Memage from many

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Wizard (6th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-11
Dexterity-12
Constitution-10
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-12
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Repairing things

When anything technological fails, I am inclined to take it apart and attempt to repair it. Sometimes it is not practical, sometimes I don't have all the necessary knowledge, but more often than not I have succeeded. BUT, things have occasionally turned into an epic, so in recent years, I have tried to temper the tendency to fix everything myself with a policy of paying for repairs for things which the full time repair person can do much more efficiently.

This has worked for car repairs, because it doesn't take a lot for someone to do it more quickly than I do. I can get down on the ground under the car fairly easily, but, increasingly, standing up again afterwards is difficult and I need a rest. All the right tools to hand, and a hydraulic ramp, not to mention the practice of doing the job, wins most of the time.( Cut for length )

This is relevant to the latest repair; rustica's laptop computer. Months ago she asked me about something inside rattling, and I told her that it was probably the heatsink from the graphics chip (which turned out to be true) but that because it was still under warranty, it would be best if I didn't fool with it.

A couple of days back I removed the easily removable covers underneath the computer, now out of warranty, to find out if it had a place where an internal wireless card could be fitted. No such luck, but I found the heatsink from the graphics chip wedged in the air outlet from the processor cooling assembly. Come the warmer weather, it would have kept crashing, if it did not fail completely. It was the most difficult laptop to dismantle that I have found so far, but there was no point in paying a repairer who had not fixed the problem previously, to make a pigs ear of it again.( Cut for length )

I can't quite see how people who don't have a good idea how most of the technology they use works can avoid ending up throwing away and replacing things which fail, no matter how small the fault. Thus the volume of waste to be buried or recycled grows. Sadly, reliability is likely to be lower now that environmental legislation requires lead free solder in electronic equipment.

Luckily lead-free solder is not yet required in avionics, but I suppose that if you wanted to discourage the more cautious among us from traveling by aircraft, introducing this would work.