Writing Stuff

My iPhone hasn’t been happy lately and I finally got around to taking it down to the Apple Store for a check-up. Symptoms included poor battery life and a wonky home button that felt like it was grinding or clicked multiple times when pressing it down. Unfortunately neither of these issues were 100% reproducible and so I was turned down a replacement on my first visit. I decided to try and document the issues as best I could so that when I experienced a problem again, I had proof and could use that in an attempt to get a new iPhone. A couple of days after my first visit, my phone started to experience the same button issue that I had complained about previously, but it seemed more pronounced and definitely lasted longer this time than it had before. Once I figured out that it was going to last for a while, I stopped playing with it at work so that I could get it on video (audio, mostly) at home. When I got home, I took out the wife’s pink Sony camera and recorded it making the strange ...

As of today, I am on vacation for a week. I'm not doing anything in particular except not working and I imagine it will be pretty fun. Okay, so it might not be the most exciting thing in the world but, prior to this, I have only taken off 3 days in a row from work. That left me with quite a few (over 150) vacation hours and I think that means I've earned some time off. So I took it. I also took New Year's Day and the day after off, meaning that I have a very short work week when I get back next week. Being off work doesn't mean that I'll be blogging more often. In fact, I'll probably be blogging less. I want to try and stay off the computer as much as possible and just use my iPhone if I need to go online for something. I don't want to completely detach from technology, but I work on computers all day and I believe that my vacation would be more enjoyable away from one. The only reason that I'm using mine right now is because I had to wait for my iPhone...

Everyone has their horror stories about phone-based technical support. It seems like the representatives are never fully aware of what's going on, either with you or the company as a whole and they're just marginally better at troubleshooting your issues than you would be. This proved to totally be the case when I called Time Warner Cable recently to find out what I would need to get a TiVo HD up and running with their service. I did quite a bit of research for this on my own prior to calling. I hate calling companies and would rather spend the extra time browsing forums or other resources online instead of waiting on hold for ages just to get frustrated with an inexperienced representative over the phone. For whatever reason I guess I didn't look online as much as I should have, probably trying to save time by just having them tell me what I needed to do instead of finding out myself. This turned out to be a huge mistake and I wound up investing significantly more time t...

I just took my first foray into the world of throwing away money. I invested in the stock market. I know that it may not seem like the greatest time to start throwing money into something that has been on a steady downward fall for the past year, but I think now is one of the best times to invest if you can. Why would you invest when times are tough? Because they're going to get better. The market always gets better. We've had a couple of recessions in recent years, but things always turn around. It makes sense to invest when the market is low, because (at least in the long term) it has nowhere to go but up. Things will definitely get worse before they get better but investing when things are bad leaves you open to making a fair amount of money when things get better. Of course, there's no guarantees and there's always the possibility of the economy collapsing and having everything that was invested be gone forever. I'm thinking that if that happens, we'll be ...

I love delivery food. It's not really the taste of it (the wife makes better home-made versions of everything we've had), but the convenience sure is nice. I like not having to make myself presentable to drive out to a place to eat or to wait in line to get some food to bring home sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I do really enjoy going out to dinner with the wife. I'm always the one that suggests eating out instead of making food at home, actually. Thankfully she stops me, otherwise we'd be eating out every night and spending hundreds of dollars a month on food that we could probably be making at home. When you're not in the mood to go out and eat, though, sometimes it'd be nice if the same food could come home. Apparently it can. I got an ad in the mail the other day for some restaurant delivery company. I can't remember the name of it and can't find the ad, but basically they would pick up food for you from a variety of local restaurants and deliver...

We're obviously not going through the best of economic times and we've officially been in a recession for a year now, so extra perks that I've been used to at work for the past couple years are not something that I expected to continue this time around. Fortunately they did, which makes me incredibly happy as an employee, but also as a shareholder in the company. Christmas bonuses seem to be one of those things that people preface with "remember when..." and others wish that they'd ever received one. I honestly don't know of anybody besides current co-workers that get a Christmas bonus anymore, and I really don't blame the companies for not giving them. Bonuses are like paid vacation... they don't make sense. You're getting paid to not work (with paid vacation) or for not doing anything extra (with bonuses) and I understand why it may be hard to justify giving employees "free" money, especially now. It's nice to work for a compan...

As cheesy as it may sound, Thanksgiving does make me think about all that I'm thankful for and I do really cherish the time I spend with my wife and my family. Getting together with people that I don't see except for during birthdays or other holidays that our family spends together is important to me and means a lot. Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday of the year. I really enjoy hanging out with my family at my Grandpa's house all day and then having a dinner that everyone has contributed to in some way. It may seem pessimistic to assume and expect that everyone's life is too short, but it is. Every moment spent with the people that I care for may be the last, and after losing my Grandmother to ovarian cancer years ago, it really makes me appreciate that time. My Grandfather is getting quite old and I have to consider that every holiday or get-together that we have may be the last of that particular holiday or event. Instead of depressing me, this just makes ...