Android Tablet Deal-A Fast One For $35.

Amazon will be discounting the latest version of their quad-core Fire 7" tablet for Black Friday. On November 26, it will be just $34.99. I have a Fire 7, and it's very nice and very fast over the internet. One extra benefit of this model is that it can be rooted, which means, with a little effort, you can make it function as a pure Android machine rather than a proprietary Amazon tablet.

Mechanical Update

It's taken me a few days, but I started the furnace. The lows have been dipping into the mid-thirties but the gas furnace would not fire.

After looking at a number of possibilities, it turned out to be the thermostat. A year ago, I must have put in a damaged battery. Today, I installed two good batteries, after cleaning weird corrosion from inside the battery compartment. Voila!

It was confusing because the thermostat sort of worked with bad batteries. The fan, for instance,could be activated. And replacement batteries were only successful after the battery contacts were carefully cleaned.

I'll bet that a serviceman would have charged for a new thermostat, and then it would also cost twice what they do at Home Depot.