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that’s the title I saw in the business section of the newspaper today.
and the mutual I thought of wasn’t mutual fund.
hohohoho….

So on the sad note, the Canada Post delivery notice I received was not the contact lenses I’ve been waiting for (for two weeks) but on a happy note it’s a geeky new toy, in the La Crosse Technology BC-900 battery charger.

First impressions:

This thing looks cheap.. but it has lots of information on display so its forgiveable.. and it comes with batteries and a bag.. and some adapters so you can use AA batteries in your C and D cell equipment (didn’t know you could do that!).

Anyhow, last night I plopped in 4 of my oldest NiMH batteries (rated 2300mAH) and set it to Test mode. It fills up the batteries to full, then drains them, then fills them up again and reports the capacity.

If I had placed these batteries into my old charger.. it would have charged until one battery was full then stopped for all of them or done something like that. Little did I know that the four batteries started at pretty varied voltages. I set it to charge at 500mAH (5hrs to fill 2300mAH) and then discharge at 250mAH (10 hrs to empty). Two of the batteries were filled in about 3 hours.. but the other two took another 2-3 hours. (basically empty). They finished at varying voltages, from 1.46v to 1.51v.. and then they started to discharge at 250mAH.

When I woke this morning.. 3 were done.. and as I was writing down their reported capacities.. the 4th (batt#4, the one which hit the highest voltage during the initial charge) finished. The results I got were pretty surprising.. but fairly in line with what the initial charging peak voltages implied.

Two of the batteries (which finished charging with relatively low voltages last night) only reported 1470mAH and 1480mAH as max capacity! Batt#1 reported 1550mAH and batt#4 topped out at about 1880mAH. Talk about a difference! Anyway.. currently all 4 batteries are going through a discharge/charge cycle at 350mAH/700mAH. I’ll report on the capacities tonight, and then set them to “refresh” mode and see if these batteries are too old to increase their capacity again.

Seeing as we know electronics only function until the weakest battery dies.. that would mean I could have been putting 1470mAH batteries into a flash. yikes. And that would be assuming I could even get them fully charged.

Is it time to start the Flickr photostream? I’m thinking that it’s time that I started to make use of the sites out there (such as Flickr) and not just wait for my own vaporware site to appear which will have some super awesome super duper gallery (as pictured in my head)

Anyone else using Flickr or experience with? My brother was pretty amazed I didn’t actively use Flickr.

Interesting that jon would post about feeling ungrateful about work. Lately, i’ve been finding myself to be quite ungrateful, not so happy with work I guess. Insurance (as i was telling Grace), is not a very happy thing, nobody likes insurance, nobody likes paying for insurance so I get the blunt end of everything, a conversation can start off with the client being all cheerful but the minute you tell them their brand new vehicle is costing them more insurance prem, they go all sour and yell. The reality of it is, insurance rates are filed with FSCO (the governing body) so nobody can change the rates even if you complained, but i suppose (like everybody in life), we all want to be heard, and these people probably want to be heard, knowing full well that i cannot do anything about their rates.

Bearing this in mind, work becomes somewhat a drag, this year more so because no Gtalk and people aren’t as fast in responding to emails. And this year, I do property insurance and the company is trying to launch this initiative CRM (customer relationship management) [re: organizational behaviour..for those who’ve taken it], so they want us to handle not only auto and property insurance, but handle new insurance policies (traditionally sent to sales department). That way we can build ‘multiple’ relationships with the client and they aren’t transfered so much. Good idea, but for a department that is already stretched thin with the volume of calls, it doesn’t really work that well. The service level (dictated by number of calls waiting, etc) for us is typically 56% while sales stands at 100% for most of the day.

So this year, it’s been a drag every morning going to work, hearing a ton of problems then going home drained and hearing the occasional nag. Last night, I just ranted to Grace about how crappy work is and she told me to think of 10 things that make me happy/grateful about today… I’ve not given it much thought yet, but at first thought, I think it’ll be really hard, in that I really don’t know what I could say I’m happy about..kinda sad? I feel like, I want to purchase this lens, not even sure which one yet, and somehow that would bring “happiness” but as with all toys in life, its only temporary and clearly doesn’t solve the problem. Sure the job is well paid compared to many other students and its comfortable…but still not that satisfied with it.

How can I be more grateful about things?

I guess this goes here? So I just had a meeting.. and I just got the heads up on a new project I’m on.. and it’s probably one of the biggest projects I’ve gotten so far.. one of those portfolio building ones.

I actually get to design the student recruitment portal for a university. Time to start working.. hard. It’s always hard to see how “good you have it” when you’re in “it”. If I want to go into design.. I probably couldn’t have a better position than where I am now.. having gotten into this company through web programming.. but now maneuvered myself into the design department and pretty much designing on a consistent basis.. I suppose its the other spam-junk which really weighs me down.

Thinking about it.. makes me feel so ungrateful.. I have my cake and I’m eating it too, getting paid as a programmer (more than a starting design job for sure) and getting to design stuff with fairly minimal programming. Maybe full-time school isn’t such a good idea. It would probably be better to do part time while continuing to work.. a large part of the appeal of full-time school is the fun of it I think.