Rain | Floods | Winner | Friday Fun

The weeks fly by and the seasons change. Our beautiful Fall weather here has been replaced with gray and rain — which means it is a good time to remind you of some basic facts about digital devices. Let me start with an easy one..

1) Electronics + Water = Bad News. (aka “sad, sad news..”)

My advice here is pretty simple and straight forward – don’t drop your doodad into water; and take your cell phone out of your pocket before you jump in the swimming pool.
Do not try to surf the net in the shower.

That said, should you manage to immerse your device, or pour an entire Thirsty-Two Ouncer onto it.. there are some actions you can take which might save its life — and these actions are good things to know before you actually need to perform them — so, please, read my How To Rescue A Drowned Device now.. ahead of time. Forewarned is forearmed.

Not directly releated… Fortunately, our rains here were not of the sort that produced any flooding — unlike some places currently in the news. Thailand, for example. They’re in bad shape.. not quite like Noah dealt with, but bad flooding there..

Did you know that thanks to globalization and the demand to produce cheaply (because, who doesn’t love a bargain?) we rely on Thailand to assemble every hard drive built? And since those factories are now underwater, nobody knows when we will ever get another hard drive built? So, the price of drives is soaring? And the price of computers is going to go up, up, up?
And we wonder about our unemployment rate.. Tip for the wise: buy now.

• Thailand Floods Could Affect Cloud Computing New York Times – 2 hours ago
  

  “The cost of hard drives is expected to rise as makers scramble to secure supply. But it could have a wider impact on every company that stores data in the …” Read more..

• Prices of hard drives continue to soar TechEye – 4 hours ago
  

  “The effects of the Thai floods are beginning to have significant effect on product prices in the UK, with substantial hard drive price increases, … ” Read more..

I am pleased to announce the winner of the random drawing for a license for TuneUp Utilities 2012 (please see, Are you interested in making your computer run as fast as it did when it was new?).

Congratulations to..

.. and, my sincere thanks to the good folks at TuneUp for making the giveaway possible.

Friday Fun (video): It has become tradition here at Tech – for Everyone to celebrate the fact that we’ve made it to Friday with a little “fun”..

Yay, the weekend’s almost here.

Today’s quotable quote: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Bonus:

“AOL? MySpace? Yahoo? Can Yahoo! be saved? Do you even care? Paul Saffo talks about other companies and the reasons for their dramatic turnarounds. As Yahoo! seems to have none of those traits, Mr. Saffo has pretty much convinced me that Yahoo! is doomed. What do you think? Read more at The New York Times Can Yahoo Be Rescued?“

• Bonus bonus:

AOL??? Sorry – not since ’96…

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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