A friend retired…

retirement

Today is his retirement party.

I’m going to be there with booze and good wishes.

It’s a good day, he deserves the recognition and the celebration. He’s worked his ass off over the years and honestly has navigated the shoals of PC and outsourcing much better than I have.

I’m proud to know him and happy to be invited to the family only event.

Now what’s the best booze I can afford in honor of the occasion?

Humm…

Lucky!

Power Now

I got lucky, my computer cleared the bad battery message.

So I don’t need a new computer and I can put off spending the cash on a new battery.  As I was investigating the issue I confirmed that I was correct in my assessment that If I was going to be in the machine it made sense to replace the drive and the battery at the same time.

The battery is getting tired, but it’s not damaged. 

Maybe if I wait a little longer, the prices will continue to fall. 

HardDrive

Yeah, I’ve been looking at a drive upgrade for a while. The model I’ve had my eye on has fallen in price by about 100.00 over the past few months. Next year perhaps I’ll be able to do the drive and battery upgrade for 400.00 or less.

Ok Ok I’m cheap.

If there are any of you who are having similar issues, you might try just cycling the hell out of your system.

Make sure that you’ve got the latest OS updates. Sometimes Apple releases SMC updates that optimize both your power utilization and battery maintenance.

Once you’re sure of that, just run the hell out of your computer. Kill the battery, recharge it, kill it, recharge it and see what happens.

I was experimenting with run times on my machine to see just how long the battery would last. I’ve got a couple of client meetings coming up and wanted to pick locations where I could plug the machine in if I needed to. Then I figured if the machine lasted a couple of hours I’d be good.

macbookair

While I was trying to figure out the battery life, suddenly, the “Service Battery” message disappeared and I got nearly normal run time, just over 5 hours. Brand new, this machine ran 7 hours on battery.

I’m glad I didn’t place that upgrade order!

I’m wondering if this is a case of “Use it or lose it” When I’m around home I tend to keep the machine plugged in to the adapter while I’m using it. Maybe I should be running unconnected more often.

In anycase, It’s a GOOD DAY!

I hope you have similar luck in your world.

This is one of those things that reboots my brain.

I’ve been scouring ads pretty much everywhere for jobs and ran across this one on Craigslist.

Please be seated, take a deep breath and then read this ad.

Screen Shot 2015 09 16 at 1 43 23 PM

So what exactly does one’s dietary choice have to do with the addition of a pipe to someone’s pool?

Unless this is code for sex.

It’s my understanding that we carnivores smell different to vegans.

I’m assuming that would be problematic to a vegan who was interested in the addition of my pipe to their system.

People are very strange…

 

I’m exonerated!

SouthPark

The South Park season premier last night seemed like I could have written it.

If ONLY!  I’d love to work with Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

But quick highlights are:

Caitlyn Jenner, Political Correctness, Public Shaming, White privilege, & herd mentality, as only South Park can take these issues on.

If you don’t watch South Park regularly you should start. I’m guessing that they’re going to have a whole lot of social commentary this season.

This can’t be good…

Service Battery

Saw this message this morning on my beloved Macbook Air. I’m hoping it’s a lie and that cycling the battery completely will make it go away.

This usually means the battery is getting to the end of it’s useful life and is due for replacement. Sometimes it means you’ve got a glitch in the power management system that can be corrected. 

Fingers crossed that it’s correctable.

macbookair

If it’s not, well it looks like batteries are about 100.00 so it won’t be too expensive to repair.  This got me thinking though, “How old is this computer?” I pulled up the receipt and DANG! this little puppy was purchased 6/2012. Not too shabby if the battery is just now saying it’s getting tired. 

So now comes the question. Do I replace the battery or the computer? A quick search tells me that another Macbook Air similarly equipped would cost $1749.00. The specs on the newest machines aren’t substantially different from what I’ve got. The new machine would give me Thunderbolt 2, 802.11ac, and a longer battery life, 12 hours instead of 7.

SSD

On the other hand for about $600.00 I could put a lower power, faster, bigger(1TB) SSD (Solid State Drive) in this machine and replace its battery with a larger capacity version and probably achieve some system wide improvements that would be on par with the brand new machine. This would extend the life of my current computer easily another three years.

It would be nice to have Thunderbolt 2 and it would be nice to have faster wifi. But those items don’t justify the additional cost. The display on the new Macbook Air isn’t substantially different and in all other respects the new machine would be a duplication of the old.

battery

So if I’m going to have to replace the battery in this machine, the question is do I spring for the new hard drive at the same time? Since I’m going to have the machine open in the first place maybe it makes more sense to do all the surgery at once.

We also have a new operating system release coming up. Humm…

In for a penny, in for a pound.  or more modern… Go big or Go home.

I’ll wait for the results of the battery drain and recharge and then decide but I think I’m going to have some interesting computer stuff going on in the near future.

Pray to the computer gods for me.