Here’s my update for the last post about the Garmin 610…

Since the last review, I spoke with a women at Garmin support (based in the USA!) and she was very helpful. She agreed the GPS had a problem, and was willing to replace it, but they did not currently have any in stock. She suggested that I talk to the retailer to see if they could do an immediate replacement. I then contacted Clever Training, the Amazon merchant, by email and they said they would send me a replacement upon receiving the defective item. I packaged it up, sent it off and in about a week received the new 610.

I initially had problems setting up the new 610. The software required a firmware update, but the Garmin Ant agent software wouldn’t recognize it. I believe this was because I had previously activated the other 610 on the computer. I tried deleting the old profile, re-installing the software, etc but no-go. I finally gave up and had to use another computer to do the firmware update. There is obviously a bug in the Garmin software which they hopefully will fix in a future release.

For the most part the watch works well. There have been a few minor glitches. I once saw the display reset and start counting from zero after I had completed a mile, but scrolling through the …

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This is a copy of a review I just posted on Amazon for the Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS Watch.

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I purchased this GPS watch about a week ago.  When I first received it, I put it in the charging cradle and charged it to 100%.  Everything was fine.  I ran with it a few days, then upgraded the firmware to the new 2.4 release.  The next time I attempted to charge the unit, instead of charging, it began to discharge with the percent charge number going down until the unit was fully discharged.

I checked the Garmin forums to see if there was a fix for this and found that there are a whole bunch of people dealing with this issue.  A Garmin rep posted in late June that they were aware of the problem and were looking into it, but there have been no additional postings about it since then.

I attempted a few other things on my own to try to fix this.  I did a hard reset.  No go.  I also attempted to charge the unit through the computers USB port.  Again no go.

I’ve contacted Garmin support this morning (Sunday) and hope that I will get a response tomorrow.

If you’re considering purchasing one of these, I suggest you check the Garmin forums first to see if this issue has been resolved, otherwise you’re taking you’re chances.

I’ll …

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I’ve had a small wart on the top of my left hand for about a year now.  Shortly after it appeared I tried to get rid of it using one of those over-the-counter salacylic acid wart remover products.  Following the directions on the bottle, I applied the stuff twice a day, every day for about two weeks.  At the end of the two weeks, nothing had changed.  I knew I should go to a dermatolgist to get it taken care of, but it was pretty minor and I just never got around to scheduling an appointment.

Last night while I was at CVS with my wife, I spotted Compound W Freeze Off on one of the shelves.  The packaging on the product, claimed to freeze off warts similar to the method used by dermatologists.  Since I had had a wart successfully removed by a dermitologist years ago using the freeze method, I decided I’d give it a try.  What the heck, it was only twenty bucks.  What could go wrong?

This morning when I got up, I unpacked the product and read the instructions.  Seemed simple enough.  Stick one of the cotton swab like applicators into the holder, insert the holder into the main bottle and press down for three seconds to unlease the freezing compound.  Take the applicator out and hold it against the wart for a period of time determined by …

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One of the unfortunate side effects of the Christmas holiday is weight gain. There is always so much good food to eat (and bad food too), that it’s almost impossible to escape the holiday season without gaining some weight. This year’s menu included rib roast, Italian style steak, Chinese food, pizza, banana bread, rum cake, assorted chocolates and many other dishes too numerous to mention. No, I didn’t eat these all at one meal. They were spread out throughout the holiday week so at any one time it didn’t seem like I was eating that much. But each item added up and when I stepped on the scale this weekend I found that they added up big time.

How come it takes forever to lose a pound, but you can gain a whole bunch of them in a week?

Anyway, it was time to pay the piper and I was determined that I would get the weight off fast. I decided to try something different this year. Years ago I tried out a diet that included meal replacement shakes. I bought a six pack of these pre-mixed things with the best of intentions, but after sampling the first one I decided it was not for me. It was pretty awful. The mixture kind of resembled a shake but was chalky and had a strange after taste that’s best described as a cross …

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I’ve been seeing a lot of advertisements for the new McDonald’s Fruit & Walnut Salad so today I thought I would give it a try.

The fruit in the salad consist of a number of apple slices with a handful of grapes thrown in for good measure. For some reason I expected more then this. It’s probably because they bill it as a Fruit & Walnut Salad so I expected it to have multiple types of fruit. I guess technically two type of fruit constitutes “fruit” but I must say I was a bit disappointed.

The quality of the apple slices were decent, nothing spectacular here; just average quality apple slices. The grapes were a bit on the tart side and did not have a lot of flavor, but this could vary from salad to salad so your experience may be different.

The walnut portion of the salad is a small bag (0.75oz) of Diamond Candied Walnuts. These were tasty, but again nothing to kill for. I’ve had better nuts on plane flights. They also add significantly to the caloric content of the salad, the small bag coming in at 140 calories.

As a dipping sauce for the fruit, McDonald’s includes a small container of their low fat yogurt. Since I really love McDonald’s yogurt, this was the high point of the salad for me.

With tax included, the Fruit & Walnut …

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