NOTE: I basically copied and pasted from the same news story last year. Great....

Recently one of my LCD monitors up and died on me one day. It was plugging along just fine when it started to flicker a little bit here and there. Within 72 hours it was dead as a door nail. Needless to say I was super bummed. I started shopping around for a replacement and then had an idea, "Why not try and fix this thing myself?".

So I jumped onto the trusty google search and started firing search queries out to the web. A couple came back with good results and soon enough I was pricing out new power inverters, back lights, and even leds. Then I stumbled upon a super find, a discussion on my exact monitor!

The fix was easy, or so they said, just bust open the power board and you will find some of your capacitors shot. Replace those bad boys and you are on your way. I was a little reluctant to believe it could be that easy, but I popped my monitor open and sure enough 3 of the caps were bulging at the seems.

I looked at the type of caps they were and found they were 470uf. Off to google once again trying to price out these suckers and luckily they had them at RadioShack for $1.29. The next day I set off to buy them and then headed to my brother's house where we busted out his soldering iron and were on our way. About 7 minutes later, to my amazement this thing was working beautifully!

Right now I am so psyched. And to think that if I would have brought that to some repair shop(which nobody with any level of intelligence would ever do) I would have shelled out upwards of $100 most likely. This really made my day and now if you don't mind, I am heading over to ebay to try and find some cheap "dead" monitors.....

So I have set up a blog to track my running. Visit if you like at

http://andrewsrunninglog.blogspot.com/

Many people are probably jumping for joy today with the news that Brett Favre has asked for his release from the Packers, essentially confirming reports that he wants to return to the NFL. I am not one of those fans. For me this story has run its course and is starting to resemble "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It seems at the conclusion of every NFL season Favre gets emotional about the fact that it could be over only to see him return the next year. I am sorry, but it has reached a level of annoyance and frankly I just want to see the guy go.

Even with his teary-eyed press conference a few months ago, I knew that wasn't going to be the last I saw of number 4, the most overrated quarterback ever. No, I am just kidding, that would most certainly be Joe Namath, but the legend of Favre seems to grow exponentially every day and its pretty ridiculous. He has once again held the Packers hostage and screwed up their entire draft and pre-season camps. Is it any wonder the Pack are finally ready to move on? While the entire national media has decided to deride and criticize the Packer front office for not begging Favre to come back I can't help but wonder why the criticism. I guess its really not that hard to understand, fans and media just watch the games and enjoy the competition, they aren't dealing with #4 and his reluctance to commit to the team and franchise for more than a 4 month stretch every fall. Fans just want to see the "legend" one more time and media types just want another big story.

Not me, I want the NFL, the No Favre League. His career has run its course and its time he get over it and himself. But hey, if he wants to lace 'em up with Jets or Vikings and ruin one of the great legacies of all-time, be my guest.

Anyone who helped elect Massachusetts State Rep James H. Fagan into office should be absolutely embarrassed by his performance on a hearing regarding "Jessica's Law", a law that would toughen penalties for sex offenders. Whether you agree with this legislation or not, his rant is outright ridiculous and I am not sure how this guy can sleep at night.

Some of his amazing attacks on victims' rights included his statement that he would "rip apart" 6-year old victims on the stand and "make sure the rest of their life is ruined". What an upstanding individual who has such a sense of loyalty and duty to his profession. It must be every lawyers dream to belittle and terrorize young innocent children. He went on to say "when they’re 8 years old they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”

Here, watch it for yourself.

I will be the first to speak out against mandatory sentences for sex offenders, albeit in specific situations. The case against 17 year old Genarlow Wilson had me outraged. If you are not familiar with the case it involved Wilson and a 15 year old girl who engaged in consensual oral sex. He was given a mandatory 10 year sentence. It has since been overturned, but only after he spent 2 years of his life in a prison cell. In all cases mandatory sentences do not work.

However, Jessica's Law is quite different. Originally passed in Florida, the provisions state that mandatory prison time would only apply to pedophiles who have committed offenses with victims under the age of 12. I don't know about you, but I have no issues sending adults up the river who have sexually abused someone under the age of 12. That is pretty black and white.

Right or wrong, Fagan should be ashamed of the way he acted and if this is the type of animated language he uses in public proceedings I would hate to hear the vitriol that spews from his mouth behind closed doors.

Seems the latest big story is the push to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling in response to skyrocketing gas prices. I am not going to pretend like I am some kind of expert on this issue, but I am not sure that opening up more area for drilling is the answer in the short-term or the long-term. Certainly, if the moratorium is lifted it would still be multiple years before any of the oil is actually drilled for and refined into gasoline. Even then, would it actually affect gas prices? I am not sure since every where you turn you get a different response.

There is one peculiar part of the issue that I recently read. It has to deal with the fact that there are millions of acres currently being leased by oil companies, but are not being used or drilled on. This certainly seems to raise the question as to why we need more area opened up when current drillable acres are not being used. I am not sure the answer, but it definitely seems like a good discussion point.

The House Committee on Natural Resources introduced legislation that will force these oil companies to use those leases or run the risk of losing them. Here is an excerpt from that bill.

"The 68 million acres of leased but inactive federal land have the potential to produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day. This would nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75 percent. "

If the above statement is indeed true, whats the point of opening up more resources. Is it just for the sake of having more area leased by big oil? You tell me, because this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Give me your thoughts and/or opinions. Am I being misled? Let me know. Enjoy your commute!

For the full article on this bill you can go here.