NASCAR Withdrawal

Thanks to Sean at Double Crown for pointing this one out to me.





I'll watch it a few times this weekend and all will be well.

Spin Cycle

My old washer died Sunday morning. I probably could have had it fixed... maybe. It was born in 1992 or so. I did some poking around and that seemed to be a reasonable age for such an appliance to start failing. We went out Sunday afternoon and settled on some new LG units. The washer is one of those new front-loading ones. It uses half as much water as a traditional toploader and a lot less energy too. Maybe our water savings will help keep some water in Lake Lanier.




I used to just set the size, water temp, cycle and then push the button. Now I have to turn it on (causing it to play you happy little greeting) then set a cycle, adjust water temp, soil level, spin speed and 3-4 other settings I haven't learned how to use yet, then push "play."

I watched a whole 20 minute "speed-wash" cycle this morning. It starts out with a few casual spins to determine the size of the load. The manual says it's "weighing" the load so it can adjust accordingly. I'm guessing it's doing some sort of rotational speed sensing after giving it a spin to get started and then it figures out something from there. Then it starts adding a little water... blasting it through the soap dispenser to add the detergent. Then it gets on with the washing. The machine uses a direct drive motor and is incredibly quiet. Even when spinning at 1000+ RPM it's still almost silent. It bugs me that there no agitator to beat up the clothes and slosh things around. It just rotates one way and dumps the clothes into the water, then the other way. Repeat. Does it work as well as an agitator? I don't know. We'll see.

Once it's done it plays another happy little song (I'll try to record it later) and you start a similar process with the dryer.

What these things really need is a wired or wireless network connection and a web-based monitoring application that simply shows you the data on the machines' displays. That would be really handy for when you can't hear the happy songs. Maybe I can install a webcam on my local network. I'd be able to at least see what they're doing.

Coming up: HE Detergent

Back for another round...

Cold but Pretty

It's a cold but pretty day down by the carillon at Stone Mountain right
now. It's a full house too as there were 7 people around the console
just before noon. Ms. Mabel had already switched to Christmas tunes
which fits in perfectly with the chilly weather (which we have now
determined is brought to us by a visitor from Wisconsin... who brought
us that cold snap last Easter too.) I'm freezing down by the water...
better go find a place in the sun.

Chumby Time

Here's my Chumby:




I think I'm going to make my n800 be a Virtual Chumby Viewer for when it's just sitting around not doing anything else (passive utility.)

Sorghum Beer

I picked up a six-pack of Redbridge beer today. I've seen it around but never tried it.



It's an OK offering from AB aimed at the gluten intolerant celiac crowd. It's brewed from sorghum instead of wheat and barley. Unfortunately the audience for this type of thing is larger than we might expect. It's nice that AB is making an effort to market something for this problem as well as bring some public awareness to it.

It's a lager. Doesn't have much of a nose... nor much of a hoppy bite. It does have a pleasantly sweet taste (not too over the top) with hints of molasses. The aftertaste is a bit too astringent though... enough to make me probably not buy it again. Not bad. Nothing special to me.

In the picture you'll also see a nifty pirate skull mug and lunchbox that some friends brought back from the Pirate House (I think that's the right place) from a recent trip to Hilton Head. It's my only skull mug. :)

Yarrrrrrrrrrrr!

Cranberry _________ ?

It's that time of the year again... seems about the only time we think of them.



Time for cranberries.

For quite some time now I've been making a hot cranberry-apple salad for Thanksgiving dinner. It's a recipe I got from my Grandmother and it's awesome. One of the best things about it is that it also make a great dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. However, I'm not making it this year. Our Thanksgiving celebration coincides with a birthday and we're having cake so we don't really need another super-sweet thing like dessert.

I'm still going for something cranberry but I don't know what yet. A relish on the side or something. Something to mix in to give stuff that cranberry zing. I only have two days to figure it out. I'm leaning toward a cranberry-orange relish or spiced cranberries (clove, cinnamon, brown sugar sauce.) Maybe I'll make two. Just some things that will hang up on the side of the plate next to the turkey or dressing for you to dab in to when you want to mix it up a bit.

If you have any suggestions please post them in comments or drop me a line.

I Speak:

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English 30% Dixie 10% Yankee 0% Midwestern 0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?


And I guess 5% something else?

All Hail Crisco!

I put fbreader on the n800 yesterday so I could add some reading to my evening streaming. Then I headed over to Project Gutenberg to find some old yet interesting things to read. So far my favorite is The Story of Crisco from 1916 or so.

After making it through the introduction it's evident that Crisco is the best thing that has ever happened to society. Yes, that's right... better than the iPhone in fact. It is the definition of purity, the perfect fat, and the most economical substance ever invented. It's a wonder anyone can digest food without it.

Equip your children with good stomachs by giving them wholesome Crisco foods—foods which digest with ease. (pg. 15)

I'm definitely going to pick up and extra can this weekend and start plowing through all these recipes. I might start with Meat Cakes. Yum.

n800 Tunes

I'm still liking my little Nokia n800. The other morning I installed a port of streamtuner on it. It makes find something on SHOUTcast and some of the other severs out there pretty easy. Just search and click... Good tunes. I often go to sleep with the radio on so I figured I'd try it with the n800. There was only one problem... there's no "sleep timer" to turn it off after 30-60 minutes or so. Bummer. :(

Hey, wait! It's a linux box. Open Xterm, get root, shutdown -hP 60. Done.
Elegant? No. Functional? Yes.

If you're in need of some tunes to stream I suggest:

• Illinois Street Lounge and Secret Agent from SomaFM
• LuxuriaMusic

Digital Cameras and Megapixels

Why can't you get a good name-brand 3-4MP camera for cheap? I don't need 7, 8, 10MP or more. I just want a small camera that's 3MP or so, 3x optical zoom ("digital zoom" is not zoom) for $50-$70 or so. I used to have a little 2MP Minolta DiMAGE X20 that was awesome but it finally went nuts after serving me well for a few years. I have a newer Panasonic that I actually like but it's a little to big to carry around in a pocket (unless I get some really BIG baggy pants.)



I think the camera people are in cahoots with the flash memory people and the hard drive people. They just want us to use more and more and more memory to store everything. It's just not necessary to have 10MP for making a 4x6 print or taking a snappy for the blog. And yeah you can set a more expensive 10MP camera to take 4MP pics but you've still got to pay for the 10MP price tag. I guess maybe there's a technical reason and perhaps they don't make the lower MP electronics any more... all the new sensors are probably the higher resolution ones. Hmmmph.