The keypads on our alarm have become unresponsive on the buttons we’re always pressing. Some keypads work by having the button complete an electrical circuit. You can test whatever keypad you’re working with by opening it up and touching the button contact with a piece of aluminum foil. If it activates the button, you can glue a piece of aluminum foil over the back of the keypad over the worn-out activator. Use clear fingernail polish or krazy glue…and generously apply it. If it works, you don’t have to replace the whole keypad or remote or whatever has worn out.
Archive for January, 2010
Our local news is now in HD! Check it out! See the nice purple…uh…curtains?
Come on local news! I even found a sidewalk plumbing cover in HD!
Go to grooveshark.com Type a song…any song…sweet, eh?
We watched Mythbusters the other day and now Sean is obsessed with getting hold of some Mentos and Diet Coke.
If you’re editing a bulleted list in Microsoft Word and try to insert an image below the text of one of the bullets, Word will probably try to stick the picture awkwardly between two spaces of text. Shift-enter will put a return into the current bullet between the text and the picture.
I wonder if compact fluorescent light bulbs were not so long-lasting as we were led to believe. I’ve filled the house with them and they go out quite often…more so than incandescent bulbs. I theorize that the average house has light switches that don’t provide even current as you turn them on and the bulbs can’t take any variation. Maybe there are better bulbs out there or something? Maybe some that can withstand fading.
UPDATE: These things are going out all over the place. They are Feit Electric flourescent bulbs. Avoid them like the plague.
I have some pent up nerdly rambling to do. A while back, I got a Dell Vostro 400 on sale. It was a core 2 duo PC at a very good price. Unfortunately, I failed to take power requirements into consideration when I put in an Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT. Cue the recent graphic anomalies I’ve started seeing. The card seems to have croaked. So I ordered a 9800 GT (the next year’s model, but pretty much the same card.) Only when I received this card did I really start to look at power requirements as I should have in the first place. Those nice quiet small Dell computers often have tiny 350 W power supplies. So, I ordered a 460 W power supply that I hope is enough for the new card.  I also learned that you have to look at the combined current on the 12V rails vs your video card’s requirements. I’m noticing that AMD/ATI are at the top of the price/performance charts at the moment. I guess I’m a bit superstitious about sticking with Nvidia for driver support/stability. It might not be a bad idea to try an AMD processor one of these days, though. But like an old man in his high pants, I’ll probably stick with Intel stuff. One of my highest priorities in a PC is stability. I hates me some crashing.
Grapefruit and the smoked cheese you got for Christmas. I learned how to peel a grapefruit if all you have handy is a sharp knife. Cut off the top and bottom. Cut off the north, south, east, and west sides, and then cut off the corners. Then cut out the pulp in curved slices away from the core.
My favorite part of watching blu rays on a PS3 is playing the special features at 1.5 speed by pressing R2. Ya kinda wanna see some of them, but don’t want to take the full time.
