Lucas Blackwood Contemplations » Technology/Gadgets

Broken zipper

Lucas — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:54:26 +0000

A few weeks ago I saw a zipper repair kit for sale online at one of those “bargain” websites. I had been looking for something to give my wife to use to repair the zipper on the hooded sweatshirt that she had hand painted several years ago. The zipper had broken and she had stopped wearing the sweatshirt, but she did not want to throw it away because she had spent so much time and energy hand painting the thing.

So when the zipper repair kit arrived, we hunted for a while to find the sweat shirt. It had been put away in the back of a closet and was being elusive. Finally we put the zipper repair kit in her sewing basket and had given up looking for the sweat shirt. Well, surprisingly enough, when my wife was looking for a gray skirt to lend to her sister to wear at a funeral, she found that sweat shirt and pulled it out of the closet.

We tried to use the zipper repair kit, but we were unsuccessful with our attempt. We broke two of the replacement zipper heads in the attempt. Very discouraging!

The new timeline

Lucas — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:50:00 +0000

Have you converted your Facebook page to the new timeline yet? I have been resisting the change; I really did not want to bother trying to learn something new AGAIN. Generally speaking I am usually accepting of change, but to be perfectly honest when I was looking at my friend’s pages that had already converted I found the new format to be confusing. To be honest, I still DO think that it is confusing. I suppose I’ll get used to it, but it is definitely going to take a while before I’m comfortable with it. A lot of my friends have been complaining that they don’t like it, but then again several say that they like it just fine; it reminds them of the “MySpace” pages. I never had a MySpace page, I guess that I never felt “self-important” enough to crow about me online. I only signed up for Facebook as a way to keep in touch with several of my friends, since they never seem to send individual emails.

Servers

Lucas — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:38:07 +0000

It seems as if the whole world comes to a screeching halt when the Server that allows you access to the World Wide Web has stopped working. I’m so grateful for our IT folks at work that are in charge of all the computers that keep the place running and alive. I’ve tried a couple times to get some of their home numbers so that I could call and ask for their assistance if I needed it for my home computer, they just laugh it off and keep doing what they do to keep us in the Clouds.

Audio conference services

Lucas — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:35:45 +0000

Audio conferencing services are a great way to help more people be able to work from their homes. There are many jobs now that rely heavily on computers, the Internet, and audio conferencing for the majority of their work day. I think that it’s a wonderful option to be able to do that, and I wish that more companies offered that option to more of their employees.

Tractor Races

Lucas — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:14:08 +0000

This video is amusing. I can’t imagine using my new tractor to participate in such an activity. I suppose a person would use an old beater rather than a nice new one like mine.

These men look like they are having a great time. I wonder how one would run if it was jacked up with over sized tires?

Visable Address Plaques Needed

Lucas — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:06:47 +0000

The new mailbox that we just ordered will certainly have our address that is easily readable on it, but it occurred to me that our house does not have any of it’s numbers posted anywhere on it. In our childhood home, we had our house numbers visable on an address plaque, which was clearly mounted on the wall right beside our front door. At night the numbers were illuminated by our front porch light, which we left on most nights anyway since electricity wasn’t so totally over the top and crazy expensive back then like it is now, it wasn’t a big deal to leave the porch light on since there were people always coming and going 24/7 back then.

The majority of the houses now a days along our road do have address plaques, so I wonder why the former owners of our house never got around to putting up one? I think it adds a nice touch to any house, to have the house numbers proudly displayed by the door. Besides I think it can also be an important safety issue. Not all the residential mailboxes have the numbers clearly visible at the road. If you have address signs somewhere else on the property, emergency response vehicles will have a better chance at finding your house to help.

A Perfectly Good Cell Phone, Down The Toilet

Lucas — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:37:39 +0000

Funny how the title of this post basically tells it all. I dropped my cell phone into the toilet. What a dope! Of course I don’t have insurance on the darn thing. So it’s looks like I’m now in the market to find a new cell phone. I’m glad that Internet will make it a much easier task so that I won’t have to go running from store to store to find the right one for me. But it still will take some time to do a decent amount of research, I don’t want to get stuck with something that I will regret this time around.

Flower and Plant Care Info Online

Lucas — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:16:57 +0000

Who would have ever thought that you could one day (and that day is now here) get on a computer (a computer that fits on your lap, no less) and learn all that you need to know about flower and plant care and then order the ones that you want right then and there and then within a matter of days receive in the mail the ones that you had just a few days ago decided on. It sounds like something right out of “The Jetsons” the popular futuristic cartoon show from back in the days of my childhood cartoon watching days, in the 60′s, which ended up showing us the way of the future that actually came true in so many ways that they depicted it to be.

I don’t think that they ever did a show specifically about how to plants buy online, and the computers that they showed being used were not as small and handy as they have now become and they didn’t show that you could get on a computer and find plant care information and instructions from various websites like wikipedia and ehow.com, just to name a few. But if you didn’t get the chance to see The Jetsons back in the day and if you can find the re-runs on your current cable and/or satellite listings I would really urge you to check it out and see what it was all about. I think you will be surprised to see how much they portrayed the way that we live our lives in today’s high tech world as we know it.

Sorting through the shop

Lucas — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:15:32 +0000

Aunt Betty asked me to help clean out the garage and shop, and to see if there were any tools in either location that belonged to Uncle Bernard that I would like to keep for myself before she donates the rest to the local high school shop class. So I’ve been trying to go over to her place every weekend for a couple of hours to straighten up, throw out the junk, pick out what I want and put the rest aside for the donation box.

So far I’ve picked out a couple of miller welders and some snap-on tools to keep for myself. Also some Sears craftsman tools. As far as I’m concerned you can never have too many snap-on or craftsman tools!

My fingers are too big

Lucas — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:03:44 +0000

Have you tried typing on one of those new netbooks that seem to be the big incentive free gift for people that sign up for things? My niece was telling me that she had received one as a gift for Christmas and she showed it to me. Admittedly it was really cool that she could fit it into her purse, but when she opened it up and I tried the keyboard for myself I had a hard time typing with it – my fingers are just too big, or I need a lot of practice, or both. My typing was terrible!