Doubting Thomas Blog

Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category

Instead of making resolutions, I’m writing down plans…well, not plans exactly, but stuff that I want to do.

I think most of these ideas are feasible. What do you think?

1. Finish the house we started in 2009. I’d like to incorporate green technology, but we’ll see.
2. Get back to running my favorite seasonal business, The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co.
3. Go to more pro baseball games than we did in 2009. I’d like to see my first major league game. In Toronto. I know what you’re saying…someone my age has never seen the MLB in person? Nope.
4. This one is related to #2 above. I will lose a little weight and continue to improve my cardiovascular health. Riding The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co, it would be nearly impossible to gain weight.
5. Do more writing, even if it just more-frequent posts on this blog. I do want to get back to real writing, though.
6. I’d like to learn to speak another language. I studied French in high school and college, so I remember some of that, but “Quiero aprender a hablar español de este año.” (Without having to use Google Translate.)
7. I have a bunch of audio cassettes that I want to convert into digital files, so that I can actually listen to that music. (Younger readers may want to ask their parents if they have any audio cassettes in the basement that they could look at.)
8. I say this every year, but this year is different (partly because of the divorce). I want to spend more time with old friends. I have not ever visited my friends Jesse, Rich, Craig, or Greg at their houses.
9. I’d like to buy an electric car. A Tesla Roadster would be nice, but I would “settle” for a a hybrid Fusion.
10. We live near a lot of water, so I’d like to make sure we get the canoe wet a lot this summer. The Buffalo River is a lot more scenic than you’d expect.
11. Another thing I’ve wanted to do for years, but somehow haven’t found the time to do, is ride my bicycle across New York State. The Erie Canal is a great way to go.
12. I want to take the boys camping, somewhere that they’ll never forget. I think the Adirondacks would be great.
13. We’ve been attending church more regularly, but this year, I would like to make it such a standard part of our life that the boys don’t resist going, when they are at my house on a Sunday. But here’s a problem I haven’t figured out how to resolve: I like three different churches, but I can’t go to all three on the same Sunday morning. Ultimately, I think it will be better if I am more actively involved with one of those three churches, doing things besides just attending morning church services.
14. Many of these things can be done, and some should be done, with family. Baseball, bicycling, and church, for example. This year, I would like to have time to visit my family members at their houses, but also to make the house we’re working on large enough for everyone to gather here for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

What about you? Will you be doing any of these activities?

I am still blogging, though very infrequently. Why is that? I used to blog a lot. More than one entry per day. Now I’m hardly blogging once per month.

I used to send photos from my phone and at least post a photo. Why did I stop doing that?

I used to have all kinds of strong opinions in my blog. Why did I stop writing them?

I have a 2.5-year-old notebook computer, and the cord on the power supply recently went from what looked like perfectly good to frayed and short-circuited in about a second flat. Bzzzt! and a little puff of smoke, and the next thing I know, I’ve got not only a fire hazard, but a notebook computer that wants some power and can’t get any.

A replacement power supply from the manufacturer of my notebook computer was going to cost me $80 plus tax and shipping, so I started Googling for a better price. I found one on some weird web site that was used and refurbished for about half that price, but I had no idea how good the quality would be (although it said it had a 90-day warranty). I kept searching and searching, and eventually I found a blog entry that referred to a FREE replacement program from the manufacturer, because apparently they were quietly acknowleging that there was a design flaw.

I made a request through the manufacturer’s web site, but they don’t ship them out, their customers have to go to a retail store to pick one up. I went in yesterday after work, and the store employee told me that the replacement program was not automatically FREE, that the store employees were making case-by-case judgments to determine which power supplies were damaged due to customer misuse, and which seemed to be broken due to manufacturing defects.

When I took my damaged power supply out of my backpack and handed it to the store employee, he noted right away that the way I had correctly wrapped the cord around the cordwrap built in to the power brick. I am always careful not to put too much strain on the ends of any kind of wire, because when a wire is bent tightly like that, it can wear out the insulation, crack the conductors inside, or both. And then it’s not a good wire anymore.

Because he could tell I was taking proper care of my power supply wire, he determined that I was eligible for the free replacement power supply. So, my advice to you, if you have the same problem with your wire, is to make sure you wrap it properly before you present it to the store employee. If I had had to buy the part in the store last night, it would have cost me $61 (still a bargain compared to the $80+ online, but who wants to pay $61 when free is a possibility?).