Just about a year ago, I posted about finding a new supply link.
Well, I have found a new, and even better option: CVS Wooden Cotton Swabs. They are available at CVS retail stores, or on-line.
They are more expensive than the ones I found on e-Bay - $3.69 for 125 (about 2X more per double-ended swab), but, they are very good quality - strong wood sticks, lots of cotton on the tip - comparable to what I remember the Q-Tips brand being like, and definitely a step up from the Royal brand.
At the moment, the CVS swabs are on sale on-line for $2.21.
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Regarding my previous post on this subject.
Yep, the problem was in fact tied to a lack of available memory. I encountered the error again, and when I checked Options, Status, File Free: showed 0 Bytes. Performing a soft reset (simultaneously pressing the left ALT and right Shift and DEL keys) and then trying the synch again after the BB had reset allowed the synch to complete without error.
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Monday
Started the day with a work call, then packed the car.
Did a little site seeing in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. Visited the house where Jeanie lived and where she went to High School.
Had lunch at the Olive Garden in Norfolk. All you can eat soup, salad and breadsticks.
Left Norfolk and headed to Clarksville. It still amazes me that I can be sitting in the passenger seat of a car driving down the highway at 70 MPH in the middle of nowhere Virginia, and be able to work on my computer that is connected via a VPN connection via a connection to my cell phone that acts as a cellular modem to my corporate network.
Drove to Tammy and Coop's where Jeanie visited while I leached off of their wireless Internet connection and participated in a teleconference and then drove to Bob and Wendy's.
Arrived at Bob and Wendy's around 5:00 PM. Had dinner, chatted a while, went to bed.
Tuesday
Had a teleconference, then drove into Clarksville for lunch. Had lunch at Gino's Italian Restaurant. Jeanie and I split a veggie grinder with fries, both of which were absolutely delicious. The grinder had grilled onions, peppers, mushrooms and was topped with melted cheese. The veggies were cooked just right - just al dente. Took a call for work, then left to drive to Apex. Had planned to stay at Andrew and Laura's, but Laura was sick, so we used some Hilton points to make a reservation at the Homewood Suites in Cary.
Met Andrew and Hannah at the Rockfish Seafood Grill at Southpoint for dinner. Food was fine, service was horrible. Andrew was really nice and gave us a coupon for 1/2 off on one of our entrees.
Wednesday
Went to start the RAV4 to head back home and the battery was dead. I figured I must have left the lights on. Unfortunately, we were just a few thousand miles over the three year, 36,000 mile warranty that included road service. Fortunately, Robby had not left for work yet, so he and Erin drove over to the hotel to give us a jump. It took allowing the battery to charge for about five minutes before the engine would crank, but then it did and started.
Jeanie wanted to go by the Fresh Market / Whole Foods before we left town, so we drove over to Waverly Place. Since we hadn't driven far and the battery hadn't had much time to charge, I decided to stay in the car and keep it slightly revved so the battery would charge. After a few minutes, the dash lights flickered a couple of times and then the engine died. Once again, the battery was as dead as a door nail. So dead, that I couldn't even get it out of Park. We called the closest Toyota dealer, Fred Anderson Toyota in Raleigh, and they were very accommodating, scheduling an appointment for "as soon as we could get there" and dispatching a tow truck. While I waited for the tow truck, I reviewed the towing section of the owner's manual, and found out how to override the "Park" lockout on the transmission. Fortunately, the tow truck that came was driven by a very nice man, and the truck happened to have a rear seat which he was willing to let us ride in.
Long story short, on the cosmic scale of relative fortune, we got lucky, and the problem turned out to only be a battery that had apparently developed an internal short or collapsed plate and thus had died a premature death. Since the car was out of warranty (I do think 3 years, 36,000 miles is way too short) we had to purchase a new battery, but Fred Anderson Toyota was very nice and waived the diagnosis fee and only charged us $10 for the installation. Since it turned out that we were due for an oil change, we had them do that while we were there, thus saving Jeanie from having to make a trip to Jacksonville to get the oil changed after we got home.
The nice folks at Fred Anderson had a very nice waiting area with free wireless Internet access and a cool coffee machine that ground and brewed a cup of Starbucks coffee on demand. Jeanie spent some time on the phone and on her laptop doing fun stuff, and I spent some time on my phone and my laptop doing work stuff.
We got on our way around 3:00 PM. I took the first shift of driving. Around Benson, we stopped to get gas and use the facilities. The station had a Quiznos, and we both got veggie subs that were quite tasty. Jeanie drove for a while and I worked, and then we switched off for the last leg home.
Thursday
Worked.
Friday
Worked.
Saturday
Went flying to renew night currency. Left the house around 6:30 PM so I could do a few touch and goes while it was still light to knock the rust off, then waited until 8:30 PM (1 hour after official sunset) to do my three landings to a full stop so I can carry passengers at night for the next three months.
Sunday
Coffee at the airport.
Ran errands with Jeanie - Lowe's to get a furnace filter, Wal-Mart to get various dry goods and some groceries, CVS to get wooden stick cotton swabs, and Publix to get some groceries.
Put together, and "installed," the Iron Gym pull-up bar by Pro Fit. Actually, quite cool. Requires no drilling into the door frame. Seems quite sturdy. Easy to "install" and remove.
Sad part is, I can't even do one pull-up or chin-up. Can't hardly even just hang. Jeanie can hang and do leg lifts!
Watched "The Astronaut Farmer" which Jeanie had DVRed IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Somewhat slow at times, and totally improbable, but we still enjoyed it, as ultimately, it was a feel good movie. Possibly the first Billy Bob Thornton movie I've ever enjoyed.
Commentary
I made a decision about 20 months ago to try to attain better balance between work and life. I can't say that I've been as successful in that endeavor as I would have hoped, but I did take a step in the right direction last Sunday. And sometimes, things actually do work out right, when you make a leap of faith. Okay, maybe it wasn't a leap... maybe more of a hop, but still...
This, in regards to my decision to drive home with Jeanie rather than fly.
Turns out, that after the client meeting, the deal is in a bit of a lull, so I would have been sitting at home alone, with nothing pressing to do work wise, whereas, having made the decision to drive with Jeanie, I've been able to enjoy a few days with her, away from the routine and drudgery of home.
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Monday
Spent about an hour trying to get the Internet connection at Mom and Dad Melvin's working. Problem was that the DSL modem wouldn't connect. Disconnected all the phones to see if the problem was with one of the filters. Didn't help. Spent about thirty minutes on the phone with the Windstream Communications telephone support. Couldn't resolve the issue, so they scheduled someone to go out to the house tomorrow.
Drove home. Stopped at Taco Bell in Baxley for lunch. Ordered a bean and rice burrito, then realized I would have rathered had a seven layer burrito. There were only three people working, and they were kind of slow, but they were really nice and gave me a seven layer burrito for free, and gave Jeanie a couple of extra tacos.
Got home, took a nap, then I updated Jeanie's Garmin Nuvi 760 with an operating system and map update.
Then watched a couple of episodes of "The Philanthropist" and "Sunday Morning."
Tuesday
Normal work from home day. Learned from Dad that the problem with their Internet connectivity was that their DSL modem was cooked. Not totally fried, as the lights still worked, but cooked to the point that it couldn't establish a connection to the DSL circuit.
Wednesday
Got up at 3:00 AM to travel to NYC. Stayed at the Helmsley on 42nd and 3rd. Not very impressed, but at least they did let me check in at 9:00 AM. They were doing major renovaton of the lobby, so for all practical purposes, there was no lobby. There wasn't anything wrong with the room, it just didn't impress me - especially at the ridiculous nightly rate they were charging. Had to stay at the Helmsley rather than my usual Hilton because it was fashion week and almost every hotel on the IBM list was sold out.
Thursday
Worked at the IBM office in NYC preparing for an executive presentation to the client next week.
Friday
More client meeting preparation, then grabbed a taxi to JFK around noon to catch the 3:20 PM flight to Norfolk to meet Jeanie for her high school reunion. Flight was hassle free. Liked the JFK terminal much better than the La Guardia terminal. Shared a Cary Limo with a woman from Manhattan to the Cavalier Hotel. Technically, there are two Cavalier Hotels in Virginia Beach, the grand Cavalier on the Hill, built in 1927,
and the contemporary Cavalier Oceanfront across the street.
We stayed in the Oceanfront, as that's where the block of rooms had been reserved. I arrived at the hotel around 6:30. Jeanie was at the bar with a large group of her classmates. I hung around for about an hour, then went up to the room and fell asleep. Jeanie came up around 10:00 with a Greek Salad. Yummy.
Saturday
Had the buffet breakfast at the hotel. Not bad, and only $10 a piece, which isn't bad at all for a hotel. Walked down to the fishing pier on 17th. Walked part of the way on the beach, part on the boardwalk, and part on Atlantic. Watched the Shriner's parade as part of the Mid-Atlantic Shrine Association (MASA) convention. Walked back to the hotel and took a three hour nap. Went to the dinner dance, which was held in the grand Cavalier on the Hill. Dinner was really good and very pescatarian friendly - salad, veggies, potatoes, rice and a really good mahi mahi with fruit chutney. Yummy chocolate cake. Stayed until about 10:30. Then, Jeanie and I went back to the room, changed, and went for a walk on the beach - very nice.
Sunday
Woke up, walked down Atlantic. Had breakfast at the restaurant at the Holiday Inn Express. Jeanie enjoyed her garden omelette, but I didn't enjoy my cinnamon french toast - it was obviously from some frozen prepared roll, and it was too heavy on the cinnamon.
Walked back to the hotel and went down to the luncheon at 11:30 AM. Lunch was fried chicken, potato salad, cole slaw and rolls - obviously we didn't have the chicken, the rest of it was mediocre at best.
The lunch was the last event of Jeanie's class reunion weekend. Jeanie really enjoyed the weekend's events and especially enjoyed reconnecting with so many of her classmates.
Bought a Greek salad at the bar mid-afternoon and brought it up to the room to share with Jeanie. Then spent an hour on the phone for a work call. Made a totally unusual decision for me and cancelled my flight back to JAX and decided to stay with Jeanie and drive back home over the next few days. Walked down the boardwalk to 17th street to listen to the Blues Festival, but it had ended at 5:00 so we didn't get to listen to any Blues.
Started back towards the hotel and stopped at Kohr Brothers for frozen yogurts. Jeanie got a vanilla chocolate dipped cake cone and I got at chocolate chocolate dipped cone. $9 bucks for the two! I didn't like mine and pitched it after a few bites. Stopped at Giovanni's Italian Restaurant and shared pasta tubes stuffed with ricotta and mozzarella with a wonderful fresh tomato sauce. It was really good. The bread was fantastic. After our meal, we continued our stroll back towards the hotel. There was live music at 31st Street, and we stopped and listened for a while.
I enjoyed the weekend as well. I was impressed with Virginia Beach. The concrete "boardwalk" is really nice, as is the beach - clean and wide. There is a separate bike path, and there are various interesting sculptures and exhibits along the way. Among my favorites was the Neptune Statue (link1 link2) and The Naval Aviation Monument. Of course the best part of the weekend was seeing how much Jeanie enjoyed being back in her old stomping grounds and spending time with her high school friends.
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Monday
Normal work from home day.
Tuesday
Normal work from home day.
Wednesday
Flew to NYC. Left the house around 2:00 PM. Good flight, CRJ90, upgraded to first class. Walked up to 59th St - Central Park South. Had a slice of pizza for dinner. Wore a wrist watch (my old Rolex) for the first time in as long as I can remember. Felt a little strange, but wasn't a problem.
Thursday
Worked in the hotel in the morning.
Met a co worker for lunch. Went to McCormick & Schmick - had red tilapia - not as good as Jeanie's with her pineapple chutney. Should have had the tuna - sushi style.
Met with the customer in their offices in the GE bldg - 30 Rock. Beautiful view. Felt like Gomer even though I grew up in NYC.
After the meeting, went back to the hotel to debrief. Met in the executive lounge. Ran into the pricer from the first winning engagement I led. One of the strange things about the job is how you can form strong bonds working with someone for a year in intense conditions, then never work with them again.
Took a nice long walk in Central Park. Central Park Driveway was closed to traffic which was nice, and since it was still daylight, I felt relatively safe. Didn't stray too far off the beaten path. Band was playing in the amphitheater. Walked up The Mall to to the lovely Bethesda Fountain at Bethesda Terrace in front of a Central Park lake and just enjoyed the view for a while. On the walk back, the moon was rising and I just happened to see it framed between two buildings. Moon was full and large. The view was really great.
Friday
Flew home. Arrived around noon. Jeanie picked me up and we went to lunch at the Green Papaya - a Thai restaurant at River City Market. Jeanie had shrimp in red curry sauce that was delicious, I had Thai Chili Cashew scallops (at spiciness level 4 out of 5) that was okay.
Saturday
Took the dogs and walked on the beach. Had wanted to fly Saturday night to do my night currency, but the landing light on the club aircraft had not been replaced, and my Form 5 has lapsed with the CAP, and even if it hadn't, we currently have a G1000 C-182 in the hangar for which I am not qualified.
Sunday
Went to coffee at the airport - only stayed for about thirty minutes so we could leave to drive to Jeanie's parents.
Paid $2.23 per gallon for gas at exit 3 in Georgia.
There were a number of motivators to go visit Jeanie's parents. Other than just to get to see them, which is always nice, other reasons were to drop the dogs off so they could take care of them while Jeanie and I are away, and for me to set up the new laptop we had given Dad for Father's day.
Before I got started with the setup, I discovered that their Internet connection wasn't working. Did some trouble shooting, but wasn't able to get it working. Learned later that the problem was that the DSL modem had gotten fried. The provider had to come out and replace the unit.
Spent a nice afternoon and evening with Mama and Dad visiting.
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While trying to synchronize my Blackberry today, I got the following error:
Error Encountered. Error code - 0x80040fb3. Check documentation.
This occurred synchronizing the Outlook Notes to the Blackberry MemoPad.
Long story short, performing a hard reset of the device by removing the battery then running the sync again fixed the problem.
My guess is that the device had run low on available memory, and that's what the real cause was. Guess I won't know unless it happens again and I think to check the free memory before pulling the battery.
Long story long would involve talking about clearing the data for the MemoPad from the device by going into Backup and Restore, Advanced from the Desktop Manager, then changing the settings on the synch to only write from Outlook to the device (rather than bi-directional), looking at the log file under synchronization configuration and wondering why it just stopped part way after starting the "Updates To First System:" phase. But, that would take too much typing and reading effort.
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This happened a few months ago, and I thought I had documented it here on Blogdom, but apparently, I only documented it in the Word document that I maintain on my PC in which I track each installation or removal of software. Long story short is that there was a registry entry with an incorrect permission that caused the installation to fail. Details follow:
When I installed (as an update to the previous versions) the Blackberry Desktop Manager v4.7 and BB Handheld Software v4.5, this killed the synchronization of data from Outlook to the Blackberry. I uninstalled BBDM 4.7, and tried to reinstall BBDM 4.2.2 but got an error 1720. I downloaded a new BBDM 4.2.2 from Blackberry and tried to install, but the install failed. I downloaded BBDM 4.7 from Blackberry and installed (it encountered a few errors, but I was able to continue through them. After installing BBDM 4.7, I still received an error when trying to configure the synch with outlook. I was able to resolve the error by doing the following:
- Initial error when trying to configure synchronization: "the application's section is not file-based"
- Suggested fix for this error:
- Unregister the old Microsoft Outlook connector ilxolkCompanion.fil by completing the following steps:
- 1. From the computer, open the command prompt.
- 2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\Connectors\MS Outlook Connector.
- 3. Type regsvr32 -u ilxolkCompanion.fil in the command prompt.
- 4. Open BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Microsoft Outlook no longer appears in the Available desktop applications list.
- Register the most current Microsoft Outlook connector msoutlookconnector.fil for BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.3 by completing the following steps:
- 1. From the computer, open the command prompt.
- 2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\IS71 Connectors\MS Outlook Connector.
- 3. Type regsvr32 msoutlookconnector.fil in the command prompt.
- 4. Open BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Microsoft Outlook appears in the Available desktop applications list.
- Unregister the old Microsoft Outlook connector ilxolkCompanion.fil by completing the following steps:
- Suggested fix for this error:
- Error when running C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\IS71 Connectors\MS Outlook Connector>regsvr32 msoutlookconnector.fil
- DllRegisterServer in msoutlookconnector.fil failed. Return code was: 0x80070005
- Solution from: http://www.cryer.co.uk/brian/windows/trbl_nt_rgsvrfld80070005.htm
- Had to edit the following Registry entry: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\MsOutlook.ConnectorManager.1
- Right click on it, select Permissions, highlight Administrators under Group or user names:, click on Allow Full Control, click OK
- Was then able to successfully run: C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\IS71 Connectors\MS Outlook Connector>regsvr32 msoutlookconnector.fil
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