...Solar powered light that is!
One of the fantastic Christmas presents I got this year was a solar powered LED shed light, and with the unseasonably warm temps this past weekend I took full advantage to get it installed.
Not wanting to spend tons of money to have a light source in our shed, this was the most cost effective option and didn't involved trenching wire underneath our yard. Took me about 30 minutes to get it installed and I was good to go! If you need some light in your shed for those late nights when you're trying to put something away, the Light My Shed 2 is the way to go. It's not going to give off a ton of light, but enough to let you see what you're doing out there so you don't step on the wrong end of a rake or something like that!
The shed roof is filled up now. We had a weather center up there already that transmits temperature, wind speed and rainfall information back into the house and now we have our solor panel on the far side.
So Kel and I both upgraded our cell phones recently and we decided to go the 'smartphone' route since that seems to be the route where everyone is headed. I ended up going with a phone that had both a touch screen and a full keyboard...figured that would be a better fit for me.
I haven't gone crazy downloading many apps or crap like that, [No twitter or facebook on here for me. Seems like some people are physically addicted to those things!] but I did install a very cool program from our bank that not only lets me check balances and make transfers...but get this, you can deposit a check simply by taking a photo of it! That's like James Bond kinda stuff right there folks.
Since our bank is based out of Texas it's not super easy to deposit money. In the past you'd drop a check into a prepaid envelope and mail it in to be deposited and this took 3 or 4 days to get reflected in the acct. Not too bad if you were depositing 20 bucks a friend owed you, but if this was for your payroll check or something you needed right away it could be a problem.
About a year and a half ago they came out with a "Deposit @ Home" feature where you could simply place a check on your scanner and deposit it that way. I've been using that ever since and it's been great. As soon as you hit submit the funds are ready to go in your acct and the entire process only takes as long as it takes to scan the front and back of the check.
Well...this new Mobile Deposit thing that is part of the smartphone application may be the coolest thing I've seen yet. I couldn't wait for a check to arrive so I wrote out a check from another one of our banks to myself for 1 dollar in order to test it out. You simply type in the amount of the check, select what acct you want it deposited in, then snap a photo of the front and back of the check making sure you line up the corners of the check with the little guide marks on the phone screen. Check it out below...
The entire process takes about 30 seconds and you're done...the money is in the acct and ready to be spent. Amazing what modern technology can do!
Now if only if our other banks got with the program and came out with technology like this...heck, I'd even settle for some decent mobile applications. I'm talking to you HSBC, Citizens, and Navy Federal !
