We've been having problems with our Dell Insprion 8200 recently...  mainly to do with the power supply and connector.  For a while there, it could be fixed by pushing the connector a certain way or propping something underneath the laptop.  As it turns out, we were experiencing two problems at once and just didn't realize it.  The first was that the cord on the power supply near the laptop connector had worn to the point that the smaller wires within the big wire had broken.  I had to cut this open and manage to solder them together.  I should probably purchase another power supply since this is likely to happen again since it has already happened to the three power supplies I already had.  The second problem is that the connector on the motherboard the power cord connects to was flakey.  Do you see the four regularly-spaced solder joints?  On the bottom line of that rectangle, do you see the triangle shaped set of three?  The connection on the bottom left corner is a bad solder joint.  I have no way of knowing if this came from the factory this way, but it's for sure there now.

I did fix it for a while by re-soldering the pin of the connector back down (effectively repairing the existing joint), but that eventually wore out again and I finally ended up soldering a wire to the back of the power connector and soldering the other end of it to the chip you see in the bottom right here, effectively bypassing the trace on the board.  The laptop seems to be fine now, it just looks a little strange to see an extra wire in a laptop.

Ok, so I know the correct word for a baby goose is a gosling, but I couldn't help it.  Here is one following its mother (I assume) in our parking lot at work. 

After celebrating Laura's birthday, several folks were surprised to see one of these on their cars when they left.  I realize the city of Helena passed a law making it illegal to park on the street.  I also realize that it is very inconvenient when other folks park on the street.  I just don't know what the comprimise is since most houses only have places for about 5 cars. 

The last time I ate at McDonald's I flipped my burger carton over and saw this:

Since this accounted for 95% of my daily saturated fat, I figured I might die in the car on the way home from work that day.  Curious about other items McDonald's is trying to use to kill me?  Check out their nutrition information here.

Laura has told me I'm not allowed to eat at McDonald's anymore.  That's probably a good thing.

This is one of the simplest and yet most useful things I've seen on a gas pump...  a card reader that will read your card, even if it's upside down. 

I really wish this was illegal (and inforced) on 459.  I see this entirely too often on the way to work...  three trucks wide going the same exact speed.

I'm not normally one to complain, but I've gone through about 3 headlamps in the past 6 months.  I know I have a Jetta and it's electrical system is questionable at best, but the original headlamps lasted a couple years, I would hope to get at least a year out of a replacement.  When I needed to replace one, I decided to go with the nicer "Nighthawk" GE brand.  They supposedly lasted longer and gave 20-30% more light, which should help in cutting through the layer of grime my headlamps always seem to have on them.  Anyway, I was unhappy with their very minimal survival rate, so I figured I'd take a queue from Laura and let the company know their product wasn't up to par and that I was switching to Sylvania.  Here is a copy of my original complaint email:

When one of my original bulbs went out on my Jetta (3 years for some standard Sylvania's - not too bad, eh?) I purchased two GE nighthawk bulbs from wal-mart since having the headlights a little brighter might help me at night.  Three months later, I'm operating on my fourth nighthawk bulb and I put the extra original Sylvania back in the car since I refuse to purchase yet another set of nighthawk bulbs.  The first one I wrote off as "it happens" but now that I've lost three of them (and they're not cheap!) I think I'll be finding out which retailer carries Sylvania bulbs.

Here is the email I got back:

Hello Richard,

Thank you for contacting the GE lighting web-site.
I will be glad to help.

I am forwarding your concern to our product manager for consideration of
replacement. Someone will respond to you with further instructions via US
Postal Service in the next 15 days. Please hang onto the product since
they may ask for its return. If you have already disposed of the lamp,
please wait for the letter for further instructions.

I apologize for the inconvenience, and hope you will continue to choose
GE products.

Thank you again for contacting GE.

Sincerely,
Jacquelyn
GE Internet Response Team

And low and behold about 2 weeks later, I received four brand new Nighthawk bulbs in the mail.  I might not ever buy another Nighthawk bulb, but if I end up needing to, at least I'll know for sure they are a little sub-standard.  Honestly, I'm hoping the next set I need to put in the car will last until the wheels fall off.

Something I might not have told all of you yet...  Massachusettes has even more bizarre liquor laws than Alabama.  Only three (3) stores in any company (read as supermarket chain) in the state can sell beer/wine/liquor.  It was a law enacted back in the 1930s, but it's still in effect today.  And I'm sure the smaller mom-and-pop liquor stores don't want it changed.  Here is a link to the initiative to get it changed.

The past two days, I've had quite a view of some cool cloud formations on the way home.  These pictures were taken with the camera on my phone, so you can imagine how much better these were in person:

We went to the Birmingham farmer's market the other day and I just thought the little pea sheller machine was cool:

The Crayolamobile hit 111,111 miles the other day:

I couldn't believe this one when Laura told me about it...  apparently you don't need to pass the driver's test to get a driver's license in the state of Alabama.  I guess this answers a lot.

This came up because someone we all know and love is turning 16 this summer.  Of course, the person we know is an excellent driver (honestly one of the better ones I know), but considering how many people I knew when I turned 16 that were stopped from driving because of the driver's test (and backing in a straight line and parallel parking), I think this is doing society an injustice and quite frankly putting a lot of us in danger.  I spend about 40 minutes a day in the car and that makes me a target for all of those drivers that probably couldn't pass the driver's test but are driving anyway. 

Here's one for thought...  somebody that shouldn't even be driving gets their license.  They have a *huge* wreck and total their car and the car of someone else.  Hopefully everyone walks away, but the fact that they shouldn't have been driving in the first place never comes up and they get to KEEP THEIR LICENSE.  Very sad state of affairs.

Reference:

DPS PDF link

So for the past several MONTHS, every time I logged into delta.com to check my SkyMiles balance, I get a pop-up window (probably supposed to be a survey or an ad or something) that is apparently not a valid page:

So thinking that Delta has no idea of what was going on (I was probably right) I sent their web support an email telling them that they've had a web page error for several months.  A little over 25 hours later, I get the following form letter:

Thank you for contacting Delta Air Lines.

Our 24-hour Online Customer Support Desk is available to help you with any questions you may have regarding delta.com. Please feel free to contact us at 888-750-3284 so that we may assist you with your navigational or web-related needs.

We appreciate your interest in Delta Air Lines.

Sincerely,

Online Customer Support Desk

Way to go, Delta.  You've addressed my needs perfectly.  And there is about a 0% chance I'll bother to call you because we all know I'd get someone that doesn't even speak English, much less someone that has ever flown on a Delta Air Lines flight. 

Have any of you noticed the drastic difference in quality with some of my pictures?  I just wanted to explain as it's kinda funny (as least to me). 

A couple years ago (5?) I bought a digital camera before a trip to London (unfortunately I did not buy one before my trip to Barcelona - I would love to have some good pictures from there, but that's beside the point).  It was a Canon Elph 110.  I absolutely love that camera since it's small enough I can put it in my pocket and not appear to be the typical tourist.  It took excellent quality pictures at 2.1 megapixels.  The only downside to it was it only had a 2x optical zoom which pretty much meant you had a manual zoom (walk really close or walk far away).  Some (but very few) of our pictures on here were taken with this camera, especially since Chris M. has been borrowing it for the past several months.

A couple years ago (2?) Laura bought me a very nice Nikon D70 that used the same lenses my old N6006 took.  Hello 300mm zoom lens.  Turns out this is only the equivalent of a 6x optical zoom, but it's an amazing difference.  That and it's a 6 megapixel camera, so if I use Photoshop to crop the picture a little, it has the appearance of being a much higher zoom (call it simulated digital zoom since that's pretty much how a digital zoom works).  I absolutely love this camera since I can tinker with it all day to make some bizarre photos.  Of course, this sometimes tries on the patience of people I'm with, but it also has a fully automatic mode that saves the day.  The majority of the good pictures on the blog were taken with this camera.

A year and a half ago Laura bought me a Motorola MPx220 smartphone with a camera in it.  It has a 1 megapixel camera, but the quality is somewhat lacking (but it makes an excellent phone and PDA - which was the reason for getting the phone).  The majority of the bad quality images were taken with this camera as I have it in my pocket almost all the time, so I can take random pictures in traffic, etc.

A couple months ago I bought Laura a Motorola Razr.  The camera in it is very low resolution, but it has incredible quality for its size.  Those pictures have started working their way into the blog too as she is using it more and more.  The picture of the warning sign and of Chris T. in a cast were taken with it.

Hopefully some day the cameras in phones will catch up with mainstream digital cameras.  Until that day, if you continue to follow this blog, you will be enjoying incredibly high quality pictures of cats and poor quality pictures of random things.

I'm not sure I ever paid attention to the Mississippi state flag before our trip yesterday...  I saw it flying at Trustmark Park:

You can't really see it very well in this picture, so here is a better one with a description and history.

I find it very strange in the day and age of "cover up anything that ever has or ever might offend anyone" that this is still the state flag of Mississippi.  Progress in this region can be very much like turning a battleship.  What should I expect considering Alabama has voted down the lottery to help fund schools three times now.  I know quite a few people that at least got one good year of free college tuition from the lottery, if not a full 4 years.  Of course, we went to school in Georgia.

But back on the flag issue...  Is it just me, or does the Mississippi state flag look just like the French or Dutch flag with the Confederate flag thrown into one corner.  For once Alabama isn't last in something...  they had already taken their Confederate flag down in 1993.

We received these letters on the same day:

Let me explain why this is even worthy of a post...

Over Memorial Day weekend when Doug was here, he apparently lost some of his business cards and club memberships out of his wallet (not sure how he lost part but not all of his wallet).  He sounded like he'd want them back, so I put them in an envelope with $0.39 and sent them on their merry way.

Laura's mom was trying to send something to us.  Not sure if she even knew the USPS rates had gone from $0.37 to $0.39 for a 1oz letter.

But surprisingly, the letter up top is the one with just $0.37 postage on it and was delivered to us from Huntsville without a problem.

The bottom letter shown was the one with adequate postage for its weight ($0.39) but it was returned telling us we needed $0.13 more postage.  I'm assuming this is the non-machinable surcharge since their machine probably didn't take it without choking.

Madness I tell you.  Grrr.

I finally got a decent picture of an example of a local fire department (which shall remain nameless) doing something that really annoys me...  they needlessly block off lanes of I-459 at 5pm just because they feel like it.  The cause of all this madness is two cars that probably bumped each other in traffic (probably in a very similar situation to all the cars that are piling up behind the mess caused by them blocking off a lane) that are now currently completely off the side of the shoulder.  Not just on the shoulder, but OFF THE SIDE.  So why then would you park a fire truck in one of the traffic lanes instead of at least on the shoulder if not off the edge of the shoulder?  I have no idea.

This brings me back to a year and a half ago when I got in a wreck at almost this same place (just on the left shoulder).  This fire department apparently is having to justify its existance by responding to every emergency call possible on the interstate.  It was very obvious to me which department had this section of the road since I got a fire truck, and ambulance, and an entire fleet of trainees.  How did I know they were trainees?  They had t-shirts that literally said "trainee".  Go figure. 

Unfortunately, even though I knew which fire department we were serviced by, it was a little bit of a grey area as to which police district needed to write up the accident report.  We were right in-between Hoover and Vestavia Hills, so either police group could have responded.  We were in Jefferson County, so the sheriff could have responded.  But no, we got stuck with a State Trooper.  It took the better part of an hour for them to show up (in the middle of a city no less) to spend 10 minutes to write up some paperwork.  The ENTIRE TIME we were waiting on the trooper to show up the fire truck was blocking the left lane of I-459 since apparently once someone responds to an "emergency", someone must stay there until the call has been resolved.  Oh joy.

Where have you been my old friend?  You used to keep me company at night with a blinding amber light that never wavered, never blinked.  I must say I've missed you and yet I haven't missed you.  I saw you the other day and now you're gone again.  It's amazing how frequently you can just drop by and bring so much enjoyment to my life (swearing, wishing I had somehow invoked the lemon law, wanting to let Laura actually use the axe on it).  Now please stay away.

Yesterday I pulled into Wal-Mart and saw this off in the distance.  Unfortunately this picture was taken with the camera on my cell phone.

We participated in the Arthritis walk on Saturday.   Well, I do use the term "participated" loosely...  we showed up and put in the money we "raised" (as in Laura donated money) and got our official t-shirts and then left because it was raining and nobody in our group wanted to walk in the rain.  Hopefully we'll have a picture from the event too (supposedly will show up in email soon).  At least it was money for a good cause.  Here is the event page.

I've been wondering for the past several weeks now why there were two parking spaces at work taken up by two traffic cones.  Seemed odd, but they were right next to a tree, so maybe they needed to do tree maintenance and didn't want someone to block their access to the tree.  That would have made sense had it just been for a couple days.  This has gone on for weeks.  Finally today I parked near them to take a look:

S co-worker that gave me the scoop.  It's actually a goose nest.  And apparently Mama Goose would give people the evil eye, even if they parked a couple spots away and walked around the reserved parking spaces.  Now I wish I had gotten a couple pictures of her on the nest.  I'll remember for next year since I'm sure they'll be back.

One thing I didn't know about Tuscaloosa (home of the University of Alabama) was that there are very few (no?) roads that go over or under the main railroad line in town.  So what's amusing is when something large happens (like Alabama's graduation lets out - congratulations to Katie by the way) and everyone races to their cars and gets in them and then promptly gets stuck because the city is bisected by a stopped train.  A very long train.  One amusing thing about this train...  they seemed to load the train incorrectly - the larger cargo container is on top of the smaller one - sticking out on each end.

I broke out my Christmas tree again this year...  wasn't quite as prominent as the one last year since I couldn't put it on top of my cube wall to be viewed across the whole company.  I had to settle for it just being seen by people walking by my office.

So we've been told repeatedly by our various friends that the Winn Dixie near us is very shady.  Not only have they greatly reduced their selection of quite a few products, but they apparently don't mind selling expired products.  Here is a picture of the cheese we got back on October 21.  It was dated August 25.  Kinda scary that they didn't check for expired dairy products for 2 months.

We have a squirrel that routinely comes to sun himself on our back deck.  He will lay there with his arms and legs around the railing just being lazy:

So I'm driving through Bessemer, AL (just west of Birmingham) and I notice this sign.  Unfortunately I took this picture from my phone while the car was moving, so it got a little bit skewed as it went from top to bottom.  Just in case you can't read the sign, it says "Gold Teeth 4 for $70, 6 for $100".  Very disturbing.

Here's a funny one with a boat being towed by a truck on top of a truck...  somehow they loaded the whole thing on the top rack of a car carrying big rig with the boat trailer hitch still attached to the smaller truck...

This is a picture of Laura's family's ferrets.  Their names are Noodle and Loki.  The picture is so bad I can't tell you which one is which.

 

As some of you might have noticed (or not noticed - the beauty of RSS), I haven't updated my blog in quite a while.  Well, to sum it up, I haven't had a whole lot of time recently.  I have been keeping pictures of things I wanted to share with everyone, so over the next few hours (or worst case few days) I'll be posting what has been going on with us recently.

So what happened to our cold weather?  About a week ago we had some charcoal out in the "fire bowl" on our back deck and almost froze trying to roast marshmellows with it.  Now it's approaching 80 at the end of this week.  Go figure.  Is a white Christmas out of the question?

I reported a while ago that there was a new traffic light that'll help out traffic going to/from our neighborhood.  It is finally up and operational (it was hanging there for at least a month doing nothing).  At the moment it's too sensitive (changes almost immediately when a car pulls up) so it causes a traffic jam in the afternoon when it should wait a bunch a few people up then let them through, but I won't complain too much.

I thought this was really interesting...  I got a postcard in the mail that tells me that DirecTV will be replacing their music channels with XM Satellite Radio.  I'd been wanting XM radio but didn't want to have to buy a special receiver (and have yet another remote) just to hear it at home.  I also disagree with having to either carry your receiver from car to house or to pay for two subscriptions.  Maybe this will prompt me to actually pay for one for my next car.

Link.

Seemed like a couple hundred.  I'm assuming these were going to Katrina relief since they were headed south:

Interestingly, they were just long enough that you couldn't put two on a flatbed railcar together.  That made this train incredibly long.

It is truly sad when I am excited that gas is below $3/gallon.  (keep in mind this completely filled up my tank - a very small tank at that).

Sunday is my first game of the fall season.  Yay.  This is the league I play in.  Hopefully we'll do better than we did the last couple times.

Please go to the Capital One Bowl page and vote for Buzz over Purdue Pete.  He is a much cooler mascot than some plastic-headed freak.

I have decided, in my first experience with Wachovia since the SouthTrust takeover, that Wachovia doesn't spend their money well.  I guess it's actually our money, but either way, they have money and they are wasting it.  For example, I recently received a letter from them saying that they needed to contact me but that none of my phone numbers worked anymore.  Ok, I understand, I opened the account when I still lived in Huntsville and worked in Birmingham.  So my bad on not updating the phone numbers with them when I officially moved.  I corrected this on the phone, but they still needed me to come into one of their offices to sign some stuff. 

A couple weeks after doing that, I received another letter more or less identical to the first - that they could not contact me and needed me to come in.  A very short phone call to a very apologetic Wachovia representative kept me from having to go in to the bank.  They had apparently sent out another batch of these letters by mistake.

So this brings us to the next thing I receive in the mail from them...  it was actually quite a large packet (it was a full-size envelope - the kind you can put a piece of paper in without folding it).  The body of the cover letter stated the following:

I understand you were inconvenienced by a recent notification.

Due to a processing error, a duplicate letter of notification was sent to you via certified mail.  We strive to provide you with unmatched service for all transactions and sincerely apologize for any confusion and inconvenience you may have experienced as a result of this error.  Please accept the enclosed $30 Visa Gift Card as a small token of appreciation for your patience and understanding.

And sure enough, one was in there:

Now I appreciate customer service, but if they are going to make money off of whatever I manage to deposit with them, why do they go and spend $30 of it when all they had to do was say "sorry"?  Do they have to charge me higher rates for things to cover sending who knows how many $30 gift cards?  I'd rather save the money on fees than get rewarded when I call them and they're idiots.  Don't get me wrong, I did appreciate having the $30.  Maybe I need to call up Wachovia and complain more often.

I like this picture...  it's an accident that it looks this way.  The camera on my cell phone is quite bad and blurred the edges (since they were moving the fastest) but it looks like I'm flying down the road.  I really like roads with tree cover like this...

Remember the huge spider from the other day?  In its place (same gas station, same pump) is a praying mantis.  Wonder if it got the spider...

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this...  it appears as if they have the equipment installed for a traffic light at Morgan Rd and Aviation.  Woo hoo!  This was a terrible intersection.  Once this and the light at I459 get turned on, I will no longer have blind left turns at a stop sign onto major streets.  Yay.

I've had problems over the past few years of my belt loops on Levi's jeans breaking while the rest of the jean is still near perfect.  My mother had been fixing them for me for a while, but thanks to Rob prompting me to see if they have a warranty, I sent a pair to Levi's to see what they'd do.  Sure enough a week or so later, we got a monsterously large box with a pair of jeans in it.  A brand new, pristine fresh pair with all the labels still on them.  Way to go Levi's for having incredible customer service.

 

This is one of the largest spiders I have ever seen outside of a zoo:

It's abdomen was almost the size of a dime.  And it apparently liked Plus better than Regular or Premium.

Having not worked on 280 for two months now, I consider myself very lucky.  The other morning I had to go to the doctor's office and pretty much got scenes like this one the entire way there.  Stoplight to stoplight of semi trucks:

I made a cat tower for Wilson since he seemed to like ours so much when he was over here.  It's mostly plywood and 2x10s (ripped down to smaller sizes) covered in carpet left over when we re-carped our Huntsville house (before selling it).  Can you say lots of fun with the nailgun and staple gun?

One of the guys here at work took off on a vacation for a few days.  Apparently it's funny to vandalize someone's office while they're gone.  Wish I had a lock on my door :)

I'm not sure which is my favorite, the hut-like material as a backdrop on his walls or the fake spanish moss on the floor.

I am very excited...  they seem to have the light poles up at the exit I usually take to get home in the afternoons.  This will make my drive home WAY easier and faster once they get it done.  Let's just hope it's soon.  It looks like they have all the wires run and just have to hook things up.

My latest freebie project...  update our homeowner's association web site.  I only spent a few minutes on it this time around but hope to have a lot more dynamic content soon.  We'll see how that goes.

Thanks to all of you that showed up over the weekend.  Everyone seemed to have a really good time.  Laura and I enjoyed seeing all of you and hope we can do it again soon.

Rob is a very bad man.  He didn't tell us he had an exellent view of downtown Birmingham.  In fact I had no idea of what his place even looked like before Sunday.  He asked me if I'd come over and take a good picture of his view instead of this one with my phone camera, so hopefully I'll have a better copy to put up here soon.

Crazy had a wreck a few days ago.  He is 100% ok (or at least as ok as he was before the wreck).  His car (humbly called the "POOmobile" due to the way his license plate reads) was not however.  Credit goes to Toyota for him walking away from this one.  Notice the trunk is as destroyed as the front but the center part is just fine.  His clothes are even still hanging in the back window.

I believe our subdivision put a dock in before I had a blog...  this was one of the most bizarre things to watch them construct.  The little construction crew created two 4'x6' platforms and drove in 2 posts...  anchored one end of the platform to the posts then drove two more posts (in the water - using a sledgehammer from a canoe) in to hold it above water.  Then they took the other platform and submerged it at the end of the other one and then drove in two more posts at the end of that platform.  So the end result is more or less an underwater platform (which I assume is for embarking/disembarking on the long voyage around the tiny lake).  Maybe I should buy a kayak.  Not sure why they don't want anyone to use them though.  I wonder if this sign will be permanently up.

The original freak is back in true hissing form.  He should be here through Sunday.  Bella is so happy.

I have been waiting to post this since I wanted to see them in action, but it has been a couple weeks now and I haven't been stopped by a train yet.  A few months ago, someone was killed at the railroad crossing near our house.  I suspect that because of this they installed new railroad lights and gates.  It was previously just the white "X" sign and a stop sign that nobody ever stopped for.  Since the gates and lights went up, they pulled up the stop sign, so it will probably be a couple more months before I remember to not stop there.

Just because I posted that last message to the blog, on my way home from work yesterday the sun came out.  Only for about a minute and a half and then it was gone again.  It was so bright I had to get out my sunglasses.  The camera couldn't even register the color of the sun it was so bright:

I am really getting tired of rain.  It has been raining all week.  The forecast has it raining for at least the next 10 days.  I can't believe how insanely wet this time of year has become.  When the rain finally lets up, I might get a chance to mow our now well-watered weeds.

It's been a while since I posted anything on here because I have a new job now.  While it's sad to leave some friends behind at the old one, I am in a much better place now. 

I believe they could not determine for sure where the hive is, so they just sealed up the access holes for it.  Let's hope they don't decide to move farther inside the building.  These bees are apparently the ones that were outside the hive when they sealed it.

This is my next-to-last day at my old job and there is a cleanup crew here to stop a bee problem.  Apparently they have a hive between the brick veneer and the rest of