Redbox offers movies on Blu-ray and DVD formats, and games are available for Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. You can rent for as little as $1 per day – or keep your rentals as long as you like. A debit or credit card is required for rentals, which can be set up via reservations online (right now you can reserve DVD rentals online for just $1!), or simply rented directly from your local kiosk. A nice feature about Redbox kiosks is that you can rent from one kiosk and then return your rentals to another – handy if you find yourself in a different area with rentals that are ready to be returned.

Redbox offers thousands of movies and video games, with selections ranging from new releases to ever-popular hits that’ll never cease to entertain.

For more information, check out Redbox at Redbox.com.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

In any case, after spending an unexpected hour at my mother’s house yesterday evening, with half an hour of that time being spent on the phone, I was able to straighten out the issue. A phone line needed to be plugged into the proper port, and the router’s broadcast had to be changed from channel 5 to channel 9. Fun. Now if there was only a way to bypass the router functionality the shitty little gateway thing offers and have it go directly into my mom’s Linksys router. Any suggestions?

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Anyway, I do keep a spare pair of glasses on hand, but since the prescription is going on four years old and the lenses are scratched in a few places, I’m going to replace them soon. I’m not going to bother with the standard route of getting glasses. Since I already have a prescription, I’m just going to check out the eyeglasses that Zenni Optical has. They’re an online exclusive, so you don’t have the normal costs associated with operating a brick and mortar establishment. This means paying for the cost of the frame & lenses only — not the high rates that stores charge in order to cover their own costs!

Psst… don’t just take my word for it — Check out what the Brooklyn Liberal Examiner had to say about Zenni Optical!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Here’s a before & after shot of our Christmas tree:

I can’t wait to surprise my kids with this photo of Santa tomorrow morning!

Anyway, I’m using Vimeo frequently these days, so I’ll be sure to get back to you guys with a full-fledged review soon!

Three days later the connection card showed up on my doorstep, courtesy of UPS. To say I was surprised was an understatement. So I waited for my new laptop to arrive (and it did, a week and two days later), and once I got it all set up, I decided to try out the Sprint Mobile Broadband service. And I have to say, it works perfectly. Setting up the service was as easy as uncapping the connection card and plugging it into one of the USB ports on my laptop. The drivers and installation software are contained within the connection card, so everything was automated. A quick restart later, and the Sprint SmartView dialog box was looking at me, waiting for me to click Connect. I did, and nothing happened. So I went to Tools > Activate Device, and once I received a success message and pressed Connect again, I was on!

In fact, I’m on right now. So far the wireless internet service coming from Sprint Mobile Broadband is working like a charm. I haven’t tried to do any downloads, as 1) I have nothing to download and 2) I’m not going to needlessly eat into my 5GB data plan, but emailing and surfing the internet is moving along almost as fast as it does at home, on my home wifi network.

With that said, Sprint rocks for three reasons:

1. They approved me, despite my shitty credit rating (we’re talking below 550, if I’m even that lucky).
2. Setting up the mobile broadband connection was easy-peasy.
3. The internet connection seems to work flawlessly.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

But after today’s runaround with three phone representatives and two supervisors, I am feeling pretty disillusioned about T-Mobile. My husband has a black T-Mobile G1 that is approximately six weeks old. Last night, he noticed a crack had developed on it. It runs vertically from the menu button down to the back arrow button (here’s a picture of the front of the phone). This phone has never been dropped, stepped on, sat on, exposed to water or any other type of environment or situation that could cause such a crack to occur. Since the phone is only six weeks old, silly me assumed that T-Mobile would step up to the plate to replace what is obviously a defective phone.

However, you know what they say about assumptions. After two hours on the phone with T-Mobile, the bottom line is they are claiming that we caused the damage, even if it was accidental. Our options? File a claim through the insurance and pay $130 for a replacement, or request that T-Mobile themselves replace it, and pay them a $100 “out of warranty” fee.

So to anyone who has a T-Mobile phone or might be getting one, heed my warning: unless spontaneous damage/cracks/defects occur within the first two weeks of phone ownership, you are SOL. T-Mobile is very quick to talk the talk about how great they are and how they satisfy their customers, but the truth is that they only care about money, and will do as much as possible in order to pay out as little as possible.

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars