Well I managed to acquire 18 stitches this past weekend, but still had enough brains to be able to participate in our weekly podcast of Cast of Dads. We did the recording just a few hours after I had returned from the ER and enduring the wonderful process of someone sewing my forehead back together (sorry for the graphics there). Episode #28 “When Daddy Takes a Tumble” discusses my intelligence and how it happened, but we also talk about other injuries we or our kids have had among other things.
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When your kids get hurt, it is a devastating thing. Your job as a parent is to protect them at whatever cost. When you yourself get injured, it is a different matter entirely. I used my “stupidity” as a lesson to my kids, reinforcing about being careful when running and not to do things that are dangerous. Since my kids are young, the lesson was around simply being safe when doing activities. Had they been older (e.g., of drinking age), my “lecture” would have been quite different. While my injury was alcohol related, it did NOT involve driving or doing anything dangerous, it was merely that I tripped on my driveway as I walked back from a neighbor’s house. Obviously my equilibrium and balance were not what they should have been. But enough said on that topic, it obviously “left me in stitches”.
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by Michael Sheehan on July 27, 2010
in Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Family, Gadgets, General, Hardware, Lose the Laptop, Mobile, parenting, Safety, social media, social networking
We are now in the final days of voting for the AT&T Lose the Laptop Challenge. It has been an interesting four months writing about different topics and how they relate to the HTC Tilt 2 smart phone. You can see all of my articles on the Lose the Laptop site here. But I thought that it might be a good idea to provide a quick summary of all of my posts, all within one article. That way, you can see the evolution of the program in my mind. Hope you like them! And be sure to VOTE FOR ME on the Lose the Laptop site! Each vote that you make enters you to win the GRAND PRIZE of $5000!!!
Each of the post titles below link to the full article on the AT&T Lose the Laptop site. Also included, in italics, is the first paragraph of each post and a tiny bit of Commentary about these posts.
April – “Travel” Theme
The theme for April was all about travel and how the HTC Tilt 2 can help with that.
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Catch up on Part 1 of “The Mobile Spy” here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here (on AT&T’s Lose the Laptop site) or Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here (on HighTechDad.com).
He slept most of the way. He hadn’t realized how running on adrenaline had made him so incredibly tired. He only woke a few times to have his ticket checked and to peer out the window to identify his surroundings. But after each check, he slipped back into a deep slumber.
After about five hours of sleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the train, he snapped awake, refreshed and rejuvenated. He was about an hour away from his final destination, a sleepy lake-side town in the Italian mountains. He knew the area like the back of his hand. The small villa had been purchased many years ago and had been cared for by a local who had been paid from an anonymous fund. It would be his family’s sanctuary and the start of his new life.
He thought back to the events of the past 24 hours, double checking every possible angle of his escape. By the time the agents caught the vagrant in the cab, they would realize that they had been tricked and that the trail would be cold. The safe house had been thoroughly burned. He knew this because of how he had set up the rooms. Each room had areas that were meant to act as tinder, from the old, dry and dusty curtains to the yellowing newspapers stacked in careful piles around the flat. He had lost the laptop by completely destroying its internal hard drive and burning it beyond recovery. The data had been transferred from his cell phone to the laptop and then off to a secure site. All of the checks were in the appropriate boxes. Through a stroke of luck, Mark Z, the man he had bought the data from, was dead. And for all intents and purposes, any connections to Mark, the data and him were long erased.
The man got up from his seat and walked to the WC at the end of the train car. Once the bathroom door was locked behind him, he took out his wallet and began removing all of the credit cards and IDs. He set to work folding and ripping up the items of his past lives, flushing pieces of the documents down the toilet as the train raced through empty pastures and hillsides. When the last piece had been disposed of, he breathed a sigh of relief and headed back to his seat.
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by Michael Sheehan on July 26, 2010
in Apple, Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Fix It, Gadgets, General, Hardware, how to, iPhone, Mobile, video
My iPhone 3GS has been showing signs of a dying battery for a month or so now. The symptoms included the battery depleting faster than normal, charging very quickly (because there wasn’t much to “charge”), and the iPhone simply crashing when the battery was at 75-90% FULL. It would simply crash as I was doing some tasks, not even showing a warning that it needed a charge. Sometimes when I would plug it in to get charged after crashing, it would show the red battery icon which means that it was at a very low level of charge. Then after plugging it in, it would show about 75% full after a few seconds. There was definitely something wrong there with the power.
So while I was waiting for an iPhone 4 to arrive in a local AT&T store (you should read my issue about that whole process here), I decided that it would make sense to try to replace the battery on my iPhone 3GS because the phone itself was in great shape. Also, when I do eventually upgrade, my kids would get my old iPhone to play with and I wanted to be sure that it had a strong battery for their game time on it.,
Also if you are thinking about getting an iPhone 4 and you have an iPhone 3GS that is dying, you could do this process to bump up the re-sale value of your 3GS!
I did a little bit of research and found that iFixit.com (my favorite repair guide website for Mac/iPhone repairs and how-to guides) had a replacement battery kit for $19.95 which was a really good deal. The only thing is, you have to do it yourself! That’s not a big deal, right? Well, if you have never done any repairs on electronics, it is a bit challenging. But it is definitely doable, and I was willing to accept that challenge. And the nice folks at iFixIt.com hooked me up with a free battery…the only catch, I had to successfully do the install and document the process!
Be sure to read the last section below “Words of Warning Advice” before diving in.
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