Another Word for Nerd

Two parts fell out of the bottom of my Steelcase LEAP chair last night.

Upon further investigation, they appear to be most of the “Seat Edge Height” adjustment (fortunately, not an adjustment I use often) and the failure looks to be from a bad or weak weld.

I’m waiting to hear back from the company that the chair was bought from, but if they can’t fix it cheaply I may end up buying a complete new chair in a month or two.

Update: Apparently the main Steelcase reseller here in Houston would rather sell me a new chair than give any serious thought to repairing my existing one.

Second Update (Aug. 2007): The rep at the main Steelcase reseller in Houston apparently went on vacation, and then never bothered to respond to any of my emails. It’s obvious that they’re more concerned with corporate sales than small business or individuals.

My new asthma medicines must have sped up my metabolism. A week after I got out of the hospital, I bought all new smaller shirts and pants. Now, I can easily stick a balled-up fist between my waistband and my waist.

Another 2-3 weeks, and I’ll have to buy more pants because these new ones are already falling off me.

I’ve always been interested in Freemasonry, and reading about the organization has been a long-time hobby of mine. My grandfather was a Mason, although he passed away before I got interested in it so I was never able to ask him about it.

I decided a couple of days ago to see what I could find out about his participation. Some helpful folks pointed me to the Secretary of the Lodge in Guthrie, Oklahoma. I emailed him about an hour ago, and in less than forty-five minutes had this response back:

“George Stanley Williams was initiated an Entered Apprentice on 5/12/31, passed to the Degree of Fellow Craft on 6/9/31 and raised to Master Mason on 6/2/53 in Marlow Lodge #103. He moved his membership to Anadarko on 1/18/55. He held no offices.”

How’s that for speed and service? Pretty neat, I say.

I finally got some good pictures of the AT&T Central Office on Wesleyan between Richmond and Westheimer today.

I finally ended my 3-year love affair with the Linksys WRT54G (currently running DD-WRT firmware), and replaced my last unit tonight with the new Apple Airport Extreme.

I’d already replaced one of my WRT54Gs (the one acting as a wireless-to-wired bridge in my middle bedroom that acts as a “projects lab”) with an Airport Express a couple of weeks ago.

So, now my entire network is based around Apple products. So far, it works great - the only stumbling block was a bit of manual configuration for the WDS setup that lets me bridge two wired networks with the wireless connection.

I don’t have any 802.11n devices yet, but plan on picking up another Extreme in a couple of months to replace the existing Express.

Some guidelines for a better life:

1. Be polite. Say “please”, “thank you”, and use “Ma’am” and “Sir”
2. Treat other people like you’d want to be treated.
3. Hang up your phone, and concentrate on driving your vehicle. If you MUST take a call, pull off to the side of the road or a parking lot first.
4. Open the door for other people if you get there before they do.
5. If you believe in something, feel free to share it, but don’t force it on others.
6. Everyone is entitled to think differently.
7. Don’t respond to spam, forward chain letters to your friends, or fall for stupid Nigerian scams.
8. If you have children, don’t expect everyone within hearing distance to ooh, ahh, and ignore their misbehavior just because you managed to insert Tab A into Slot B and win the Crotch Fruit Jackpot. Don’t take your children to public places if they can’t behave or you won’t/can’t discipline them properly.
9. Clerks, cashiers, waiters, and over “service industry” personnel are people too. If you have a problem, take it up with them in a sane, reasonable manner and don’t be an asshole - kindness does wonders. Tip well for good service.
10. If you have to call technical support for something computer-related, be in front of your computer when you call. Learn the proper terms for the equipment; you’ll be amazed at how much quicker problems can get solved.
11. Read at least one new book a month to expand your horizons.
12. MySpace is not cool, neither is eBaum’s World. If you want to share a funny video, post it to Google Video or YouTube, and make sure that someone else hasn’t beaten you to it.

At least *I* think so.

I haven’t tried the mushy peas yet.

There’s nothing quite like the hilarity contained in the latest newsletter from the Property Owner’s Association (e.g, a “Voluntary HOA”) for my neighborhood.

Spot the typos! Spot the bigotry, thiny-veiled racism, hypocrisy, and “not in my back yard” syndrome!

… with a bonus.

I sent it off to get a dead hard drive and a discolored top-half fixed.

It came back with a new hard drive (OSX 10.4 preloaded of course), new top-half (still with the protective plastic cover on it), and a couple of other minor recall issues fixed.

However, I sent the machine off with a single 512M SODIMM installed.
It came back with that 512M SODIMM *and* a 256M SODIMM installed.

Would be a nice free bonus, if I didn’t already have two 1G SODIMMs here waiting on it - I just put the “official Apple” 512M SODIMM in it when I sent it in for service, as Apple gets really picky about third-party memory and my 1G SODIMMs are Crucial-brand.