Reality Me

Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

  • Zipfizz.com no longer resizes browser

    In my post Anti-coffee – Man I could use a cup right now! I listed some Caffeine alternatives and included a link to http://www.zipfizz.com/ as a Caffeine alternative with a warning "WARNING! Some evil web developer thinks it is ok to resize your browser window." Shae of Zipfizz paid us a pleasant visit yesterday which prompted me to revisit her site. I was pleased to find that it no longer resizes your browser!

    I have avoided the energy drink craze. Perhaps I’ll have to try one of these. They certainly make it tempting. The store offers a single for free (you pay $1.79 shipping).

  • Do you know about Blingo?

    I’ve been slowly introducing clients to Blingo over time as an alternative to Google. I was shocked yesterday to find out I had not told my wife about Blingo.

    I told one friend and two hours later he had won a music CD. Apparently they either didn’t have the refer a friend program or I didn’t know about it or I would have one also. Just incase you missed that, if you refer a friend to Blingo and your friend wins so do you. For example, yesterday Busy Mom won an iPod Shuffle which means that Lauren’s Mommy also won an iPod Shuffle.

    The following is reprinted from a post I made on Spy Journal Blog Tips:

    Blingo now has a blog. What is Blingo? Blingo is a search engine that returns the exact same results as Google (since it is powered by Google) but gives out prizes (currently limited to the United States, I think).

    You don’t need to sign up to search. But if you sign up as a Blingo Friend when you win, so does your friend!

    Spy Journal Tech Tips alerted on Blingo in December of 2004.

    Blingo

  • Featured Blog

    If you like celebrity news this blog looks like it has hours of great reading. Careful! Some risque pictures.

  • Air Quality Action Day

    Today we have an orange alert Air Quality Action Day. That means that you can ride KAT Buses for free and carpooling is encouraged. Things you can do:

    • Conserve electricity and set your air conditioner at a higher temperature.
    • Choose a cleaner commute—share a ride to work or take a KAT bus or other public transportation. Bicycle or walk to work or for errands.
    • Wait until another day to use gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment.
    • Refuel cars and trucks after dusk.
    • Combine errands and reduce motor vehicle trips.
    • If you’re going to stop your car for more than a couple of minutes, turn it off. It saves gas and reduces pollution!
    • Wait until another day to use household, workshop, and garden chemicals.

  • Today I am happy…

    …because I realized the reason we aren’t buying diapers isn’t due to lack of money but because we are using drastic measures to potty train Amy.

    see Big Orange Michael and The August Challenge

  • Can’t Move – with thanks to Bob Seger

    I woke this morning to the feel of panic
    Laid in bed and tried to handle it
    Started thinking what had to be done
    Ain’t it funny how the panic grows
    When you seem to have everything to lose
    Strange because you can’t move
    With the walls closing in.

    taken from Bob Seger’s "Night Moves"

    I woke last night to the sound of thunder
    How far off I sat and wondered
    Started humming a song from 1962
    Ain’t it funny how the night moves
    When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
    Strange how the night moves
    With autumn closing in

    I could have fun doing the rest of the song.

  • GizMag Wins Me Over–I could change careers!

    In checking out these utterly cool aircraft (my favs the Gravity powered aircraft flies with no fuel and VTOL AirBike) I really became obsessed with GizMag. Between GizMag and Make: (which has a blog) I could really get depressed over not having enough money for these cool toys or enough live span to play with them. I guess in addition to these two I need to spend more time at Kurzweil AI learning how to live forever.

  • We can improve our gas mileage

    This I have to try! Apparently, adding acetone to your gas (1-3 ounces per 10 gallons [29-87milliliters per 40 liters]) can increase gas mileage by 15-35%. Just make sure that your gas station isn’t already adding acetone! Too much and your performance will decrease.

    In other warnings, acetone eats paint and dissolves plastics. Should be stored outside.

    Additional Benefits

    In addition to increased mileage acetone added to fuel boasts other benefits such as increased power, engine life, and performance. Less unburned fuel going past the rings keeps the rings and engine oil in far better condition.

    A tiny bit of acetone in diesel fuel can stop the black smoke when the rack is all the way at full throttle. You will notice that the exhaust soot will be greatly reduced and your truck or car runs smoother.

    Acetone can reduce hydrocarbon emissions up to 60 percent. In some older cars, the HC readings with acetone in a 1986 GMC went from 440 PPM to 195, as just one example. Though mileage gains taper off with too much acetone, hydrocarbon emissions are nevertheless greatly reduced. Pure acetone is an extremely clean burning fuel that burns in air with a pretty blue, smokeless flame.

    Acetone reduces the formation of water-ice crystals in below-zero weather which can damage the fuel filter. Change that fuel filter every year to protect injectors.

    There are no known bad effects and every good reason to use acetone in your fuel. I have never seen a problem with acetone, and I have used ACETONE in gasoline and diesel fuel and in jet fuel (JP-4) for 50 years. I have rigorously tested fuels independently (with burns all over me) and am considered an authority on this important subject.

  • Kevin Costner did it first

    Wired has a great article on NASA’s attempts to recycle urine into drinking water. Excellent read!

    Over the past five years, the agency has spent $60 million delivering potable water to the International Space Station on the space shuttle (6 tons at a cost of about $40,000 per gallon).

    One gallon of that stuff would dramatically improve my family’s quality of living. Two gallon’s and we’d have a whole new life!

    Alan Shepherd’s first 15-minute suborbital flight was so short that no one thought to install a urine receptacle in his space suit. At T-minus 15 minutes, an electrical problem caused an 86-minute delay on the launchpad. Shepherd’s bladder soon reached the bursting point, and he radioed the first-ever “Houston, we have a problem” message. After some deliberation, mission control had an answer: “Do it in the suit.”

  • Troubleshooting Just Got Easier or too convenient

    Thanks to Windows XP and MSN Messenger 7.0 I was just able to use Remote Desktop Assistant to get on my father-in-law’s desktop computer to grab a file from his laptop computer and transfer it to a server in West Virginia using software downloaded from Atlanta.

    I love computers!

  • Today I am happy…

    …because I am accepting my challenges head-on. I am confident that everything will work out.

    see Big Orange Michael and The August Challenge

  • Wahoo! Milestones met!

    Ok. I’m an hour late and I missed on biggie but it will complete later in the day. Off to a client meeting.

  • Calgon!

    I’m so ridiculously tired!

  • Program with external documentation

    Visio Rules! If you program, build databases, or build database driven websites (which counts as programming) then you should be documenting your code within the code itself in the form of comments and externally in documents. My stand-bys are a site map (created in Visio), a data dictionary (created in Word), a data map (created in Visio), and a specification (created in Word). I also maintain a single document that records all my assumptions, questions, and notes about future upgrades or oversights that need to be modified "later." Maintaining these documents is enjoyable and having them on -hand makes the coding go so much smoother.

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: I am losing my will to fight.
    Master: Are you fighting for the right reason?