Roaches and the Internet

Yesterday I learned that the only food roaches won't eat is cucumber.
And today I learned never to use an Internet cafe that allows smoking!

Multi-headed Monster

eBay can easily become a multi-headed monster. Today I learned that running 86 simultaneous auctions is a bad idea!

I want my, I want my, I want my tvrss.net...

OK, maybe you are too old to get the joke. The point is, tvRSS.net has been down for many days now, and it doesn't look good. Miro + tvRSS.net was the ultimate way to watch TV without dealing with cable, satellite, antenna reception, DVR's, and commercials. But now all the feeds have stopped updating. One solution is to use ShowRSS. They require a free registration for custom feeds, but the public feeds do not require any registration. You must add one feed per show, just like tvRSS.

Today I learned how much value tvRSS.net provided.

Replacing a Watch Battery

My Vestal Shiv watch started making a high pitch noise and then the seconds hand started jumping in 4 second intervals. Shiv customer service explained this is the built in low battery warning, and I gave me 2 choices:

1) Send them the watch, and they would replace the battery and ship it back for $15.

2) They would ship me a battery for $15 and I could get it replaced by a local watchmaker.

This is my second call to Vestal customer service, the first was to replace a band part I broke, and I must give Vestal high marks for always answering the customer service line quickly, and offering simple and free-to-reasonably priced solutions.

Of course I decided to see if I could replace this myself, and found the tools and battery at micro-tools.com. $4 for the case removal tool, 69¢(!!) for the battery, and $5 shipping.

Today I learned you can change your own watch batteries.

Microsoft Photosynth

Microsoft's Photosynth is amazing! It lets you stitch overlapping photos in all directions and rotations. I thought I would try it out on the new mulch bed, and cleaned out garage bay. Today I learned I need to practice a little more before my photosynths are smooth and easy to navigate. Just hit the "slide show" button, trying to manually walk through the photos is not easy. My next synth will be easier to walk through.

Immigration Insanity

The U.S. Embassy in Dublin sent Uli instructions to use a new online form, DS-160, instead of two previous paper forms. What is the problem? They required two copies to be submitted. Yes, they want two copies of an ONLINE form to be submitted. How? By going through the whole process twice! It is an electronic file. They can copy it all they want after you submit it once!!! Today I learned that our government needs to pull its head out of its ass!!!!

Clean the Filter

Before cleaning the two stage filters on my Hoover Mach 3 vacuum, it sucked. But after cleaning them, it SUCKED!!! Wow!!! 

Today I learned that my fancy bagless vacuum has a hidden filter compartment separate from the dirt compartment.

[UPDATE]

Guess what? There is an even more hidden 3rd filter element in the super secret "Final Filter" compartment! It is amazing what you can discover when you RTFM...