I run up to six computers in my house. I turn them off or suspend them in order to save money and reduce my impact on the environment. I recently discovered a problem when doing this, though. I want to watch a television show or movie when I power on my HTPC. When I shut them off or suspend them most of their “lives,” all of the system health stuff runs at the same time I am trying to watch a program.

For example, I run Grisoft’s AVG antivirus software and Windows Defender. Both run on schedules and both can take a fair amount of CPU, RAM, and hard disk I/O resources. If you leave the machine off long enough, it’s possible to have both programs running at the same time.

This makes the rest of the system run slowly. This is particularly annoying when watching a 720p HD show via Boxee, which takes a pretty healthy dose of resources up on its own.
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Here’s the raw truth. My dog Pearl eats poop. I’ve tried adding stuff to the dog’s food to make their bombs taste worse (?) and that didn’t work. There’s a new plan of attack coming online soon, but in the meantime we have to deal with the only thing worse than a dog eating poop: the gas and belching that accompanies it.

Enter the International Veterinary Sciences Anti-Gas pill for dogs. Purchased from Wal-Mart, the pill

is a pleasant tasting tablet specially formulated to promote healthy digestion and curb unpleasant gassy odors.

Does the product live up to it’s claim? Let’s break down the above sentence one bit at a time.
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We had another snow storm here in Virginia last weekend. I lived in Utah during my high school years, and while it snows much much less in Virginia, Utah was well-equipped to handle routine and heavy deathflakes. Virginia, especially where I live, doesn’t get enough snow to really justify a fleet of trucks and stockpiles of de-icing goodies like sand and salt.

As such, people start to get nervous whenever the forecast calls for snow. This is our second “heavy” snowfall this year, and normally we escape the winter months without so much as a flake. We got about nine or ten inches of snow at the house, and some of my friends got as much as thirteen inches. The storm took place over an eighteen hour period, and my buddy Stilts was visiting for the weekend.

We wound up staying inside the house for three days, and local roads are still iced over quite a bit. Here’s what we did, and what I might change before the next snow or ice storm.
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I’ve gone through a bit of an odyssey with my home theater personal computer (HTPC) setups in the house. I originally hoped to use my Microsoft 360 remote to control the Microsoft Media Center, but I wound up using a cheap USB remote instead.

There are many wireless keyboards on the market, but the suffer from at least one of the following problems:

1. They are very large and not suitable for use in a bedroom environment — they are too big to store on a nightstand or other accessible area.
2. They are too small and don’t have an integrated touchpad or trackball.
3. They have a “touch stick” similar to what IBM / Lenovo embeds on their laptop keyboards.
4. They cost a lot of money, around $80 – $150 depending on the model.

I had resigned myself to using the HDE USB remote for the majority of my needs and then getting up to use a USB keyboard when needed. Then I found a small wireless remote with integrated keyboard from Lenovo. Better yet, I found it on sale at 50% off.
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Well, the wait is over. A long, long seventeen year wait if you had (or lusted after) an Apple Newton: Apple’s return to a hand-held, touch-sensitive computing device. The iPad was unveiled today and attempts to fill the niche between full-fledged laptop computer and a smartphone. Yes, you could say the iPod Touch or iPhone are hand-held, touch-sensitive computing devices, but the iPad is designed to be a portable Internet appliance first and a communications device second. And even defining the iPad as a “communications device” is a bit sketchy, as I will get into in a bit.
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I’ve spent the last two months migrating towards home theater personal computers (HTPCs) in my house. It’s an effort to simplify my home audio/visual system, play high definition content, and allow for some quick Internet access. Along the way I’ve learned some interesting things, like how important keyboards and on-screen zoom are when you try to control a computer from across the room.

I have a pair of Xbox 360s in my house, and I was hoping to use the Microsoft Xbox 360 multimedia remote to control my HTPCs. The problem was I didn’t have an infra-red receiver on my computers. After searching around on the Internet, the best advice was to buy a cheap USB remote control and steal the “dongle” that allowed the remote to talk with the computer.

I sprang for two remotes by HDE, sold by Amazon.com. They were about $16 each and were eligible for free Amazon Prime shipping. I learned a few more things after they arrived, including that you shouldn’t be cheap with your remote controllers.
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One of the reasons I like zombie movies is that they are conversation starters for disaster preparedness. “What would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse” is a nice science-fiction way of saying, “what would you do if the world went crazy for awhile?” I credit Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for starting my interest in disaster preparedness and how to comfortably survive a disruption of service.

Out here in Virginia, the only things we have to worry about are ice storms, hurricanes, and maybe an odd flood or two. There are “bug out bags” in the house, but the central strategy here is to wait out a disruption of services of up to two weeks. During the first time I lived in Virginia, one of my co-workers went two weeks without power. Her family wound up staying in a hotel, but it was not uncommon for folks to be out of juice for multiple days. When you live in a house powered by all electric appliances, that is a big deal.

So it was with anticipation that I started reading “Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out,” by Jon and Robin Robertson. I had hoped that it was the cookbook equivalent of Night of the Living Dead, and that the book would help me evaluate my current food stores and how I prepare them.

Unfortunately, the recipes are too complex and are made up of things an average American house probably doesn’t have. The book violates a few rules of thumb in the preparedness community, and as such Apocalypse Chow has limited usefulness in your preparedness library.
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I recently built two “bug-out” bags (BoB), and did some of my shopping at Wal-Mart. I had plenty of supplies here at the house, but I needed a few odds and ends. I happened to see a three-pack of dry sacks by Outdoor Products. They might come in handy, especially for things I really really didn’t want to get wet.

At $9.99 I was skeptical that the bags could keep anything dry in crappy conditions, but I figured at least it would make a good Gibberish entry. I put the trio of bags in my cart and started thinking about how to test the dry sacks.
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I had to say goodbye to an old friend last week — my old G-Shock GW500A-1V Tough Solar Wave Ceptor atomic watch by Casio. I’d worn it every day for over four years. It went with me swimming, survived my personal training with Yoda, endured Tony Horton and his myriad at-home-workouts, shrugged off being struck repeatedly by solid iron kettlebells, and even a trip to the woods of Virginia for some shotgun training.

However, all good things must come to an end. The internal battery, although recharged by the solar array on the face of the watch, eventually failed to hold a charge for more than three days at a time. I opened the watch to try to replace the battery, but did some, er, irreparable damage to the thin metal cage around the battery. Oh yeah, I also managed to dislodge the rubber waterproof gasket and lose it, probably to be ingested by my youngest dog Pearl.

So I was on the market for a replacement, but didn’t want the same watch. I wanted some of the same features, like the solar charging and atomic time keeping. I also wanted a countdown timer again, something I had on my crufty old Ironman watch but the G-Shock lacked. Although I eventually got used to the G-Shock’s humongous size, I wouldn’t mind having something smaller than a wall clock on my wrist. I turned to Casio to see what they had to offer, and what I could get for less than my old WVM120J.
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About five months ago I wrote about the Zipit Opener, which is a battery-powered doodad that helps you open plastic packaging.

I didn’t think too highly of the Zipit, but now that some time has gone by and I’ve used it more, I thought I’d do a follow up.

Unfortunately the Zipit still isn’t very good as I would like, but I have found a few ways to make it perform better. Check it out.