In early 2006, I powered up my old IBM PCjr and realized it would not boot up. The BIOS would beep a few times, but nothing else would happen. How was I supposed to play JumpMan or Shamus?! So to eBay I went and in April 2006 I found and won a working IBM PCjr. It cost me $51 and even came with original manuals, keyboard, and power supply… all in the original box. A great deal in my mind.

Fast forward to the end of August 2007. My original IBM PCjr (which refuses to boot up) just sold on eBay. I threw it back in the original box I previously bought and included my old keyboard and the manuals. The winning bid? A whopping $154.50. I couldn’t believe it. With the housing market in a slump, is this turning out to be prime PCjr selling season?

So I guess the moral of the story is this: Broken crap is worth more than working crap. Who knew?

With the recent demise of SunRocket, I was forced to switch VoIP providers in a pinch. My wife and I did some quick research and had narrowed it down to a few companies that provided features and price comparable to what SunRocket had offered. Since we take advantage of the free long distance and free roaming on our cell phones, having a home phone is not critical – it’s just nice to not have to worry about low batteries and lost signals once in a while. For that reason, we wanted an affordable (read: low price) service. The major VoIP players charge way too much, as do the cable providers. In the end, one company stood above all the rest when it came to the features and the price they offered. Unfortunately, with all the SunRocket customers heading for the same handful of companies, nobody can keep up. After a couple weeks of unreliable service, we’re now faced with our old phone number not yet transfered to our new provider. This means people calling us get a “SunRocket is out of busines” recording.

Turns out there would have been a lot less aggravation if we simply handed out tin cans and ran string to our friend’s houses.

My wife’s key fob to her Jetta stopped working some months ago. Appears to be the battery, since the LED is very faint and, well, the doors don’t unlock. Upon quick inspection of the fob, it appeared to be a sealed unit, which to me meant $$$$ at a dealer.

Not so!

A quick search found this page over at riskin.org. I suppose I should be thanking Kimmy and Jacob Riskin, so… thanks guys!! You’ve turned an expensive trip to the dealer into a cheap trip to Radio Shack.

There are step-by-step instructions and many more images available on their site. Go check them out and save some bucks.

You can’t handle the truth… but I’ll say it anyway. There are a handful of companies that I’ve come across recently that are worth checking out (at least in my opinion). They are, in no particular order:

• SunRocket – VoIP service for under $10 a month. I signed up with these guys a few months ago and am extremely happy with them. They are actually more reliable than my old Verizon voice line! And if you’re worried about power outages killing your phone (like I was), head on over to Costco or Best Buy and pick up a cheap UPS (it will pay for itself with the money you save by switching to SunRocket). Oh, and yes – you can keep your current phone number. Sign up for their unlimited plan using the link above and get 3 months free. (see comments)
• GrandCentral – Recently acquired by the evil Google empire, GrandCentral allows users to pick a single permanent telephone number from almost any area code in the United States. Use it so you have a single place for all your voice messages (which you can listen to and save right from the web), have it ring your work number when you’re at work and your home number during the evening. You can even block specific numbers, create custom greetings, and much more. Check them out, it’s all free.
• Mozy – Free online backup services, up to 2GB… and under $5 per month for unlimited storage. You can have Mozy automatically backup your most important files (or all your files if you desire) and then access them from the web or via a Windows Explorer interface right from your desktop.
• Crabersen – Very affordable domain names and web hosting is just a click away. Ok, I’m a little biased, but check them out. They offer very competitive web hosting rates in state-of-the-art data centers. Secure. Fast. Reliable. That’s the Crabersen advantage.

This post really serves as a reminder to myself… so I don’t make the manly mistake of forgetting my anniversary. It would be worthy of many nights on the couch if I forgot this one, since it is our first…

For the second year in a row, rivers are overflowing their banks in Lowell. Many roads and businesses were forced to close due to the rising waters or the threat of rising waters. In May 2006, the bowling alley in Lowell was severely damaged by flood waters and was closed for a number of months for cleanup and repairs. Yesterday, the lanes were again shut down due to the threat of the rising Merrimack River.

The above picture was taken yesterday and shows a flooded bowling alley parking lot. You can also see tarps and plastic sheets up against the bottom of the doors. They packed these with dirt and sand in an effort to defend against the threatening water. The interesting thing about this scene is that the river, which is across the main road, had not flooded the road (which was still open to traffic). It appears as if poor drainage in the parking lot caused excess water to collect.

Tom Wilson has aparently resorted to ripping himself off. My friend Carrie has been giving me Ziggy’s One-Day-At-A-Time calendar for as long as I can remember, and much to my surprise I found a repeat! The comic for Sept 8, 2006 was almost identical to the one from Mar 17, 2007. Sure, it’s drawn slightly differently, but c’mon… it’s the same strip! Have the Wilsons really been doing this so long that they’ve run out of ideas? Or maybe they figure their audience is so old, they’d never remember the same strip showing up twice. I would just ask that next time they wait more than 6 months to repeat it.

I think I’m coming down with a web-induced illness.  I spend all day managing the business side of one of my company’s web sites, so 90% of my day is spent playing around on web sites.  The last thing I want to do when I come home is do anything online.  My eBay usage has suffered tremendously… as has this blog (can you tell?).  This over-exposure to web radiation is starting to take its toll.

The dust was thick.  The smell was musty.  And there were cobwebs in every corner.  Today I grabbed a rag and some Pledge and made my blog all nice and shiny once again.  I’ve also pulled some static pages from my old site into my blog template, which will allow me to keep them updated a bit easier than before.  You’ll also notice a new masthead picture – that’s Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, taken this past weekend.

I had assumed that once the wedding and honeymoon were behind us, things would settle down a bit.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Since the wedding (June 24, remember? ), we have attended two more weddings, held a yard sale in Maine, traveled to DC/Maryland,  hosted a neighborhood party, and went to the NASCAR race in Richmond, VA… not to mention the countless projects ongoing at home!  Sheesh!  When do things slow down?