tintedpane.com

The weekend trip consisted of mostly driving, driving, and Initial D. Interstate 30 was the usual high-speed game of follow the leader; the state roads were nicely banked and sufficiently curved. Attaching the corners in a more than adequately powerful Odyssey (who thought of that spelling BTW???) produced wide grins across my face, especially combined with the dusk and moderate altitude changes. The first night was spent in a cabin in Le Petit State Park. Cozy little place. Would’ve been more cozy for two, but you take what you get. Watched the end of Initial D 1st Stage and started 2nd Stage. Hiked around and saw a waterfall the next day, and then drove to Hot Springs. Roads were again of the state variety which had the _same_ curves and elevation rises and falls. (I know, I know, Itsugi would’ve said corners!) Hot Springs is a quaint little place. Ate some local chinese buffet, and then watched nearly all the rest of 2nd Stage. Drove around to the top of a mountain overlooking Hot Springs the next day (Saturday morning), then drove home.

Overall nice and relaxed. Really didn’t see too much, but I didn’t really care. I can now add AR to my list of been there, done that places.

Good news for the indy shops and weekend tinkerer’s that work on late model cars. The electronics and software are soon to be opened up due to several bills in congress.

You’d think that technology would have reduced cost of ownership but the author argues differently:

bq. For mechanics, however, the advancement has caused headaches, made worse by the difficulty in getting information from automakers. For owners, the cost of service has soared.

That whole google define thing that I mentioned here was actually the graduation of google glossary from google labs. (And consequently, the lab link for the glossary now give a server 500 error.)

And here’s a dictionary for those weird acronyms floating around the web that you can never quite figure out — BFH, IANAL, RTFM, WTF — ok j/k on that last one: urbandictionary.com (urbandic.com also works for those lazy few.)

I’ll bore you guys with the weekend update later today.

After maxing out on Friday, I now have a more recent baseline to make comparisons with. I’d like to increase my one-rep-max to 25lbs over my best last year. (Any way I can to not reveal hard numbers :-p) Squat twice my weight, and probably most importantly, reach the rim with my wrist. All of this hopefully by May 15th.

Musically, get through all of Uncle Tim’s First Year so I can pick up songs I hear and not have to look up tabs and such nonsense. I’ve made some progress — picked up Hoobastank’s The Reason without lookin’ up anything. (Well, I kinda looked in the book to see the other chords in E major, but that’s it.)

Anyways, that’s all the stuff that doesn’t really matter to you, only to me.

I got three packages in the mail today, which of course makes me a happy person. First one I opened was from Wisconsin — I had sent in a pair of headphones to get repaired because the wiring had come loose from one of the drivers. I was expecting them to have it soldered back on and hoping that they replaced the cord because it had hardened from repeated abuse over the years. Much to my surprise, I opened the bubble wrap and saw that they had shipped me a new pair. I must say I am most impressed: I bought these new for $60 and paid $6 for shipping it to them when it broke. Granted that it probably cost less than $10 of materials, I was still very much pleased with their level of customer service. Good product, combined with great lifetime warranty, and the ability to honor said warranty equal a great company and a very satisfied customer.

Now on to more sour news. I have been on an Ebay frenzy as of late, purchasing Initial D, the Initial D Soundtrack, and two batteries from different sellers. I’ll stick to ranting about the batteries. One was advertised as “Brand New”. The other was “Like New”, only opened to test in computer. Both were OEM batteries. And both came heavily used. The “Brand New” one had been charge-cycled 35 times according to the battery monitor. The other, 69 times. Very disappointing to say the least. Hopefully the sellers will do the right thing and send me new ones.

Conclusions:

1. Koss makes good stuff and gives great customer satisfaction, even though their products aren’t the most aesthetically pleasing.
2. Don’t buy OEM IBM Thinkpad batteries on Ebay. Instead buy aftermarket ones from reputable resellers. Or better yet, wait for me to be the guinea pig and try out an aftermarket battery first and report back.

Being bored at work, I stumbled upon this.

Everything I wanted to know about lithium-ion batteries that power my laptop computer and more. These are the rechargeable batteries technologies developed over the years: nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries, nickel-metal-hydride (Ni-Mh) batteries, and lithium-ion (Li-I) batteries.

You can do your own reading for the nickel* based batteries. I just wanted to summarize the points for prolonging lithium-ion battery life in your computer:

• Do keep it “topped” up. Lithium-ion does not bode well to deep discharges.
• Deep discharge the battery once a month to “reset” the battery gauge of the computer. (somewhat contrary to the above point; also the battery has absolutely no memory so this is purely for keeping the battery gauge accurate)
• Try to keep the battery cool when using it. Same thing applies to storage. Heat kills lithium-ion batteries.
• Know that the battery has limited shelf life of 2-3 years from the date of manufacture
• If storing the battery, store it with a 40% charge in a cool environment

More new ways of using Google:

• identifying area code locations
• VIN’s (Vehicle Identification Numbers)
• flight tracking (use airline and flight number)
• UPC search
• and package tracking for UPS, FedEx, USPS

This is in addition to stuff like unit conversion, calculator…

• dictionary (though I still prefer m-w.com): append the *define:* operator before a word
• glossary
• and others

Enjoy!