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Don_HH2K's Blog

Don tryeth, Don hacketh, and Don gaveth up.
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Laptop batteries

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I've been having an interesting problem: two almost-adjacent two-hour classes that require me to run back to my dorm after the first class is over, so that I can recharge my laptop. Annoying? You bet. I researched an extra battery but found out that one would run me $180, and I wouldn't be able to use my docking station with it. So I came up with this: "This" being a 180-watt-hour battery pack constructed from two UPS batteries and a car adapter. Now I can run around for eleven hours without having to plug in - although my...

posted @ Saturday, October 31, 2009 2:13 PM | Feedback (5) | Filed Under [ School Hardware Photo ]

Coming soon to a campus near you...

Those guys actually went around to pick people up, too.

posted @ Thursday, October 01, 2009 6:45 PM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ School Photo ]

Final update from Boston

And so begins my final full day in Boston for a long while. It's a feeling that I knew was coming since last year, but finally set in. I'll be making my last rounds around the city in the morning, and plan on finishing up the packing in the afternoon, leaving Saturday morning for the 6.5-hour, 400mi / 650km trip to college. Hopefully it won't take me all that long to get situated there so that I can come back and detail the move-out and move-in. Anyway, the past few weeks have been rather eventful: My rooming situation has been up in...

posted @ Friday, August 28, 2009 12:21 AM | Feedback (2) | Filed Under [ School Travel Photo ]

Mein Auto

I was going to save this post for a time when I had a photo to prove to Antony that I am, in fact, not rich, but it's taking me too long to produce that photo. The news as of last week is that I am now the owner of a '99 BMW 528i, which a number of my friends have dubbed the "Donmobile". For more photos, check out this post on the SD701 Forums. (To Antony: I am poor, the 528i was the base model BMW 5series in 1999.) (To Dave: I don't have any plans to run over your mailbox.)

posted @ Monday, July 13, 2009 11:29 PM | Feedback (5) | Filed Under [ Travel Photo ]

Q: How do you fix a clock radio?

A: What can't vinyl tape fix? The button board had been acting flaky for awhile, and often to set the clock I'd just open it up and short the accumulator pin to adjust the time. It turned out that the material between the buttons and the board itself had dried out over the years, thus squishing instead of depressing as expected. I tore it out and used some tape in its place. (to Antony: this is the same one I modified earlier. Why buy a new clock if I can just fix up what I have?)

posted @ Tuesday, June 30, 2009 3:25 PM | Feedback (15) | Filed Under [ Hardware Hacks Photo ]

"No Don! Please!!"

I've already had a few requests for a copy of the crowbar image I was using while my blog was down, so here it is:

posted @ Friday, June 12, 2009 3:37 PM | Feedback (4) | Filed Under [ Blog-related Photo ]

Recapping the past month.

It feels nice to have some time to spare and catch up on things. I've been quite busy recently, with family, life, work, and school, and the sheer volume of what's been going on had put me off from taking the time to write a blog entry about anything. For those that have kept up with me via e-mail, AIM/iChat, Skype, and the like, bear with me for just a moment. Things start in mid-April, where I had been working on a series of videos for the senior comedy event at school. This was, more or less, the only time when...

posted @ Sunday, May 24, 2009 1:03 AM | Feedback (5) | Filed Under [ Blog-related School Hardware Software Photo ]

Cleanliness is a virtue.

By now, some of you have probably seen the photos of how dirty my Model M keyboard got before I cleaned it. That keyboard hadn’t been cleaned at least since I acquired it in 1996, and I can’t be sure that its previous owner had cleaned it since its date of manufacture in 1989. Of course, the keyboard really never left my desk, so it wasn’t that bad of a dirt magnet. Enter my laptop. Going on three years old this July, it’s been everywhere from hospitals to restaurants to train stations – it quite literally provokes a, “Do you know...

posted @ Thursday, April 30, 2009 11:18 PM | Feedback (12) | Filed Under [ Hardware Photo ]

Political statements

I found some particularly well-placed graffiti on the way home today – well enough that I walked back later on to take a photo of it. I’ll bet that it will be quite some time before Uncle Sam resolves the politics of removing the graffiti.

posted @ Sunday, April 05, 2009 11:20 PM | Feedback (10) | Filed Under [ Photo ]

Internet Explorer 8

Is it me, or does this post-install process seem a bit excessive? I took these at the first launch of IE8, so the other five or six steps in the installer itself aren’t included in these ten… I don’t even remember Netscape 6 having this many pestering install dialogs. I'm still wondering what to make of this review just yet. There's definitely been progress made, but in true Microsoft fashion, it seems to just be mostly improvements to technologies already available elsewhere. The unofficial Googlebar extension (the same one I was using way back when with Netscape 7.1, mind...

posted @ Thursday, March 19, 2009 8:40 PM | Feedback (9) | Filed Under [ Software Photo ]

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