Have you ever had your electricity turned off for lack of payment and tried to use the excuse that you never received your bill? That excuse, even if it’s true, doesn’t work. You must pay that bill every two months whether you receive it or not or risk having your power turned off.

Did you watch the Super Bowl two weeks ago? I did.  I had a fund-raiser and was told that I would have a better turnout if the viewers, many of whom were not really interested in the football game could watch the U.S. commercials. I have the Canadian Star Choice (now Shaw Direct) satellite system. And even when watching a rebroadcast of the Seattle station, naturally some of the U.S. commercials were replaced with local commercials. So just in case it was important for someone to see only the U.S. commercials, I reactivated my old big dish C-Band system so that those who wanted to see only the U.S. commercials could do so.

Two weeks ago we discussed the latest products introduced at this year’s consumer electronics show — to include my favorite topic, 3DTV. A friend wrote: “Great Pete, but how about starting with the basics. Television in the States has gone from analog to something else. The newer TV screens are of a different shape. And during some of the programming, the picture seems a lot sharper. How come?”

This years’ annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES®) in Las Vegas was the most successful ever. Paraphrasing from the CES® webpage this 5 day show which started on January 7th consisted of more than 2,500 technology companies which introduced more than 20,000 new products, kicking off the next decade of technology innovation.