Community Watch

Thanks to Olga Quinn

Does your neighborhood have an organized community watch? Until recently mine did not but over the past several months several concerned neighbors have tried to organize one in our community. I’m thinking about getting involved and doing what I can to help out. Although I have a home alarm system from WWW.Securitychoice.com, I have to admit that I don’t always use it. I’m guilty, like so many others, of being in a rush in the mornings and sometimes just forgetting to set it. Of course there are some crimes that an alarm system can’t protect you from. Like people stealing stuff from your garage when you forgot to close the garage door. Guilty again! I have actually forgotten to close my garage door as I left for work. One of my neighbors told me he noticed it was open all day but didn’t have my contact information so he couldn’t call to let me know. If nothing else, maybe I can help our neighborhood watch put together a contact information sheet for times like that!

Own Home

Contribution by Stevie Kirby

I love having my own home and living by myself but my family gives me the hardest time. They’re always telling me I’m a young woman and I should have more friends and roommates but honestly, I’m just kind of a loner and I always have been. I don’t know why all of a sudden they seem to think I’ve got to be Mrs. Social Butterfly! Anyway, I bought my house last month and I’m loving living in it and making all kinds of improvements to it. I went to AllHomeSecurity.com for an alarm system and messed with the backyard a lot and I’ve got some paint colors picked out for the interior, too. I can’t wait until it looks the way I’ve got it imagined in my head and I know it’s only a matter of time with my work ethic and the monetary gift from my dad specifically for this purpose! I just don’t know what I would do without such a great support system and I can’t wait to get the house done!

Eco-Friendly Asus Laptop

ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated, commonly known simply as Asus is a Chinese computer manufacturing company. For over 20 years Asus has created top of the line computers. One such computer is their recently released U33Jc laptop computer.

Clearly this is a laptop designed for work, but with a little play thrown in. However, it does not have any kind of CD or DVD drive, as this is one of the company's light-weight offerings. One of the main sources of extra weight in a laptop is in the optical drive. With so much software available for legitimate downloading, most people rarely use such drives anymore.

This Asus laptop is exquisitely beautiful and features a battery life of up to 10.5 hours. The speakers deliver crisp, clear audio, and has integrated NVIDIA GeForce 310M video card with 1GB of DDR3 VRAM. It also contains a 1GB RAM module and is fully upgradable to a maximum of 4GB. And it weighs almost 4 pounds.

It uses an Intel Core i5 processor running at 2.4Ghz and utilizes Microsoft's Windows 7 as its operating system of choice.

The smallest hard drive included in this laptop is a 320GB hard drive available in either 5400rpm or 7200rpm (the speed, in revolutions per minute, is how fast the hard drive spins. The faster it spins, the faster data is retrieved). The largest drive offered is 640GB.

The U33Jc laptop also includes a 5-in-1 card reader, a 2.0 mega pixel camera, integrated b, g, and n wi-fi connectivity, an RJ45 ethernet port, 1 USB 3.0 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA and HDMI port for connecting the laptop to an external monitor, and of course a headphone jack and a microphone jack.

When used with a microphone and headphones, the camera can be used for recording notes or for video conferencing. The camera is positioned on top of the LCD screen for easy access.

That's just the inside of this laptop. The outside has an excellent bamboo wood grain finish, chosen for its beauty and for its low impact on the environment. It was made to look like a piece of beautiful furniture. The keyboard also has a flourish of bamboo, but is housed in aluminum. I

Asus has had a reputation for creating top-notch computers, and they have yet to make one that failed to inspire. This laptop not only inspires, it tries to save the environment, and it does a good job of being eco-friendly, right down to the packaging.