Peter's site  

www.MadmanPierre.com

Links

Here are several links I recommend (note a couple are ones that I control so obviously I'm biased towards those ones!). This is a random sampling, normally you would come here because I suggested in person that you come here for a specific link. But if you came here simply out of curiosity, give a quick look to see if anything below interests you.

Reference links:

Gold prices - Peter's preferred method of viewing them

Currency Exchange - Canadian to US

Currency Exchange - US to Canadian

Product/Services links:

US Payroll. I have very great personal experience with Execupay . They provide payroll services to small to large US based companies. They take the headache of keeping track of all the legal government gyrations. I have "worked" for them as a consultant/developer and can assure you that they continuously seek to provide the best experience for their customers. If an option cost them more but gave a better experience for their customers they choose it without any hesitation.. No they did NOT pay for me to put this up here, this was done on my own initiative. But, from time to time, as I own US companies, they are my unquestionable choice for our payroll needs. Call and tell Gerald Jr. that "Madman" sent you.

This company won 1st place in 2006 for engineering product of the year in maintenance management.This is one of my biases... but if you have large numbers of assets you keep track of, you'll want to check this out. After all - the award (details on the site) was given by a magazine and was given completely independent of my biases! Note: I own half this company, but I am no longer involved in day to day management of it. And at the risk of sounding too egotistical - I wrote entirely the program that won the 1st place engineering product of the year, so I was quite pleased - and yes, I think the product is that good. And the product has gotten even better since then, thanks to customer suggestions, the marketing director and the efforts of the current chief developer for the company..

pCalc - the Preminent Pocket PC and Desktop Calculator (Warning: I wrote this, so I am biased. But I also use it as my primary calculator so it must have some value!)

GREAT PLACES For Cameras, Batteries, Weddings, Software, US Payroll services and others.

I have very positive, PERSONAL experiences with all below. I am giving my personal recommendation. If you need more information on why I recommend them,please email me. A couple of these are "affiliate links" but to date I have NEVER gotten a PENNY from ANY of them - for an explanation why, jump to the bottom of this page.

A free ebook on gardening. It is a nice read. His site also has detailed steps on propagation of plants. So check here for your free ebook. Free eBook on Gardening He gives you the option on signing up for his mailing list. If you do, you can expect to receive every week or two some tips on gardening. Each of these has a small ad for his 2 products he sells (a collection of information on how to run a gardening business or how to do high volume propagation.) They are unobtrusive and, if you are into gardening and anything other than an expert, you will appreciate his information.

Great hats. Have you ever heard of the "Tilley" hat? If you haven't check out Tilley Endurables. They also have an interesting line of clothing and travel accessories. I have been an owner/user for over 10 years.

One site, chock full of information on photography is Edwin Leong's Camera Hobby site. This site is geared for the amateur photographer but has lots of great information for professionals as well. If you like to look at nice pictures another site to check out is Mike Albin's. I particularly like some of his underwater photographs.

Want to go on a great heli-tour (wedding, fishing, hiking, skiing, whatever) Check out Icefield Helicopter Tours . I've flown with them and I recommend them.

Finally, for my Canadian customers, Amazon.ca - The Canadian version of Amazon.com. Prices in CDN$, Shipment from Canada (so low cost shipping) - FREE if your order is $75CDN or more!. (Now, because of how Amazon pays - although these links are technically tied to me, I have NEVER made a PENNY from Amazon for these recommendations. I have made money with the books I have published and sold on Amazon, but I don't care if you use the links below because there is no financial benefit to me. Check out Amazons terms if you don't believe me.)

Camera Filters, rings, lens caps. The best price and great quality comes from the Filter House, a tidy site, easy to determine if they have what you need and if they don't have it, the place to go is The Filter Connection in the US. Vist their site, it is a little messy but they are very good at getting virtually anything I want. They ship worldwide. I started buying from this company in 1998 and have made several orders - about 1 per year on average. On one "out of production" filter, they tried for 2 years and finally found me the one I wanted in someones old dusty bins (the filter itself was flawless.)   In general, I recommend getting multi-coated lenses. Yes they are a little extra money, but I'd prefer to have FEWER filters of better quality.

You need Batteries! Alkaline can only be used once (well other than the really poor quality rechargeable Alkalines.) NiCAD have memory - and are therefore a PAIN to use. Since 1997 I've been using fanTAStic NiMH batteries from Sunn Battery Co/EBC. I currently recommend www.thomas-distributing.com as your source if you are in the US or if you are in Canada and don't mind importing. Or, I sell them as well for my Canadian clients (mail order or pickup) and US and Mexico clients (pickup only when I'm "there") My tests of their AA 1700MaH NiMh batteries show they last about twice as long as alkaline - REALLY! The 1800+ (I use mostly 2300 currently) last even longer! And of course you can recharge NiMH's 100's of times. And, even better...these NiMH's are not the low capacity 1200MaH in Radio Shack, Wallmart & Home Depot etc.., And their D cells are not like the old NiCad D cells where you got a tiny AA cell inside a big D package. These D cells are big heavy ones that also last. Same deal with the other sizes - no AA's inside C's clothing! US Orders click here. Canadian Orders click here. You can also get most odd sized batteries like the 3000MaH Sub C's used for R/C Car racing. Great for flashlights on camping trips, cameras, toys, your Palm Pilot, I even put them in my cordless phone (contact me for tricks & traps before doing this!) There are lots more reasons that I am really excited about Sunn/EBC's NiMH batteries, ask me about power drop curve for example!

There are only two types of application that I don't use NiMH for - 1. places where the batteries stay in for a year or more like smoke detectors or emergency flashlights that don't trickle charge. Why? Because NiMh lose about 10% of their charge per month (Some say less in the 1st month but much more after 30 days). 2. Very cold (like -40) where you can't keep the batteries warm. Like normal Alkaline & NiCad's, NiMH lose their power as the temperature drops. I am currently testing NiMh with Electronic Dog Fence: I'm hypothesising that the batteries will have to be recharged every 3 months in the spring/summer/fall, and probably every month in the cold winters(down to -40C/F) we have here.

Drip irrigation. Now you may not need to water 1500 trees, 500 raspberry plants and 1000 other edible annuals and perennials, but if you want to water your garden efficiently without waste of water, check out The Drip Store. It has a wide variety of VERY high quality products and advice. I suggest you follow ALL of their advice it is not biased to sell you more, it is biased to make you successful in your irrigation needs.

Electronic Dog Fence. We have 9 acres for our dogs to run in (and 140 acres that they are not allowed on). We have friends with 2 acres that want their dogs to stay in the 2 acres. We have friends with a city lot and a dog that keeps jumping the fence (city bylaw has 6' max. fence. Several dogs can jump 6'). So what do we all do? Well, years ago I bought an Electronic dog fence from PetSafe and my friends, seeing how well mine worked, did the same? Are they perfect? No, you have to train your dog to it, but the bigger the area you have the easier it is to train (you can set the border wider.) PetSafe is not the very cheapest, but it is one of the lowest cost and, at least from my research, is well worth the little extra money over the cheapest solutions. Do you have a "big" dogs like we do (Shepard/Akita crosses), PetSafe now has a more effective collar -and best of all, the standard Alkaline 9V battery works for 8 months between charges! Hmmm, I guess this means that, after the 1st year, PetSafe is CHEAPER than the competition I've seen that use expensive batteries that last 4 DAYS (yes Really, some that require you buy special batteries, like from Tri-Tronics only last 4 days!!) to 6 months (Most seem to say 3-6 months. My original PetSafe said 6 months and they lasted about 8 in warm wheather and 3 in bitter cold weather, -20C and below.) I've been using PetSafe since 1997.

Finally:Sorry about "www.greattools.com" - they appear to have gone out of business. That is why they are no longer listed in my site recommendations. Pity.

WHY DO YOU ALMOST NEVER GET MONEY FROM AFFILIATE LINKS?

From what I can tell, they are all designed so that you have an affiliate link, they pay if and only if someone immediately buys without going to any other pages (ie Amazon.com) or you buy "that session". For example, if I give you several amazon.com links to specific books and you follow more than one and buy them all ... I don't get "credit" because when you used the 2nd link it "forgot" how you got there for the first link. Or if they put the book or product into their shopping cart, go away and think about it, then come back and buy, they didn't come through the affiliate link so you don't get you affiliate money. This is why I ONLY recommend products that I turly like and I know I will probably never receive any money from any of them. (If I do once, it won't pay for the time maintaining this page.)

So ... if you have a web site, don't expect to make money from affiliate links. The companies at the other end know they will very seldom pay you anything. The only time you should use affiliate links (or any other links for that matter) is when you really truly like the product and want to recommend it to your friends and clients.