Occasionally a section of lights may go out in your Artificial Christmas Tree. This is typically the result of a bulb that has become loose from the socket. When this is the case, a standard light tester designed to check for current is all that is needed to locate the bulb that needs replacing. Many tree owners find themselves confused as to how they should operate their light tester, and are unsure as to exactly what they need to look for. Below is a basic guideline to help you test for faulty bulbs.

• Christmas Light Tester Tool

The 2010 Chevrolet Camaro lives in two eras. It’s a 1970s muscle car at heart – big, loud, visible – yet it’s also more polished thanks to the dozens of microprocessors that keep the rear end from breaking loose under acceleration, maintain fuel economy in the mid-twenties, and provide connections for your iPod and cell phone. If you’re a pony car fan, the choice of Camaro vs. Ford Mustang comes down to whether you’re a Chevy guy or Ford guy. Ford offers more cockpit technology even if the Camaro has just about enough on its best-equipped V6 and V8 models.

Chevrolet has done a good job making the 2010 Camaro look like its 1970s predecessors from the outside. Hop in and the first thing you’ll ask yourself is, “How can something only three inches narrower (and a foot shorter) than a Chevy Suburban make you feel so claustrophobic?” I also felt that cramped the first time I settled into an Audi TT and Nissan 370Z, two cars that are smaller outside. Not only is the interior small but the door sills are high and there isn’t much window glass. The $900 sunroof (my car lacked it) should help.

Assuming you do acclimate yourself, you’ll appreciate the nice interior design around the second week of ownership. My son, who raved over the exterior, said sitting in the cockpit felt as if someone was holding a hand in front of his face and he was peeking out between the fingers.

Just Enough Technology to Escape that ’70s FeelingYou get a USB adapter for iPods, Zunes, and music sticks, and a Bluetooth adapter for your phone on the top of the line Camaro V6 (2LT, $27,725 plus $850 freight) and V8 (2SS, $33,945), or as part of a $795 option package on the mid-level V6 (1LT, $23,880), but not on the entry V6 (LS, $22,680) or V8 (1SS, $33,945). Every Camaro comes with OnStar (door unlock, crash notification) and the Bluetooth/USB-equipped or -available models come with the premium version of OnStar with offboard navigation; the first year of service comes free. You also get satellite radio and three months of service free, which beats some European cars that charge $500-plus and give you a year of service worth about $150. There’s no HD radio.No Navigation (Except Premium OnStar)In-dash navigation is not an option.

Christmas Light Tester Tool

(For that, buy a Mustang. See the review,.) And good luck finding a place to put a portable GPS unit that doesn’t block what precious little forward vision the Camaro offiers. My top-of-the-line V6 Camaro had the $30-a-month Directions & Connections OnStar service. You call, tell the operator your destination (if it’s a business, all you need is the phone number or business name), and the directions are downloaded to the car.

It works fine so long as you don’t mind not having a moving map, and realizing two years of the premium Onstar upcharge would buy you most any GPS system known to man or Best Buy, even a lot of premium Garmins. Still, pressing the OnStar button is the best way to navigate if you’re too stupid to learn how to use a navigation system, or think navigation systems are too complex to be worth the effort. Multi-Information Display? More Like Single-Piece-of-Information DisplayNavigation route instructions and an arrows map appear in the multi-information display (MID) between the speedometer and tachometer. (They’re also spoken.) When the navigation instructions are displayed, which you call up by turning a knurled ring halfway along the turn signal stalk (not immediately obvious without the manual), you lose whatever other information was in the display. GM only offers one thing at a time.

The inset photo above shows the trip odometer. This is yet another car that doesn’t offer trip mileage side-by-side with the odometer. Not a good use of screen real estate. What I’d like to see is the navigation arrows sharing space with the speedometer and trip odometer and as you approach a turn, the speedometer shrinks and the arrows grow. You want the digital speedometer because on the analog speedometer, it’s hard to tell differences of 5 mph, and there are places in America where the difference between 58 mph and 63 mph is a speeding ticket. It would have been better if Chevrolet simply embedded the digital speedometer in the analog speedometer dial.If you go off route, even so much as pull into a rest area on the Interstate, OnStar asks if you want to be re-routed. All you need to do is push a button or say “yes” and you get new routing.

My sense from using OnStar off and on for several years is that the service is a lot better now, and the fraction of clueless operators – “OnStar advisors” – who should be flipping burgers at McDonald’s is much lower. Most of them now know what they’re doing. When I asked for routing to a specific hospital, the operator asked, “Is this an emergency?” – something that seems obvious to ask, but it wasn’t always asked in the past. IPod Controls: Making Do Nicely with a 4-Line Radio DisplayLike Ford with its Sync Bluetooth and music adapter system, the Camaro accepts input from many media players, including Microsoft Zune (main photo above), Apple iPods (inset upper right), and USB memory keys (inset upper left). You navigate using information shown on the radio’s four-line display.

Making selections takes more effort than Sync. You’ll be twisting and turning the right radio knob a lot, and you need to know the secret passageway: If you want to search by artist, genre, album, or playlist, it’s a couple levels down. You press the knob, scroll to Search, press the knob, then you come to artist-genre-album-playlist, press the knob, and scroll. After you turn and turn in a long playlist, a power scroll activates that goes from the A’s to B’s to C’s and so forth. Supposedly you can activate power scroll by jogging the knob back and forth quickly but it didn’t work for me.Pairing Bluetooth phones was no problem, in comparison. OnStar used to have a shared minutes program where you could use your Verizon calling minutes via the car’s built-in cellphone, which is better quality.

My test car had problems with two iPods and two different cables I used. The music played fine if you plugged in the player, hit play, and didn’t mess around too much with playlists or finding specific songs.

If you dialed back and forth among music options, I got an odd “no supported data found,” then the iPod music stopped about five seconds later, and the radio started playing. Unplug the iPod, plug it in again, select the AUX connection again, and it started up. Once the music played, it played well through the optional Boston Acoustics nine-speaker audio system. There was enough bass from the footwell speaker to vibrate my jeans. I’m not sure if that’s a mark of excellence among audio reviewers, but to me it’s a sign the car is putting out a lot of low-frequency energy.Overall, the Camaro’s music player functions were just passable, marked down in my mind because Ford is so far out front in ease of use, voice input (virtually everything you can do with entertainment and navigation you can do with voice), and availability. On most Fords, Sync is either free or $395; only on the cheapest model Ford in the lineup is it not offered.

Unlike Ford, GM actually identifies an iPod as an iPod; Ford, which developed Sync with Microsoft, uses the odd term “user device.”On the Road: Wrong Season for High-Speed Testing. In this section I could regale you with tales of how the powerful 306-hp V6 Chevy engine and six-speed manual gearbox blew away every Mustang in sight. On a weekend trek along the eastern seaboard, I got past every Mustang I encountered in stoplight getaways. But it was unfair: There was eight inches of snow on the ground, my Camaro had four snow tires, the Mustangs apparently didn’t, game over. Driving home through 200-plus miles of heavily salted roads created a fascinating, I thought, artistic statement (photo above). This is the same imperial blue metallic as on the top-of-story photo.Vietnam-era pony cars had big engines, terrible suspensions, very little weight sitting over the rear drive wheels, and tires that were laughable compared to what’s available now.

Now, the combination of dynamic stability control, traction control, and anti-lock brakes (plus better suspensions and tires) make it hard to do something unintentionally stupid. Technology has tamed the pony car’s bad habits in winter. Even if I stomped the gas pedal in the snow, the most the Camaro did was slide sideways a couple inches – inches not feet – then the microprocessors took over, and the car settled down.You can order the Camaro with either a 306-hp V6 or 400-426-hp V8 engine.

I got just under 25 mpg in a V6 Camaro with manual transmission in mostly highway driving. The V6 is plenty throaty, and powerful, but if you’re a Camaro fan, you may want the V8. What you probably don’t want is the six-speed manual gearbox. I found it stiff, imprecise, and heavy. Same goes for the clutch.

If you don’t have a chance to test-drive the six-speed Camaro manual, you can duplicate the feeling at home: Put a crowbar in the middle of a bucket, fill the bucket with rocks, and stir. Other ’70s Throwbacks in a Modern CockpitThe Camaro cockpit materials, fabrics, and leathers seemed contemporary. A thin, curved piece of bright trim on the doors gave off a soft glow at night. The dash in front of the passenger is clean and uncluttered. But: The steering wheel is deeply dished and that presents two problems. The steering wheel spokes are steeply angled, too, and so are the phone and audio buttons (inset above) on the spokes, making it hard to press them square-on.

Also, the spokes are so wide that you can’t wrap your fingers around the back of the wheel if you prefer a nine-and-three steering wheel position. Instead, you’ll have all four fingers pressing against the back of the spokes.Some models have an optional gauge package, but they’re buried at the bottom of the center stack (photo, right) and the plastic faces seem to reflect light from one gauge or the other except at night. You have to fold and unfold yourself to get in the back seat. It’s passable for limber passengers for a half-hour at a time. The rear seatback comes down to carry the occasional longer piece of cargo, say a pushbroom but not a sheet of plywood. Drive something else to Home Depot.Should You Buy?If you’re old enough to recall the heyday of the pony cars in the 1970s, or you’re under 35 and just love the look, but you’ve got a cellphone and iPod this time around, the Chevrolet Camaro is worth a look, as is the Ford Mustang and to a lesser extended the larger (inside) Dodge Challenger.

They’re far better tributes than the briefly resurrected Ford Thunderbird. If you’re performance minded, you probably know already that the Camaro returned from a seven-year hiatus in 2009 with an independent rear suspension (good) while the Mustang retains a solid axle, but the Camaro also weighs several hundred pounds more than the Mustang (not good), so they fare about the same in road test comparisons.I spent a week in the Camaro because I was curious to see how much of the rough edges Chevrolet rubbed off its pony car with 40 years of off-and-on development. Except for the cramped cockpit, ergonomically challenged steering wheel, and lumpy gearbox, I was pleasantly surprised. The suspension was stiff but it didn’t rattle my fillings the way the Hyundai Genesis Coupe 3.8 Track Package car did. If you buy, you almost certainly want a model with rear parking sonar because you don’t see much out the back window and the car is almost seven feet wide including mirrors. Otc genisys 3 0 manual woodworkers. Choose a lighter color interior to make it less confining. Get a model with Bluetooth and the music adapter.

Some models offer Xenon headlamps; get them especially if you’re a boomer whose eyesight peaked at the same time as Frampton and Foreigner. When you travel, use soft-sided luggage and you’ll have enough room in the trunk for two people’s belongings for a long weekend. Nothing you can buy from Germany and very little from Japan offers this kind of power and torque for around $30,000. Competitors from Asia, particularly the Genesis Coupe or Nissan 370Z, offer deft handling and gobs of power in a smaller footprint, but the cars feel completely different.

Except for the Genesis Coupe, the competition costs more. Chevrolet sees the Infiniti G37 as competition as well but the G37 is a contemporary coupe with decent room for four (almost) that doesn’t pay homage to the ’70s. (That would be the Nissan Z car that could pay homage, except it pretty much ignores the 240Z in its current 370Z incarnation.)Odds are, if you want a throwback pony car, it’s either Camaro or Mustang, maybe the Dodge Challenger. And most people who think that way are Chevy diehards or Ford diehards. No review will change them. It’s like a religion, only with more wheelspin.