I am stuck in a 3 year contract with TDS and Dish is part of the deal. Breaking the contract will mean a substantial loss of money. I recently called my TDS/Dish customer service and mentioned that they are advertising free HD for life to new customers. They said I can get the $10 per month fee dropped if I sign a Dish contract to stay with them for 2 years. My current contract with the TDS/Dish combo will be up in one year. I asked what the penalty is if I leave Dish before the two years are up and was told it is $10 per each month that I cancel before the end of the contract. I think I hate TDS more than Dish. At the minimum, I get picture freezes, pixalation and/or audio interruptions three times a week, and complete loss of service for varying lengths of time about 3 times a month. I have had the company out here on several occasions and each time they tweak something and say I should be fine. Not true! Now, when I say I want someone back, they say I will be charged for the visit!!!! I live on 5 acres that used to be farm fields. Beyond my acres are more farm fields. The only trees on my property have been planted since I moved here 5 years ago. Nothing is in the way of the signal getting to my dish. I usually do extremely well getting what I want if I make a serious complaint to a company. No so with the combo TDS/Dish I have to deal with. I don't know which company is worse--does anyone reading this deal with TDS that is not packaged with Dish? Also, at least in my area, Dish is cheaper than Direct. I could leave Dish for Direct, I could get internet from Hughes Net (they don't have a very good reputation) and I guess I could give up my telephone and rely only on a cell provider. That is my biggest fear because cell coverage out my way is spotty, at best. I think I will have to tough it out until my combo TDS/Dish contract is over on 10-24-11. I could then dump TDS as my phone carrier and DSL provider. However, I would still be locked in to another year of commitment with Dish for free HD. I guess I could give up HD, but now that I know how superior the picture is in HD I think I would really miss it. I am going to try watching TV without HD selected and see if I can discipline myself and give up HD altogether for the next year. I am retired and watch TV all evening (although I am often also online at the same time). During the day I read and listen to NPR when I am home. Ironically, Verizon provides service 6 miles north of me and the little town of Port Byron is or will receive help with broadband through some government program. Port Byron is 6 miles south :-(

We put our house on the market in 1991 with a realtor who was an old friend (but we hadn't had a lot of contact with her for the few years prior to 1991). When she came to get the listing, she had no comps nor any numbers to give us an idea of what we would net. This bothered us, but we decided to cut her some slack since she was a friend. She brought us a buyer who was an engineer buying his first house and was doing everything by the book. We could see he didn't love the house. Had to ask all sorts of stupid questions. Our mortgage was assumable with about 20% down but he was going FHA. Tax laws then in effect allowed us to not pay a capital gains tax if we sold withing two years of buying our new house (which we had purchased in another state 20 months earlier so we had four months to sell). We decided that we didn't want to take a chance by selling to him as he was someone who would find any little thing to back out if the FHA appraisal gave him the opportunity. We told her to find another buyer as time was running out. The engineer made an offer about 10% below list price. She still didn't have numbers for us to show what we would net with that offer and met DH and me at my office to present the offer. She had another showing of the house scheduled but didn't get through the offer soon enough so DH had to run home to be there when the other prospects showed up. We countered, but engineer didn't take it. She offered to cut her commission since the buyer was her commission also. We really didn't want to sell to the guy, no matter what the numbers worked out to be as we felt that it just wouldn't happen and time was awasting. Oh, also, she had a broker's open house, but she was out of town for it. Her office listed the wrong address so no one showed up. After three days of telling her that she had until three days to lose the guy and start concentrating on a good buyer, she hadn't done anything. So, we fired her. We listed it ourselves, put a photo in the newspaper, the realtor who sold us the house saw it in the paper, brought us a couple who loved the house and made an offer which we accepted 4 days after we fired the first realtor. The engineer buyer, after we fired the realtor, told her he wanted to see the house again (about the 4th or 5th time). She convinced us to let him see it. By then we had our own sign up. He came with the brother and then decided no, the garage was too small. She had taken photos of the house for an album and complained that she had spent $300 so far marketing. I paid her $300 and asked that she give us the photo album. Never got it. Needless to say, we never saw her again. I think she had a drinking problem as nothing ever got done after 6 p.m. as she was always "enjoying" her wine then.

Not for me, but I'm sure I'm not "kewl" enough to be in their target market. I have a white, wall-mounted fire extinguisher in my kitchen. I got it at Home Depot. It's only about 10" tall and is pretty unobtrusive. I don't have a picture of my current kitchen but here's my previous house's kitchen - the extinguisher is below the microwave. I left that one for the new owners and got another one for this house. There's also a conventional red one by the back door (for any grill incidents, and the back deck is also where the smokers go to indulge; I need to get a mounting bracket for it for better visibility), and currently there's one on the porch where DH is working with an infrared paint remover. When we had a fireplace, a fire extinguisher about the size of a 2-liter soda bottle stayed in the kindling box, and a large one hung in the garage when we had one of those. I've been lucky enough that I've never had a major fire but I've had some little ones over the years (cooking fires, cigarettes, candles) that without a fire extinguisher could have become major fires. I want any idjit :-) who happens to be in my house to be able to grab the fire extinguisher without having to think "is this a fire extinguisher or what?" while the fire alarms are screaming and maybe they've been imbibing a bit or are half asleep. IMO a fire extinguisher is such an important piece of safety equipment that I don't really care if it's not beautiful, I would never stash it away in a closet or cabinet - I think it defeats the purpose to have it hidden away where you have to go hunting for it. However, white fire extinguishers are becoming widely available, as are residential ones in a brushed stainless finish (I guess to coordinate with those stainless steel kitchen appliances). First Alert makes a silver and black all-purpose extinguisher. "The only other thing that it reminds me of is an oversized seltzer bottle, and you could probably put out a residential fire with that too." Only if it's burning paper, wood, cloth or similar combustible material. Water spreads both oil/grease and electrical fires (and you can also electrocute yourself by putting water on an electrical fire, since water is a wonderful conductor of electricity). It's most sensible to have A-B-C extinguishers, which put out all three kinds of typical home fires, especially since a class C (electrical) fire can spread to become a class A (combustible materials), or a class A can come into contact with combustible liquids (class B).

Another thought on having a fire extinguisher - have you ever actually used one? I worked at a private school where the admin arranged a whole class for the staff on using a fire extinguisher. I couldn't believe it, but what the heck? It turned out to be pretty interesting. One surprising thing was how my fellow teachers managed the kind of extinguisher with a hose: Every single person who used that extinguisher sprayed their shoes before spraying the target, even after watching the person beside them do the exact same thing. So that's probably not the kind to get if you only use it for real once in your life. Using this kind everyone could hit the target first time out. Also, actually take a look at the top of the thing to see where the pull ring is and a take mental walk through what you'd have to do to make it spray. It's not at all difficult (except for the shoe spray thing), but it does require you to figure it out ahead of time. Another thought: if you have small hands (that would be me) or limited strength (arthritis?), be sure that the extinguisher you choose you can actually use. I frequently find that tools and what-all are designed by Godzilla who figures everyone has baseball mitts for hands. If the squeezy parts of the extinguisher are set so far apart that your thumb and baby finger can't get a grip, you might as well not have the thing. Choose one from a more enlightened manufacturer or go for the kind that has a trigger set not too far from the handle. When you really need a fire extinguisher, you probably won't be in your most calm and analytic frame of mind, so be sure that the design of the equipment itself won't add to or even create feelings of panic.