Mom has been on me for years to fix up my house. So she called me one day with what she thought was such a great idea that she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She would act as my General Contractor and find people to do work on my house and all I would have to do is pay and make any necessary decisions. She would research contractors, get estimates, meet people at my house, etc. Since I was really needing my roof replaced I agreed that would be a good test and then we would evaluate from there. She would charge me a commission for the work she was doing.
Year: 2007
Y2K All Over Again
The media and computer people made a big deal about the switch to Daylight Savings Time (also known as Daylight Saving Time, either is correct; not sure where the “s” ever came from). I didn’t see why it would be an issue and that Microsoft sends out so many patches that this should just be fixed without any effort on my part. Yesterday, after the time change, my computer at home knew the correct time automatically. I did install a fix on my Palm, but didn’t realize that for it to work I actually had to run the program once. But I did that and it made the adjustment. So far so good.
The Archos Lives
Now that he has an 80 GB iPod, Jeb returned the Archos after three years of borrowing it. Also it didn’t work anymore. 
Well, kind of. If I hooked it up to my computer (had to install the drivers since my current computer had never seen the Archos before) it would act as an external hard drive, but by itself it wouldn’t spin up its hard drive and seemed to freeze while trying to boot up. I could turn it off and it would flash HD FAIL before turning off. So it was useless as a music player.
Better Headphones
Last year I bought some Sony headphones that I thought were pretty good, but had some problems.
Sometime in the summer I left those headphones in my pocket and they did not survive the washing and drying. I was on the lookout for something new and found a lot of raves for Sennheiser CX300 earbud headphones. These lacked the over-the-ear clip of the Sony but were otherwise essentially the same design, down to the 3 sizes of rubber ear parts which are interchangeable with the Sony ones (making me wonder if Sony doesn’t build these for Sennheiser). Both block out most but not all noise around you, so they are good for MARTA. And both have different lengths of cable to each earbud so that you pass the longer one (on the right) behind your neck (not sure if I like that or not). These cost more, $50 vs. $30. But the sound is much more even. With the Sony I would have to cut back on the bass and treble to get an even frequency response, but with the Sennheisers I don’t have to make any adjustments. Also the cord seems a little heavier duty than the Sony cord which some people on Amazon said would disintegrate over time. So I’m quite happy. As much as people rave about these on iLounge, Amazon, and elsewhere, you would think these would be a life-changing experience. However, it’s not like the music gets any better.
Surrounded
About six years ago I bought a surround sound system. At the time Dolby Digital 5.1, where a DVD would have six distinct tracks of audio, was still pretty rare (they had Dolby Surround aka Dolby 2.0) and there was a premium for receivers that could decode the signal. Instead I found a DVD player that would decode it and had outputs for all six signals. The AIWA audio system I chose also lacked a separate subwoofer (the “.1” part of “5.1”) so I never had the thundering bass of some systems. Most annoyingly, the surround speakers would emit a low static noise whenever the receiver was on, which became annoying if there wasn’t any other sound to drown it out. I had other nits to pick as well, like any time the power went out, the thing would flash the time. I don’t know why the receiver needed to know the time in the first place.