Time to Get Healthy

Exercise is good... in moderation. I just proved I need a whole lot more. Today I had to head out to the car on an errand, so coming back, I decided to take the stairs to the office, rather than the elevator. Only four flights up and I am huffing and puffing and totally out of breath.

Time to take up biking or jogging or .... losing a few pounds wouldn't hurt a bit either.

Shred THIS!

I went out and bought a new paper shredder for the office about 10 days ago. It's a purchase that the old boss wouldn't approve, but he's gone. We now have a shredder for each side of the office. The new shredder has wheels, but we put it on the same table as the old shredder. I was walking past and heard it beep, so being curious, I stopped to check it out. Turns out there's a warning beep when the shredder is getting full. I pulled out the bin to take a look, packed down the contents and pushed back in the bin.

Did I mention that the new shredder has wheels? The front wheels lock, but not the back. I pushed in the bin, and pushed a little bit more to get the safety sensor to detect the closed bin... and it rolled...

Did I mention that the new shredder was on a table? I watched it roll off the table and crash to the floor. One wheel broke off (serves it right) and the control buttons were knocked out; the housing was cracked. And it didn't work!

Did I mention that my expense check for the new shredder has not yet been processed? Royal claims that abuse is not covered under the warranty, so we started disassembling to see how bad the damage really was and what it would take to fix. The additional damage was that the mother board (a 2.5" X 4" board) was cracked and had one corner broken off, and the mounting brackets broken.

The buttons were easily put back into their sockets. As I didn't really want to submit an expense report for a second shredder, I wanted to see about fixing the mother board. Part of it was the challenge of could I do it. (Part of it was not wanting to deal with the corporate red tape).

I superglued the corner back on the board, along with the missing component. Chaelomen helped solder jumper wires to components to skip over damaged traces on the board and I reassembled the shredder... (using twine and a few boy scout knots to tie the mother board in place)... and it works!!!

And I forgot to take pictures of the finished work to post.

There used to be a month called "December"

I'm not sure where the month went. It was quiet at work - I got a lot done. It was busy at church - mostly 12 hour Sundays at the church. Mondays with the crew. One trip to the Temple on a Tuesday. A New Year's Eve Dance on the Saturday after Christmas (attendance was down by about 200 from the previous year - I was there as a "chaperon", although there wasn't a whole lot of need for supervision, and New Year's Eve doing the First Aid support with the crew. We saw some action this year.

Oh, and there was Christmas, and the related shopping; hoping that my wife and daughter could make it home for Christmas (something about flying standby) - they made it. Hoping that my son could make it back home after Christmas - after a couple of days in Chicago, any available flight to anywhere looked good. Enjoying time with the family (and resisting the temptation to eat even 1 habanero popper - I made that mistake at Thanksgiving).

Life is good - even if I didn't find the time to post for the month. Happy 2009.

And I did some driving during the month, but as it is now almost 1 in the morning, mileage for December can wait...