The best part is when you finally spot that little sucker and can wipe a little of that blood on it to prove you were there. No, I would never do that, but I sure do dig into the tecnu when I get home.

I’ve more to say on this topic, but a day in the sun and underbrush can do a person in!

“Daddy?”

“Yes baby?”

“Why doesn’t the computer turn on?”

“What!  It was working when I shut it down last night!”

After a few hours of jiggling wires and sitting and staring, I yanked the power supply out and brought it to CompUSA.  The dude plugged a few of the connectors into his device and concluded everything was in working order.  Bummer, so much for that simple solution.

Time for a trip to Fry’s.  (I know what you are thinking, and I’ll explain: CompUSA has a 15% return policy. No thanks.)

One CPU. One Motherboard. 2GB RAM.

That’ll be $178 please. I suppose that is much cheaper then a new system would have been, with NO loss of data. (Except maybe for those poor souls from My Tribe, may they rest in peace. [Thanks for nothing Big Fish.])

I listen to audiobooks all the time… in my car.  Sometimes I wish my commute were longer so that I’d have more time to listen! (No, not really.)  Since I’ve discovered NetLibrary, I’ve been obssessed with finding an MP3 player that supports bookmarking.  Surprisingly, neither the iPod nor the Zune support this feature. And it must also support protected WMA files.

After searching around, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Sansa Clip is the player that would work best for me, confirmed by this article on anythingbutipod.com.

Now, to find an adapter for my car…

Don’t buy from people you know. The next steps are going to be painful…

UPDATE!
Seems the package was damaged in transit. Apparently there are pictures, need to see those!

Being a Windows user since DOS, I’m not sure how I will adjust to it. I remember a few years ago trying to use my parents Mac while I was visiting. It made absolutely no sense. Nothing worked as I thought it should; the overwhelming impression I got was that Mac was designed to make all your decisions for you, you either liked that or you were out of luck. I’m used to setting things up how I want ‘em, not how the OS thinks you want ‘em!

But that was years ago, I figured I’d check it out. Used Macs seem to hold their value, but that may be ’cause Mac users are fanatics, not because the depreciation doesn’t exist.

You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.* When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank, claiming that you have an account problem or a question from a buyer, it’s probably a “phishing scam” intended to trick you into typing your password. Don’t click the link in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type “www.ebay.com” (or whatever) manually.

* Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.

* You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: Windows key+D in Windows, F11 on Macs (or, on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.

* You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.

* You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

* The number of megapixels does not determine a camera’s picture quality; that’s a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for “sensor size Nikon D90.”)

* On most cellphones, press the Send key to open up a list of recent calls. Instead of manually dialing, you can return a call by highlighting one of these calls and pressing Send again.

* When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.

* You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

* When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

* You can adjust the size and position of any window on your computer. Drag the top strip to move it; drag the lower-right corner (Mac) or any edge (Windows) to resize it.

* Forcing the camera’s flash to go off prevents silhouetted, too-dark faces when you’re outdoors.

* When you’re searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”

* You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.

* Oh, yeah: on the computer, * means “times” and / means “divided by.”

* If you can’t find some obvious command, like Delete in a photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)

* Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.

* You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.

* You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).

* You generally can’t send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they’ll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhone or Picasa–photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

* Whatever technology you buy today will be obsolete soon, but you can avoid heartache by learning the cycles. New iPods come out every September. New digital cameras come out in February and October.

* Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79 gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)

* You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser. Just type the remainder: “nytimes.com” or “dilbert.com,” for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off the “.com” part.)

* On the iPhone, hit the Space bar twice at the end of a sentence. You get a period, a space, and a capitalized letter at the beginning of the next word.

* Come up with an automated backup system for your computer. There’s no misery quite like the sick feeling of having lost chunks of your life because you didn’t have a safety copy.

It’s 47″ with 120mHz refresh vs. the standard 60mHz. It has some sort of ambient lighting feature which I still need to mess with.

Imagine it!  A sleek 46 inches of flat glorious screen, surrounded by a glossy black border hanging at the perfect height over components meant to bring your entertainment to life.  The wires are run, the boxes are talking to each other in beautiful harmony.

In your hand is the remote to bring the vision to life; a little red button with a funny little symbol will alter the serenity of the room and loosen those knots that have been forming all day.  Press it and… hmm, press it harder and… NOTHING.  Wait!  There’s something, hear it?  It’s a clicking sound, you know the one.  The click just before the screen lights up the room with its high definition glory.  Here we go!  Here we… Umm.  Wait!  There it is again! Click!  I heard it!  Here we…

DAMMIT. DAMMIT. DAMMIT.

Here is what Samsung’s website has to say:

If You Are Using Your TV Strictly As A TV

If you are using your Samsung LCD TV strictly as a TV, the Power Light will typically blink several times after you have pushed the On button, but the blinking should stop once the screen lights up and goes on.

If the power indicator light or timer light on your TV continues to blink and the TV won’t turn on or turns off a few minutes after you turn it on, the TV may be using its power management system.

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

1. Make sure that the power cord is firmly connected to the wall and the TV.
2. Make sure that the cables connecting the TV to the various video sources (cable, set-top-box, DVD player, VCR, etc.) are all firmly connected.
3. Make sure that the source you are trying to watch is turned on and/or providing a signal.
4. Turn the TV off, and then on.
5. Press the Source button on the remote, and cycle through the sources.

If this procedure does not resolve your problem, most likely the power supply in the TV is failing and you need to get the TV serviced. For service information, see the bottom of this page.

35 days out of the box and DAMMIT.  Tomorrow it goes back to Costco.  They are selling it for $300 cheaper now anyway.  Not that I will be getting the same model.  Samsung can take their LN46A540 and, well, keep it.