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I got laid off from earthmine. While they loved me, (and gave me the best recommendation letter eva) they said they need a mechanical engineer instead of a jack-of-all-trades. I really enjoyed the job, the building stuff, cameraderie, travel. That’s the “looking down” part.

Looking up… I just got the go-ahead to make a new sign for a new local Pizza Cafe. It’ll involve using the newest, coolest tool at the Box Shop, the CNC plasma cutter.

More looking up… a friend asked if I couldn’t help her by helping relatives go sight-seeing in Carmel, that’ll be fun.

More looking up… I’m now the head of the Kinetics and Electronics Department at the Crucible! And youth classes are starting up soon so I’ll have a month of crazy projects and youthful exuberance!

And the latest looking up: Yarn Bombs! Finally, a graffiti I can get behind.

I’ve finally gotten my AT&T Captivate (AKA Samsung SGH-I897) Android phone to a place I like it, installing apps and tweaking controls. Here’s what I’ve got:

A 3,300 mah battery from Seidio. It makes the phone twice as thick but now I can use the phone knowing the battery won’t die at 10pm (when I might really need it!). Gives about 36 hrs on a charge instead of the embarrassing stock battery 12 hrs. $75 and well worth it.

Gmail – I switched from Outlook 2003 on my main computer. Now my email on my phone exactly matches my desktop. Deleting/archiving an email on my phone deletes it on my desktop. Very efficient! And I’m growing to like tags instead of folders.

HiQ MP3 – a good audio recorder

Screen Filter – lets me lower my screen brightness way lower than the phone would normally allow me. Previously, using it with the house lights off or in the car at night was dangerously blindingly bright.

mNote – coupled to SimpleNote and ResophNotes on my PC makes for a much better note-taking setup than the Google. It didn’t always sync correctly.

Shortcuts to my Wiki Todo page – for longer term Todo items

RealCalc – way better calculator than the built in one

Google Voice – online voicemail

Screebl Lite – keeps the phone awake whenever I’m holding it Meh. It makes for an easier interface to just set the timeout to 2 minutes and turn the phone off manually when I’m not using it.

SwiFTP – A wifi FTP server for my phone! Now I don’t EVER need to plug my phone into my computer. And I can copy files (music, pictures, etc) using the familiar Filezilla!

NoLED – alerts me when I miss a call etc, because the phone lacks a message light

Others: Yelp, Chase online banking (especially depositing checks with the camera), OKCupid, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, Smart Ruler Lite, Pandora, Advanced Task Killer Free to reduce battery drain, Battery Graph to track battery drain, Iridium Flare, Google Sky, Tricorder, Tank Hero.

The hard drive on Charlotte’s computer died this week. She had barely turned the computer on in a year so it was quite a surprise. Here’s what happened:

Last week I copied a pile of pictures to the computer

I ran Windows Update during a shutdown on it. It ran for quite a while with 20 updates. Mid-way through, some of the updates failed with odd messages. It said it couldn’t save the files correctly or something. I clicked through this message maybe 5 times over the course of an hour. I left the house. When I came back, the computer finally shut itself off.

When I turned it back on after the updates… sadness!

Windows wouldn’t start. :-(

So I got out my Spinrite. It ran for about two hours. There were several spots where it enabled it’s fancy Dynastat process. The computer’s speaker clicked insistently for a while indicating it was trying to recover individual bits on the hard drive.

I then powered up the computer and, hurray, Windows started! The hard drive sounded a little funny so I turned on my audio recorder. 2 minutes in, the hard drive started making awful awful awful sounds! I powered off, saddened.

Listen to  bad hard drive sounds and cringe!

So I rebooted. This time with Safe Mode on. It made the same sounds after a minute.

I got to thinking…. the bearing has gone bad… probably the bottom bearing… what might allow me to read the drive for just a little while…. Tada!

I’ve been running the computer on its side for an hour, grabbing backups.

Phew.

Update: I got all the files :-). I turned off the computer and back on again about 30 minutes later. The BIOS asked if I wanted to boot from the network! In other words, it didn’t see the hard drive AT ALL. I fear the hard drive is now officially dead.

Google mail has a nice set of keyboard shortcuts. Their shortcut list was updated 2/18/2011. As an aid to learning them I created this PDF cheatsheet that fits on one printed page.
Share and Enjoy!

gmail shortcut cheatsheet.pdf

Froyo is available for the Captivate now. You have to do a few steps but here are some really good instructions from Samsung:

Froyo Captivate installation instructions from Samsung

It took like 20 minutes and wasn’t frustrating (except for the part where the phone was saying “DO NOT UNPLUG ME UNTIL I’M DONE!!!” and it seemed to never finish, so I unplugged it… and it was fine.)

I write the following in a low-emotion writing style because that is pretty much how I remember it. I immediately kicked into “work” mode when I realized what was going on.

Monday morning December 14th, 2009 at about 11:20 the fire alarm in my building started ringing. I went to the door, felt it to make sure it wasn’t hot and opened it. My upstairs neighbor Samantha was walking down, she said in an elevated voice “There is smoke upstairs!” I went back inside, put my shoes on and went upstairs. I saw a whiff of smoke coming from the top of my upstairs neighbor’s door. It wasn’t much, may be one lungfull of cigarette smoke, but it smelled wrong. It smelled like pine and something else. I knocked loudly on the door and then felt the door. The top was not warm and all but the bottom was a tiny bit too hot. I thought for a second that may be it was just the sun shining in on the door warming it up. But no it was a fire.

I ran downstairs and called 911. “There is a fire inside the top floor apartment in my building. I am at [address redacted]. I saw smoke coming from the top of the door and the door was hot.” The dispatcher said that the fire department would be on the way. I sat down and thought for a minute. Should I rescued anything is in my apartment? Maybe I should grab my computer. Nah, I just finished backing it up and I don’t think the building will burn down, water damage probably won’t kill my computer. Is there anything else I should grab? Nah. I grabbed my cell phone, my home phone (it works within one block of the building) and a jacket. I went upstairs to the door again I went over, grabbed the water hose in the back stairwell and set it where it could be seen. I considered forcing the door open to fight the fire, knowing how fast fires spread (they double in size every 18 seconds!). But I thought how the fire department would be here very soon and it could easily get out of hand if I opened the door to give the fire air.

I went to different apartments knocking loudly. I ran into S. and told her in a forceful voice “There is a fire in the building, it might burn down. You should leave.” I went down one floor and knocked on all of those doors loudly, shouting how there are was a fire in the building. I then heard fire sirens and thought to run downstairs to prop open the doors. I heard later that they would have ripped it from it’s hinges if I hadn’t. I walked up with 3 fire fighters and showed them where the fire was. It’s good that I walked up with them so they could find the fire quickly, no smoke was coming out of her door at all. The fire fighters broke the glass window, reached around and unlocked the door in a remarkable 3 seconds. When the door opened, a wall of thick very dark gray smoke from 3′ off the ground to the top of the door started to inch out the doorway. It seemed a bit odd how slow the smoke moved. I watched them bust into another neighbors apartment in 2 seconds: a swift shove broke the glass and the plexiglass burglar-proofing insert was ripped all its screws.

Things were starting to look better. The firefighters brought up a water hose and were barnstorming the burning apartment. Initially the hose was leaking all over the stairwell but they shoved the leaking union out the 1st story window. I went downstairs and out. I called the landlord, building manager, and neighbors.

Later, I saw S. sticking her head out the window of her apartment, slightly surprised to see fire trucks. All I could think was, “Idiot.”

Over an hour or so, neighbors trickled in from the places I called them from. The contents of the burnt apartment were thrown in a soggy pile in front of the apartment, and things began to calm down. All in all, there wasn’t that much damage to the building. The fire department ripped a hole in the ceiling of the flaming apartment to make sure fire wasn’t eating through the rafters. The water damage people put holes in the wall-ceiling joinery so they could set up fans and dry out the bones of the building. It completely sucks if mold takes hold of a building after a fire! The rugs were dried out and brought back after a few weeks.

As a thank you, the landlord gave me a gift certificate to the House of Prime Rib in San Francisco. I haven’t gone yet but will soon!

My trip to Hawaii a few weeks was terribly short… Took off Saturday 8am, landed at noon. Saturday night I went to a birthday party at with an old friend that now lives in Hawaii, hi Heidi! It’s interesting that Heidi had friended me on Facebook after 10 years at exactly that moment. Just the next morning, I was on my way to fly to her in Honolulu!

Dinner Saturday night was fun.

Ala Moana park at sunset

Just a few moments before I took this, a surfer passed by that tiny gap in the break below the sun. It would have been a perfect picture. I get to keep that image in my mind. All you get is this awesome photo.

Long boats near Ala Moana park

Sunday was work. Man it was hot, humid, and sunny in Honolulu! Sunday night,

Monday night we hiked at night partway up to Mānoa Falls. It was pretty rad! Walking along, I saw a fallen flower at my feet, oo pretty. then I scanned with my flashlight to find a few more next to me… and a whole lot more! Wow, I walked right into this thing! Another spot, I was walking along and saw “something big” away to my right. I scanned with my flashlight and saw a wall of sorts about 50 yards away. And then I scanned up with the flashlight… hmm, it’s big… it’s flat… it has vines on it… scan up some more, it’s really big, and bumpy or something, 30 feet wide and scan up some more, 40 feet tall, 50, 60, what is it, 80 feet tall with branches at the top! It’s a 100 ft tall wall of a tree with multiple trunks completely covered with vines!

Hiking toward Manoa Falls at night

At the mention of me going hiking at night, my host told me that was a terrible idea, I’d get killed, fall off a cliff, get mugged, or worse. I asked him what I should do instead to see Honolulu, and after 3 times of prodding, the best he could come up with was “Sit down and have a drink at a bar in Waikiki. That’s the real Hawaii.” Needless to say, I went hiking instead.

Greetings from Honolulu. That's Diamondhead behind me :-)

How I spent my Valentines Day. University of Hawaii beat Nevada in overtime. A good, tight game, if you like basketball.

On Monday and Tuesday I trained our clients staff how to put together the rig. It was fun from a teaching perspective, though awfully awfully hot in that parking lot.

My last meal was at this Japanese restaurant with my client, finishing with a tasty toast ice cream thing covered in honey, cinnamon and sugar :-)

There wasn’t enough time to do what I wanted to, but there never is.

In November I visited a very good friend in Virginia. At one point she mentioned how she was unhappy that her ex made off with the waffle iron. I thought pensively and sadly to myself how the utter lack of home made waffles in her life was only multiplied by the loss of the iron itself. Thus began a search for a great waffle iron. It was a surprisingly long road.

I had bought a Villaware model 2001 from Williams Sonoma in 2001 that I am very happy with. But it’s a Belgian iron and she said she didn’t like such big crusty waffles. Besides, they don’t make the model any more, the replacement isn’t that well rated.

I stood in the San Francisco Williams Sonoma googling their waffle irons; starting at $180, you would think the All-Clad machines would be well rated, but “eh”. Surly Table was about the same. Standing in the basement at Macy’s, the Cuisinart $30 iron got good recommendations; and then I realized it would cost almost as much to ship it as it cost. Finally, I got a trial subscription to Cooks Illustrated online to look at reviews. They liked the M840 Wafflepro Express. I read a gazillion reviews. Many love, some hate. It was good to see that most of the hates were things like “It doesn’t make my mom’s traditional recipe the way I want it to!”

So here’s what I got her from Amazon:  Chef’s Choice M840 WafflePro Express Waffle Maker, Traditional Five of Hearts

Is it a good waffle maker? Late one evening, about 2 weeks after mailing the machine, I got the following text:

Im drunk and i have been eating waffles all night. You are amazing

This is about the greatest text I have ever received.

Each month AAA’s magazine “Via” has segment where they ask readers to contribute tips. Here’s one I submitted and they published in the west coast March 2011 edition, with great help from Charlotte! It’s neat that they illustrated the idea as well :-) Illustration by Michael Klein.

They sent me a AAA T-Shirt and a $25 check :-)

The House voted to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding on 2-17-11. They cut funding for HIV tests, cancer screenings, birth control, and more, putting millions of women and families at risk. We can’t let it go unanswered. It’s time for you and me to stand with Planned Parenthood. Sign the open letter to the reps who voted for this bill — and to the senators who still have a chance to stop it.
http://www.istandwithplannedparenthood.org/

Yes, this is real. The National Right to Life Committee and StopTheAbortionAgenda.com is strongly in favor of this amendment. Nuff said. I signed the Planned Parenthood petition.

Though it’s doubtful the bill can really stand… Here’s some snippets from OpenCongress Blog. Read the whole article there.

…
First, the Senate, which is still controlled by Democrats, will never agree to this. Some Republicans – namely Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME] and Sen. Susan Collins [R, ME] – have even said that they would oppose an attempt to block Planned Parenthood from receiving funding. Senate Democrats are confident they have the votes to block this.

The second problem is that it is clearly unconstitutional. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution forbids Congress from passing bills of attainder, i.e. laws that punish a specific individual or group that have not been given a judicial trial. The Republicans passed a similar bill of attainder last year against the community organizing group ACORN that resulted in the federal government being sued. The Republicans may want to repeat that, but nobody else does.

One more thing to be clear on here. Planned Parenthood does not receive federal funding for abortion services. That has been against the law since 1974. They currently receive funds for other health care services, like cancer screening and family planning. But abortion services are subsidized exclusively by private donors. This amendment is about killing Planned Parenthood, not about blocking public abortion funding. That’s already blocked.
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