After living in the stone age for the past three days, I've finally gotten a new (and working) cell phone and joined the rest of the 23st century. All of the phones on eBaY were way too expensive. The cheapest phones (including shipping and everything) were about $40 to $50 and I'm not paying that much for a crappy used phone. I ended up snagging a prepaid Cingular phone for $30. The great thing was that I just stuck my old SIM card in the phone and everything works fine. The phone itself is a Motorola C139 which is the dictionary definition of a no-frills phone. The coolest feature about the phone is that it works. And believe me, that is a great feature to have on a phone. Anyway, I now have a phone, but I don't have very many phone numbers. I think the only number I decided to save to my SIM card was Steph's. And the work number of a high-level manager I worked under in Austin last year. You two are special.

I also got a new alarm clock. This one has a non-broken radio so I can once again wake up to news of death and destruction around the world instead of static. The clock radio also has a neat feature where it sets the time automatically. One might say it was automagic. You just plug it in and after a few seconds, not only do you have the right time, you also get the day, month, and year. Awesome. The box says that I no longer need to waste time setting my clock. I spent the time I would have spent setting the clock by unplugging the clock, plugging it back in, and watching the time magically appear. I did this repeatedly. One might say I wasted more time than I would have if I just set the thing myself. Oh well.

Finally, for an interesting sight, go to the Sunnyvale Fry's on Wednesday evenings. I don't know if it's every Wednesday evening or some select Wednesday evenings (last Wednesday evening of the month maybe). When I went this past Wednesday, it looked like they were doing inventory. What was interesting was that there were a bunch of people at just about every merchandise display wearing shirts that proclaim something about being from a "professional counting service" scanning the barcode of everything. Hmm, now that I think about it, I don't see what's interesting about that. But I was highly interested when I saw the professional counting going on. Maybe you just had to be there.

I'll start off this post with a lizard:

This fella strolled into the building at work last week and hung out by the window next to my office. Someone walking down the hall spotted the guy and we began harassing him, which is the standard operating procedure when encountering a reptile in ones' place of employment. When one of my more gutsy co-workers tried to pick it up, the lizard tried to run away...into the window. Repeatedly. Apparently this lizard wasn't too bright. I have no idea how it got in here. I guess our interviewing procedure have become lax recently. Anyway, after trying, unsuccessfully, to scare another co-worker with a cold-blooded critter, we escorted it to the door and went back to doing whatever it is we do here at work.

I've broken a few things lately. My AC adapter for my laptop was the first one. During a beach trip this past weekend, my cell phone was the next to go. What happened was that I was holding on to someone's hat so she could jump in the water. While I was standing by the water's edge trying to figure out how to put it on and look like a fool, I didn't notice the water creeping up on me. Before I knew it, the brutal waves had engulfed the pocket with my cell phone in it, and somehow one of my shoes fell off. The poor phone didn't stand a chance. And I never figured out how to put the hat on. When I took the phone home, I tried charging it to see if it'll turn on...and it did! It also vibrated like crazy. The screen said, "Charging" at first but then it said, "Pausing due to over temperature". All while vibrating like rabbit on a massage chair. The next morning, the phone powered up without vibrating but the keys no longer work so I can't answer the phone. And it no longer vibrates when a call comes in. So that's the state of the phone. Replacement phones are pretty expensive without a plan. The cheapest I can find on EBay (or eBay or ebay or EBAY or E*Bay!!!) is $50 including shipping and everything for a used phone. Bah.

Second casualty: clock radio. This morning, the clock radio that I have been using for the past maybe 18 years stopped being a clocked radio and became more of a clock that make strange noises. It'll still make that beeping noise that has been proven to cause insanity and wake you up, but it doesn't play any radio stations. So this morning I awoke to a symphony of hissing and static. I think what happened was that I put a bottle of frozen water on my desk next to the clock so I could drink cold water if I couldn't sleep at night. The ice must have melted and dripped onto the clock. Poor thing. It's lasted me a very long time.

Well, it looks like I need a new phone and a new alarm clock. The funny thing is that sometimes I use my phone as my backup alarm clock if I need to wake up early so I really need two alarm clocks. In the mean time, I should stay away from my laptop, digital camera, and PDA for a while. I will be really sad if any of those croaked on me. Sigh.

The AC adapter on my laptop puked and stopped providing juice last week. Replacement AC adapters cost between $60 and $friggingexpensive so rather than buy a new one, I took my chances and tried to fix it. Fortunately, the problem was just that the cord near the plug to my laptop was broken so it was pretty easy to fix. Still, that's probably the most exciting thing I've done in a while so I thought I'd share pictures.

First I took a pocket knife and cut away the insulation at the outside. The material is really soft so it is really easy to slice it down the middle, then at the ends and peel it away. Here's the cord with the insulation cut away:
The stranded wires (probably the ground wires) had become frayed probably because it had been bent too often. The adapter stopped working when all of the wires broke away from the wires at the plug. Unfortunately, there were only a few wires to the plug that were still connected and visible.

The next step is to connect what's left of the frayed wires to the wires at the plug. Since the break was very close to the plug, it would have been kind of hard to solder. And the nearest soldering iron was far away. So I decided wrapped a piece of aluminum foil around the exposed wires.
Having done this, the voltmeter reads a healthy 19.67V at the output. (It's a 19V, 3.16A supply.)

To hold the foil in place, I wanted to just use electrical tape at first but then I figured it might still bend and break again later on. Aluminum foil is pretty weak. So I got a plastic coffee stirrer from the kitchen and used it to stiffen up the cord between the choke and the plug. These are the kind of stirrers that are like very small straws. They're easy to cut to the right length and are relatively stiff. I didn't want to snip the cord so I opted to cut a straight-ish slit length-wise down the straw so I can snap it on over the exposed wire.
The diameter of the stirrer was smaller than the cord so I couldn't have threaded the wire through the stirrer anyway. If this slit wasn't fairly straight, it becomes harder to fit it over the cord later.

Here, I used a pair of pliers to split the incision so it'll be eaiser for my fat sausage fingers to put it over the wire.

Now to assemble the cover. I used a small piece of Scotch tape around the foil so it'll stay in place and I wouldn't damage the foil while I put the cover over it. This step was a bit tricky because it's so small. But once I got one side of the tube on, the rest of it slides right into place...if the cut was fairly straight.
As you can see, the stirrer is a bit too small so there is still some wire exposed. I fixed that by covering it with another length of coffee stirrer.

And here's the fully armed and operational AC adapter cord:

I guess the final step would be to wrap electrical tape around the whole thing but I don't have any lying around. The coffee stirrer I cut was a bit too short so now there might be a weak point around the choke. It also causes the foil to slip sometimes and then I lose continuity with the plug. But I think this is good enough for now.

Yesterday this country celebrated her birthday with another smoke-filled, government-sanctioned pyrotechnic extravaganza. This year's public display of explosives did not disappoint. While there were no smiley faces or dinosaurs in the display there were plenty of Saturn-looking goodies and loud noises. OK, I've never seen a dinosaur firework before and I don't know if those exist but it would be really cool if they did. The grande finale was really grand to the e. They launched so many fireworks that the sky was filled with a large cloud of smoke. Towards the end of smokin' hot blast-fest, it was getting hard to see some of the low flying ordinance through the smoke screen. But that's what makes a great night of fireworks. Sometime this weekend, I read an article in the paper about a guy who goes around doing choreographed fireworks displays for parties. He says that the finale is the easiest to plan because you just launch whatever you have lying around. What's funny is that he cautioned that you should not launch too many fireworks otherwise your finale will be a large cloud of smoke.

Oh, and as the smoke drifted over the observers, it got kind of stinky.

In my last post, I said that About Schmidt was the worst movie I had ever seen. It was a movie that I rented from my good pal Netflix but returned before I finished it. The story is a really depressing story about a really depressing old guy who leads a really depressing life after retiring from his really depressing job. While Jack Nicholson did a fine job of portraying the gloom-inspiring Warren Schmidt, the movie moved at the speed of a Buick on Lawrence while I'm trying to get to work on Wednesday mornings (meaning: slower than a snail stuck in molasses on a January morning). So not only was the movie depressing, it wallowed in sadness for longer than I can bear. I'm sure the movie had a heart-warming ending but in order to reach the ending I would have had to dress in all black, grow my hair over one eye, written horrible poetry and shot myself while sippin' on gin an' rat poison.

Now, having said that, I was wrong about that movie being the worst film I have ever watched. I had forgotten about this one. By far, the lousiest cinematic safari I have ever embarked on was the film adaptation of Battlefield Earth. I'm pretty sure I got this one right because it's number 40 on IMDB's bottom 100 as of today and I've never seen any of the movies ranked lower than it so it must be the worst movie I've ever seen.

Hmm, now that I scan the list, I've only seen one other movie on that list: Rollerball (although I've seen parts of Spice World showing in the TV section at Fry's). That must mean I have great taste in movies. Or that I'm too cheap to pay eight frigging dollars for a matinee at AM-frigging-C.

Last Monday, I finished my fourth year at work and a few weeks before that, I finished my fourth year out of college. Here is a brief summary of what I have accomplished during the past four years:

1. Scraped up right elbow
2. Scraped up right shin
3. Scraped up right knee
4. Scraped up left elbow
5. Scraped up left forearm

As you can see, my BS in EECS has really been beneficial to me and my limbs. If I hadn't graduated from college, I would still be walking all over the place rather than biking and I'd be almost 100% scrape-free. I considered listing my post-employment weight gain on there but it's not really an accomplishment. The way I see it, I didn't really "gain" weight, the unused sections of my once-useful brain simply settled down around my gut. Apparently, it's easier to not think when you're next to intestines than it is to not think near a pair of unfocused optic nerves.

Four years seems to be significant in our culture. Every four years, Americans argue about who gets to decorate the White House next. Same deal for the govenor's mansion. High school and college are typically four years long. The Olympic Games ravage productivity around the world for a few weeks every four years. And Ja Rule gets one year (or four years, not sure) older every four years. So it seems like a fitting time for people to switch things around. A lot of people I know have started jobs, quit jobs, started school, finished school, moved away, moved back or are planning to do so this year. OK, most of those people aren't on the same four-year schedule as me, but it's how these people affect me that I'm talking about. My point is that every four years, things happen. And that I make crappy points.

I, like others, am in the process of turning my world upside down (or at least 90 degrees to the left). Last year I bought arm pads to protect my arms from vicious scrapes. This year I started wearing them. I'm a real revolutionary.

Oh and the worst movie evar is About Schmidt.