Ever miss the good old days of computing?

In this modern world that we live in technology can seem a little overwhelming, let’s face it, it’s everywhere, in our pockets, on our wrist, stuck behind our ear and soon no doubt implanted in our head. Sometimes it’s good to have little walk down memory lane and remember how things used to be. Take a look at this old school word processor I found at BigHugeLabs.com http://writer.bighugelabs.com/. Not only is it cool it’s so very functional. Applications are getting way to complicated and full of themselves, even the new trend of online applications are somewhat complex, requiring you to have an account with them and one thing and another. Writer by BigHugeLabs.com is the complete opposite, open up the website and start typing whilst basking in the glow of a good old green screen. Writer is defiantly bare bones computing but it is also not without features, when you are done typing you and print the document, save as a PDF file or send it to you email or a variety of online places i.e. blogger (I wrote this entire entry on Writer) the only thing that is missing in my opinion is a spell checker.

Defiantly cool, check it out http://writer.bighugelabs.com/

Air Conditioning Repair - A tail of lies, deceit and industrial espionage - Part 1

What follows is a true story about one man’s fight against the oppressive heat of summer and the generously proportioned, money grabbing and all together not very nice industry that is Heating and Air Conditioning Repair. Please be aware that the names in the story have been changed to protect the innocent as one of the biggest secrets in the A/C industry is about to be released. Any information you procure from reading this is yours do with as you please but don’t go blaming anyone if you decide to try this and blowup yourself, your house, or anything else for that matter.

Summer is here at last. Picnics, walks in the park, fishing and sailing, just a few of the common summer activities that I for one don’t partake in. Why? I here you ask, well to be perfectly honest I live in South Texas and it’s just too damn hot for any of those summer shenanigans, especially considering the first 20 years of my life was spent in Manchester England where it gets bloody cold. So I retreat, hide you might say shielding myself from whatever ridicules temperature it happens to be outside. My favorite retreat of course is my house. My house, a place of solitude, a place to unwind and let the stresses of the day wash away in the calming glow of the cathode ray, a safe place, a cool place. This leads me nicely into my story. My name is Smith I live an average life in an average house in an average neighborhood with my beautiful wife Mrs. Smith, our son Smith Jr and another on the way who for now is affectionately named JB (Just Baby). Our lives are what you might call normal, average and for the most part very happy until one day the unimaginable happened, our house was invaded, the safe place violated, solitude desecrated, HEAT it was everywhere the air conditioner had decided to go on strike. This was almost too much to bare it was six o’clock at night, nowhere is open, what to do. Frantically I ran down my mental list of ‘what to do in an emergency’ I called 911 but they lady who answered the telephone said that this didn’t constitute as an emergency, I asked if she wouldn’t mind telling that to Mrs. Smith who is six months pregnant and suddenly we were disconnected, a glitch in their phone system I am sure. So I moved on, hospital yes that’s it, number two on the emergency list, take the sick to the hospital, I sprang into action, ran outside, where to my surprise it was considerably cooler than it was inside, pulled the car around next to the A/C unit and tried loading it up. To my astonishment it was bolted down! Well that’s it out of options well almost there was one left. Looking back though I can see how you may think me foolish but I was desperate. I sat down next to the unit and tried to reason with it, I explained to the unit why it would be better If it worked, how I don’t like the heat, I promised we wouldn’t just ignore it and take it for granted anymore, I begged, I pleaded I cried but alas my words fell upon deaf ears. So I did what any man pushed to the edge of reason would do, yes I started cursing and kicking it, finally after hearing my profanities increasing in volume Mrs. Smith dragged me back into the oven that was previously our house.

I was done, thrown in the towel, defeated by an immovable force. We sat uncomfortably staring at the television, the room was silent except for the mindless rambling emanating from the moving picture box. Time was dragging, minutes seemed like hours as if the heat had formed some kind of time vortex within the house. Then out of the blue Mrs. Smith spoke her words graced my ears as if sung by angels ‘I am going to bed, could you please call the repair people in the morning’ Could it be that simple? Maybe it could, I went to bed and dreamed about cold places eagerly awaiting the morning.

Morning came and the temperature was bearable, everybody went about their morning routine, even the time vortex seemed to have gone. The whole morning was awash with normality, one could almost have forgotten about the events of the previous night. We all piled in the car, dropped Smith Jr of at his grandmothers (its summer, school is out) and Mrs. Smith dropped me of at my office. As I was getting out of the car the angels sang again, ‘don’t forget to all the AC people, love you’. Suddenly like a bad dream the whole night came flooding back, the begging, the pleading, the crying and yes the kicking, realizing now why my foot was in so much pain I shook of the nightmare and opened the office.

To be continued…………………