Not Necessarily Interesting News

Yesterday was our first rain here in Texas in over 2 months. The kid was bored so I looked for something we could do around the house. I was making breakfast and next to the bowls in the pantry I noticed an old electric firestarer. I knew it was almost empty and had an idea. I started scrounging the rest of the house to find more supplies. He’s what I came up with:

1 electric firestarter
1 35MM film canister
Some assorted wire
a block of wood
and a bottle of my wife’s perfume

First, disassemble the firestarter to get at the piezoelectric ignitor.

A standard Bic lighter will have one but they are smaller and harder to get out of the case. In our case I needed to solder on a new wire as the lighter used the body to transfer the charge back to the ignitor.

Then drill a couple holes in the block of wood and run the wire from the ignitor down one and up the other and through a small hole in the film can lid.

Then you need to set the gap to get a good spark.

When done you’ll have something that looks like this.

Nothing fancy looking but still lots of fun.

Lastly, spray a squirt of your favorite fragrance into the can(make sure it’s an alchohol based perfume) and snap it on the lid. Click away on the ignitor and you should get a nice sized pop. We can get about 30feet across the house. With a better propelant, like Binaca or hairspray we could probably get more distance.

Here’s a clip or two of it in action. Getting the fuel mixture right takes a bit of practice to get it to fire correctly the first time. Too little fuel and it won’t go, same with too much which is usually the case. It makes a nice satisfying *POP* that kids absolutely love. It’s mostly safe for indoor use as long as you don’t go nuts with the fuel and get a pool of it in the lid. If that happens it can ignite in the lid but it’s not like it’s a huge fire. One puff and it’s out. Keep an eye on it.
First video

Ok, It’s not a real cannon but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun to build and fire. Easily built out of stuff you have laying around the house. It also is a learning experience for our homeschooled son. He gets to write a report on thermodynamics and explain why the whole contraption works. He wouldn’t get to do this kind of stuff in public school, that’s for sure.

Last night we bought a toy I’ve wanted for ages. A nice shiny Tivo. They have a $150 rebate going right now if you get a year’s service. We went with the cheapest 40hour unit at $170. After rebate our net out-of-pocket is $20. Not bad. I know it’s going to be a bit small but we wanted to try one out before jumping in for a $400 Tivo.

I got home and hooked it up. Now there’s a little task for ya. We’ve got our 51″ HDTV, HD cable box, Sony audio receiver for sound, DVD player, VCR, Xbox, and now a Tivo in the system. The back of the TV looks like spaghetti. The actual hooking up wasn’t too bad I guess. Luckily the TV has 5 inputs and the Tivo doesn’t support HD so I could just use one of the S-videos I wasn’t using. I had to run a phone line from the kitchen across the floor for its initial setup call it makes to get programming info and such. It took about an hour to do that and I was ready to watch TV. After the initial phone setup I plugged a usb ethernet dongle in the back and hooked it to my home network. Now it doesn’t need the phone line and can get updates and program guides over the Net.

The picture quality is a bit worse because the signal now leaves the cable box to go through the Tivo and on to the TV using S-Video instead of the component output straight from the cable box to the TV I usually use. I can still use the composite for HD programming but lose the Tivo funcionality. They are supposed to be releasing a HD Tivo by the end of the year. I may look into that. The guides and recording parts of the Tivo are very easy to use and fun to find those weird programs at 3 in the morning you might want to record. My wife is currently teaching our son about the Revolutionary War so we decided to try the search out. We looked for ‘revolution’ and it came up with a series airing at 4AM on Sunday on like the Military Channel. It’ll record that automatically now and he can watch it during school.

I had thought about one for years but got pushed over the edge when I read about the Tivo Desktop software. It lets you play music and photos from your computer to the TV. Even better it gives you the ability move recordings from your Tivo to your computer over the network to watch or burn to DVD for archiving. The features of the latest release are even better. It’ll automagically convert the video file to download to your iPod or PSP. Being able to watch Battlestar Gallactica or WRC on the go is going to be so sweet.

Well, got to see the doc again today. Things are starting to look up though he says I’m not out of the woods yet. I like my new doc, he seems genuinely concerned about my health. I was able to blow a 375 through the air flow meter today. I’m running at nearly 2/3rds normal lung capacity again. For the past 2 weeks the best I could manage was 210. 600liters per minute is normal for a man my size. He’s put me on steroids for another 2 weeks and wants me to follow up again in a week. I am feeling a bit better, maybe because I’m almost getting enough air to breathe. Waking up in the middle of the night gasping for breath does have a way of screwing with your sleep schedule.

I am sick and tired of being sick. I have not been well for over 3 weeks. I’ve been hiding inside my house most of the time. I have had very bad bronchitis for that entire time following a cold I cought at Christmas. Late last week I also caught the flu on top of it. My temp topped 102-103 for all of Thursday. I stayed in bed for 5 straight days and limped into work yesterday finally. The docs are mystified. I’ve been given/told to take albuterol inhalers, anti-biotics, prednisone steroids, Advair(that crap costs $150 btw), and plain old Robitussin. Nothing eleviates the wheezing and constant tired. Walking 100 yards from my car into work tires me out. All I want to do is find a nice cozy bed or couch and sleep.

On sunday my wife almost called 911 when I passed out laughing. I could not breathe because I was laughing so hard. It scared the hell out of me. I can only imagine what she thought. We were standing in the kitchen talking about how in high school I could take a rolled towel in the locker room and draw blood with it. Guys were scared of me. Well, I decided to demonstrate to her and picked a target. That banana looked like it’d do. I wound up a kitchen rag and let fly the hand towel of war. The banana exploded. Literally. There was banana on the counter, on the cabinets, the ceiling, the microwave, me, her. Everywhere. I started laughing so hard I fell down and passed out.

I’m visiting the doc again tomorrow so he can see my progress, or lack thereof. The weather outside is beautiful. I’ve got two cars in my driveway that need to be repaired and all I want to do in my free time is hide in my HEPA filtered/75% humidity bedroom.

Ok, it’s Cedar Fever season here in Central Texas. That means heading down to the local Walgreens to stock up on Sudafed. I dropped by this morning to do just that and found out what a pain it really is.
On the shelves they stock something called Sudafed PE or something. I wanted real Sudafed because that’s what works for me. As I was looking for it an employee walking by asked if I need help. I told her what I was looking for. She told me I had to take a little slip up to the pharmacy counter to get ‘real’ Sudafed. WTF?
I did as she said and the pharmacist had to stop filling a real prescription to get my what used to be OTC drugs. I then had to produce my license and he wrote down the info in a little book, how much I was buying, and had me sign it. I mentioned that ‘this is a total pain in the ass’. He told me ‘I couldn’t have said it better myself’. I said next time I was in I’d stock up to avoid the hassle before I thought about what I’d said. He laughed and told me not to get too much or I’d have black helicopters following me around. He’s probably more right than I know.
Ah, the ‘War on Drugs’, you’ve gotta love it. Thanks all you tweakers out there for making everyone else’s life a little more joyful.

Wow, I didn’t get much at all done this weekend.
Ok, we did get up before dawn to go on our annual pilgrimage to Wimberly Glassworks for their annual 2nds sale. All the glass they’ve blown all year that wasn’t quite good enough for the showroom floor is saved and they have a huge sale the first weekend in January. We have been first in line every year but one since their first sale. The owner, Tim, expects us to be there and we stand out front before they open catching up on the year. I look forward to the trip every year. We have lots of glass we’ve gotten there over the years. Our prized possesion from them is a great lamp we have in the living room. After that we dropped by the giant Cabela’s store in Buda and browsed to waste time while waiting on our son to get done with his Young Marines drill day. That evening I played poker and had a really good start to the night. The books I’ve been reading have really improved my game. The last 2 hours of the game I could not catch a hand to save my life. I coasted from my dominant chip lead into the money and was eventually blinded out. Such is life. I did make enough to cover my entry so I guess it was just a free night of BSing with friends and playing poker.
Today I tried to fix our broken garage door opener to no avail. Time for a new one. 🙁 When I gave up on that I noticed that sitting in the garage was our new pressure washer I hadn’t yet tried out. I fired it up and washed the siding on the front of the house. Damn, where was this thing all my life? Between that and the vinyl siding on the side of the house it made for quick work. I’d rather pressure wash vinyl every year or so than paint wood siding every 10 years. I also did the sidewalk out front. You think you’re looking at a freshly swept walkway and when you hit it with the pressure washer it’s like night and day. I also cleaned up a Dogloo that we’re storing for a friend of ours. I was walking past it and hit it with the jet and my eyes about popped out. By then I’d screwed up and was dedicated to cleaning it. I planned on working on the dead truck but between my allergies and asthma the coughing/sneezing fits were going to make working under a truck very difficult.
This evening after a nice dinner with the family we headed down to see the UT Tower all lit up to celebrate UT’s winning of the Rose Bowl and BCS Championship. It’s awesome seeing it all lit up orange with the giant #1 in the windows. Definitely something every Austinite should see. I am still pissed at myself for not bringing my film camera and tripod. Next year. 🙂

Got a call yesterday from my old job. Said they worked something out with my contract and that I could come back immediately. They basically cancelled the paperwork that ended my contract. I came in this morning. Same office, same desk, same pay, slightly different job. It sure as hell beats unemployment.

I finally caved and went to the doctor for my nagging cough. They had me do an airflow test. In that test you blow into a tube and it tells them how much air you’re moving. Apparently I scored pretty low. She had me do it again and same thing. Of course, doing the test threw me into coughing fits. They next did a blood oxygen test and that was also a bit low. After listening to my chest the doc said I have asthma brought on by an infection. Oh Boy! He hooked me up with some sample antibiotics he had in his closet-o-goodies to save me money and gave me a script for an inhaler.
I picked up the inhaler at Walgreens and took a couple hits off it like I was told and, wow, I could breathe again. Amazing. It also gave me a decent buzz. If this lack of air thing is how it feels to be asthmatic I’m glad I’m not. It sucks getting winded walking to the mailbox.

Last month for my birthday I received one of the best gifts ever, a 60GB iPod Video. Since then I’ve been putting anything and everything on it. I’ve found a couple of great tools for converting most any video format to the MPEG4 required by the iPod. None of these are Windows tools so if that’s what you need you might as well look elsewhere.
(Read on …)

For the last week or so I’ve had a cough from hell. It started off as a cold, fever, nagging cough, you know, the works. All the other symptoms are gone except the cough. Nothing controls it and I’m constantly wheezing to the great annoyance of my wife. Sleep has been non-existant. I’m sure it’s bronchitis and I should go see a doc. Therein lies the problem.
Docs cost money. Unemployment means little money. I know he’ll want to do X-rays and all kinds of tests when all I want is a good Codine based(oh, how I love that Codine 🙂 ) cough syrup. I’m going to go tomorrow to make the wife happy but I’ll tell the doc to go easy on the tests to keep costs down.
Why does this stuff always happen at the wrong time? Now I’m forced to choose between not dying and a new clutch for my Defender that’s been sitting in the garage for 3 weeks. The clutch died the day before I was laid off in a bit of good fortune.