Product: Boncare Heating Pad with 40-Mins Auto Shut Off

This heating pad is 12" wide and 24" long. It comes with a removable polyester sleeve cover. Inside the sleeve there is also a thin insulation pad for one side of the heating pad. If you want more gentle heat or wet heat you can use this insulation pad dry or wet.

The controller has three temperature levels and an off position.  The hearing pad does not stay on contiously it has an auto-shut off after 40 minutes.  I would have preferred not to have a shut off but they must have added for some legal reasons.

The polyester sleeve is soft on one side, on the side it has printed legal disclaimers which make it rough to touch.  I hope the writing will rub off with time as the sleeve cover is washable.

The power cord is 6.5 long and ends in a regular size plug with two prongs without a ground.

When I set the switch to "hot" the hearing pad became warm to touch in 2 minutes.  The heat was distributed fairly evenly through out the pad.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Compression Packing Cube for Travel

I love traveling with travel bags to keep my luggage organized.  These bags are a little different from the other bags I own:

1) My other bags have mesh on one side, these bags are made out of solid nylon on all sides.  Nylon works better for comparision purposes as well as containing smells (so they would be good for dirty closing as you travel).

2) They have two zippers. One zipper open the opening where you insert your stuff.  The second zipper lets out 3" of height of the bag (similar to a feauture of some soft side luggage).  Then once you fill the bag you can use this zipper to shrink the bag and get a little big of compression. 

In my video I show before and after compression. The compression is small compared to vacuum bags, but every little bit helps when you need to fit a lot of stuff.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: USB Bluetooth 4.1 Receiver Adapter for Car Audio Stereo

This Bluetooth adapter is a receiver, which means you attach it to audio device (car stereo or any other speaker) and pair it with the device that produces sound or music (such as a phone or MP3 player).

To make it work you need to plug in the device into AC source (could a USB port in the car or an external battery). And then connect its audio port to the car's audio port.  The dongle blinks slow blue light when you plug in, press the the button for a few seconds and it begins blinking faster. As it blinks faster the phone detects it as UKIT Bluetooth device.

Note: It is not the right  Bluetooth dongle to add Bluetooth to a computer that does not have Bluetooth.  If you wanted to  play music on the computer and listen to it using Bluetooth headphones this is not the right dongle to get.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

Product review: Blazedrive Wifi Hard Drive Enclosures for 2.5" hard drive

What attracted me to this disk enclosure that it allows an external disk to be accessible in three ways: WIFI, USB 3.0, and via Ethernet cable.  Unfortunately, I could not get it to work at all. I am an engineer by profession, and have dealt with numerous wireless devices at work and at home.

What you get is an enclosure for a disk, the disk you need to provide yourself.  I purchase a 500G Seagate SSD drive to use in this enclosure. The drive has to be formatted in either 32 FAT or NTF format, so I started with mounting it directly in my computer and formatting it. I was able to access  without any problems when it was mounted directly in my computer.  However, I was not able to detect the drive when it was mounted in the enclosure.

The drive supposed to show up as Blazedrive in WI HI hot spots. Per manual I installed the app called "Blazedrive" from Google Playstore.  The manual said that this app should be used to detect and configure the drive (e.g. change password from the default provided in the manual).

The app was not able to detect the drive.  I was not able to see a Blazedrive hot spot neither in my WIFI network connections nor via the app.

I have tried:
1. I fully charged the drie and tried connecting when running from battery.
2. I tried running the app and connecting while the drive was plugged into AC source
3. I tried rebooting the drive and rebooting the phone
4. I tried the reset button located next to the charging port


I also tried connecting the enclosure with the drive to USB 3.0 port directly to the computer, then to USB 2.0 PORT directly to the computer and then using an Ethernet cable.  None of the attempts worked.  I returned the drive and received a replacement which worked exactly the same way.

I also want to add one other piece of information missing from Amazon description and the manual, but listed on the back of the enclosure itself: the detailed specs for the interface:

WIFI 2.4G/802.11 BGNL 300Mps

I have both 2.4G and 5G hot spots in my house and I made sure my phone was connected to 2.4G network.

Final note:  When I attempted to use the app without being able to connect the drive I was prompted to download an update from the vendor directry, not from Google app store.  Such updates are not safe as they have not undergone Google security checks and I did not take it as this is this is the safe computing practicing if one does not want to install software with viruses and spyware.  If the vendor has a safe update there is no reason why they would not put it in the GooglePlay store.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★☆☆☆☆

Product review: Magtoe Women's slippers (terry cloth with Velcro closure)

The best feature of these slippers is the Velcro closure.  I can adjust them to be very comfortable no matter whether I am in bare feet or wearing thick socks.

Magtoe lady slippers are made of terry cloth like material and a Velcro closure which allows one to adjust the fit of the slipper.  The sole is made of memory foam, which makes them soft to step on.  The soles are totally flat, no arch support.

The sizing is true to size, and the width is adjustable with the help of Velcro. Since they have open toes my feet do not get hot in super hot weather. The foam bottom absorbs the sweat.  They have been perfect for the hot summer weather.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Plant Stand 18430 Down Under Plant Caddy, Terra Cotta

These are the best plant stands I own.  They roll well, they fit a variety of sizes of large pots, they aged very well (I have owned them for 3 years).  I store them outside during the winter and they have not rusted or became britle over time.

I am using these dollies on the deck so the pots do not rest on wood and cause damage, and they work very well for that purpose.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Head and Shoulders Green Apple Anti-Dandruff Shampoo

My hair dresser informed me that I need to take action as scalp on the back of my head is dry and flaking. Head and Shoulders shampoo has changed since I last used it. It comes in many different scents and I purchased "green apple" scent. It smelled very nice (no old unpleasant scent) exactly as what I expected "green apple" to smell. I have been using it for a number of weeks and my hair dresser told me that my scalp looks significantly better. So, it is effective and smells good - I am pleased with it. Amazon Pantry has a very good price when they offer an instant coupon, the coupon deal does not run all the time but it is repeated often.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★