Over the years that I’ve had her, I’ve bought a variety of beds for my cat, Caldonia. Without exception these have been ignored in favor of piles of laundry, cardboard boxes, magazines on the floor, pretty much anything not specifically designed as a cat bed.
For Christmas, my mother gave her a “Wooly Buddy Bed”, a very cozy-looking bed constructed from a woolly sweater. 5% of the proceeds from which are donated to The Home For Friendless Animals in Waynetown, IN., she tells me. This sounds wonderful and the bed looks like just the sort of thing a cat should want to lay on, but, given my past experience, I had my doubts.
I got the bed home and Caldonia loves it. She now spends the majority of her sleeping time in her new bed. My mother and my Aunt each have 2 cats all of whom are just as enamored of their ‘Wooly Buddy Beds’ as my cat is. 5 cats, all with very different personalities, but they agree on one thing, they love their “Wooly Buddy Beds”.
So, if you, or someone you know, has a hard to please feline (or dog, she makes them for our canine friends as well) I strongly urge you to get in touch with Susie at Wooly Buddy Beds. (No affiliation, just the “roommate” of a very satisfied user.)
I’m a firm believer in adequate illumination for night-time cycling. My personal set up for the last several years has been: A 7 LED red “blinky” light mounted to the seatpost and a 12W Cygolite halogen (I know, I need to get with times) mounted to the handlebars (henceforth: “headlight“). I’ve heard various people rave about head-mounted lights (henceforth: “headlamps“) over the years, but have resisted their pull, at least partly because of the perceived (on my part) dork-factor.
Anyway, some time ago I bought a Garrity 1W Luxeon LED Headlamp because of Woot having a great deal on them and my inability to resist a bargain.
Tonight I finally strapped the headlamp on and went for a ride. Oh, my God! Why did I not do that sooner. My old trusty headlight does a fine job of illuminating the road, especially the road right in front of me, but what an incredible addition the headlamp was. Its tightly focused beam allowed me to see well beyond where I could have otherwise (a real blessing when descending at speed) and the fact that it went where I was looking was most helpful, particularly when cornering and turning. It would also be quite helpful for the game of “skunk or kitty-cat” I sometimes play.
I wouldn’t want to ride with just the headlamp as its beam is too tightly focused for general illumination, but I can’t imagine riding at night without it now.
Now I just need to make the jump to an LED headlight, too. Boy, am I glad I didn’t drop several hundred dollars on an HID system a few years ago! LED’s are so vastly superior (for bicycle applications) in every significant way (more efficient, less heat, no mega-expensive short-lived bulbs to replace).
Last night I spent an inordinate amount of time equalizing the volume of the (1500+) mp3’s on my Sansa. If they all lived together in one directory, I could have knocked it out in no time and just let the software do its thing. However, being the obsessive/compulsive neurotic that I am, they all live in separate directories, sorted by artist, then by album. Anyway, I finally got it done and I’m thrilled with the results. No more wild fluctuations in volume level from song to song. The software I used to accomplish this is MP3Gain. It’s freeware and it:
does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear.
Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.
MP3Gain most definitely earns:
Today I got a mass mail piece from Time Warner. On the outside it said “Thank You”. My curiosity piqued, I opened it, thinking perhaps it had something to do with the ~$18 they’re supposed to be crediting my bill. Instead it’s a solicitation urging me to switch to their digital phone service.
Hey Time Warner,
Right after several hundred thousand of your customers were without cable service for a couple of weeks (or more) probably isn’t the time to try to sell them your digital phone service.
I mean really! My power was out for nearly a week, my cable for over 2; my phone (and DSL), on the other hand, worked the entire time.
The other day I got an ad from Pier 1 in the mail (I’m on their mailing list and don’t mind, I’ve always liked Pier 1). The first thing that struck me about the ad was that it said “spring-a-ding-ding” on the cover yet I had to shake the snow off of it after removing it from the mailbox. The next thing that grabbed my attention was page 19, the Damask Armchair.
I’m not the type to get all worked up about chairs, but when I saw that chair I said, “I love that chair! Later in the week, when I’m feeling better, I’m going to Pier 1. If it’s at all comfortable, I’m buying that chair.”
Today I went to Pier 1. It is, I did. The cat is napping in it even as I type.
I really like my new chair!
…is that you then become, by default, tech-support. My hair stands on end when she calls on the phone and says, “I’m having trouble with my computer”.
Recently she made that very call. Her computer was making a noise (which she couldn’t describe) and, more troublingly the motherboard’s protection software had popped up a warning “something about heat” just before it shut down. Let me just pause here to say, my mother is an amazing, extraordinarily intelligent woman. She doesn’t, however, know nor does she have any interest in knowing what makes her computer work.
Analyzing the facts at hand, I determined that the most likely culprit was the fan on the CPU heatsink. I pulled up the emailed invoice, checked the Intel website, and determine that it is still under warranty (two years old, 3 year warranty!)
I call Intel, hopeful that with the info from the invoice I can get a new heatsink on its way. No such luck, they need specific info from the fan and from the processor itself. Ok, this isn’t a huge problem, and I at least have jumped the first few hurdles with Intel and have a case number. When I handed the computer over to mom, I had nested all of the component’s boxes into the larger boxes and had her save them, so it shouldn’t take long to locate the CPU box and get the serial number and such… in theory. In reality, a few phone calls later, it’s obvious Mom isn’t going to find the box.
In a scene reminiscent of a 70’s disaster film, wherein the control tower talks the sweating passenger through the landing of a jumbo-jet, I (looking at photos and diagrams online) manage to talk my mother through removing the heatsink from her CPU. Jubilant with her success, she gets off the phone with me to call Intel.
Far too soon, my phone rings, they’re closed for the night.
The next evening, she calls Intel, everything goes swimmingly, and Diego (whom she was quite impressed with) assured her that the heatsink should be there in 2 - 5 days. She gives my email address to send the confirmation and tracking info to, as her computer is (obviously) down.
The tracking info comes shortly after midnight and it says that it was shipped next-day air. The next day I check the tracking status and discover that it was delivered at 9:30 AM! Just over 13 hours after she’d gotten off the phone with them!
So, I call Mom that evening and tell her to look on her porch for the package, then we repeat the control-tower, nervous non-pilot, reinstallation process.
I’d give anything for a picture of my mother’s face when she got it back together and it worked without a hitch. Just the joy in her voice was reward enough. She was (understandably) proud of herself, and I was proud of her. Graciously, she complimented me for doing such a good job talking her through it.
My lovely, amazing mother and Intel’s customer service both earn a resounding:
As I’ve mentioned here before, I am colorblind, and as I said then, it’s not really something I like to bring up.
I’m mentioning it now because I’ve found an awesome shareware utility that is absolutely indispensable. I don’t know how Ive gotten along without it! Years ago I found eyedropper, a handy utility that lives in your system tray, ready to tell you the color value of any pixel on your screen in RGB or Hex. Handy for matching colors and such, but less so for actually identifying colors.
Now I’ve found What Color, a tiny little utility that tells you the color not only in RGB and Hex, but also in plain english. For me “166,204,227″ is much less helpful than “LightBlue”. Optionally, it can also display the color’s position on a color-wheel; also quite helpful.
‘What Color’ will be a permanent resident of my system tray. If you, or someone you know, has some level of color blindness it’s worth a look.
‘What Color’ earns a resounding:
You may recall that some time ago, I was bemoaning the fact that I needed a smaller digital camera to take along on rides and such. I’ve got a Nikon Coolpix 5400 which I love, but it’s just too big to fit comfortably in a jersey pocket.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I decided enough was enough and started shopping for a smaller digicam. I wanted something that was small, ran on AA batteries, had a high ISO for low-light shooting, was a capable macro shooter and wouldn’t break the bank.
I found all of that in the Nikon Coolpix L12, which I got about a week ago from Amazon
.
What a great little camera! It slips easily into a jersey pocket, produces fantastic images, has point and shoot simplicity but yet still offers a fair amount of creative control. The Nikon Coolpix L12 earns:
So, I’ve had some Rudy Project ‘Ekynox’ shades for a few years now. Last night I somehow managed to step on them and snap one of the temples, right at the hinge. They’re amazingly well made and suffered no other damage. I did notice that the nose pads could stand to be replaced, too, though.
So I call their toll-free customer service number to enquire about getting replacement parts. Within moments I have an actual person on the line (Celeste, who really should consider working for Bianchi!). Total for the parts: $6 or $7 (I forget, it all happened so fast). My parts will ship no later than tomorrow and I do have a spare pair, so all is well.
Rudy Project earns a resounding “CGSOA”.Rudy also has a Replacement Lens Guarantee that can’t be beat!
For quite some time, I’ve been using Torelli Extra-lite tubes (or Torelli Ultra-legere, if you prefer). Primarily because these were the only tubes at my preferred LBS which have smooth (unthreaded) stems, which I find to be a big plus. They slip into and out of my Silca Pista’s chuck much easier than their threaded counterparts, thereby lessening the frequency of the dreaded valve separation plus they don’t tear up the rubber washer inside said chuck. There were two problems with these tubes:
- They’re a bit on the pricey side (6 or 7 bucks, as I recall)
- They seem rather porous, needing to be topped off every day or two.
Anyway… I rode to the bike shop the other day to get some tubes (after my aforementioned Satanic tire debacle) only to discover that it was closed (apparently Roger was living it up in at Interbike in Las Vegas). So, I ordered some Michelin Ultralight tubes from Performance Bike. I must say, I’m pleased with these tubes. They have the smooth stems I value and they seem to hold air much better than the Torelli’s. They don’t come all nice and pre-talced like the Torelli’s, but that’s a minor point. All in all the “Michelin Road Ultralight Presta 700-18/23 Tubes” earn “Crazy Greg’s Seal of Approval”.
Now I need to test the
Salsa “Pneumaticos Simpaticos” Tubes. Not only are their stems unthreaded, they’re all shiny and
gold-plated!
Buy these shoes. Wear them until they look like this.
If you would like to replicate this experiment, you can get the shoes here (and apparently nowhere else, I don’t know why). They’ll set you back about $90, but if they last you 6+ years of all-day, every-day wear before they start to disintegrate (as mine did), that works out to about $15 a year.
If you own and routinely wear more than one pair of shoes, your per annum cost will actually approach zero!
The New Balance 998 earns “Crazy Greg’s Seal of Approval”!
I’m a frugal, trend-setting fashion plate! (And, unlike
Tommy Hilfiger, I do not have a monkey face… at least I don’t think I do.)
So, I’ve just built up a new computer (yesterday). It rocks, and everything came together without a hitch. Until today that is. I awoke to this “click… click… click…” sound that seemed to coming from the direction of the new computer.
Closer investigation revealed that it was the computer, or, more specifically, one of the brand-spanking new 160G Western Digital SATA-II hard drives. Here’s the lucky part; it’s not the boot drive which I just spent much of the night installing software on, it’s “just” the scratch disc.
So, I go to WD’s website, it suggests I try starting the computer up with the data cable disconnected from that drive and seeing if it still clicks. I do, it does, bingo! Bad drive.
So, I call Western Digital, spend a little too much time on hold being force-fed bad jazz at an uncomfortable volume level, then finally get a guy on the line. I describe the sequence of events and he says “Yep, bad drive, we’ll need to replace that.”
The cool thing is: They have Advance Replacement. They ship the replacement to me, enter an authorization on my credit card, I ship the dead drive back (in their packaging) within thirty days and the authorization drops off.
I’ve always had good luck with WD drives (I had 4 providing years of trouble free service in other computers when I got the new comp.) A bad drive happens every now and then, I suppose, and at least they make the replacement process as painless as possible.
Western Digital gets Crazy Greg’s Seal of Approval!
