Archive for June, 2007
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
I noticed a while ago that whenever I turn on my BRAND NEW HP laptop, the battery indicator say something like, 83%. I say to myself, “What the heck is that about? This laptop is brand new and the battery was charged to 100% when I used it last.”
Today, when I turned the laptop on, it said, “Plugged in, not charging” and the power read 8%. I thought that was odd, because it was around 80% when I turned it off. Is there something draining the battery when I am not using it? That’s really not cool. I mean, I haven’t turned the laptop on for a few weeks, but that’s no excuse to drain the battery.
Today, I looked up the “Plugged in, not charging” phrase in Google and a few good results showed up. Apparently, there are quite a few people that are having similar issues with their laptops when Windows Vista is installed.
When the laptop was on, I noticed the little lightening bolt was blinking. I read that if you unplug and then re-plug in the power cord, the battery will start charging again. Well, I had to turn the computer off first, before I unplugged the power cord, because if I just unplugged it, the computer would go dead.
What is going on? Is this a Windows Vista power management bug? Does it have anything to do with power management at all or just that the people at Microsoft who created Vista don’t work on laptops?
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Posted in Computers, Technology | 149 Comments »
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
As promised (oooh exciting), I am posting a photo of one of the concrete filled 12 inch sonotubes. Yesterday, the guys came over with that cool concrete trailer and filled the tubes up. We have 6 tubes with a 12 inch diameter. They are 42 inches deep.
The lumber delivery is scheduled for two Mondays from now. Why two Mondays? Well…you’ll see.
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Friday, June 29th, 2007
Oh yeah…the guys showed up this morning to pour the concrete footings. What I really liked, was the trailer of already mixed concrete. There was enough to fill up all the footings, and then some.
I never knew that this type of thing existed. I always thought that people either had to get a bunch of concrete bags and mix them up or have a truck deliver the stuff. Pretty cool…they just towed this trailer with a pickup truck.
I will take some photos of the finished footers tonight.
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Today was a good day for the installation of the porch footings. In the last porch post I wrote, I mentioned that we were having some issues with rocks and needed to get a machine in here. Well, today was the day.
When I left this morning, the guys were waiting for the machine and operator to arrive. Darren gave me a call around noon and told me that the footings were in. They had some issues with lots of rocks and a stump that someone buried. Also, there was an unexpected pipe next to the septic pipe that was hit and needed replacement. You just never know what you are going to find when someone sells you a house with no instructions. You tend to figure these things out along the way.
We had six, twelve inch footings installed at 42 inches deep. They really don’t look like much in the photos above, just sticking a bit out of the dirt, but looking down the tube, you can see that they are pretty damn deep. Too deep if you ask me. The ones I pulled out were about 1 1/2 feet deep and were fine. Also, think about all those people out there who just lay a brick on top of dirt. Oh man.
The inspector came out today for the first inspection and left his card that said, “OK” on the back steps. Yeah…the steps. I can’t wait to burn those suckers.
Anyway, Friday morning, the guys are going to come back and pour the concrete in the tubes. Then, they will return the next Friday, after we are back from our little vacation. That’s when the fun starts…the lumber. Also, I have to write out more checks.
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Posted in Home Improvement | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Today, during lunch, I took a ride up to the Lowes in Poughkeepsie, NY. I was looking for some residential window film. I have doing a little research on this product because of its heat blocking and UV radiation reduction attributes. I figured this would be a good thing for the front of the house where the sun blasts.
I parked the car and started walking towards the entrance to Lowes. About half way there, I noticed a full sized, gasoline pickup truck…running with the air conditioning on. The forcast for today is for the mid 90s, so it’s a hot one. I heard the truck…wab, wab, wab…its 8 cylinders firing away. There was a teenaged kid sitting in the front seat.
This kind of action really burns me up. I can’t stand it when someone can’t get off their butt to walk into the store to stay cool…or just open the window like the rest of us. Hey, don’t worry, we don’t mind the stink of what’s coming from the exhaust pipe floating across the parking lot as we walk by breathing it in. Yeah, don’t mind the rest of us in the world.
So, I went in and looked around for my stuff. I would say I was inside for about 20 minutes. I didn’t like the product they had, so I left. As I was walking out, there was a woman, with what I can only assume was her daughter, walking out the door right behind me. I walked past the truck and to my surprise, IT WAS STILL RUNNING. The woman and her daughter walked right to it and started putting their products into the back of it.
I just shook my head in disgust. I couldn’t believe it. I really think this whole environmental thing is an uphill battle. Obviously, there are just too many people out there who don’t give a crap about anything around them. They are totally in it for themselves. So now, the people who actually do care and who are out there buying Toyota Priuses, are being cancelled out by these types of dirtbags.
I don’t even have to worry about any of these people reading this blog post. They are probably too busy smoking indoors with their kids sitting right next to them.
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Posted in Environment, Ramblings | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Yesterday, I ran over to the optometrist for an eye exam. I am 33 years old and my right eye is getting a little blurry at far distances. I think someone said that this is nearsighted. I am always a little confused at what nearsighted and farsighted mean.
The doctor gave me the exam and said that the right eye isn’t there yet for distance correction. I told him that I had been reading up on “Computer glasses” and feel that they might be good for me, since I am on the computer 25 hours a day. A few websites brought me to this conclusion. They are here…
- Computer Glasses for Blurred Vision and Other CVS Symptoms
- What are computer glasses?
There are many reasons for wearing computer glasses, one of which is that they offer some protection against your eyesight getting any worse than it is. For someone who is on the computer over 2 hours a day, such as myself, they are a good idea.
They were pretty cheap…the exam was $50, the lenses were $15 each, the frame was $45, the anti-glare coating was $40 and the one hour speedy job was an extra $10. I could’ve gotten then for less, but I think I left an impression when I kept on asking, “How long would it take for…”
I think I look like kind of a dork with them on, but I am sure I will get used to them. I let a few people try them on and I think they look great. Interesting…
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Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »
Monday, June 25th, 2007
I read this great article I found on Digg this afternoon. I thought I would share it with you. It’s title is…”Tricks to Keep Your House Cool this Summer.” Check it out.
I am going to think about the white shades (cheap) as well as planting a tree in front of the window AC unit.
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Posted in Environment, Home Improvement, Trees & Shrubs | 1 Comment »
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Here is an update to my hated corporate jargon list…
On my way to work this morning while listening to NPR, I heard an interview between the DJ and someone from Eckerds. I am not sure who it was…maybe the CEO or something. I believe they were talking about Eckerds buying out CVS or something.
Well, as it so happens, the woman they were interviewing said some rather entertaining corporate jargon phrases that I have never heard before. I course, upon hearing them, I was forced into an uncontrollable eye roll, but I was still able to drive. Here they are, but they are not the exact sentences…
- Our employees are really the touchpoint to our customers…
- It was really frustrating, because we didn’t want to upset the apple cart…
Seriously, can someone please find out who this person was and call her? Please tell her that these types of statements are incredibly idiotic and to stop saying them. They are making the rest of us dumber just by listening to them.
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Posted in Current Events | No Comments »
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Well, the guys showed up this morning to dig the footings for the back porch. We need 6 footings, 12 inches wide. I walked around with them to show where the septic pipe was and where I thought the septic tank was. Ok, fine.
They spray painted the ground with some markings for the pipe and where the footings are supposed to go and pulled out some shovels and a big, long bar to pry any rocks out that may be in the way. They started digging some shallow holes for the big two-man auger they were going to use.
I left to go to work and got a phone call after about 15 minutes. It was Darren telling me that they were going to need to rent a mini excavator to get the rocks out. They hit one about two feet wide.
I had a feeling about that. Oh, well. The excavator should be at the house tomorrow morning, so we’ll see what happens.
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Posted in Home Improvement | 1 Comment »
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
I told you a few weeks ago that I purchased a laptop and a desktop, both with Windows Vista as the operating system.
I heard it from all angles during my purchase process. The most frequent argument I heard was, “Don’t get a computer with Vista on it…nothing works with it yet.” I love that argument, mainly because I heard the exact same words as I was purchasing a computer with Windows XP installed on it. When I buy things, I tend to purchase what’s going to be popular, not what currently is popular. When I asked the people what doesn’t work with Vista, not one of them had an answer for me. The most common answer was, “I don’t know.” Well, that makes sense. It was almost like one person out in this big world said that nothing works with Vista very loudly and everyone heard it.
Just to let you know, the only thing that didn’t work with Vista was my Quickbooks 2004 program. Everything else is fine.
Bugs…after a few weeks now, working with the operating system, I find that the computer (mainly my desktop, because that’s what I tend to work on) needs to be rebooted every so often. It could be every few hours, if I use it a lot or every few days. It doesn’t run for months like XP did. I seem to remember me having to do this with my old version of Windows 98.
There are a few other little bugs that will most likely be cleared up with updates, but the most annoying one is the restart.
My advice is to go ahead and get Vista. Don’t be one of those people who overthinks these things and gets stuck with a brand new computer that has an aging operating system installed on it for the next few years.
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Posted in Computers, Technology | 3 Comments »
