21st Century Wows and Woes

I geek out about modern technology a lot. I couldn't really imagine a technology career when I was a kid in New Plymouth, Idaho. I remember creating a program on a TRS-80, a "microcomputer", and saving and running the program from a cassette tape. We created a white humanoid (that's as good as you do with pixels larger than the type you are now reading) on black field waving, with words of greeting. I was told it was the future. I couldn't tell how.

Today, I do technology work (mostly with databases) from home, on a fiberoptic network that allows data downloads and uploads at 1 gigabyte per second.  My home network is simply fabulous: a very speedy wired and wireless router in the basement is supported with two linked satellites creating a mesh network that gives excellent coverage for my home and yard. My work monitors are nicer than our LED TV, which is incomparably awesome to our old tube TV with a much smaller screen but heavier build.

Anyway, I am eyeing the day I can move my office into one of the bedrooms upstairs, and put one of the mesh routers in Joshua and Enoch's bedroom, but wanted it up high, so we put it on a shelf with some of our hit pinewood derby cars. I think it is cool.

But way cooler is all the things we can do now. 

We broke the main controller on our stove. So, what do we do?

Well, first I watch a Youtube video that shows me what I am getting into. If it doesn't scare me too much (and this one didn't), then I buy a replacement "brain" from Amazon. I take it apart and take a picture of the wires I have to replace, to make sure I put them back right, on a phone that does more than a Star Trek communicator and tricorder could do combined. 

And then I buy the wrong front sticker display so it looks like Frigidaire instead of Kenmore -- and noboby cares.

It is just amazing how relatively easy and effective it is, even when I screw up!

Anther nice repairt: I also used a windshield repair kit to fix my shattered phone glass. I dropped my phone in Houston and couldn't read things on the far left side. Replacement is $250. The windshield repair kit wasn't near perfect, but it did fill in the gaps so I can read everything now, and it keeps all the little pieces of glass glued together nicely.