I've always been a hands on kind of person, learning about things by experiencing them. So when it comes to doing things that I don't know how to do, or know anything about, my theory is always "do/try it once". Yesterday's lesson was replacing an AC compressor in our van. Air conditioning components, along with transmissions are the parts of a car that I try to stay away from. They both have little room for error. I'm currently in the market for a new car to replace our van, so I don't want to invest another $1000 in it having someone replace the AC compressor. So I decided to make this one of those "try it once" experiences. I did all of the research I could, picked up the parts and tackled it yesterday. It was a huge pain in the ass, but it was also a great learning experience …keep reading …
Above and Beyond: Sports Authority
I’ve been wakeboarding since I was a teenager. I first learned on a Skurfer, then I bought a wakeboard around 1995 from Sams Club (which I bought on store credit, because I was broke and unemployed at the time). That board has long since been out dated. Since then, I’ve used a loaner from a friend. This year, for my brithday, I decided to break down and buy a “REAL” wakeboard. So I went to my local Sports Authority and bought an O’brien System 140 package. As an added benefit, they had all of their watersports equipment 40% off! [more] The next weekend, we took it out and I rode it four times and loved it, then my 135lb nephew rode it a few times then SNAP…broken. Less than ten rides total and the whole end just broke. A few days later I called O’brien to ask what to do, and they said …keep reading …
Organizing your Desktop with an Wallpaper Image
While digging around on my normal blog sites, I came across an interesting method of using a specially built image as your wallpaper to organize your desktop. The concept is to section off your screen to store and group your icons. For instance for mine I created the following areas. [more] Open Desktop – blank area for general Windows applications. Active Documents/Projects – Duh! Provides quick access to your current projects. Temporary Use Files – I always save stuff on my desktop as I’m working on it. Especially quick save things when they are part of a multi-step process. Icons here get cleaned out at least once a week. Archive Storage – Here I store folders that contain data that I need accessible enough to not want to dig for it. Examples PDF books, MP3s, etc. Management Tools – As a developer and server administer, there are various tools I …keep reading …
Make your own $15 Lightbox
If you Google “DIY Lightbox” you will get a bunch of how-to pages. Most are just WAY to complicated for the average shutterbug. Others are just too fragile and will likely get destroyed in short order. Nearly every one you find will cost more than you are likely to get out of it. I noticed that my local WalMart has a portable lightbox kit in the camera deptartment for $49, which actually looks nice. But me being a cheapskate, decided that I can make one cheaper. So here you go. [more] (2) Clip-on-Lights $2.50 from Target (1) Clear Storage Bin $7.50 from Walmart (2) Posterboards white and blue $1 (2) BinderClips Assemble like the pic! Nothing difficult. The clear(ish) bin works to filter and soften the light. Best thing of all, is that everything stores in the tub when not used. Just remember to turn the dark background out before …keep reading …
How to Ask Help
Over the past couple of years, I’ve gained a new “pet-peeve”. It seems that people have in general, forgot how to properly ask someone for help or advice with a task or a problem. Being a techie/geek I get little questions like these all of the time: What does this error mean? I downloaded a virus, how to I get rid of it? My computer stopped working, do you know why? How much would it cost to for a website? [more]Without knowing what you were doing when you got the error, how in the world could I ever figure out what caused it, thus how to fix it. If you neglect to tell me the “since I moved my computer” part of your “computer stopped working” problem, I’ll likely be stabbing in the dark for solutions. If I don’t know what you want a website to do, how could I …keep reading …