Author: DOuG pRATt

Sumpy Lives!

Sumpy, my trusty basement sump pump, has had it easy for more than ten years. He hasn’t needed to run since my next door neighbors installed sump pumps in their house.

Monday’s storm was so bad that it woke up Sumpy. He’s been running every few minutes for the past 24 hours. I’m glad he was able to hold his water until after the electricity came back on. Otherwise, if I hadn’t caught it in time to get the generator running, there would have been a mess to clean up in the basement.

I used to have a couple of PVC drain pipes that fit together to extend the outside outlet and take the water away from the house. I still have them, but as mentioned here a while ago, they were used by the landscaping contractor for the downspout drain project, so I had to improvise.

In the garage I had a long, plastic shipping tube from a video projector screen project. The tube seemed like a perfect replacement for the pipes that are now buried underground, but when I dropped it on the ground it broke in two! Despite being much thicker than the other pipes, it’s actually much more fragile.

Forced to improvise again, I knew that duct tape wouldn’t be good enough to hold the two pieces together. Then I remembered the roll of aluminum tape I bought when replacing the dryer vent.

It worked! And I was wondering if I would ever have another use for that expensive roll of aluminum tape.

I’m going to reward myself for a successful hack with an Elvis Special — a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I won’t fry it the Elvis way, but I’ll toast the bread.

Which Debit to Credit?

Hmm… if I were irresponsible I would think of my new $700 laptop PC as being free with this year’s Bank of America cash rewards money.

Congratulations! Your rewards are on the way.
Amount: $713.60

I’ll do the responsible thing and think of the money as going towards the $777 heating oil bill.

My cash rewards money is courtesy of everybody else’s bank fees.

The Dirty Little Secret of Credit Card Rewards Programs

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/opinion/credit-card-rewards-points-poor-interchange-fees.html

The Little Generator That Could

We’ve had the second storm of the season that, in the past, would have been a blizzard. Instead, it’s 60 degrees with high wind and heavy rain.

The power went out this morning and the utility doesn’t have an estimate when it will be restored. I fired up the portable generator and recharged my phone, which is now running as a Wi-Fi hotspot for the new laptop PC.

Yes, the garage floor needs to be resurfaced. It’s on the list.

Der Bingle in Davis Dorm

On the MOVIES! channel, now back on Boston OTA TV, I was intrigued when catching a bit of High Time, from 1960. In this Blake Edwards farce Bing Crosby, showing his age, starts college 30 years too late. Rodney Dangerfield would do the same thing in the 1986 remake.

Just knowing that Tuesday Weld and Yvonne Craig are in High Time was enough to pull me in, but seeing Bing in drag made it a must-see. Thanks to some fan’s hard work, it’s available in HD CinemaScope splendor on YouTube.

I’ve just started watching it, with the opening 20th Century Fox fanfare that will forever be associated with Star Wars. I had to laugh when Bing was assigned to Davis Dorm, because that’s where Denro and I met at Westfield State.

I’m only two degrees of separation away from Blake Edwards. I’ll explain later.

Being An Elf to Myself

This is my new Lenovo laptop PC, but with a 14″ screen. Not being an Apple product it can’t be cool, but Lenovo tries.

Buying it required me to abandon my “never spend more than $300 on a laptop” rule. But it was a good deal for a 14-inch laptop with a partial aluminum case, an Intel i7 CPU and 16 GB memory, with a touch screen and lighted keyboard. USB-C charging was something else I wanted, which HP doesn’t have yet. The 2-in-1 feature, turning it into a tablet, wasn’t of special interest.

I was surprised to see that its dimensions, except for thickness, are almost identical to the old HP ProBook 11 G2 with its 11.6-inch screen. The ProBook has something that, along with optical drives, is extinct in laptop computers. It has a VGA connector. This makes it perfect for the 4:3 projector that I sometimes have set up in the living room. It’s a 2005 model purchased as new-old stock for $65, plus $10 shipping.

Viewsonic PJ656 XGA projector on a 60″ 4:3 screen

The Lenovo’s 2200×1400 IPS LCD screen and out-of-the-box color accuracy are exceptionally good. The sound of the speakers is impressive for a laptop, but audio is directed to the porch’s 10-year-old Sony Bluetooth speaker. It was an early product supporting Qualcomm’s proprietary Bluetooth codec, aptX.

Not too many changes were needed in Windows 11 to make it behave the way I want. Something about Windows 11 I don’t like is that support for aptX, which is found natively in Windows 10, has apparently been dropped.