Power Cord

Barclay Street 3200 block, between midnight and 1:25 p.m. March 12. Cash, Maryland tag 14659M5 stolen from 2002 Lincoln. Buena Vista Avenue 3800 block, between 10:30 p.m. March 1 and 6:15 a.m. March 12. Silver, 2003 Dodge Intrepid with Maryland tags 1BWX64 stolen. North Calvert Street 2700 block at 7 p.m. March 14. Green, women's bicycle stolen from rear yard. Ellerslie Avenue 3500 block at 11:20 a.m. March 12. Resident returned home to find someone using screwdriver to break in though rear door.

Sometimes, late at night, Glennae Williams is startled awake by a crash. "Are you ok, Ma?" she calls to her mother. Her mother, DaVeeda White, has fallen again. She gets up to use the bathroom and her legs collapse, just as they have been collapsing since Glennae was a little girl. "I'm on the floor," White calls back. She knows her daughter will come. These are not the kinds of nights one associates with the last exhausted, exuberant, anxious weeks of college. Williams stays up late cramming for finals and fretting about grades, then rushes off to work in the morning.

Battery-powered Boostaroo improves sound of portablesHere's a fun little gizmo: the Boostaroo ($17.95), an amplifier and audio splitter for portable stereo gear. Let's face it: That tape player you hastily bought at the drugstore before your big beach weekend has all the fidelity of a tin can telephone. The battery-powered (two AAs) Boostaroo can help.The Boostaroo plugs into the headphone jack of any audio device that has a mini stereo plug. Your headphones plug into it. Once switched on, the Boostaroo cranks up the signal, giving you a brighter, more powerful sound.

Twenty years from now, I will tell people I was present at the creation. One evening last fall, my colleague Jason Toraldo walked into my office and asked if I could troubleshoot a problem he was having on Facebook. He had recently put up a page for a small business he owned and wanted to connect it to his personal account. I'm reasonably tech savvy, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw. A nervous pig dressed like a middle-aged man, in slacks and an argyle sweater, was entangled in a pine tree and a string of colorful lights.

Twenty years from now, I will tell people I was present at the creation. One evening last fall, my colleague Jason Toraldo walked into my office and asked if I could troubleshoot a problem he was having on Facebook. He had recently put up a page for a small business he owned and wanted to connect it to his personal account. I'm reasonably tech savvy, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw. A nervous pig dressed like a middle-aged man, in slacks and an argyle sweater, was entangled in a pine tree and a string of colorful lights.

Sometimes, late at night, Glennae Williams is startled awake by a crash. "Are you ok, Ma?" she calls to her mother. Her mother, DaVeeda White, has fallen again. She gets up to use the bathroom and her legs collapse, just as they have been collapsing since Glennae was a little girl. "I'm on the floor," White calls back. She knows her daughter will come. These are not the kinds of nights one associates with the last exhausted, exuberant, anxious weeks of college. Williams stays up late cramming for finals and fretting about grades, then rushes off to work in the morning.

Abell Avenue 3300 block, between 6:30 and 8 p.m. Aug. 25. Burgundy, 1990 Lexus LS400 with Maryland tags 6FMM35 stolen. S. Edgecombe Circle 2900 block, between 2:45 p.m. Aug. 22 and 12:59 a.m. Aug. 23. Gold, 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee with Maryland tags 61147M6 stolen. St. Paul Street 3600 block, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Aug. 22. Garmin GPS, GPS stand stolen from vehicle. Tudor Arms Avenue 3900 block, between 12:01 and 8 a.m. Aug. 25. Stereo, iPod stolen from vehicle.

So, rock star, you've got your own little recording studio and you're laying down some hot tracks while admiring how great you sound on tricked-out studio monitors. Big deal. Anyone can bring home those studio monitors - in our world, they're known as powered loudspeakers - and create an instant sound system with an iPod, computer or even a television. Here are two reasons the nonmusician might like pro-type studio monitors in your home: Imagine tossing your favorite stereo system in a trash compactor and out pop two bookshelf speakers, each with an amplifier, volume control, on-off switch and power cord, ready to play.

Adding a disk drive, tape backup unit or network adapter card to your PC can be a daunting job, particularly if you don't like the idea of taking your computer apart.Even if you don't mind fooling with the hardware, you may be stymied if you have a small-footprint machine without an extra drive bay, or if you don't have an extra expansion slot for the controller board.Fortunately, manufacturers have come up with simple alternatives -- external devices that connect to your printer's parallel port, the same port the printer uses.

Josephine Hill came home from the hospital in the spring of 2004 unable to climb the stairs to her bedroom. At the recommendation of her doctors, her husband, Ian T. Hill, converted the living room into a bedroom, kept a baby monitor at her side and acquired a hospital bed to keep her more comfortable. The bed, Ian Hill believes, is what killed her. Hill and his three children are suing Johns Hopkins Home Care Group, the company that provided the electric bed, for $10 million. They allege that the bed's motor ignited in August 2004 and caused a fire that fatally burned Josephine Hill, 65, and destroyed their Ellicott City home.

Barclay Street 3200 block, between midnight and 1:25 p.m. March 12. Cash, Maryland tag 14659M5 stolen from 2002 Lincoln. Buena Vista Avenue 3800 block, between 10:30 p.m. March 1 and 6:15 a.m. March 12. Silver, 2003 Dodge Intrepid with Maryland tags 1BWX64 stolen. North Calvert Street 2700 block at 7 p.m. March 14. Green, women's bicycle stolen from rear yard. Ellerslie Avenue 3500 block at 11:20 a.m. March 12. Resident returned home to find someone using screwdriver to break in though rear door.

Battery-powered Boostaroo improves sound of portablesHere's a fun little gizmo: the Boostaroo ($17.95), an amplifier and audio splitter for portable stereo gear. Let's face it: That tape player you hastily bought at the drugstore before your big beach weekend has all the fidelity of a tin can telephone. The battery-powered (two AAs) Boostaroo can help.The Boostaroo plugs into the headphone jack of any audio device that has a mini stereo plug. Your headphones plug into it. Once switched on, the Boostaroo cranks up the signal, giving you a brighter, more powerful sound.

Task force to deal with Columbia Association's outdoor poolsThe Columbia Council has created a task force to analyze issues surrounding the operation of the Columbia Association's 21 outdoor pools, as well as the future of the association's pool system.Roy Lyons, newly elected council representative for the Village of Long Reach, will head the committee. The task force will meet later this summer and will make a report and recommendations to the Columbia Council in November.Columbia residents interested in participating on the task force should apply in writing by July 15 to Pam Mack, director of community relations, at the Columbia Association, 10221 Wincopin Circle, Suite 100, Columbia 21044.

It may be asking too much to expect new Mac hardware that doesn't exhibit any odd behavior, but hope springs eternal. A few days ago a strange anomaly affecting many owners of the new Mac Pro models turned up on my machine. Waking the Mac Pro from Sleep sometimes causes it to spontaneously reboot instead. I know it's not just me because the issue is a hot topic on several Mac Web sites and Apple's own support forums. The best solution anyone has come up with so far is to reset the System Management Controller (SMC)