Quick, how are rum distillers, stockcar race track owners, wool researchers, TV and movie producers, and wooden arrows different from middle class home owners?1
Why's the rum gone?
Give up? The home owners aren’t benefiting one dime from the bailout legislation!
My laptop is back, up and running! I truly cannot explain just how happy I am that I have it back.
Scotty
As I mentioned earlier, my laptop stopped working on the Sunday night before last. The next day I stopped by a local Fry’s Electronics and picked up a hard drive enclosure for my laptop’s hard drive. This solved my initial problem, being cut off from my data, by allowing me to schlep my laptop’s hard drive with me. Even though I had my data with me, I didn’t have my laptop with me. I constantly felt as if I had lost my wallet or cell phone. A disconcerting feeling, to say the least.
On Friday afternoon I took my laptop to a local repair shop, Paramount Technology, and, after talking with the proprietor for a few minutes, left my laptop with them at about 12:30pm. He estimated they might have it ready on Tuesday; Monday at the earliest.
They called my cell less than three hours later to tell me my laptop was fixed.
Everyone knows how Captain Kirk would ask the impossible of Scotty. Like clockwork, Scotty would bitch and moan about how he could not perform the impossible. And, yet, when crunch time came, the polarity was reversed, dilithium crystals realigned, and they had warp engines back on line.
They did a great job, warranting their work for 90 days, had my laptop repaired in record time, and didn’t scratch my baby. (FYI, Dell offers a whopping 30 day warranty on their work. In the words of Govenor Palin, “Thanks, but no thanks.”)
I don’t care if they were practicing “under promise and over deliver.” Paramount Technology has earned my business and my recommendation.
Wednesday afternoon I received an e-mail “Link Exchange Request” from another website. That website is for legally related services, but really has nothing to do with what this website is about: California workers’ compensation, nerdytechnobabble, and random silliness.
This other website proposed that I put up a link to their website here. Incoming website links are one of the primary tools search engines use to rank web pages, which is why people are always offering link exchanges. Google’s PageRank system ranks a website on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best. Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, PageRank scores require exponentially more energy to reach the next level.
Bad Link Exchange Offer
These links to my site can be “high quality” because they are from a website that also deals with California workers’ compensation, nerdytechnobabble, or random silliness. Or, they can be “low quality” because they have nothing to do with what my site is about.
In order to find out whether they were offering a high quality linkback, I checked out their website. On the right is a screenshot of their website. It has nothing whatsoever to do with workers’ compensation. The green circle is where they had the link to their “resources” page. The green box at the top is the only part of their page that’s visible when you go to their page.
So, not only were they offering me a low quality link, but they were offering me a low quality link that no one would ever look for, let alone find.
While they were clearly making a terrible offer, the idea that they looked up my website in order to solicit a link was amusing. My website’s gotten so big people want links from me! Blog bigtime, baby!
Maybe I’m just being thick or just something here. Someone, please, explain this to me. Our president was adamant that home owners needed to learn a lesson about the free market and that the government would not bail them out of bad mortgages. A few weeks ago, $700 billion in bailouts for huge companies was also unthinkable. As of last night, our president tried to convince us that bailing out these companies is a good idea.
And, it probably is – that’s not the point. The point is that this seems a double standard. I realize that every major bank closing its doors overnight is not a good thing. Millions of people losing their homes is not good either. After all of this, I’ve got one question and one idea.
The Question:
Assuming (at the time I’m writing this) a U.S. population of 305,248,844 of which there are 138,000,000 taxpayers. Our government is about to spend $700,000,000,000 of our money. I figure that’s about $5,072.46 a person. Hey, what’s the worst that could happen if we passed that money out to the taxpayers? A complete collapse of our financial institutions overnight? HAHAhaha … um… ha? <crickets chirping>
The Idea:
The big problem right now isn’t so much the bad mortgages, its that people aren’t paying their mortgages. And, people aren’t paying their mortgages because they can’t afford the increased payments due to the higher interest rates from their adjustable rate mortgages. My idea is give everyone with an ARM the option to freeze their interest rate at their introductory rate.
Upsides:
Mortgages and property taxes get paid.
Lawns get mowed.
Banks get paid back.
Downsides:
People get to live in houses they can’t really afford. So what? At least they’re mowing their lawn.
I’ve just invented the 90 year home loan. Again, so what? That loan will have to be paid off before its sold – and they will sell it.
Banks get paid back slower than they thought. Its better than closing your doors, amiright WaMu?
Anyhow, I guess I’ll leave the economic policy up to the professionals. (’cause, you know, they’ve been doing a bang up job).
Cost is probably the single biggest deciding factor. The good news is that your laptop can probably be repaired. Sight unseen, it will probably cost you between $200.00 and $500.00 including parts and labor. A new laptop will cost you roughly $500.00 for a bare bones machine, $1,250.00 for a nice machine, and $2,500.00 and up for a ridiculously powerful machine.
Lifetime
For most people a computer has a 3 year timeline of usefulness. After that something about the computer will be too outdated to be of use beyond basic usage. If your computer is more than 3 years old, you’ve had a good run. Replace the poor thing.
Time & Need
If you need a computer for your business, every hour without your computer means you’re losing money. If you don’t need it for your business, you’ve got more time to decide. Your time is important and your downtime is even more important.
Formula
Here’s my totally unscientific and completely quantifiable formula for determining with nearly totally complete guesstimate-approximation of whether you should repair or replace your laptop. First, let’s assume a constant – the amount you would spend on a new laptop and set that equal to the original purchase price of your current broken laptop. The formula is as follows:
Virtual Real Estate – Part II – Less Obvious Benefits
Outsmart spam. When I need to sign up for a new online service or website, I just create a new e-mail address – and point it to my real e-mail address. For example, If I want to sign up for PDRater.com, I register with the address, “pdrater@my-very-own-domain.com.” If I start getting spam sent to that address – I delete the e-mail account!
Organization. Just as with spam avoidance, I can create e-mail accounts for differnet purposes and have them all routed to the same place. Later on, I can search for information I sent myself (or had others send me) by searching for “todo@my_very_own_domain.com.”
Portability. If you may need files while you’re out and about, just upload them to your website and have the file available anywhere.
Redundancy. There are a lot of companies that charge for online backups. Why not just do it yourself?
Resiliency. I made a point of purchasing the domain names through a different company than the one hosting my web space. If one of those companies were to suddenly go off-line, I would be able to put up a new site in roughly an hour. If the web host is down, just upload a new copy of your website to a new host and connect it to your original domain name. If the domain name host is down, just buy a new domain name and point the web host to the new name.
Next in this series: I haven’t thought of a next segment yet!
I purchased my first domain name and web space in August of 2007. Since that time I’ve probably purchased about a dozen more domain names. There are some fairly obvious benefits to owning your own domain name and web space.1
Virtual Real Estate – Part I – Obvious Benefits
Your own website! Admittedly, there are a lot of ways to get a website for free, but there are always tradeoffs (pop-up ads, no creative control, ads inside your pages).
Accountability. When you own your own webspace, your web host is responsible for taking care of problems when things go wrong.
More features. When you’re paying for your own webspace, you can set up your own MySQL databases, install programs like WordPress, set up an FTP account, etc.
Custom e-mail addresses. Always wanted “I-Hate-Clowns@SuperCoolAwesome.com”? Good news!
My backpack is my lifeline when I’m out and about. Some prefer a laptop case, rolling briefcase/suitcase, suitcase, or purse. I find that a backpack with a laptop section works best for me. I can carry a medium file, laptop, and the essentials.
Here’s my road warrior checklist for my backpack:
Front flap
Notepad
Pens
2 blue gel, 1 black pen, 1 red gel pen, 1 permanent ink marker, 1 highlighter
In an earlier post I gave my “my road warrior checklist for the car.” Within the last year I occasionally worked as computer tech support and/or mobile techie.
Sometimes I was on location fixing a problem, writing a database program, or doing a small bit of programming on a friend’s larger program. I enjoyed being a techie, but wouldn’t want to do it for a living.
When I’m a road warrior techie, here’s what I carry with me:
Laptop backpack
Laptop, extra battery, power cord
Portable hard drive, 120 GB (Actually a laptop hard drive in an enclosure)
Flash drives (4G, 128meg)
CDRW – rewriteable CD’s
DVD-RW – rewriteable DVD’s
USB hub, 3 ports
USB cable, A to B
USB cable, A to mini
Ethernet cable, 6′
Phone cord, 6′
If I had to keep a techi backpack stocked, here’s what else I’d put in it:
Zip ties, twist ties, and/or velcro ties
Labels
Small screwdriver set
What do you take with you?
Update: A (techie) friend suggested the following additions, trunk space permitting:
I am constantly trying to think of ways in which to improve this website and to make it a better resource for California Workers’ Compensation professionals. If you’ve got an idea as to how I can improve this site, drop me a line and let me know.
What’s that? I only promised the top five PDRater.com features? Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the first rule of business: Under promise and over deliver.
