Doug's Sounding Board

Wash Darlene’s bathroom walls and ceiling.
Get the light working in the computer room.
Get all this code to compile and working.
Put more stuff in the free pile.

A recent note from a friend in response to a note from me allowed for a handwriting comparison on their end. It was noted that we have almost the same handwriting except for noted differences in the ‘f’ and ‘S’ characters. That got me to thinking about how my ‘f’ had changed over time. It was stable for a long time and then in calculus the ‘f’ started looking more and more like an integral symbol.

That wasn’t a difficult change, so how easy are handwriting changes in general. I think people usually consider that pretty steady but it does change. Mine gets worse at least. Maybe it’s because of a lack of patience to write nicely.

So Nicole moved everything out of her room and started to pull up the carpet. I finished removing the carpet when I got home. The floors underneath look to be in pretty good shape overall. We still need to remove the carpet tack strips though.

Hopefully tonight I’ll get to the ceiling light in the computer room. I’m going to try to raise the conduit on the ceiling light. so I can install the electrical box in the ceiling.

I finally found the Dark Side M&Ms at Toys R Us. I liked the idea of dark chocolate M&Ms. So what do I think? They really don’t taste all that much different than regular M&Ms. The dark colors are great though!

So the EZ-Seal made the tire last twice, at four weeks, as any previous tire. The presious tires lasted two weeks and one week, respectively.

I came back from OSH and after realizing I needed more hardware, hopeed back on the scooter to realize that the tire was low. I saw some EZ-Seal bubbling a little and decided to see if it would take airing it back up. While I was fillin git I noticed a bulge in the tire wall. I guess since the tire can’t really take the load of me + scooter + bumps and the sealant is fixing holes, it put extra pressure on the side wall. Anyway, I aired it back up and decided to take it around the block (0.9 miles) since it wouldn’t be that far to walk it home if I needed to. It made it two-thirds of the way around before it died fully.

I went to We All Ride because I saw that they had the 3.5×10 tire that I wanted to try next. It has a rated capacity of 430lbs vs. the 330lbs for the 3.0×10 that is the standard.

Last night I pulled off the wheel and I’ll take it to Volks Cafe to have them put the new tire on. I’m getting better and it only took 20-25 minutes to take off the wheel.

Chocolate and Vanilla Cream. This is vanilla flavored white chocolate where
you can barely taste the vanille and a small layer of milk chocolate on the
bottom. I htink it’s mostly unsatisfying since it doesn’t really live up
to its name.

Souble Chocolate. This is milk chocolate with a thin layer of dark chocolate
on the bottom. This ends up merging to make a pretty good flavor
of chocolate. Check this one out.

For the past 2 weeks my scooter lights haven’t been working. That isn’t such a big deal during the day when you can do hand signals, but it’s dangerous at night. Yesterday I took it apart until I found out where the action goes on electrically.

Under the front panel is a mess of wires behind the headlight area. These are for engaging the ignition, controlling the signals, and running the lights. However it isn’t where your problems are going to come in. The area you really want it behind the plastic that is under the front of the seat. There is one long screw holding it in place in addition to 2 under the seat that hold the bucket (under the seat) to it. Here is where you find the main controller for the motor and another mess of wires.

On a previous visit to behind the headlights I wrote the function of the various wires on teh wire connectors and I should have done it on the seat panel too but I neglected to do it. Anyway, 3 of the wires lead to a connector that connects to the light controller that lives under/in the floor board. In my case, these wires were run behind and under the main controller and the jostling from riding eventually cut one of those wires.

I stripped the teo ends and twisted and soldered them together and covered it in electrical tape. Then I packed everything away and now I’m back as good as new!

So I just saw HGttG and I have to say that I liked it overall. I also have to agree with the reviews that say that it isn’t as funny as the books, but the reasonfor that, I believe, is that the funniest parts of the books are not action or dialog but the commentary on what is happening. That is a very difficult thing to translate to film and I like the choices that were made throughout.

A number of people were laughing all the way through and I laughed a good bit, I’m just saying that I didn’t find it as funny as the books. I hope they continue with the series and keep the cast.

Last night I saw Kung-Fu Hustle, the latest film from Stephen Chow. I loved this move and will say right up fron that this is the movie that Matrix 2 & 3 wanted to be. I’m not going to spoil anything here but I will say that the fight scenes are amazing and creative. The story, while a little slow to start is pretty good, though it isn’t s good as Shaolin Soccer (Stephen Chow’s last film to make it here).

Thankfully, unlike Shaolin Soccer, this appears to be intact. Are studios finally learning to leave the goodness of Hong Kong films alone? I hope so!

If you like kung-fu movies, if you like comedies, if you liked the Matrix, if you liked Shaoline Soccer, go see this movie!