Then two capacitors on the 40″ died. It was out of warranty, but I found a guy who came to me to replace them for less than $200.

I just replaced my external monitor for my laptop. I had been using a 19″ Acer in conjunction with the 13″ laptop monitor as a dual setup. Working this way meant the graphics processor was working overtime to power both monitors. I upgraded to a Samsung 23″ and am using it as a single-monitor setup to help the laptop processor out.

During the time that I was dealing with the TV capacitors, I tweeted about it in the hopes that I’d get some response from Samsung for a loyal customer of theirs. I was hoping that by mentioning that I had 3 of their products and was considering purchasing a 4th, they’d do something to help. I never heard from them, but it didn’t matter because of how inexpensive the repair was. It’s a good thing, too, because the number of Samsung products I’d have told them I had would have been wrong.

When we needed to upgrade the hard drive on our old Windows desktop PC a few years back, I purchased an 80GB drive for it. The drive was a Samsung.

When my wife bought a netbook we purchased an external CD/DVD drive for it to install software. The drive was a Samsung.

My wife lost her iPhone in DC last fall and bought an inexpensive pay-as-you-go phone to get by for the weekend. It was a Samsung.

So that makes 7 total Samsung products we’ve purchased over the years, 6 of which we still have.

So am I loyal to Samsung? Pretty much. I’ll still stick with my iPhone rather than go with one of the 12 models of smartphone that Samsung makes. I’ll also stick with my MacBook rather than get a Samsung laptop.

Umm, just realized that I also am loyal to Apple. In our home we have a MacBook (with Apple wired keyboard & Magic Mouse), iMac, Mac Mini (with Apple Wireless keyboard), 4 iPhones (2G (dead), 3G (I use it as an iPod Touch), & two 4Gs), 2 iPod Shuffles, and we’re about to purchase a MacBook Air. Looks like the only brand that we’re more loyal to than Samsung is Apple.

Sales at the Copy Center had been dismally low, so my boss pulled me out of there and had me do odd projects for her around the Corporate Office. First I spent a week cleaning out our old warehouse so that we could vacate the building, thus saving the cost of the lease. I got to take a Sawzall to old desks & other large items in order to safely get them in the bed of a pickup & haul them to the dumpster. In the space of 4 days I hauled off 5 dumpster loads of trash.

After the warehouse was empty, she had me go to the Corporate Office to work on a spreadsheet listing of file boxes being stored. I had to color code them by type (Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, & Human Resources). I then had to calculate destroy dates based on how long we’re to retain them. Next I had to sort them by destroy date and assign a new box number to make it easier to find them. That took about 2 weeks, what with being interrupted with other little projects.

Once I got the spreadsheet & box numbers figured out, I generated labels and went to the warehouse to tag the boxes & organize them. There were between 3000 & 4000 boxes. I handled each of them at least twice. Some were stacked on shelves, some were on pallets. Some of the pallets were stacked in the middle of the floor, others were 10′+ off the floor. I used a riding forklift, a walk-behind forklift, and a pallet jack to move the pallets around. The whole job took 7.5 days to complete. There is actually quite a bit more room for box storage now than before, and nothing was disposed of, it’s just organized better. Now anyone can go in and find a specific box easily. What used to take them a day or longer can now be done in less than 5 minutes.

After that project was done, my boss had me doing all kinds of other things, from getting duplicate vehicle titles to researching a color laser printer that can handle envelopes to helping out other stores. I spent a day and a half at one store scanning binders to PDFs. They had 21 binders that came in at noon on a Wednesday that needed to be scanned & burned to CD by noon on the following Monday. Normally, they’d be finalizing the burn at 11:30am on Monday, and would have worked pretty much all weekend on it. I started scanning them at 3pm on Wednesday, and had 12 done by 6pm. I returned at 9am on Thursday and spent an hour correcting errors in some of the binders that had already been scanned. I’d initially been given incorrect instructions as to what had to be scanned. Once that was done, I finished the other 8 binders that I had left (someone else did the other binder). While I was working on those, another person was scanning the large format items that my machine couldn’t handle. I then had to insert those scans in the proper place in my scans. Including an hour lunch, I had everything complete & ready to be checked & burned to disc by 3pm. I ended up finishing up the day there by helping out on other jobs they had.

Earlier that morning, I was told that the store manager had asked one of the assistant managers why I was so much faster than they were. He was told that I was faster because I knew the machine better than they did. They’d been scanning pretty much every sheet as its own file, then combining the 150+ files together into one document at the end. I knew that by simply touching one button on screen while scanning the first page, that I could scan the entire binder as one PDF file, thus saving tons of time on the back end. Being the nice guy that I am, I was sure to show three of them how to do the same thing in the future.

I also learned how to do billing for my location, and how to close out the month. Sales have started to pick up, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll be helping out at Corporate. I’m kinda hoping that my boss will see the value in keeping me up there and will instead hire a new delivery guy for the Copy Center. She’d just have to convince her bosses that it would be a good idea to do so.

Another project I’ve been working on is scanning new account credit applications to PDF. I scanned 7 file boxes of apps, and discovered that two of them didn’t need to be scanned. Since I simply pulled the staples and scanned them as large 300+ page documents, I now have to go through the files and extract out each account’s documents & name them with their account number, account name, and the state where they’re located.

On the home front, I haven’t been bike riding as much as I’d like to, mainly because of my work schedule. Instead of walking 3 blocks to/from work every day, I have to take the DART Light Rail train 30 minutes each way. So instead of clocking out at 6pm and being home by 6:05pm, I get home between 6:45 & 7, depending on which train I catch. That pretty much kills any bike riding, mainly because I’d have no time to get changed & out the door to make it to the group. I know I could ride on my own, but that’s no fun. Plus I’m usually exhausted at the end of the day. Cynthia is now working 9-6 & getting home between 6:45 & 7, so we’re eating dinner later.

So everything is pretty much going well now. There were a couple hiccups earlier in the year, but they’ve been resolved in a manner that’s left us in an even better position than before, so that’s good.

Oh, I had to get my iPhone replaced again. It had been forgetting the settings for known WiFi hotspots, mainly the one at home. I’d go to connect with it, and it would ask for the password, which it should have in its memory. I’d key in the password, and would get a message telling me that it was incorrect. All our other WiFi devices (TiVo, MacBook, Netbook) connect to the network just fine, so I knew the issue was with the phone. The staff at the Genius Bar had me do a full reset last Sunday. That didn’t fix it. When the iPhone 3.0 update came out on Wednesday, I thought it might help. No such luck. So I went in this afternoon and they gave me a new phone. Here’s hoping it works at least until the end of September, before the year warranty runs out, or even better, another year or more.

Kathleen tagged me, so what the hell:

The Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

#1:

I can’t whistle. Well, I can, but it’s weak and only dogs can hear it. I’ve tried to learn how, and just can’t do it.  Every now and then I’ll get a good, solid tone, but it doesn’t last, and I can’t vary the pitch. It’s sad, really.

#2:

I was my high school’s first National Merit Scholar. And I didn’t even try. I wasn’t valedictorian, didn’t make straight-A’s, and only took the SAT once. I just test really well. From what I understand, the second National Merit Scholar from my HS was the very next year.

#3:

Even though I got a full scholarship to college, I never graduated.  In fact, I dropped out after one year. I’ve since gone back to various colleges/universities and picked up classes here and there, enough to be classified as a Junior, but not enough for a degree.  I still have no idea what I want to do when I grow up.

#4:

I was the best trombone player in my HS graduating class, but I can’t/don’t read music.  I’ve even performed on stage at the Meyerson Symphony Center, twice. Oh, and I can’t do jazz improv, either. But put a piece of music in front of me and I can play it.  I learned to play by position, so when I see the note on a page, I see numbers.  It works for me.

#5:

In another 15 months I’ll have lived half my life in the Dallas/Ft Worth area.  I’m including the summer my brothers and I lived here with our mother back in the 70s. The other half of my life has been spent mostly in various towns/cities in Wisconsin, but also in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, & California.  Of all the places I’ve lived, I prefer Dallas.

#6:

I love cats & don’t really care for dogs.  Dogs smell, and are very needy.  Cats take care of themselves, but can still tell when they’re needed.  There, that makes 6. Can you tell I’m struggling here?

On whom shall I inflict this?

• YummY!
• WebKittyn
• Jenn
• Mandy
• Amberance
• Tim

The MacBook is working well for me.  I did drop it on the concrete floor one evening while it was running, but nothing was damaged.  I’m more careful now.

We moved at the end of July to a new loft in a new(er) building.  Our old loft was in a 100+ year old building.  Our new loft is in a 50+ year old building.  It’s a smaller space, but the layout is very efficient, and we like it.

Work is work.  Nothing new there.

We’re now down to two cats.  We had to have Lorenzo put down at the end of July.  His ear cancer had come back, and his kidneys were failing.  The best thing for him was to humanely have him euthanized.  It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, but it was the right thing to do.  Lance & Arianna have adapted to his loss fairly well, but I can tell they miss him.

I got an iPhone recently.  It’s great, as I expected.  I’ve downloaded lots of free apps for it.  I’m afraid of downloading non-free apps because I don’t want to run up a huge iTunes bill.

We went to the NYC area for a week from the 18th through the 25th.  I’ll go into detail in another post.

My wife: You have a blog, what more do you need?

For the most part, EE has worked well for me.  The main drawback I’ve been able to discover is that when it’s time to update the software, I found it easier to completely uninstall the old version and do a new install of the new one.  Even doing that, updating the software generally took me a couple of days to do.  Because of that, I’d been using version 1.4.2 for well over a year.  I know that I needed to update to the current version (1.6), I just wasn’t looking forward to doing it.

Last week, I attended WordCamp Dallas with my wife.  I figured I’d pick up general blogging tips (I did), and also learn more about WordPress.  I fully intended to update the software to the current version, but also considered switching to WordPress.

Earlier this week, I made the attempt to update.  As usual, it didn’t work.  Finally, in frustration, I decided to install WordPress 2.5 and start over.  But I didn’t want to simply install it on my current host.  I decided to finally purchase monogodo.com, and install it on that.  I’ll keep monogodo.org and have it redirect to the .com version eventually.

The WordPress installation was the easiest software installation I’ve ever done.  I’m amazed at how simple it was.  Adding plugins & widgets and themes is extremely easy.  In EE, all of it took some doing.  Now I understand why my wife loves WordPress.

I am still going to try to export my old posts from EE and import them into WordPress at some point.  I think the best way to do that is going to be to install EE locally on my computer at home, and fiddle with it there.

Oh, another thing I like about WordPress vs. EE:  In EE, if I want to add a Category, I have to create it in a whole different submenu.  In WordPress, I just add it during the post.  I also hated the preview in EE.  The theme it used for previewing posts was the Dashboard theme, which looked nothing like my blog.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to using the software even more as time goes on.