Rather than pay prime replacement rate for a Polar Electro T31 cheap trash POS, I have decided to fix this cheap trash POS Polar Electro T31 myself.

Good luck getting me to ever purchase another cheap POS manufactured by Polar Electro.

Should you ever need to replace the battery in this thing, there are plenty of videos covering instructions on how to replace the transmitter battery. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than paying for a new heart transmitter, considering the battery is only a couple of bucks.

I’ve been waiting ages for Scrivener to come out with a viable Windows product. I’m happy to say that my wait is now over. I’m plugging away on their latest version, 1.0.3, and it’s working flawlessly. It doesn’t yet have all of the features of the other computer company at version 2, but it’s coming along nicely.

I’ve plugged three projects into it, and plan on using it from now on. I find the software extremely useful for story planners such as myself. If you’re a pantser, perhaps not so much.

A trial version is available for 30 days of actual use. Like the ad copy says, if you use the trial for two days a week, it lasts 15 weeks. Try it and buy it, right away. I did. Once you get past the learning curve, you’ll not go back to Word. The price can’t be beat either.

UPDATE 1: There is a current/updated version of the Weather Center Gadget available at a Russian site. The link is here, just down the page a bit.

UPDATE 2: Effective 2011.10.05, the Windows Live Gadgets site for Win7 has been terminated in order that developers can work on something or other for new operating systems. Good luck with that one. Here’s a page of gadgets that are still available.

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I like having a weather gadget on my desktop. When the simpleton Windows 7 weather gadget stopped showing me the little sunshine icon in the top left for the city in which I live, I was annoyed. I experimented with every city in the world and discovered that mine was the only one without the little sun shining brightly down upon me, even when the sun was actually shining brightly down upon me.

Obviously I searched for the solution to the problem. If you’re having the same problem, don’t bother searching. The morons that write about these things in blogs (for example, this one) and forums don’t have the foggiest notion why the OEM Windows 7 weather gadget has stopped shining down upon us all. Furthermore, they all have absolutely no idea how to get it working again!

But don’t despair, dear reader. I have the solution. It’s called Weather Center gadget. You can obtain the latest version here.

Don’t look on the official Windows Gadget page. It’s not there.

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To change the number of days that show up:

• click on the gadget and then use the scroll wheel to choose the number of days that are displayed.

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Note that this gadget is NOT a solution to the “Cannot connect to service” that sometimes appears on the Win7 weather gadget.

I have replaced this antique

(Phone-wise, at least.)

I avoided it for as long as I could, but it was eating batteries, and at 50 buck$ a pop, I just got fed up. It was good to me though, and traveled around North America well. The perfect traveling companion–no space in the luggage racks was required; no change of underwear necessary; no makeup needed. There was never any complaining.

I have moved on to someone something newer. Call me fickle if you wish, but admit it–you’re jealous.

with an HTC Desire HD

I finally broke down and bought one of these. I’ll use it primarily as a backup with my laptop when I’m traveling. It’s running on 64-bit Win7. So far, it works adequately. I had to do a bit of experimenting with USB ports to get it to ring a phone for incoming calls on the laptop.

• Outgoing calls are not a problem. Plug it in and start making calls after a software install included on the dongle.
• On the laptop, I had to try a number of USB ports before I found one that would ring the telephone on incoming calls. I’m not really concerned with that, since I won’t be using it for incoming calls.
• The phone you plug in should have a REN (Ringer Equivalence Number) of 0.0 or the phone probably won’t ring. The REN is located on the bottom of the phone. If you’re buying a new phone, the REN should be listed on the box. If it isn’t, it means that the REN is high. Notwithstanding that, my Motorolla MD481 with a REN of 0.0 does not ring on incoming calls.
• Voicemail and call forwarding are provided.
• Be aware that it is a basic phone service, not an extravagant system like Vonage – which I use – or your local phone system.
• 911 service is typical for a Voip phone system in that it’s NOT CONNECTED to local police, fire or any other type of local emergency service.
• There are a limited number of Canadian area codes available should you choose to request a local phone number. For example, in Alberta, there are only two available area codes-one for Calgary and one for Edmonton.
• When your computer goes to sleep, or is off, the phone isn’t available.
• I don’t recommend it without a primary phone service in the house – whatever primary phone service you choose to use.

Again, let me be clear: Under no circumstance would I attempt to use it as my primary phone service.