I used to really dislike driving long distances. However, in the last few months I’ve done a few things to completely change my mind.
Use a GPS. I no longer have to worry about leaving directions at home, taking a wrong turn, finding food or fuel, or needing a detour. I just hop in the car, hit the road, head in the general direction of my destination, and plug in the address on the way.
Buy prescription sunglasses. Sunglasses have made a world of difference. Yesterday I drove out to Auburn in the morning and back to the East Bay in the afternoon, driving into the sun both ways. Having the sunglasses has completely eliminated squinting and strain on my eyes.
Take Music. Loading up the GPS with music has really helped pass the time. I even added a few hours of MCLE, just in case!
Drive slower. I’ve made a point of obeying the speed limit, even when I’m running late. Driving fast saves a negligible amount of time and can be very stressful.
These four things have transformed my long drives from stressful events into fairly enjoyable trips.
One pair of glasses had “polychromatic” lenses and cost about $35.00. The other three pairs included a regular pair of glasses, a pair of tinted glasses for use as sunglasses, and a funky pair since they were totally free free (complete with frames and prescription lenses!?!?!)
I ordered from two different retailers because (1) $35.00 for those “transition” lenses aka “polychromatic” lenses was too good to pass up and (2) so I could compare the customer service and quality of the two companies.
Service through one company was a little better than the other. However, I’m not qualified to judge quality. Although I’m very happy with the look of these frames and lenses, I’d feel a lot better if I took them to my optomologist to be sure.
That said, I’m going to postpone an in-depth review until I see my eye-doc. When I post the review I’ll include a few tips for ordering glasses online.2
I’ve already said I’m a big fan of NPR. A few weeks ago they ran a story about the “Best-Kept Online Secret: Cheap Eyeglasses.” The author, tired of paying hundreds of dollars for glasses, tried out a few different online glasses retailers. 1
This weekend I ordered glasses from two different websites. (I’m going to hold off mentioning which ones for now. I’ll wait to find out what kind of a job they do.)
I ordered four pairs of glasses for much less than what a single pair used to cost me. If all goes well, I’ll be getting one pair of sunglasses, one pair of color changing glasses, one pair that looks almost identical to the ones I wear now, and one pair of funky glasses (this was the free one).
The trade-off is that the glasses will take about two weeks.
Less than 24 hours later I got a call from their local technician – James. He came to my home that very evening and swapped out my motherboard. 4
Here’s Lionel’s e-mail to me from just after midnight this morning:
“Jay:
That’s great news. I’m really glad to see it all worked out smoothly. I appreciate you being a loyal Dell customer. Feel free to tell any other Dell customers how to contact me directly if they need some assistance.
It’s customer’s like you that make this the best job I’ve ever had.
If you’ve got an issue with your Dell, get a hold of Lionel directly. He’s an incredible guy working for an incredible company. Lionel and Dell took care of me. This Dell XPS m1210 is my third Dell laptop, and my next computer will absolutely be a Dell too.
It died within 1 year after my warranty expired, but by the time I talked to Dell it was more than a year out of warranty. [↩]
It was a very simple and short e-mail, so it took me forever to write. [↩]
Since I had nothing to lose, I sent an e-mail to Dell’s head blogger, Lionel Menchaca about my problem. He was lightning fast in responding to me – asking for my Dell service tag.2
When Dell had lost my prior laptop and replaced it with the XPS m1210 I purchased a warranty extension. I had spent a fair bit of change on that laptop and I was expecting to keep it around a while. However, that extended warranty lapsed a little over a year ago.3 I explained my problem with the bad nVidia video card. He responded telling me that I would be getting a call from someone soon.
Sure enough, less than a day later I received a call from Dell’s corporate customer service program. They told me that as a “gesture of good will” they were going to replace my computer’s motherboard – by sending a technician to me to do the repair.
Replacing a motherboard is so expensive its almost always cheaper to buy a new computer. Offering to repair an out-of-warranty laptop by sending a tech to me to replace the motherboard???
All I can say is WOW.
Two of which were under Paramount Technology’s repair warranty. [↩]
This is a number on a little sticker underneath the laptop. The service tag code is essentially a serial number they use to track your computer when its being repaired or you call for technical support. [↩]
Although, less than a year from when I first started having this problem [↩]
Yesterday I discussed the basics of buying a new computer. The most important first step is figuring out what you need and what you want out of a new computer. There are three main types of portable computers available these days: netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops. Today is all about “netbooks.”1
(Scroll to the end to see my picks…)
Netbooks
A netbook is a very small laptop designed to extremely mobile and portable. They are optimized for portability and wireless connectivity.
Netbooks typically have a display of 10″ or less. 2 They usually don’t have any CD or DVD drives. 3 They usually have very small solid state drives or mid-sized hard drives. On the plus side, they usually have bluetooth, media card readers, and WiFi. They’re typically between 2 to 3 pounds, depending upon brand and type of battery. They’re also relatively cheap – between $350 to $500.
My requirements may differ from yours. If I were to buy a netbook, I would want:
Minimum 2 USB ports, preferably 3
Minimum 100 GB hard drive
1 GB RAM
Bluetooth
WiFi aka 802.11a/b/g, and preferably also 802.11n
Ethernet port
Modem port
Other things people might care about (but I don’t):
Webcam
Keyboard size
Monitor size
Keep in mind, I’ve never used any of these laptops – I’m just evaluating them based on their prices and my own opinions as to their respective brands and specs. Although, I’m enough of a nerd that I put together a spreadsheet to compare those five netbooks as well as about another dozen or so models and submodels. If anyone is interested in seeing the spreadsheet, mention it in the comments below or drop me a line.
Dell has a new netbook too, but it only has solid state drive options – which are too small to be of use to me. 4 However, I’m sure it would be perfect for some people.
If I were to buy a netbook today, I’d probably go for the Acer Aspire One. It occupies a sweet spot in terms of price, is a decent brand, and has very comparable specs to the higher-end models.
I’m undecided what kind of laptop I want/need. A netbook? A basic laptop? A high-end laptop?2
Figure out what you need, then figure out what you want
Needs
Its all about what you want and what you need. I need a laptop that will let me program, surf the web, listen to music, and send e-mail. This accounts for roughly 98% of my computer usage.
The last 2% of computer usage is comprised of processor intensive activities such as watching DVD’s, video games, video editing, DVD and CD burning, and manipulating large amounts of programming code. For instance, the WCAB legacy number to EAMS number converter involved more than 4.6 million lines of code. 3 My previous laptop struggled with that one. I probably only do these things once every six months or so.
For what I need, a netbook would actually work very well for me.
Wants
As any computer user knows, its very frustrating to have a computer that will not do what you want or takes to long to do it. My wants are a super slim, light-weight, battery efficient, computer that has the processing power to deal with large amounts of data and the ability to burn DVD’s and CD’s.
A netbook fulfills the wants of a slim, light-weight, and battery efficient computer. A basic laptop would suffice for the processing power and CD/DVD burning capabilities.
Having it all
When it comes to laptops, sometimes you can have it all – it just depends how you’re going to compromise.
If money were no object, this would be a no-brainer: buy a high-end light and powerful laptop. These cost $1500 and start climbing steeply after that.
The other compromise is not so intuitive. A very decent external CD/DVD burner combo drive would probably only cost $75 or so. If I’m only burning discs 2% of the time, this is a very reasonable solution. The bigger problem is the underpowered processors in netbooks. They simply do not have the ability to play new games, handle large amounts of data, or deal with too many simultaneous tasks. The only possible work around here is where you use your underpowered laptop to remotely control a more powerful computer and use that more powerful computer to crunch numbers.4 However, this won’t help with video games. ;)
Decision Time
What am I going to get? I’m going to run down the pro’s and con’s of netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops next time. Stay tuned!
Here’s a recipe I’ve used to make ravioli, including the filling, from scratch. 1 I found the recipe several years ago on the web, but unfortunately don’t remember where. In any case, here’s the recipe. It makes a LOT of pasta – enough for at least 6 people. The ravioli filling is my own creation – and its damn tasty.
Place about 3/4 of the flour into a large bowl. Separately mix the egg, oil, salt and water. Add the wet ingredients to the flour. Mix everything thoroughly.
Kneed in the remaining flour. This takes a long time.
Wrap in plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes in the fridge. In the meantime, let’s move on to…
Defrost spinach in bowl and drain. Mix in everything else. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate when not in use.
Step 3: Make the ravioli
When ready to make the ravioli, only remove a very small amount from the plastic to work with at a time.3 I only worked with pieces of dough about the size of a standard 6-sided-die.
Squish the piece of dough into a disc about the size of a silver dollar.
Place the dough on a plastic cutting board. I prefer the kind with the non-skid rubberized ends.
Roll the dough as thinly as possible. You’re going for almost translucent in the center. A heavy rolling pin helps.
Add about 1/2 tablespoon of the filling to the center.
Fold the dough in half and pinch the edges.
Set each piece aside on wax paper on a large plate. The wax paper is to prevent the ravioli from sticking to the plate. Don’t let the ravioli touch each other since they will stick together.
Cover the ravioli on the plate with plastic wrap while you work.
Step 4: Cook
When ready to cook, add the pasta to boiling water in a large pot and then lower to medium heat after a minute.
After a short break from blogging, I off two tidbits: one full of holiday cheer… and the other about an incorrigible Grinch.1
Holiday Cheer
A few days before Christmas I received an extremely nice e-mail from David DePaolo, of WorkCompCentral fame. He had read my blog post about my local food bank and made his own donation to his local food bank. Thank you David!
Incorrigible Grinch
I have a loud neighbor. They talk on the phone loud, watch TV loud, play music loud, etc. Loud enough so that I can hear whatever it is they’re doing over my own TV with the doors and windows closed. The night before Christmas Eve at around 8 O’clock PM they were playing something that sounded like a marching band – complete with tubas. I couldn’t tell if it was a radio or TV or what – but it was extremely loud. Being a good neighbor and filled with the aforementioned holiday cheer, I went out onto my patio and hollered, “Hey! Turn it down already!” In a few minutes their marching band music died down to a low rumble.
A few minutes later I find out that I had just yelled at a group of teenagers with instruments walking down our street… carrolling. That’s right, I yelled at carolers – I’m the Grinch.
