Swine flu got me. ...or I'm lazy....
Continue reading Sorry, no post tonight.
April 2009 Archives
Yeah, that's right. My truck goes from 5520 to 4840 pounds in 22 minutes. P.S. 8000 gross....
Continue reading Time slip from the drag races dump.
There are two primary paths between my house and downtown Bellevue. One is an arterial road, and the other is a highway. The highway is very slightly quicker. Even though they're the same speed in both directions (i.e., the surface streets take the same amount of time whether I'm going...
Continue reading Directionality.
Do you use those AV cables packaged with (as far as I can tell) every digital camera ever sold? Busting them out once to try them doesn't count. Have you used them more than once?...
Continue reading Question for you all.
I killed this ivy off right after we moved in on advice that killing the ivy would be a whole lot easier than removing the tree when the ivy strangles and kills it. I'm pleased with the decision on that—the ivy is a complete nuisance and I'm glad to be...
Continue reading Dead ivy just won't fall.
I did the back yard. Even though it's larger than the front, it ended up yielding the same amount of thatch. I'm hoping that liming the ground will prevent the moss from growing back in the future. I dethatched by hand last year without any long-term success (and with a...
Continue reading Another day, another yard.
It seems the yellow haze is worse this year than in the past. Everything is covered....
Continue reading Stop! Pollen time..
We had dinner tonight at Sages (achtung! auto-play audio!) in Redmond tonight, and then caught This American Life Live. Both were great!...
Continue reading Sages and This American Life Live.
The Aluminum Overcast B-17 is coming to Seattle at the end of May. Yes yes yes yes excellent yes. I'm booking my flight tomorrow....
Continue reading Aluminum Overcast.
This photo was reportedly taken on "I-5 on Mercer Island," which isn't true since I-5 doesn't go across Mercer Island (I-90 does)...but regardless, this is pretty awesome. Video here....
Continue reading Lambo on the bottom.
This is what happens when you drive a lowrider. The ball bolt gets all jacked up on pavement—in this case, the bolt was way mangled long before I bought the truck and I actually cut the bottom of the bolt off a while back with a cutoff tool so I...
Continue reading Here's why that tow ball will be impossible to remove.
Apparently my truck is so low that the rental guys insisted on moving the trailer tongue down from its initial position (pictured) onto the bottom-most holes on the flange. The trailer is bottomed out at this point against its stand—it's technically possible to drop it more but I agree with...
Continue reading Lowrider.
Rob needed a small front-end loader thing to lay soil all over his lawn. So he rented this, and according to the rental guy, his Ranger was not up to the task of pulling this ~2200lb. trailer. Having towed this up and down the hills of Bellevue and Redmond, I...
Continue reading This is what I did towed today.
I'm looking for a new hip technology. This one didn't last very long....
Continue reading Well, that's over.
I have a handful of accounts that bill me reasonable infrequently. My insurance—and probably yours—only charges me once every six months. My trash and water bills come in about once every two months or so. This is great stuff. Half of these bills are charged in arrears so it's not...
Continue reading Bill me quarterly.
This is a great set of shots from outside and inisde a Soviet Typhoon submarine (called Akula by the Soviets—not to be confused with the other Soviet submarine NATO called Akula). Really interesting stuff, including photos of the space between the light hull and the pressure hull—and some of the...
Continue reading Akula akula.
I find it particularly interesting that despite the apparent rigidity of a bicycle frame or a car unibody, it all flexes—even under everyday use. I'm not a mechanical engineer1 but it seems to be that nearly everything we use sags, bends, and deforms minutely on a day-to-day basis. The limit...
Continue reading Everything bends.
It's impossible to tell in this photo (damn) but the grill is misting like crazy as the rain lands on it. I made chicken....
Continue reading Seattle BBQ.
I've never understood the appeal of stick-on plastic scoops you can affix to your cars hood to make it more ... aggressive. This particular Dodge Ram pickup truck features said scoops (in the traditional snout pattern), chrome flame inserts in the grille, and some weird wide fatty fog lamps mounted...
Continue reading Dodge Rammin'.
I trucked the mess to Jarrod's earlier for some mulchy compost insulating goodness. Saves me a trip to the dump (and the cost), so that's cool. The whole mess just about filled the truck. I estimate the total at a bit less than 1.5 yards in all. The streak of...
Continue reading Bye bye dethatch aftermath.
The gasket around the PCV valve in the truck has started leaking a little bit. It's made of ancient rubber. The amusing part about this is that sometimes when the engine is decelerating with the throttle closed, the gasket whines like a kazoo....
Continue reading PCVeeeeee.
I was going to make some quick quip about gopher being the best way to get Bolo binaries but when hitting Wikipedia to come up with the links, I acidentally went from Bolo (disambiguation) to Bolo (tank) instead of Bolo (video game). The Bolo (tank) page is like, ten pages...
Continue reading Fictionpedia.
My rear derailer has started autoshifting under load—while pedaling uphill it will spontaneously jump a gear. The linked page actually hints that this may be due to friction on the actuating cable, which is unbelievable. Apparently torsion of the frame due to heavy pedaling causes the cable to bind at...
Continue reading Dérailleur.
Once you remove moss from your lawn, it's helpful to thrown down some lime all over the place to raise the pH of the soil (reducing its acidity). An overview of all of this is here. Anyway I picked up a 40lb. sack of dolomitic lime and tossed it all...
Continue reading Dol-o-mite!.
This is the GPS track from Saturday's riding adventure up at Stevens Pass. I hit 36mph coming around the big sweeping bend on the bottom of the map just to the right of center....
Continue reading For the [GPS] record.
I convinced Rob to let me borrow the dethatcher he rented today. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but the subsequent events illuminate what a huge miscalculation this was. So as you may know, my lawn is full of moss. And dead grass. It's a thatching nightmare—the...
Continue reading Houston, we have a problem.
I wore my heart rate monitor today while snowboarding. We were on the slopes for a total of four hours—including some back-country trudging through the snow—and in all I racked up a whopping 5667 burned calories. ...although I forgot to turn the watch off after the run, so this included...
Continue reading For the record.
I pulled the front wheel off my bike earlier. This is the caliper. It's covered in cat hair since apparently I raked my hand across the carpet before adjusting the brake pad dials. Interesting stuff. Very tiny....
Continue reading Calipers and cat hair.
Layla was in eastern and central Europe for the last few weeks. She came home last night and brought me ... this. It's baby food. Made from horse meat. Ingredient #2 (right after "cooking water") is carne di cavallo. Ewwww. Nutritional info on the back....
Continue reading Nay! I won't eat it!.
I posted about this last year. April Fool's Day makes the sites I go to regularly even less useful than they normally are. I give up. No more internets for me on 4/1 from now on....
Continue reading The internet is dumb[er than usual] today.
