This is the first part of a story (which will continue) in a series of computer and technology related stories. So check back often for the next part or story in the series! Also, please leave me a comment about this (and other) stories. This will definitely help with the final version (A whole collection of stories, which will be in at least PDF and Word format). Anyone who would like to sign up for the mailing list for this story is encouraged to send an email to funknowledge@gmail.com. The people on this list will be the first to read the next part. Enjoy!
NOTE: The *** means who is talking in the following section.

“Screwdrivers”
“Check!”
“Hammer”
“Check!”
“Pliers”
“Check! That’s it we are all ready to begin the procedure!”
“Alright, let’s do it!” It’s Wednesday night in mid May, we were in the basement of the house. The old, slow, but still working laptop has a messed up (or non-working) screen. A few days before we started the procedure I noticed something: Why should it have a screen if it doesn’t work? Plus it takes up space, why don’t we just get rid of it?” So here I am, screwdriver in hand removing the screws that keep the screen where it is. Then, the power goes out. I just removed the last screw and I pulled apart the laptop screen from the rest of the body.
“Kevin?” asks my assistant, Mike.
“Yes?”
“Should I go get a flash light?”
“Good idea, I’ll stay here.” That probably was not a good idea. As I sat there, the low rumbling sound of a hard drive arose. “That’s odd, I removed the battery.” It put my hand on the black, plastic case of the old Toshiba, and I felt the vibrating of a spinning hard disk. I turned it around, and in the moon light, I could see that no battery was in it. I must be dreaming, I thought to my self. I decided to leave it there and go back upstairs to go help Mike find the flashlight. Bad idea.
As we were busily looking for the flash-light, a different thing happened without us noticing, a small rectangular piece of plastic fell down the stairs.
“I found it!” said Mike, waving it in his hands.
“Great, lets go back downstairs and finish what we were doing.” We didn’t noticed anything funny about the piece of plastic, so we thought that it fell out of the computer.
“That floppy disk must have popped out, I’ll put it back inside. It’s not like it’ll do anything, and anyways it might have something important on it.” I, still thinking about the strange rumbling, agreed to the idea. It’s not spinning anymore, I thought. I grabbed the screen and stuck in in our trash can. While Mike brought the laptop back into the family room. That night we both went to bed. Mike on one hand was snoring away, while I was still wondering about the laptop. Not being able to calm myself down, I went downstairs flashlight in my hand and walked over to the laptop. See, nothing wrong, I thought, but then came a glow from the trash bin.

To be continued…

Copyright (c) 2007 by Funknowledge Networks and Kevin Johnson.

So I’ve been out and busy the last few weeks, and I never got a good chance to write a blog post, until now. I have been still searching the web and doing other various things with my computer. So this blog post is dedicated to what I have found.

First, is a new product from Microsoft called Silverlight. It is a web browser plug-in similar to Flash. It isn’t much of a “breakthrough technology” but it is still pretty cool. One main difference between this and Flash is that this vector based. So you can resize the image without distorting it. Website: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/default01.aspx

Microsoft Website “Vista-like” navigation: http://www.silverlight.net/mscom/

A Silverlight video player (Note: That is Bill Gates in the video)
http://silverlight.net/samples/1.0/Video-Library/default.html

The next thing is that Google unveiled a new name for its personalized homepage service. It is now called iGoogle (I wonder what Steve Jobs thinks about this). I always wondered why it was google.com followed by “ig”, now I now: it stands of iGoogle. Everything else hasn’t changed much other than that.

My iGoogle Homepage at http://google.com/ig

The next thing is a open-source, multiplatform game called Flight Gear. Some of you might know about Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, well this is similar except that it is free. Note that this does’t have all the bells and whistles of Microsoft but hey you get what you pay for. I do prefer this over Microsoft’s mainly because I think it easier to fly. Plus, it doesn’t take up too much space like Flight Simulator X.http://www.flightgear.org/

FlightGear aircraft can have fully 3d, fully animated, fully clickable/interactive cockpits