Thinking About Pre-Paid Legal Services?

The web is the weirdest thing on our planet… I got a message via my YouTube channel from someone who knows my buddy Scott, and he was asking about Pre-Paid Legal Services because he was thinking of joining.  I wrote him back and then thought, maybe this should go on the blog for others who might want an opinion:

Yes, I have been a PrePaid subscriber for years. Yes, they truly were an MLM, although these days you can go directly to PPL and join without going through an associate, I think.

Pros: Unlimited phone consultations with attornies who practice the law pertinent to your issue and are licensed in the area where you need them (for example, if I am in CO and doing a real estate transaction in AZ, PPL will put me in contact with a real estate attorney in AZ).

They will review up to a certain number of pages (5 or 10) of contract verbiage to advise you on it, and they will write certain types of letters on your behalf. These are “metered” per month depending on your plan.

There are other benefits and riders you can “bolt on” to the $26/mo base price. It is month-to-month, and you can scale up or down. At one time we had the “small business” rider, which helped with LLC/S-Corp type questions for our business.

Cons: There really is no con as long as customers understand that no attorney is going to take them on as a client without them shelling additional cash out of pocket! I have no idea if the rates are truly discounted compared to street rates, but my focus is to use PPL as information for “self-help” and as a way to avoid actual litigation.

Overall I am a happy customer, but even if you don’t like it, you will be out I think $10 to sign up and $26 for the first month – that’s a pretty cheap “pilot program” and I think you will find it is pretty legit.

Hope this info prooves useful. My rep/reseller is Diane Glass. I do not resell but if you don’t have anyone to “give credit to” and if they still need a “name” be my guest to use hers.

Ronald Jenkees, 2007 CD

Mr. Super Fun

I F***ING DID IT! I caved and bought Jenkees’ CD. It’s Matt’s fault for showing me the “56K RAP,” and then when I saw him plop the camera down and launch into some nice live electronica, it was game over.

I won’t lie… I am bummed that his YouTube electronica tracks aren’t on it.

My tastes come from a freak-blend of Trance, Grunge, and who knows what else, so for me the first track, “Derty,” is the war hammer. It crushed everything in its path – even tho I am not a “synth horn” person, the rest of the layers in that track are so wicked, I played it like 19 times in a row. Heck, I skipped logging into DDO to play it 19 times in a row while writing this!

The rest of the CD is cool – just not my style overall. He has a fabulous blend of musical elements, styles, sounds - he’s not scared to try anything and I wouldn’t be surprised if some other tracks grow on me.  The “Rocky Song Remixed” and “Canon in D Remix” definitely breathed a new spin into those melodies.

“Derty” and the infamous “56K RAP” are worth the $10, but you can buy them separate for a $1 each. I would pay another $10 just to have his YouTube jams in higher quality…not even studio grade, just not YouTube grade!

Thinking About Buying a Lexmark x4530?

OK… go ahead, just don’t expect the wireless scanning to work.  Well, maybe it will work for you, but it is really (REALLY) flaky for me.

So let me drop some stats… I am running a Phenom 9850 2.5Ghz quad core with 4GB RAM and due to other drivers (Don’t know if Lexmark plays on 64 bit or not), I am running XP Pro (32-bit).

The Lexmark x4530 has been a pretty good unit, it prints and scans well, the software is pretty easy to use (the configuration/drivers are clunky because they bolted stuff together from previous models to make it work).  Where it starts to flake out is…well, the one feature that compelled me to buy it: Wireless.

The unit will print wireless.  That for me has been quite reliable.  But I do a fair amount of scanning for my meager DeviantArt page, and this thing is like pulling teeth. 

To get it to scan wirelessly the first time took about 30 minutes with a chat-based Lexmark technician, who had to remote into my machine and reinstall drivers.  After that it worked that one day.

A couple days later I went to scan and it was broken.  But I found if I went and changed the name of my computer via the “Lexmark Solution Center” (Advanced icon, networking button, then click the link “Change your PC name”), then I could get it to scan.  It always throws an error saying the new name I selected is in use – it is stepping on itself somehow…but it works so I do it anyway.

Of course this generated a laundry list of computer names…”Stix”, “Stix2″, “PajamaParty”, “PorkJoy”, “GrapeMadness” all of which were broken except for the current one I had created.

But then the day came when this trick stopped working.  It was back to tech support, and it took 90 minutes this time… and I was able to scan for? You guessed it, THAT DAY.

Here I am creating “PorkJoy2″ and my printer scanned but I know this is the hell I will endure, unless I either buy a USB hub, or they fix their software.

So, if you don’t need wireless , then don’t buy this printer.  If you DO need wireless scanning, then don’t buy this printer, IMHO.  However, if you just need wireless printing it might be a good fit -and Lexmark inkjet printers/ink to date are still my favorite over comparable Canon, HP and Epson (although it has been a while since I bought an Epson, the Stylus I had pissed me off way too much to rush into trying them again).

Hope this prooves useful! Happy printing and scanning….