Sad fact

If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The firearms death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.

Slow down

I guess you could say I'm on the frontline of the economy; or at least, support for the frontline. I have noticed the downturn that started almost immediately after the mortgage bubble popped. Residential electrical is slowing down. Commercial and industrial is still going, which helps, but residential is down. We're feeling it at work; slow days, especially when I'm not out at a store, like today. Little stock to put away, not as many customers since they don't have as much work. I'm not too worried yet, as spring, hopefully, isn't that far away.

I don't call what's happening to economy a recession...it's merely a slowdown at this point. To me, a recession involves massive layoffs and high unemployment; there are still plenty of jobs out there, and I haven't heard of any major layoffs. Everyone's nervous, I suppose.

Unbricking an iPhone

tonight I had pleasure of unbricking an iPhone for a friend of mine. It's his son's iPhone actually, but Brian asked if I could take a look at it. The son had tried to put an aftermarket firmware on his iPhone, and it broke it. I'm writing this to save people the steps I couldn't find to make it easier for them to get back to working status.

First, you should pop out the SIM card. It's located at the top of the iPhone, between the headphone jack and the power button. You'll need something small to push firmly into the ejection hole, but it does pop up. I used needle nose pliers to slide the SIM card holder further out til I could grasp it with my fingers.

Next, you'll want to make sure the usb cord is plugged into the computer you have iTunes on, but not plugged into the iPhone yet. power the iPhone up, then power it down by holding both the power button and the home button. Continue to hold down the home button after the iPhone is "off" , then plug in the iPhone, then start iTunes manually.

With a minute or so, iTunes should find the iPhone, in "recover mode" It will then ask you if you want to basically wipe out everything and start over. I believe this is your only choice. iTunes will then download the current firmware (1.1.3) and then install it on the iPhone.

After the iPhone was restored, I powered it off, then re-inserted the SIM card. I powered the iPhone back up, most of the functions were there. just for good measure, I did a restore once more, and after that, the iPhone was just like new. I made a test call to my phone on it, and vice versa. I connected to my home wireless network. I browsed the internet on it. I tried to test it as best as I could.

Hopefully, this helps someone save about 3 hours of looking for the way to restore their iPhone after a failed Jailbreak like this was.

Feel free to drop me a line, and I'll answer questions as best I can.

Cheers
Chad

weekend recap

ok, so I took Friday off just to have a day with nothing on my schedule....it felt really nice...

Saturday, basketball to coach at 8:30, lunch with Holly at 11:30, then off to Racine to tech with my buddy Matt. Payment in great pizza at Angelo's.

Sunday...church, lunch, basketball practice, football game. Holly had a lot of work this weekend, and was feeling some stress because of it, so I cooked her dinner Sunday night. I fixed my fabulous chicken, and for desert, we had peanut butter cup ice cream.

Giants win, no perfection for New England...

thatisall