So the part we will be using for whole house audio system is the music streaming device. This part of the Airport Express integrates with iTunes so you can select which AirPort Express you want to send music too. Plus you have the option of playing your music through your Computer speakers and through the Airport Express synchronized. You can also send music to several airport express units all at the same time. So you have the same music playing in several room or areas all at the same time.

We do this with the house, the patio, and pool area. All three areas are playing the same music at the same time.
So now you want to play music in the kids’ room and different music in the family room. OK you select the music from different iTunes library and send it to the desired airport express. Done

So now what about amplifiers and speakers for all this? Being that the AirPort devices are distributed all around your house the cost of wiring is minimal or non-existing, as you can stream wireless to an airport Express using WiFi. So that is where the Audioengin A5 speakers come in to play. More on the speakers next time.

One of the big problems has been remotes and the need to turn on a TV to play music. The Roku Soundbridge solved the need for the TV but you cannot synchronize the multiple devices to play the same music. Plus the display is text only. I know recently that Logitech bought the Squeezebox™ and has been announcing better integrated product this last year, they are expensive. Nothing like Apple is putting together.

Apple is not always the best solution right out of the gate. Give Apple a few revisions and they start to get it right. The announcement that pushed me into the Apple camp was a little piece of FREE software for the iPhone and iTouch called Remote. To me Remote pulled home media all together and the light went off.

So the picture above shows all the parts for a simple, very user friendly and flexible whole house audio system. The core of the system is one or multiple Mini Mac to store all your music. I would use multiple Mini Macs to store diverse music libraries for instance Mom and dad’s music verse the kids music. Running on the Macs would be iTunes as the music server. Ya, I know I did not like iTunes when it first was released, but Apple won me over by integrating their network products (airport Express) and MP3 players (iPods) seamlessly into iTunes.

First iTunes, as we all know works great with the iPhone and iPods. My favored is the iTouch. Why you ask, again it is that free software appilication name “Remote” that runs on the iPhone and iTouch. With Remote I can control my whole house music system from the palm of my hand using a full color remote call the iTouch (better and cheeper then the Squeezebox™ Controller). Very cool…. I can change from my library of music to my Kids library of music. Or I can select an album, see the cover art, select a song, and select what room I want to play the select music in. OR multiple rooms if I desire.

How is this done, through the magic of the Apple Airport express and Audioengin A5 speakers. All that will be in part two.

You are renting a portion of the physical plant, coal, nuclear, steam, hydro or Solar that generates the electrical power. Also you are renting the transmission lines that are used to move the power from the generating plant to your place of residence.

So why not buy your electricity just like you buy your car or your home. When we buy personal property that is more then we can pay out in one lump sum, we finance it over a period of time. But when that financial obligation is paid off we own that piece of personal property. Granted it takes a lot longer to pay off a home over a vehicle.

So do the same thing with your electricity. Buy it! For many of us that live in the sunbelt we can purchase our own power generating system. And once installed, it requires very little maintenance and does not emit any pollutants. The answer is photovoltaic panels. Ok, they are still kind of expensive, although the cost is coming down over just ten years ago. And the products are more mainstream and readily available today. Most system also will qualify for federal and state rebate programs or tax credits.

So instead of being a Dumb American and paying the power company every month for the rest of your life, pay yourself. Take that monthly amount you would pay out to the power company and pay off your solar system over time. Then when the system is paid off you will be getting almost free electricity.

But today, 6/27/2008 is the official day to drive your Corvette to work day. The “Drive Drive Your Corvette To Work Day” is in honor of the real birthday of the All American Sports car the Corvette 6/30/1953. Mid-American motorworks had sponsored this event for the past 8 years.

The tradition is, that the Friday that is closest to the real birthday of the Corvette shall be deemed “Drive Drive Your Corvette To Work Day”

So take that special car out for the day and drive it to work

Some of the problem with these two trucks were long charging times and short driving distances. The biggest problem is you could NOT buy one. They were only leased. Some, of these electric trucks worked their way from being leased to being purchased. Only about 200 of the Rangers were sold and less than 100 of the Chevy S10 were sold. The rest were CRUSHED.

Have no fear the Phoenix MotorCars company is raising out of the oily, smoggy, soot of southern California. They are producing two all electric vehicles. The big new is they will be sold to the public. Not leased or available for fleet only. So as long as you have $45,000 you can own your very own 100% smog free truck.

The stats on the truck are amazing. Just the available driving range of 130 miles plus, is off the cart for an electric vehicle. And next year, 2009, ther will be and extended battery pack to increase the range to 250 miles. The brushless electric drive has no gears to cycle through and has regenerative breaking at 94% efficiency. This tinny 191 pound electric motor delivers a whooping 400 plus foot pounds of peak toque and 134 horse power. It will push this five passenger sport truck to in excess of 100 MPH and deliver 0 to 60 times around 10 seconds.

Phoenix MotorCars is using the NanoSafe™ battery. It’s a 35 kilowatts battery pack that is lithium ion based. The batteries can be charged in 10 minutes or less, but requires 480 volts. About the same time it takes to fuel a gasoline car. So you’re saying to yourself, who has 480 volts at the home. And I would say to you, who has a gas station at home. The point is, the 480 would be available at a recharging station just like gasoline is today. But with the electric vehicle you also have the option of charging it at home using your photovoltaic solar panels, for zero emissions.

People test driving the Phoenix MotorCars SUT have used words like smooth, strong, powerful, great, it is a real car. I cannot wait to get my hands on one of these little beauty and then I can tell the oil companies to stick it where the sun does not shine.

What a great time to be driving an American automobile. And your thinking… you got to be nuts, with the price of gas these days and low MPG ratings. Every fill up is $50.00 bucks plus.

My thoughts are baised on a trend that we have not seen in 40 years. Just look at the horsepower race that is going on. We have not seen cars being built with this much horsepower since the muscle cars of the 60’s and early 70’s. Detroit is building cars with 4 hundred, 5 hundred and even some with over 6 hundred horsepower.

The current top dogs being the Dodge Viper with 600 horsepower and Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 supercar with 630 horsepower. Ok their sports cars. So, you ask, what about the mid-size sedan 2009 Cadillac CTS-V with 550 horsepower, it is over the top! All of these cars have horsepower that years ago would have been considered exotic and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just look at the Porsche 911 GT2, with 501 horsepower at almost 200 grand. You can buy the Corvette ZR1 for a little more than half of the Porsche and you get over 600 horsepower not the measly 501 the Porsche has. Or get your hands on the CTS-V, that will do a sub 4 second 0-60, for under $70,000.

Who knows what will happen in the next few years? With all the government regulations hitting for higher Mile Per Gallon ratings hitting. We might be seeing the auto manufactures dropping all these great horsepower numbers to achieve the average fleet MPG rates being regulated by the government. So you better run out and drive one of these power house now.

So even though Gas prices are high, and I mean sky high, it is still great to be driving an American car with all this horsepower.

Then that same year, 2005, Congress instructed the Environmental Protection agency to enforce the Renewable Standards Act. Which required at least 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels be added too and blended into our existing fossil fuel by the year 2012. And so starts the process that is giving us higher food prices today.

Now jump forward to 2008 looking at two staple we all need, back in Feb 2006 corn was $2.28 per bushel just a few months ago Feb 2008 the price per bushel rose to $5.46. This is almost double the cost in just 24 months. Wheat another staple food item was $3.48 per bushel in Feb 2006; now in Feb 2008 it is $11.21/bushel.

Why is the price of basic food elements climbing so fast? Because we are burning our food crops to fuel our cars, trucks and lawn mowers. So we cause a shift in the food paradigm. We create an entirely new use and market for crops that are scarce in the world today. Maybe the crops are not scarce today in America but large parts of the world are starving. People are dying every day because they do not have any food.

Then here in America, not only do we waist food, but now we burn our food crops for transportation. The rest of the world is watching and now trying to import more food crops. They just want to protect their own countries food supply. The result is again, more pressure on the food supply that results in higher prices. We are truly dumb americans.

We need to stop the push for ethanol as a renewable fuel before we all starve to death. I would rather have the option of not filling up my car at $9.00 a gallon for gasoline opposed to not being able to eat.

The scene was depicting how Courtney’s character gets the scoop on other celebrates. So instead of the bikini waxing they could have use had Courtney getting her hair or nails done. There was no need to show Cox getting a bikini waxing. So was it done just for ratings? Could Courtney have refused the scene as written? Well she is the executive producer of the Dirt show on FX, so you tell me.

There are other shows that are talking about subjects that I would not want my pre-teens and young teens to see and hear from except form their parents. In a recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashidn’s the older sisters were discussing the changes a female goes through when becoming a woman with the younger sisters. The dialog was very open and extremely candid. The Kardashian sisters discussed female products and how and where they are used. Again it is on cable so what can you expect.

And guess what, “Semi-Pro” is the top grossing movie the weekend it is released. Semi-pro beats out “Vantage Point” by taking in 15 million dollars vs. Vantage point 13 million. It should be noted that Vantage brought in almost 23 million its opening weekend, with a total to date (3/2/2008) of 41 million.

So does this mean we are “dumb Americans” falling for a repetitive formula movie? After all Bob Hope had great success in the 1940’s and 1950’s with his road series (“ The road to Morocco”, “ The road to Singapore”, “ The road to Utopia” , “ The road to Zanzibar “The Road to Bali”, “The Road to Rio” and “The Road to Hong Kong”).

But when you think about it there are a lot of series movies, Star Trek 1- 10, James Bond 1 -21, Batman, Superman, Star Wars and the list goes on and on. But are they a rip-off like the Ferrell sport series?

In my opinion series like Star trek and James Bond are good story telling movies. These series are full of action, beautiful places or great computer graphics. The Ferrell sport series are just a bunch of gags strung together around the sports thread. Some are funny and some are not. Do I get a laugh, ya some times? But do not watch the trailer or you will have seen every funny clip in the movie.

So are the dumb Americans getting smarter? Well according to folks that are in the know, the 15 million was not good enough to call ‘Semi-Pro” a success. In fact the main stream press is calling it a failure and even going so far as to question Mr. Ferrell future big screen potential.

So chalk one up for the Dumb Americans, you spotted this one.

It appears that Warner Bros looked at next gen disk sales in December 2007 and notices the Bul-Ray was out selling HD-DVD. So to help encourage the adoption of a single next generation video format, Warner Bros decided to support only Bul-Ray.

Does this really make sense for the consumer? If you look at both formats Blu-Ray and HD-dvd they have similar specks. Blu-ray does have a greater storage capacity. On the other hand Sony Blu-Ray is an evolving standard. To get in the market Sony Blu-Ray decided to do a phase in of the standard. Kind of developing the product as they go. This means that when you buy a Blu-Ray disk and get it home, then pop it into the player it might work and it might not.

Surprise, you see a screen with big letters saying that YOUR Blu-Ray player does not support THIS Blu-Ray disk. Great now you just spent $30 plus on a disk and it will not play. So now what do you do? Will there is this convoluted firmware upgrade procedure you need to do before the disk will work. And oh by the way it requires a PC, with a DVD burner and an internet connection (on the LG BH-100). Great, so now I need to spend an hour or so to find, download and burn a DVD that will play in a DVD player.

I never had the upgrade problem with a HD-DVD disk. The HD-DVD standard was complete when the product was released. I have never had a problem playing an HD-DVD disk. All my problems have been with Blu-Ray. And the problem are not limited to the disk will not play. Other problems I encountered with Blu-ray are audio track drop out and audio and lip sync problems.

Oh and by the way The HD-DVD standard includes a migration plan for the consumer. The HD-DVD speck includes the option for the studio to put the HD-DVD format in different layers of the disk and the older DVD in a another layer( kind of like having side A & B). That way you can play the movie in your bedroom on your old DVD only player. OR you had the option to buy the new movie on a combo disk in the anticipation that you were going to by a new Generation HD-DVD player in a few months, but wanted to watch the movie on a standard definition DVD player now.

So Toshiba was offering the consumer a reasonable migration plan to the next generation high definition format. A completely formulated software standard, that works. Plus Toshiba also offered HD-DVD player for a reasonable price, at times under a hundred bucks. True the player did not have every gee whiz feature, but you could still afford a next generation player.

Now, Sony, on the other hand wants you to pay for the movie for each and every format. That would be DVD, Blu-Ray, PSP etc…. And the price of the Blu-Ray players is three to four times that of the HD-DVD entry players.

Sony also paid studios hundreds of millions of dollars to get the movie studios to back the Blu-ray format. Sony was not going to lose another format war. Sony lost the video tape format war when Betamax lost out to VHS. Sony’s MiniDisc audio format never caught on in the shadow of the infamous Compact Disk (CD). Sony did not hold back on next generation video the format war.

So who pays? You and Me we pay. We all pay through higher prices for Blu-ray players and Blu-ray Disks. After all someone needs to pay all the hundreds of millions of dollars Sony spent winning the format war.

So You (the consumer) lose!