Windows phone users who hate Bing, rejoice!

Yes, for those of you who actually use a Windows phone, but hate when you press the search home button and Bing pops up, I've found a way to make Google come up instead. Mine is a Nokia Lumia 920, but I know this trick works on other brands as well.

The trick is to set your set your browser search language in settings. I thought this was a joke at first, but it works!

To get started, access your phones settings. From the main screen you can swipe to the right for the app menu and go down to Settings. Once in Settings, swipe down and choose the language+region settings. At the bottom of this option is the setting for Browser and search language. From the list which comes up, choose and select Bashkir (Russia). Press the center home button to return to the main screen and then power off your phone.

Power on your phone once it has completely shut down and hit the hourglass button on the right bottom. To your amazement, the Google search screen will appear!

I've heard from some that this messes up YouTube as it appears in Russian, but that was not the case for me. YouTube works the same as it always has on my phone.

To see a demo of this fix, you can watch this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWwViHOtzpc

BTW, it shows in the video choosing plain russian, but I knew from reading other posts on the subject that the one I recommended works. This may be the reason why my YouTube didn't change to russian, which is a good thing.

Grocery shopping

I've always known that Walmart was the cheapest place to shop for some time now. This comparison makes my point very well, even though it ranks Aldi the cheapest. I don't even consider Aldi though, as they don't offer many name brands and are limited in sizes, etc. For me, this was/is all about comparing Kroger and Walmart strictly on a lowest price basis.

I buy my groceries one month at a time and have always been able to get more for my money at Walmart. This was even after using a Kroger card for additional savings. I pity the fool who shops at Kroger without one of those, they are paying through the nose for items!

Because my food needs are very basic, as well as the fact that I only eat twice a day, I can usually eat what I consider well for $100 or less a month. On months that I need to use my money to pay a bill or some unexpected expense comes up, I can survive on much less actually.

I do this by eating a lot of single items like chili for example. I always get the Armour Star chili with beans for $1.14 a can and buy 30 cans of it for $34.20. That is supper for a month for me if need be. A couple of boxes of the store brand crackers and this is a very good meal for me!

If I want variety, I substitute Banquet frozen dinners and pot pies. At $1.00 each for the dinners and only 80 cents each for the pot pies, I can save even more!  At these prices I can even afford to buy the occasional treat like beef stew and bean soup.

For my breakfast meal, I sometimes purchase the El Monterey brand family packs of burritos for which I can get a full months supply for about $13. Put one of these on a napkin and pop in the microwave for a minute, and instant breakfast! That and a bottle of water to take my pills with is all I need to last until supper time.


Naturally I spice things up from time to time and add a few more items to the list, such as Great Value pancake mix or maybe a box of cereal and bananas to top it with. And I also buy other items for the supper meal too from time to time, like frozen pizza or maybe even hamburger helper.

The point is, I can eat cheap if I need to. Some might find my way of doing things bland or boring, but it satisfies me and that is all I need. And yes I do include veggies in my diet from time to time as well. I might even make a meat loaf if the mood strikes me.

I have not really mentioned what I drink with my meals, but that is simply water. I used to buy the discount diet soda, but I've found that I like water even better when I eat. Bland yes, but better for you in the long run.

To those who say this diet not healthy, I can say that while I was working, my primary single daily meal consisted of deep fried chicken tenders and taters after work. Considering this, I look like a health food nut now!

They are at it again.

As one of my many news sources, I sometimes click on Yahoo and read their news feed. Imagine my shock when I saw these two headlines on the same newsfeed page:

'Duck Dynasty,' 'American Idol' Suffer Big Ratings Drops in Return

‘Duck Dynasty’ Season Premiere Gets Ratings Boost Following Controversy

Both stories appeared within an hour of one another and both were sourced to the Yahoo TV news site. So what is a person supposed to think? If you click the links and read both stories, you will see that the actual facts are pretty much the same. 

The difference, as usual, is a question of the writer's  or editor's point of view. In the news game, and it is a game, it never hurts to talk out of both sides of your mouth. Covering both the pro Duck Dynasty crowd as well as it's detractors, it's easy to see what the goal of these two articles were. And that is to get the maximum number of people to read the article. After all, ad rates are based on how many people view/read a story and with headlines like this, you get both the pro and con sides reading basically the same story.

Where Yahoo messed up was to post both stories within site of one another. Of course that makes a person want to find out both sides of the story, but imagine the disappointment when they found out the story was basically the same. Perhaps others don't care at all, but I tend to read the Yahoo newsfeed with a jaundiced eye. Too many things don't add up there for me.