Solar Death Ray

This is good for a laugh, assuming you're the type of person who laughs at things being burned to a crisp by a Solar Death Ray that concentrates 112 times the power of the sun to heat things up to about a thousand degrees. (Fahrenheit, as if that mattered.)

Solar Death Ray

Read the site, don't just look at the pictures. It's better that way.

School is just... just... simply... FANTASTIC!

I know that I haven't posted anything is quite some time and I apologize for that. School has been keeping me pretty busy and I'm enjoying every precious moment of it. I guess I’ve found my calling. I know there are many out there that don’t really believe or care for Alternative Medicine, but I find it just simply fascinating.

Aromatherapy seems to be in my blood and I just never knew it. They say we change careers many times in our lifetime, I guess this is #3 for me. My old career in the computer world holds no interest for me any more. I just can’t cope with the way big business works and the politics involved. Something in the pit of my stomach just wants to heave when I start hearing all those “corporate buzz words” and the games they play. I just can’t hack injustice and lying to make a buck no matter who you have to step on to get it. Oh well… enough of my ranting :-)

Years ago I took a test to see which side of my brain I use the most. The last 2 times I took this test, I scored 54% left and 46% right. From what I remember, the left is the logical & scientific side and the right is the emotional & artistic side. Seems I’m pretty darned close to the middle each time. I guess that explains why my paintings were so annoying to me. My trees were just not perfectly logical… LOL. I kept tearing apart my work in seek of perfection. Yup… you guessed it… I’m a perfectionist :-)

Aromatherapy seems to fill the needs on both sides of my brain. The logical/scientific side is loving the chemistry, botany, anatomy & physiology of it, while the right side is loving the emotions and aromas. The fact that I can actually help people is the icing on the cake. I can now see a future helping those that suffer from stress, arthritis, Fibromyalgia, water retention, etc. As I’m entering Fibromyalgia remission and feeling better and better every day, it sure would do my soul good to be able to possible help others reach that same point. I won’t kid you and say I feel great all the time, but what a change!!!! I still get pain and achy, but when I allow myself to recover and recoup with rest, all seems to fall into place again. Muscles let go of their spasms and pain eases. I still rely on the occasional Tylenol #3, but not to the extent of the past.

I still have a long way to go to get my lower back stronger, but with chiropractic adjustments and massage therapy… and let’s not forget my little personal trainer from hell. Amy may be one of “those” people (body builder), but she honestly and genuinely is trying to help me get stronger. Today is one of those… OUCHIE days. I finished a full day at the school on a “clinic day” and I’m beat. I just want to curl up in bed and sleep. In fact, I may just do that and go take a nap.

I’ve also signed up for Reflexology at the school. I start August 8th and finish by the 30th. I’ll have a mid-term, final, and written test for the board to get certified along with 60 case studies. If all goes well, I’ll be able to work part-time as a Reflexologist while continuing the Aromatherapy program. I feel guilty that I have been unable to work for so long and depending on Jason for everything while I was so sick. I know we said “in sickness and in health”, but it still eats away at me that I’ve put us into such financial debt. It really sucks. Jason has been so wonderful and supportive while I know how stressful and difficult this has been for him. I know for a fact, once I start earning some money that this burden on him will ease some until we get ourselves debt-free.

What’s been eating at me even more lately is that my starting school has delayed our plans to move to the U.S. Some days I feel like such a heel. I know how much Jason wants this as do I, and now I’ve delayed us by at least 1 year. I will try not to dwell on this negativity and I’ll work my butt off to get Jason back to where he is comfortable. Nothing is more important to me than his health and happiness… and damn it… I’ll do whatever it takes to make him happy.
Ok… I’ve blabbered on long enough. I really should go for a nap. I have much more news regarding school and the future that I want to write in this blog. It’s soooooo exciting :-)

Truck brakes

Very few things annoy me more than having something fixed that then doesn't stay fixed. Normal wear is one thing, but this is way beyond normal.

It turns out that the 2001 Dakota needs brakes (again). I guess the trailer must really eat through the brakes or something. I'm going to upgrade the parts to better quality this time and see if maybe they'll stay fixed for a change.

We just had these replaced not too long ago (two years, max) by Speedy Muffler. The particularly annoying thing is that they've been pulsing for a while, and I've asked Speedy to inspect the brakes twice in the last year, most recently at the end of April. They always tell me "oh, yeah, everything's fine, the rear is a bit out of round which causes the pulsing, but there's nothing to worry about."

Well, it's been getting worse, so Norah went back over on Tuesday morning and asked them to check it out again just to be sure we'll be okay for taking the trailer down to Jon's at the end of July. Nope. It's not okay at all. They told her that the pads had totally self destructed and eaten the rotors, and that she shouldn't put it back on the road until they could replace everything. So she called me, and I got on the phone to ask what they were talking about. (Oh, a man, that's different.) Well, um, the reality is that a couple of small pieces have cracked off the pads, and they're scoring some lines in the surface of the rotors. They assured me that it would be safe for another week or so, and gave Norah an estimate to have the work done for about $590.

Now, I already have a set of PowerSlot rotors sitting down at Jon's. And I found brand new pads on the net for about a third of what Speedy wants. And if we head down to Jon's and do the work down there, it cuts another half the price off due to their inflated labor charges.

It's just so annoying to get ambushed by these idiots. I asked why, when I asked them to look at this specific problem back in April, they found nothing, but today it's gone way beyond the point where it should have been replaced. Can things possibly self destruct in two months? Were your technicians totally incompetent back in April? And if so, why would I trust them to do the work now? Or are you trying to scam me, by allowing a small cheap job to go unrepaired until it gets to the point where it becomes a large expensive job?

The manager didn't have an answer for that. All he could say was "gee, that's odd."

Jon assures me that disc brakes aren't very difficult. I remember helping my Dad with drum brakes on the Jeep, and those were indeed very difficult. So hopefully this will go much smoother than that ever did. We'll see :-).

MythTV for Underpowered CPUs

For my own reference. Good information for putting together a PVR on an old machine.

Greg's MythTV for Underpowered CPUs Page

We have a 400MHz K6-2 just sitting in the corner that we might be able to turn in to a PVR with the Hauppauge PVR-350 card and its hardware acceleration. The trick will be keeping the cost under $300, otherwise it's cheaper to go with Bell. The Haupp card goes for about $170 US on eBay (about $215 Cdn).

The do-your-own PVR does have advantages over Bell's. We could save the stuff we record, put it on the server, and burn it to DVD for archival purposes. Bell's PVR also has advantages, though. It's more integrated all in one unit and more convenient.

My concerns about this machine are the hard drive, the memory, and sound card.

The hard drive we have sitting around is a 5400 rpm 30G model. That would give us about 13-14 hours of TV recording, but I'm not sure if it's fast enough to keep up with the video input/output.

It has 256M of memory, but I was thinking of moving that module to the kitchen computer, which would leave the 400 with 128M of memory. Might be a bit tight.

The sound card is an old ISA SoundBlaster 16. Not sure if the ISA bus is capable of keeping up with the bandwidth requirements. However, this might be a non-issue, as I think the Haupp card handles its own audio. Have to check in to that.

If we start upgrading these parts in addition to buying an encoder/decoder card, the price is going to go above $300 quickly.

One thing about the Haupp card is that it has a TV tuner on it that we don't need since we have satellite. As for hardware, we could use the video card in Norah's computer if we replaced that card (could be upgraded for all of $30). However, I don't think that card has the hardware assistance. Most sites say we'd want about a 1GHz processor for software encoding/decoding. But that's a computer upgrade, which means lots more money.

Interesting to think about, though.

Computer in a VCR

Heck with Bell and their $300 PVR when you can build one of these...

VCRVO

And I thought WE had a lot of computer junk...

Messed UP Data Center

At what point do you stand back and say "yeah, I think that's enough computers"?

Portable Rotary Phone

There's something I like about a cell phone that can be used to hammer other cell phones to dust without taking any damage itself.

MAKE: Blog: Portable Rotary Phone - pre-review

Toronto highways

Highway
Originally uploaded by drazaelb.

Here's something you don't see every day. I took this with my cell phone camera one morning on my way to work.



By the fact that I didn't spend weeks in a body cast, I'm sure you figured out that it isn't what it looks like. But it makes an amusing image.

Network equipment: after moving

Network equipment after moving
Originally uploaded by drazaelb.

And this is what it looks like in the new computer room. Still a lot of wires, but they're much more manageable now. Wire shelves are cool :-).

Equipment stack: before

Equipment stack
Originally uploaded by drazaelb.

This is what our stack of network equipment looked like before we moved in to our new computer room. The cables were all hanging down below the desk, and were so knotted together that we couldn't even get all the boxes to sit straight.

I just don't get music today

Of course, I've been saying this for years about all the fluffy pop and hippity-hoppity music the kids all just eat up. But now I'm getting to the point where I don't even get what's currently passing for rock and roll.

Case in point: I was listening to the radio last night on the way home from work, and the DJ was all excited about the new Foo Fighters album that's coming out. Apparently it's two discs. One is traditional Foo Fighters, and the other is an all-acoustic disc, with John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame, dontcha know) helping out. I'm quite interested to hear that one.

However, the first track that this DJ selected to play was from the regular Foo Fighters part. He said it was "really rockin'". I gave it a listen. To be perfectly honest, I found it almost utterly indistinguishable it from any other Foo Fighters song I've ever heard. I don't mean to pick on the Foo Fighters here, they're not the only band with this problem, it's just that they happened to catch my attention last night. It wasn't a bad song, but if they hadn't announced it as brand new, I never would have known the difference.

I also have to admit that I was having a problem finding the rockin' part. The whole song was constructed around a constant steady beat from beginning to end. To my untrained ear it sounded like about 1.5 to 2 beats per second, or about 90-120 beats per minute. It occurred to me that this was the exact same rhythm that can be observed in people aimlessly jumping up and down in place. For example, ADD children who have forgotten to take their ritalin, drug addicts who are hopped up on crystal meth, or just people who really need to go to the bathroom.

I remembered seeing concert footage of entire crowds jumping up and down to the rhythm of whatever song was being played. I suppose concerts by the Foo Fighters and other similar-sounding bands appeal mainly to young people who like to jump up and down in one place for an evening and yell things like "yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-I'm-at-the-Foo-Fight-ers-con-
cert-and-I-for-got-my-ri-ta-lin-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah". I have to wonder, when it comes time to film the video, maybe they could just lock the doors on all the porta-potties and film the entire crowd doing the "potty dance" to make it look like they're all having a really rockin' time.

Personally, I wouldn't have used the term rockin' to describe music which makes me want to jump up and down on one spot for an hour and a half. When I think of new music I would describe as rockin', I think of what I've been hearing lately from bands like Finger Eleven or Seether. Music that makes you want to smash things, or at least drive really, really fast. I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing, but I do like it.

But, hey, if you like the Foo Fighters, more power to you. Have a good jump up and down.

Root Beer

I seem to be on a root beer kick lately. It goes along with trying to change our eating habits to be natural and healthy instead of stuffing ourselves with chemicals and preservatives. One of the things I've had to get rid of was Diet Coke, of which I used to drink two or three cans a day. Not only is it full of chemicals, I've also learned some pretty nasty things about aspartame.

So, now that I've been missing the Diet Coke, we noticed that the organic section of the store has naturally brewed root beer. Of course, it has sugar in it, so I have to drink it in moderation (one a week or so). But boy, is it ever good!

Now Makezine.com has a link to Make your own root beer. Excellent.

Because we just can't get enough of moving

OK, it's been a few days since I've had any time to post anything here. I want to maintain the habit of keeping this updated, otherwise I'll get lazy and forget about it. It's just that I've been working those extra hours keeping Honeywell and the tax man rich, for all the good being burned out at the end of the day is actually doing me in terms of making productive progress.

But, no work rants. At least not now. Now I want to post about our moving experience. You would have thought that we would have gotten enough of moving boxes and furniture around when we helped Maria move.

But, as things worked out, we spent the last weekend tearing our apartment apart so we could put it back together. We had been talking for a week or so about taking the upstairs portion of the house we're in the basement of. Unfortunately, we found out that it had been rented pretty much the same day we had started thinking about taking it. All along, we figured our backup plan in the event that we didn't get the upstairs would be to set up our second bedroom as a dedicated computer room and office. It was previously being used for storage of boxes. Many of the boxes are empty or nearly empty. Many of them have stuff we haven't bothered unpacking from our move in 2003. And I think there are even a couple that I never unpacked from my move to Canada in 1997. If I've gone this long and not missed whatever it is that's in there, it must not be that important. We keep thinking that "someday" we'll settle down and figure out where we actually want to live. Maybe. Then we'll actually unpack all our boxes and find places for all of our stuff. Or maybe we'll take a look at it, ask "why did we bother even moving this so many times?" and give it away.

In the mean time, getting the computers out of the living room will be a big benefit, and it will also give Norah some much-needed space that she'll be able to put to good use in her aromatherapy practice.

One really cool thing that happened last weekend was finding a free desk that's going to work out really well. It'll be the work desk for serious business, like paperwork, paying bills, etc. We're going to be enforcing the "no clutter" policy. At least that's the idea.

How, you ask, did we get a free desk? Well, we realized we needed some kind of desk that wasn't going to get covered up with all of our various computer stuff. We figured we'd go over to Office Depot and check out their folding tables. That's what we currently use for our main desk, and it works pretty well. Plus they're cheap. As we were driving over there through our neighborhood, we saw a desk that someone had put out at the end of their driveway with a sign that read "FREE COMPUTER DESK". We didn't need much convincing. After a quick check to make sure we had enough space in the black truck for it, we grabbed it up. I thought about going home to get the other truck with its extra cargo space, but Norah reminded me that the desk would probably disappear in that amount of time. So we just took it in the truck we happened to be driving at the time. And so many people ask whiningly "why do you need a truck in the city?" Because they're so much more than just a transportation appliance to carry myself from one point to another. They're tools. People who can't see that have no imagination. That's why.

Anyway... back to our current big question: where in the world are all of these boxes going to go? As of Monday, we had stacks of boxes everywhere. In the kitchen, in the laundry room, in the bedroom, on the couch, pretty much everywhere we looked there were boxes upon boxes next to even more boxes. But, at least the computer desk was in place. I'm slowly trying to formulate a plan to put the network back together to avoid the unruly mess that used to prevent me from doing any work on the computer. It was easier to avoid being eaten by the cable monster, so I tended to only do things that absolutely needed to be done with them.

Norah has been figuring out good homes for a lot of the boxes, and the piles are slowly dwindling. I'm quite impressed with how well she can pack a whole lot of stuff in to a very small amount of space. We're not quite there yet, but hopefully this weekend we'll be able to make some good progress. Especially with the empty boxes. If we collapse those down, they'll be much easier to store.

The irony is that we picked probably the worst possible time to start a project like this. I'm stuck at work doing my mandatory overtime. Norah just started school. The weather is warm enough to go places, although recently it's turned hot, hazy and humid, so there's also a lot to be said for staying in the air conditioning. But, there is no such time as a perfect time, and having this done will make things much better on both of us.

I'll try to get some pictures of our new setup once it's all put together. No guarantees when that will be, though. Keep watching this space...

Neat...

Don't these people realize how dangerous it is to give me ideas???

Science Fiction Case Mod Contest: The First Winner!

DIYParts.org

I'm hoping this site will grow, it looks like a good resource for old junk to be used for future projects.

DIYParts.org