Well, I fought through the laziness and went to change the clock on the coffee maker. It took about 10 minutes but I got it done. The only problem is that I’m not sure that I didn’t eff up some of the other settings while trying to figure out how to change it.
The hardest clock to change now is the automatic on/off timer for the fish tank light. It’s an analog circular device that is not very accurate. Usually the lights go on and off within 30 minutes of the preset time, so it always takes a few days of trial and error to get it right.
Whenever it’s time to change the clocks, I always have a hard time getting every clock. The alarm clock is usually taken care of automatically since it’s one of those that syncs with the atomic clock using radio signals. If that doesn’t work, I do it manually. The clock in the living room I also do manually right away since it is the clock I look at most. Watches are done the first time I wear them after the time change. The two that always present a problem are the coffee maker, and the microwave oven.
The coffee maker is just hard to change, so it always waits a day or two while I look for the manual. The dangerous thing about this is that the coffee is not ready when I wake up, which makes for a cranky Josh. The microwave is a problem because I only use the clock on it while I’m washing the dishes, but because my hands are all wet and soapy, I don’t change it when I look at it and see that it’s off, and by the time I am done washing the dishes, I have forgotten all about it.
I guess now would be a good time to change both, but I’m lazy and will probably just go to bed instead.
About three weeks ago I upgraded the RAM in my iBook to the maximum 1.5GB. I had 768MB but I noticed that when I ran Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Safari, Firefox, Mail, iCal, Adium and another app or two, there was a five second “pinwheel” when switching apps, and i figured that upgrading the RAM was a pretty cheap way to increase performance. Every since then, every few days, I encountered a weird problem.
The problem happens without any clear event to trigger it, and happens every few days for me. The symptoms are as follows:
- The mouse response to the trackpad starts to jump around. It is as if the mouse on the screen freezes for a moment, then jumps across the screen in an attempt to catch up with the trackpad. This makes using the mouse very difficult.
- The kernal_task process starts taking up about 65% of the processor.
- The AirPort indicator in the menu bar loses at least one level of reception.
The only way to completely solve the problem, for the moment, is with a reboot. Stopping the AirPort does fix the kernal_task issue and mouse movement issue, but they both come right back as soon as you turn it back on. Also, when you turn the AirPort off and turn it back on, it may not reconnect to the wireless network.
I did a whole bunch of research and found quite a few threads in various forums that others were having a similar problem.
Continue reading…
Every now and then I get a “pre-approved credit card” offer in the mail and am always amused by the rate that comes with these cards. In most cases it’s 10% for the first 6 months, then 25%, or worse.
Today I got one in the mail that I am still in shock over. The APR is 9.9% but jumps to 19.9% if you miss two months, but drops back to 9.9% if you pay in full or make minimum payments for 3 consecutive months. So far, that’s not bad. But then I got to the fees section…holy carp!!!
Account set up fee: $29 (one time fee)
Program fee: $95 (one time fee)
Annual fee: $48
Participation fee: $72
That’s $124 just to get the card, and then $120 per year to keep the card. They have got to be kidding. Where’s my shredder?
Well, it’s been more than a week since the incident and it seems to be fine. One thing I have noticed is that when I go out in the morning, and I go to turn it on, pressing the “play” button does not do anything. I have to press the “menu” button, have the Apple logo show up for a moment, but then it goes back to exactly where it was when it was last shut off, even if it was in the middle of the song. I don’t remember if it did that before the incident, but I know that the regular iPod does not do that.
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Today was a good test for the iPod.
When I woke up, the display of the iPod was back to normal. The scroll wheel was also functioning fine. If I didn’t know that this iPod had been in the toilet for a few minutes, I wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with it.
I had to go into the office today and used the iPod for the 25 minute walk there without a problem. After finishing in the office, I walked to the fish store and back to the office (total of 60 minutes) and the iPod functioned flawlessly. I also listed to it on the way home from the office without issue.
I’ll need to test it for a few more days before I feel it is fine, but with today’s test, it worked flawlessly.
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It’s been charging a couple of hours now and the display now shows the large full battery icon and it says “Charged” at the top. I unplugged it from the USB cable, and it seems to be working fine right now. The scroll wheel is still a bit weird and the display hasn’t changed from before, but it is playing music.
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Went to see U2 at Madison Square Garden last night. The show was great. I was in section 336 row J, which was off to the right side of the stage, at about the opposite 40 yard line (assuming the big scoreboard in the center of MSG is the 50 yard line). We were pretty far away, but we got see the entire stage and the light show was great.
Horrible camera phone shot of stage
There was a good mix of HTDAAB songs, recent album songs, and older songs. I checked out the published set list on u2.com before heading to the show so I had an idea what to expect, but it changed right before the show because it looked to me like a stagehand taped down a setlist about 15 minutes before U2 took the stage, only to pull it up and tape down a new one about 5 minutes before. It also looked like Bono called an audible for the very last song of the night because he whispered something to The Edge then shouted over to Larry and Adam before playing Vertigo a second time. According to the published set list on u2.com it was supposed to be “40″.
For me, the best part of the evening was Where The Streets Have No Name because Bono let the audience sing the first two verses and sounded great, and the lights really came up so you could see almost 20,000 people singing in unison, which was kinda cool.
Actual set list from u2setlists.com:
City Of Blinding Lights, Vertigo/Rockaway Beach (snippet), Elevation, The Electric Co./Bullet With Butterfly Wings (snippet), Gloria, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For/In A Little While (snippet), Beautiful Day, Miracle Drug, Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own/Torna A Surriento (snippet), Love And Peace Or Else, Sunday Bloody Sunday/Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (snippet)/Across The Universe (snippet), Bullet The Blue Sky/The Hands That Built America (snippet)/When Johnny Comes Marching Home (snippet), Miss Sarajevo, Pride (In The Name Of Love), Where The Streets Have No Name, One/She’s A Mystery To Me (snippet)
Encores: The First Time, Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, Fast Cars, With Or Without You, All Because Of You, Party Girl, Yahweh, Vertigo
I have resisted temptation to try the iPod for several days, and today was the day that I said would be enough time for it to dry out. In my mind, if it wasn’t dry after four days, then it wasn’t going to get dry.
I went into the kitchen, picked it up, and carried it into the living room. I pressed the “play” button and watched the display do nothing. I pressed it again, and again, nothing. Damn.
Then, for grins, I pressed the “Menu” button, and to my delight, the display lit up with the Apple logo. It was not backlit, but it was on. After a few moments, the display showed a large battery with one bar on it. It didn’t do anything else. I assumed that that meant that the battery was low.
I went over to the computer and plugged the iPod in. This display lit up and displayed the red circle with the slash thought it and the warning to not disconnect. Good sign. Very good sign.
iTunes on the computer found the nano and synced with it, as if there was nothing wrong. After it finished syncing, I ejected the iPod from iTunes, but left it connected to the USB cord so it could recharge the battery. I picked up the iPod and started to try to use it. The menu navigation was a bit weird. Sometimes it jumped very quickly between menu items and other times, it didn’t move at all, but when selecting a playlist to play, it played without a problem. Yay!
The display looks a bit weird. It looks like half the display in the center is a different shade or intensity than the surrounding area. I guess the display still has a bit of waterl in it. I guess the weird menu navigation is also due to water interfering with the sensor. I tried to get a pic of the display, but it didn’t come out.
I’m going to leave it plugged in for a while and see if the battery charges and if it will work off the cable.
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I understand that to keep the size of the 12” iBook as small as possible, Apple had to make some hard decisions about which keys to leave off the keyboard to save space. Unfortunately, some of the keys are the very keys I use all the time. Page Up, Page Down, Delete (not Backspace), Home and End are all keys that did not make the cut. I really think that if they cut down the size of the mouse button, they could have gotten an extra row of keys on the keyboard at the top the size of the function keys. The addition of those five keys would make my life a lot easier. Yes, I am aware that I can accomplish all those functions by using a combination of keys, but that requires two hands in most cases.
I really hope that when Apple introduces their Intel based laptops they will find a way to include those keys on the keyboard.
One more thing…how about a right mouse button?
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