Monthly Archives: January 2008

A few days ago I switched back to my trusty IBM SK-8805 keyboard.  I was using a “cool” looking Ortec laptop looking keyboard.  No matter how cool you think your keyboard looks, go with the one that feels the best.  The IBM is loud, a little ugly at times, but I can type twice as fast on it, with the half the errors.  I am sure this IBM will last darn near forever as well.

My advice is never ever skimp on your input devices.  A cheap mouse/keyboard will give you carpel tunnel.  You can have the most kick ass computer in the world, and if your keyboard sucks, you will hate the computer.  This also goes for monitors as well.  Get the best that you can afford.  Eye strain=headaches.  I have had the same monitor for years, it was expensive and huge (19″) when it was new, and still looks great now.  The computer you can skimp on, if you can upgrade it in the future, or it is so cheap you can throw it out. A keyboard/mouse/monitor should outlast 2 or 3 generations of computers, easily.  

Looks like we are in for some serious snow.  I just hope it is enough snow for a ‘snow day’ tomorrow. 
If we get a foot, like some predictions, you really don’t want to drive in it.  We have just a regular sedan, and I know I don’t have 12″ of ground clearance.

Glenn is growing more teeth.  Two just came in, a little out of order.  It looks like the first molar, but he is very protective of his mouth.  I read online it is usually harmless if they come in a little out of order.  Other than that, he has been a pretty happy baby on the sippy cup and antibiotics. I hope his ears feel better now.  We will find out next month how they are doing.

I am sick of depressing news, so I am going to make it a point to avoid some, if not all of it as much as I can for the next few days. It is sometimes called news fasting. It is a way to relieve stress. I don’t want to read any more stories about toddlers getting killed, or the latest woman’s frozen corpse found. Do these stores REALLY matter to me, personally? Not really. The economy stories can affect me, but I have a fixed rate mortgage and we do not have a home equity line, so we never pulled money out of the house. I am not the lowest man on the totem pole at work, and I currently have work to last me for years. So unless the whole company goes belly up, I should be ok. Remember, even during the Great Depression, 75% of people still had their jobs. I work for a family owned company, so no stock owners to appease.
So, I think I will focus on the good in things in my life. I have a beautiful wife, a cute, but loud, son, a house, some money in the bank, a new car I can afford and a job that I like. I discovered (or re-discovered) my love of watches. I don’t know why I like them, but they make me happy. They are so more reliable, in general, than any other consumer product out there.
Start Pessimistic Dave Commentary:
Speaking as an electronics engineer for the past decade, I have to let you all in on a little no so secret fact. Almost every piece of electronics you buy is made as cheaply as possible. When you first turn on a new piece of electronics, you have about a 1 in 33 chance of it not working. It is almost 99% certain YOU are the first person who has turned it on. This is all thanks to the wonderful world of statistics, most electronics is tested by sampling, usually 1 out of 50 or 100. The industry accepts about a 3% fall out rate of any new electronics. It is cheaper to throw away those 3% than test the products before they go out the door. The good news is, if it works the first time, it should work for a few years. When the warranty runs out, it should break. That is how they are designed. The only products not like this are military, aerospace, medical, and automotive electronics, which have laws/strict rules governing how they are tested. Everything else is ISO 9000:2000, which means absolutely nothing.
:End Pessimistic Dave Commentary.
Enough of that depressing commentary. Glenn didn’t sleep worth a crap last night, BUT Tiffany may of gotten him on the sippy cup finally! I am so sick of bottles. We shall see how it goes tonight and tomorrow. Wish us luck.

We just started recycling about 2 weeks ago (a little late, but better than never starting) and I am shocked how much can be recycled. Other than food waste and really gross paper, just about everything can be recycled. Before we were throwing out AT LEAST 1 13 gallon trash bag a day, packed. Now, we throw out 1 plastic shopping bag of garbage every 2 days. We used to fill, and then some, our 70 gallon garbage cart every week. Now, it is less than half full, and most of that is Glenn diapers.
Once you have everything set up, recycling is surprisingly easy to do. It also makes you feel like you not are killing the Earth as bad as you were before.  If your community recycles, give it a try, it is not that hard.

In Texas recently, many people reported seeing UFOs dashing about. The Air Force says they were just fighter jets training. I believe them.
You know why? I don’t know if there is intelligent life out there. The odds say that there is. The odds also say the chances of us meeting one is next to nothing. Any life out there is either bacteria or gods.
So, to believe in UFOs, you have to accept a race intelligent enough to travel hundreds or thousands of light years comes to Earth, strap on the brightest lights possible to their craft, and then buzz a small town in Texas. You would think after the invention of the camera 150 years ago, in the trillions of photos taken, we could get a clear shot of these apparently brightly lit craft. I have seen photos, they all look like pie tins and model kits hurled in the air to me.
If I was an alien race, and wanted to be seen (they fly with running lights), I would just pop the damn hatches open in the center of Washington D.C. or downtown Chicago or Tokyo or London or something like that. Zipping around farm country seems a bit silly. Also, I am not going to travel a trillion trillion miles to come to Earth to steal cattle genitals and blood. Think about it people. If we had the technology to travel across the vast voids of space, how would we act? Certainly not like how our supposed UFOs do. Anal probes and bull testicles? Makes no sense at all. Of course, a real alien race would think differently than us, but that different?

(In this post, I assume UFO’s are craft of an alien race come to Earth.  There are certainly real UFOs all the time, it can be a weather balloon, a fighter jet, or a Soyuz space station burning up in the atmosphere.  To the untrained or even trained naked eye, some things are just outside your realm of experience and seem alien to you.  It’s human and understandable that mistakes can happen.)