The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
I always thought THIS was the original vision of a monorail:
Monorail pulling out of the Polynesian Resort in Disney World
Wouldn’t you rather ride on this gyro monorail? And this is just a prototype from 1903!
The future isn’t what it used to be, is it? Well, at least I have my jetpack.
And in case there was any question as to the origins of the monorail, Ya Got Trouble, right here in River City! (no seriously, click both of those links)
Hmm. Remember the $700 billion bank baleout called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program)? It looks like it might have been money well spent.
The Treasury Department reported on Wednesday that six more banks repaid a total of $475 million in funds they had received as part of their participation in the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The reimbursement lifted the recovery under the program to about 99%. The program was initiated more than two years ago to rescue the nation’s financial industry.
There is more good news for the Treasury. In addition to the recovery of the entire TARP money, the Treasury expects the program to earn a handsome $20 billion in profit from banks.
…
But then The Huffington Post talks a little vaguely about how the government spent $4 trillion on the bailout and most of that money is gone for good. I don’t know!
I’m going. You?
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Saturday brings Chicken John’s Lost Vegas to NIMBY. We have plenty of off street parking,
almost 4 acres, the weather will be great and if not, don’t worry, we are
mostly indoors though the enormous burn barrel will need to stay
outside…
We are featuring this year:
Cockroach Racing
Rat Roulette
The wheel of SMUT
Quantum Physics Dating Game
Crackjack
Poke-her
Human Wheel of Death
Crap
These are all games you can win big on. Big. Big!!! BIG!!!!!!!!!! The show
goes late, so come early all over the place.
LET IT RIDE!: Just like the big boys, you can win big! Big! BIG!!!!
ROCK!: To the sounds of KALRI$$IAN !
WEEP!: Like a baby as our sharks take all your chips!
MARVEL!: Time Traveler Anton Berteaux will jump the ramp of death!
VOW!: Dr. Hal & Rev. Burke will offer short duration marriages!
CROON/CRINGE!: At the Kareokie station with Beyond Paul!
POPERATTZI!: The PHOTOBOOF will be in effect!!!
SWOON!: The Ukaladies Strumming Club are the only all gal uke band!
CASH OUT!: At the redemption booth with Tracey and Don!
OOGLE!: The loose ladies and the Miami sounds of Freaktronic!
CRY!: Out in disgust at our cockroach racing!
YO!: David Capurro rocks the Yo Yo to Black Sabbath!
SLURRR!: Your words, by patronizing out bar!
RACK!: Your brains to the Can Cannibals!
DRESS!: To the nines; Lost Vegas has an un-enforced dress code
FOUL!: Chicken John is your host with the least…
Short duration marriages performed by Dr. Hal and Rev. Ben Burke! Discount
at the door for those wearing Bridal attire!!!
More entertainment as follows:
Mirium on the Trapeze
Azana’s Arial acrobatics
Bruce Tomb’s Maria Del Camino
Michael Christian
SOL by Alex Nolan
The Tub-o- Hurrle
The Yo Yo King
Ukaladies
Mongo Lounge
Cheese Puff
Sparkle Motion
Belly Dancing with Rose Harden and friends
The Can-Cannibals Dance Troupe
KALRI$$IAN
Freaktronic
Naked Fire Babes
Shipwreck Tiki Lounge
and much, much, more.
It’s an evening to dismember, so put on your finest and come on out to
NIMBY to do the Lost Vegas grind!
All gambling is real. You play with chips that you cash out for valuable
prizes. Ahem. This is less spectacular and more action-oriented. You place
the bets! You race the roaches! You spill your drink! It’s all about
you!!!!
Lost Vegas, where everybody’s nobody and that at least all of you…..
This marvelous event (now in it’s 18th year) is everything you’ve never
wanted in a casino experience and much, much less.
Come on down and hang out all over.
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/157303
We have enough off street parking for everyone
Autos and Bicycles
http://www.facebook.com/nimbyspace
Help keep NIMBY open and alive.
All proceeds will help us with past and future endeavors. If you can’t
make it to this show, please buy a ticket and give it to a friend.
Please forward this invite to your favorite lists
Mr. Snook
“refuse to live vicariously”
A DIY space
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Nimby-List mailing list
Nimby-List@lists.nimbyspace.org
http://lists.nimbyspace.org/listinfo.cgi/nimby-list-nimbyspace.org
I got laid off from earthmine. While they loved me, (and gave me the best recommendation letter eva) they said they need a mechanical engineer instead of a jack-of-all-trades. I really enjoyed the job, the building stuff, cameraderie, travel. That’s the “looking down” part.
Looking up… I just got the go-ahead to make a new sign for a new local Pizza Cafe. It’ll involve using the newest, coolest tool at the Box Shop, the CNC plasma cutter.
More looking up… a friend asked if I couldn’t help her by helping relatives go sight-seeing in Carmel, that’ll be fun.
More looking up… I’m now the head of the Kinetics and Electronics Department at the Crucible! And youth classes are starting up soon so I’ll have a month of crazy projects and youthful exuberance!
And the latest looking up: Yarn Bombs! Finally, a graffiti I can get behind.
I’ve finally gotten my AT&T Captivate (AKA Samsung SGH-I897) Android phone to a place I like it, installing apps and tweaking controls. Here’s what I’ve got:
A 3,300 mah battery from Seidio. It makes the phone twice as thick but now I can use the phone knowing the battery won’t die at 10pm (when I might really need it!). Gives about 36 hrs on a charge instead of the embarrassing stock battery 12 hrs. $75 and well worth it.
Gmail – I switched from Outlook 2003 on my main computer. Now my email on my phone exactly matches my desktop. Deleting/archiving an email on my phone deletes it on my desktop. Very efficient! And I’m growing to like tags instead of folders.
HiQ MP3 – a good audio recorder
Screen Filter – lets me lower my screen brightness way lower than the phone would normally allow me. Previously, using it with the house lights off or in the car at night was dangerously blindingly bright.
mNote – coupled to SimpleNote and ResophNotes on my PC makes for a much better note-taking setup than the Google. It didn’t always sync correctly.
Shortcuts to my Wiki Todo page – for longer term Todo items
RealCalc – way better calculator than the built in one
Google Voice – online voicemail
Screebl Lite – keeps the phone awake whenever I’m holding it Meh. It makes for an easier interface to just set the timeout to 2 minutes and turn the phone off manually when I’m not using it.
SwiFTP – A wifi FTP server for my phone! Now I don’t EVER need to plug my phone into my computer. And I can copy files (music, pictures, etc) using the familiar Filezilla!
NoLED – alerts me when I miss a call etc, because the phone lacks a message light
Others: Yelp, Chase online banking (especially depositing checks with the camera), OKCupid, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, Smart Ruler Lite, Pandora, Advanced Task Killer Free to reduce battery drain, Battery Graph to track battery drain, Iridium Flare, Google Sky, Tricorder, Tank Hero.
The hard drive on Charlotte’s computer died this week. She had barely turned the computer on in a year so it was quite a surprise. Here’s what happened:
Last week I copied a pile of pictures to the computer
I ran Windows Update during a shutdown on it. It ran for quite a while with 20 updates. Mid-way through, some of the updates failed with odd messages. It said it couldn’t save the files correctly or something. I clicked through this message maybe 5 times over the course of an hour. I left the house. When I came back, the computer finally shut itself off.
When I turned it back on after the updates… sadness!
Windows wouldn’t start. :-(
So I got out my Spinrite. It ran for about two hours. There were several spots where it enabled it’s fancy Dynastat process. The computer’s speaker clicked insistently for a while indicating it was trying to recover individual bits on the hard drive.
I then powered up the computer and, hurray, Windows started! The hard drive sounded a little funny so I turned on my audio recorder. 2 minutes in, the hard drive started making awful awful awful sounds! I powered off, saddened.
Listen to bad hard drive sounds and cringe!
So I rebooted. This time with Safe Mode on. It made the same sounds after a minute.
I got to thinking…. the bearing has gone bad… probably the bottom bearing… what might allow me to read the drive for just a little while…. Tada!
I’ve been running the computer on its side for an hour, grabbing backups.
Phew.
Update: I got all the files :-). I turned off the computer and back on again about 30 minutes later. The BIOS asked if I wanted to boot from the network! In other words, it didn’t see the hard drive AT ALL. I fear the hard drive is now officially dead.
Google mail has a nice set of keyboard shortcuts. Their shortcut list was updated 2/18/2011. As an aid to learning them I created this PDF cheatsheet that fits on one printed page.
Share and Enjoy!
Froyo is available for the Captivate now. You have to do a few steps but here are some really good instructions from Samsung:
Froyo Captivate installation instructions from Samsung
It took like 20 minutes and wasn’t frustrating (except for the part where the phone was saying “DO NOT UNPLUG ME UNTIL I’M DONE!!!” and it seemed to never finish, so I unplugged it… and it was fine.)
I write the following in a low-emotion writing style because that is pretty much how I remember it. I immediately kicked into “work” mode when I realized what was going on.
Monday morning December 14th, 2009 at about 11:20 the fire alarm in my building started ringing. I went to the door, felt it to make sure it wasn’t hot and opened it. My upstairs neighbor Samantha was walking down, she said in an elevated voice “There is smoke upstairs!” I went back inside, put my shoes on and went upstairs. I saw a whiff of smoke coming from the top of my upstairs neighbor’s door. It wasn’t much, may be one lungfull of cigarette smoke, but it smelled wrong. It smelled like pine and something else. I knocked loudly on the door and then felt the door. The top was not warm and all but the bottom was a tiny bit too hot. I thought for a second that may be it was just the sun shining in on the door warming it up. But no it was a fire.
I ran downstairs and called 911. “There is a fire inside the top floor apartment in my building. I am at [address redacted]. I saw smoke coming from the top of the door and the door was hot.” The dispatcher said that the fire department would be on the way. I sat down and thought for a minute. Should I rescued anything is in my apartment? Maybe I should grab my computer. Nah, I just finished backing it up and I don’t think the building will burn down, water damage probably won’t kill my computer. Is there anything else I should grab? Nah. I grabbed my cell phone, my home phone (it works within one block of the building) and a jacket. I went upstairs to the door again I went over, grabbed the water hose in the back stairwell and set it where it could be seen. I considered forcing the door open to fight the fire, knowing how fast fires spread (they double in size every 18 seconds!). But I thought how the fire department would be here very soon and it could easily get out of hand if I opened the door to give the fire air.
I went to different apartments knocking loudly. I ran into S. and told her in a forceful voice “There is a fire in the building, it might burn down. You should leave.” I went down one floor and knocked on all of those doors loudly, shouting how there are was a fire in the building. I then heard fire sirens and thought to run downstairs to prop open the doors. I heard later that they would have ripped it from it’s hinges if I hadn’t. I walked up with 3 fire fighters and showed them where the fire was. It’s good that I walked up with them so they could find the fire quickly, no smoke was coming out of her door at all. The fire fighters broke the glass window, reached around and unlocked the door in a remarkable 3 seconds. When the door opened, a wall of thick very dark gray smoke from 3′ off the ground to the top of the door started to inch out the doorway. It seemed a bit odd how slow the smoke moved. I watched them bust into another neighbors apartment in 2 seconds: a swift shove broke the glass and the plexiglass burglar-proofing insert was ripped all its screws.
Things were starting to look better. The firefighters brought up a water hose and were barnstorming the burning apartment. Initially the hose was leaking all over the stairwell but they shoved the leaking union out the 1st story window. I went downstairs and out. I called the landlord, building manager, and neighbors.
Later, I saw S. sticking her head out the window of her apartment, slightly surprised to see fire trucks. All I could think was, “Idiot.”
Over an hour or so, neighbors trickled in from the places I called them from. The contents of the burnt apartment were thrown in a soggy pile in front of the apartment, and things began to calm down. All in all, there wasn’t that much damage to the building. The fire department ripped a hole in the ceiling of the flaming apartment to make sure fire wasn’t eating through the rafters. The water damage people put holes in the wall-ceiling joinery so they could set up fans and dry out the bones of the building. It completely sucks if mold takes hold of a building after a fire! The rugs were dried out and brought back after a few weeks.
As a thank you, the landlord gave me a gift certificate to the House of Prime Rib in San Francisco. I haven’t gone yet but will soon!
My trip to Hawaii a few weeks was terribly short… Took off Saturday 8am, landed at noon. Saturday night I went to a birthday party at with an old friend that now lives in Hawaii, hi Heidi! It’s interesting that Heidi had friended me on Facebook after 10 years at exactly that moment. Just the next morning, I was on my way to fly to her in Honolulu!
Dinner Saturday night was fun.
Ala Moana park at sunset
Just a few moments before I took this, a surfer passed by that tiny gap in the break below the sun. It would have been a perfect picture. I get to keep that image in my mind. All you get is this awesome photo.
Long boats near Ala Moana park
Sunday was work. Man it was hot, humid, and sunny in Honolulu! Sunday night,
Monday night we hiked at night partway up to MÄnoa Falls. It was pretty rad! Walking along, I saw a fallen flower at my feet, oo pretty. then I scanned with my flashlight to find a few more next to me… and a whole lot more! Wow, I walked right into this thing! Another spot, I was walking along and saw “something big” away to my right. I scanned with my flashlight and saw a wall of sorts about 50 yards away. And then I scanned up with the flashlight… hmm, it’s big… it’s flat… it has vines on it… scan up some more, it’s really big, and bumpy or something, 30 feet wide and scan up some more, 40 feet tall, 50, 60, what is it, 80 feet tall with branches at the top! It’s a 100 ft tall wall of a tree with multiple trunks completely covered with vines!
Hiking toward Manoa Falls at night
At the mention of me going hiking at night, my host told me that was a terrible idea, I’d get killed, fall off a cliff, get mugged, or worse. I asked him what I should do instead to see Honolulu, and after 3 times of prodding, the best he could come up with was “Sit down and have a drink at a bar in Waikiki. That’s the real Hawaii.” Needless to say, I went hiking instead.
Greetings from Honolulu. That's Diamondhead behind me :-)
How I spent my Valentines Day. University of Hawaii beat Nevada in overtime. A good, tight game, if you like basketball.
On Monday and Tuesday I trained our clients staff how to put together the rig. It was fun from a teaching perspective, though awfully awfully hot in that parking lot.
My last meal was at this Japanese restaurant with my client, finishing with a tasty toast ice cream thing covered in honey, cinnamon and sugar :-)
There wasn’t enough time to do what I wanted to, but there never is.