When Geeks Cry (Part 3)

(A little technology rant about how it has recently let me down.)
Part 1
Part 2
I’m big on backups.  I backup incrementally every few days, and a full backup once a month.
Of course, I wasn’t always like that.  Backups were more of a chore when trying to backup your PC to 50 floppies, or 20 CDs.  Man, [...]

When Geeks Cry (Part 2)

(This is a rant about technology, and how it has recently let me down.)
Part 1 here.
I had left our laptop for days trying to get the hard drive to work again.  It had been running SpinRite for several days and was making slow progress.  There were several sectors of the hard drive with a big [...]

When Geeks Cry (Part 1)

I consider myself a geek.  I’m an engineer by trade, and so I’m always trying to figure how stuff works, what’s wrong with it and how to fix it.  That’s just how I roll.
So when my wife called last week saying that she was having trouble with our laptop, I wasn’t too worried.
And then when [...]

Mr. Fix-It

I’m not one of those “Mr. Fix-It” guys who can fix anything.  I’m pretty cautious when it comes to home appliance repair.  So if I had gotten those 4 words (“Honey, the washer’s broke.”) a couple of weeks earlier, I would have made a call to the Sears appliance repair.
But last Sunday at a soccer [...]

DIY Whiteboard

In preparing for a new school year, my wife decided that we needed a new white board.  We had one 3′x3′ on the back of an Ikea easel, but she decided that it wasn’t going to be sufficient.
Big white boards, the kind that you get in a school are expensive, and so we decided to [...]

Budget Reboot

I figured that since I was leading a life group on Finances, I ought to take a good look at ours and make sure everything added up (literally).
I’ve prescribed to the envelope budgeting system over the years, using “virtual envelopes” in a computer rather than real ones, but there haven’t been many (any) good tools [...]

Sometimes THIS would be nice

There are times where I would really like something like this:

But unfortunately, where I work, it would probably cause more interruptions than it would prevent.  (“Hey, what’s this?  You trying to actually get some work done?”)
[via lifehack.org]

Solution for Sorry Sound Card

I’ve been really happy with my Dell Dimension E510, which I’ve had for almost a year. It is a solid machine and much faster than our 1998 350MHz Compaq Presario. The Presario has now been relegated to the kid PC and serves as a typing tutor, Spanish teacher, and all around home school [...]