The road chose me

Going without my little Dell Mini 9 for a month now has been really frustrating, so I’m pretty eager to get it fixed. Every time I’ve seen a sign for free Wi-Fi I can’t help but feel I’m missing out.

My poor little Dell Mini 9 after taking a tumble on the concrete

I bought a screen off eBay for all of $20 USD and had my Dad send it down here to me just after I broke it. Customs wanted to hold the package until I came down and paid some taxes, so off to the big city we venture. A lot of government paperwork and back-and-forth and a $4 USD tax later, I have the new screen in my hot little hands.

I don’t exactly know how to pull the laptop apart, so I just un-screw everything I can see, and slowly progress until I’ve got the thing in quite a few pieces. The new screen was an identical copy of the original, and about an hour later I have everything back together and working perfectly.

Where did I put that piece again?

Can you believe not a a single screw left over?

One happy Dan to have a working laptop again

A huge thanks to my Dad for sending the screen, and Kate and Nick for trying hard to get one here a few weeks back, that missed the plane by one day.

We just dumped over 1000 photos from our three cameras and over the next couple of weeks I’m going to go back through the last month worth of articles and fix them up with complete stories and photos.
I’m also going to throw some links to the updated articles on the front page so it will be easier for you to find them.

Things are about to get a lot better around here.

-Dan

Duke’s friend Kori has written an article for her school paper that mentions me and my site a bit. Checkout an exerpt:

Currently, I am following Dan Grec, an Australian man that is living his dream to travel the top of Alaska to the bottom of South America; meanwhile he documents the details of his journey with pictures and personal stories at www.dangrec.com. It is fascinating to see how one man is utilizing a blog to stay connected with himself, his family and everyone he meets along the way.

You can read all of Kori’s article here and checkout her blog here, which I expect to grow a lot in the coming months.

-Dan

Growing a moustache for charity in November Movember is becoming quite popular. I wanted to bring the heat to work, so Ryan and I organized about 15 competitors. The rules are very simple. Clean shaven on the first day of the month, judging on the last day. Everyone in the company voted and the votes were very impartially tallied.

We raised about $320 and the winner was…. ME!

Strata Movember Crew

For Halloween this year we had a costume competition in the office. I’d been wanting to re-do my “Arnie from Predator” since I did it back in the day. I think I improved it a little. We also carved out some pumpkins – I was amazed how well they turned out.