Archive for category Homelife

I’ve received a number of emails from around the globe — my favorite was from Northern Ireland, since something about Ireland just makes me smile —  thanking me for posting my fix for a Samsung monitor gone faulty as mine had.

First, I appreciate hearing that it worked for you.  I’ll accept the thanks in this regard, but I’ll also point out that if it doesn’t work or you blow your monitor up attempting it or burn down a city block or such … I’ll accept none of the blame.

Second, I thought I ought to post an update that my monitor is still working brilliantly. The problem hasn’t reoccurred.  Not once.

Go me.

It’s been awhile since I made any observations about the linguistic development of the wee lad.

It’s Christmas Eve morning. The tree is trimmed and glorious, resplendent with lights and memories. The yawning house stumbles down the hardwood stairs to gather in the kitchen. Bowls of cereal are poured. Juice is delivered in Disney-adorned cups. Eggs are cooking.

The wee lass, predictably, is whining. Her high-pitched annoyance tweaks the ears of the early-risen family and winces shoulders.

Several minutes pass. The girl’s diva-like shrills are unabated. And so the wee lad, his speech patterns learnt at the feet of a grand master or eloquence, takes a moment to remove his hands from his ears and shout across the table at his sister: “Damnit-boy, Elanor, stop it!”

Thus does the father spend his Christmas Eve both amused and in trouble.

About two years ago, we bought ourselves a fancy new computer monitor. It wasn’t incredibly state of the art, but we got a great deal on it, and it was still a really awesome monitor: a Samsung SyncMaster T220HD, a 22″ widescreen, high-definition monitor/HDTV beauty. The monitor was a huge step up from the little CRT we had been using for a long time. We were very pleased.

But then, a month or two ago, the monitor started acting funny. We would try to turn it on in the morning, and the power light would flash — “message received, I’m turning on now” — but then nothing would happen. A person would have to sit there for 5-10 minutes or so, hitting the power button about every 5-6 seconds before one of the signals eventually got all the way through and the monitor powered up. After that, until you turned it off again, the monitor would be right as rain.

Eventually we opted never to turn the monitor off, which isn’t exactly great for the environment and sure as heck ain’t good for the monitor.

I didn’t really know what might be wrong with it, so we talked about taking it in for repairs. We were pretty confident, though, that just getting a technician to diagnose it would probably run close to $100, and then you’d add on the cost of the repair itself. As Black Friday was nearing and we started to see the dropping prices in computer monitors, we could see that it didn’t make any sense to repair the monitor: we could probably get a brand-new one for the cost it would take to repair the old one.

At the same time, it was hard to swallow paying a couple of hundred dollars to replace a monitor that surely could be repaired — plus it was hard to imagine putting the old beast in the landfill.

So I decided I’d repair it myself.

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It’s no secret hereabouts that I’m a big Colorado sports fan. Through good times and bad, I root for my Rockies, Avalanche, Nuggets, and, of course, my Broncos. I can’t really help it. Born in the Rockies, it’s in my blood. Just like lovin’ me some John Denver singing “Rocky Mountain High.”

At the same time, I consider myself a fairly rational fan. In my classes I preach critical thinking every chance I get, and I like to practice what I preach. Sure, I get a little riled up now and again in the heat of the moment — it’s for this reason that my wife bought me a designated “Broncos Pillow” that I can put into a headlock and beat into submission or pick up and throw at the offending referee on the TV — but on the whole I just enjoy being a fan. It’s fun.

I also like to think that I’m a pretty well informed fan. I try to know as much as I can about everything in life, and football is no different at all. In that respect, I like to look at the big picture in the development of my teams. It’s not just the game-of-the-moment that matters to me, it’s what is being built on a larger scale.

It thus pains me to say that today I was having a hard time seeing a light at the end of the particular tunnel that the Broncos have entered. It’s a dark, dark place when you lose by 456 points at home to the Raiders (oh, wasn’t that many? sure felt like it) and then follow it up by heading to the international stage in London and losing to the 1-win 49ers behind their 3rd-string QB. That’s not cool, Broncos.

Never one to get too down on my team, I decided to respond in proper American fashion (especially appropriate to election season!) by ditching reality. This evening I loaded Madden up on the Wii and dialed up a 5-minute-quarters game between the digital Broncos and the digital Colts. I confess I’m not very good at all the joystick jockeying and button bashing required to control the players, so I just ran the game in a “coach” mode, where I called the plays and left it up to the game to run them.

Final score: Broncos 105, Colts 3.

I know it isn’t reality, but I do feel a little better now.

What a day.  What a week.

For some reason, driving home at the end of a long day tonight, a song came on the radio that I hadn’t heard in many years.  Somehow it fit the mood perfectly.

Ain’t a half-bad song, either:

Life’s good here. Nothing to report beyond being busy.

To keep you occupied, here’s a terrific version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” I bet you didn’t think about how great the lyrics were before: