A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
Had a phenomenal Easter weekend. My daughter came home from college in New York so the entire family was together. Her siblings really miss her. The weather was perfect! I have grass on the lawn for the first time since…well…since I bought the house in 1997. And we had a great Easter egg hunt although I believe the Easter bunny needs to be a little tougher on hiding eggs next year.
As for Monday, I need a pick me up. Must have spent all my happiness this weekend.
Yesterday I wasted my time trying to move Windows 7 Ultimate from one machine to another. Techies know the chipset/driver problems that come with such an endeavor, but, none the less, we feel we can overcome these challenges. A day later, I feel I am so close yet I still do not have a machine to perform my coding duties upon so I succumb to allowing the new machine to having a fresh Windows 7 Professional installation and prepare myself to spend the day reinstalling software. This is such a waste of time. Operating systems should accommodate moving a hard drive from one machine to another, realizing the chipset and hardware drivers are wrong, and fix itself seamlessly. Ugh!
Spending my day cloning Windows 7 Ultimate from a mechanical hard drive to a solid state hard drive to put into a new computer. Word of advice: chkdsk first! (and don’t forget to set the partition active)
Square hit the market with a bang. An innovative small piece of hardware took advantage of the microphone feature of a smartphone’s headphone jack to create a way to read a credit card and interact with software on the smartphone. You can buy a Sqaure at Target for $9.99 and I believe you get a $10 credit from Square. They make their money via a percentage of the transaction but you don’t need a merchant account.
Now Paypal is getting in on the "anyone can accept credit cards" game. Paypal is offering their smartphone card reader for free. Soon, your excuse of "I have no cash" to say no to Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout popcorn will be gone!
I went back and looked at my Amazon order history. My first purchase was made in 2003. It was a dvd of School House Rock. Guess what I’m putting on the television when I get home!
Student: I think it is best if I don’t speak.
Master: …
Surprisingly, a black heart was on the donor’s list.
NSFW!
Our air conditioner has died. Last time it died was in July/August of 2007 and the temperatures were so hot that the insurance company paid to house us in a hotel for the 9 days of the repair. This time the weather is bearable and the repair is quicker. However, this does not come without drama. While the repairman was checking on the outside unit, he asked me to throw the 30 amp breaker at the inside unit. When I did, the breaker box erupted in flame and threw a shower of sparks. This small breaker box (holds a 30 amp dual pole breaker and a 60 amp dual pole breaker) does not currently attach to our wall so I was holding it in my hands at the time. Very exciting!
Apparently the breaker did exactly what it is designed to do. After opening the box, not a wire was burned. No insulation melted. I just received a light show. I can imagine that if I were to dissect the breaker itself that the innards would be melted sludge.
So, the breaker kept the house safe. Now, the big lesson I learned: Don’t ever tell the wife there was a fire inside the house!
Incredible sense of dread today like I’ve forgotten something terribly important.
Student: Have I been tired my entire life?
Master: Have you ever rested?
