Category: Technology

Careful Where You Park!

Today I learned that it can be really bad to leave the vacuum cleaner parked in one place while you use the hose and attachments.

Some vacuums have a separate switch that lets you turn those carpet beater things on and off.  This is handy.  Mine is not in that price and function range.

While I was using the attachments to clean under my desk (a noble pursuit), the rug beaters were beating the crap out of the pretty fringe on my expensive wool rug!

Park it somewhere safe!  Somewhere flat and uncarpeted!

DCU Deposit Despair

After WAY too long trying to deposit a check using Digital Credit Union’s scan function, I learned a few tricks that led to success.

1. Set scanner to 300 DPI

2. If the program can’t detect the edges of the check, mark then and put a colored paper behind the check to scan.  (Who thought of this second part? Sal? Kat?)

3. The biggie: do NOT use Chrome!  Firefox works fine, Chrome just does not.

 

 

Invest In Research (x2)

Jill and I had a great day of craft fairs, and two lessons in doing backround checks came up:

We went to 5 craft fairs (or fair-like things), but of those, one was good and one was great, the others completely missable.   More research needed.

My new GPS is terrible!  I assumed it had basic features (it is 2010, after all), but it does not even have “spoken street name”.  Back to Amazon for that thing!  More research was needed.

Preheat Peril

See this is how an electric oven works: Preheat means heat both the top and bottom elements.  Bake is just the bottom elements.

I have learned how darn important it is to switch from preheat to bake when you put the item in the oven.

Our carefully over-managed Thanksgiving morning project plan had every step in the world on it -when to mix, when to bake, when to carve.  But there was no task and no slack for dealing with broccoli casserole with actual raging flames coming from the potato chip topping too close to the still-on-preheat burner!

All’s well that ends well, but please heed the lessons from this!

This is not my sister’s dialup

It’s worse!

I have learned that the molasses-like morning traffic in the rain is not the only thing slow about this bus.

Even though the wireless connection says Signal Strength:Good, internet access is c..r..a..w..l..i..n..g…..!

Screens are blank while they load over what feels like hours.  Yikes.  There must be too much demand on this bus or on the service in general -whatever that blue-blink-box is connecting to in the sky.

So the lesson is don’t count on getting anything done on the ride in.

I want a do-over.  To nap.