cons

• I had to supply my own coax cable to connect the power supply to the amplifier; this would have been a problem, but I bought a few cheap coax cables recently

Overall

If you have to split a coax signal, I'd definitely recommend one of these. If you don't have to split a coax signal and are having problems, this box is definitely worth a shot. However, as someone pointed out in a comment in another post, terminate all the ports that aren't in use. In my case, all 4 ports are in use, so I didn't have to terminate any ports.