Monthly Archives: December 2008

Gotta love the Internet

Rave, Technology,

Well, you don’t have to love it — but it comes in handy now and then.

Remember our naked tree? Well, I bought some new lights — extra special ones at target. These lights are distributed by Phillips and called “Stay-lit”. Apparently they have a microchip in each bulb holder and they remain lit even when the bulb is broken, missing or burned out.

Now, I’m no electrical engineer, but I thought that modern Christmas Tree lights all did that — remained lit even though one or more of the bulbs were burned out, but the old fashioned kind were different. Something to do with the way they were in the sting — series current vs parallel current. Aren’t microchips overkill?

I guess I was mistaken, because we’ve thrown away countless modern Christmas tree light strings in the past few years.

Anyway — back to why the Internet is cool. So, I get home and Clare and I (mostly Clare) put up the 3 strands of lights. We turn them on. They look nice on the tree. We promise to put ornaments on the tree sometime soon.

The next morning we turn the lights on again, and one of the strands blinks intermittently. Not regularly — just randomly and for random lengths of time. I’m annoyed. These are brand new lights that promise to STAY-LIT on the box. If I wanted them to blink I would have bought blinking lights. So I’m left with a few options:

  1. Live with it
  2. Take the box back to Target (which would involve removing them from the tree, packaging them back up, finding the receipt and driving to Target)
  3. Sending them to the company (which would involve removing them from the tree, packaging them back up, finding the receipt, packaging them for mail and driving to the post office and waiting in line)
  4. Locating information in some online forum about why these lights might be blinking

So I chose option d. I searched Stay-lit bulbs and clicked on a link that looked promising:

http://www.staylit.com/

I’d found the site of the inventor of the Stay-lit Christmas Tree light bulb string. He even provided his email address, so I emailed him with my problem.

An hour or so later I got this reply:

Dona:

Sounds like a bulb is not making good contact.  Also, there is a microchip in every socket that may not be connecting properly IN THAT SOCKET.

One way to find the culprit is to pull the bulbs out one at a time until the string goes out.  When you pull a bulb out and nothing changes put it back in.

If you give me your telephone number and a good time to call, I will call you to discuss.

John Janning
Dayton, Ohio

I was pleasantly surprised. The inventor of the product telling me how to solve an issue with the product. While I’d expect this of some software developers, I didn’t necessarily expect the inventor of the Stay-lit bulbs to answer me and offer support over the phone — at his expense.

The fact that this man turned 80 in March is also surprising, considering my dad is also 80. But maybe not so surprising. I’ve got neighbors that are in their 80’s that are as active as Mr. Janning seems to be. Here’s some text from the web page:

John is also a motivational speaker on the subject of creativity and imagination. John is the inventor of the liquid crystal molecular alignment invention which perfected the liquid crystal display and made possible the large scale manufacturing of LCD’s back in the early 70’s. (See the article on “Liquid Crystals” in the Spring 2002 issue of Invention & Technology magazine – published by Forbes). He is also the inventor of the thermal printing wafer – used in all thermal fax machines around the world today and at many retail store checkouts. He holds a number of patents in plasma display technology.

I turned the lights back on and found one that was not lit, wiggled it a bit. The light came on and didn’t blink. I responded that it worked and he replied that he was glad it was an easy fix.

Me too.  And I’m glad I made a small connection with someone as bright and motivated as John Janning.

Over the river and through the woods

Events, Life, Memories, , ,

to cut ourselves a tree…

We did it again — we took our almost annual trip to Loudoun County to cut down our Christmas tree. We’ve been doing this since the kids were quite small — Clare might have been 6 when we started.

This is the last year we’ll go to Jacobson’s Tree Farm though — suburbia is moving in. Next year there will probably be McMansions where the trees used to be. Loudoun County is one of the fastest growing counties in the DC Metro area. People who want to live in the country, yet be close to DC are buying up the land and building homes there. (And according to Wikipedia, it is the wealthiest county in the country.)

But this post is not about suburban sprawl. It’s about our annual trip to cut down a Christmas tree.

We ate a delicious breakfast of Dutch Babies (weird name for a baked pancake sort of thing — very reminiscent of a Yorkshire pudding). Then piled in the Highlander for our trip to Virginia. The weather didn’t cooperate. It was chilly and rainy. We would have preferred snow, of course, but it didn’t happen.

Sure, Virginia is a short distance away via bridges and interstates, but we go the long way. The way that involves a ferry, country roads and wooded scenery. We cheated this time and drove up 270 instead of going on River Road where it actually does follow the river. We got off 270 in Gaithersburg and drove along Rt. 28 until we found White’s Ferry Road then took the ferry to Virginia, then drove to the tree farm.

The Jubal Early @ White's Ferry

When we first began getting our trees from Jacobson’s the farm was covered in a forest of pine and fir trees. It was hard to choose trees, because they were so plentiful. The area was so big that the owners brought wagons pulled by tractors to patrons when they’d chosen their trees. Now there might have been 100 trees left in three spots. Two were a bit of a walk, but one was pretty close to the parking lot. We headed there first, not because of its proximity, but because I prefer Canaan Firs for my Christmas tree. We found one right away, Dean unceremoniously cut it down (we forgot to thank it for giving its life so we could put presents under it). Dean and Andrew carried it to the shed where it was vibrated (to help it shed loose needles) and tied up in string. Then Andrew and Dean tied it to the top of the Highlander while Clare and I went into the shed to warm up.

Our Tree

Being a rainy day early in the season, there were few people at the tree farm. The owners said they’d be up and running at a different location in a couple of years. We gave them our email address so they could tell us when they were ready for business.

DSCF3455

On the way to Leesburg for lunch we stopped at the Old Lucketts Store to look through their 3 floors of antiques. On the top floor I met a man who told me that the store was allegedly haunted. It didn’t surprise me — I felt a chill when entering one of the rooms on the third floor, but that might have been because it was full of previously owned clothes worn by creepy mannequins. Clare and Dean tried on coats, but neither worked out.

We then drove to Leesburg and parked in front of the Leesburg Restaurant — another part of the tradition. Leesburg Restaurant is a dining establishment that’s been around since 1865, according to their sign. The inside of the restaurant is a throwback to a more innocent time — and very art deco-y

Leesburg Restaurant

After eating a cholesterol filled meal we walked to another antique store up the road where we browsed the basement for bargains. Clare found a few things, but the rest of us just looked.

Then we drove back home, taking the ferry again — but taking lesser roads than we took to get to Virginia.

Return Trip Ticket White's Ferry

Dean set the tree up and we got out our decorations. As mentioned in another post, the lights didn’t work, so the tree stood naked for a day. I bought lights the next day and Clare put them on the tree. That’s as far as we’ve gotten. Maybe we’ll decorate it tonight.

The Tree at Home

College Correspondence

Humor, Things, ,

So you know Clare’s getting ready to go to college — right? I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.

Well, back in her Sophomore year, when she took the PSAT, she gave the colleges permission to send her emails and snail mail. They took her up on that. She’s basically had to change email addresses because of the huge amount of email she has been getting from the colleges. At first the emails had subjects like: “Clare, we want you!” and “Your efforts have been noticed, Clare!”. This year they’ve gotten more desperate: “Re: Did you get my email?” and “Clare, we haven’t heard from you!” This week they say things like, “Time’s running out!” and “Hurry! Only one more day to apply to X-college”. Today they say, “Your application is overdue, Clare!”

She finished applying to the colleges on her list weeks ago, [actually she only finished part of the process, but knows what colleges she’s applying to], but the constant reminders are worrisome.

But the email is the least of it. Last spring we recycled half a 50 gallon container of college correspondence. On Sunday, in order to fit the Christmas tree in the living room, we did the same. But this time we took pictures…