I just added a recipe page so I can more easily keep track of recipes I come across and like and that I think others might like.
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Aug 012005
Jul 302005
My sister loves horror movies. She can’t get enough of them, and “House of 1000 Corpses” is one of her favorite. She loved it so much that took the day off work to see the sequel (currently in theaters) “The Devil’s Rejects“. Anyway, I decided I shoudl see why she liked it so much and after watching it last night I think I know.
It’s intense. It’s not like your typical horror movie where you have some super-human bad guy that gets vanquished in the end. You have psycho killers who prey on people wandering through and mutilating them for their experiments. They will kill anyone who tries to interfere and it all has a more real feel than most horror movies. The story isn’t the greatest, it’s wrapped in a House of Wax wrapper of kids going to see the freak show and in the end finding out the exhibits are the previous visitors. Most of the movie is the torture and torment of the kids though and it’s certainly more than you get from your average horror flick. It had that I can’t look away from the car accident feel to it.
If horror movies aren’t doing it for you anymore and you want something to push some more of those boundaries, then this is the movie for you.
Occasionally when I go over a bump I feel the power cut out on the scooter for a second. I thought it might be where the splice in the line to the motor is from when changing tires on these was an unknown. I just checked that yesterday and all those splices are solid, not even a wiggle. I also thought it might be in the throttle and to test that I had the back wheel off the ground with the throttle on and whacked it. The motor cut out for a split second.
I talked to Ricky at the Volks Cafe about it and he said he didn’t have any others in stock and explained that it is a hall-effect sensor which basically means it’s a magnet and a magnetic field sensor Not likely to have a problem unless the sensor or the magnet is loose. I took it apart and found the sensor a little loose so I bought some epoxy and really glued it in. I also got it positioned better so the final position will be closer to the sensor than before (slightly but we aren’t talking about major distances in any case and the magnetic field drops off as 1 over r squared so every little bit helps). The power in the throttle starts a little earlier now which is good but still there is the drop-out.
I got it home from the test ride and put it back on the center stand. I got the back wheel off the ground and turned it on. Then for some reason I turned the handle bars. When it was at either side it would work perfectly, but when I turned it through the center position sometimes it would cut out. Finally a concrete way to reproduce it without me having to be riding! I’m guessing that something is getting pinched sometimes in the forward position or something. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for but I with the better reproduction I can play around until I find it better.
He was wearing a t-shirt that read “I Told You So!“
Jul 292005
It’s frozen, but better than nothing. Time to search for microbes!
Jul 292005
Rip out the old dryer vent and run a new one to the outside
Patch the wall where the new dryer vent is
Put a restraint on the new drain pipe for the washing machine so it won’t try to push against the wall patch I need to put in.
Patch the wall where all the washing mahcine work was done.
Patch the hole in the ceiline in the tv room
Patch the hole in the ceiling in the office
Cut the hole larger in the living room so I can use large pieces of dry wall to patch the holes left by the old floor heater
Get large pieces of dry wall and a fresh bucket of dry wall compound
Laundry (I can even do that while wall stuff is being done
Install the new fan in Dar’s bathroom
Hang up the curtain rod in the office
Wash poof chair covers
Dishes
Weed wack
Track down scooter electrical connection flakiness and fix it – At lunch I took off the electrical tape that hid the splicing job done at the show early on (it was their first tire thing and they didn’t know a better way yet). The splice was in great shape and no loose wires there. Now I think it’s the throttle handle.
Post stuff more interesting than to do lists
Put up Dar’s curtains
Jul 272005
We just bought a new king-sized bed. We picked out the new bed frame and the nice foam (not body molding so you can still roll over) mattress and to get over thinking about how much it was I started thinking of how long the mattress is supposed to last and how much bedding like pillows and sheets we’d ahve to buy of the years and figured that it works out to like 40 cents a day per person to have a good night’s sleep for the life of the bed. It doesn’t seem so bad that way.
My company, in celebration of their 10th anniversary, decided to make a trading card contest where you would have to socialize with people around you to get certain sub-sets which in-turn qualify for you to maybe win some prizes based on which sub-sets you collect. The sets are corporate logos (5 cards), the 10-year employees (8 cards), a set of 5 random people (I haven’t read these but they are things like student and grandmother), technology buzzwords (5 cards), branding (5 cards), and the set that let me here, corporate virtues (11 cards) with things like Integrity, Passion, Drive, etc.
You’re probably wondering buy this point how this is funny at all. Well, it’s trading cards, so there has been a lot of time with people saying things like:
“Do you have any Purpose?”
“No, but I have lots of Passion.”
Or “Do you have any Integrity?”
“Yes, if you can give me Respect.”
Or, “I have Drive now, but I’ve lost my Goals.”
I’ve had a great deal of entertainment with this and I felt I had to share. Thanks for listening.
Jul 272005
It’s been awhile since I did that. I made some good fixes and helped others fix or diagnose problems. I had to call the allergy clinic and ask them to put my shots in the refrigerator for tomorrow morning and they did which is good so I don’t get charged for wasted shots.
I also took a walk to the library to look at their videos. They had an extensive collection of non-fiction VHS tapes, including a number on local history like a ten tape set on the oral history of Davenport and another 10 tapes from the discussion about rebuilding Santa Cruz after the earthquake or 1989 (still two holes in the ground (am I rambling too much here?)). Anyway, their total number of DVDs is maybe 50 tops. They didn’t have any current VHS movies either which makes me think it’s 100% donation. Maybe I should start giving them movies I don’t care for. Or since I just bought this 20 kung-fu movie collection for $15 (on 6 discs) and if I don’t really want to own them after that (but $0.75/movie is worth buying initially) I’ll hand them over and then 1/3 of their movies will be kung-fu movies.
Jul 252005
I really dislike the Bic-knockoff pens we have in our office. “Value Plus” Medium Pt. India, because Bic pens are too expensive? These pens go dry if you set them down for 10 minutes and you have to write a little for the ink to start flowing again. They also seem to be high friction and require a considerable writing force to move it across the writing surface. Are pens really the biggest expense around here? Instead, as my co-worker Paul pointed out, they paid for me to go across the street and shop for pens for 10 minutes at probably a much greater expense.
Anyway, I picked up two pens: the Sarasa 0.7 ball-point by Zebra, and the Energel 0.5 gel needle-tip by Pentel. The Sarasa has click-top action and writes smoothly and evenly and has a rubber grip. The Energel has a removable cap which reveals a rubber grip, and it also writes smoothly and evenly without feeling like you are engraving the paper which is good for a pen with a tip that small. Both rubber grips are not overly grippy which is good because on some of them you can grab it and then have a hard time adjusting to get settled in a comfortable grip.