One day I noticed a charge on my bank account that said "CIC * TripleAdvantage" for $14.95. I was actually charged twice because I went on a retreat when this happened and did not have access to the internet for a while. Clearly, I did not want credit monitoring, and I had no memory of signing up or somehow applying to a kind of membership.Then I did some research and found that I was...

The Crate MX15R is a worthy solid-state amp. It is a 15-watt amp with a built in overdrive channel, 3-band equalization, and spring reverb. It also supports a headphone jack along with a speaker jack, and thus can be used also as a preamp.The sound is pretty amazing for a 15-watt amp. It can definitely power through unmonitored drums, and can pack a punch if monitored. In general, the amp is to...

The Creative Labs External 24-bit Audigy Sound Card (USB) is a very nice addition to your computer entertainment system. It boasts 2, 2.1, 4.1, and 5.1 technology. It also has Line In, Microphone and Headphone jacks, along with DIN, SPDIF, and Optical ability. It is also IR remote capable, and has a MIC volume and MASTER volume controls on the device itself. It also features CMSS technology. Th...

The Audiotechnica ATH-A700 Art Montitor headphones are a great $100 range pair of headphones. They completely cover your ears, and have slight passive noise cancelling ability (they muffle outside sounds). They are comfortable, and have an innovative one-size fits all (not adjustable) design.The sound quality of these headphones are great. The headphones are stated to come with custom design lo...

The Timex T109S Extra Loud Alarm Clock is an excellent clock. It has a bright-red 7-segment LED display, which is really easy to read, even with my glasses off. It has a very intuitive interface, with an LED for AM/PM, alarm on/off, and low battery. The unit is small, is a non-instrusive color, and it has a pretty long power cable.The only complaint that can be registered against this device is...

The Schecter C-1Classic is a very solid electric guitar. It looks and plays nice and has a decent range of tone and timbre. Some of the downsides is that the bridge pickup is very hot, and the guitar is pretty heavy. The first thing that one will notice of the guitar is the inlays, which are the 'vine of life' inlays. The guitar itself is very sleek, and the quilt top is a nice addition...

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the 5th installment of the GTA series. It uses the GTA III graphics engine but runs much smoother than GTA III. The premise of all the GTA games is that the player is some no-name freelancer who climbs up the criminal ladder by working for mob bosses that reside in parts of a city. GTA:SA is based upon Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.The player pl...

The Toshiba Satellite A105-S2031 is an average laptop designed for average tasks and average games.The Intel 1.7 GHz Celeron M CPU runs at a rated 2.1GHz P4. The hard drive packs a not-whopping 60 GB. The memory is lacking for current usage at only 512 MB. The ATI 200M is not capabable of running Half-Life 2 at above 800x600, at medium settings. The battery lasts for a little over an hour, whic...

The Altec Lansing Multimedia Computer Speaker System ACS33 is a good entry level speaker set. The 2.1 set designs in general are not desinged for top notch audiophilic activities, but this speaker set is able to deliver clean, powerful sound.The volume knob is located on the right satellite speaker, and the sub is connected through a thicker, model-specific cable. The sub is made of wood, and t...

The Seagate 300 GB External hard drive is a great addition to your computer system. It holds a total of 279 GB of data (after the conversion factor), and is connectable by USB or Firewire. If connected by Firewire, the device can serve in a daisy-chain system, and can further improve your storage capacity without increasing the number of connections you need.The External requires a short (estim...

The Nintendo Gamecube Entertainment System is a nice group oriented gaming system to own. It primarily boasts a small physical size and an intuitive controller; in other areas it is towered by the power of the Playstation 2 or the Xbox entertainment systems.The best part of the Gamecube system is the controller design. It is very ergonomic on the hands and buttons are easy to press. Also, the b...

The Boss ME-50 Guitar Multiple Effects Board is the one of the most intuitive yet complex digital effects pedal available on the market. Every feature is physically written on the board, and it almost has a zero learning curve.The basic features this pedal board provides are Tone, Compressor, Noise Silencer, Reverb, Overdrive/Distortion, Modulation, Delay and Expression. The Tone serves as a Pr...

The Sony Playstation 2 Entertainment System is one the primary system that competes with the Microsoft Xbox Entertainment System. Numerically it is weaker than an Xbox, but on the contrary the PS2 boasts better games and commitments with better game companies (ie. SquareEnix, etc.).The Playstation 2 system is decently sized, at about the size of an average VCR player. It can be used either vert...

The BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone Distortion Pedal packs a lot of punch. It powers its drive with the use of a 3.5-band equalizer, and what almost feels like a distortion level from fuzzed to piping hot.Like all BOSS pedals, the MT-2 is encased in a solid steel compartment, can be foot activated, and is conveniently small. It can be powered by either a 9-V battery or with a DC power supply.This distorti...

The Helio Drift is a slide open cellphone from the modern age. It has a 2.1 megapixel camera and a high-quality 2.1 inch LCD display. The phone has high-quality speakers, which are loud and pretty crisp. The only bad part about the sound (besides the fact that it is a cell phone and cell phones are incomparable to home theater systems) is that the sound quality of transmission (as in the towers...

Super Smash Brothers Melee is the second installment of the Super Smash Brothers series, and is for the Nintendo Gamecube Entertainment console. It supports up to four players in simultaneous arcade-style combat, with an innovative twist of having to knock the opposing character off the screen rather than reducing a life bar to zero.The basic gameplay consists of players trying to damage oppone...

Square Enix and Disney Interactive teamed up to fabricate Kingdom Hearts. It is an epic tale consisting of both anime-style cartoon characters and Disney-style cartoon characters. The entertainment value of Kingdom Hearts is a complete hit-or-miss. The gameplay is a very repetitive, button-mashing system; however, this is primarily to focus most of the attention to the plot. In all fairness, th...

Disney and Square Enix produced the sequel, Kingdom Hearts II, and succeeded in improving the gameplay and storyline of the previous title. The game is very captivating and the button-mashing has a few more complexities in it than last time.The plot of the game becomes much more complicated and features many more twists than in the first Kingdom Hearts. It features the same style of gameplay, w...

Half-Life 2 is one of the greatest genre-defining games to be released. It featured one of most efficient, best looking engine (of that time), the Source engine, and one of the coolest weapons features in a mainstream game, the Gravity Gun.The gameplay is a standard FPS, with well balanced and well placed enemies. The game flows very well, the atmosphere of the game is very consistent, and the ...

Half-Life is one of the most important games to be released ever. It features a flowing storyline, without missions or levels. The plot becomes very dark and the atmosphere is consistent throughout the entire game. The enemies are creative and simple, but mixed with the environment creates very complex situations.The graphics are outdated by modern standards, but back then they were top notch. ...