February 2007 - Posts
Alright, so I'll admit I am a tech junky. I love my little electronic toys, and it borders on obsession at times. One of my favorite 'toys' right now is my iPaq hw6515 phone/PDA/MP3 player/GPS unit/protable document store/mobile internet connection. How can you not love one device that does ALL of that?
On to the point of my post. The device has two SD slots -- a standard size and a miniSD slot. For most of teh time that I have had the phone, I had a 1GB SD card in the standard slot, and was waiting to get a mini card until I found a good deal or a wifi card without a massive antenna came out. Well, the wifi cards are starting to come out, but they still have big antennae that stick out the side of the device, and I don't need wifi that badly -- most of the time my WAP/EDGE internet is fast enough for what I am doing (and when it isn't -- I'm probably not where I can get a wifi signal easily anyway!). On the other hand, the 2 and 4 GB SD cards are starting to get very reasonable in price, so I have been watching the specials. I took advantage of one of the rebate specials on buy.com -- 2GB SD card for -- free. Sure, I had to pay 45$ up front, then mail in the rebate, but the 45$ price was good to begin with, and obviously, the rebate price is even better. We'll see if I get my rebate -- I've got photocopies of everything and a calendar reminder to ping me when the 10 weeks is up so I can call them if I haven't gotten it. I also picked up a 2GB miniSD card for a very reasonable price on buy.com.
So the cards are great, and they work fantastic. Now my problem is moving information around. I have an older card reader, but it wouldn't read the cards (it demanded I format them before using, and only would recognize 1GB). So I went looking for a cheap card reader that would do the job. I ended up digging around on newegg, and found a thumb-drive sized SD reader for 4.99$. That's right -- 5 bucks. It works great. The speed seems pretty reasonable, and both the miniSD (with adapter) and the standard SD 2GB cards are read and written perfectly. I dig it.
While digging around on newegg, I also wanted to get a high-speed USB2.0 hub so I could have one at work and one at home so when I take my external HDs and my external DVD burner back and forth it is one less thing to forget. I found a super-tacky (I mean 'cool') Superman Returns 4-port USB hub for $5.99 (can anyone say marketing 'whoops'?). Bitchin'. Joshua gets the awful packaging, and I get an ugly -- but totally functional USB hub for dirt cheap.
In both cases, shipping was fast and cheap (although newegg is a little more expensive), and everything works great. So now I have 3.5 GB of music on my 'phone' -- it is essentially my iPhone (without the gimmicky scheit interface). Oh, the crummy picture of the hub was taken with the phone too, just for kicks...
Just have to throw out a little love for the Green and White -- great showing tonight at the Breslin Center against a top-ranked team. I enjoyed every minute of it, especially since I was at bowling -- in Ann Arbor (of course) and the various people around me weren't quite as excited about the events unfolding as I was (Clinton -- I do appreciate you not giving me too hard of a time, just a little 
).
Congrats to the team and to the coaches -- great win. Please keep it rolling Saturday against Indiana...
(NOTE: I have inlined reasonably-sized pictures, but you can click each for a high-resolution version. All photos are the copyrighted property of Ed Wegryn -- no use without permission. If you would like to forward this on, please link to this blog entry. If you'd like to use the images, please contact me.)
This morning we had a little surprise waiting for us in one of the cubes at the office. When one of the other managers got to work, he noticed that the monitor in one of the cubes by his office looked like it had been blasted by a paint pellet or something similar.
Investigating further, he discovered that this was the result of a regular old AAA battery ridding itself of its negative terminal in a rather exciting fashion. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!), no one was present for the event, but we were able to piece together what occurred. Here is the cannon, err, battery that was left behind.
Here is the negative terminal of the battery, which apparently was also the projectile.
Here is the rather unassuming launch point, along with another battery that was hardly disturbed by the explosion.
Finally a photo of the whole cube to give an idea of the scale of things. On the right, you see the launch point and secondary battery, along with the original battery which ended up on the chair at the lower right. On the left you can see the monitor with the dried chemicals splattered all over the screen. Finally, what you can't see, but I'll tell you, is that the terminal ended up on the floor on the right of the post at the back center of the photo. It must have bounced off the screen and rebounded back there.
All in all, it is probably a really good thing that this didn't occur while someone was using the battery, as it must have had at least a mildly impressive force to launch the terminal with almost no drop across the room like that. Apparently the owner of the batteries had just recently purchased them, but noticed they had a strange bulge in the packaging when she went to use them. Even though they were brand new, they appeared to be dead so she took them out of her device and left them on the desk until she had a chance to return them. Unfortunately, they exploded before she could return them!
Nothing else to say really, except that. The kids have been trading colds for a while, and this morning I woke up with some severely inflamed tonsils. I sometimes get a little irritation if I snore (which is usually precipitated by either sleeping in the wrong position or if I were to over-imbibe), but this was a bit more severe than that, and it is still bothering me now (3:30 in the afternoon). Bummer. I had mostly stayed relatively healthy this year, with the exception of a little cold in the fall. There's nothing like feeling under the weather to make you cranky... Grrr...
I've been bad about posting for a while again, so I'll give the whirlwind update:
Since Caleb's hospital visit and our subsequent home improvements, things have been quiet. I spent a weekend in Grand Rapids, travelling to Allegan county both Saturday and Sunday to goose hunt with Dave, Julian, and Bruce. We had okay luck, taking two birds each day. It was frustrating, as we seemed to have some exuberant callers on either side of us both days, seemingly reducing our chances of getting birds in close, but that's the breaks. The shotgun works splendidly, and I'm a little bummed that season is done until the fall. I have a couple of frozen geese in the garage in the meantime.
It's been so cold that I've had to be very creative to grill outside -- the propane tank has a tendency to 'freeze' in 0F temperatures. I've resorted to setting the tank in a canning pot with hot water in it, but after about 40 minutes, that baby is also frozen solid. Back to the drawing board...
Finally, I'm kind of a closet tea drinker (I have a select few types I like) and recently got myself an electric tea kettle (for heating the water) and a teapot with infuser (for brewing the tea). Mmmm. Hot tea any time I am in my office for more than 5 minutes. I am liking it a lot. With the purchase, I got a sampler of green teas, which I've never tried much of, so I'll be expanding my horizons some. Already, the black tea I bought is obviously much better than the grocery store fodder -- I'll be interested to see what the green teas are like.
Not much else going on. Chasing the kids around (whenever I can) keeps me busy. Sure, Jodi does most of it, but I give it a go whenever I am home. Emma has two teeth and is growing like a weed, and the boys seem to be getting so much bigger and smarter so fast I can hardly keep up. Joshua wanted to play XBox with me yesterday and scored a couple of birdies on Links. It took me quite a while to get the hang of the swing on that darn game, in an hour, he was doing it pretty well -- especially when you realize the controller is WAY too big for his 4-year-old hands. Cripes... It was fun to see him get all confident when I high-fived him for his good play, though.