KodyMyers.NET

One of the fans on one of my computers is starting to fail. I know this because it makes a terrible buzzing noise from time to time. I actually have a fan to replace it with, but with my laziness being the stuff of legends, I instead opt to smack the front of my case when it acts up. A rather effective solution, I might add.

Now mind you, I only have to do this about once or twice a week. The fan would have probably gotten chucked out the window months ago had it crossed my annoyance threshold. My propensity for laziness and my tolerance of annoyance sit on opposite ends of the same balance. I consistently find myself posing the question: Is this annoying enough to warrant spending the time and effort doing something about it? But I digress.

Yesterday (Halloween, for those of you still chronologically disoriented from the time change), the fan started buzzing so loudly I heard it from the other end of the house. So of course, I went and smacked the case. No effect. So I smacked it again. It continued to buzz defiantly.

So I did what anyone would do.

“Turn off the computer and replace the fan, Kody?”

Heh. Nope.

I punched the machine on the side.

The buzzing ceased actually, if only for a second. Of course this did nothing but encourage me to punch my machine again. I don’’t often exact physical abuse on computer hardware, but this was turning out to be quite an effective stress reliever.

WHAM! BUZZZZZZ! WHAM! BUZZZZZZ! WHAM! BZZzzZZzzKSSssshhhtttT!

The monitor goes dark.

Oh. Crap.

As I sat in shock, not knowing what to do next, the machine started back up again on its own. I cheered from within when I saw the Windows XP logo, only to panic again when I heard that same terrible BZZZZZZZZT and saw the life swept from the monitor once more.

At this point, I began to process my surroundings. Yes, the computer was apparently fine -– somehow. However, something very bad was happening with the electricity. To spare my old friend any more pain, I flipped the switch on the back of the power supply. BZZZZZZZZT. This was sounding serious.

I went outside and quickly inspected the pole that carries the power line that feeds our house. No smoke, no fire, nothing. So I went back inside to inspect our breaker box. While I was inside, a neighbor pulls in the driveway, jumps out, and starts yelling for my uncle who lives beside us.

As it turns out, a transformer down the road had blown up after a tree branch fell across a power line. The power line burnt itself in two and set a fire after hitting the ground. The terrible electrical noises I was hearing was the power line grounding itself.

The fire spread quite quickly due to all the dry, dead brush before the first firefighters arrived -– not to mention that the wind was up as well. I had to leave for work so I didn’t get to see the drama play out, but when I got home the fire was out, power had been restored, and my computer was doing okay.

I’m really not sure what lesson to get out of all this. Perhaps, “Don’t beat your equipment so hard you blow a transformer?” I don’t know. At any rate I consider myself lucky on several levels. It could have turned out to be a particularly scary Halloween.

At least it made for a crazy story to tell.

Synaptics certainly made an interesting choice as the example time on their touchpad driver interface.

That’s right, kids. It’s 4:20!

Now granted, it is possible that this is just remarkable coincidence, but I’m far too cynical these days to believe it.

Well I had almost forgotten what it was like to have a newborn in the house. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that takes some getting used to again.

In my haste, I only managed to put up some basic information about Taylor’s birth. As you all know, however, every birth has a story. Taylor’s story was, to say the least, a whirlwind of events.

For about two weeks up to the 21st, Tabitha insisted that I bring her phone with me to class in case she went into labor while I was getting my brain stuffed. I kept it on “Silent” at all times, and since I wasn’t used to carrying a phone with me, I usually forgot to check it for missed calls before coming home. By some miracle, I remembered to check it on that afternoon, discovering that Tabitha was experiencing severe pain and needed me to drive her to the hospital.

Both of us were almost certain it would be a false alarm. We figured the doctors would examine Tabitha and the baby, tell us we’re silly, and just send us back home. To stay on the safe side, though, they wanted her to come in and get checked anyway.

I was so certain it was a false alarm that I went ahead and went to work at 4pm after I got her settled into the hospital. My mom was there to take Tabitha back home and me, being a guy, would have only been in the way had I stayed. Now imagine my utter surprise when I was at work and got a message at 5:30 that the baby was going to be delivered early.

I made it to the hospital just in time to throw on some scrubs and get briefed on what I had missed. It turns out that Tabitha’s pains were indeed labor pains, and her doctor had decided to go ahead and perform the C-section instead of inhibiting the labor.

At 6:14, our family was blessed with a new little girl a week before we were expecting her. I think Tabitha was quite relieved to have the pregnancy over with and thankful that she wasn’t in labor for 21 hours like she was with Kristopher.

So that’s it. A Wednesday that began normally and ended with a welcome addition to the family. We thank everyone for their support and many gifts. We are thankful that we have so many loving friends and family.

The Myers Family Welcomes:
Taylor Callista Myers

Born:
September 21st, 2005 – 6:14pm CST

Weight:
5lbs. 15oz.
Length:
18.5in.

intMyersFamily++;

Well, after trying out several unsuccessful configurations aimed at managing my bookmarks, I’ve finally embraced that which is del.icio.us. It’s the only free solution that provides the mobility I’ve been looking for.

It’s taken me some time to get used to the whole “social” part of social bookmarking, but I think it’s finally grown on me. I’ve even managed to find several useful links on occasions when boredom drove me to browse the links posted by other users. The only major pain was importing and categorizing the 250+ links I had already amassed over the last few years, but on the positive side I did manage to weed out several that were broken and unused.

The ability to assign multiple categories to links is what really makes del.icio.us stand out for me. When I was still using a directory structure to categorize links, there were several times when I couldn’t decide whether a particular link belonged in one category or another. Inevitibly, when I came back to look for it later, I would have to browse at least 3 different folders to find out which one I put it in.

I’ve found that I have this same problem with folders on my machine. I tend to be a file packrat, so there’s quite a bit of stuff in there. There are times with the limitations of the underlying Windows directory structure hinder my ability to organize my files. I haven’t tried the beta yet, but Windows Vista is supposed to provide a whole new level of file organization that circumvents the inherent limitations of directories. I’m not sure if that means you can assign multiple categories to files or not, but certainly any step in that direction would be useful indeed.

At any rate, you can scope out my most current bookmarks by going to del.icio.us/synthetik.

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Random Thought: What happens when you’re so out of it you can’t even spell “dictionary.com”?