JimGorski.com

I’m still working my plan for 2010, but it will definitely revolve around health and weight this year. Any resolutions out there to share?

Well I know one thing that Santa is bringing me this year - an Acer Aspire One netbook.  Being the type of person to hang much hope on technology, I am already planning on using my new plastic pal to make my life even better than it is today.  All this awesome will come at a price however, and calculating this price has me in a bind.  I think it’s best to start with what I want the new box to do ( in a perfect world). Here’s my short draft list:

• Alarm clock for mornings
• News digest (sports scores/local news/work news) at wake
• Email summaries (home and work) at wake
• Social network summary (home) at wake
• Collect health/diet information
• Collect video blog posts and post when possible
• Collect writers notes and drafts with backup
• Ebook reader
• Email reader
• Social network reader
• Family data with backup (addresses/recipies/etc)
• Encrypted and safe in case of theft

With this list in mind I am in a much better position to decide on Win7 or Linux.

Time to start googling!

It’s creeping closer to Halloween every day, and I stumbled across a new friend at my son’s football practice whose hobby is Ghost Hunting.  I’m a born skeptic, but after listening to his EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) I’m swinging from dubious to intrigued.  It’s one thing to watch a couple of plumbers on TV, it’s quite another to meet an ordinary person who has captured what sounds like an answer to his question asked in an empty room on digital audio.

I’m hoping he’ll let me come along on his next creep!

I really need to evaluate why I keep this website up and running. If I skip an ENTIRE month without posting, maybe I shouldn’t have it at all.

Posting is a priviledge AND a responsibility.

As I slowly read and internalize the NEC, my respect for electricians that spend seven years as apprentices and then get licensed grows and grows. Little things like terminating stranded wiring (which is stranded to allow easier pulling through conduit) seem like such little points, until you understand why they are required.

Personally I just want my pool pump plugged into a safe outlet and on a timer.

But I’m too cheap to spend more than a grand to do it…

A massive social study took place over the last eighty years or so called The Grant Study which examined the lives of some two hundred or so men every two years whenever possible. This study included physical health, emotional well being and pretty much every other variable you can measure. Admittedly the study started with a group of men from Harvard, so the baseline for happiness was set a bit higher (In my opinion) than in most other locations on earth.

What they discovered is that your connection to other people is the biggest predictor of personal happiness and satisfaction. Whether giving or receiving - contact on an emotional level is what does it.

I’m wondering how much of that contact was valid over the phone? (or in mail/telegraph).

How much of that contact can Facebook simulate?

Kidding! I have been working in the fresh air almost every day for the past few weeks, including three hours of mowing on Saturday! I can’t wait to get back out there and make some lasting, positive changes with my own two hands. It’s funny how satisfying that can be after shifting bits and attending meetings for the rest of the week…

Okay, if your eye is drippy and watery - even if the doctor says it is normal (post-op) - it is not. Go back every day until they give you some more meds. I suffered for two weeks, and then finally went back twice.  The second time around my drips had glued my eye shut in the morning and I earned a teeny bottle of medicine. Later that day I was back to awesome! I knew I was being to quiet about something…

I have made a terrible mistake.
That phrase ran through my mind about ten times a minute as I sat on the couch and squinted at my boys playing on the living room rug. My eyes burned and wept when they were open, and they burned worse and itched when I had them closed.  Eye drops would bring relief for a few minutes and then the weeping would begin again.
The sorriest sight to see is a person who cannot see (through their own choosing) searching the internet for advice before calling his doctor.
It turns out that I have very sensitive eyes. Since eyes are the windows of the soul and you know I am a sensitive soul, this makes an odd sort of sense.
Two days back on the original (and expensive - preservative free) eye drops and I am back on cloud nine.
My eyes just have champagne tastes I guess…

Well this holiday season will have significantly fewer brown boxes with black smiley swoops on my front door, and it has little to do with the sad state of the economy. I spent a week trying to find magnetic door holders/stops from a local vendor and then finally had to turn to the web.

Amazon was happy to send me to a ‘vendor’ called Polstein’s Home and Beyond.

They took my card number and sent me an email with delivery expected the following week. the following week I called when I hadn’t seen any shipping email.  They said it was shipping the subsequent week. So like a chump I set a calendar reminder and wiped my mind clean.  Yesterday when my calendar prompted me, I called again. They ship tomorrow. That is a quote. They ship tomorrow.

Then I got an email saying my order had been cancelled.

Confused, I called them up again.  It seems that they were not going to ship tomorrow - or ever. So they cancelled my order. No idea why I was told that they were going out soon. So sorry.

Get this - no ‘vendor feedback’ on Amazon.com for cancelled orders. No way to explain that they wasted weeks of my time and then lied to me on the phone.

Amazon.com sent me a polite email in reply to my ‘how can this be true’ email and confirmed that this is how thier system works today.

I sent them an even more polite email explaining that I was done doing business with vendors through them if the entire ‘feedback’ mechanism is a lie. That feedback is not based on people who were unsucessful in doing business with the vendor - those are only the SUCESSFUL, satisfied customers offering feedback!

So that score of 83% means that only 83% percent of the people who GOT WHAT THEY WANTED are happy. The others got what they wanted and are still unhappy. Who knows how many got treated the way I did…

So goodbye online shopping for 2009 - hello Barnes & Noble again.