Life

Love the life you Live!

Playing "Pop Goes the Power Supply" with crappy chinese electronics

Life, Randomness

Back in July when my second Dell power supply bit the dust I decided that I wasn’t going to give them another $65 (at least) for a power adapter that was just going to fail in a year. So I searched on Amazon and found this cheap one for only $27. I mean it ran so hot that I couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds, but that could be a feature, foot warmer! Well the heat or something finally got to it because it let out one last “POP” and I smelled the familiar smell of burning electronics. Dead. I cracked it open to find that some component hap burnt to a crisp.

piece of crap

^ piece of crap^

Because I’ve made a commitment to Lappy Topperson to be my computer for the forseeable future I’m going to have to buy another one. Instead of buying another cheap one or another Dell one. I’m getting a third choice, one that was only just announced back when i got this one. It costs $49 but I figure I’ll pay the extra for a brand name and the future proofing that the swappable adapters gives me.


^hopefully not crap^

I’ll post a review when it gets here on Friday.

Laptop Batteries… a pox on you.

Life, Randomness

So for about a year the battery in Lappy Topperson has been dying a slow death. I’ve tried putting it in the freezer, (that actually brought it back from 30 second life to about 45 minutes, but that faded also. Then the bettery indicator started blinking at me. Mocking my cheapness with four repeating blinks. So I finally decided to get a new battery. But I’m not going to give Dell $95 – $135 for a new battery. So I found a cheap one on Amazon.com for $35 bucks. Which seems like a savings but now I realize that it makes the laptop so hot that the trackpad starts freaking out and clicking everything.

So I’m either an Internet deal genius or a cheap bastard who’s able to deal with annoyances for a price.

Either way I win.

My drawing hero – Drew Struzan

Interests, Life

I was cruising around some art blogs today and I found a link to his site. I looked around for a little while because there were illustrations for almost all of my favorite movies from the 70’s and 80’s. At first I thought that like Tyler Stout, he was just a fan of all of them. Then I realized…he IS the artist who did all the posters! I love every one of them.

Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Big Trouble in Little China, The Goonies, Coming to America, Back to the Future, …Mallrats!

He has such a talent for capturing the look of a character. But he’s also a master of layout, nothing seems out of place or squished in any of his drawings. I really like that he lets you see some of his preliminary sketches for the posters. It gives you a look into his drawing style, I can almost see the strokes happening right in front of me.

sketch for the Big Trouble in Little China poster

sketch for the Big Trouble in Little China poster

Some people aspire to be picasso or dali or warhol. But this is what I want to be when I grow up.

I hate the DC Metro system so much.

Life, Rants

Lets look beyond the fact that the system was designed in the 70’s with aesthetics in mind more than functionality. there can never be express trains, I get that. I get that the system is low on money because they have to spend a million dollars per year to shampoo the carpets. I get that they’re on manual mode right now because of the crash last month. What I don’t understand is why they have “Scheduled Track Maintenance” during operating hours.

Every Saturday they seem to be doing it on the orange line, 45 minute delay. Coming back from the Nationals game they had it on a weekday, 30 minute delay at West Falls Church and 2 hours total trip time. Last night they had all trains shut down from the Pentagon to Rosalyn on the Blue line and I waited at the Braddock Rd stop for 45 minutes before they announced it.

The only time it runs smoothly are the rush hours in the morning and afternoon and even then I’m sweating my ass off.

The DC METRO SYSTEM SUCKS, don’t take it unless you’re scared to parallel park or drunk.