Tonight Gigi jumped off the diving board at the pool for the first time. She stood at the end of the board, shivering, crying, and pleading with her instructor that she could not do it. I stood nearby, encouraging her to try. Her instructor reached up and encouraged her as well.

All of the sudden, SPLASH, she jumped in and plunged deep under the water.

When she came up she was laughing and shouting, “Again! Again!” I guess her fears weren’t ultimately realized.

The only thing I regret is that Thursdays are the nights her father spends with her for a few hours and he was supposed to be at her lesson. Usually, he takes her on Thursdays, but he called me to tell me he would be late and could I take her, that he would meet us there. He never showed up. She is at dinner with him now, but he missed a HUGE event in her life. She was thrilled to tell him all about it, but sad that he had not seen it.

I have my fair share of computers. I have an old Mac, my favorite Dell desktop, some older Dells, and my Dell laptop. The laptop has taken some spills, because I used to use it on the couch a lot when Gigi was small. Nothing ever seemed to be fully out of her reach. The poor thing is very unstable right now, so I need to go ahead and replace some parts to get it back up to 100%.

My laptop is ready for both a new power cable and a new battery. Batteries, though they do recharge, still wear down with time. Think about any device that uses a rechargeable battery, like a lap top, a cell phone or your digital camera. The life of the laptop battery just doesn’t seem to be as generous as the years go by. From time to time, you are doing yourself a huge favor by purchasing fresh laptop batteries.

I’m poking around on the Laptops for Less website and they have batteries for just about any laptop model you can imagine. Plus, they’ve got the adaptor I need. Their selection is impressive, but I suppose when you focus on one sector of the electronics market, you’re able to become super specialized like that.

The other night I was watching some shows and I realized I had forgotten o program my DVR to record The Journeyman. It was already about 19 minutes into the show and although I started it recording, there was nothing I could do about the part I had missed.

Bright House Networks is starting a new service in our area t the end of the year called “Start Over”. It will be free for all digital cable customers and you won’t even need to have the DVR to use it. If you turn on the TV or to a channel and realize a show you want to watch is already well into its broadcast, you will be able to restart the program from the beginning.

I’m excited about this! I cannot tell you how often I watch a movie or a show having not seen the first 10-15 minutes. I sure could have used it for The Journeyman the other night.

I wrote earlier this week about how October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and how it means so much to me, because both my paternal grandmother and aunt are survivors. My grandmother survived it twice, back in the days when medicine was still in the proverbial dark ages. She is 84 now and so vibrantly alive it’s inspiring.

1 in 8 women in America are diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes. My individual risk level is higher, due to the line of heredity on my family. I draw courage and strength, though, through the women I love who have survived this illness.

That’s why it’s my pleasure, honestly, to highlight companies I find that are donating proceeds to breast cancer research this month. HolidayLEDs is actually donating a full 5% of ALL October sales to BreastCancer.org. They are not just donating proceeds from select items, but everything they sell for the entire month.

That’s inspiring.

On top of the donations HolidayLEDs is making to battle breast cancer, I’m also a fan of their LED mini lights. Their LED Christmas lights are long-lasing and cool to the touch. They are safer than hot-burning traditional lights AND they use 90% less energy. It’s win-win all around.

If I could have one superpower, it would be teleportation. I have always wished I could make myself go from one place to another in an instant.

It seems that in the last few years, physicists working independently in Austria, Australia and Denmark have all achieved a form of teleportation at the quantum level of atoms and photons. Finally, teleportation is being looked at as a serious scientific possibility.

I know. It does not look like teleportation on a human level is anything I will actually live to see, or anything that might ever actually come to fruition. Nonetheless, I think the concept of “quantum teleportation” is fascinating.

It involves two separate particles acting like they are one and the same, even though they are separated by distance. Changes to one particle will be mirrored in the other. It might not ever move to the human level, but it has a huge impact on the world of computing. In fact, I may perhaps live to see a quantum computer that moves information at the sped of light.