Things, Stuff & Such

My mother has a friend who is from Bolivia, I believe.  She has dual citizenship and is retired from  same industry my Mother works in (home health care).  They talk almost every day and have many things in common.  One of which is that they were both raised Catholic.

My mother told me the following story about her friend. 

Being raised Catholic her friend goes to church every Sunday.  Religiously, you could say (geeze, sorry).  Anyway, since the Catholic church has been offering sanctuary to illegial aliens from Mexico she has refused to give her weekly tithe in the collection plate.  That was her way of telling the Church that she disagreed with their new policy.  I could argue the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church all day, but that’s not why I’m writing this.

Through the Church she heard of a young woman and her children who were having a dificult time while the husband is fighting in Iraq.  My mother’s friend asked if she could meet with the woman and she was invited to their house.

She met with the woman and her children and they talked for a while.  At the end of the evening she gave the woman a check for $500 and said it was to help the children through this hard time. 

My mother didn’t tell me this story so I would tell other people.  And, I know her friend is not looking for accolades.  I feel it is a good story of a good Christian acting as her faith has shown her -not as a blind subject of the Catholic Church.

Wednesday night I got an email from Syria saying that Scott will get five extra credit points if we write an essay describing him.  By ‘we’ she meant me.  I was happy to do it for him.  Yesterday I was thinking of ideas while at work but didn’t get to really start writing until the day was almost over.  I thought I had a good start on it when I left the office and figured it would flow pretty quickly when I got home.  At home I had all the points I wanted to hit in my head but could not come up with a way to articulate them logically in the essay.  So I sat there.  Thinking.  Typing fragments of thoughts and partial paragraphs in the hopes of incorporating them into a final essay.  Sitting, thinking.  Okay, maybe if I start like this…  Thinking, sitting.  I notice my Tivo is recording something.  Focus.  What time is it?  Seven o’clock.  Okay, just focus for a little bit and you can finish this.  Oh, I know, my tivo must be recording ”Everybody Loves Raymond”.  I wonder which episode it is?  Focus.  Finish the essay and you can watch anything you want.  I read over what I have – it only takes a few seconds.  I like that paragraph…  There is a good idea… That’s a clumsy transition… I should tell them this…  But they won’t understand unless I tell them about that…  Now you’re just being long winded.  “Brevity is the soul of Wit”… oh come on!  I don’t need Shakespeare in my head right now. 

Okay, I’m going to start over.

Um?

Well, I’ll use this part to start off.  Then Syria calls.

“Are you finished with the essay?”

“No.”

 She did offer some good ideas but my problem was forming the ideas in to an essay format.  I told her not to worry it would be finished and emailed to her in time to print it up for Scott to turn in.

The final format was a little choppy but it conveys what I wanted to about my son.  And almost as importantly it was turned in on time.  Can’t give my children lectures about finishing their homework on time if I failed to do it the first week of school.  Well, actually, I can but I would rather have the credibility.  It carries more weight than “Do as I say, not as I do.”  And Scott is intelligent enough to know the difference.  I emailed the finished essay and went to bed.

 This morning, as I am about to walk out the door, Syria calls me to say she didn’t get the email.  I knew I sent it… twice actually because I forgot to save the Word document in the 97-2003 Word format the first time so I resent it.  Now I have to restart my pc and pull up my gmail account to see if the email bounced back for some reason.

Nothing came back.  I checked my ‘sent’ folder to verify I sent it to her and there they were – two emails sent.  I don’t know what’s up.  Maybe Yahoo’s servers were down overnight.  I resent it and headed for work.

On the road she calls again.  Still no emails.  I tell her I will resend it from the office to her other email account first thing.  At the office I resend the email to both accounts and call her.  Now I’m a little worried.  They have to leave for school soon. 

Finally the emails show up for some reason.  I don’t know why the internet gods chose to mess with me today but I don’t appreciate it.  Scott is off to school with his extra credit essay in hand. 

iRobot has come out with a new series of roomba vacuum cleaners, the 500 series!  These new robots have many improvements over the previous robots.  engadget.com has a video: Roomba 560 vs Discovery and a good article describing the new series.  My friend at work, who also has multiple roombas, sent me links to videos and articles about this new gen of autonomous vacuum.  I got so excited by what I saw I purchased the less expensive 530 model from HSN.com.  They have a great deal where the roomba 530 is $50 cheaper plus they upgrade it from having two virtual walls to one of the new Virtual Wall Lighthouse which is much improved.

Aesthetically, the new roomba is much improved.  It looks like it would be at home in Buck Roger’s appartment or cleaning the passageways of the Millenium Falcon (I am speaking of the white 530 model.  The black 560 model would be better placed inside the Death Star). 

It is slightly faster, quieter, and has a larger dirt bin and filer.  It also has been upgraded to using radio frequency instead of IR which means it can find it’s home base from another room.  No more dead roombas under the bed.  It will slow down when it senses a wall or other object in near so it doesn’t bang in to it full speed like an idiot. 

The new robot is modular so replacing parts like wheels or motors should be easier.  This will no doubt extend the usable life of the robot for the average user.  Also, it is better sealed inside to dirt, hair and carpet fibers won’t muck up the works inside.  The roomba I took apart a while a go had so much crap inside I was surprised it still functioned – well, actually when I got it it wasn’t really working fully.

It now has an anti-tangle feature that is supposed to keep it from getting caught on carpet fringe and rug tassels.  This is important to me as we have a large area rug that my current roomba has choked on a couple of times.  Plus it has pulled speakers off my desk by their cord.  Hopefully no more of that to worry about.

And if that’s not enough… it talks!  You can press a button and it will explain how to set it up and tell you when a component is malfuntioning.  Now that’s Geek-tacular!

Look here for a complete list of it’s features and check back for pics and videos of the new roomba once it arrives.

Yesterday was the boys’ first day of school.  Neither of them was looking forward to the end of summer vacation, of course.  In addition to the usual first day of school stuff one has to deal with Aaron had his bike stolen.  He had to walk home and I don’t think he told anyone until his mother called from work to check on them.  I talked to him last night and he was bummed but over all in good spirits – he told me “I know what I want for my birthday now.”  (I had asked him what he wanted for his birthday last week in an effort to get a jump on it.  I will be going up there in October and was trying to decide if I should buy something and ship it, bring it or wait and buy it up there.)  Syria talked to the Principal who said she would make an announcement today about the missing bike.  Maybe there is a small chance he will get it back.

Over the weekend I decided to try out the roomba in my bedroom. It has been working well going over the main rooms of the house but, up to now, it has not been sent into any of the bedrooms. The thing about my room is that it is the only room with the original carpet in it (from 1984). Most of the house has bamboo flooring and the other two bedrooms have much newer carpet. Normally when I vacuum my room everything goes in to a bag that is thrown away and I never see what was picked up. I don’t know if bits of 23 year old carpet are being pull out or what. Also, there is the mystery of what was under my bed. <queue spooky music>

Watching the roomba go over carpet it looked more like a robotic vacuum. On the hardwood it seems more like one of the boys’ RC toys than a vacuum. It did a good job of following the edges of walls and furniture and you can see the ‘trail’ of clean carpet it left behind. I watched it go for a few minutes and then left the room, closing the door to keep it focused on just my room.

After about twenty minutes I went to check on it. I could hear it knocking around under my bed. I can’t tell you the last time I vacuumed under my bed – it’s been years. The first thing I noticed was that the roomba had caught a speaker wire and dragged it about three feet into the middle of the floor, pulling down the computer speaker with it. Not a big deal. I fixed the speaker, hid the wire and left the roomba to it’s work.

Another twenty minutes and I went to check on the roomba again. The carpet looked great. It looked like the roomba had been everywhere it could go in the little room but, was still working hard going over every inch many times. I decided to stop it and check the dirt bin. One cool thing I noticed about the roomba cleaning under the bed was that it rolled out an empty water bottle that had made its way deep under my bed. Pretty cool feature.

The dust bin was FULL. The filter was covered with packed dirt, dust and whatever. Good thing I stopped it. I can’t imagine there was any kind of suction in the vacuum with all the junk already in there. Pulling out the bin I was impress with what the little guy had picked up. There were a couple of small Lego pieces, two good sized pieces of paper (one with a phone number on it that I can not recall who the owner is), and a good sized piece of plastic that when to God knows what. I picked out the Lego and dumped everything else in the trash. I gave the brush and good combing and blew out the bin and roomba interior with compressed air. Compressed air is my new best friend in the fight to keep my roomba clean and operational.

While I was cleaning the roomba out for the second time my mother noted: “If you used a regular vacuum, you would be done by now.” She thought the extra time I was taking to clean out the roomba almost negated the time saved by an “autonomus” vacuum.

Clearly, the geek factor is out ways all of that.

Annette, a woman I work with, missed her 20th high school reunion last month.  She decided to have an informal reunion/beach party last weekend, inviting as many classmates and coworkers as she could get a hold of.  The other day she brought in her Senior yearbook to show the people she works with.  As it happens, we went to the same school – though three years apart.  I was a freshman in that book.   Annette let me look through her book and man did it bring back memories.  Faces I had not thought about for years… and some I had.  It was a long time ago and almost seems like another life.  Annette and I knew some of the same people.  Sometimes she knew their older brothers or sisters more than the actual friend.  It was fun talking about who we knew and what we did during those years. 

The picture that brough back the most memories has to be Syria’s.  We knew each other since middle school and started dating our Junior year.  Actually, in middle school she interested in one of my best friends.  There were a lot of good times between us.  Seeing her picture in the yearbook reminded me of them. 

I could not resist.  I had to scan the picture and send it to her.  When she emailed me back the first thing she asked was “You aren’t going to post that anywhere are you?”  I told her I wouldn’t (see picture on right that is not really there). 

She called me when she got it and we had a nice talk about the ‘old times’.  It was nice.  I know I have ranted about her on this blog a time or two but I want to say that it wasn’t all bad.  I never intended to imply it was all bad.  There were many good times and I do have two wonderful sons because of it.  I told her that while we were talking about the yearbook.  I finally got her to agree to let me post her picture (see the paragraph above and remember when you thought I was being a jerk).  Pretty girl, huh?

Wanna see the dork she hooked up with?

Now I can go another 17 years without seeing my high school picture.

Saturday was my nephew’s birthday party.  He turns four on the 19th.  I got up early on Saturday morning so I could get to St. Pete by 10 a.m.   I don’t like getting up early on Saturdays but I was looking forward to this day.  On the way up I finished listening to the audio book ‘Blink‘.  It is a book about how we make decisions without “thinking”… in the blink of an eye.  It was very interesting and entertaining.  I recommend it, highly. 

To get to my brother’s house I have to cross the Sunshine Skyway bridge.  Everytime the boys and I go to the timeshare or to my brother’s house we pass over the bridge.  We have made it our routine to stop at the rest area just before the bridge to stretch our legs and get drinks or ice cream.  This time I had to stop for a pee.  Getting out of the car I felt a little sad, missing the boys.  Just over a month ago I was right here with them on our way to our week at the timeshare.  Their whole summer visit with me seemed to pass to quickly. 

As I approached the bridge the Minneapolis bridge collaps rushed to the forefront of my thoughts.  What a tradegy.  Since childhood I would worry about things collapsing; bridges, balconies, second story floors or the floor above a basement.  When we lived in Michigan my brother an I would spend nights at our cosin’s house.  They had a basement that we would play in alot.  Sometimes, when we were upstairs, I would hear the floor creak (as wood floors do) and thing I was going to fall through.  I imagined the wood joists stressing under the weight of funiture and people walking or us kids running and jumping around.  I wondered how those seemingly thing pieces of wood could hold so much weight over what seemed to be such a long span.  We also had a basement at our house but I can not remember ever worring about it.  I’m not sure why I never thought about it at home.  Anytime I mentioned it to an adult they would tell me “not to worry” or “don’t be silly, nothing is going to happen.”  But these things DO happen.  Not often, but they do.  I have a better understanding of how things are constructed and the way loads are displaced in a structure (thanks to reading things like Popular Mechanics when I was younger and watching the Discovery channel now).  But, I still think about it.  I worry less but I wouldn’t say I was unconcerned.  I do enjoy being up high on the bridge and looking out over the water (I’m not affraid of heights, just things breaking). 

About fifteen minutes after crossing the bridge I pulled in to Kevin’s house.  He was finishing up mowing the lawn.  Inside Monica was working on Ethan’s cake.

Monica makes and decorates her own cakes, and she always does a great job.  This year, Ethan got a Mickey Mouse cake.  When I showed up she was just finishing it.  This picture doesn’t do it justice.  She really has a talent for this.  Sometime she makes and sells cakes for extra money.  I have to make sure she is coming to my next birthday.  She made all the little ‘Mickey’ heads herself.  The only thing she bought was the letter candles and the characters on top.  What is not in the picture are the stars she made from fondant.  They looked good and were probably delicious (unfortunately, she didn’t bring them with us to the party).  The cake was chocolate on the top tier and vanilla on the bottom.  She told me a trick she uses to keep the top layer from sinking in to the bottom: lay drinking straws under the top layer.  Neat ideas, just don’t forget about them when cutting the cake.

We got to the bowling alley a little before the one o’clock start time.  We checked in and got our lane assignments.  We had four lanes to ourselves.  This places has a neat set up for kid’s parties.  You are assigned two party helpers to take care of whatever you need.  We got two young kids that were great.  They seemed very helpful and on top of things.  They brought out several pitchers of Sprite and paper cups.   Ofcourse, when you have a group of 4 year olds bowling you get balls that don’t make it to the pins and these guys helped with that. 

There were several other birthdays going on at the same time.  That’s a lot of children running around but the place was ready for it.  They had a DJ playing music and wishing each kid a happy birthday by name.  They really know how to throw a kiddie party.  They led the kids in a couple of dances and a conga line.  Everyone had a great time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc-n5pJTfM4]

“Does it really matter what kind?” goes the joke. 

My laptop recently had a hard drive failure.  Not a big deal, mostly annoying, but I decided that I would get it back on its feet and sell it.  It was a good time for a change.  I sold the laptop to a friend at work and set the money aside either purchase a ‘new’ notebook or repair the broken lcd on my remaining laptop.

I’ve been searching the usual websites (ebay, newegg, tigerdirect, etc.) and local sale ads and the classifieds for a deal.  There was an ad on craigslist that caught my attention.  It was for a Sony Vaio laptop Core 2 Duo for $620.  Immediately I was skeptical. Though you can find core 2 duo processors in notebooks for that price (and under if you know where to look), you won’t often see a Sony.  The first thing I did was google the model to see what they go for new. I was seeing prices around $2,000.  Now I was getting that “If it seems to good to be true it probably is” feeling .  A two grand computer that is a few months old for $620?  That’s a bad sign.  I read all the time about people being scammed or even robbed setting up deals with people over the internet. But, I was interested to see what the deal was so I contacted the person yesterday (Aug. 1^st) which was a day or two after the item was posted. I had no illusions that I would ever end up with this notebook but I wanted to see what this person was going to say to lure me in. Later that night I received this reply:

Hello

I still have the laptop. As I said, the laptop is an US version, it is 3 months old and it comes with 9 months of warranty.
I have attached some pics with the laptop to this e-mail. I am now in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom.
Since I can’t meet you and make the exchange, I would like to use a service that will help us with that:

www.tnt.com/tnt.express.wolverhampton.depot/third_party_service.html

TNT is a worldwide delivery company (like Fedex, DHL or UPS). You can see from their procedure that you will be able to check the laptop before I receive the payment. If you are in a hurry, I will use 2 days delivery (on my expense).

Let me know what you think.

Best Regards,
Susan

The location for the listing was Fort Myers (which is about 30 miles from where I live) and was posted on July 30th.  Now, two days later, she is back in the UK?!  That was bad sign number two (and it’s a biggie).  She suggested that I use a delivery service that I send the money to and then she ships the notebook.  (Bad sign number three – I don’t know you and you want me to send $600 bucks to you in another country?).  Then she offers to send me the notebook with two day delivery “on my expense” if I am “in a hurry”.  Well, that’s incredibly sweet… (and bad sign number four).  It’s expensive to mail items over seas.  It’s more expensive to mail a heavy electronic item (insured, of course) quickly over seas.  That’s taking a larger chunk out of the already incredibly low asking price of $620 for a two grand laptop she’s only owned for a few months.  Bad sign, bad sign, bad sign.

I thought about taking the next step just to see how something like this gets played out.  I would never send a dime, but let her thing I was on the hook.  This is a text book scam if there ever was one and I am happy to stop it here. 

If you want to hear stories from people who were actually scammed check out almost any web forum that has a BST (Buy/Sell/Trade) forum.  If they are reputable they will have a Fraud or Scam forum warning buyers of scams that have taken place.  This is where people who have been scammed tell their stories.  If you are considering purchasing a used item from a forum or site like craigslist – be careful.  Most people are honest but not everyone.  Pay attention to the bad signs.  Watch yourself and if you are going to meet someone do it in a public place and bring a friend if you can.  You can’t be too careful but you can easily not be careful enough.