A Mark's Life

Movie reviews

2009-01-04T12:04:00.002-06:00

Over the holiday I've had the opportunity to see a few movies and I thought I would give anyone that cares (hopefully no one) my opinion of the three I saw; Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Valkyrie.

Slumdog Millionaire is about a kid from the slums of India that somehow, without the slightest hint of a personality or on-screen presence, makes it through the tryouts for the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and makes it onto the show. He proceeds to do quite well, and the show host grows suspicious and calls in the police who proceed to question him over night, before he returns to answer the final question. It seems that his life has been full of little events that have enabled him to answer these questions, and given him the suspicion and gumption to answer the questions that he doesn't know the exact answer to. All in all, it's an OK attempt at the classic man-tries-to-do-everything-to-get-woman-to-love-him story. I would give it 2 out of 4.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about a guy that appears to have been the unfortunate recipient of the time warp caused by a clock maker that, because of the loss of his son in WWI, makes a clock to run backwards for a train station. He's born old, with all the infirmities that come with it, and slowly grows larger and younger, then smaller and younger as he ages. He eventually dies as an infant, but I was rooting for him to become an embryo. This is a total chick flick, and while I normally don't mind a good chick flick, this movie was especially boring. Like someone once said, "Not all movies can have explosions and car chases, which is why there's nudity and espionage." Unfortunately, this movie has none of that and suffers for it. I never connected with the character, so when he dies I felt nothing. The women to my sides, however, were weeping. Chick flick. I give it 1 out of 4.

Valkyrie, on the other hand, has both explosions and espionage, and is right up my alley in terms of the kind of movies that I like to watch. It's about the 15th and final attempt on Hitler's life, by some of his highest ranking soldiers. They drop a bomb off at his planning session, but due to an unfortunate change of circumstances, it doesn't kill him. During the chaos that ensues, they attempt an otherwise bloodless coupe by invoking "Valkyrie", a set of plans to be used to secure Berlin and Germany in the case of an attempt on Hitler. They use Valkyrie as a way of getting the SS out of power and themselves into power, with the idea of negotiating a peace that won't destroy Germany with the Allies once they have succeeded. Unfortunately, Hitler doesn't die, and they are all caught and executed. The part that got me choked up at the end was knowing that the only monument to German soldiers in WWII is to these soldiers, the "traitors". I definitely liked it and would give it 2.5-3 out of 4.

Health care costs

2008-12-02T17:10:00.002-06:00

In response to Ian's comments, and as a sort of "part 2" to yesterday's post, I have to agree that we're getting more and better health care today than we did 20 years ago (or probably even 10 years ago).

But that's only part of the problem with the expense of health care. The other is that it doesn't follow the laws of supply and demand, at least not in any sort of reasonable way.

How much would you pay to be healthy or out of pain? The answer for most people is "as much as it takes". It's worse than racing. There is basically no upper limit that people won't spend, and so there is no incentive to have reasonable prices, or to limit care.

A heart transplant might make sense for a 20 year old, or probably makes even more sense for a 40 year old owner of a small business, but does it make sense for a 1 year old, or a 60 year old? I know I'm callus, but kids are easy to come by (I know specific kids have priceless value to their parents, but to society, they appear to be disposable if the back alleys of any major city are used as reference), and old people are of very little use to society and present a very real drain of resources.

In times past, you had a dozen kids because more likely than not, at least half of them were going to die (and you needed your own labor pool), and old people really didn't stick around much past their useful (to society) working years. The Eskimos are said to have put their old onto ice flows when they were too big of a burden to the clan.

I'm not saying that I want to go back to those times, because I don't. What I'm trying to say is that a capitalistic society is going to have a hard time with health care. It's either priced to the point where many can't afford it, or it doesn't offer all that it can, given a price-is-no-object mentality. We seem to have gone for the price-is-no-object way of doing things, so many people can't afford it.

The politicians are trying to get more people to be able to afford it, and they think that's done with insurance, but is it really? Is socialized medicine the way to go? Maybe. Is mandatory insurance the way to go? Probably not because it doesn't address the root cause of the problem, and from my (limited) point of view, it seems to be part of the problem. It causes people to stop caring about how much something costs (never a good thing if you're trying to keep costs down) and just like in socialized countries, it seems to be causing them to have to line up for months to get service.

The delay in getting service in Massachusetts seems to be partly related to people with new insurance having long lists of saved up complaints, something that probably doesn't happen any more in socialized medicine countries, but mainly it stems from the fact that there aren't enough general practice doctors. The lack of general practice doctors seems to stem from the fact that specialized medicine pays much better. General practice doctors are only paid for 15 minute visits with patients, so they try to hustle patients in and out as fast as possible, again, probably not what people want or are expecting. Jiffy Lube spends longer working on my car.

How can we convince doctors to become primary care physicians instead of specialists? Maybe we pay them more, maybe we pay the specialists less, maybe we fill all the specialist positions so that new doctors can't find any work as specialists and have to go into general practice? I don't know, and I don't pretend to know. Knowing enough to ask the question is sometimes the best that one can be expected to know.

It's a tough problem, all I'm trying to say is that maybe we're trying to treat the symptom and not the cause; that we should put some effort into figuring out the real reason why everyone needs insurance. Insurance may be the answer, but it doesn't really seem like we've determined that it is. It seems like we're just guessing at the answer. If there's one thing I've learned from situations like these, it's that the unintended consequences will hit you hard if you don't know the root cause and don't think things through.

I'm glad the Massachusetts is having a such a hard time, because it tells us that they probably didn't do it right. If we're going to inflict this kind of plan on the other 299 million residents of the U.S.A., we might want to know what doesn't work so that we can do something different. Or at least know what we're in for.

Mandatory insurance

2008-12-01T07:15:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I heard an NPR article about how Massachusetts is coping with mandatory health insurance and the problems it's causing, primarily the lack of primary physicians.

This got me thinking, due in no small part to a book I've been reading lately, "More Sex is Safer Sex", which examines interesting topics from the point of view of an economist (supply and demand and putting the real cost on to the those that get the benefits).

It would seem to me that the problem isn't that health care is so expensive that no one can afford it and that people are going bankrupt trying to pay their medical bills and/or outrageous health insurance costs, but instead the problem is that there aren't enough doctors.

Some part of this equation is classic supply and demand, and Massachusetts' predicament shows it clearly, that there just aren't enough doctors. People with their new insurance are trying to use it, only to find that it takes them months (averaging about 4 months) to get to a primary care physician, and until that's done, they can't move forward in the health care system, so they continue to use emergency services and deal with the mess that creates.

If there were more doctors, presumably, they would be competing amongst themselves for quality and price, and driving down costs. If that was the case, then there might not be the need for insurance or complicated insurance forms that cost doctors money and all in all take 30% of every dollar spent on health care.

For every complicated problem there is a simple answer that is wrong, and this may very well be one of those answers, but I can't help but wonder if we're putting our attention in the wrong place. After all, how much use is insurance if you can't actually use it? I'd rather spend my money somewhere else.

Miata runs!

2008-04-18T11:33:00.001-05:00

It's been close to three years since I've even turned on the Miata, and last weekend I decided that was long enough.

A brief hunt for a new battery from BatteriesPlus was required. The first store I went to had one, but one of the vent tubes was broken. The next closest store was going to be closing right about when I would get there, but a quick call to them got them to agree to stay open a few extra minutes (and verified that they actually had a battery). While I was there, I picked up a replacement for the V-Strom as well (yep, I'm not driving for fun much anymore).

About a week later I actually get the time (while Sara is working late) to install the battery in the Miata (V-Strom is still waiting for a nice day) and, it runs! It took a lot of cranking, but the 3 year old gas actually burns! I let the Miata idle while I filled its four flat tires (though none of them appeared to be flat thanks to very stiff sidewalls) and I was surprised that the exhaust was clear, no smoke or anything.

The brake fluid appears to have vanished into thin air, but without any puddles, I can't be certain where it actually went. Does that stuff actually evaporate? I'm guessing not. I topped up the reservoir without checking pad thickness (it might just be all in the brake calipers and waiting to overflow when I replace the pads). Oh well, a turkey baster works well for pulling it back out again.

I think I heard a misfire or two in the few minutes it took the compressor to fill up so that I could pump up the tires, but I can't be certain. I was able to back it out of the garage, and though I have only comprehensive insurance and can't locate my '09 registration (I have it, but I think it's in the house somewhere), I decided I would give it a quick trip around the block to see how it runs.

It got me around the block, which is always a nice way to start. But it appears that there's a (big) miss at about 5k RPM, almost like fuel cutoff. I have no idea what the Link (replacement computer) is programmed for, so it could just be a configuration issue. Before the Miata went into cold storage I was working on tuning it for the newly installed wide-band O2 sensor, so this is probably just old gas and incorrect target lambda points (or maybe the boost control is messed up).

Unfortunately, the Link's keypad display was all messed up, which meant that I couldn't do any adjustments at the time. A trip to Radio Shack was necessary to pick up a soldering iron to re-do the cable connections going to the keypad before I would be able to use it again. I did that resoldering last night and verified that the keypad still works, so I have hopes for being able to get some adjustments made this weekend, and if it's nice, maybe even get in a little driving.

Then maybe I can convert the Miata to be my daily driver. But, that's a separate conversation.

Carpet tomorrow!

2008-03-24T14:44:00.001-05:00

It might be premature for a "yay!" but I'm going to give one now anyway. The carpet people called to say that their installers will be calling me tomorrow to tell me at what time tomorrow they will be over to do the carpet install.

It doesn't take very long to get bored with chipboard floors.

Let's hope they come tomorrow because we're going to take apart our bedroom and tear up the carpet tonight.

Change of scenery

2008-03-24T14:41:00.000-05:00

Today I start my work day in a new location, my front "den". I think it's supposed to be the den, at least that's what Sara and I call it. It's the room right off of the front entry which I suppose is where you usually put dens.

I'm working here because we've signed up for (and put a deposit on) new carpets which hopefully will be installed later this week. This weekend Sara and I started pulling up the carpet and pad in the upstairs rooms (all of the upstairs, and the stairs, are getting new carpet). We have just the master bedroom and the stairs left to do, which we'll do tonight or tomorrow.

In order to do my office carpet, we had to relocate my desk somewhere, and the den was available (the living room, not so much, since that's where the craft room supplies went). So, now instead of staring out the window and across the street like I usually do, I'm staring into the corner and happy that there isn't too much glare from having the monitor pointed at the windows.

Right now I'm also very glad that I got my Mac Pro with the Airport option, even though I have gigabit Ethernet in most rooms in the house, because I didn't put it in the den. After pulling up all that carpet, I didn't want to have to deal with drilling holes in walls and running cable too.

Hopefully the carpet will be in on Thursday or Friday (or maybe Saturday), because I leave for LA next Monday and return on Friday. After that I start a new job and I won't be working from home anymore (making it hard to be at home for the install).

Terrible toilets

2007-03-05T09:00:00.000-06:00

This story, like all good ones, starts in the past. This one only starts a few months in the past, so I'm not sure how good of a story it can be, but I'll try to make it interesting...

I'm a light sleeper, nearly anything wakes me up, so a number of times over the last couple of months I've woken up to the sound of the toilet stopping, mainly because the plumbing sucks and the pipes hammer quite loudly when it shuts off.

I thought it was the master bathroom's toilet, but was never able to catch it in the act. Then, last week, I heard the guest bathroom toilet running and knew I had my culprit. I checked the seal of the flapper with the body and that seemed OK. I turned off the water and came back an hour later to see the toilet bowl empty. How much water have I been wasting?!?

I go to Menards (a local Home Depot like store) and get a new flapper and body since a flapper is $4 and a new flapper and body is $2. I figure if it's just the flapper, I've got spare parts for later, or if it is as I expect, the seal of the body to the tank, I can replace that too.

Of course it's not just the flapper. I take the tank off (which is conveniently already drained), and begin to try to get the flapper body out, but it's stuck, and the rubber seal that seals the tank to the bowl is making it nearly impossible to get a wrench on the giant nut. At some point in the process of wrestling with the tank it falls, and unnoticed by me at the time, cracks. Eventually I use a screwdriver and hammer to pound the nut around and get it off. It looks like it was on so tight that it crushed and destroyed the rubber seal, which is why it was leaking. I wonder if it's been leaking for years.

It's not until I get the new unit on that I realize that the tank is cracked. I'm not going to risk putting it on, so it's off to Menards to see if I can get a replacement tank. But, none of the toilets at Menards use a three bolt mounting system, so I drive over to Home Depot and find that the Kohler toilets use the same three bolt pattern that the Sterling toilet I have uses. A new tank is $57. I figure if it doesn't fit the bowl I have, I'll come back and buy the matching Kohler bowl later.

This morning I mount the tank to the bowl and get everything nice and tight. The old hard supply line needs to bent just ever to slightly to match up with the new tank and things are looking good. A few adjustments and everything's flushing just like it should.

Then I notice the puddle below the shutoff valve. It's leaking at the valve, not at the tank. The hard line has a compression fitting on it, so I try to tighten it down a bit more, but the green corrosion on it tells me that the thing hasn't been sealing well for years, and at this point, it probably never will. I'll buy a new flexible line tonight and that should conclude my toilet troubles for this week. I hope.

Brushing cat's teeth

2007-02-28T09:40:00.000-06:00

Last week I had President's Day off, and the vet was open, so I took Lucy, my cat, to the vet to have her right eye checked out. It used to produce a yellowish weep, like the sleep you get in your eyes, but lately it looks to be irritated and producing a black dried and crusty weep. It didn't seem to be bothering her, but after a couple of months I decided it should be looked at anyway.

The short car ride over to the vet's was quite traumatic. For Lucy because she doesn't like to be in a car, and for me because her constant meowing meant a constant stream of bad, bad cat breath that had me wishing for a gas mask (or that the car was warmed up enough so that I could roll down a window).

I told the vet about the eye and the incredible bad breath. The eye was brushed aside as not an issue if it didn't appear to be causing her pain, but the breath issue was traced to a rather bad case of gingivitis and receding gums.

Lucy is scheduled to go in for some sedation dentistry next week, and I got a mini toothbrush that fits over a finger and some cat approved toothpaste to attack the problem in the mean time. I'm hoping that if I brush her teeth every night for the two weeks before the dentist that I can improve things to the point where they won't have to remove any of her teeth.

Apparently cats have a hard pallet that allows them to eat dry cat food even if they have no teeth, and Lucy appears to only be at risk of losing one molar, but all told, I'd like to try to help her keep all of her teeth.

So, every night Sara holds Lucy while I open her mouth and attempt to brush Lucy's teeth. It's not easy. First, Lucy doesn't enjoy the operation and tries to lick the toothbrush (I don't know why I even bother to put the toothpaste on it since she pretty much licks it off the second I get the brush near her mouth), then there is the fact that cat's teeth are small. With all the wriggling, the tongue action, and having my other hand in the way trying to hold open her mouth and spread apart her cheeks, I barely hit any teeth, getting mostly gums and the inside of her cheeks. I know when I've hit the sensitive gums because that's when Lucy starts to squirm and howl, and the toothbrush comes back bloody. Poor thing.

Afterwards, a handful of tarter treats, as they've come to be known, seems to make everything OK. She's back sitting in our laps within minutes of the ordeal so that gives me a little comfort.

Her breath has improved a fair amount, so I'm holding out hope that her teeth can be saved, but I'm thinking that Lucy would trade a few lost teeth for a few less teeth cleaning episodes in a heartbeat.

Finishing up the basement (sorta)

2007-02-02T09:57:00.000-06:00

Last night I put some finishing touches on the basement and it's starting to look pretty good. I finished wiring the last baseboard heater, and moved the one baseboard heater that I accidentally installed under an outlet (it can be wired from either side, so I just switched sides).

I then put up most of the rest of the baseboard moulding, and realized that I didn't buy enough. The other interesting point is that the laminate is much lower than the carpet so the interesting thing will be how to match up the moulding as it goes across the transition. It turns out that if I build up the moulding by using the flattened quarter round moulding that I'll be putting around the wet bar, everything matches up perfectly, everything looks nice, and I didn't have to rip any of the moulding.

The Legato carpet tiles that I put down look reasonable when vacuumed, but there are still a number of places that make it obvious that it's not seamless carpet. It's good enough for the workout space, and I like it enough to not be upset, but I certainly wouldn't put it anywhere else in the house.

This weekend I hope to get another stip of moulding to finish a little bit of wall, and to put down the short moulding that runs around the wet bar, and then after the Superbowl party I'll move my TV and couch downstairs and start enjoying the space.

I still have to finish the counter top on the wet bar, finish the flooring on the stairs into the basement, and figure out what I want to do with the bathroom down there, but that's not going to keep me from enjoying the space now. Yea!

Basement flooring

2007-01-26T09:29:00.000-06:00

After last week's plumbing debacle, I decided that the only thing that would make me feel better is to spend a little cash trying to get the basement prettier.  Sara and I went to Ikea and bought about 700lbs of laminate flooring (light maple colored).

This was two boxes over the limit of what would fit in the Jetta's trunk (and way over the limit of what the Jetta's springs are rated for), but we managed to get it all home without an issue.  Carrying the 25 boxes down into the basement was enough of a workout so I left them there to acclimate to the temperature and humidity of the basement for a couple of days.

Over the past three days I've been installing three or four boxes each night, which works out to about 50 square feet per hour; a solid average number for a first time installer.  I'm slightly disappointed, however, as I strive to be above average.

After a few nights, I'm through more than half of the boxes, and I appear to have covered substantially more than half of the floor.  I'm pretty sure I did the math right when figuring the area of the floor, so it's probably just an illusion (or further proof of the lack of my spacial skills).  At any rate, Ikea will take back the unopened boxes, so it's not a big deal (I just hope I haven't lost the receipt already -- I'm so bad with those).

It's pretty easy to lay, with click locks on the long edges and tongue and groove on the short edges; which is far better than some that are click lock on all four sides.  Those require you to assemble the flooring into long strips and then attempt to latch a 35' section as one unit; it's hard enough to latch a 54" section.

So far I've only screwed up two cuts, and I can probably fix them with some laminate filler.  They're on two boards that start a staggered row.  I cut from the beginning of the board, instead of the end of the board, so the cut is in the field instead of up against the wall.  I might also be able to just slide that piece out and cut a new piece the correct length and slide it back in.  That will require me to slide the entire floor to the right a few feet, which is possible since it doesn't go wall to wall (it will butt up against carpet that's yet to be laid), but I'll have to do it soon since the floor is already past the point of being able to easily move.

All in all, it's looking quite nice, it's easy to install, and I'm pretty happy with it.  Some of the edges don't fit perfectly, and it's a little too easy to hit the boards together too hard and get them to buckle a bit (which I'm hoping will go away when I put furniture down), but for $1.29 a square foot an a little bit of sweat, these sorts of things can be forgiven.

Plumbing nightmares

2007-01-25T11:18:00.000-06:00

Two weeks ago I had my most serious plumbing problem of my life.  Luckily it was my house's plumbing and not my personal plumbing.

I had just come back from picking up Sara in Minneapolis because she had missed the last bus of the evening Thursday night when I pulled the stopper to drain some old dish water and nothing happened (well, actually a little water moved to the other side of the sink) and I went searching for the plunger.

I'm attempting to plunge with one hand while using the stopper to prevent the back flow from coming up the garbage disposal side and making absolutely no progress.  Sara comes down, after changing from her work clothes, and I ask her (in probably a very brisk way) to come over and help me out.  She looks as if I'm threatening to beat her with the plunger and takes a tentative step forward.  I assure it's OK, I just need her to hold onto the stopper so I can use both hands on the plunger.

I plunge to no avail, dinner is overcooking, and we call it a night.  I figure letting the clog sit for a while will help for the reattempt on Friday.

Friday evening rolls around and still plunging doesn't work, so I take the P-trap off and insert the only snake I have, a toilet snake, into the drain hoping to dislodge whatever is in there.  A little black sludge comes back, but the drain is still clogged.  I then move on to my favorite tool, a rubber bladder that connects to a garden hose that inflates with water to seal the pipe, and then sprays high pressure water to blast through the clog.  It appears to be working well, until I turn off the water, the bag deflates, and about two gallons of water comes shooting back at me, drenching me and creating quite a little lake in the kitchen.

An hour later and I've been able to create a paper-towel damn and mop up most of the water.  I decide that I need to get a real snake and head for Home Depot.  I get a 25' coiled model that lets you attach a power drill to it so you don't have to crank it by hand.  For good measure I decide to get some "10 minute drain opener".

With the snake and drill I'm still not getting anywhere, though when I force the issue I get the snake all wrapped up and nearly broken.  I bend it back into something resembling straight with a pair of pliers.  I decide to do an out flanking maneuver and go into the basement and snake upwards towards the clog.  I get about 23' of my snake into the drain pipe, but can't clear anything and can't find any evidence of a clog either.  However, I determine that pulling all the snake out of the housing means that you have to disassemble the housing to get the snake back in.

I notice that the cold air intake, which is (slightly) insulated, runs right along side the kitchen drain pipe over the top of the now finished basement ceiling and Sara's questions of whether or not the pipe froze seem much more on target.  In my heart of hearts, refuse to believe her.

But I try using hot water with my pressurized bladder, deciding to hook it up to the powder room's faucet so I can run the water until it's good and hot.  However, in attempting to remove the aerator from the faucet so I can screw in the garden hose adapter, I realize that the aerator is corroded on as I twist the soft copper internals of the faucet into a pretzel.  I put the garbage can under the open kitchen drain and run the hot until I get nice and hot water and then attempt to not repeat my previous experience.  This time I'm able to get the garbage can under the pipe as a gallon of hot water shoots back at me.

I pour in the "10 minute drain opener" and wait half an hour.  I snake some more.  Finally around 11pm I give up and decide to go to bed, but before I do, I reassemble the drain and pour about a cup of salt down the drain hoping that will melt any ice that might be in there, but still convinced that it wouldn't have frozen unless there was a clog in there to prevent the water from draining in the first place.

Saturday morning I wake at about 6:30am and begin to boil water to throw down the still clogged drain.  I pour an entire bottle of salt into the boiling water for good measure.  I pour the water into the sink and watch it go nowhere.  Then, suddenly, it starts to drain!  Into the cabinet!  A giant bowl under the trap and a quick glance shows that the metal sink and the plastic drain pipe no longer fit tightly under such thermal stress.  Great.  Now we wait for the water to cool.

More snaking.  I give up and tell Sara to call a plumber.  At this point I want to have nothing to do with the sink anymore.  Plumber shows up, takes a look around, goes into the basement and remarks about how stupid it is to run the drain next to the cold air intake for the furnace, and even dumber to run it over the basement since it's nearly impossible to get the required slope in such a shallow rafter bay, and then he gets out the big snake and tries to snake down from the kitchen.  He pulls his snake out and says it's hitting ice.  He tries again but can't bust through.

"It's going to get expensive." is his next comment.  However, he tells us what he would do and offers us the chance to try it ourselves.  If that doesn't work, he'll come back and completely rearrange our plumbing to prevent this problem in the future.  I pay him $125 for a few minutes work and for advice that I didn't want to hear and send him on his way.

I then disconnect the dishwasher, and pull it out so I can cut a large hole in the drywall behind it to get at the T connection that's the drain and vent pipe.  We then shove a hair dryer on max into the space, below the T and wait for it to do it's magic.  I decide to go to Home Depot to get a union so I can patch the pipe if I decide that I need to cut in to it if the hair dryer doesn't work.  When I get back from Home Depot the hair dryer is making a sound like it's going into some sort of thermal protection mode, and it smells funny too.  The pipe is clearly hot to the touch, but it still not draining (as I discover when I pour some water down it and it comes back up the disconnected dishwasher connection).

I cut into the vent pipe, above the T so I can get a nice straight run to the elbow that's below the floor and is probably frozen.  At first nothing happens, but after about 30 seconds of spinning the snake I suddenly get no resistance and I proceed to shove about 20' of snake down the pipe.  It all comes back perfectly clean.  There was never any clog in there.

It appears that the drain froze at about ground level as it makes it's 90 bend to go over the basement.  The guess is that condensation from sewer gasses froze and slowly built up.  I guess that means we don't use our sink enough.

The question is what to do about it now?  Put a vent in the ceiling to let warm air get into that space?  I already filled it with insulation (for sound deadening) when I put the drywall up.  Maybe it's just a fluke because it's been cold and we've had no snow.  At least now I have a union in the pipe so I can snake it easily if I need to.

Xbox 360 vs. Sony PS3

2006-12-31T12:29:00.000-06:00

The first week of December I decided to get a Xbox 360 and HD DVD drive because MicroCenter had them on sale with a $100 rebate, and I have been wanting a high-def DVD solution for quite some time. I decided to get the Xbox 360 Pro system because it came with component cables that would cost $40 if I bought the Core system. The included hard drive and wireless controller were a bit of an up sell since I didn't need them (I thought), but I'm glad I decided to get them.

The Xbox 360 was immediately useful after getting it out of the box. The Xbox 360 works as a Media Center Extender right out of the box so I could watch TV streamed from my Media Center PC, and the HD DVD drive came with the movie King Kong and a remote that works with Media Center Extender to turn the Xbox into a nice way to watch TV. The included hard drive even came with some demo games. All in all, I am very pleased with the Xbox 360 and its out-of-box experience.

The Sony PS3, on the other hand, has a painful out-of-box experience. I got one the other day when I stopped in to get some of my favorite popcorn, and a movie, at Hollywood video. Their attached Game Crazy store had just received two 60GB units about an hour before and the salesman told me I was the first adult to walk into the store. Lucky me, I got it for MSRP. :-)

After getting it home and unpacking it, I realized that they no longer come with the Blu-Ray movie "Talladega Nights" and even though it has a 60GB drive, it doesn't come with any demo games. It doesn't even come with an HD cable, so it's connected to my TV via a composite cable. Composite!?! The top of line "next generation" game machine that's being sold as "High Definition gaming" comes with the worst possible video connection. On top of that, the wireless controller uses rechargeable batteries, which of course, come mostly discharged, so you are forced to use the measly 4' USB cable with the controller. And, to make matters worse, the batteries are only charged when the PS3 is on (I was hoping they would charge if it is just plugged in). Sitting that close to my 55" TV is a bit of a neck strain. The 360 also has wireless controllers, but they supply two Energizer AA batteries (offering a rechargeable pack if you're so inclined, or allowing you to use your own rechargeable AA batteries), so their controller works at a reasonable distance right out of the box. Once again, a better out-of-box experience.

Without any games, the PS3 will let you surf the web, but without a USB keyboard or mouse (which I don't have in my living room), it's not a very pleasing experience (entering a web address is excruciatingly slow and navigating at TV resolutions means lots of scrolling).

A day later I got Tiger Woods golf because all of my PS2 games (both of them actually, Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution) use custom controllers, and there isn't a backwards compatible connection on the PS3 to plug those in (or as far as I can tell, even a Sony branded converter). Tiger Woods Golf looks like it might be a nice game (I got it because Sara thought she might like it, not because I suddenly started liking golf), but the 480i SD TV connection offered by the composite video cable is not doing the PS3 any favors.

By contrast, the Xbox 360 actually up-samples and anti-aliases old Xbox games (I bought a used copy of Colin McRae Rally 04 for $8 at Game Stop last week) to full 720p HD TV resolution, and they look great. I'm glad I got that hard drive for the Xbox 360 since it's required to run original Xbox games, like Colin McRae.

All in all, I would have to say that the Xbox 360 has left me with a very positive feeling regarding Microsoft, and the PS3 has left me with a very negative feeling regarding Sony (which really just builds on a previously held poor opinion of Sony). If I can only find a HD cable for the PS3 (they're not in stock anywhere locally), perhaps my opinion of the Ps3 will change.

Excitement

2006-09-25T10:28:00.000-05:00

Wow, it seems like forever since I've posted anything to my blog, but it's only been three months. I guess not much really interesting has happened. Is my life really that boring? I'm preparing for a wedding, which is to say that I'm sitting back and making my wife-to-be do all the work because I don't want to get anything wrong, but that's not really all that exciting. I am looking forward to seeing all my friends again, but as far as I'm concerned, I already feel married so that day isn't much more than paper work in my mind (I know, not terribly romantic, but hey, I'm a guy, it's my nature).

The only thing that has been of much "excitement" lately was that I almost burnt down my second (detached) garage. On Saturday I turned on the lights to look for a tool and one of the ballasts in one of the fluorescent lights hummed loudly, then popped, then burst into flames which went shooting out and along the ceiling for a few inches. I quickly rushed to turn off the lights and then ran into the house to get the fire extinguisher as smoke oozed out of the light fixture.

After returning with the fire extinguisher, and being relieved that there was no fire, I examined the inside of the fixture to find that it had been wired in a most unworkman like manner. No ground wires, wires that were too long, wires that were too short, loose wire nuts, and no strain reliefs for the wires coming into the fixtures.

The ballast appeared to be something out of the 1960's, perhaps procured from a local dumpster. It doesn't surprise me, since the previous owner appeared to be the "resourceful" type.

Now I have to figure out what to do about it. I certainly need to do some rewiring of the fixture, if not all of them. I think I can get to the wires above it from the attic space, but if the ground wire is cut off everywhere that might mean rewiring the entire lighting of the garage, which would be no small feat. I found replacement ballasts in the attic, but I'm not sure that I want to use those as they appear to be roughly identical to the flaming one, so I'll probably try to buy a new one, or ten (there are a lot of lights in that garage). All in all, more work that I have to do. That's the problem with owning a house, the work never ends.

Bad driving

2006-06-19T13:22:00.000-05:00

Sorry to the few people that read this blog, it's been way too long since I've updated it. I've been busy, though not a lot of it was noteworthy.

I've been noticing some pretty bad driving lately and thought I'd share.

One of the reasons why I won't bicycle to work; the guy in front of me the other day came within inches of taking out a mailbox on the side of the road, on the far side of at least six feet of shoulder, when he leaned down to pick up something while traveling at 60mph.

The next day, the cement truck in front of me was forced off the road, and I quickly followed him, as a car crossed over the double yellow line and headed right for us. The driver appeared to just not be paying attention.

A coworker's wife just got rear ended by a driver accelerating into her when the light turned green for a different lane of traffic. I'm really not a fan of the drivers in the Midwest, though people say that Minnesota drivers are particularly bad.

On the lighter side, I saw a car from Rhode Island with the license plate "IQ 110". Seriously? I'm hoping that Rhode Island's license plate format is two letters followed by three numbers, but even still, I'd hope that they would have left out the "IQ" series, or at least started it at 200.

Working in the basement

2006-05-08T10:33:00.000-05:00

This weekend Mom and I spent some quality time in the basement getting "that" much closer to being finished.

The first day was spent trying to pull the 10-3 (10 gauge, 3 wire w/ground) cable for the 240v electric baseboard heaters from the basement into the garage, where the main panel is. This wouldn't have taken entire day except for the fact that the wall that I have to pull the wire through is full of the 1-1/2 inch ABS plastic pipe that the previous owner put in while the house was being constructed thinking that it would make it easier to pull new wire into the basement. The only problem is that you can't pull wire through the pipe given the two 90 degree bends it makes in less than 6 inches. I imagine that the one wire that was in there was put in while he pipe apart since I couldn't even get my fishing tape through the pipe.

The only solution was to remove the pipe, or more accurately the two 90 degree bends, so that I could run the wire through the hole where the pipe used to be. This required about 2.5 hours of cutting, twisting, nipping, and Dremeling, all through a small hole in the drywall while standing at the top of a ladder and trying not to damage the one good wire inside of the pipe. I finally got the pipe out with the wire intact, but it was serious work and it tore up pretty much every knuckle on my hands. I was exhausted from the work and decided to call it a day.

The next day I took it slow, but I was able to get speaker wire pulled for the rear speakers, a 1/2" soft copper gas line run in the soffit space, and the soffit finished.

While finishing the soffit I managed to shoot myself in the left thumb with the air nailer. Luckily my hand was about a foot away from the air nailer when it happened, so it was more like hitting the knuckle on your thumb as hard as you possibly could, instead of the more painful option of driving a nail through my thumb.

The problem with the air nailer is that while working in awkward locations, if you push the nailer too hard after pulling the trigger, you'll push the nailer back onto the wood after the recoil, but before you can release the trigger. Since the nailer cycles automatically, and quickly, this leads to double nailing as the trigger is down and the tip is depressed when it hits the wood again. The secret to preventing this is to have a light touch on the nailer. But in awkward locations, that's sometimes hard to do. In this case, the tip pushed against the wood just enough to activate, but not enough to cover the nail hole. The nail came flying out at an alarming rate of speed and my hand just happened to be "down range".

The thumb is fine, stiff, and has just a small cut, belying the true violence of the event. I was only a few boards from being done with the soffit, so I pushed on through the pain while the thumb was still usable. Today it's quite stiff and I doubt I could pinch an ant between my thumb and forefinger today. It's not swollen, however, so I imagine that nothing's broken.

All that I think to do in the basement is to put in the return air ducts in the return air plenum, wire up the boxes for the electric baseboard heaters, wire up the thermostat for the baseboard heaters, run a flexible gas line from the upstairs into the basement to connect with the soft copper line, and put in some insulation in ceiling to help deaden the sound from the basement. I'm sure there's something else I'll think to do before drywall, but it looks like I've got only about another weekend's worth of work (assuming I don't remember something major). Yea!

South Dakota

2006-05-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

This weekend Sara and I took the Jetta down to South Dakota for her brother's Confirmation. It's a long drive, over 350 miles, and the Jetta TDI delivered nearly 39mpg even though our average speed was over 75mph. It was raining the entire way there, and most of the way back. There were some points where the rain was so fierce that I really wanted a third, faster, speed for the wipers. Passing 18-wheelers at some points was really taking your life into your own hands. The spray from their wheels was nearly impenetrable and they always seemed to edge into our lane at that point (it was quite windy).

We only had to fill up the tank at the beginning of the trip and about a hundred miles into the return trip. However, after over ten hours of sitting in a car seat over two days, not to mention sleeping on a hotel bed, I'm pretty sore and rather sleep deprived.

At this point I'm hoping that I'll a few weekends at home to myself so that I can finish up the basement. The biggest remaining task is to put in the return air ducting. I'm not sure how I'll do that. I can either cut into the main plenum with the vent and put it in the soffit, or I can put some ducting into the wall and run that into the return plenum inside the soffit. Just putting the ducting into the main plenum seems the easiest thing to do, so I'll first verify if that's allowable or not. I'm hoping it is. Once that's done, I bet I can finish up the rest of the work and be ready for drywall by July (though I'm shooting for June).

TV feature I won't be looking for!

2006-04-19T16:20:00.000-05:00

I stumbled upon this link to a website talking about new patents.

Philips has submitted a patent that would allow digital cable boxes (of the type primarily used in Europe) to prevent you from skipping commercials by changing the channel during a live program, or fast forwarding it if it was recorded. Alternately, you could pay a fee to be able to skip the commercial (Pay per skip?).

It was interesting to note that they thought there might be significant consumer resentment. You think?

Getting a new car

2006-04-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

Over the past few months Sara has been lamenting her '92 Buick's lack of good gas mileage and the fact that it has over 209,000 miles on it and in general is the source of a lot of worry for her (overheats, minor stuff doesn't work, etc).

Toyota was advertising a sale on their cars and a Corolla seemed like a good fit for Sara. The Honda Civic was also in the running. Her main criteria was gas mileage, but I wanted her to have ABS (not standard on the Corolla) and lots of airbags would be nice too. On her wish list was heated seats and a sunroof (the time she'd spent in the Focus, which has heated seats and a sunroof, had really made an impression on her).

The idea of Biodiesel had been thrown around by me, and I think a few of her friends as well, so I also wanted to look for a Golf since they used to come with diesel engines. The local dealer said that there were no more diesel Golfs (though I found some on the web inventory at another local dealer) but they had a bunch of diesel Jettas. I took a 5 speed (manual) out for a spin.

With only 100hp it's not fast, but with 177lb-ft of torque (it's max) at 1800prm, it will easily spin its wheels on our sandy roads as you leave the stop lights. For about $24k it had all the features that we said we wanted, though it was more than I was wanting to spend (but that's pretty much always the case, isn't it?).

I had been approved for a "blank check" loan for 5.95% from Capital One for $20k already, but a quick call to them the next day got them to up the limit to $27k. I figured that I didn't want to spend that much, but I had better be ready to, just in case the Jetta proved to be the car Sara really wanted.

On Saturday Sara and I went back to the Volkswagen dealer so she could check out the car. I took out the stick, and after getting it to a less populated area switched with Sara so she could drive it. It's been a while since she has driven a manual, and with the salesman in the back and a brand new car under her, she had a very rough time driving it. As much as I hate to think of it, it seems the 6-speed automatic would be the way to go.

Unsure if we really wanted to spend that kind of money, we tested a Corolla. While it was a little faster, it gets a little worse gas mileage, it doesn't handle as well, and it didn't have nearly as many features (safety or otherwise). It is about $6k less, however.

We never did test that Civic, figuring it wasn't going to be much different from the Corolla and even if it was, it wasn't going to be as great as the Jetta which competes favorably with sedans in the $30k price range. Plus, I think Hondas are a bit over rated at this point.

After haggling with the professional saleman, I had gotten him down to invoice price (which was after he gave me the song and dance about "How much profit do you think is fair for me?") but his manager wouldn't go for it. The diesel is in too high of a demand, now, for him to let it go at invoice (where they still make a fair amount of profit apparently), so we got it for $250 over invoice. Of course they "lied" when they said that they actually had the color that we wanted in stock.

Sara wasn't too happy about the experience of haggling with a professional. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation really caught her off guard. At one point she wanted to leave, protesting "They've turned mean!" Eventually we got them being nice again, by me fumbling with my calculator, pointing out that I am willing to pay sticker price on a car when it's truly warranted (I paid sticker for my Lightning and I was happy to do so) and Sara commenting about how we hadn't really seen many other cars, so maybe we should go and compare other cars. We didn't actually have to get up and walk, but it was close.

Tomorrow we should be able to pick up our car, assuming that they can do the dealer transfer. Looks like insurance will be less than the Civic or Corolla too, so that's a bonus. Now to check into biodiesel...

Wedding Ceremony vs. Wedding Mass

2006-04-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

This Saturday Sara and I went to a briefing at the Cathedral (along with ten other couples) to find out the ins and outs about having a wedding at the Cathedral.

We were given a brief lecture from a priest about the sacrament of marriage and how it is a reflection of God's love for Israel (so what you're really trying to tell me is that my getting hitched has something to do with world piece?) and how the gays and Mormons have perverted the whole thing. Yeah, whatever, bite tongue, please move along...

Then we got a brief lecture about the whole process and were informed, much to my pleasure, that we have the option of a "Wedding Ceremony" instead of a "Wedding Mass". This means that there will be much less religion in the ceremony and no Communion. That should make my side of the isle breathe a collective sigh of relief. Sara thought her side of the family might have a problem with this, but parents didn't have any objections at all. Whew.

Finally, we were given a FOCCUS test which is supposed to tell us all about ourselves, and I suppose let us know our likelihood of getting divorced (or actually, annulled since divorce isn't allowed). The test was off to a bad start in my book because it asks for you to put down your current relationship state, listing single, married, divorced, widowed, seeking validation, and a few others. None of them were "engaged", so I voiced the question that everyone else was too afraid to ask. "What do I put down for my status? Am I seeking validation?" "Seeking validation" seemed a whole lot like what I was doing here.

The blunt answer came back that "you're single". Funny, don't feel single. The lady to my right informed me that "seeking validation" is for people that were married outside of the church and were looking to have their marriage recognized. Ah.

The next interesting bit of the front page was the question of "how long have you been courting?" which I took to be about 6 months since that's how long we were dating before I asked Sara to marry me. Sara put down 10 since apparently she thinks being engaged is some form of courtship.

I asked, "Are you planning on leaving me?"

"No.", she replied.

"Then we're not courting."

Oh well. Not as bad as the lady to my right that needed to do math to figure out how long they had been courting. When her fiancee asked what she was scribbling, she said she needed to calculate the number, and that she needed another box (there were only two) since they had been "courting" for 106 months. He responded, with not much love in his voice, "I don't think that we needed to inform the entire room of that fact." Whoa there big guy, nothing to get riled up about. Another lady giggled and said that they needed three digits too. I suggested that "99 will be just fine."

So, the first meeting with the church went well. I didn't burst into flames when I walked through the door, and I managed not to insert my foot in my mouth, even if it was because I had to clench my teeth though a lot of it.

Snowin' snowin' snowin'...

2006-03-16T11:19:00.000-06:00

It's snowed a lot this week. Monday most people decided to just call off their day due to the snow. The Minneapolis Twin Cities area got a fair amount of snow (6 to 18 inches, I got about 12 inches), concentrated during the morning rush hour and the plows just couldn't keep up. The morning news was full of spin outs and buses stuck in the snow.

I got up at 7am and started to snow-throw my driveway and sidewalk. It was the thick heavy snow that sticks to everything (including the sides of buildings and cars -- looked like the town had been attacked with papier mache) and that thrower can't throw quite as far. The wind had driven the snow to well over a foot in some places -- taller than my thrower. And the wind was still blowing at quite a clip (about 10mph), creating deep drifts and making throwing snow in the wrong direction a cold and unpleasant experience.

It had started to snow late the previous night and there was probably about 6" of snow on the ground and in the street (not counting the drifts). It took me over an hour of hard work with the thrower to clear the snow. While I was out there I watched a van get stuck on my street and decided that I would wait until the plow came by before trying to leave for work.

I got back in the house and was able to take a shower before the power went out. The unfortunate side effect of having an on-demand hot water heater is that if the power goes out, so does the hot water (my unit has a computer to control the burner and input and output water valves, not to mention a fan to assist in combustion).

Unfortunately, Sara was in the shower when the power went out. I quickly ran downstairs to get the UPS from the computer and plug it into the water heater (in the dark, the spark told me I had plugged it into the right outlet in the UPS!), but Sara wasn't patient enough (the heater apparently takes a while to reboot before it will deliver hot water) turning off the hot water just as the burner turned on. She said that she got her hair clean before the water went too cold. It's a good thing to know though, that you can at least finish a shower if the power goes off.

I didn't have enough UPSes to do actual work though, so for the 2+ hours that the power was off, I read a book. At least the stove is gas and I can light it with a match, so I was able to do a late breakfast without a problem.

Once the power was back, I worked from home while the snow continued to pour down. At about 1pm the street plow came by and at about 2pm the sidewalk plow came by. I could see that the snow was pretty thick, but it wasn't snowing much anymore. The neighbor's driveway was nice and clean, so I decided I should get mine in order as well.

I started to shovel the snow from the garage door, but it was just too heavy to move with a shovel, so I went back to snow thrower. This time the drifts were bigger (up to my knee), and the wind was worse. I could only attack small sections of the snow at once, and it wasn't making it off the driveway, which meant that by the time I got to the other side, I would be moving twice as much snow. I just kept slamming the snow thrower into the snow, and while it nearly stalled a hundred times, it managed to mostly clear the snow. I then went back with the shovel to get the bits of snow that thrower left behind.

All told, that took me over two hours, and none of it was easy. My back was definitely feeling it, and I knew that the next few days were going to be painful.

Around 5pm the street plow came back again. This time going so fast that he nearly completely covered the sidewalk with thick, compacted, snow and managed to even get some snow onto my lawn! Another hour of shoveling to clear the sidewalk and driveway apron of the heavy sticky snow (a small shovel full weighed at least 50lbs). I was also nice enough to clear most of the corner of sidewalk/street where the snow pushed by the plow and was up to my waist.

Today, Thursday, we got another 6 inches of snow. Luckily this was the lighter, fluffy variety that's easier to shovel. However, the ground is much colder now, so it doesn't release from the pavement as nicely as it did on Monday. I shoveled for an hour this morning, but used the snow thrower on the driveway apron where the plow had pushed it so high and hard that I really couldn't shovel it in a reasonable amount of time.

Traffic wasn't nearly as bad today and I was able to get into work at my normal time. It's still snowing, however, so there will be plenty to shovel when I get home today too.

I love winter! It's good exercise. ;-)

Wedding photo idea

2006-03-15T20:35:00.000-06:00

So I had an idea yesterday, while going over the budget for the wedding...

Everyone talks about getting a bunch of disposable cameras instead of a photographer (because they are damn expensive), and I was momentarily thinking the same thing, but then I came up with a twist.

What if we got four or five quality digital cameras (like a Canon Rebel XT or Nikon D50)? We would hand them out before hand (and probably have to give brief lessons) and have a few people use them to take photos during the wedding and at the reception. I imagine that the quality of the photos would be no worse than a disposable camera, and hopefully they would be quite a bit better. The twist is, at the end of the evening we would raffle them off (all but one, I want one for myself) for $25 a ticket.

Five Rebel XT cameras or seven Nikon D50 cameras would cost about the same as hiring the professional photographers that we've been interviewing. With about 150 guests, if everyone buys a ticket at $25 each, all of the cameras are basically paid for (and I get one for free!). If only 4 people buy tickets, then I'm no worse off (monetarily) than if I had hired a professional photographer. Any other number of tickets and I'm ahead (fewer and I e-bay the extra cameras, and more and I have at least a little cash to offset the expense).

Seems like a reasonable, if not ecstatically cool, plan to me. It has basically no downside (since you can often get really lousy pictures even with a professional photographer). And it has the upside that four to six guests would be very happy at the end of the night. Sara doesn't like the idea of selling tickets at our wedding, and I can understand that, but I still think it's great idea. I'll probably be soliciting opinions on this, so don't be surprised if I bring it up in conversation. :-)

Arrested for wearing a T-shirt

2006-02-02T15:56:00.000-06:00

It's been bugging me a while and I had to just get some thoughts down on...

I'm wondering why the people charged with protecting our Constitution don't seem to agree with it or even do much to protect it when they don't agree with those who are doing the talking.

We've all heard about the people that are denied access to Presidential campaign speeches because they're not one of the faithful, that that's shameful enough. But, when people get arrested for the t-shirt that they are wearing, haven't we crossed some sort of line that leads us away from "free speech" towards "totalitarian regime"?

Cindy Sheehan gets arrested for wearing a t-shirt that has printed on it the number of US soldiers dead in Iraq to the State of the Union address. While I could see her being escorted from the building if she was also making a scene about it, arresting her for wearing a t-shirt seems a bit totalitarian to me. What part of free speech and petitioning the government for a redress of grievances don't they get? I mean, come on, it's the #1 Amendment to Constitution (see billofrights.org for a refresher course, if you need one). Did they not even bother to read it half way?

Of course all charges were subsequently dropped, but they never should have been filed in the first place! The government is supposed to work for us, not against us. It has unlimited funds and time, and the average innocent citizen just can't stand up against that sort of power.

I also wonder about this guy arrested for wearing a "Give Peace a Chance" t-shirt at the mall that sold it to him. I don't know where that stands legally, but it does make me think that people need to lighten up a bit.

Remember, free speech means letting someone shout at the top of their lungs ideas that you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. It doesn't mean that you get to throw those people that you don't agree with in jail.

Wedding plans

2006-01-22T21:54:00.000-06:00

I hadn't posted anything about Sara's and my engagement because I wanted to be able to tell everyone in person first. I've mostly done that now, and if I haven't told you in person, well, sorry.

We got engaged back in November, actually on my birthday. I asked her to be my birthday present, which I thought was better than asking on Christmas or Valentine's Day, and only slightly more cheesy.

Ever since then, the wedding plans have been the 400lb gorilla in the room that no one wants to confront. We talked about it a little, but with very different ideas of we each want we hadn't made much forward progress.

Sara wants a big church wedding (preferably in the Saint Paul Cathedral) to make her parents happy. I want something small and informal, preferably a destination wedding, because I detest pomp and circumstance and don't really like being the center of attention. Not being a practicing Catholic makes me an unlikely candidate for the Cathedral too, but I figured I would jump through whatever hoops they would require to get back in their good graces in time for a big wedding.

We booked a local mansion, Cedarhurst, that does outdoor weddings and receptions and thought we were well on our way, but the realization of the expense of the whole undertaking kept weighing on me, though I tried not to show it. I know that Sara was concerned about it as well, and she tried to calm my fears by saying that her parents would pay for some of the wedding.

A week after putting our deposit down at Cedarhurst we had a long talk about what we each wanted from the wedding, what our parents might want, and what we were willing to settle for. In the end, we decided that a small destination wedding was the way to go, both in terms of cost, and in terms of a ceremony that we both could live with. Hopefully her parents will understand and won't hold it against me.

So, our Oct. 14th wedding is off (which is good because it wasn't looking like we were going to get the Cathedral -- it's a solemnity day and they might not be able to have a wedding that day anyway) and we're now going to be planning the wedding I've always dreamed of -- something informal on a beach in the tropics. Maybe I'll even get a steel drum to play...

Holidays in NYC

2006-01-04T10:54:00.000-06:00

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, I've been quite busy lately (though none of it was really interesting).

The week before Christmas Sara and I took an early flight to JFK to visit with my dad and his third wife, Karen, at one of his time share condos in Manhattan (across from Carnegie Hall). Unfortunately, this was the first day of the Metro Transit strike so the normally hour long ride took nearly three hours and we arrived in the lobby just when dad and Karen had given up hope of us arriving in time to see the show at Radio City. We gave our bags to the bellman and were off to walk the 5 blocks to Radio City. We made it with about 10 minutes to spare.

The show was their usual Christmas Spectacular, though from the way-back seats, it's not so spectacular. I was glad that we were behind the artificial snow so none of it landed on us, but the view was about what I would see on my 55" TV.

The next day we were limited in our travels because of the metro strike and Karen's artificial hip, we wandered around in a very small area, staying near 5th Ave and Broadway. The Christmas shopping rush was in full swing and I was almost able to buy the perfume my mom wanted at the Bulgari shop on 5th Avenue, but they were sold out.

That night we saw "The Producers" the movie which everyone but me loved. I'm not a fan of musicals, but it was OK.

On the third, and last day, of our trip, Dad, Sara and I wandered down to Rockefeller Center to see the rink and tall tree. The murals inside Rockefeller Plaza were quite interesting, but unfortunately we entered from the wrong entrance and read them backwards; giving the impression that a mighty civilization had deteriorated in a simple agrarian society.

Dad and Karen drove us to Grand Central Station so we could get the bus back to the airport. The transit strike had just ended an hour before, but that didn't do anything to help traffic. It was worse than ever with people trying to leave town for the Christmas weekend. They dropped us off at about 4pm for our 7:15pm flight. We stood in line for about 20 minutes before we got on a bus and went nowhere fast. At one point a lady walked into traffic, and with a heavy French accent asked if we could take her to JFK because she was late for her flight. Our bus driver informed her that he had no empty seats and she would need to buy a ticket across from Grand Central.

When our bus finally got to our terminal at 6:45pm we were sure that if we made our flight it would be as the doors were closing. Luckily no one was in line to get a boarding pass (though one lady cut in front of us saying that she had a 7:15 flight, we got the next agent because we were closer to that agent). There was basically no line for security (the Delta terminal) and our gate was #1, so we didn't have an issue getting to the gate a little before 7pm. And, lucky for us, the flight was delayed an hour.

Leaving the Minneapolis airport was almost as exciting as at 11:30pm the credit card reader that figures out how long you've been parked didn't want to read my card. I must have inserted and removed my card 50 times before Sara suggested that we just back up and try a different reader (my card is constantly giving me grief, time for a replacement). Thankfully the second reader read my card on the first try and we were gone. I didn't relish the thought of trying to find someone to let us out at 11:30pm on Dec 22nd.

Moving Sara

2005-12-28T17:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday the 17th, a coworker, Sean, and I moved most of Sara's belongings from her downtown St. Paul apartment to my house in Cottage Grove. Luckily the snow of the past few days had stopped, though the high for the day wasn't likely to make it far into the double digits.

Renting the U-Haul took far longer than it should have (30 minutes or more), though because the rental place didn't have a chance to check in the U-Haul, I got the use of the moving blankets for free. Some of the blankets had been used to prevent slipping on the steel floor of the truck and were icy/sandy/yucky -- and while I wouldn't have ever thought to use a clean blanket for that purpose, we used the dirty ones to prevent us from sliding all the way down the truck.

Moving Sara's stuff wasn't too bad, she had (thankfully) gotten most of it boxed up and she only had a few large items. She was, however, on the second floor and even in single digit weather I worked up enough of a sweat to justify wearing only a T-shirt.

The real fun came when we were done and wanted to leave. The back driveway, that the trash man uses, has some broken concrete, and I thought that the multiple inches of compacted snow (about 8 inches had fallen that week) would even out the lip in the driveway from the broken/sunken concrete, but apparently it didn't and that lip (and the snow/ice) seemed to be all it took to prevent the U-Haul from backing out of the driveway.

I gave it more gas, hoping that I could burn through the ice. After a while I got a lot of smoke from the passenger side tires, but no movement. I tried rocking the truck back and forth. It got going a little bit after a while, but never made it over that lip. I tried turning the front wheels, but that only works on front wheel drive cars.

At that point I looked over at Sean and asked if I should go forward down the driveway in hopes of getting up some speed, or would I just get stuck farther down the driveway. Sean pointed out that the tow trucks just use a winch with a long cable, so it doesn't matter how far down we get stuck. Right-o, down the driveway we go.

I went down about 15 feet and tried from there but the truck wouldn't back up. Uh-oh. Well, let's go farther down the driveway (about half way, say 50 feet). Whew, the truck would back up from there. I tried to get a running start, but it wasn't enough. Though the speedometer read close to 40mph, the truck was only going about 2mph and that wasn't enough to get us over the lip. I did this many times. One time I almost made it out, but the truck slid sideways and started to take out the recycling cans (large 64 gallon trash cans) on the side of the driveway and I had to stop.

This went on and on for over 15 minutes. I was surprised with all the tire squealing/smoke and engine revving noise that no one ever came down to watch (or point and laugh) or complain. Eventually the snow/ice was worn down enough so that when I gunned the truck from about 65 feet down the driveway, and kept the rear wheels spinning at 40mph the whole way, I got enough momentum/traction to get over the lip and out of the driveway. Whew. No need to call road side assistance, but I was sure that I put on at least two miles (at $0.99 a mile) in that driveway.

After that, it was pretty standard unloading the truck kind of stuff, though everything in the truck was at about 5 degrees F, which required us to wear gloves to be able to handle any of it. Thankfully I'm not a professional. It's hard work.

Snow, and where to put it

2005-12-15T18:52:00.000-06:00

This has been a snowy week. It started snowing Tuesday night, leaving about 5 inches over night, and continued to snow a few more inches Wednesday day and night, with an inch or less Thursday day just to top things off.

All of this wouldn't be a problem, or even really worth mentioning, were it not for the snow plow driver Wednesday morning.

I've only been through one other MN winter, and by watching what other people did, and talking to friends in the office, it appeared that thing to do was to throw your snow into the street. Presumably the plows and cars deal with it and that's that.

For the most part I throw the snow in the direction of the wind, which puts most of it onto my lawn. However, for the sidewalk and driveway apron, this puts a lot of it on the street. I don't really see this as an issue since the city's plows put a lot of the snow from the street onto my driveway's apron. It's a winter game of cat and mouse.

Apparently the guy driving the plow sees things differently. As I was out throwing the two foot tall and three foot wide wall of compacted snow that he left on my driveway's apron, he came back to plow the other side of the street. I saw him gesturing at the snow I had put on the street and I waved back to him, blissfully ignorant of his anger. However, it was pretty clear that he wasn't waving at me when he came back and re-plowed my side of the street, much closer and much faster than the first time. Since most of the snow from my apron was thrown past my driveway, this did nothing but put a thin film of snow onto my apron. However, he came back with so much speed that snow was thrown up and over onto the sidewalk. Clearly he was pissed.

Later, I watched my neighbors, all of whom came out after the plow had gone by. Most of them threw their snow into the street, unless they were shoveling, in which case they put it beside their driveway in a large mound (some of the mounds are at least 5' tall). I decided that I should really check with the city of Cottage Grove to see what the "official" rules are.

Cottage Grove has their code searchable from their website and I was able to find section 7-1-3, Prohibited Snow and Ice Deposits. Section A seems to the most applicable:

A. Unless approved by the director of public works of the city, it shall be unlawful to deposit snow removed from private property on public property, including boulevard areas; except, that snow removed from boulevard areas of driveways and sidewalks may be placed on adjacent boulevard areas.

Except this says that the boulevard (which is from the property line to the street, including the sidewalk and the grass between it and the street) is public property. This would mean that I'm just moving snow from one part of public property to another part of public property (the street), which isn't disallowed.

Section C also seems to be interesting:

C. Removal operations shall in no manner interfere with the use of public streets, nor shall snow be accumulated or deposited by motor-driven equipment in such a manner as to interfere with visibility at intersections or curves of public streets of the city. (1971 Code § 22-5)

One could argue that putting a bunch of snow on the street interferes with its use, but the snow distributed evenly over the street was less than an inch thick, so that seems unlikely (though I'm sure someone would argue the point). I generally try to stop my throwing activity when a car drives by, so I'm good on that point. Though, on the other hand, I'm clearly free to shovel all the snow I want to onto the street.

But, anyway, I decided that I didn't need to get the city's plow drivers pissed at me, so I'd better figure out what to do.

A little more checking into the definition of things shows that the boulevard was expressly made for the purpose of "snow storage":

BOULEVARD: The portion of the public street right of way between the back curb line and the property line for uses such as snow storage, sidewalk, utilities, street light and traffic or other signage and potential widening of roadways.

So, now the game becomes how to do I get as much snow as I can from the sidewalks and apron onto the boulevard without getting too much onto the street? Well, if the wind cooperates, it's not too hard, though I still need to use the shovel a bit to fully clear the apron, the sidewalk's snow isn't too hard to get onto the boulevard.

The real bummer in all of this is that I used to clear the whole sidewalk on my block (it's a short block), throwing all the snow into the street. However, since that's not an option, and section B of 7-1-3 says:

B. Snow removed from private property may not be deposited upon other private property without the consent of the owner thereof. (1971 Code § 22-4; amd. 2000 Code)

I never talk to my neighbors so I won't be asking their permission to throw the snow onto their lawns any time soon. I'm just going to stop cleaning everyone's sidewalk. Oh well. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

South Dakota road trip

2005-12-14T11:13:00.000-06:00

This weekend was a long one. Sara and I left for South Dakota Friday evening after work. I left work a little early and we got on the road at about 5:30pm for our 400 mile drive to Lesterville, where her family has their farm.

Traffic was a little stop and go getting out of the city, but then it was just a 70mph drone to South Dakota where the speed limit changes to 75mph. Yea! It was rather windy, as it's apt to be in South Dakota and southern Minnesota. Snow was blowing across the road way and the reflection in the headlights made me think of ghosts or spooky movies.

We got to Yankton, which is close to Lesterville, but actually has hotels, a little after 11pm and searched for the Best Western that no longer exists. Once we were convinced that the Best Western must have been plowed under, we turned around and made our way to the Holiday Inn that looked new and shiny. It looked like they were close to full, but we were able to get a room for two nights.

We went back to the car to unload our gear, and it was at that point I asked the question "Sara, where's my bag?" Instead of giving me my bag, Sara gave me a blank stare.

Luckily hotels are prepared for such bonehead maneuvers as driving nearly 400 miles without your luggage. They were able to offer me all the things I needed to be appropriately groomed and clean and sweet smelling for when I met Sara's folks at their house. The local JCPenney was able to equip me with everything else.

Hanging out with the entire Dummer clan was nice. A couple of cousins came over, a brother from the West Coast that I had not yet met came with his wife, and we got to me a sister's boyfriend we'd never seen before. It was a very full house (small farmhouse and all).

We had a nice "Christmas" lunch, waited for the food coma to pass, and then started opening presents, which probably took more than an hour. There were a lot of people, and a lot of presents to hand out. I was shocked when I got a bunch of gifts from Sara's parents, including her grandparents. I felt bad since I hadn't gotten them anywhere near as many presents.

After all of the present openings, Sara wanted to play the game that I had gotten her, a guess-who-said-what kind of game where you read a weird question from a card (like how much would someone have to pay you to stick your hand in a polluted toilet) and then everyone writes down their answer, which are then read out loud, and one person has to guess who said what, getting a point for each correct guess. I fell asleep, much to Sara's dismay. Everyone else was laughing quite a bit, so I think they all enjoyed it.

The drive back to MN on Sunday afternoon was uneventful. The wind had lessened and there was hardly any traffic. For miles we were the only car going our direction that I could see. And in South Dakota, you can see for quite a distance.

Christmas lights!

2005-12-04T11:40:00.000-06:00

Saw this cool link from SiliconValley.com to a WMV (Windows Media) of a guy that apparently hooked up his Christmas lights to a sequencer so that they flash in time to music. It's one heck of a display.

Busy week

2005-12-04T11:00:00.000-06:00

This week has been a very busy week for me at work and at home. Work is work, nothing new there, but it's been stressful lately because I'm responsible for things that are out of my control, and that always gets me wound up.

At home every night I've been working in the basement and I've made decent progress. I got all but 10 (of the original 240) DRIcore panels installed. The main area of the basement is covered, as is the bit under the stairs and alongside the stairs. I stopped before wrapping around the stairs with the panels, mainly because that looks like it will require some intricate cuts and I'm not sure where the bathroom will end, and I don't want to put the panels in the bathroom. It will sit like this until I figure out what I'm doing regarding the shower in the basement (doing a plain shower, or something more interesting, like a steam shower).

Having all the panels in the basement seems to have raised the temperature by about 2 degrees, not the 6 that were promised (that I never really believed anyway). I imagine that adding more ducts to the basement will help to keep it warmer (there are only two for 900+ square feet), but it's going to require a large quantity of return ducting. Adding that amount of return ducting will be a hassle that I'm not looking forward to. I might be better served by calling a pro to calculate heating requiements, check my furnace, and do whatever ducting is required.

On Thursday and Saturday I put in the last of the lights in the basement. Two lights in the hall beside the stairs, wired with three way switches, so that you can walk through the basement without walking in the dark, or having to backtrack to turn off lights. Yea! I also put in four lights in the back section of the basement where the wet bar (and maybe a pinball table and dart board) will go. It's now very well down there, and that's a "good thing."

The remaining things to be done are to box up the main ducting with soffits, put in a few outlets and boxes for wall sconces and rope lights (to be put behind crown molding to provide "mood" lighting), a few more ducts (and the associated return air ducts), the external vent for the bathroom (I put in the ducting for it on Thursday, but haven't cut the side of the house for the vent), and then drywall.

After the drywall I'll be down to just the finish materials, flooring, cabinets, painting. The exciting bits. But, first I have to finish the drywall, and that's got me worried. I'm seriously considering hiring out the drywall. It's heavy, dusty, and a lot of work (even though it's not complicated work, it is hard work). There's just so much to do that I'm not sure I want to spend the time doing it. Well, I've got plenty more work to do before I get to that point, so maybe when that time comes around I'll feel more up to the task.

Not so lazy Saturday

2005-11-26T18:01:00.000-06:00

Saturday morning started out by me wanting to sleep in as long as possible, but that wasn't possible since I had to deal with the two to three inches of snow that had fallen the previous day. Luckily my snow thrower fired right up after being in storage for 9 months and 35 minutes later I was done. It looks like I'll need new blades for the snow thrower (it's the kind with rubber paddles so that it actually scrapes all the way down to the pavement), but it's fully functional in the mean time, which is all that matters.

After that Sara and I took a bunch of boards up from the basement to the table saw in the garage so that I could rip them into more useful shims for installing the DRIcore. I ripped a bunch of 3/4" shims for the walls without drywall and shaved a 2x4 down 1/4" at a time to make the shims needed for the walls that had drywall already installed. Ten hours later and the saw dust is still hanging in the garage.

After that, Sara started cleaning the floor of debris, and I started laying DRIcore. The DRIcore goes down very quickly since there's no glue or nails, and only one cut is needed at the end of each row. There's a lot of banging with a hammer to get the panels tight to each other, but that's it. So far I haven't had to use any shims to level the panels, so that's really nice.

Sara patched five holes (from where the previous room's walls had been) in the concrete floor while I continued to lay DRIcore. After laying about 100 panels (4 rows) my back was shot and Sara went out for knitting supplies.

If my back holds up tomorrow I should be able to get almost all of the DRIcore panels down. Let's hope.

Dishwasher troubles

2005-11-26T17:37:00.000-06:00

Monday was the day that Sara was making all of the food that she was going to bring up for Thanksgiving dinner. Of course that would be the day that the dishwasher decides to pee all over the floor.

It appears that the gasket that seals the door had shriveled up and was no longer sealing (after less than 8 years). I called the number of the top of the washer's door, got GE's parts department, and ordered a new gasket for $18.

We had to wash everything by hand, though we used the dishwasher as a drying rack. Let me tell you, cooking a hundred cookies (four different kinds), two pies, sweet potato spoon bread, and preparing the dough for rolls makes a lot of dirty dishes. This was not the time for the dishwasher to go on strike.

When we got back from Franklin on Friday, I checked the mail and found my replacement gasket. Yea! When I went to install it Saturday morning I found out that the gasket kit doesn't include one little piece of gasket that goes in the bottom center of the door. This, of course, was the part that was leaking. I installed the new gasket around the door anyway and ordered the missing part of gasket. It's nearly impossible to close the door now, but they say that this will get easier in a few weeks.

Hopefully the dishwasher will be working in a few days, but if it's not, I'm eyeing a new Jenn-Air Floating Glass dishwasher that will match the new range that I just got.

Family

2005-11-26T16:57:00.000-06:00

For Thanksgiving Sara and I went to her Father's Father's house in Franklin MN. Sara's parents were there, so I met her Grandfather, Grandmother, father Paul, brother John, and sister Katie's husband, all for the first time. They all seem like nice people, and I think that they liked me too. I had previously met Sara's mother and sisters Katie and Amy.

We stayed at Jackpot Junction, an Indian hotel and Casino. It was a nice enough place, but really smelled of smoke. Luckily the room, while not being a non-smoking room, didn't smell too bad. However, the shower had basically no water pressure. I don't know if that was because we were on the fifth floor or just because they have lousy water pressure, but you basically had to cozy up with the wall to get water to hit you.

The women cooked while the men talked in the living room. When the food was ready we lined up buffet style. We got in line, Sara's mom dished up food for Grandma, and then Steve and I started to help ourselves (in MN it's common for no one to actually want to start eating a party). All three of us got one of Sara's bread rolls, and shortly thereafter we heard a loud crash. At first people thought that a dish had fallen, but the Pyrex dish that the rolls were in literary exploded. It had been left on a burner that was still set at medium-high. We noticed that the oven was still on as well. Since it's pretty common to take off your shoes inside MN, most people were in their socks, so no one wanted to approach the stove. Even after the burner was turned off, the rolls continued to cook and were looking like they were about to catch on fire (they were starting to produce lots of smoke), so I rushed in there get them off the burner before they ignited.

After lunch we split off into three groups. Those that wanted to nap, those that wanted to play card games, and those that wanted to play a marbles game on a homemade board with rules something like Aggravation. I was in the latter group. It was lots of fun.

Friday we left Franklin at about 3:40, but because of the snow on the road it took us a while to get home. We only saw one person in the ditch, though we did a couple of crumpled cars. I wish that they would plow the on/off ramps as those can get a bit dicey (the freeways are generally just fine though).

Easy come, easy go

2005-11-22T19:31:00.000-06:00

This past Saturday Sara and I went to Home Depot to get thermostat wire. Why thermostat wire you might ask? Because we want to put up a tree for Christmas, and Sara wants to put up some delicate and priceless ornaments, but I'm not willing to vouch for Lucy and claim that there's no possibility that she won't try to climb the tree and knock it over in the process. Since the front room of the house has glass doors that be closed, it's the perfect room for the tree. However, it's also the room with the thermostat, and closing off that room would mean that the rest of the house would quickly become very uncomfortable.

While we were at Home Depot we saw that they were having 10% off all appliances $299 and up. We had bought our Jenn-Air range, for $1569, just two days before and asked if we could get the discount. The associate told us no, but I was pretty sure that if I asked the customer service people, that they would give me the discount. I went back to my house, got the receipt, saw that I had 3 business days to get a refund on special orders, and went to the Home Depot that I actually bought the range at.

I went to the customer service desk and told them I had just bought the stove and wanted the discount, which we could either the easy way (they just give it to me), or the hard way (I return the stove, that I haven't taken delivery of yet, and buy it again with the discount). The customer service people were quite happy to do it easy way, though when the customer service people called the appliance manager to get her code to approve our $167 refund, she was shocked. The customer service people explained that we had just bought a $1569 stove, hence our desire for the 10% off, and the appliance manager gave her code and we got our discount.

Emboldened by the savings of $167, we went out and spent it three times over. We bought new sheets, new cooking hardware, and some other gear. It was stuff that we needed, but I think I would have preferred to have bought the stuff in a month or so. Oh well, one of these days I'll get through a weekend without spending tons of money.

DRIcore

2005-11-21T08:18:00.000-06:00

Friday the DRIcore was supposed to be delivered, so I was working from home all day (something that I don't really enjoy since I like the people in the office). By 3:30 I was getting worried that it wasn't coming so I called Home Depot to see when it might be here. After being transferred around, they finally said that the manager would call me back. By 4:30, when I still hadn't heard from them, I called again and got the same run around. When I tried to call back at 5:30, as expected, there was no one to talk to.

I gave up on getting the delivery that day and at about 6:15 left with Sara to get dinner and go to the kickball season-end party.

When I got home, at about midnight, I was greeted by two pallets of DRIcore sitting in front of the garage. This was nice, since I wasn't expecting them to deliver it, but also not so nice since it meant I had to move a ton (literally, 2260 pounds) of DRIcore into the garage instead letting the guy with the forklift do it.

It took about half an hour to move all of the 240 tiles into the front of the garage, and I still had enough room to park the car in the garage. Nice. I only dropped a few tiles, with a loud bang, and the neighbors didn't seem to notice. Very nice.

Sunday I decided that I wanted to start laying the DRIcore. The first thing I would need is shims. The DRIcore is supposed to be 1/4" away from the drywall. Since most of the basement doesn't have drywall, that means 3/4" away from the studs. Luckily for me, the trim boards from around the doors in the room I removed from the basement were 3/4" thick. I spent 15 minutes pulling the finish nails from them and had ready made shims. I also spent about half an hour removing the screws from some of the 2x4s that were used in those walls in case I needed to rip some of those down to use as shims.

I put down an initial row of 12 tiles just to see how the shims were working and how the panels fit together. They fit easily enough, though it's hard to get them square to each other since tapping with a hammer tends to make them jump. I think that might be because the shims are too tall and aren't sitting perfectly flat against the base of the walls, so I'll have to cut the shims down to see if that helps. I also figure that as I get more panels down, the likelihood of the panels shifting will be greatly reduced. The boards go down quite quickly since there is no gluing or nailing, though my floor requires constant cleaning since it's a bit of a demolition mess. That's the part that's really slowing me down.

Confident that things will work out, I decided that it was time to bring all of the tiles into the basement so that they can adjust to the temperature and humidity (it's like 30 degrees in the garage and 65 in the basement). That took about 50 minutes and was quite the work out. I would bring down 6 or 7 tiles at a time (each tile weighs over 9 pounds) and flip them over onto their plastic bottoms (on the pallets they were upside down, but they suggest that you put them on their feet when letting them acclimate). That started to tear up sides of my arms as I attempted to rotate the 6" thick stack with rough edges and by the end of the process I was bruised from accidentally kicking the pile with my bare foot, arms were rubbed raw in some spots, hands had a splinter or two, and my back was killing me, but all the tiles were in the basement. I put them in the far corner so there shouldn't be too many to move when I have to tile the location they're currently occupying.

I'm excited to get them down and see if they really do warm the basement the "6 to 7 degrees" that I've been promised. At any rate, they'll make whatever carpet I put down feel way better than it would if it was sitting on concrete, and I think that's worth the 7/8 of an inch I lose to headroom. Updates to follow.

Spend, spend, spend

2005-11-18T10:14:00.000-06:00

Wednesday evening, after cooking dinner, Sara asked if we could go ahead and get the Jenn-Air dual oven range that we had looked at over the weekend. I immediately agreed since I had gotten two coupons from Home Depot for no payments/no interest for 12 months and one was set to expire at the end of November.

I decided to get the white version of the range, though there was a brief moment where I thought I might be "forced" to get the stainless steel version. Sara really likes stainless steel appliances, and while I'm not opposed to them, I don't think that one stainless steel range would look right in a kitchen where all the other appliances are white and the theme is more country kitchen than modern.

We'll be keeping the existing electric range in the back garage. We'll either sell it for a few hundred bucks come spring, or maybe Sara will convince me that it should go into the basement as part of the wet bar.

While we were at Home Depot, I decided that it was time to get the DRIcore floor system so I can have a basement floor that's not solid concrete. The nice thing about the DRIcore system is that it says it gives you an R-value of 2, which should be enough to warm (or prevent heat loss) the basement to the tune of 6 to 7 degrees F. That alone would be worth the $1400 in tiles.

The other reason to get the DRIcore is that it should be considerably softer than concrete. I've never been on a carpet laid on concrete that was anything other than rock hard. While the DRIcore panels say they will support 5500 pounds per square foot, normal concrete supports about 5000 pounds per square inch. Concrete is harder by a couple orders of magnitude, and you're feet can tell.

The DRIcore should be delivered today, Friday, and then I'll have the fun task of moving 240 tiles, about 2300 pounds, down a flight of stairs into the basement. Sara's quite a trooper though, she suggested that we save the $60 delivery fee and load the tiles into my truck ourselves. I figure it's worth way more than $60 to only have to lift the tiles once.

Productive weekend

2005-11-15T19:55:00.000-06:00

It's been, what seems like forever, that I've updated my blog. Sorry for that, I've been busy.

This weekend I decided that I needed to move the fresh air intake for the heater over one joist bay. The builders apparently didn't care that they had run it in the wrong joist bay, requiring it to jog under a joist because it was running directly into the metal air ducts. This would make building a nice looking soffit impossible and so I had to move it to the correct location.

This involved cutting a new (approximately) 7.5" hole in the side of the house (and not cutting any sized holes in the drain pipe or electrical wire that are in that joist bay). After moving the air intake over I was left with a gaping hole (if 7.5" could be considered gaping). Luckily I have some spare siding and I was able to patch the hole. While I didn't do the world's greatest patch job (there's a small section of siding instead of a few larger sections which I suspect a pro would have done), it's more than acceptable and from more than 5' you can't tell it was any other way.

I also bought some metal ducting to see how much work it would be to install ducting in the basement. To get the ducting installed they make special adapters that have a large plate that allows you to cut a rough opening and connect a 6" round duct cleanly. Of course Home Depot didn't have any of those (though they did have the picture of them). Instead they had only the duct starters that require you to make a perfectly round hole.

I already had a circle cutter for the RotoZip, but I didn't have a metal bit for it, and RotoZip doesn't make one. Luckily Dremel makes a tungsten-carbide bit and I have a collet that will take the 1/8" bits that the Dremel uses (because I don't have a circle cutter for my Dremel). Installing the Dremel bit in the RotoZip was a bit dicey since RotoZip bits are a lot longer than Dremel bits, so I had to put it in just the barest amount, but it was, just barely, long enough.

Starting the hole was easy enough since the bit has a rounded tip. Making the circle cut was a bit more of an ordeal than I was expecting. The metal for the ducting isn't very thick, so I wasn't expecting to see flames shooting out from under the RotoZip. Sparks were expected. Flames? Not expected. The cutting was slow going, slower than I expected, but after a few moments the sparks lessened and the flames stopped. About half way around the circle the cutting slowed and I saw that the bit was glowing orange hot. Orange! That's hot. I let the bit cool for a moment and was able to continue the cut. It made a perfect 6" hole and the adapter fit in perfectly. I think I might need to get another bit before I'm done with all the ducting, but it's worth it rather than trying to cut a hole with tin snips.

It was no effort to the horizontal run of ducting, though the half an hour I spent fighting with the 90 degree adapter to get it bent into 90 degrees (they come straight and you have to rotate the sections to get them into their 90 degree configuration) was rather frustrating.

It looks like the other two runs of ducting will be quick and easy, though I'm a bit worried about the work for the return air ducting since that will have to be much larger (and is generally put into a wall -- and I'm not sure that I have one handy). I'm sure I'll figure something out though.

I'll try to keep the blog up to date better. More news to come. :-)

Pulling wire

2005-11-06T12:20:00.000-06:00

Saturday I decided that I needed to finish pulling the wire (cat-5 coax, cat-5e, and cat-6) to all of the bedrooms so that I could close up the walls and get on with things. It didn't hurt that the weather was in the mid 60s so working in the attic was actually quite pleasant.

Pulling wire, however, wasn't. The knockouts through the engineered wood I-beams were nearly full of the wire pulled for previous rooms, which made it rather difficult to pull new wires. Fishing the wires up through the holes in the walls was even more difficult as those holes are even smaller than the knockouts. Furthermore, going from the first floor to the second floor means that you have to drill past the second floor's engineered wood I-beams and fishing a fish tape through two 1" holes nearly a foot apart can be trying. However, I have all the right tools, and with Sara's help it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

Every room is getting 6 wires, two cat-5 coax, two cat-5e, and two cat-6, which means that I have to pull a bundle of those three wires twice to each room (I had thought about buying two boxes of each, but decided that I wouldn't need that much wire). The first pull went reasonably smoothly, including the part where I had to drill into the wall, bang the bit around inside the wall, and have Sara mark it's location so that I could later cut into the wall and install the wiring box. The second pull wasn't quite as nice since I didn't pull enough wire to make it all the way to the wire box, which meant I had to go back down to the basement and pull another 10' of wire through all those knockouts and up into the attic.

The third pull of wires went into the same wall, but for the next room, and that went smoothly enough after I knocked out a new path of knockouts. The fourth pull, however, stopped about 10' short of being long enough because I ran out of the cat-5 coax. Argh! I still have plenty of cat-5e and cat-6 wire, but I didn't complete the pull as I was tired and dejected, and Sara was really bummed out.

I'll order new cable tomorrow, hopefully I'll get it by the weekend. Hopefully the weather will still be nice (not too hot or cold in the attic), and I'll be able to finish the final three pulls without running out of the cat 5 or 6 wire. The remaining spools seem to still have a decent amount left on them, but maybe they don't. I certainly don't want to have an extra 900 (or even 400) feet of cable left over, but the thoughts of getting most of the way through a pull and running out of wire haunt me. I guess I'll take the gamble.

House with pop!

2005-11-02T16:39:00.000-06:00

Monday evening was Halloween, and my first Halloween in the new house (having moved in December of last year). I figured that since I'm living at the edge of suburbia, and everyone seems to have the requisite 2.3 kids that I should get a fair amount of candy.

I bought about 12lbs of candy and started handing it out at about 5:30pm (actually, Sara started handing it out as I was still cooking dinner). By about 6pm I was starting to worry that I should go out and get some more. By 6:15pm I was seriously talking about going out and getting more candy but Sara thought it wouldn't be needed. But by 6:45pm we had about 6 pieces of candy left and I had to go out and get more candy, or face the wrath of angry 5th graders.

To hold them off while I was out getting new bags of candy, we emptied the fridge of Pepsi and Mountain Dew and Sara gave that out until I got back with 10lbs of candy.

I ended up giving away a few more pounds of candy (until about 8pm), but the best part was when 6 or 7 5th or 6th graders came to house. I gave the first one some candy and he said sadly proclaimed "We thought you were the house with pop." "Oh", I said, "I've still got some if you want that." I was greeted by a round of "Yes, please!"

Well, I know what I'll have to buy next year. Lots of soda for the teenagers and probably 15lbs of candy for the little ones. It's expensive living in the 'burbs.

Glass!

2005-10-31T09:37:00.000-06:00

Last night was my usual Sunday night out with the crowd. This Sunday, the "crowd" was only Spencer (the organizer), Sara and I. For a while, I was worried that it might only be Sara and I, but eventually Spencer arrived (which wasn't too unexpected, he's been working hard in his basement too).

Sara and I talked about random things and listened to the guys behind me complain about how poorly their fish sandwiches were cooked (apparently even the replacement sandwich was poorly cooked). The manager tried to sooth rumpled feathers, but I don't know if those guys will be coming back any time soon.

It wasn't going to be a good night for the manager.

I was maybe three bites into my bacon and cheese chicken sandwich when I bit down on something hard. Thinking it was just overcooked bacon, I bit down harder until I heard a loud snap! and I was through it. A fraction of a second later I thought, "that didn't sound right". I stopped chewing and looked at the sandwich to see what I just bit into, thinking it was a bone or the like. A piece of shredded lettuce didn't look quite right. When I grabbed it, it turned out to be a shard of glass a about half an inch long, a few millimeters wide, and maybe a millimeter thick. I promptly, though not too elegantly, emptied the contents of my mouth back onto the plate.

We called over the waitress and explained it to her, and she promptly called over the manager (whom we know quite well from years of doing Sunday nights here). We gave her the piece of glass that was pulled from the sandwich and found the bit that had been in my mouth, which was probably about 2mm square. She asked if I was OK and I said I was, though I had cut the tip of my tongue, though not to the point of bleeding, but it sure did feel weird.

I got a replacement sandwich, and had my sandwich taken off the bill, as we pondered how a thin shard of glass could get into the food prep area, which for obvious reasons is kept free of glass containers. The best we could come up with was that something may have fallen and shattered, scattering pieces much father than expected. The odd part was that it was a pretty thin piece of glass, thinner than any of their drink glasses -- at least the ones that I've seen. Perhaps a Martini glass?

Oh well, no harm, no foul, and I'll be back there next Sunday.

Rakin'

2005-10-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

Today I spent about an hour and a half raking leaves, followed by an hour mowing the lawn. I've decided that I hate raking leaves. Well, not all leaves, the maple leaves are nice to rake. Large and easy to control.

It's the small leaves that pass through the fins of the rake, mocking me at every sweep, that really make the job less enjoyable. The same tree also drops its leaves' stems separate from the leaves, which is like raking toothpicks. Toothpicks that mock you. Whomever picked that tree should be punished by being forced to rake it's leaves in a high wind for all eternity.

I have five trees that are fully bare and two (a birch and something else I don't recognize) that haven't even turned yet. What's up with that?

After raking the leaves into a dozen small piles, I got the lawn mower out to use it to scoop them up. I was hoping that it would mulch the leaves as it bagged them, but it didn't (even though it's a mulching mower). However, even if it didn't save space in the garbage bags, it at least made it easy to get the leaves into garbage bags.

After that, I mowed the lawn for, hopefully, the last time this season. I'm looking forward to the snow.

Workin' in the basement

2005-10-28T09:44:00.000-05:00

These last few nights Sara has been out of town on a field trip to other museums to see how they do things and get some ideas of what works and what doesn't.

That left me with lonely evenings, and there was only one thing to do. Yep, work in the basement! :-)

The first night I got an additional 6 recessed lights hung and wire run, but not connected since I had forgotten to get the needed grommets for the wire going into the metal boxes attached to the lights. I had just enough time to lift some weights and take a shower before hitting the sack at about 10pm. Yep, that's my bedtime. What can I say, I'm getting old.

The second night, with grommets in hand, I wired up the lights and removed the temporary switch for the first bank and installed the two permanent switches to control the 12 lights. Nice and bright once again in the basement. There are some parts that still need more light, and I have 4 more lights that I will be installing for that purpose. The dimmers on the two banks give a nice effect allowing you to have just enough light for whatever you're doing. I then turned down the light levels and rode my mountain bike, clamped into a stationary stand, for about 25 minutes. Boy am I out of shape.

The third night, after coming home late from work, I only had time to install a new electrical outlet up near the ceiling for the wall mounted TV and ReplayTV that I had mounted over the weekend. No more extension cords, which is a good thing. Adding that outlet allowed me to easily get two outlets working again as well. Those outlets had been wired into the ceiling lights, so when I removed the lights, the outlets went dead. But, they had enough wire poking out of them that I could wire them into the new outlet which saved me from having to tear out more drywall just to get to them. Yea for my side! Another quick 25 minute bike ride and I was left unable to fall asleep until after 11:30pm. Argh, exercising too late at night can really throw off your sleep schedule.

And on the fourth night, Sara returned from her trip. I wanted to reinstall the low voltage wiring for the TV and ReplayTV, which is currently dangling from the ceiling since the wall it used to go into no longer exists, but Sara wanted to relax with me on the couch. What's a guy to do?

After a bit I told her that I needed to get up and exercise before it got too late, and she said that she had to make some "old time" candy to give away the next day at The Ramsey House. I finished riding the bike after about 30 minutes and came up to see Sara looking sad and complaining that making candy on an electric stove is impossible. I tried to help her out, but yeah, making candy on an electric stove, at least my stove, is an exercise in frustration.

The problem is that the cook top doesn't produce an even heat, instead turning the burner on and off as the stove deems necessary. What this does to a high sugar content fluid is a crime. Alternately boiling it and cooling it. Two things that are just no good for candy. I think if we had used a little more heat than medium and less than high, we might have been able to get the butterscotch and sugar to melt without burning, but in Sara's frustration she turned the stove up to high. That certainly caused the sugar to start to melt (the sugar and milk had turned into something resembling brown sugar when we added the butterscotch chips), but it was too hot and no amount of stirring and moving the pot on and off the heat could keep the butterscotch from turning a shade or two darker than it should have.

We did get it all melted, and I thought it tasted great, though it had a very smokey or Oakey flavor to it which meant that it had been burnt. Didn't taste anything like butterscotch if you ask me, but I think it was yummy none the less. Breaking it into 100+ pieces was a real chore, however, since it was supposed to be cut into squares and not just broken into random sized pieces. Unfortunately, she let it cool too much and I think I would have had better luck cutting it with my glass cutting tools than a kitchen knife. In the end, we just scored and snapped off pieces that were roughly, and I do mean roughly, uniform in size.

Hopefully everyone will like it, and I say that it's probably more authentic anyway since cooking over a wood-fired stove would surely result in uneven heating as well. I told her I would eat anything that they didn't, but to please not bring back any leftovers. It's just too yummy and I'm trying to be good. It was actually the first sweets that I had all week and I'd like to keep it that way. Too many temptations with Halloween coming up and all.

Oops

2005-10-26T08:42:00.000-05:00

This morning on my way into work I turned north onto Manning Ave, my usual way to work. Up in the distance I could see red and blue flashing lights and thought "Wow, they're really cracking down on speeders around here."

As I got to within about a quarter of a mile I saw that the cop car was sideways with it's back half in traffic and a tow truck, complete with flashing lights, was just pulling up. I was thinking "Do they impound cars around here for not having valid insurance or what could this person have done to get their car impounded on their way into work?"

As I got to with a hundred feet it became clear what had happened. The cop had driven off the shoulder, presumably trying to make a u-turn, and had beached his cruiser as there is quite a ditch at that point. Oops.

But it was OK, he had another officer there to keep him company while the tow truck started to figure out how they were going to get his car back onto the road. I'm sure that's going to require some explaining back at the station.

As I left, I couldn't help but think that whomever he was turning around to chase (if that's in fact what he was doing) was one lucky bastard. If only we could all be so lucky. :-)

Annoying Blog Spam

2005-10-26T08:39:00.000-05:00

OK, today I've had enough. After getting one too many posts from some loser about how to cook prime rib, I've turned off comments on this blog. If you're reading this, you probably already know my e-mail address, so if you want to comment, please do, but it will have to be by e-mail.

Blog spam

2005-10-24T09:10:00.000-05:00

Guy complained about blog spam a while ago, and it's finally gotten to the point where I'm going to turn off anonymous commenting as well.

Blog spam is really lame, just like regular spam, only I personally think it's even more lame than regular spam. It seems that there are bots (automated programs) running that are just looking for blog changes. When they find them, they immediately post a comment about their own topic (which would have nothing to do with the original blog entry) to the new blog entry. This ends up sending me a mail, and presumably anyone searching Google or the like would find their comment and their link.

I've noticed that for the most part blogger.com has been pretty good at automatically removing the bogus comments, but I still get the e-mail and that's pretty annoying. I then go in and delete the comment so that no one gets a chance to read it, and that's beginning to be a hassle.

So, the first step is turn off anonymous commenting and hope that helps. If that doesn't help, then I'll turn off commenting all together and you'll just have to e-mail me your comments. Safe bet that if I actually want to hear your comments, you already know my e-mail address. :-)

Destruction

2005-10-23T13:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Sara and I spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon deconstructing the fifth room, located in the basement. The plan is to have the basement open as one big space with the fitness equipment at one end, the TV and couches at the other, and a pool table in the middle. There will be a bathroom (probably with a shower instead of full tub) and of course the utilities, but the rest will be one large space.

I had removed the drywall earlier in the week so we started the morning by carrying that up and putting it in the back of the truck. We cut up the two layers of carpet and put that in the truck as well, which left the truck piled higher than I can probably drive with. I found a local solid waste transfer station, but decided that I would go there next week so as to not slow down the immediate progress in the basement.

We started on the walls next, which were clearly not constructed by a seasoned carpenter. It was nice that he had screwed many of the studs together since that made things easier to take apart. I still needed to get out the sawsall to cut through a few screws that I couldn't get to, but after that a big ol' mallet was able to finish off the walls with quickly.

I then attacked the wacky wiring in the basement. Removing the ugly fluorescent flights and some wires that were going in weird directions. I only got electrocuted once, luckily only across one hand, so it was just a tingle and not a jolt. When everything was done and the breakers were flipped back on I had three hot wires with caps on them and one shut off breaker (that was some of the outlets in the bedroom). I can reuse that one circuit (not quite sure where yet), but I don't want to use any of the other lines since they were coming from the first floor and not specific to the basement. Unfortunately I'll have to reuse one or else I'll have to remove even more drywall to rewire the two outlets that are remaining after the demo. Oh well, at least I have enough existing wire to add in the one outlet I need up in the wall for the Replay and TV.

In the immediate future I need to add a bunch more recessed lighting over the fitness equipment space and pool table area so that there is decent lighting to continue working. I've still got to put in some accent lighting, speaker wires, vent ducting, hang drywall, install subflooring, finished flooring, prime and paint, and then install the wet bar and cabinets. Well it will give me something to do this winter, that's for sure.

Fall cleanup

2005-10-16T11:49:00.000-05:00

Fall is upon us out here in the Midwest, though some of my trees are all but bare, and others haven't even changed color yet. I think we're past the "peak colors" time of the year and I'm bummed that I didn't get a chance to get out there on the motorcycle to check them out.

I kept meaning to ask my neighbors who they used to blow out their sprinkler systems, but I didn't get the chance, so I just went with a random name from the phone book. I've scheduled to have my sprinkler system blown out next week, but was woken up this morning by the sounds of a heavy duty air compressor running -- my neighbors were getting their sprinkler system blown out. Oh well, maybe next year I'll use their guy.

I spent an hour or so raking leaves while Sara planted bulbs in front of my house. The only problem with raking leaves while they're still falling is by the time you're done, it doesn't look like you even started, aside from the two bags full of leaves. I knew this was going to be multi-week process, but I was hoping that I could look at a clean lawn for at least a few minutes. Maybe next year I'll get a lawn vacuum so that even if I have to go over it multiple times, it won't be nearly so much work (raking is hard on the elbow). Plus the lawn vacuums shred the leaves resulting in fewer bags that I need to take to the local compost pile (at $1 a bag).

I think I'll need to mow the lawn at least once more (and probably two or three time more), but not this weekend. I mowed it last week (because I mow it every week), but it's definitely growing more slowly now so I'm going to be lazy this week and pretend it's a good thing. I just need to make sure that it's not too tall before it snows because apparently that can cause rot in the spring as the snow melts.

Home phone

2005-10-13T21:46:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I decided to cave in and get a home phone. It's not so much that I need one, but at times I want to have a bigger phone that rings louder, or has better battery life, or better sound quality, or I can have a two hour conversation on without costing a small fortune.

The main reason I did this is I'd like to be able to work from home for at least part of the winter (at least the really bad commute days), so having a phone that I can use for hours on end during the day is important.

However, I decided that I still don't need an actual phone, so I went with Vonage, a phone-over-internet (VoIP) provider instead. It looks like a pretty slick system, just a small box that you plug into your network and then plug your phone into. In my case I have just a phone cord going to my punch-down block in the basement so all the phone jacks in the house can eventually (currently I only have one physical phone) be on Vonage. The box supports two physical phone lines, and you can easily have two boxes connected to your network (based on what UDP ports I had to open in my firewall). It's only $14.99 a month for 500 outgoing minutes (incoming and Vonage to Vonage calls are always free) or $24.99 for unlimited minutes. I decided that 500 minutes should be more than I need.

The Vonage service is pretty nifty. I can get notified of new voicemail via e-mail, with or without the actual voicemail audio, if I so choose. I can configure a whole host of things related to my phone line from their website. A really cool feature is that for only $4.99 I can get a virtual phone number -- a number that works only for incoming calls. This number can have any area code that Vonage supports (which is most of them) so that friends and family can call me as if it was just a local call (which are always free to me). And there a lot more cool options like that, with hopefully new ones able to added quite easily.

The sound quality is exactly what I would expect from my phone. They give you a selectable quality level of 30kbs (low), 50kbs (average), or 90kbs (default - high) so you can tailor your bandwidth usage to your available bandwidth. I've not tried using the phone and doing a large upload yet, so I don't know what happens when my uplink is busy.

The most interesting thing is that your phone number is tied to your box, which is reasonably small. You can take you box with you on a trip and be carrying your local phone with you. I can see how this would work out great for a business traveler that books a hotel with broadband access, especially since calls to you will follow you wherever you go. Of course this plays havoc with 911 calls, so they make you click through a bunch of screens talking about this and make you enter your physical location before they'll activate the 911 service, but it's a small price to play for the convenience.

All in all, it's a pretty slick system and I think I'm going to like it a lot. I'll report back on any issues that might crop up.

Out of town

2005-10-11T08:30:00.000-05:00

Last week I left sunny and nice MN for hot and smoggy CA (Anaheim area) to finish up the USB Audio 2.0 spec. The flight out Tuesday morning (at 7am ) was delayed for 2 hours because of lightning in the area which prevented the refueling and baggage loading. Apparently the storm dumped 5-6 inches of rain and caused landslides in my general area (where they were doing construction on the roads). Nothing happened to my place and my basement remained dry. Yea for me.

On the first day, I went to Irwindale to meet the people at the main headquarters of my company to put faces to names and voices. Funny how people never look like how you imagine them to be.

The next few long days we finished the spec and it's now available for public comment on the USB web site. If you've got anything bad to say about it, now's the time! Remember though, no new materials will be added, and no changes will be made unless it's to correct an error in the spec.

Lucy was glad to see me when I got home, and I think she had gotten even fatter while I was away. I think she eats when she's lonely (don't we all?). Sad.

Stupid people

2005-09-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

It seems they are all around... Here's a useful page that explains them, why they exist, and the 5 rules to live by when dealing with stupid people. Long, but a funny read with funny pictures.

Chilly morning

2005-09-29T09:03:00.000-05:00

Whew, today was a bit nippy to ride the motorcycle, being a balmy 36 degrees this morning, but I decided to ride the 16 miles anyway. I'm trying to ride the motorcycle more, both to save on gas, and to just ride more.

I put the liner in my jacket, which was good since even on the 40-50 degree mornings I get chilled without it. I didn't put the liner in my overpants, thinking that I wouldn't need them. Wrong. I was good for the first five miles, but after that my quads were quite cold.

I put on a neck warmer but I didn't get it around my chin, which I was thinking wouldn't be a problem. Again, wrong. I should have put on my mouth and nose warmer too but elected not to. That was a mistake, but not as uncomfortable as the exposed chin. I'll need to figure out what I can do to stop the visor from fogging up too. For a couple of mile stretch I was driving with the left half moderately fogged and the right half completely clear. Weird since my breathing isn't obstructed.

It takes a little while to get used to the thicker winter gloves. I lurched off the line when the light turned green in Hudson (the only light on my way to work) due to cold hands and thick gloves. I'm sure I've looked more graceful.

I think I'll get those handlebar warmers, but other than that, I think I'm set to ride as long as the roads stay dry. Only saw one other motorcycle this morning, a full dress tourer. I'm glad to know I'm not the only crazy one.

Kickball trouble

2005-09-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

Last night our team, Matt's Rats, played our fifth game. We finally won a game, but no one enjoyed the game and the win was bitter sweet at best. The team we were playing was previously known for being a bunch of jerks, so we weren't in a good position when we started.

The first few innings went quickly with few, if anyone getting on base. My first kick was a line drive to the third baseman who caught it in the air. My second attempt was where it all went wrong.

I had a good low kick towards the third baseman who fielded the ball after a brief fumbling, but he was a good thrower and I was going to have to run at maximum speed if I was going to beat the throw to first. I put my head down and sprinted as quickly as I could. I followed the chalk line until I saw the bag, looked up and realized that the first baseman, a petite woman weighing maybe 100lbs, was standing fully on first base. I had barely enough time to get my hands up before I ran into her, totally flattening her and launching her at least a foot from the bag. Everyone was pissed. They were looking like they wanted to start a fight, yelling that I should have run for the orange side of the double wide first base bag (to the right of the line I was running down). I was apologetic. This sort of thing happens in one form or another in basically every game (in fact it happened to our team a few innings later where a runner to second took out our shortstop as he went to back up second base).

After that their team got a bit riled up and was able to tie the score, 2 to 2. We likewise got riled up, but mainly wanted to shake off the event. The next inning I made all three outs, a suitable response, though it didn't make me feel any better. My team tried to console me and told me to shake it off. I tried as best I could.

An inning or two later, a guy tried for a double and was thrown out at second (I was playing second base). I had a foot on the base when the ball came to me, but since it wasn't a force, I had to reach around and tag him (easier said than done with an 8" rubber ball). The ump called him out, but people began to shout that it wasn't a force and that he was safe. He had slid into second, but was currently touching it, so I touched his shoulder with the ball and said "You're out now for sure." He then put his hand on the bag and I removed the ball. He was complaining that he was safe, and removed his hand from the bag, which he was still sitting next to, so I tagged him again on the shoulder. Whereupon he hit me with the back of his fist in my groin (I was standing, he was sitting). Appalled I asked the ump if he had seen it. He had, and said he was appalled too and the guy was out. I was expecting something more along the lines of ejected, but no such luck. Once again my teammates consoled me and told me to shake it off.

There were some more calls that were more in our team's favor than theirs, all of which I either agreed with or didn't see (during one of which they convinced the umps, after about 5 minutes, to reverse their call, putting a man on 3rd). One of the suspect calls was a force at second where I had my foot on the third base side of the bag, giving the runner a clear path to the bag, which the team argued I wasn't touching, but they were clearly wrong; the runner even agreed that he was out.

At the end of the long night, we won 4 to 2, but no one was happy about the win (except a few members of the team that played them the week before). My neck was beginning to stiffen up, most likely as a result of crashing into the woman at first base, and I was in a fairly foul mood. Half of the team went to Matt's bar (our sponsor) in Saint Paul for beer and burgers. They told me that things like this seem to happen every week, though this was obviously the first time for me, and I shouldn't worry about it.

Next week we have a bye (and I'd be in California anyway). Hopefully this will give us time to get back in the spirit of kickball -- having fun.

Very busy

2005-09-28T08:44:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging lately because I've been pretty busy, at least for me.

Last week I was on vacation while Mom came out from California to visit and see if Minnesota might be the place for her. We looked at over a dozen houses, seeing one, actually the first, that was really great. Eventually she decided that it wasn't for her, but Minnesota probably was. I think I'll be seeing a lot more of her by the middle of next year.

There's lots of work to be done in my basement to convert it from one giant unfinished room plus a half finished bedroom and turn it into a home theater, wet bar, workout area, and bathroom.

Towards that end I got 6 recessed lights installed, along with their requisite new drop from the main electrical panel, and a dimmer that doesn't seem to be quite useful (the first 50% of the travel basically does nothing).

I then started working on making the walls for the bathroom. Since I don't know what kind of bathroom I want (tub, shower, steam shower, etc.) I don't know how wide to make the room, so I don't know where two of the three walls are supposed to go. That left me with just the back wall which was obvious as to where it needed to go. Unfortunately, there are three drain pipes and two flues where that wall need to be as well. Since I no longer use the tank water heater, I was able to remove its flue and get the flue vent to be no more in the way than the one drain pipe that I was going to have to make a soffet around, so that's cool. I made two mini walls between the drain pipes, did the soffet, had fun with power tools and a powder actuated nailer (drives nails using a 22 caliber-like gunpowder charge).

I also added hot and cold water lines for the wet bar, right next to the drain pipe for the washer, which I plan to cut into as soon as I find a store that sells PVC in increments less than 10' long. Cutting into the existing water lines was fun. I didn't think to leave a faucet running when I turned off the water shutoff so there was a fair amount of pressure when I cut into the lines. No worries, I had a bucket right there and there was little over spray. I then I had to take the pipes off their hangers, so that I could slip insulation over them, which would further drain the pipe and require me to jump off the ladder and run to the bucket to get it under the draining pipe. After doing two water lines with no leaks, I was quite happy.

To round out the vacation I got lots of TV watching in, drove around and looked at some new and used cars (just for fun), and slept in as much as could.

All in all, it was a good vacation, but not nearly long enough. Now I just have to figure out how wide to make the bathroom...

Little party

2005-09-11T12:24:00.000-05:00

Last night Sara had a little birthday party for herself at my place. Her actual birthday is Sept 19, but I guess she's busy that day so planned it for the 10th instead.

She invited a bunch of her friends, and I invited a couple of coworkers. Unfortunately, it appeared that several other people were having parties that night, so she didn't get a great turnout, and several people had to leave early to go to other parties.

It was a Mardi Gras themed party, planned long before Hurricane Katrina, so I got Hurricane glasses, the fixings to make Hurricanes, and 190 proof Everclear to soak Maraschino cherries in to go onto the umbrella in the Hurricane. Everclear is not legal for sale in Minnesota, but luckily I work in Wisconsin where it is legal for sale. When I told the young girl working the register that fact she replied "No wonder why so many people come in here and ask for it!"

The party went slowly at first, but eventually had a good turnout and people were talking and having fun. No one wanted to make the first slice into the homemade cheesecake (which is a pretty common thing for Minnesota), so after an appropriate amount of time I made the first cuts, took a big (yummy) slice for myself, and moved it to a prominent position on a table whereupon it was quickly devoured.

Towards the end of the evening, I was slicing some bread with my meat carving knife. The hard crusted bread made starting the cut difficult since the carving knife doesn't have a point. I had my fingers curled back and against the blade, but when it slipped, it still managed to embed itself into my left index finger's nail. Apparently quite deeply since it didn't stop bleeding for more than 10 minutes. If it hadn't been under the nail it would probably need a stitch, but I'm hoping some compression bandaids will prevent scarring and a permanently mangled fingernail.

Moving and appliances

2005-08-29T18:56:00.000-05:00

This weekend was quite a busy weekend, and I'm still feeling its effects.

It started out early Saturday (around 7:30am) morning when Sara and I drove to Saint Paul to help a couple of her friends move from their very small second floor apartment to a much bigger three bedroom house a short distance away.

The first order of business was to pick up bagels for us and the "crew" of friends. I wanted cinnamon sugar bagels. I ordered two for myself while Sara was on the phone with her friend, who apparently also wanted a cinnamon sugar bagel. Sara thought I heard this and that's why I was ordering two cinnamon sugar bagels. Apparently she didn't realize that I just need that much sugar to get me going in the morning. So, of course, after I had eaten both bagels before we got to her friend's house, the only thing left to do was to go back to the bagel store and pick up two more.

The little one bedroom apartment was jam packed with stuff in boxes (some well packed, some not so well packed), bags, and other random containers. A lot of the bigger furniture was trapped behind the boxes. I didn't even realize that they had a storage locker that was apparently jam packed as well.

I moved the box spring mattress and half a dozen garment boxes down to the truck, and then decided that I would be the one to stay inside the hot and stale-air truck and arrange stuff as the other three or four friends brought stuff down from their apartment. I think this was probably the best arrangement as I was, to everyone's amazement, able to cram basically everything into the moderately sized U-Haul enabling us to do it all in just one trip. The hardest part was that it seemed that every box was labeled "Fragile", "Very Fragile", or "Extremely Fragile". Can you stack very fragile on top of fragile? I hope so.

After helping to unload all of the items (which always takes like one tenth the amount of time of loading) we were treated to "Hot Dish" which was best described as macaroni and cheese with spicy sausage and a thick cheese crust. For desert there was a chocolate cake with a yummy bottom layer of chocolate chips and sweet stuff (marshmallow?).

After getting home and cleaning up, Sara and I headed out to look at appliances, specifically ranges, but I cant help being attracted to other shiny things in an appliance store. The idea behind that was that she keeps saying that I should get a Viking range, while I prefer the (much) less expensive Jenn-Air ranges, specifically for their gas grill option. By the time we had left the appliance showroom I think she was convinced that we could get a whole lot more kitchen if we went with appliances other than those by Viking, and they would be able to cook food probably just as well. If we're going to be doing a lot of cooking at home (which it's seeming like we might be doing) I think I might order that Jenn-Air sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, I've been so busy over the past few weeks that I haven't been able to complete this blog entry until now (two weeks later). The worst part is, I'm sure there was something else that happend that weekend (like a party or something), but now I can't remember it! Oh well, it couldn't have been that interesting, right?

1840's rules baseball

2005-08-29T18:31:00.000-05:00

A week ago Saturday Sara and I made a 115 mile trek north to Bruno on the motorcycle to watch her friends play in an 1840 rules baseball game.

Sara made the mistake of not having proper shoes or a jacket for the ride. I thought that she was going to at least be wearing her long sleeved shirt, but first thing when we stopped for gas she took that off, leaving her wearing just a tank top. I wasn't super thrilled about her not having proper riding gear, but I've seen people wearing a whole lot less out here, and the freeway is safest place for a motorcyclist.

We started out going up highway 61, through East Saint Paul (a rather tough section of town), saw some mounted police (who waved back to us), but decided to get onto highway 35 North as we were averaging only about 35mph going along highway 61 (which is probably the original freeway before the interstate was put in) because of all of the towns with stop lights.

The baseball game was interesting. It would be easily recognized as baseball, though there are no strikes or balls and only a home "plate" umpire. The pitcher throws until you hit the ball fair (so if you aren't getting good pitches you can ask him to pitch it to a certain place over the plate) or a foul is caught. No one has a glove, but the ball is rather soft and bouncy, so catching it on a single bounce is also a fly out. When you score a run, you have to ring a little bell, apparently so that the scorekeeper notices.

We were worried that we didn't have any sunscreen, and before the game was over I noticed that I had sunburn on the back of my hands (I wasn't wearing gloves because Sara wasn't wearing a jacket -- a sort of reminder) and Sara was worried about my head (not a lot of hair up there anymore). She claimed that she didn't sunburn, though she was interested in getting some sunscreen for herself. We couldn't find the general store in the town of 102, and decided to grin and bear it.

By the time we got home, Sara's back was lobster red and she spent the following week nursing it with lotion. Luckily for us, the helmet's visors are UV treated so we didn't get sunburned on our faces (though I got some on the top of my head while watching baseball).

Interestingly enough, when her skin flakes off, it removes the tan and exposes the burn again. I say interesting, because when my burns flake off, I'm still tan underneath, so I didn't realize that it worked any other way.

Sara has definitely learned her lesson. No matter how warm it might be, it's not worth it to not have a jacket, for more than one reason.

I decided that I needed a top case for the motorcycle so that I could cary important things, like sun tan lotion, and have a place to store jackets when we get to where we're going.

Tail's well

2005-08-29T18:26:00.000-05:00

For those of you following the Lucy saga, she's doing great. Her tail has been shaved, and after a day where it was probably still a bit sore, she's acting like nothing ever happened; which I suppose is the case since I've recently learned that cats' memory is limited to about 16 hours (substantially better than a dog's 15 minute memory).

Tail trouble

2005-08-21T13:34:00.000-05:00

Last night Sara and I attempted to shave the last four inches of Lucy's tail's hair to remove the wax that was stuck on it. We decided that this was the thing to do since Lucy has been kinda freaking out about the wax on her tail. We hoped that if we removed it, or lessened it, that she would be able to clean it herself and make things better.

Sara put on my welding gloves, we wrapped Lucy in a towel, and then I tried to shave her tail with my electric shaver. Lucy was less than agreeable to this and Sara bore the brunt of her malfeasance (being the one closest to the end with the teeth and claws). I was able to reduce the amount of wax on her tail, and we thought that would allow her to chew the rest of it out over the coming days.

I saw her chewing at her tail this morning and was hoping that she would have it all fixed up in short order. Unfortunately, that didn't go as planned. She removed a lot, but not all, of the wax herself. Unfortunately, it seems she chewed her tail raw in the process.

What that translates into is a cat that's afraid of her own tail because it seems to hurt whenever she touches anything with it. She had been running around the house afraid of her tail for at least 20 minutes until, panting(!), she came and sat on my lap -- I guess hoping that I would save her from her tail.

I tried to calm her down by holding her tail, stroking her, and "shushing" her. It seemed to be working, but then as she grew more content she started to wag her tail and she grew more restless. She started hissing at me, or her tail, it was hard to tell as she circled and jumped around on my lap. She was crying and meowing and looking quite scared. I decided that I would have to finish the job and wondered how I would hold her down all by myself.

I got her, my electric shaver, and a blanket. I wrapped her in my blanket and she immediately started to squirm and cry. I decided that the only way to hold her down was to sit on her and squeeze her between my legs. I started shaving her tail, much to her dislike. She started to squirm, quite forcefully, and then started to howl and cry like I've never heard a cat cry before -- it almost sounded like a baby crying. Spooky. I tried to console her with my voice, but decided that be best way to console her would be shave her as quickly as I could.

After a minute or so, she got her head free, or maybe a foot, but I think it was her head, and sunk something very sharp into my ankle. That halted the shaving for a brief moment as I had to rearrange her and the blanket. I was able to quickly finish shaving her tail and made sure that it wasn't bleeding from my trimming. She ran off, and I took my bleeding foot upstairs to clean and bandage it.

After a few minutes she had time to settle down. I think that she's doing better. Certainly she doesn't have a giant wax club on the end of her tail making life miserable for her. She's still a bit jumpy around her tail, but I'm hoping that her unease will lessen as the pain wears off. Too bad I don't have any pain meds for her, but I think she's a trooper and will be fine by the end of the day. At least that's what I'm hoping for.

Will she learn?

2005-08-19T10:46:00.000-05:00

Last night Sara and I decided to do a romantic soak in the tub (hey, that's why I bought the uber water heater!) complete with bubble bath and a couple of candles to set the mood. One for light, and one of the new Glade scented oil candles.

Of course Lucy had to come and check out the bubbles and see what we were up to (generally just relaxing in a hot tub after a long day). Occasionally Lucy would check out one of the candles, but clearly didn't enjoy sniffing the flame. I was worried she might loose a whisker or two, but she seemed to be keeping clear of them. Until she decided that she wanted to check out the glass of ice water we had on hand.

Her tail was perilously close to the flame from the Glade candle, and I could see things going badly in short order. But, I couldn't figure out how to get her tail away from the candle without her tucking it right down into the candle, as lowering her tail is what she does when I attempt to move her or scold her, or whenever she gets nervous. So, as we tried to get her away from the candle, and she decided to stand her ground, her tail went right into the scented oil (which is really just a low melting point wax) and she hopped off the tub with a noticeably weird looking tail. About 30 seconds later the smell of burnt fur wafted through the air, overpowering the light scent of vanilla from the candle.

When Lucy pulled her tail around to sniff it, she recoiled in horror and began to run around the bathroom, unable to retreat from her heavy-with-wax tail. Sara and I cracked up laughing. The combination of pungent odor, death defying fire walking, and uninjured, but clearly freaked, cat was just too funny.

I attempted to touch her tail a few minutes later, but that immediately sent Lucy running for cover. I chased her down and verified that she only had wax stuck to her tail and doesn't appear to be missing much fur, so I doubt there is any serious burn under there.

Later that night, as she lay beside me, she whipped her now significantly heavier tail back and forth clubbing me with it for about 10 minutes during the night. I'm guessing that means she's not actually injured.

Now the question is, can she eat that wax out of her tail, do I try to clip or shave it out, or do I just leave it there? But really, the question I want answered is, did she learn her lesson?

Random Summer Party

2005-08-14T13:52:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I had a party, inviting everyone I knew, including my kickball teammates for some drinks, BBQ, s'mores, and fun. Unfortunately only one of my teammates (other than Sara) was able to make it, and a few of my coworkers weren't able to make it either. But, it was definitely the best turnout that I've had at any of my parties. It was probably the right amount of people for the size of the house, it wasn't too crowded and it wasn't too sparse.

As usual, I had way too much food and soda, though not enough of the "right" kind of beer for a summer party. Apparently a summer party calls for a lighter kind of beer than Sam Adams Lager. But that's OK, since we also needed tonic water and there is a liquor store only two blocks away. The tonic and proper beer were acquired and everyone was happy.

Many thanks go out to my coworker Sean for tending the BBQ all night while I played host and showed people around the house. He did this, without complaint, the day after having worked all night BBQ'ing at his father's business in Hudson. All of the food was cooked to perfection, and the biggest complaint seemed to have been that I didn't have any BBQ sauce for the chicken.

Since it was the day after my friend Amanda's birthday, and a week before my friend Dave's birthday, I was going to have two cakes on hand for a muted celebration. I was going to bake a Devil's Food cake for Amanda, and Sara was going to bake a yellow cake with "yummy" icing for Dave and we were going to have a contest to see what's better, cake from a box, or home-made cake. However, with the time pressures of late, I wasn't even able to make a cake from a box. Sara, on the other hand, brought all the needed ingredients to my place and baked a yummy cake while guests slowly arrived. I called the local bakery the day before to get a chocolate cake with only frosting in the middle (because Amanda doesn't like icing).

Everyone agreed that Sara's cake was better than the bakery's cake, though I personally like chocolate cake better than yellow cake. However, judging by the fact that only Amanda and I had any of the huge 12" double layer chocolate cake, it was clear that Sara's cake was the runaway favorite. Or maybe it was the yummy icing that put hers over the top.

As the sun went down and it started to get cold, I fired up the copper fire bowl which did a good job of keeping those near it warm and providing ambiance. Not to mention the ability to cook marshmallows for s'mores.

In the end, it was just Trevor and Sean (a couple of coworkers), Sean's wife Stacia, Sara, and I sitting around the fire bowl looking for shooting starts from the Persius meteor shower and shooting the breeze. Sean was able to spot a few shooting stars, while I was attempting to stay out of the smoke of the fire. I wasn't very successful as my still burning eyes will attest to.

All in all, it was a great party that I believe everyone enjoyed. Unfortunately, now I have to clean up the mess.

Irish Fair

2005-08-14T13:19:00.000-05:00

Friday evening, Sara and I went to the Irish Fair in Saint Paul for some good food, music, and general fair fun.

We wanted to meet up with a couple of friends of Sara's that were serving beer at one of the tents and hopefully hang out with them while waiting for Floggy Molly to begin playing. Unfortunately, the fair was far busier than expected, and they weren't able to talk for more than a minute or two before they had to go back to serving beer.

Sara and I hung out listening to the bands and talking. When it got cold and windy, which was unexpected given the warm weather we've been having, I bought Sara an "Irish girls rule" T-shirt to keep the evening from ending prematurely.

Before 10pm, and the Fair's close snuck up on us, we got a couple more beers, and ran into a group of Sara's friends in the beer line. We chatted for twenty or thirty minutes, and then eventually decided to head out as they were turning off the lights and clearly wanted us to leave. We called a cab, since we had taken a cab to the fair to avoid parking problems, and waited for it while watching the gridlock of cars attempting to leave. The cab ride to the fair had been only $4, but the traffic caused the return trip to be nearly $15. Significantly more than even the most expensive $10 parking space, but worth it to not have to worry about driving or dealing with the madness of the traffic.

Kickball party

2005-08-07T12:24:00.000-05:00

Friday evening my kickball team had its season's end backyard BBQ party. I got there right at 7pm (when the party was supposed to start) because I was told to bring the grill and charcoal and I figured I needed to be there early to get the grill going. It turned out that they already had a grill, but thought that they might need two to keep up with the demand. Turns out that theirs was enough to keep up with demand, but my BBQ utensils were definitely well received.

Two beers on an empty stomach and both Saire (whom I now learn wants to be called Sara) and I are feeling just fine. Sara and I spent a lot of time talking and hanging out together, and I was now pretty sure that she liked me. That the previous weekend's motorcycle ride was more than just friendly, but I still wasn't totally sure because when you begin dating a friend it can be quite confusing in that transition phase. I told her that I got tickets to the Saturday evening St. Paul Saints baseball game from my Realtor Dan (something we had talked about during the motorcycle ride) and Sara accepted. Yea!

I accidentally smacked my drink out of my hand while batting away a mosquito and this meant that I had to go into the cage (a 10'x5' open-topped cage connected to the detached garage where I guess they used to keep a dog) where I would have to wait for 5 minutes, unless someone challenged me to a match of cage dodge ball. Luckily someone did almost immediately, I was able to strike first, and thus secured my freedom from the cage.

After all but 6 people had gone home, some time around midnight, we decided to go to the park a few blocks away and play some kickball. Playing kickball in the dark is quite difficult. Especially when it comes to catching a fly ball, which bounced off of one player before she even realized it was coming to her. A good time was had by all, and apparently we were laughing a bit too loudly. As we were getting to our car the Edina police showed up. Oops.

I initially put my hands in my pockets because that's what I do when I'm nervous, but then decided it would be better to clasp them in front of me. Clearly the cop wasn't too worried as he only ever got one leg out of his car before asked "Are you guys playing kickball or something out here? Because we got a noise complaint." I said yes, apologized for making noise, and clearly we were in the process of leaving. The cop got back in his car and left and we were all relieved, though slighted embarrassed.

I drove Sara back to her car, agreed to pick her up the next day at 5:30 for the baseball game, and drove home very happy.

Dark and stormy night

2005-08-04T15:48:00.000-05:00

Wow, last night had to have been the best lightning show I've ever tried to sleep through.

Around 12:30am the skies opened up with fire-hose like rain and non-stop lightning for twenty minutes. The lightning must have been a ways away. It seemed to be more cloud-to-cloud than cloud-to-ground, because I couldn't hear much of the thunder over the furious maelstrom of rain against the windows. It sure did light up the bedroom though -- through my sunlight blocking shades no less.

I've never been in a storm that had non-stop lightning. I would have been impressed if I hadn't been so darn tired and trying to sleep with a pillow over my head.

Lucy didn't seem to mind the weather, just one large thunderclap that was obviously very close made her sit up and pay attention. Actually, I think she was more freaked out by the power going out than by the thunder. How come animals seem to perk up when the power goes out? Is it's sub-audible (for humans at least) humming stopping abruptly a bit of a shocker? Or is it just the noise that so many modern things make when they have their power yanked that freaks them out?

Motorcycling with Saire

2005-08-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening I went for a pleasant evening ride with my fellow kickball teammate, Saire, along the Mississippi.

I bought a new Arai helmet on Thursday and second speaker/microphone setup for my Autocom bike audio system, cleaned my old helmet (the cheek-pad liners are washable and I sprayed Fabreeze inside) and got the bike ready.

I picked her up at her apartment at about 4:30pm and we decided to see the replica of the Nina, that was docked in Hudson and then head down the St. Croix river until it meets up with the Mississippi.

It was a bit warmer than I would have liked (about 90 with 50-60% humidity), especially for wearing a black jacket. At least my jacket was vented, though initially her hands holding onto me were, you guessed it, covering the vents. Once we were moving the heat wasn't too bad, which always makes me wonder why people refuse to wear proper protective gear. The intercom system on the bike worked well, though Saire didn't always talk loud enough to turn on the VOX (but I can adjust that).

Standing in line at the Nina was a killer and we were dehydrated by wait. That is a damn small boat. It's hard to believe that it could sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Since it was completely empty it was riding high above the water, but apparently fully loaded for a trip across the ocean it would have been so low in the water that its decks would be almost constantly awash. Scary.

Before we left on our long trip, I bought us some water and a map of Wisconsin and plotted our route south.

We drove along Highway 35 in Wisconsin, taking a 15 mile detour in Pepin to visit the original log cabin home of Laura Ingalls Wilder (or more likely, a replica), until we crossed over to Minnesota in Wabasha and headed north on 61, into the setting sun. This appeared to be a common motorcycle route as we saw probably a hundred other motorcycles on the trip. The scenery was fabulous in parts, especially with the sun setting on the river, and I wished that I had a camera (better than my cell phone's) with me.

In Hastings I had to pull over and switch from my sunglasses to my regular glasses as with the sun mostly down, it was getting pretty hard to see. Saire took the opportunity to stretch her legs, which I was afraid of doing for fear of cramping up. We had been on the bike for about 4 hours at that point and let's face it, the bike's not that comfortable (but it's certainly better than any bike I've had before).

It seems that most of Minnesota, even that in the tourist section along the river, was closed for Sunday evening. We had to ride back to Cottage Grove before we found someplace that wasn't a fast food restaurant for dinner. A nice dinner of decent burgers and some speciality lemonade and we were back on the bike, finishing a trip of nearly 200 miles.

I got her back to her apartment at about 10:30pm safe and sound (without even any close calls). We did that whole awkward "did you have fun?" thing, decided that we did and that we wanted to do it again. We made tentative plans for doing dinner or another ride at some time in the future, but didn't actually set a date. She's busy with family in town so it's not likely that we'll be able to meet up again until Friday at the end-of-kickball-season party, but that's OK. We don't want to rush into anything, do we?

Stealth

2005-07-31T09:06:00.000-05:00

Last night I went out with a coworker, Joel, and his wife to see Stealth and have a late dinner.

Stealth was a much better movie than I was expecting, pretty much by virtue of being a different movie than I expected. It was kind of an I, Robot meets Iron Eagle movie (down to the bad rock music played by the robot plane during attack missions). I'll try not to spoil the movie, which means I won't be saying much. Suffice it to say that you really have to suspend disbelief to make this movie work.

One part that I noticed was that there was a new Pontiac GTO in the movie. It was in the movie for about 10 seconds alltogether, and I have to wonder if Pontiac is pissed that a bunch of footage of the GTO was left on the cutting room floor.

Birthday fun

2005-07-31T08:37:00.000-05:00

Friday evening I went to the birthday party of Lori, one of my kickball teammates. It was held at Elsie's, a local bowling alley, but not your average bowling alley. It's part bowling alley, part sports bar, and part classy restaurant. We had a reserved section with our own private bar and server.

Lori has a great batch of friends, many of them driving or flying quite a distance to make it to her 30th celebration. Early in the party, before too many people arrived, I was able to chat with a few of them, being one of the few kickball people that was talking to non-kickball people.

Also at the party, and one of my fellow kickball teammates, was Saire, and I spent much of the evening talking with her. She has previously mentioned a desire to go motorcycling, as a passenger, so I've offered to take her out for a ride.

We'll probably be doing a ride along the Mississippi river Sunday afternoon/evening. I wish the weather was better today; highs in the upper 70's would be ideal, but instead they'll be in the low 90's. At least we'll be able to chat while riding, making wearing a helmet in this weather slightly more pleasant. She'll be wearing my old helmet and I bought a new helmet for myself, along with a second speaker/microphone setup to create an intercom with my Autocom setup.

Not a lot going on

2005-07-29T08:47:00.000-05:00

This week has been pretty quiet. We got some much needed rain over the weekend, though I don't think that getting two inches in an hour is the best way to make up for a long dry spell. The wind (50+mph, trees downed) and rain was very impressive. The kind of impressive that makes you really glad you have a well built structure. Tossing all that aside, however, I went outside to stand in the fury and quickly changed my mind. Instead, I just stood hunkered down in the corner of the porch that wasn't getting pounded. The air funneling between my and my neighbor's house produced some impressive velocities and the rain was basically horizontal through there. On other people's houses it was coming off so fast that it was over shooting their gutters. Lucy poked her head out, but had more sense than I did.

That storm signaled the start of cooler weather here and this week as been all mid to upper 70's, which is far nicer than the high 80's and mid 90's that we'd had for the previous two weeks. Looks like next week is going to be all 90's though.

I changed my sprinklers to run twice per day (but for half as long each time) in an effort to keep some water in the ground and the grass alive. The grass is looking better, though I have to adjust a couple of sprinkler heads and trim some low tree branches. I think that the morning and night watering might be the key to keeping the grass alive (either that, or the massive storm).

I changed the oil in the Miata over the weekend. Since I hadn't changed it in probably two years, I decided to unbolt the oil cooler and drain it as well. How did I ever get that thing up in there in the first place? It must have taken me 20 minutes to get it out. This is all in preparation for getting the Miata out and tuned with the wide band O2 sensor -- something that I've been meaning to do for the last couple of years now. Maybe I'll get it done before winter. I wouldn't bet on it though.

I got a coupon for 10% off an unlimited amount of Home Depot purchases, this weekend only. I have been wanting to work on the basement, but plunking down $5k or more for lights, drywall, sub-flooring, flooring, and other miscellaneous bits isn't really what I want to do at this point. It's definitely temping, but I don't really want to tap into my investments at this point, and my checking account really can't handle that kind of expenditure at this point. They usually send out these kind of coupons a couple of times a year (though usually they're 10% off up to $200), so perhaps I'll just get some drywall and lights this weekend and save the really big purchases for later in the year when I've had more time to save.

Tonight I'm hoping to have some fun with the kickball team at a member's birthday party which is being held in a bowling alley/restaurant. That should be fun.

No plans for the weekend, but maybe I'll do some demolition of the existing bedroom in the basement because it doesn't really fit into my plan of a home theater/pool table/work-out space.

Trapped!

2005-07-24T12:26:00.000-05:00

Last evening I went outside to check on the state of the lawn (it's doing OK, though there are still a number of brown spots) and Lucy decided to follow me out.

It was hot and humid outside so I didn't want to stay out too long, but Lucy didn't want to come quite so quickly. I left her out unsupervised, hoping that she would want to come back in quickly. Twenty minutes later I was worried because she wasn't waiting to come in. After doing two laps around the house, calling out her name, she finally came out of the bush she was hiding in. I decided that it was time for her to come in. I picked her up, went to the sliding door and put her down, expecting her to go inside. Instead she immediately turned around.

I decided that I'd go back inside and check on her later. Another 20 minutes passed and she's still not waiting at the door. It's starting to get dark, and I'm not looking forward to trying to find a black cat in the dark, so I go back out looking for her.

Calling her name and walking the perimeter of the house (which she likes to stay close to, I don't think she likes the grass, preferring the mulch) I finally heard her. She was doing a non-stop meow and standing in the egress pit for the basement bedroom. The dew on the window told me that she had been scratching at the window. I wondered for how long? But, that answers the question I had. Could she could jump the 4+ feet out of the egress pit? The answer is no (well, maybe she didn't try hard enough).

I jumped down, picked her up and put her on the ledge (briefly wondering if I could jump up) and then got out, scooped her up and took her back inside. Interestingly, she wanted to run right back outside, but I wasn't going to let her.

I was really worried about losing her, I don't think I'm going to be letting her outside too much again.

Cool links

2005-07-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

I found a few cool links that I thought were worth sharing...

An article in a German newspaper about birds learning to imitate cell phone rings is interesting. Apparently they do it as a way of trying to keep their territory by spoofing the sound of encroaching birds, thus making those birds think the territory is already occupied by one of their kind.

For you motorcycle fans, a motorcycle powered by 24 chainsaw motors. 'Nuff said. Be sure to check out the videos, and if anyone can translate German, I'd love to know what the rider had to report.

And on the "is that really useful?" front, the Optimus keyboard has little screens for each of the keys so that you can have your keyboard display any symbol you want for any key. I suppose that means the end of the keyboard overlays, but I like the Das keyboard, a keyboard without any symbols, better.

Red Dawn

2005-07-20T09:04:00.000-05:00

This morning I was awakened by the crash of thunder at about 5:35am. That meant that I had to get up and close a few windows and to my great surprise I opened my eyes to find the entire world (at least all that I could see from my second story windows) an eerie red. It was more than just the cool red sky you get in the evening. It was more than just some red clouds. It was everything. It was like I had awakened on another planet. It was cool.

Too bad for you I was too tired to find the camera and take any pictures. By the time the heavy rain, howling wind, and non-stop thunder hit, the world had returned to a neutral blue/green/grey color. Now I fully comprehend the saying "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning." I wouldn't have wanted to be staring at storm like that if I was stuck in a little wooden boat in the middle of the ocean.

Movie night

2005-07-17T11:35:00.000-05:00

Last night I went out and saw Wedding Crashers and then met up with a coworker to see Fantastic Four.

Wedding Crashers was pretty darn funny, at least for the first 30 minutes. I didn't realize that it was an R rated movie either until topless women started flopping down onto beds. Was amazed me most was that during some pretty crass scenes, I heard more women laughing than men. Quite frankly, I was expecting that these kinds of scenes wouldn't play too well in middle America, but apparently they do. Maybe it's not so bad out here after all.

Fantastic Four was decent, not great, not bad, but not really as much of a "big screen" movie as I was expecting. There is action, but not as much as I expected. I had been warned by a different coworker that this was the case, so I wasn't disappointed. The movie also moves slower than I was expecting. They definitely spent a lot of time setting up the characters, though they never really explained why Von Doom's company was going bankrupt (though it appeared to be because of the cosmic storm incident, that doesn't really make sense). It really looks like they set up this movie as a lead in to another Fantastic Four movie. Hopefully we'll get another one in a couple of years that won't have to spend so much time explaining things to us and will be better for it.

I would say that each of the movies was worth the price of admission (about $8 here in MN).

Porn Scam

2005-07-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

Thursday I received a e-mail on friendster from "Carrie" saying that she had seen my entry, was new to the area, and looking to make friends. Well, I'm looking to make friends too, so I thought I would reply to see if she was for real and got this e-mail the next day:

Hey Mark, thanks for getting in touch! So how's your Friday going? Just
another work day for me:) A bit about me....I'm a LA woman, who moved to
the Minneapolis area for my job (sales) and I officially know 0 people. I
never imagined a change like this would be so hard and lonely to say the
least. I definitely want to meet up with you soon if you're down! According
to friendster, I live close by so we could really meet whenever you want.
GREAT NEWS (if you're a baseball fan) my boss gave me 2 tickets to the
Twins/Devil Rays game for Saturday night...it's at 6:10PM. Care to come
with me???

I posted A LOT more pics (as I said I'd give you!) on my newest personal,
they're at http://www.matchinglust.com/carrie00 My profile is listed in
that site under "BackSideBabe". I wanted to post my personal info (i.e.
phone # and my personal email address) there for 3 real simple reasons. 1)
It's DISCREET! 2) I never have to worry about being contacted by children
since only adults are allowed in the site and 3) I know all the replies I
receive are genuine. I've met 3 people off of this site, and it's truly made
me feel safe. I had a nightmare of an experience in the past that I don't
want to happen again. Thats all I've got to say right now, let's just plan
on meeting soon! Cause you know what that means... ;)

Give me a call!

Carrie

***The following is a requirement of this website: "If you are offended by
adult material or are not of legal age to view such material, or if you
simply would not like to hear from any members from this website, follow
this link to be removed:"
http://www.matchinglust.com/subscription.php

As I expected, she wasn't real. Turns out "she" has been running this scam with lots of different people on at two different services (using myspace.com as well), but it looks like more people are getting wise to the antics.

This morning, after failing to call her yesterday, I got another e-mail (from a different, but similar, hotmail e-mail address), saying how she was disappointed that I hadn't called her yesterday. She suggested that I go to myblissfuldesires and look her up as NaughtyNaughty. She's having trouble keeping her story straight. I replied back that I was on to her scam and she needed to move on.

Gotta love the Internet.

Attic vent

2005-07-16T10:15:00.000-05:00

This week has been very warm, if not down right hot. It's been in the high 80's to low 90's every day for going on two weeks now. The humidity adds to the suffering and means that opening a window for a fan is the last thing you want to do. Even if it's cooler outside, it often feels warmer.

Since my HVAC system is doing such a poor job of keeping my upstairs cool (or warm), I decided to buy an attic fan to keep the attic cool and thus keep the house cool. After looking around at various different kinds of attic fans, I decided to go with a gable vent fan. They're easy to install because they don't require you to get on the roof, they move a lot of air, and they're more weather and animal resistant than some of the other options.

Since every house I see has gable ends, I naturally assumed that mine did too. But, you know what they say about assumption... It turns out that I don't actually have a gabled roof, so the $120 worth of fan and vent louvers do me absolutely no good.

At least that means I don't have to go into the stifling hot attic this weekend. Now all I have to do is find my receipt.

Weak Grass

2005-07-12T09:39:00.000-05:00

I'm really having a difficult time of trying to keep my lawn healthy out here, which is quite the opposite of what I expected.

From my lawn experiences in California, I'm used to watering the grass for 15 minutes two or three times a week. I realized that wouldn't cut it here in Minnesota about a month ago. However, it seems that my response has been too little, too late.

Parts of my lawn are doing just fine (mainly the parts I see), but parts are in real trouble (mainly the parts my neighbors see). I don't think it's insects (grubs). I've fertilized the lawn a couple of times since spring, though I haven't used an insect control product, mainly because I don't see any insects or predators (birds) on the lawn. I don't see my neighbors watering any more than I am (of course I water at 3am, so if they're watering at 3am and 6pm, then I'm in trouble).

I think it's just that I'm not watering enough, but that's really baffling me. I'm watering about 30 minutes every other day (I can water my lawn on even days). I made sure that my sprinklers were all running correctly last night (need to buy one new head, but it's not in the affected area), adjusted a few, and increased the run times of a few zones. I'm hoping that with enough water I'll be able to bring my lawn back. Grass is pretty hardy, so I imagine it will be back next spring, but I'd like it back by this August.

Fireworks

2005-07-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

Wow, Minnesotans really like their fireworks. They started launching them off on Friday, and it was pretty much non-stop until about midnight Monday.

One particularly interesting bit was the neighbor kids that lit off one of those spark shooting kinds, braced up against their deck support. As if that wasn't bad enough, their dog made a lunge for it, but was restrained at the last second. Then once it was out, the toddler came over to stamp it out, with his bare feet, just like he had seen the older kids do on the previous fireworks. Well, at least no one was injured, but it was touch and go for a moment.

The local junior high school a block down the street was the location of the Cottage Grove celebration, so I had a great view from my second story bedroom window. The air bursts were so loud, however, that Lucy, my cat, decided that the basement was a better place to be. She didn't have a problem with the personal fireworks, but I guess this was just too much for her.

Monday night was by far the biggest display of personal fireworks that I've ever seen. Four neighbors within five houses of me set off massive displays of aerial fireworks (which are thoroughly illegal in Minnesota, but the police don't seem to care). These fireworks are just slightly smaller versions of what the city was using, but since they were only 50 feet away, they appeared with equal magnitude. A couple of houses even seemed to be synchronized. This was either very impressive, or they both bought the same setup and lit it off at approximately the same time (the latter being my guess). The personal fireworks ran for well over an hour, and it wasn't like it was one at a time. These were full-on fireworks displays with virtually no gaps between air bursts.

All in all, it was quite a display and left me wondering, how much did these guys spend on fireworks? If you told me it was over $1000 each, I wouldn't be surprised. In fact, if you told me it was less, I would be surprised.

Ceiling fan

2005-07-02T16:03:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I installed a little ceiling fan in my first/second story stairwell. I'm hoping that moving air from the lower level, where the HVAC seems to do a good job of heating/cooling, to the second story will help to keep the upstairs cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

I got a little 32" Hampton Bay White Minuet II fan. I'm glad that I decided to get the 32" model, and not the 36" model, because even though the stairwell is 39" across, there is a ceiling joist in the exact wrong spot if you want to mount something in the middle of the stairwell. The fan needs to be offset to the left a couple of inches, and that just wouldn't have been possible with a 36" fan.

The tricky part of the whole thing was how to get to the ceiling in the stairwell. Normal ladders don't work, and a Little Giant ladder that does work on stairs costs about $350. That's a lot of hardware to install a $40 fan. Luckily I was able to rent one in Hudson for only $30 a day.

To save some time in the attic (which is like 140 degrees today) I got a remote control for the fan. That meant that I didn't have to wire in a switch and made the install considerably simpler (if you discount the standing 10' in the air on a wacky ladder part). There was plenty of slack in the wire that I had run months earlier to power the new outlets I put in for the towel warmers, which was nice since I didn't have to do anything other than just cut that wire at the new box for the ceiling fan. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get that box quite level. Since I was mounting it from the attic, I couldn't really see how it was fitting with respect to the drywall. It's not perfect, but it's passable (I wonder how I could have done a better job -- screw a board below the box to give me a level reference point?). Considering that it's nearly 16' up in the air, I don't think too many people will immediately notice it (though if you look, it's clear there's a gap on one side). The fan sits on a ball mount, so it hangs level, even if its mount isn't. I've got the ladder for another 16 hours, so maybe I'll make another stab at before I return the ladder.

The cool thing about the remote is that it can dim the light on the fan, turn the light off after a specified period of time, but most importantly, it can automatically control the fan speed based temperature.

Now the only thing left to do is adjust/balance the fan blades. At least one of them must not be quite level because you can really see the fan blades going up and down as it spins.

It's really moving a fair amount of air though, and it's far more quiet than the fan I had sitting on the floor, so even if things stay as they are now, I'll be quite happy with it.

War of the Worlds

2005-06-30T10:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening, before my kickball game, I made a mad dash to get to the theater to see War of the Worlds at 5:50pm. I was close to 10 minutes late, and forced to sit in some very uncomfortable seats in the second row (the seats didn't tilt, and even slouching and tilting my head uncomfortably, it was difficult to see the top of the screen), but I think I saw a full complement of trailers, thankfully missing the stupid TV adds.

The movie was OK, but I don't think it lived up to the hype. Special effects about the destruction of a/the world just don't impress me much anymore. I realize that it's a lot of work for the crew (apparently they bought a real 747 to cut it up, placing it over the back lot of Universal for a 5 minute scene), but it wasn't that stunning.

I did like a scene where a burning Amtrak trail blasts past a crowd of refugees at full speed and the crowd seems completely unfazed. It was a surreal moment, that's for sure. There was another scene where the clothes of the the vaporized victims float eerily down through the trees, like some giant leaves in the fall. That was eerie, but two scenes don't make a movie.

Tim Robins' character didn't have a big enough part in the movie (though it's hard to fault the movie for that -- it's just that I like Tim), and we didn't see enough of the aliens or get enough background on some things for my liking.

I realize that the movie is told from Tom Cruise's character's point of view, so we don't know the things he doesn't know, but that doesn't make me like the movie any more.

I also think that's a limiting view of how to tell this story. Since it is a movie about the attack and destruction of the Earth and its people, it would be more interesting, to me, to see the story told from a broader perspective. Either from that from someone with better communication (like the President), or from the view of multiple people as they scramble about. There was a lot of dead time in this movie where the main characters are sleeping, driving, running, etc. It would have been nice to have seen some other characters at those points.

I think the bottom line is that this story has been told so many times, and everyone knows how it ends, that you have to give us something more. The movie claims to be full of suspense, but it isn't. You know how it ends, and when was the last time you saw a Hollywood movie with three main characters where they all die? Never. Which means there's no suspense.

I'm glad I only paid $4 for the movie. I think I would have been disappointed if I had paid more, especially considering the hype that lead me to believe that this would have been an awesome movie.

Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie

2005-06-24T12:54:00.000-05:00

By now I figure you've all heard about the Supreme Court saying it's OK to take someone's land as long as you can promise to bring in more tax revenue than the current users (here's CNN's report about it).

What worries me most is, what's to keep a developer from taking a bunch of houses to make an apartment building and strip mall? The developer would force everyone out of their homes, and then conveniently make a place for them to live, only this time he gets all the money and the coffers of the local government get that much richer.

I'm hoping that things like this won't come to pass because the basic goodness in people will keep them from even trying, or that our local governments aren't so corrupt as to allow it, but the very thought that it's not out of the realm of possibility is scary. What's to keep us from becoming a bunch of serfs tied to the land owned by a few wealthy "lords" who were able to "convince" the local authorities to let them "buy" the land (at very reasonable prices, I'm sure) and force everyone off of it?

Isn't that how the communists used to work? And we're not even doing it for a factory or better farm, but for office buildings and strip malls.

I'm Melting!

2005-06-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

It's been pretty warm here the past few days, and I'm coming the realization that the HVAC system in my house just isn't up to snuff.

It's too cold on the second story in the Winter, and it's way too hot in the Summer. The first floor seems to maintain the set temperature reasonably well, and the basement is always basement temperatures, but the second floor is a horrible living experience. Even Lucy is hanging out in the basement and will only sit on my lap for a few minutes. And cats are from Africa! It's that hot.

For the past few days I've been able to get away with opening the windows and getting a reasonable amount of cooling, though not as much as I would like. However, now that outside temperatures are high nineties, and inside temperatures are high eighties, windows won't cut it.

Yesterday I closed down all but one of the first story vents and all but the two vents in my bedroom in an effort to get some cooling upstairs. That worked slightly. Basically the upstairs was as miserable as the downstairs. At this point, after checking for leaks around the heater (the humidifier is leaking a little air, but nothing much), I think I'm going to have to call a pro to come out there and tell me what's wrong.

I have plenty of attic vents. Do I need an attic fan? Do I need booster fans in the ducts? Do I need to recharge my AC? Probably not since the heat doesn't get up there either... Well, hopefully this won't be too expensive. Call me paranoid, but I'm not expecting an easy fix. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Kickball!

2005-06-24T09:11:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday I was at a friend of a friend's party, doing my best to talk to others. Turns out that a few people at the party are in a kickball league (yep, just like what you played in grade school) organized by MUSA. They invited me to come out and play with their team, "Cntr | Alt | Del", and I accepted. They play on Wednesdays at 9pm, so I don't have to leave work early for it, and hey, it's a co-ed league. :-)

We played at Como Park, under the lights on the softball field. Kinda surreal to be playing kickball under kilowatts of artificial light.

We won the rock-paper-scissors face off and elected to be the "home" team. Not having played kickball for, oh, 25 years, I was put in right field. One of the first balls came right too me. I was a little far back, so I came running forward, lost the ball in the lights, tripped over the grass/dirt interface and got a bloody knee and scraped up palms (caught and dropped the ball). It didn't phase me, it made me more intense. This was going to be fun.

A good time was had by (mostly) all. One player on the opposing team was a bit of an ass, which seemed to wind up one of our players a bit and later a tag was made in a rather forceful manner that had people muttering. Disparaging remarks were made, but it wasn't too bad.

In the 7th or 8th inning, I switched to playing second base, feeling confident I could do a decent job of ball handling. Plus I was tired of doing nothing in right field (I only ever got that one ball -- most balls stay well inside the baseline). One man got to first. The next ball was kicked right to me. I ran forward a few feet and waited for it to arc right to me, hoping that it wouldn't bounce off of my hands. I grabbed it for a fly out and looked to my right to find the man who was on first standing just a couple of feet to my left say "Oh, that's not what I wanted to see." I tossed the ball at his back for an easy tag out and double play. Then center fielder asked me if I was going to be here next week. :-) I almost caught the next kick too, but once again, I lost the ball in the lights and it went over me (I got a pinkie on it, but that was it).

We lost, something like 12 to 5, but we all had fun. I know I had fun. Afterwards we went to Dave's, a bar just one block away to get some beers. I stayed until about 11:30pm, chatting with people. They all seem like very nice people, mostly mid-thirties, so there's a real possibility of making some friends. Yea!

I'm already committed to the Fall league, and I'm excited.

Lost in space

2005-06-22T08:43:00.000-05:00

Bummer for Cosmos 1, the first attempt at working a spacecraft propelled by solar sails. CNN reports the Russian ballistic missile it was launched with malfunctioned and, while it appears to have gotten Cosmos 1 into space, it didn't put it where it was supposed to be.

Hopefully the mission can be saved and useful data collected. Solar sails seem to be our best bet at being able to explore the outer planets in a reasonable time frame, and that's an important first step in making life better on this planet.

F1 at Indy

2005-06-19T15:02:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching the F1 race at Indianapolis and I have to say that I really enjoyed the spectacle of it all.

I especially like the fact that no compromises were made and Michelin was hung out to dry, unable to let any of their teams race. This is F1, the motor sport that prides itself on cars with no compromises. Why should the FIA change things because a bunch of people choose poorly? They shouldn't, and they didn't. And that's cool.

This isn't kids' stuff, this is F1. They're not a bunch of school girls. The track is the same for everyone, and the particular corner that's causing the problem has remained unchanged (in its banking level, the thing causing the issue with the tires) for over 90 years. Michelin has supplied tires for 5 previous years' races without any problems. Who forgot about the banked corner this year?

F1 is all about making the best thing you can, and then bringing it out to see if your best is better than everyone else's. Some times you win, some times you lose, and some times you lose big. And when you do, take it like a man.

The Cube of Babble

2005-06-18T07:59:00.000-05:00

NPR did a story about Herman Miller's subsidiary Sonare Technologies coming out with a cool new product call Babble that promises to make workplace cubical conversations private for the first time. Sounds like interesting technology, and I'll be looking at this kind of technology more closely in the future. Maybe when it comes down from it's initial $395 price tag I'll actually buy one. I like the idea of a personal version of this for cell phone conversations and doctor's offices.

Batman Begins

2005-06-17T11:46:00.000-05:00

Last night I skipped out of work a tiny bit early to catch the 5:45pm showing of Batman Begins because it's only a $4 at that time. I didn't want to be into this movie for $8.25 because of the very real chance it might not be that great.

However, I was happily surprised to find it a decent movie, even for someone not that into Batman. The visuals were great, the fighting was well done, Batman's tools were reasonable (so I didn't have to suspend disbelief too much), and the acting was passable. All in all, a movie that I would have been happy to see at twice the price.

Boundary Waters pictures

2005-06-15T23:06:00.000-05:00

I finally managed to get the pictures of my Boundary Waters camping trip arranged and posted.

Some are by Mike before his camera got wet, some are by Jon, and some are by me. I'm not saying which are which, but my disposable cameras were clearly inferior to Mike's and Jon's digital cameras. I've elected to leave a couple of very unflattering pictures of me in there for who knows what reason (self loathing?). I especially like the one where I look like Jabba the Hut (taken by me trying to hold the camera at maximum arm's length).

If the pictures are bit slow in loading, I apologize, they're hosted on my home computer and I've not sprung for the extra bandwidth from Comcast yet.

eDisharmony

2005-06-14T21:55:00.000-05:00

Last week I was in California at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference for business.

Among other things that were discussed, I talked with an old friend about his dating experiences of late. He's getting married! Yea for him. I asked him how he had met the lucky lady, since we were both having issues meeting people (and I'm always looking for good ideas). He said that eHarmony had found him his match. He highly recommended it.

Tonight I decided to give it a try. While I was prepared for the inevitable rejection that dating brings with it, I was not prepared to be rejected by eHarmony. Apparently I'm in the 20% of the public that they just haven't figured out, and rather than give me some bad matches, they're going to give me no help whatsoever.

I have to say, being told that you're that unlikely to find a compatible person hurts almost as much as being rejected by a real person. Ouch. Is my nose bleeding?

Boundary Waters Day 4

2005-06-01T22:25:00.000-05:00

The fourth day in The Boundary Waters was our last, and shortest, because we were to be picked up at 3pm.

Again, the day started slowly as we had blueberry pancakes and hash browns with the requisite hours of cook time. After I had attacked the frying pan and gotten it as clean as I thought it was going to get, which wasn't clean enough to allow plausible deny ability of the fact that we used it in the fire, Jon scrubbed the frying pan like a mad man and got it that clean. Whew, we weren't going to need to buy them a new pot set.

We decided that we wanted to a hike instead of paddling. We'd had enough of paddling, and we were going to get a couple of miles of paddling even if we wanted to hike.

We found a hiking loop near the south east side of Snowbank. That would good for two reasons, it was a loop which makes hiking it quickly easier, and it was near our pickup point which meant we could spend more time hiking. We brought our lunch and planned to have it on our hike.

Cleaning up camp didn't take too long as our gear was fairly minimal. We did a quick two minute loop around our island to check it out and were on the water at about 11:30am, heading for the short trail that's supposed to take us to the hiking loop. We got to the south-east corner of Snowbank, which was heavily populated with fisherman in motorboats, and tried to find our trail head.

I tried to steer clear of the fishermen, not wanting to get yelled at for scaring away their fish, but our obvious lack of fishing gear and random paddling around the lake caused some of them to take note of us. One asked us if we had heard the weather report. We hadn't. He said the forecast was calling for storms today. A quick check of the skies showed that it was a definite possibility.

We headed for the next cove as a couple of fishermen sped towards us. They were not speeding to get to the best fishing hole, but instead came to ask us if we were lost. We told them we were looking for a trail down on this end of the lake and one of them responded "Oh yeah, it's not used anymore. It's not maintained anymore." He didn't know where the trail might be. We decided to land and Jon would walk into the woods hoping to stumble across the trail.

A few minutes after wandering through the woods, Jon reported that he had found a trail and that it was marked with orange tags. Mike and I backed the canoe out of the cove we were in and headed for the adjacent cove where Jon came out. There was a log that had been worn down, like when a canoe hits it head on, and there was a clear trail that looked like it hadn't been maintained for a few years. We figured this was the trail we were looking for.

Mike set a waypoint on his GPS at our canoe so we could be certain of finding our way back out. We followed the trail about a hundred yards into the woods only to find it abruptly end. There were no more orange tags to be found. We could see a blue tag, and Jon found a couple more, but they were in a straight line and didn't have any walkable path near them. Jon hiked farther into the woods only to find a similar set of grey and red tags, but no trail. After about 10 minutes of searching, and getting eaten by mosquitoes, we backtracked and called it a no-go.

It was about 1pm and we decided to head for an island to eat lunch. Lunch was a simple beef stick and banana chip affair. As we were finishing lunch, the weather turned ugly and it started to rain. We were uncertain of the length or intensity of the rain, so we quickly finished eating and headed towards our pickup point. I don't think anyone wanted to relive the stormy/windy/choppy seas of the previous day. We were quick to get off the island before the water got a chance to get nasty.

We made it to our pickup point at about 2pm and hung out until close to 3pm when our pickup arrived. Once back at the outfitter's, they checked our canoe's various scrapes with the back of their hand and it passed muster. They said that we should head down to the office to check out, and in about 15 minutes they would call down to say if we were clear to leave or if we owed them more money.

We sat outside the office, like kids at the Principal's office waiting to find out if we were in trouble. I mentioned to the owner that the Kevlar canoes are quite easily scratched and he, I believe jokingly, said that we needed to get out of the canoe in deeper water. I responded that we landed our canoes the same way as everyone else we saw and noted that even a stick will scratch the resin of the canoe. He eventually agreed that they were easy to scratch and then got on his radio to check if our gear check was satisfactory. It was.

We breathed a collective sigh of relief and headed back to my car for the 4+ hour drive home. Jon and Mike gave me a hard time for bringing up the scratches on the canoe. I was sure the owner was pulling my leg, but they weren't so sure and were a bit worried that I might have said too much (like that's never happened before!).

The drive home was uneventful, though we eventually met up with the bad weather that had been forecast. At one point, the rain was so intense that all I could make out of the car a couple of hundred feet in front of us were its dim taillights. I remarked that if it stopped abruptly, we were going to stop abruptly too. Luckily, that didn't happen.

A quick shower for everyone and a quick dinner at Chili's closed out the evening with a pleasant mellow air.

Everyone had a great time, and Mike and Jon said that they would be interested in doing it again. Now that we have a better idea of how The Boundary Waters work I think that we can plan out a trip that would suit our needs better. It was pretty clear that the outfitter expected us to be fishing and not paddling 50 miles in two and a half days, so we either need to plan everything ourselves, which I think we can do now, or find a different outfitter that's more geared towards hiking trips.

All in all, it was a good time and I hope we all get to do it again.

Boundary Waters Day 3

2005-05-31T20:33:00.000-05:00

Saturday was our last full day in the Boundary Waters. We woke, did the morning two hour ritual of making fire and breakfast (blueberry pancakes and hash browns -- very yummy) and plotted out our day.

We decided that we wanted to go to Canada and paddle in one of its lakes. We plotted out a route that would be an up-and-back route, instead of a loop. It would include a single portage that was listed as 220 rods, or over two thirds of a mile. All told, this route was about 20 miles and had more than two miles of portages. I had signed up to do them all as a test of how hard could I push myself.

The day was beautiful, probably low 70s with no wind and light cloud cover. We all dressed lightly and headed towards Canada.

We saw a number of people along the way, both on land and in the lakes. Most were fishing. Clearly we were the odds one attempting to travel rather than fish.

We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I had prepared while waiting for the hash browns to cook. The sandwiches had all but collapsed under their own weight and had gotten quite soggy. I'm used to wheat bread where PB&J sandwiches keep much better. None the less, they were yummy (apple cinnamon was my favorite) and hit the spot.

The trip to Canada was largely uneventful. We surfed the wake of a passing fishing boat and were rocked by the wake of a speeding canoe taxi. When we got to Canada at about 4pm, I paid $10 for a day pass (good until 10pm!) so we could paddle for 5 minutes in Inlet Bay before reversing our route and trying to beat the sunset.

Our fears of getting back in the dark were unfounded as we made great time when everyone was paddling rather than trying to figure out where we were going or pumping water from the lake. We returned to Snowbank Lake with plenty of sun to spare, but were shocked to find driving winds had whipped Snowbank into 2 foot white-capped waves.

At first, none of us were too worried since our canoe sits rather high in the water and seemed to be pretty stable. However, the waves were coming such that we would fall into the trough of one and have the next one nearly break into the canoe. Luckily we didn't have any waves come into the canoe, though many tried, and Jon took the brunt of the waves since he was sitting at the front. He later admitted that he was worried about a couple of waves that nearly entered the canoe. Mike strapped his backpack to the canoe just in case we were to capsize.

I was at the back, paddling hard, trying to keep us on track for our island. I had to paddle hard to keep us angled slightly into the waves to prevent them from hitting us broadside and rolling our canoe. At one point I called out to have everyone paddle on the right side of the canoe (Mike and Jon were both paddling on the left) only to have a mutiny because they did not believe that we needed to go to the left. I was sure that's what we needed as we were drifting to the right and were taking more waves broadside. I screamed again "paddle right!" only to have them argue the point again. Finally I yelled out something along the lines of "I'm in back, I'm steering, and I know what I'm doing! Paddle right!" and got the needed strokes, just a few, to get us on track and pointed the right way. Once into the shadow of the leeward side of the island, it was easy to make landfall.

Upon returning to camp, we found that our garbage bag had been chewed into. Not by anything big (we were assuming that no bears would make it to our island since we were well out in the lake), but probably by a squirrel, or maybe a bird. Luckily it didn't chew into our food bag and only licked (maybe) a few empty jelly packets. I was grateful that it didn't make anything resembling a mess and the holes in the garbage bag were at the top, rather than the bottom.

We started dinner, and finished about the time we heard the first clap of thunder. I was not happy to have a thunderstorm coming our way. We looked at the sky, but couldn't really tell if we were in for a lot of rain, or just a little. The thunder seemed to be far off in the distance, and the clouds were moving slowly (so slowly that I couldn't see them moving, but Jon claimed that he could), so I couldn't guess when we might get rain, or how long it might last.

It started to rain just a few minutes later, but thankfully it lasted for only 20 minutes. Jon used his hiking umbrella, and I put on my poncho while Mike dove for cover in his tent. The rain wasn't strong enough to put out the fire with some logs protecting it on the fire grate, though we considered letting it do that since it was late and none of us wanted to stand around in the cold rain. Before we could decide, it stopped raining and I decided that now was the time to get into my tent (something I didn't want to do in the rain since it's so hard to get into my one-man tent).

The thunder and lightning stopped when the rain did and the wind died down. It became quite peaceful. I slept much better that night, though apparently I still snored. We were all woken by a noisy crow around 7am.

Boundary Waters Day 2

2005-05-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

Day two at the Boundary Waters was the first day that we actually made it into the Boundary Waters. But, before we could do that, we all did a gear check in the bunk house to make sure that we weren't duplicating anything needlessly. I was able to leave a lot of my stuff in the car, though no one wanted to take any of the water-proof disposable cameras I had bought, instead opting to take their own digital cameras. I took two of the three disposables with me. During the gear check, we realized that the lighter I had was busted, it's flint wouldn't strike. We would need to get matches or a lighter from the outfitters when we got the rest of our stuff.

The rest of our stuff was to be provided by the outfitter I had chosen, River Point Outfitters, food and a canoe. We had opted for the more expensive, but lighter, 3 man Kevlar canoe. It's a We-no-nah Minnesota 3 which is listed at 49lbs. This is important because I would have to carry it on my shoulders during the portages.

For food, I requested all freeze dried food to save weight and make cooking and cleaning easier. I wanted something that was just-add-boiling-water-and-eat simple. Something that you don't have to clean, and something that doesn't take much time to prepare. Instead, they gave us a couple of freeze dried pouches like that, but also a full mess kit, steaks, eggs, bacon, freeze dried pancakes and hash browns -- all of which had to be cooked with pots and pans. They told us that matches would be in the mess kit (along with towels, pot holders, soap, etc.). They gave us a ton of food. Way more food than I expected, or really even wanted. I think I actually gained weight while out there. There was that much food.

They gave us a brand new canoe, loaded up our gear and drove us about 45 minutes out to our entry point on Snowbank Lake.

We had a restricted permit, which means we were supposed to camp on Snowbank lake every night. I suppose for Memorial Day weekend, that's as good as we could get, but it clashed with our plans of getting far into the wilderness. We would settle for day trips.

Jon wanted to camp on an island, and no one else opposed, so when we put in the water at about 9:30am, we immediately (though not very directly due to steering issues) made our way towards the islands that were marked as having a camp site (since you can only stay on designated camp sites that have a fire grate and latrine). If you click on the Snowbank Lake link, you'll notice a red dot in the middle of the lake, just under the shaded portion of the lake. The dot is bigger than the island. That's where we stayed. The island was about 2-3 acres in size and had one camp site. We claimed it as ours (by setting up our tents), grabbed our first day's lunch and dinner, and headed out to do some paddling.

It was a cool and overcast day. I put on my light weight windbreaker/rain jacket to keep warm, which was just right considering the work out of paddling the canoe. It threatened to rain, but it never did, and that was just fine by us.

We did a loop through a number of lakes. In order, they were: Parent, Disappointment, Ahsub, Jitterbug, Adventure, Cattyman, Gibson, Swing, Abinodji, Haven, Boot, and finally returning to Snowbank. This involved about 460 rods of portages (a rod is 16.5 feet -- I have no idea why portages are measured in rods).

I carried the canoe every step of the way, and Mike and Jon carried my water bottle and the rest of our gear. Mike and Jon would help me put the canoe on and off my shoulders because after a couple of portages I was too tired to lift it all by myself.

It was an amazing isometric exercise for the arms to hold the canoe while walking. The canoe was very well balanced and didn't really require me to hold it tightly, but on uneven terrain and with such a long moment arm, I couldn't afford (the canoe costs $2500 and is easily broken) to let it get tilting too far.

Unfortunately, this meant that my arms weren't free to fend off mosquitoes. However, the 100% DEET that we applied worked reasonably well, as long as I didn't sweat or get wet. Pretty hard to do in a canoe with 1.5 miles of portages thrown in for good measure.

During one of the portages, Mike discovered that his water bottle had opened and had soaked a lot of his day-trip gear, including his digital camera. I tried hard to not say "I told you so" since it didn't actually die by falling into lake water.

We ate lunch (a cold lunch of rye crackers, beef sticks, and cherries) along the way, at the portage entering Parent Lake, but couldn't find an empty camp site to cook the steaks, so we had dinner at our camp site. Steaks, hash browns, corn, and pudding.

It was there that we determined that we didn't have any matches (other than the three in Jon's emergency pouch) or a lighter. However, we did have my portable camp stove which has a piezoelectric igniter, so we were able to set bark on fire and use it to light our camp fire. Disaster averted.

Mike later checked our packing list and, sure enough, the matches weren't checked off as being in our kit. Next time, don't take their word for something so important. Though since I knew we had my stove, I wasn't too worried, but it's always nice to have a backup, and we really should have done a visual on the matches. That's the kind of screw up that can get you killed in the wilderness.

We didn't eat the pudding, and we almost didn't eat the hash browns because they had to be fried in a pan, and the only one we had was in the mess kit provided. However, it was fused to the pot above it. I bashed it on a rock (denting it slightly -- oops), and deformed a couple of their knives before I was finally able to free it. After that, the hash browns took probably more than 20 minutes to cook, and we had to cook them over the fire using the mess kit's pan, something that we had been told not to do. But what were we supposed to do? When we noticed the pan deforming in the heat, we moved it off the direct heat and it straightened itself out. Took us at least 20 minutes to scrape the soot off of it though. This definitely didn't go along with my idea of quick and easy meals.

We were all pretty tired and called it a day around 10pm, which isn't completely dark up near the 48th parallel. However, it was cloudy, so we didn't get a view of the moon or stars.

The smell of cigarette smoke from the previous night had gotten into my sleeping bag. As soon as I put my head down, I couldn't breathe. Even though my one-man tent was 20 feet from Mike and Jon's two-man tent, no one got a good night's sleep. A bonus for them, however, was that the clouds broke at about 2am and they reported having a brilliant view of the stars, something that's nearly impossible to find in CA. Too bad they didn't think to wake me.

Boundary Waters Day 1

2005-05-30T19:20:00.000-05:00

Day one, or rather night one, at the Boundary Waters went smoothly and according to plan. I picked up my friends Mike and Jon at the airport, we went to REI for some last minute items (I decided to get the sandals I had been looking at, and a hat to replace the one I own but couldn't find), and then headed followed my PocketPC's GPS based directions to the lodge.

We were stuck in some rush hour traffic leaving Minneapolis since we were leaving around 5:30pm. This is the first rush hour I've been in since moving here. Not bad by CA standards. The GPS software calls out turns and tells you how long you'll go before it calls out the next one. When it said "Proceed north on 35 for 129 miles" I knew we weren't going to make it to the lodge by 9pm.

No matter, they left the door to our bunk house open (just a room with a folding table and two bunk beds of college-student quality -- there was a latrine outside) and we bedded down at about 11:30pm. The beds had only mattresses, the plastic coated kind, so we used our sleeping bags. This would prove to be an issue for me.

Unfortunately for me, people in MN like to smoke, and whatever brand they were smoking I was seriously allergic too. I couldn't breathe through my nose, which left me alternately drooling, tossing and turning, and snoring all through the night.

Hey, if I'm not sleeping, no one else is!

Boundary Waters

2005-05-26T14:48:00.000-05:00

Today a couple of friends are flying in from CA and we're going to head up to The Boundary Waters. We should get there about 9pm. We've got a lodge reserved and will start out first thing Friday morning with our rented canoe after getting a talk about the area and suggested hiking/paddling trails.

Should be lots of fun, though probably a bit soggy as there's a good chance it may rain, at least a little, every day we're there. Doesn't look like there are going to be any storms or strong winds, so it shouldn't be too miserable. The forecast calls for highs in the low 60's, which is about 10F cooler than average, but I've discovered that "average" is a number often spoken of, but usually meaningless. What you really need to know is the average and the standard deviation, since MN, unlike CA, has vastly varying weather and most of the time it's either far above or far below average, unlike CA where the normal temperature is the average temperature (it doesn't have weather, it has climate!).

Should be lots of fun and hope to be able to post some pictures upon my return to civilization.

Weird part 2

2005-05-24T09:08:00.000-05:00

This morning, after getting more and more paranoid about the random college student asking me if had a room for rent, I decided to call the Cottage Grove Police to ask them if they had any calls on similar situations.

Apparently they had several calls over the past weekend. They tracked the kids down to a bunch of out of state college students working with a marketing firm doing door to door sales. Apparently the police told them they were not wanted in the community. They shouldn't be bothering us anymore. The police were not worried that they were doing any shady.

So, there you go. It was completely above board. Weird, but at least their story checks out.

Now I can go on vacation without worrying the whole time. That's a load off.

Show me the money!

2005-05-23T22:01:00.000-05:00

Today at work I received a call from lender that I used to re-fi my house saying that the title company hadn't received a check with the final packet of paperwork that they got. They couldn't disperse the funds to pay off my loan and the proverbial stuff was hitting the fan.

They, quite indignantly, asked if I was sending the check separately or what. I informed them that I had wired the money the Friday before, and had gotten conformation that the money had arrived. Somehow this got translated into "last Friday" as opposed to the actual "the Friday before the closing" (which was on a Thursday) and they were mortified since "wire transfers can take a day or two to process and that means that the money might not be there even today." Yeah, understood, that's why I wired the money a week before closing.

They asked for the conformation number, which I gave them. A wire transfer conformation number is like 20 digits long with a couple of letters in the middle just for good measure. They then had the audacity to ask me for the account information that I had used to wire it to (which unfortunately I didn't have at my desk since it was at home with the re-fi paperwork) claiming that searching for a particular wire transfer among the "thousands of transfers they get every day" would be too difficult without the destination account information. I can't imagine why I would have to tell them the account information they gave me (because I'd pretty much have to call them and ask for it again which would instantly turn into a "Who's on first?" sort of conversation).

Come on people! You're a title company, you deal with "thousands of wire transfers every day"! If you don't have a system in place that lets you pull them up based on the wire conformation number, then you don't deserve to be a title company handling thousands of wire transfers a day!

Sheesh. I don't write database software, or financial software, and even I know that feature has to rank in the top three of the required features for any title company dealing with thousands of wire transfers a day.

While I had them on the phone bitching about their incompetence, hey, look at that, they found the money. Yep, they had it all along.

Once again I have to wonder about people whose sole job it is to track money and do paperwork when they can't figure out something as simple as a wire transfer.

Weird

2005-05-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

So we've all heard of, and probably experienced, door to door sales people. But have you ever had someone knock on your door to ask you if you know of anyone that's renting a room?

That's what just happened to me. A guy claiming to be a college student with friends trying to save money was looking for leads on rooms for rent. I swear it's the same kid that tried to sell me an alarm system for my house last weekend. He had a badge and was carrying some paperwork, but I couldn't make out the paperwork, and the badge was on a necklace and was swung around onto his back.

He stammered out the words like a school boy asking out his first girl, so he might have been telling the truth. And who cases houses at 5pm on a Sunday? By ringing the front door and talking to the occupants? While wearing a name tag? The naive boy in me wants to take him at face value, but the guy that had his stuff stolen just a few months after moving here is more wary. After all, are there even any colleges in the Cottage Grove area?

I suggested that he check out craigslist.org as a good place to search and post for rooms to rent.

If I had to guess, I'd say that he's telling the truth, and that he's also out and about Cottage Grove trying to sell alarm systems.

Very weird though.

Re-fi

2005-05-19T09:16:00.000-05:00

Today I'm sitting at home, waiting to do the paperwork on refinancing my home loan. I'm switching from a 6 month ARM tied to LIBOR to a 5/1 ARM tied to US Prime. I'm doing this just in time. LIBOR has moved up a bit, and my first 6 months are coming to an end. My rate was about to go to 5.375, and by moving to the ARM I've been able to lock in 5.25 for the next 5 years.

This length of time seems about right since I'm not certain that I'll be in this house more than 5 years from now. Like the LIBOR loan, this one is interest only, and I plan on investing the difference in the market so that I can reduce the principal with one big payment in 5 years, if I don't buy a new house before then.

This plan works with my idea of me keeping my money for as long as possible. With automatic investing and dollar cost averaging, I should be able to make a decent amount more than 5.25% in the market, so investing makes more sense than paying down the principal.

So far, the only hitch in the re-fi has been that the money people look at you with a blank stare when you tell them that you're going to need bank wire information. They're all set up for dealing with cashier's checks. Too bad E*Trade doesn't actually issue cashier's checks (and makes doing wire transfers a serious hassle).

Let's hope they don't do again what they did last time, which was after verifying that the wire transfer happened, still asking me if I had a cashier's check for that amount.

You would think that people whose sole job is to manage paperwork, and the money associated with it, would do a better job of it.

The BBQ

2005-05-16T07:17:00.000-05:00

This Saturday I invited a few friends over to my place for a BBQ and general camaraderie. Unfortunately, the weather just didn't want to cooperate. A week ago they predicted that Saturday would be a lovely day, but as the day drew nearer, it was obvious that it was going to be rainy and windy. The rain subsided around 3pm, and it started to warm up to a balmy 55. I decided to fire up the portable fire pit that I bought for this occasion for this eventuality (basically a giant copper bowl and mesh top). That would have made things reasonable for a Minnesotan for dining alfresco, but then the wind kicked up. And when it gets windy here in the Midwest, it gets windy. We're talking 20-30mph winds, far beyond the limit of keeping paper plates on a table without extraordinary effort, so we ate inside.

The wind and the weather meant that we didn't get a chance to play any disc golf or Boche Ball, though we did break out the discs and balls and the two-year olds were suitably entertained for a brief period of time.

The food, however, was very good, and the preparation was excellent, thanks to Dave. One of the diners had requested organic, free-range, meat, and the task was suitably interesting that I decided to try to buy as much organic food as I could. Partly this was a challenge to see how much organic food I could buy, and partly there was curiosity to see if it was any better than "normal" food. There was no question it was more expensive.

I have to say that the fruit (strawberries, blackberries, raspberries) was no better, and possibly a little worse (harder and less tasty) though I didn't have a side by side taste test. The tomatoes looked far worse than their non-organic counterparts (smaller, oddly shaped, not fully ripe), but hey, I wasn't eating them. The meat was great, no complaints there, but it was also Black Angus, so it had better be great. I didn't get a chance to try to ostrich, and picky eater me is only slightly sorry for that loss. But, hey, I know where to get more, and I still have the buffalo burgers to try.

The most shocking thing to me, however, was the one who requested the organic food was later found to be eating Frito's. Frito's! I'm pretty sure those are as close to non-organic as you can get.

All in all, it was a great afternoon/evening with some really nice people. I hope we can get a chance to do it again some time soon. The problem is you never know when it's going to be nice enough to have a BBQ. Planning in advance seems iffy, and getting a number of people with kids or who work occasional weekend shifts free on random Saturday or Sunday afternoon for an impromptu get together seems even more iffy. Hopefully the weather will become more stable in July/August/September and the next BBQ will work out better.

Spend, spend, spend

2005-05-11T09:26:00.000-05:00

A dozen years ago I was a supreme example of consumerism. I always had to have the latest and greatest and I was working just to feed a "new toy" addiction. After a lot of soul searching I realized that buying stuff doesn't make me happy (well, it does for a while) and tried to cut back.

I was pretty successful, until recently, and I'm trying to figure out what's gone wrong and what I can do about it. Granted this latest batch of spending isn't aimed directly at happiness, but still, I'm getting the feeling like it's getting out of control. I'm trying to cut down on spending, but it seems like there's always something that needs to be bought.

I guess owning a home does that to you. For this weekend's BBQ party that I'm hosting I ended up buying $500+ worth of stuff. Granted it's all big ticket items (patio table, chairs, grill, etc.) that I'll have for a long time, but it seems like that's always the excuse. As I was unloading all of it, it left me thinking about how much I'm going to have to spend to move it when I eventually (hopefully many years from now) leave this house.

Then there's the weed whacker that I had to buy. And the lawn mower. And the new camping gear for my trip to The Boundary Waters. And the, and the, and the... It seems like the list never ends.

It's time to make a concerted effort to stop spending. It's not so much that I don't have the money (I do, but just barely), it's more that I want to save the money for other things. What those other things are I don't know, but it seems like hoarding money gives me happiness now. At least for a while.

Maybe I'll just hoard it until I have enough to buy the next big thing.

Getting outside

2005-05-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

I've been hoping that at some point Lucy (my cat) would want to go outside and experience more of life than the 3600 square feet she's been living in. I've previously opened doors and tried to entice her outside, but she hasn't been interested. The most I could get her to do would be to hunker down and peer outside in a curious, but incredibly timid way.

That's why I was so happy tonight when Lucy made overtures of being interested in going outside. She was sitting in front of the sliding glass door and peering out -- something she never did before. I opened the back door to the deck and she almost immediately, though timidly, inched onto the deck. At that point I was expecting her to immediately want to turn around and come back in, but she didn't. Instead she started moving towards the stairs and the darkness.

But, before I would let her out for a long and unsupervised excursion, I wanted to get her collar on (with ID tag). When she headed over towards the stairs, I decided that I needed to get her back inside and put her collar on.

Putting the collar on was far easier than I expected, but watching her try to lick the (rather large) ID tag off of her chest was absolutely hilarious. It's basically just under her observable limit. She knows it's there, but can't tell where it is. She would lick at it, then get up and look at where she had been sitting, expecting to see it there. She would turn in circles looking for it. She was rolling around on the floor, curling up in a ball trying to figure out where it was. She was trying to grab it with one paw, then two. Words just can't do it justice -- it was quite entertaining.

I'm hoping that by tomorrow she'll be used to it, and that it will still be on, and I can feel a bit more confident about letting her outside. On the bright (or maybe bad, I haven't decided yet), the bell and ID tag banging together on the collar mean that I won't have a hard time figuring out where she is, or if she's scratching an itch. :-)

Too cool

2005-05-04T17:06:00.000-05:00

Found the site "How Much Is Inside" and believe it to be too cool not to share. Enjoy.

Random thoughts

2005-05-03T09:46:00.000-05:00

Nothing really to report of late. Getting my permit to go camping in The Boundary Waters at the end of May is the most exciting thing to happen so far this week.

A friend forwarded me this link which I thought was cool enough to share:
A bicycle frame made out of bamboo. Looks interesting, and it appears to be light and strong.

Another forwarded me this article about a group of high school kids, actually illegal aliens from Mexico, that beat MIT at an underwater robot contest. Pretty impressive, especially considering that the presentation (which for ESL students would seem to be daunting) was more than 50% of the score, that they had a budget more than an order of magnitude less than MIT, and they're high school students without any experience in the field of underwater robots. Too bad that winning this means nothing because they are illegal aliens.

You know you're in Minnesota when...

2005-04-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

...you're mowing your lawn and it starts to snow.

It started out as a nice day, mid 40's at 10am and the temperature was rising. I needed to take my new Toro Recycler out for a spin. Most of the others in the neighborhood mowed their lawn last weekend, so mine was beginning to look a bit ragged.

About 30 minutes into mowing the lawn a cold front moved in, it got windy, and it started to snow. Just a light snow, nothing that stuck and it only snowed for a few minutes, but it definitely was kinda surreal.

It took me about 45 minutes, maybe an hour, to mow the lawn. It's a big yard. What was I thinking? All in all though, I suppose it's not too bad, and definitely not hard work since the mower is self propelled (and the handlebar is the throttle, so the faster you walk, the faster it goes -- up to about 4.5mph). I then spent a while figuring out how to turn the water back on for the sprinkler system (it had been purged for winter and it took me a while to figure out that I had to screw closed the air pressure fitting that was used to purge the system). Once that was solved I had to figure out the sprinkler system controls and tested all of the zones (all nine of them). Only one sprinkler head had issues, and it was just buried under some thatch. A little digging with my fingers and it popped up right in my face. Boy is the water cold!

In a week or two I'll buy a weed whacker/edger to take care of the grass growing through the retaining wall blocks and to make sure it looks nice along the sidewalk. I think a saw a neighbor using a battery powered weed whacker. That might be a better choice than a two-stroke gas powered one, though some of the new gas powered ones have an interchangeable system of heads to do different things, which might make it worthwhile dealing with the hassle of yet another gasoline powered yard appliance.

Time to do some research.