Rainy Days Are Here and I Don't Mean The Weather

Rainy Day Fund

          You all know the phrase "save for a rainy day"? It's something that I practice almost religiously. Along with the unemployment checks for 6 months, it was reassuring that I had saved for a rainy day.

          Since I finally got gainfully employed 3 months ago, there seems to be more rainy days occurring in my life. First was the plumbing problem I had where a new garbage disposal system had to be installed because the old one was corroded. This happened just right after I got my first paycheck.

          Next came the car repair which involved brake pads and rotors replacement, plus a new battery because the old one had 10% charge left. The front brakes had been a problem for several years and I had been putting it off. I had been avoiding driving on the freeway because sudden or hard braking from full speed made the front wheels shake violently feeling like the wheels were going to fall off.

          Then just as winter started, my wall furnace went on the fritz. For the past 22 years, I've been able to relight the pilot on my own by following the manufacturer's instructions. This time the pilot light won't stay lit despite several tries. I called the Long Beach Gas Department and they sent a technician to check it out and he said that there was a problem with the electrical system. So I had to call a heating company whose technician first diagnosed a thermocouple problem. So he replaced that but the heater still didn't work. That could only mean one thing: the price of repairing the heater would get steeper.

         Sure enough, he had a second diagnosis and this involved the generator. He explained to me how the gas, the pilot light, and the electrical system worked. I asked him if he was sure that if replaced the generator, the heater would start working. He said "well, there are really only two parts of this particular heater: the thermocouple that I replaced and the generator". So I asked him for a price quote and again, sure enough, the price more than doubled. Well what choice do I have other than freeze in the wintertime. Unlike the movie Frozen when one of the characters sang "the cold never bothered me anyway", I prefer to keep myself warm because cold bothers me. I had to take a nap before work, so I asked the technician to come back the next day.

          So there you are. Three major rainy days in the past three months of full time employment. The timing couldn't get any better because at least I now have the income to use as an umbrella for the unexpected precipitations. Thank GOD! Oh boy, living in the United States sure is expensive! Too bad my rainy days isn't helping the drought in California.

Update: November 22, 2014 - Well my old Asus Transformer TFT 101 is on its last legs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The thing I like about this device is the 16 hour battery life when attached to the keyboard and nothing comes close to it at a reasonable price in the market nowadays. Time for another rainy day expense to replace it?

Reconsidering The ASUS Transformer to Replace the Netbook

          Several weeks after I blogged about keeping on using my ASUS netbook because of its battery life and ability to use the usual familiar Windows programs (The Case for Keeping the Old Netbook), I switched to using the ASUS TFT 101 transformer. Both of those devices I purchased awhile back as refurbished products from Tigerdirect.com thus saving me more than a few bucks.
          Let me tell you why I didn't prefer the tablet at first even though I also have a keyboard dock with it. First, the mouse touchpad was so sensitive that the cursor was jumping all over the place at the slightest touch. I use my devices to type a lot so that was a terrible inconvenience. That is, until I found out through message boards that you can disable the touchpad just by pressing one of the keys on the topmost row of the keyboard. Problem solved. Another thing I didn't like was that I couldn't save directly to Dropbox and that I couldn't copy and paste from the word processor app to the Blogger website or I haven't figured out how to do it yet. For now, I have to do it via the Blogger app which uploads it to the website once I save the document. Those are minor inconveniences I can live with including the slight lag between the moment I hit the letters on the keyboard and when it appears on the screen when using the word processor app.
          As far as surfing the web, there's hardly any difference other than choosing between a mobile enhanced website or using the full website. And as far as accessing my computer at home, the Teamviewer app works just as well on the tablet.
With the keyboard dock, the battery life is increased to as much as 16 hours and I still have the flexibility to detach it if not needed. There is however one glitch that I noticed. After fully charging the tablet and keyboard dock and I leave both attached to each other, the battery drains slowly from the tablet even when the power is off. Again, I found out from message boards that it is a firmware problem that can be updated, but which may work for some but not for others. Since the tablet battery does not drain when detached, the simplest solution of course is just to keep it so until you need to use the keyboard.
          As far as weight is concerned, it feels like the tablet with keyboard weighs as much as the netbook.
          Well, it seem like living in the tablet world is a matter of making adjustments just like one does when changes happen in life.

The Case For Keeping The Old Netbook

With so many devices on the market, sometimes one can’t help but desire the latest one. But with a strict budget to consider, I have to weigh the pros and cons of getting another electronic toy especially when an old, reliable one continues to suffice. So this is about the case for not buying an ultrabook, chromebook, or a windows 8 device and keeping the ole’ netbook which still meets my needs.

 First, the cons of the netbook. With its Intel Atom processor and even with the maximum allowable 2 gigabytes of memory, it is underpowered and slow. The boot up time takes about four times or more longer compared to tablets. It also takes a long time for programs to load, and so does opening webpages regardless of internet speed. Sometimes whatever you type or click lags. The latest news on this netbook is that Asus has stopped making them.

That being said, let me tell you what I like about it. First and foremost is its battery life. Rated by the manufacturer at 14 hours, it only usually lasts for 10 but still much longer than ultrabooks and chromebooks which only last for about 5 hours at best. Let me say though that I am not talking about Apple products which are beyond my budget. Then there’s the price. Ultrabooks are still expensive because part of what you are paying for is the lighter weight. Although you can buy a chromebook for as low as $200 now, it’s more of a cloud machine which works best if you constantly have an internet connection.  I’m still not sold on the new Windows 8 devices even though I’m already using that operating system on my laptop at home. First, I hardly work in the Tiles area and spend most of my time in the Desktop. Even if I can afford it, I may find that the cheapest Windows 8 RT device may not be flexible enough for my computing needs. As far as weight is concerned, my 3 lb. netbook rivals the weight of ultrabooks and chromebooks, and the keyboard and screen size have never been a problem for me. It even has a 250 gb hard drive which is plenty for my purposes. Besides, I already save my files to the cloud.

The only thing that the netbook requires is my patience due to the sluggish boot up, program launch, and webpage loading.  If I need a quick boot up all I have to do is surf the web, I still also have my trusty old 10 inch Asus Transformer tablet  which has an attachable keyboard that can make the battery last as long as 16 hours. If only I could get used to the android word processors and an easier way to copy and paste to my blog, then I’m golden. And guess what, both my netbook and tablets were purchased as refurbished products, thus cheaper, and they work just as well as brand new ones.

Netbook: Asus eeePC (Windows 7)

Tablet: Asus Transformer TFT 101 (Android ICS)

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Workout Notes Plus A Week of Running

I’ve had the Asus Transformer 101 Tablet PC for more than two months now but I haven’t used it while running on the treadmill (or on the road, ha!) until two weeks. On the first try, I started with a 10 minute walk then started jogging gingerly because I was still recovering from the thigh injury I suffered the previous week. I didn’t feel any thigh pain so I continued. Ever since I found an app for the local newspaper, it’s been so much easier to scroll the pages, so the initial run which lasted for 35 minutes turned out okay as far as reading and scrolling went. A second try a week later at a slight faster pace went well too. So how did it feel compared to a netbook? Well, other than the touchscreen scrolling as opposed to the arrow keys on the netbook, they worked out pretty much the same.

I rarely use the rowing machine more than 5 minutes at a time because I find it boring. So far, I haven’t found a way to read while rowing  so what I do is turn the TV on to the news and also turn on the captions. I usually do a circuit of rowing, spinning, and recumbent cycling. Somehow, last week I zoned out on the rowing machine and lasted for 15 minutes before hitting the other two machines. As far as the perceived effort went, I think repeats of 5 minutes each on the machines for 2 or three sets had better aerobic effect than 15 minutes straight on each. But that’s just me.

I don’t know what all the hullaballoo is about H.I.I.T. and Tabata. In the mid-70’s in college while taking my Physical Education degree, we already learned about circuit training which wasn’t even new by then. H.I.I.T. and Tabata are basically good old fashioned circuit training renamed.

 Ever since I started weight training in 1979, I’ve always used the suicide grip when doing the bench press because that was the way I was shown to do it. I didn’t even know it was called that until two weeks ago when I was searching for suggestions on how to do the bench press more safely without a spotter. The suggestion was not to use the suicide grip and since then I have wrapped my thumb around the bar. At first it was difficult to complete my usual number of repetitions because it felt awkward. After a few tries, I had to reposition the bar on my hands a certain way and it seems to work better.

If I were to believe my bioelectrical impedance weighing scale, I lost 1% body fat by sitting for 30 minutes while on the computer, but only lost half a percent after a half hour workout on the spinning bike. Nuts!

In other exercise news, after I did the unplanned run on Easter Sunday, I was able to do three more runs the week after. They were only very slow 45 minutes to an hour - twice on the treadmill and once on the road, but nonetheless, I’ll count them as runs. Based on my recent running history, that's plenty.

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THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ASUS TRANSFORMER

***Losing A File In Android - Boy oh boy! What an arduous task! Not a physical one but a mental task. I was typing a draft for a blog in my Android tablet and I knew I was saving the file every few sentence, however when I was looked for it later at home, I couldn’t find it. All that thinking and typing disappeared into the ether. Would you believe that there is nothing similar to Google desktop search for Android tablets? It sure could use one. I don’t know if there is a file search app for the Ipad.
So after searching for one for more than an hour, I gave up. Later in the evening I got the idea of connecting the tablet to the laptop computer and using Windows search. Voila! I found the file. The problem was that I just started using Dropbox and I mistakenly thought that the changes would upload automatically.  This is also one problem I’m having with saving files on the tablet. Often, I don’t know where the file is being saved to because I’m still in the learning process of the file structures of the system. So where did I finally find the lost file? Deep in the bowels of the Android system.
***Clunky keyboard - The keyboard docking station for my Asus Transformer arrived and my hopes were high that typing, copying and pasting would be much easier. I don't know if it's the way I type or if it is the sensitivity of the keyboard that makes the cursor jump all over the place. Sometimes as I'm typing, I inadvertently hit something and the save command comes up. Okay, I think I just figured that one out. When the touchpad mouse is tapped,the save command in Polaris appears so I have to be really careful and make sure that my fingers are floating over the keyboard and not resting my palms on it.
***Frustration- It's has been frustrating so far trying to type something for this blog while using Polaris, mainly because I couldn't copy and paste to the blogger website itself or even to the android blogger app. Usually, I compose the post in word processor first but with this Polaris limitation, I would have to type directly to the blogger app. The best thing for this Android tablet is just surfing the web. I'll have to rely on my netbook to make things easier for me to blog. Of course another feature I like about the tablet is the fast boot and the touchscreen.
***Tablet Case- I already have a case just for the tablet part of this device, however it won't accommodate the keyboard. One must have to buy a different and more expensive case. The problem with that is it makes the device bulkier thus defeating the purpose of having a lighter and more portable machine.
***Newspaper Reading- Another incovenience I experienced involved reading the electronic edition of the local newspaper. When you connect to the website, the screen is in three sections: breaking news on the left, the main page in the middle, and the text of whatever you click in the middle section comes up on the right side.
There is an option to close the left section and that's what I had been doing. However, when I scroll the right side, the text doesn't always go in a straight line if my swipe is unsteady. That usually happens when I'm on the stationary bike or treadmill. I discovered that if I don't close the left section, the right section scrolls in a straight line. Problem solved.
***Another discovery - If I use the Hacker's keyboard app instead of the Asus English keyboard, the problem of the sensitive touchpad mouse disappears and doesn't launch the save function anymore. Don't worry, it's not an app used by hackers, just a keyboard with slightly different functions.
***Still another discovery - All of a sudden I can now copy and paste from Polaris to blogger. Did this have anything to do with the Ice Cream Sandwich update a few days ago from Asus? I haven't had time to try copying and pasting straight to the blogger website yet. Okay here is an update on that: it is now possible to copy and paste from Polaris Office directly to the Blogger website without having to use the Blogger app. Thank you Asus, for the free update :)

Well folks, I hope you will excuse me for acting like a bumbling idiot while I try to figure out the ins and outs of this device.