When I first ripped all of my CD’s to MP3 files, I found out that if the music continued all the way to the end of the song, it would stutter at the end of the MP3. I got rid of that computer and my new one didn’t have the stutter. But for some reason with some CD’s it would put skips in the music. At first I thought the CD’s must be damaged, but if I ripped the same CD on my newer laptop, I didn’t have the problem.
Remote Control Close Call
Last night I was have a refreshing drink of grape juice, grapefruit juice, and water when Mom called. I was on the sofa with my drink at my side and my remote control on my lap and dogs on either side of me. So I reached in my right pocket to get the phone and the remote slides to the left and went right into my refreshing drink. There was only about an inch of juice left, but I guess that was enough because the remote didn’t work anymore. That’s bad. I got this remote to replace my previous universal remote in March 2008 and they have since stopped making them. Well, they at least they don’t make them the same way and then new ones won’t allow me to use the cable I bought to hook the remote up to my computer (I wrote about this in JP1 still kicking).
So grape juice is dripping out of the bottom of the remote and I’m trying to help Mom with her wireless network so Kelly and Gabriele can get on the internet while they are spending the night at her house. I take the batteries out in case there is some kind of short and try to continue to coax out any juice into the bathtub rather than drip purple juice on to anything else. It just keeps leaking so I figure the only thing to do is try to take it apart and get all the juice wiped up. There were a couple of screws to take out and then I used my plastic pry tools I got when I replaced the battery in my old iPod. Those things work great for unsnapping plastic devices like this. Then I had to remove 4 more little screws and the whole thing came apart into 5 pieces: the front face, the rubber mat of buttons (fortunately each button is not an individual part), a plastic board with holes where each button goes, the circuit board, and the back cover. The rubber mat of buttons was pretty dirty, so I cleaned that off and then wiped down the other parts to get all of the grape juice off. The front face is hard to clean because the buttons stick out, but without the buttons it was easy to get all the grime of the last couple of years off of it. I put it all back together, put the batteries back in (which I had charging in case they had discharged due to a short) and I got nothing. There probably aren’t too many liquids that conduct electricity better than juice. Oh well, I still have my old remote with some buttons that don’t work, so I put the batteries in it and it worked okay except I had to fast forward through commercials instead of skip ahead 30 seconds since that button doesn’t work anymore. I thought maybe if I cleaned that remote off the buttons would work again, so I took it apart the same way and cleaned it out, but those buttons still didn’t work (or didn’t seem to anyway).
At some point I decided to go back to the juiced remote, tested it, took it apart again, put it back together, tested it again, and Hey! it works! The new one is better because it has backlighting and all the buttons work, so I’m glad to have it back. And now it’s even nice and clean.
20 Years of Bridges
Twenty years ago today I started work designing bridges!
Angry Cake
I saw two articles in today’s paper about iPhone apps. One was about a Smurfs game that is free to download but you can buy add-ons from within the game and parents are getting billed hundreds of dollars when their kids buy Smurfberries from within the game (they’re not even real Smurfberries, they only exist within the game).
The second was about Angry Birds, which I have written about before. It is an iOS phenomenon, loved by all. It turns out the article was actually written for the New York Times and can be found here. I had never heard of Angry Birds until I got my iPod. Michael and Fiona like to play it when I visit them. Apparently dressing up as an angry bird was a popular Halloween costume (certainly more popular than last year). One of the things mentioned in the article is an Angry Birds birthday cake requested by a kid whose mother then spent 80 hours constructing. But it is great: picture.
Friends of Dekalb Animals
On the community bulletin board I started, a person wrote in and asked for help for Friends of Dekalb Animals. This organization is independent of the Dekalb Animal Services but helps transport animals from there to the northeastern US where it is easier to find homes for dogs. It is very expensive to transport a dog plus some veterinary services are needed, but it basically saves the dogs life.
Anyway, they are doing a thing through Citgo right now called Fueling Good hoping to get a $2500 gas card to help them out. People visit Citgo’s website and vote for Friends of Dekalb Animals. You can enter every day and every time you vote you can then play an instant win matching game where you could win $25 in gas.
Once you have signed up, you can click Cast Your Vote on the upper right of the link above. Then enter your e-mail address. Then do a search by entering “dekalb” and click on Friends of Dekalb Animals. Then choose to vote for them and you can play the matching game. It doesn’t cost anything and maybe it will help them out. You can vote every day through January 4.