You might not have much ‘stuff’, or you might not THINK you have much stuff, but if you add up the replacement costs of all your clothes, electronics, and other household items, you’d be surprised how much it would cost to rebuild your life.  A good way to help get you going is to have a good renters insurance policy on your apartment.  A typical policy in Boston / Cambridge with ~$15,000 of coverage will cost you well under $400 a year (don’t quote me, but get a quote!), and most places let you pay monthly.  Remember to get a rider on top of that if you have any valuable items, such as jewelry or anything like that.  Ask your agent for info about this.

As for where to go for this, check out Yelp!.  I use a national company (Progressive) for my car insurance now due to my local place not being able to get close to their price after MA de-regulated their auto insurance market, but Progressive couldn’t touch the price I pay for my renters through my local agent.  My local agent is also wicked helpful and great in the customer service department.

Trust me when I say that this is one expense that is worth every penny in the long run.

I have never had to make a claim (knock on wood), so I don’t really know that procedure, or how you prove what you own &tc.  I need to do more research about that, and also how to properly document my belongings in case of the need to make a claim.

Your things aren’t the most important thing.  You have yourself, your loved ones, your pets, and everything else.  But at the end of the day, you need your clothes, and eventually, you will WANT to have all of your stuff.  Protect it.

FYI, also, use Mozy to do your data backups.  I’ve lost all my financial data before, and Mozy has saved my butt.  It’s free and worth it.  More on this subject later.

- Work-wise this week has been hella busy, with adding a new customer to our Citrix based solution, dealing with crazy shipping issues, installing a new server, getting Windows 7 up and running, and other various tasks.  I have not done everything I wanted to, but was nonetheless a very productive person.  There is never enough time.

Computer related linky:
- A great Lifehacker post on what to do with your PC while you are asleep at night.  This covers both the basic (backup, defrag), to the nifty (donating processing time to projects across the Internet).  Check it out.  I confess I am a Lifehacker addict.

- At home, we have added some long-awaited hatchet fish to the 29gal BioCube, but one has already died, and I am worried that the remaining two will fall to the same fate by the time I get home from work this evening.  I should never, ever buy fish from PetCo, but I was there to replace a dead pump on a 10gal tank (BTW PetCo has a great deal – you can get a Aqueon 10gal filter for $16.99 ($3 off sale this week), and then get a $5 mail-in rebate for it – bringing your total cost to $11.99 + tax + postage and patience for the rebate check to arrive – an AMAZING deal and I am going to stock up and get 1-2 more of these little filters).  ANYWAY, I was there to purchase a replacement filter and saw that PetCo had hatchet fish in stock!  I had been looking for these guys, and my usual LFS, Tropic Isle, in Framingham always seems to be out of them.  I had some a year ago and they had all passed away, and G’s mother really loves looking at these guys when she stopped over.  They also really added some vertical-ness to the tank as they tended to stay up top, while most of the rest of the fish were closer to the bottom of the tank.  At $3.59 each, I picked up three last night and integrated them in to the tank.  I had just added some reticulated hillstream loaches (LOONG story on how I managed to find these rare little guys) a couple of weeks ago and they were doing great, so I fully expected the hatchet fish to survive fine.  I should have listened to the weird dude at PetCo though when he said that they don’t often stock the fish, as they die easily.  So of COURSE one is dead now and I’ll be back at PetCo with the fish and a water sample tonight or tomorrow.  PITA.

- That was a lot of typing.  Anyway, other than the fish, this week saw me making some pizzas again.  I was short on time so I used the random dough they sell at Shaw’s.  Yeah, don’t do that.  It’s terrible.  I did manage to get the sauce recipe closer to the way I want it.  I’ll post a whole tutorial as soon as it’s finished, but it involves D.O.P. Certified San Marzano tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, oregano, a little extra virgin olive oil, diced garlic, some salt, and my awesome new Cuisinart immersion blender (stick blender). Wicked simple.  Pizzas went into the 550 degree oven onto the pizza stone (my poor stone is cracked but still works) (FYI heat up the stone for at least 30min in the oven before adding pizza) for 7-8mins a piece and they came out delicious.

- Besides the minor boiler / furnace issues in the apt. this week, it’s been a rather uneventful week at home.  Couple birthdays, some computer work, and a bit of TV.

- Online, I spent some time last night watching a 10 year old episode of Alton Brown’s ‘Good Eats’ where he gives some good advice on pizza making.  Here are the YouTube links to the episode:

- A cool blog that I just found this morning (thanks to Facebook), is GoodEater.Org.  It’s pretty interesting, topical, and is local to Boston.  Check it out.

- One of the first projects that I plan on undertaking when I FINALLY own my own home will be this DIY home computer for the kitchen.  It’s based on an LCD touch screen and a couple custom apps to link to the most common household tasks.  Also, you can link to home automation (probably overkill for me) as well as a bar code scanner to help with shopping.  (I absolutely LOVE the Amazon bar code scanner on my Droid and use it all the time!).  As a complete OCD nerd as a kid, I collected catalogs, and the Radio Shack one was my favorite.  I remember when they touted a computer for the home back in the late 80′s (Tandy 1000RS or something), with specific kitchen related apps.  Radio Shack also was a pioneer in the home automation department, making that stuff back in the 80′s as well.   Long story short, I can’t wait to build this kitchen computer.  Rock on.

- One thing that I have been spending a little more time on lately has been my houseplants.  I have a little baby orchid that I’d picked up recently, and have a spider plant and a couple others around the house, but have never had very good luck with my plants.  It’s always one thing or another, but I tend to kill them, especially during this cold, dark winter part of the year.  I found an interesting article that helps determine if a plant is truly dead, if it’s worth reviving, and if so, then how to revive it.  Check it out.

- Had some friends in from Rochester on Sunday and went to lunch with one of them over at Charlie’s Kitchen in Harvard Square.  Great place, but it has changed a little in the past few years.  I Yelped about it here.  Trying to get more Yelping done, as I’m a 2010 Elite member, same as last year.  I feel bad for not spending more time reviewing.  If you are not Yelping yet, you should be!

Other Updates: My photo365 project isn’t going as planned due to a lack of time and discipline.  I am going to attempt to clean out enough space in our back office at home over the weekend so that I can sit there and concentrate on a couple of these online-y type things for 1/2 hour each evening without fail.

]]> http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/2010/01/23/weekly-round-up/feed/ 0 http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/2010/01/19/pic-of-the-day-january-18-2010-sadcandy/ http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/2010/01/19/pic-of-the-day-january-18-2010-sadcandy/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:59:55 +0000 feedmittens http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/?p=489 I found this pristine candy box on the ground on a side street in Cambridge, surrounded by trash.  It was sad and I had to take a picture with my Lumix point-and-shoot.

I’m not alone in the droves of 20 and 30-somethings that have this same love for their Saturday morning ritual, and I don’t apologize for being an NPR whore.  It isn’t a fashion thing, it’s simply what I enjoy.  If you haven’t heard any of the shows, give them a chance.  This weekend is a pledge drive, which (ironic given my profession) is annoying.  Wait Wait has a bunch of highlights of past shows, including Neko Case, who is one of my heroes.  Good times.

First off, if you have multiple check deposits, you cannot deposit them all at once. This is no big deal most of the time, but the other day we had to stand in line for over 5 minutes while a guy deposited many checks. This is a nuisance for me but I can see it becoming a big issue for big ATM check depositors if all the BoA machines are converted this way.

More importantly, it DOES NOT LIKE ALL CHECKS! My house mate is currently unemployed and we have both been trying to deposit her first unemployment check (before direct deposit kicks in) on many of the new Bank Of America ATM machines. The machines will not accept the check at all. After multiple tries on three different machines (Framingham, MA, Allston, MA, and Brighton, MA.) It’s very frustrating and we now need to seek out an older envelope-based BoA ATM to do the deposit, or manually make the deposit at a branch when it is open, which is a PITA.

This is just crazy, and I would think that Bank Of America has heard about this issue already. I did some Googling and haven’t seen anything, though. I assume they tested these new ATMs thoroughly before deploying them, but I’d think that this craziness of depositing an unemployment check here in MA wouldn’t be so difficult.

Has anyone else had problems with the new ATMs? Any idea what number to call at Bank Of America to notify them of this issue?

If you’re ever in Coolidge Corner and want a quick bite to eat…  They have a tiny table outside if you want to wait / eat, but no seating inside.

Living in Boston, it’s hard to find one that’s still open.  There is one about an hour’s drive out of the city in Mendon, MA: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mendon-drive-in-mendon#hrid:rKPbUVuTdm2-UuJkGEWfQA