Laptop Problems

Posted on by Jordan

A few days ago, Heather’s laptop suddenly didn’t have a wireless ethernet adapter.

That was rather interesting,  mostly because the adapter is built-in so I didn’t expect it to go missing. A few minutes of tweaking and poking around convinced me that this really was happening, so I got online to see what I could find.

Turns out, this is a known issue with that model laptop. For reasons unknown to me, Hewlett-Packard decided that starting in 2010, even though this is caused by a known defect, they won’t fix it for free. If this would have happened a year ago, we would perhaps have been better off.  Somehow heat causes damage to the motherboard, eventually causing the wireless to die. My research indicates this damage will continue to spread across the motherboard eventually killing the sound and video as well.

The Hewlett-Packard tech on the phone helpfully offered to repair the three-year-old laptop for $450… quite a bit more than the laptop is worth. When I pointed that out, he managed to find a $200 discount  laying around somewhere. I was actually starting to think that maybe the repair would be such a bad option, even being three years old, it still surfs the internet without any problems. Then he informed me that the motherboard replacement came with a complementary drive-wipe.

Let me explain something here… there is ZERO reason for that! I suppose someone in their tech support staff realized that, without some preventive maintenance, computers start to get slower over time just to accumulated stuff. Our laptop does not have that problem. And speaking as a member of the technical support community (in a loose sense) I would rather people retained all their data instead of saying “whoa, this computer is so much faster after HP worked on it!” It makes me so sad whenever I hear people talk about loosing thousands of pictures thanks to the tech support people just nuking their machine and starting over. … and I better stop on that tangent or I will turn this into a 2000 word rant…

All of that being said, we can’t really live with the laptop being a wired-only model, because we already know its just a matter of time before it dies.

I have started looking into new laptops, and thought I should share this little chart. Notice who is on the “fail” end of the graph? Yeah… I wasn’t too happy with HP going into this process, and then seeing that (technically again, it was published in November) I realized there might be a reason for it.

The downside is that the $250 repair cost is not going to buy a one-to-one replacement for that behemoth of a laptop. All of my frugal living enthusiasm kind of points to doing the repair anyway. I am honestly still torn about that. The thing is, a three-year-old laptop is knocking on deaths door anyway, so patching it up isn’t a great use of money. The batter life is down to maybe 20 minutes unplugged, and will only continue to decay I am sure. That alone kind of makes the wireless connection issue silly… you have to keep it plugged into the wall just to use it with our without a wireless connection.

Stay tuned, it is only a matter of time before some sort of replacement is selected. (and it will be posted here, because… really I don’t always have that much to talk about)

-Jordan

Quck Book Review, And Other Weekend Notes

Posted on by Jordan

I finished “Pandora’s Star” and it’s sequel finally!

I thought a lot about how I would sum them up. I think my feelings are that it was good, but after plowing through a little over 2000 pages I wanted great! I feel a little unhappy with the author for making me plow through that much book for something that didn’t end up being amazing. I suppose maybe there are people who enjoy having a more substantial read, with well fleshed out supporting characters and tons of trivial sub-plots, but I just didn’t feel like the pay off was there.

If you are ever in the mood for an absolutely massive space-opera style read, I can loan them to you 🙂

Other news this week…

We actually made corn! I don’t know how the entire month of July slipped past without us stopping at a local stand to pickup some fresh corn, but I somehow it happened.

I am forming plans to get some tomatoes from the same stands and make BLTs, but Heather’s aversion to the smell of cooking bacon has been somewhat compounded by a tour of a hog packing plant. Not the most uplifting side of our food production chain I am afraid. The tomatoes should be in season for at least a month, so hopefully there is time for some of the traumatic memories to be repressed or something 🙂

-Jordan

My Brain Is Full!

Posted on by Jordan

Well, maybe backlogged is a better word.

And actually, I feel like I am starting to catch back up now, but I felt pretty overloaded earlier this week… Might have had something to do with my taking so long to get this post up.

I spent the past weekend at the “No Fluff Just Stuff” conference. It was really good, but doing ten 90 minute sessions in a weekend left me feeling a little numb. The sessions were without a doubt non-fluffy. I learned a lot, but it was probably more than I could really absorb.

The last session I went to “Hacking your brain for fun and profit” while non-technical has been the easiest to start using. It covered ways to make yourself smarter/more productive. First up: getting more sleep. I don’t know if I can keep it up, but I really felt like I should try harder to stay on top of that one. The next point I tried to apply was avoiding distractions at work. I now have all my “new e-mail” sounds turned off, instant messenger can’t make noise ether, and my toolbar is set to auto hide. After nearly a week of that, I think I can tell that it is easier to focus on a task.

As sort of a byproduct of that, I found that Eclipse seems to prevent the taskbar from popping back up like it should sometimes, leading me to look into ways to improve task-switching. I hear there have been some great improvements in operating systems over the past… eight years or so, but my place of employ is still using XP so most of the cool things I initially found weren’t going to work.

Eventually I found out Microsoft labs had a product “Alt-Tab Replacement” in their Power Toys for Windows XP collection. It isn’t perfect, but it improved my situation fairly drastically.

And, that little tip is probably only useful to me… but hey the subscription was cheap right? 🙂

A (nearly) free weekend coming up, can’t wait to see what Heather and I end up filling it with!

-Jordan

Review: The Millionaire Next Door

Posted on by Jordan

As I mentioned in my initial multi-book review from summer vacation, I really liked this book.

What has started to become apparent to me as I have tried to tell people about it, is that they seem to start out expecting that I read some book about how to become a millionaire, or in some way convinced myself that I found the secret to getting rich.

That is in no way the case! This book is basically just a compilation of facts about people who have a net worth of over one million dollars. The authors provide some commentary, trying to explain why they think trends appeared, and in some cases offer advice.

If I were going to give a one sentence summary it would go like this: “This is the book to read once you are doing the Dave Ramsey thing, and want to start thinking about what the rest of your life looks like”

Again, I want to stress that this isn’t about “getting rich”!!

Basically what you start to realize is that the people who actually accumulate wealth are the people who don’t spend it! Living below their means, and working hard, are  two of the hallmarks of the people this book looked at. In no way do you leave with the impression that doing a few things will let you live in a huge house and have all the toys your heart desires. They are quite clear that most of the people living that way have no hope of sustaining it, ether spending everything they make, or being heavily subsidized by a parent or grandparent.

Like a lot of what you get from Dave Ramsey, nothing in the book is really outside of common sense, but it’s easy to get blinded by day to day life. I found this book so exciting to read, as just an encouragement that the plan Heather and I are pursuing really is where we want to be.

Probably the single biggest point thing I got out of the book, as far as things I can use today, was their information about houses and behavior. Basically, if you live in a “high-consumption” neighborhood, you will spend like the people around you. Apparently it is really hard to live conservatively when surrounded by people who aren’t. Considering there aren’t vast enclaves of budget  conscious people in most cities, the authors  recommended simply living in a house that cost no more than double your annual household income. Last year when Heather and I were looking for houses, I can assure you that the banks will be happy to loan you a lot more than that!

I cannot recommend this book enough if you are looking for encouragement to stick with a budget, or just sticking with a lifestyle that doesn’t have as many toys as the people around you. Outside of that I thought it was just interesting to have my perceptions rocked as to who in this nation actually has wealth as opposed to putting on a show of wealth.

-Jordan

Deep Thoughts… Or Something

Posted on by Jordan

Over the weekend, Heather and I drove out to western Nebraska for a wedding.

But before that, let me setup my frame of mind…

First I saw this video:

And then, the Internet being what it is, the remix video:

So, back to my drive out west. The song was kind of stuck in my head, and at the same time I was driving into an awe inspiring lightning show. I mean a really incredible storm! Clearly I all to easily forget how intense a storm can be.  I was really enjoying the lightning show, and started thinking about the guy in the video.

Now, I am afraid he may have been under the effects of some mind-altering chemicals at the time of that filming, but I don’t think that means he was wrong really. Rainbows, storms, all the other things you see outside… they are so amazing and I kind of take them for granted too often.

I actually have started investigating some ways to force myself to get outside, and outside of city limits, but I won’t post any details until I actually get something going. For now lets just leave it at enjoying the amazing show weather patterns in the Midwest can produce, and in awe of the splendor God has built around us.

-Jordan

Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Pie (step-by-step)

Posted on by Jordan

I had some time tonight, so I actually made the pie! Just for completeness, I will include the recipe again. If you saw my research post, I should note that this recipe isn’t quite the same as what I posted before. What you see here is what I adapted into.

Jordan’s Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Pie

(modified from this recipe over at all-recipe, and using advice from a commenter)

Ingredients

  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups  Splenda
  • 16-oz natural creamy peanut butter (one jar of the Smucker’s Natural)
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 standard pie crust

Directions

  • Beat together cream cheese and Splenda.
  • Mix in peanut butter and milk. Beat until smooth.
  • Spoon into pie shell
  • Cover, freeze until firm.

That is the recipe, now to actually start:

I made the crust first:

My recipe for the pie crust said to bake for 8-10 minutes. Apparently They were planning on my having rolled the crust out a lot thinner, because I baked this for over 20 minutes! I think it could have gone longer, but I didn’t want to risk burning it. Given that this pie will be served frozen I don’t suppose it matters if the crust is a little soft. The actual recipe calls for Graham Cracker crust, and I am sure that would work fine. Heather is always looking for ways to avoid sugar, and I thought it would be more fun to make a real pie crust, so that’s what I did. (this is also what I did last year)

As the crust was baking, I started on the filling:

I forget how nice a powered mixer can be sometimes, although I am glad the one we have is small. Splenda behaves just like powdered sugar, and can usually be substituted by volume anywhere the sugar is used. Heather kind of turned against it a while back, but if I coat it in enough peanut butter she will still give it a try 🙂

Speaking of peanut butter that was the next step:

As I was in the process of adding the peanut butter, I realized that the recipe I hacked up to get this actually used half a tub of ‘whipped topping’ in the mix. With that in the back of my mind, I started increasing the amount of peanut butter in the measuring cup a little. Once I had one and a half cups I realized there was only about half a cup of peanut butter left in the jar anyway. What you see here could be said to have 100% more peanut butter!!

Here is the point where the long cook time of the crust was starting to be a problem. Despite my having posted a ‘done’ picture of the crust, it was still in the oven when I snapped the picture of the filling all ready to go. I pulled it out a minute later, but I don’t think you should really put the filling into a hot crust. It might be ok, but I was afraid it would make the filling melt into strange layers or something else weird. I ended up putting the crust into the spot that I had cleared out in the freezer, sans-filling for a while so it wouldn’t try to cook the filling.

The finished product:

You could top this with ether low-sugar, or sugar-free whipped-topping before serving, but I think leaving it off makes it easier to sell as low-sugar. 🙂

-Jordan

Book Reviews

Posted on by Jordan

As I mentioned in the vacation summary post, I read quite a few books that week.

I thought I could throw up some quick thoughts about them here.

The Lost Fleet Series:

The basic hook in these books remains the complications of communication over solar system sized distances, given the painfully slow speed of light. The rest of the story was ok, but probably wouldn’t have held my attention. It helps that the books are an easy read, of the six books in this saga, I read two of them in a single day (one day per book). Strong points of these books: deals with religion without being disrespectful. The author did invent a faith that is very much not along the lines of Judeo–Christian, but sci-fi books gain points with me just for treating faith with some respect. Another strong point is the author keeping the book inside a PG-13 rating. Some of the other books didn’t and I just don’t see a reason for that. In short, the books are a fun read, but nothing too deep.

The Millionaire Next Door:

This book was amazing! I plan to devote an entire post to it later. The quick summary: “If you want to get excited about saving and living a thrifty lifestyle, read this book!” The book is mostly just detailing things the authors have discovered from years of doing marketing research, but I found it really really interesting, and motivating.

Altered Carbon:

The book boils down to a kind of private-eye story, that incorporates a lot of “way out there” science fiction elements. The story had lots of conspiracy, and suspense… kept me pushing to finish for sure. I keep trying to cut the author some slack for just wanting to have a conflict between religion, and tradition against technology, but I felt like the book really beat up on the Catholic faith more than necessary. I know that the kinds of things they were doing in the book would cause some real conflicts for people and churches, namely the ability to move your contentiousness to another body, more or less at-will. It made for an interesting problem to wrestle with, but given how many other things were made up, I don’t see the point in calling out an existing church. That wasn’t a major element of the book it just annoyed me. I should also include a warning that the language is course, and the book includes both sex and torture scenes that were a little more graphic than I prefer to read. Despite all my complaints, I do plan to pick up the sequel to this eventually.

Black Hawk Down:

The book on which the movie is based. As you might expect, it goes into much more detail about the battle depicted in the movie. I was really shocked at how inexperienced the Rangers were in this book. A year or so ago, I read the book “The Unforgiving Minute” that goes into detail about one man’s path through West Point, Ranger school and then on to Afghanistan. What that book tried to explain, and Black Hawk Down did a better job of explaining, is that, as hard and good as the training provided to the army’s best is, nothing actually prepares you to get shot at. We now have 50 years of practice training special forces, and it still hasn’t changed the fact that “green” troops are going to make a lot of mistakes in their first battle.

The second thing that really stood out to me in the book is how vastly different the culture of Somalia is from ours. The book is full of examples of women and children gladly acting as shields for the tribal fighters. Pregnant women running through gunfire to bring more ammo up to the fighters in cover. Frankly the behavior seemed more alien than some of the stuff I was reading in my sci-fi books. I haven’t nailed down what I think about that, or how a we deal with that without going places nobody wants to be… I probably won’t write whatever conclusions I come up with here…

I thought it was a great book, and I guess I would say if you could handle the violence levels in the movie, and you want to spend some time thinking about the actual conflict, you should check it out.

-Jordan

Peanut Butter Pie

Posted on by Jordan

Heather’s birthday was last week.

Last year, I made a peanut butter pie for her birthday. Heather still, a year later, tells me how amazing that pie was! Due to Independence Day festivities the week of her birthday was a little crowded, so I wasn’t able to make the pie on her birthday this year. The Broadway show “The Jersey Boys” is showing in Des Moines though, and I think Heather was sufficiently overjoyed at going to that show she didn’t miss the pie too much.

I still really want to make one this year, so I started trying to find the recipe I used last year… and after close to an hour of looking I pieced together that I didn’t use a recipe! So in the interest of being able to reproduce the pie again, let me post where I started from, and what modifications I made:

Jordan’s Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Pie

(modified from this recipe over at all-recipe, and using advice from a commenter)

Ingredients

  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups  Splenda
  • 1 cup 16-oz natural creamy peanut butter
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crusts
  • 1 Standard pie crust.

Directions

  • Beat together cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar. Mix in peanut butter and milk. Beat until smooth. Fold in whipped topping.
  • Spoon into one large pie shell
  • cover, freeze until firm.

I haven’t actually made the pie again, but I am comfortable saying this is what I did last year. I will update the post with any adjustments and pictures as soon as I actually get the pie made 🙂

-Jordan

(I kind of stealth-updated this recipe, what you see here is what I actually used)

Gallery Down

Posted on by Jordan

Yeah, so the upgrade didn’t go so well…

As it stands right now the gallery isn’t working at all.

I am going to try and restore from backups but the file system on the server is a mess right now.

Just thought you might be interested, or perhaps you tried to click on a picture link and got nowhere.

-Jordan