iPod battery upgrade

3:02 pm on Friday, February 25, 2005

My iPod has been suffering from a sagging battery life. It was lasting only about 4 hours on a charge, down from the 10-12 I used to get out of it. I ordered a replacement battery this week. I went with the higher powered 2100mah battery from Mac Sales. I arrived in two days and I put it in last night.
The installation wasn’t quite as easy as they make out to be. The kit came with tools to open the case. My case wasn’t exactly like the one they had pictured so I faked it and pryed it open starting at the bottom instead of the top. After about 10 minutes of work I had the new battery in and the iPod powered up.
Sweet.
I put it on charge overnight and brought it to work today. I started it playing at about 8:30 this morning. Normally I plug it into the wall at work so I can have tunes all day. If I didn’t, by noon or so it’d be dead. Today after 5.5 hours so far it’s still showing a full battery. I’m going to let it play for the rest of the day and evening to see how long it’ll go. It’s nice to know I’ll be able to make long roadtrips without worrying about if the iPod will die and leave me without music.

I love sales

8:55 pm on Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Our local Dillards is having their huge spring sale starting today. We went there after work and piled up on clothes. I got something I’ve wanted for the longest time. A real leather bomber jacket. It is an Avirex A-2. Avirex supplies jackets to the Air Force and other military. It looks black in the picture but is really brown. It’s still shiny because it’s still got it’s protective shipping coating. That’ll wear off quickly and it’ll be a dull brown. List price originally was $350. We picked it up tonite for $49. Yes, that’s over 80% off. I also grabbed a $160 leather vest for $8.50, about 4 Nautica, Polo, and Quicksilver sweatshirts, and 1/2 dozen long sleeve shirts. I got clothing with a list price of over $900 for under $100. By far the jacket is my favorite though.

Thinking of moving

11:30 am on Monday, February 21, 2005

I don’t know why but my wife and I are thinking of packing up and moving. Not just across town or across state, but across country. Tops on our list right now is New Hampshire.
Yes, that New Hampshire. Yes, we know it gets cold. Yes, it’s a long way away. No, we don’t have any family or friends even remotely near there.
I think my desire to move comes from my younger years. The longest I ever lived in one place was about 5 years or so when I was growing up. I guess I’m used to a constant change of scenery. Right now we’ve lived in the same house in Austin for going on 9 years. Twice as long as I’ve ever lived in any one place.
We picked New Hampshire because of all the good things about it. Here’s a list I’ve gathered:
#1 in US growth in per capita income
#1 business climate in New England
#1 in US growth in wholesale & retail jobs
NH has the lowest Tax Burden in the United States.
No Income Tax
No Sales Tax
No Capital Gains Tax
NH has the lowest Crime Rate in the United States.
NH has the highest Standard of Living in the United States.
NH ranks 9th of the Highest Income Levels in the United States.

It is also a very libertarian friendly state. Very small government, home schooling friendly, gun friendly, and more. It’s also the state that the Free State Project picked as the state they’ll try to make even more libertarian. Not my reason for picking New Hampshire but a damn good addition to the plus column.

We are planning on flying up next month and spending a week looking around. We’ve got a few places in mind to look at and if things go well we’ll make the move. Before we move I’ll need a job. I’m not going to move up there unless I’ve got a job waiting. We’ll rent a place up there and rent out our house in Austin. If after a while we decide that we want to make it permanent then we’ll sell our Austin place and buy a place in the woods of New Hampshire.

Diet update…

10:50 pm on Saturday, February 19, 2005

Yeah, I’ve still been working at it. I’ve dropped right at 15lbs so far. Still averaging 2-3lbs a week. I’m right at the border of dropping a jeans size. My current ones are a bit big but the next size down a bit small. Give me about anotther week or two and I’ll be in them. I kept all the jeans I had from when I weighed 20lbs less so I’m not going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe. I’ve got at least a dozen pairs sitting in the closet that I haven’t worn for 6+ years. Woohoo! I bought a fancy scale a few weeks ago that does body fat percentage testing too. I’ve lost 4% there too. I’m shooting for at least 30lbs so I should easily be there by summer. Then I’ll slack off and such. Ideally I’d like to drop 50 but I’m not gonna kill myself doing it. If I did drop 50 I’d be smaller than I was going all the way back to 16 years old.

Comment spam hell…

10:15 am on Friday, February 4, 2005

I don’t know about others but I have been getting shitloads of attempted comment spam lately. By lots I mean over 300 this week alone. Thank God for WordPress’ ability to filter comments based on keywords. Not a one of the spams for online poker has gotten through. They go straight to ‘awaiting moderation’ where I can do a bulk delete.
The floods always come overnight when I’m asleep, presumably so they’ll be there a while so Google has a chance at seeing them. Well, thanks to Google’s new system, even if they did get past moderation they won’t get any benefit of a higher ranking.