Free Walking Tours

To find free walking tours in various cities, please type "free walking tours" and your destination city name in the search field.

Coupons

Look for coupons at www.promotionalcodes.com.

Cruise Quotes/Competing Bids

If you are looking to go on a cruise, you might want to check out www.cruisecompete.com .  You find a cruise, request a quote, and you then receive competing offers for your cruise business.

Smart 911

You can use a relatively new site entitled www.smart911.com where you can list information like medicines and allergies which is automatically sent to police and medics when a 911 call is placed.  This service is not available everywhere yet.

Discourage Ants

Spray undiluted white vinegar around doorways and window sills to discourage ants from entering.

Treasury Bond Value Check

Find out what your old U.S. savings bonds are worth at www.treasurydirect.gov/BC/SBCPrice.  Just enter the series, denomination, serial number, issue date, and you will get the value of the bond.

Car Repair Quote Estimator

www.Repairpal.com gives free quotes for car repairs based on surveys of thousands of shops.  In addition, it will give you auto repair places in your zip code.   See web site for other information.

Free Directory Assistance - People and Businesses

If you want to find a telephone number via a toll free number with no cost to call, all you need to do is call the following:

     For People - 1-800-FREE - 411
     For Businesses - 1-800-500-0000

These numbers eliminate annoying charges to get a telephone number.  The charges to get a telephone number via the regular 411 route are somewhat pricey.

Slow Drains

If you have a slow sink, tub, etc. drain, consider using a product called Thrift.  It is a little pricey, but I have had good results with this product.  This product can be obtained at Advantage Plumbing in the Chicago area.  You could possibly find this product on the Internet.  If you use Thrift, I suggest that you use gloves and protective glasses when using the product.  Also, do not stand over the drain while letting the hot water run over the product.  Your sinuses will be very cleared out if you do this.  Just be careful using this product, and you should have no problems. The product in in a crystal type form.  I would suggest following the instructions on the package.  I would then not use the sink or tub until the following morning at which time I would then run hot water in the drain for a while.  This seems to clear out the results of the application for what it does over night while the product is still in the pipes and doing some residual work.

Wine Stain Removal

Wine Stain Removal From Clothing with Peroxide and Soap

A simple household remedy to remove even the ugliest of red wine stains combines the stain lifting powers of hydrogen peroxide and soap. First, combine equal parts liquid detergent or soap (Dawn Soap is a good choice) and hydrogen peroxide in a bowl. Sponge or pour the mixture over the red wine stain and let stand for a minute to pre-soak. Please note: if you have stained only one side of a garment, place a towel between the stained layer and clean layer so the stain does not penetrate through to the other side of the fabric. If possible, test one small area first to ensure the solution does not discolor the fabric.
Next, gently blot the stained area. The hydrogen peroxide and soap formula help remove discoloration. Continue to blot until the stain can no longer be seen. The garment can then be put in the laundry machine as usual. Cool water is usually best. Be sure to check care labels for special instructions.
A friend used the aforementioned procedure, and her blouse was completely clean using this procedure even not being able to utilize this procedure for about 2 hours after the wine stain happened.

Do Not Throw Away Your Old TV's Yet

If you have Comcast for your TV (this idea may apply to other cable providers also), you no longer supposedly can get TV reception via your cable connection unless you have an adapter box attached between the cable and TV set.  The adapter is provided by Comcast for a monthly fee after getting 2 adapter boxes for free.

If you reprogram your TV via auto programming feature on most TV sets, you might be able to restore TV reception to your TVs without an adapter box.  I did the auto programming process on 2 TVs and restored TV reception to those 2 TVs which happen to be rather new TVs.  I am able to get at least 60 plus TV channels on each of those 2 TVs.  I have an older TV and tried the auto programming feature, and even though I was able to access the auto programming feature, the procedure did not work for that TV apparently due to its age.  I cannot tell you how to access the auto programming feature since the access procedure to this feature is different on different TVs.  After doing the auto programming procedure try to access a TV station by punching in the channel directly on your remote, and if that does not work use the channel up/channel down on your remote.  On one of my TVs, I could not access a channel by punching in the channel directly on to the remote.  However, when I did the channel up/channel down on the remote I was able to access channels on that TV.

If that does not work, you can buy a converter box and an antenna from Best Buy or other electronic stores for a total price of $70+.  This supposed to give you TV reception, but not to all of the available channels.  This does not seem to be an economical option.

If you really want to access TV reception on that old TV, you can take the adapter box off of one of your TV sets and hook it up to the TV in question.  The adapter box is what gives you access to the TV channels and not the TV set itself.  The adapter boxes apparently can be moved to whatever TV you want to get reception.                                                                                             

The adapter boxes are proprietary to Comcast, and apparently cannot be replicated, and that is why there seems to be nothing in the market place to buy to make the old TVs work other than the adapters.  However, the auto programming procedure mentioned above could be of some help on TVs that are not too old.

So, before throwing away your old TVs due to lack of reception, do try this auto programming feature and see if your TV reception is restored.