My wife’s key fob to her Jetta stopped working some months ago. Appears to be the battery, since the LED is very faint and, well, the doors don’t unlock. Upon quick inspection of the fob, it appeared to be a sealed unit, which to me meant $$$$ at a dealer.

Not so!

A quick search found this page over at riskin.org. I suppose I should be thanking Kimmy and Jacob Riskin, so… thanks guys!! You’ve turned an expensive trip to the dealer into a cheap trip to Radio Shack.

There are step-by-step instructions and many more images available on their site. Go check them out and save some bucks.

Wow, we’ve neglected this blog for almost a year! Amazing how fast time flies. First order of business – we’re having a get-together on Saturday, Sept. 1. So mark the date and let us know if you’re free!

No major updates to report… we’ve been working on a number of projects around the house. Gone are three ugly bushes from in front of the house and we’re looking to build a retaining wall sometime this summer. Leanne has been busy painting one of our spare bedrooms, the back hallway, and the living room. I finally took the time to finish the recessed lighting in the basement… so now we just need to clear out all the stuff we plan to sell on eBay and we’ll have our home theater back up and running.

You can’t handle the truth… but I’ll say it anyway. There are a handful of companies that I’ve come across recently that are worth checking out (at least in my opinion). They are, in no particular order:

• SunRocket – VoIP service for under $10 a month. I signed up with these guys a few months ago and am extremely happy with them. They are actually more reliable than my old Verizon voice line! And if you’re worried about power outages killing your phone (like I was), head on over to Costco or Best Buy and pick up a cheap UPS (it will pay for itself with the money you save by switching to SunRocket). Oh, and yes – you can keep your current phone number. Sign up for their unlimited plan using the link above and get 3 months free. (see comments)
• GrandCentral – Recently acquired by the evil Google empire, GrandCentral allows users to pick a single permanent telephone number from almost any area code in the United States. Use it so you have a single place for all your voice messages (which you can listen to and save right from the web), have it ring your work number when you’re at work and your home number during the evening. You can even block specific numbers, create custom greetings, and much more. Check them out, it’s all free.
• Mozy – Free online backup services, up to 2GB… and under $5 per month for unlimited storage. You can have Mozy automatically backup your most important files (or all your files if you desire) and then access them from the web or via a Windows Explorer interface right from your desktop.
• Crabersen – Very affordable domain names and web hosting is just a click away. Ok, I’m a little biased, but check them out. They offer very competitive web hosting rates in state-of-the-art data centers. Secure. Fast. Reliable. That’s the Crabersen advantage.