Ryobi tools at HomeDepot review.

I own several Ryobi tools from Homedepot and I like all of them. The price was right and they get the job done around the home. I don’t know if they are as rugged as some of the industrial tool brands but I have not been able to destroy them with my typically careless attitude. I particularly like some of the 18 volt convenience tools such as the fans, lights and radios. Some of the latest versions have dual 120 VAC and 18 VDC input which is a real good feature.

I use the older style Ryobi fan all the time. The battery powered fan is great for sitting in a car waiting for someone without running the car. Its also nice when you are working on something in tight quarters and its hot.

Ryobi has finally started using led bulbs on a lot of its lighting products.  The older lights just used too much juice from the battery so they didn’t have a long run time.  

Ryobi and HomeDepot usually have great sales around the holidays so I am trying to encourage my wife to get me the updated radio as a present. Probably won’t happen though.

Ryobi also makes some 40VDC lawnmowers that are kind of attractive. I think they should consider making some type of robotic lawnmower. That’s what I am eventually going to need if my Crohn’s disease becomes worse. I can barely get the lawn cut now so I hope Ryobi implements this type of lawnmower soon at its typically reasonable price. I am also considering planting some type of ground cover on the areas with a severe slope near the front sidewalk so the robot can get the whole job done.

Advertisements

Sparse blogging by Glenn.

My father, myself and my sister long ago.

Haven’t been doing much blogging lately.  My wife is recovering from hip surgery and I have been taking care of her.  The results of the hip surgery have been very good.  She may not be dancing the jitterbug but she can at least walk with the aid of a walker again and the hip joint has not popped out.  I’ll take that as a win.  Thanks for everyone’s prayers.

Cat ate our over the air TV antennae so we bought a better compact one from Home Depot that allows the coax to be separately disconnected and is designed to be mounted in the attic. It looks like a small white UFO and is called the UFO by the manufacturer.  Strangely enough Judy objected to my drilling holes in the walls to run the coax from downstairs up to the attic. A divorce lawyer was mentioned.  Go figure women.  Instead I had to settle for mounting the UFO in the bedroom closet but it still works much better than the flat little antennae we had before so Judy was happy.  I only watch live TV for the daily local news and for Packers football games anyways.  Judy is addicted to GRIT TV from Milwaukee and she religiously watches Laramie and Walker Texas Ranger which unfortunately are starting to make me mildly ill after watching all the episodes at least three times.

I am not a big fan of cable TV so we don’t purchase it.  It’s just not worth the money.  We do have free internet TV options via Roku and Amazon TV sets so I don’t know if we fully fit the definition of “cord cutters” but maybe we are close enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exploding Circuit Board catches on fire!

 

Typical Circuit Board with Public Domain Image

A circuit board that catches on fire in your product does not make anyone happy.  I used to work at a company that had this unpleasant problem in a large electrical control panel for an industrial device involved with explosive atmospheres that was shipped around the world.  This problem made everyone very excited when it started happening on the clients factory floor according to what I was told.

I had never worked on that product line and was barely aware of its existence until my engineering supervisor called me and told me to immediately personally retrieve all of these circuit boards currently in our factory.  I was an electrical design engineer behind a desk at that company and had not yet had the privilege of interacting with everyone in the factory.  There were three boards in the factory at that time and it was relatively easy to retrieve the first two on the factory floor quickly with only minor violations of  factory protocol.

The final board was installed in a large six foot high electrical control cabinet that was packaged tightly in a strong 2 x 4 skid on the shipping dock by a waiting truck.  I asked the workers there if I could open the cabinet to retrieve the circuit board.  They all had a good laugh when I said that and one of them handed me a large crow bar as a joke.  Obviously, they didn’t know me that well. I used the crow bar to rip open the packaging and break the 2 x 4’s sufficiently to get the circuit board out of the cabinet. This rendered the product incapable of being delivered.  The dock workers seemed to be surprised at what I had done.  I returned the crow bar to them, thanked them for its use and wished them a good day.

A short time later there was a conference in my supervisors office about my unexpected actions during the circuit board retrieval.  Fortunately for me the workers had loaned me the crow bar so filing a grievance against me wouldn’t have been a desirable outcome.

My new assignment in life was to correct the defect in that exploding circuit board that a previous employee had designed.  I tested one and sure enough it started on fire when subjected to full heavy loads.  Eventually I figured out that one resister needed a massive increase in the amount of wattage it could handle and made a working model for mass production copies.  Who says that engineering can’t be fun?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five more ways to have a happy blog..

 

Younger Judy

Here are five more ways to have a happy blog.

First you can always sell a physical item advertised on your blog.  I would like to develop a craft hobby of making modified glass bottle planters with various types of succulents planted in the bottles.  This is more for my enjoyment rather than making a mint. I will probably get around to doing this when I reach the ripe old age of 90 at the rate I am going.  If I manage to hang on to life until I am 100 years old my life insurance will refund all my premiums but I don’t think there is too much danger of that happening.

Second you could use a 3-D printer to print out physical objects for other people or to enhance other items you are selling.  Dremel makes a small printer of this nature which looks like a good bet for this type of minor business.  I always wanted a 3-D printer for my own personal use.  Problem for me, the printer costs about $1000 dollars so it would be a high initial investment and would probably take a long time to recover that investment even if everything went well.  Still worth looking at though.

Third you could write a technical advice column and offer simple advise on technology via phone for pay to people that need help .  Many older people find it difficult to get some types of technology working particularly the first time. This is probably not a way to get rich but it would help someone in need.

Fourth you could help sell products using affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement by which an online retailer pays a commission to an external website for traffic that leads to sales.  It is necessary to build up a significant readership to make money in this manner.  There are many books on Amazon about affiliate marketing.  Do not try this with the Blogger platform because it is a total waste of time in my opinion.

Finally you could find a company willing to give you free samples of their product to test and review on your blog.  After testing and review is completed, I would use the product myself or it could be sold if it is valuable.  If anyone out there in the cyber world is interested in having their products reviewed on my blog please contact me.

Contact Form:

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four Good Books for Happy Blogging.

My father doing farm work.

I have been reading a bunch of e-books on blogging in an effort to improve my own blog and help any fellow blogger.  All of these e-books were at one time free on Amazon when I did a search for promotional deals.  I have put together a library of several thousand quality Amazon e-books on many subjects just by taking advantage of promotions on Amazon over several years.  It is possible some may still be free or that very similar e-books may be free on Amazon at this time.  These five e-books have lots of excellent ideas on cross promoting your blog with different social media platforms for maximum leverage and making money online in general.

Blogging 201

Social Media Marketing when you have no clue!

Facebook Marketing Made (Stupidly) Easy (Punk Rock Marketing Collection 3)

Cracking The Website Code: Grow Your Own Online Business Faster With A Smarter Website and Savvy Marketing

Someday I may want to sell some of my artistic succulent bottle garden creations on this blog and other social media platforms. These books have given me a good start on my eventual plan of attack.  I probably won’t get very rich doing that but it does give me a chance to tell other people my opinions and learn a bit along the way.

Five ways to have a Happy Blog!

Cattle feeding by grandparents trailer home

…I have learned a few things while configuring Glenn’s Way blog on WordPress.  The first way to have a happy blog is to use WordPress rather than Blogger.  WordPress has better free features and plenty of upgrade potential if you want to pay for more capabilities.  You need to be a little careful what you say on WordPress if you are not self-hosted because WordPress does not seem very tolerant of controversial opinions.  My ancient WordPress blog was turned off eons ago by an automatic process.  It was necessary to contact Lisa at WordPress to get my blog back online.  This irritated me at the time so I switched to Blogger but that was not the best idea I ever had.  Blogger proved to be a long lasting disappointment.

The second thing to consider is that you should use PayPal to collect any donations or payments.  PayPal is safe and easy to implement on WordPress.  Other forms of payment are a little risky and I wouldn’t use them on this blog however a large business/charity would also need to accept credit cards.

Third, do not expect to get rich quick from the proceeds of your blog. Keep your day job for awhile until you show a profit.  Maybe you will be the super blogger that hits it big but don’t bet the farm on it. Also, you can always sell the rights to your blog to someone else for cash if it does not strike it rich. Maybe they will have better fortune than you and you can show a little profit for your work.

Fourth, use a facebook business page to send traffic to your website.  I found the Amazon ebook   facebook marketing made (stupidly) easy to be very useful and I will probably implement many of the ideas in that book for my own facebook page and WordPress blog.

Lastly, have some type of premium content for profit.  Typically this could be an ebook on Amazon or possibly some type of course on your area of expertise.  It is a good idea to give some free samples to your readers so that they know what quality of product you have.

I have a ton or more ideas about blogging that I plan to share in future posts.  Please follow this blog by email if you don’t want to miss any!