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How I know I have O+ blood:

One section of taking Physiology over the summer was on blood. I gotta say that pricking myself with that lancet by hand totally sucked. I’ve got to get better at that.

(Previously: Chemistry Money Shot)

I got a gift card a while back. I ended up having $58.02 left on it. It’s a bother to try and spend EXACTLY $57.02 and some retail clerks don’t know how to ring up a multi-credit card purchase. I was able to apply the money to my Amazon.com account without any fees and a minimum of  hassle.

I used my non-reloadable card to buy an Amazon Gift Card. Then I applied that Gift Card to my Amazon account so I can spend it. The beauty is that Amazon will let me purchase a gift card in any amount, in my case I bought a $57.02 gift card and applied it to my Amazon.com account, finishing off my non-reloadable card. You might have to look around on the Amazon site to find the “arbitrary denomination” cards. Here is the current link to it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/gc/ref=topnav_giftcert

If you really loved me, you’d get me this for Xmas
(on eBay)

(right-click and open in a new window to enlarge)

A parachute delivered, rocket powered skycrane? On Mars? Seriously? Seriously Awesome!

local version:

If I were a martian and I saw this thing descending, I’d be seriously freaked out. Once again, truth > fiction!

This is art. And incredible.

http://archive.srl.org/2012/01/31/srl-banned-in-san-francisco/

SRL staged the Crime Wave show in 1995 after which Mark Pauline and Mike Dingle were promptly arrested and questioned by local authorities and the FBI and later charged with arson and the use of explosives to endanger the public…

Here’s an excerpt from their 1989 show:

local version:

Notes from the Youtube video:

This is a show we staged under the 101 freeway which involved among other inadvisable things, the burning of 20 pianos against a freeway support. Also notable for a week long bomb scare caused by 300 or so TNT canisters we filled with plaster and fitted with fake blasting caps that had cannon fuse protruding from them. We filled a large plastic bag with these and at the end of the show machines ripped the bag apart scattering the canisters. Then we took a canister filled with about 80 grams of black powder and set it off. The audience thought the rest were real…..Video Shoot Directed by Jon Reiss, Video edited by Leslie Asako Gladsjo.

I’ve had my HP Laserjet P1606dn for almost a year now and I’m really happy with it.

reliable paper feeding… I’ve had printers that feed poorly
small footprint… it’s a tiny printer, really
double-sided printing… works great, professional looking and saves paper
inexpensive to operate… with my aftermarket toner. The eBay seller “Toplinkinc” sells toner cartridges for it for $13. My first cartridge from them just ran out, I got 1,700 pages out of it. That’s less than 1 cent per page for ink! Why does HP sell this same toner for $79 (5 times the price per page!) ??

Don’t buy an inkjet printer unless you REALLY NEED color, and you need it cheap, and you need it to fail when you least expect it. The cartridges are VERY expensive and they dry out when you least expect them to. You have been warned.
Read more about inkjets…

A chronicle from back in early June:

Thursday

I biked to Fort Mason, we met up and saw an outdoor exhibit in Fort Mason Center called “Seat“, which was exactly what you think it might be… seats as art. Which you’d think was kinda dumb but after seeing a couple of them and “getting it” it was really pretty cool and fun.

The Exploratorium exhibits at Fort Mason were fun.

Went to Greens at Fort Mason – very chic and expensive vegetarian. I’m glad we went there but ultimately the tiny servings of flavored butter beans and tiny servings of the fried food were the best foods, which doesn’t speak terribly highly of the place.

Exploratorium After Dark was great fun. We got the backstage tour from Marnia and Corey, official visiting artists with the TE+ND rover (!)

Friday

Great breakfast at Sunny Side Cafe on Solano Ave in Albany. Their “Alameda” is the perfect hungry man’s breakfast. It’s this giant stack of French Toast, ham, eggs, hollandaise sauce and all that is good in breakfast. Megan’s niece Hanna was there, Hanna’s boyfriend Brett and Emma were there. Hanna sings a lot :-)

A 3 hour hike into Tilden Park with Megan, Hanna, Brett, and Cali. It started out as a regular hike until we decided to try and find the Tilden Park Caves. We succeeded and had quite an adventure! A bee climbed into Hanna’s hair and Brett had to get it out with a stick!

Sushi dinner at Mijori in Grand Lake with Caitlin. Megan ran into her faux-bo, we saw Martin and his son who really wanted to go to a sushi boat. A (successful) quest for frozen yogurt was undertaken, during which we ran into my pal Marcus.

I got this calculator in high school back in 19something… a long time ago. I used it in calculus, college physics, statistics, last semester’s chemistry class… it was the calculator I grew up on.

A few weeks ago, some of the buttons on the fold-out section stopped working. It’s very sad but calculator microsurgery isn’t a priority.

(UPDATE 7-1-23: Find nostalgic conversations and the manual in the comments below!)

There’s like a gazillion classes going on at this mega-learning/hacking/building event!

Join me at Workshop Weekend!

I’m teaching “BeetleBots Zooming Everywhere!” on  Sunday, July 1st at 10:00am.

Workshop Weekend is a weekend-long event of short, 1 to 3 hour long workshops in subjects from exploring 3D modeling and printing, building a mini robot, and creating your own jewelry to making ricotta cheese and discovering DNA modeling! It’s a festival of learning with more than 40 hands-on workshops to choose from, all taking place June 30 and July 1 in downtown Oakland — pay $30 and take as many workshops as you like! The weekend is a family-friendly gathering for kids and adults alike, bringing together arts, crafts and engineering workshops, all taught by the bay area’s best makers.

Aaaand, use my coupon code to get 10% off admission:  BEETLEBOTS2012

Here’s a partial list of the workshops being offered:

• Cheesemaking: Ricotta
• Creating 3D Models
• Sewing by Machine
• Royal Icing Flowers
• Arduino Programming
• Rainbow LEDs
• T-shirt Silkscreening
• …and like 30 more

Check out them all at  http://workshopweekend.net/catalog

See you there!

I’ve seen comments online and and did a little research on laser nail fungus treatments. I think a reasonable assessment would be:

* expensive ($1-2k+) (though a friend told me their friend had both feet done for $275)
* safe
* 25% success rate, a bit lower success rate than prescription oral drugs. Many report a clearing in the first year and then a return after 2 years or so.
* easy treatment. visit the foot doctor 1-4 times for short treatments over the course of a few months.

Does that sound correct? Please write in the comments below!

Some comments on my blog from folks suggest what I say is about right.

This is a followup to all the fungus talk on my blog.