Category: Uncategorized

I got a new 500 GB hard drive. Since the 250 GB hard drive on my notebook computer was kind of full, I thought it might be good to take the hard drive out of the portable and put in my notebook, then take the old notebook drive and put it back in the portable case. The basic idea would be I could move all the files over to the new drive, then put the new drive in the computer, boot up and I would have exactly the same thing except with more space (I’ll call this Option 1). But there are some wrinkles. First, I have a lot of junk on the drive and the computer acts up from time to time. Since the notebook is five years old, it might be worthwhile to reformat and start over. The existing drive has a RESTORE partition that can be used to reformat the C: drive and restore the notebook to exactly the same setup as the first day I got it (Option 2). That would still mean installing all of my software, moving over my pictures and other documents, and downloading a ton of windows and other updates. But the advantage is the computer should run a lot better that way. The downside is how do I do a restore from the old drive to the new drive? Or could I move the restore partition over to the new drive as a new RESTORE partition? Option 3 is to just use the Windows Vista disk that came with the computer and start a new Windows installation after putting the blank hard drive into my notebook, and rebuild the system from scratch, which would be even more trouble than the restore option.
Continue reading “Drive Cloning”

I keep track of five internet domain names, one of which is for my personal website, igirder.com. They are all registered at GoDaddy, which is horrible with its salacious ads, and constant attempts to make you upsize for additional services, but it is cheap. I can usually renew the domain registration for $7-8 per year using different discount codes available on the internet. If you get a new domain, they are really cheap, but they are not as likely to give you a good deal once you are there and just need to renew the domain.
Continue reading “Domain Transfer”

I heard about there being coyotes in the neighborhood a couple of years ago and there are reports on the local bulletin board from time to time, along with missing cats, which seems to be the biggest problem they cause. They only come out at night. So tonight I was walking the dogs and I heard something rustling in the leaves. The dogs stopped to look and I saw a loose dog. I shined my flashlight over there and it was obviously a coyote. Not too far away was another one, a little smaller, maybe walking with a limp. Both were smaller than my dogs, plus with me and the flashlight I think we were pretty intimidating. But they didn’t run away, getting as close as maybe 50 feet. I think they were on their way and were kind of in the way. So we turned the corner and they started walking past us on the other side of the street. The smaller one headed into the backyard of a house, but then came back down to the sidewalk to join the other one. Surprisingly, although my dogs were watching them closely, they didn’t bark or even whimper which Austin does when he wants to bark at another dog. I kept the flashlight on the coyotes a lot, but they would still look in my direction, their eyes lighting up yellow. Eventually they moved pretty well beyond us, so I took the dogs over to where they had been so they could sniff around. People get up in arms about coyotes in the neighborhood, but honestly I’m not seeing a problem, and the only thing they do is kill cats which should be inside anyway.

I have had some money building up and didn’t want to invest it in stocks given the upcoming downfall of civilization (and that the stock market had done pretty well already and might be due for some turbulence). With less than $20,000 left to pay on my mortgage, I thought I could maybe pay it off instead of dragging it out until August 2014. I called Bank of America on Tuesday to find out what I needed to do. They said I could do it that day over the phone! I said I couldn’t quite do that because the money wasn’t in my checking account (also Bank of America) yet. They said they could mail me a pay off statement and I could mail in certified funds, but I figured I would just sell some mutual funds and put the money in the checking account and call them back when it cleared.
Continue reading “Debt Free”

Yesterday I got a call on my cell phone from a restricted number. Sometimes I don’t answer those calls, but maybe I was bored, so I answered anyway. It was someone from a company that said they were doing a poll for NBC and the Wall Street Journal. I was suspicious and asked how I knew they were doing this (they can’t really prove they are legitimate), how they picked my number (randomly selected phone number), and how long the poll would take (7 minutes). What is interesting is that I get very, very few telemarketing calls because the phone isn’t even in my name officially. And I try not to give out the number (usually I give companies my old land line number).

Anyway, they proceeded to ask me demographic questions like my race, whether I had any other phones, my age, plus a bunch of questions about whether I had voted in the past, if I had voted early, and how likely I was to vote on Tuesday (definitely). They also asked me general opinion questions on what I thought of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. They asked me which one I thought could get things done if elected and I said neither. I just don’t think it’s possible right now. They also asked who I had voted for in 2008 and who I would vote for this year. At the end they asked me for my initials “for verification” and I gave them TC as the most likely answer, though they might have the answer as EC, JC, or DC depending on how they got the number and what name is listed.

Today I saw an article about NBC and Wall Street Journal’s final election poll of the year, surveying 1,475 likely voters, including 443 cell phone only respondents (me). Obama has a slight edge of 48% to 47% compared to the last poll which was tied at 47%, but the margin of error is 2.55%.

I think it is interesting that some people are saying the polls aren’t accurate because they are calling people on land lines and hardly anyone has those. But they called me on a cell phone, so I think they have it worked out.