tsandhol's boring crap

What Snow?

2010-01-07T08:19:00.002-06:00

Things that have made this winter awesome:

Inherited snow blower from the in-laws (now fixed and running beautifully)

Subaru WRX

Blizzak WS60s on steel wheels

Yay.

Escape!

2009-08-25T15:07:00.003-05:00

Fantastic symbols on the glow-in-the-dark escape pull on a rental car (ford focus). I think it is the man running away that does it for me.

Crazy Ocean Beast

2009-08-25T15:05:00.002-05:00

The focus on this photo is horrible, but it at least shows that this product does exist:

You should, in fact, "rule the pool as the Crazy Ocean Beast". That is all.

Eggy

2009-08-23T12:19:00.003-05:00

Mrs. tsandhol had an egg-tastic birthday dinner yesterday:

Angel Food Cake (12 egg whites)
Crème brulée (6 yolks)
French Laundry pasta (6 yolks + 1 egg)

NPR Monkeys

2009-06-17T21:15:00.005-05:00

Last night, Mrs. tsandhol and I renewed our membership with our local public radio/television station, WILL. After declining the standard member gifts, I entered this into the additional comments section of the donation form:

I would like to forgo the traditional thank-you gifts, but would greatly appreciate a hand-drawn monkey (even a lousy one) on a piece of paper. I can pick this up if necessary.

This morning, I received an email from somebody who handles the pledges saying that the station manager, Jay Pearce, had drawn (and autographed, apparently) one himself. I popped on over to the station that afternoon and was handed this:

Awesome.

Note that this is not the first time that we have asked for a drawing of a monkey.

So Awesome

2009-05-26T13:02:00.003-05:00

Mrs. tsandhol came home from grocery shopping with a box of fruit snacks. While she does love including fun snacks in our lunches, I could immediately see why she chose this particular treat:

How can you not love packaging that includes both a shark *and* a dinosaur (complete with pirate hat and vest)?

This one's a winner.

I hurt...

2009-05-11T08:45:00.003-05:00

At our new house, we have inherited a neglected vegetable garden. It's roughly 16' x 40', and appears that it hasn't been used in a year or so.

You'll note that there is a good 3' strip of grass along the fence that requires one to push the mower over the garden to reach it. This is because the phone line is buried under that section, and imagine it is risky to rototill that section. Anyhoo, Mrs. tsandhol and I aren't exactly big vegetable gardeners anyway, so we decided to replace the vegetable garden with some raised beds and ornamental plantings. 5 cubic yards of mulch, 144 feet of 2x6 cedar, 16' of aluminum rods, 450' of landscaping fabric, and loads of topsoil and compost later (plus plants), and we have a workable garden for now.

The raised beds are placed in a way that will allow us to either add three more of them if we decide we like doing vegetable gardening, or just have a larger ornamental garden with a path.

Now if I could just get a hold of some muscle relaxers...

Damn Bunnies...

2009-05-10T21:08:00.002-05:00

'Tis the season to chase baby bunnies around the lawn with the mower. I swear, bunnies must exist only to be food for other animals, as the babies seem to run *towards* me rather than away when I'm walking around the lawn with some loud-ass equipment.

This evening, I went out to the garage to get a level. As I'm looking around for the tool (no, we haven't yet unpacked the garage), I see what looks like a ball of wool socks on top of a few bags of mulch. Then I realize that the ball of socks has eyes and ears. A baby bunny somehow made its way into the garage when it was open today, and decided to hang out there for a while. After 30 minutes of chasing a bunny with brooms, shovel handles, and a fiberglass wire fish (which it managed to jump over, rather than be driven by it), we got a very scared and most likely tired baby bunny out the door. I hope it finds a safe place to nap for the evening.

Ah, springtime...

MAME Cabinet

2009-05-10T16:49:00.004-05:00

If you recall, Mrs. tsandhol and I built a MAME cabinet a few (5) years ago. Well, we've decided that we should actually create a marquee for it, to replace the current "TBA" that is printed on a few pieces of taped-together paper. We are at a loss as to what to name it. So, please choose one or more good names, or feel free to suggest one of your own:

What should be the text on the marquee of our MAME cabinet be?(surveys)

It has been a while

2009-04-08T07:51:00.005-05:00

Sorry for a lack of updates. We've moved (just across town), so I've been a bit busy with other things. Now for some pictures of big-ass trucks...

Breakfast of Champions

2009-02-27T07:08:00.002-06:00

We had some leftovers from my birthday meals from over the weekend. Among those were some bacon and some chocolate cake. So I had both for breakfast.

Gyaah!

2009-02-18T08:08:00.001-06:00

There's nothing quite like sitting in a stall in the bathroom when a giant cockroach comes running straight at you from under the door.

I'm sure those outside of the bathroom enjoyed my exclamations to that fact as well.

Sweet

2009-02-13T13:44:00.000-06:00

Awww yeah.

Sometimes you just gotta...

2009-02-07T14:44:00.000-06:00

...make up a big-ass batch of mac and cheese.

Sigh

2009-01-19T08:40:00.003-06:00

It's pretty noticeable that one has put a sweatshirt on backwards when said sweatshirt is a hoodie.

Awesome

2009-01-16T08:07:00.002-06:00

-14° F

2009-01-15T08:53:00.000-06:00

I blew bubbles in my backyard this morning. It was totally awesome.

I Hate Cleaning

2009-01-10T20:36:00.002-06:00

I'm cleaning out the computer closet this evening, getting rid of stuff I know that I'm never using again. I am definitely not the type of person that feels freed by getting rid of clutter. I'm way too attached to everything I have. Perhaps an example is in order:

I just got rid of two old 17" monitors and two old cases. One of the cases was the second computer I ever owned (and had all through college) and happened to be used as an old file server. The case still had two hard drives in it, and I wanted to wipe them before sending the whole thing off to the recycling center. I found a spare DVD drive and hooked everything up to the old machine.

Not only did the machine turn on without a problem, but the boot order was set to boot from disk first instead of the DVD drive. Up comes mandrake (in a quick amount of time, too) and sits at the login prompt. It was as if it was saying to me, "Hey tsandhol, I've sat in your closet for seven years just waiting for the day that you'd need me again. Here I am, ready to serve up files again. What would you like me to do for you?" And I was there to answer, "I'd like you to kill yourself."

I think I'm going to go clean out a different closet for a bit.

Figures

2009-01-10T09:49:00.002-06:00

Everybody likes the comfy chair.

Confused

2009-01-05T09:14:00.002-06:00

An article about a new 'Coffee Shop' health program by an area hospital was posted this morning in the local paper. As the News Gazette eventually archives their online stories, I'll post some choice quotes (emphasis mine):

Local senior citizens are invited for free coffee, doughnuts...

...provide heart and lung assessments along with blood pressure readings, body-fat analysis, cholesterol and blood sugar screenings.

Are they just trying to drum up business with this program?

Coffee Response

2009-01-05T08:39:00.003-06:00

On Saturday, Travis wrote a post about making coffee. As his blog still doesn't support comments (really?), I'll respond here. To the statement, "you can fix that by pouring the pot into a thermos immediately after plunging, but who does that?", I would like to mention that I do. I share a French press in my office, so I immediately pour the brewed coffee into my thermos which is taken to my desk. It works well as I can pour only a few sips of coffee into my cup at a time, ensuring I have hot coffee to drink all morning.

Carry on.

It started with a lid closing...

2008-12-31T13:32:00.005-06:00

Dear Windows Vista (and Lenovo, because I realize that you configured the machine),

I love working with you on desktop machines. I love your start menu, I love your search facilities, and I love IIS7. However, I don't believe you belong on ~~a laptop~~ my laptop. The story that follows will explain why.

Love, tsandhol

A few months ago, Mrs. tsandhol needed a laptop to help with her massage business. I helped her choose a ThinkPad T61, as it was an appropriate size and level of quality for her needs. We maxed out the amount of RAM the machine could accept (4 GB), so we chose Vista 64 for the operating system. I have used Vista 64 on desktop machines and have been very pleased with the features of the new OS. The machine came a week later and she started working with it.

Fast forward three months later. After having to manually intervene to make the machine run, I have given up. The OS can't seem to figure out to suspend and wake up when the lid is closed and opened. Suspending manually (through a menu option) works properly, but never when just closing up the laptop and going. I've had to restore from backup three times due to various registry corruption errors and boot loader issues ("windows failed to load because the nls data is missing, or corrupt"). I've completely restored from rescue disks, just in case I had a bad initial install, and still no permanent fix.

Allow me to admit that these problems aren't just bugs that exist in the OS. Most of these problems occur after manually powering off the machine after it fails to wake from sleep. I understand that turning a machine off unexpectedly will cause problems. However, these situations shouldn't exist in the first place.

Anyhoo, after the latest restore from backup, Vista refused to contact windows update. The solution to the problem wasn't horrible, but it did require significant intervention to fix. I decided that I didn't want to spend my life doing tech support on a brand new machine that wasn't having any hardware issues. I searched for alternatives.

The XP downgrade that came with the machine was only for the 32-bit version. I didn't want to give up half of the memory that came with the machine, and XP64 is pretty much dead. I decided to give Ubuntu a try.

What a difference. The install was speedy, and there were zero driver issues. All of the laptop hardware keys worked flawlessly (brightness, volume, suspend, wireless, etc). Ubuntu popped up a notification right away and told me there was a binary driver for my nvidia display adapter (with a handy button to automatically install it). All of the software Mrs. tsandhol uses for her documentation (OpenOffice, Subversion, TrueCrypt, GPG, Firefox, Thunderbird) all exist as packages for the distribution. Within 2 hours of installation and configuration, she was ready to go.

And it is fast! I had no idea how quick her laptop was. The disk seems to be the slowest component on the machine, and on Vista, it was always grinding away for every operation. Things are now so snappy (even with an obnoxious amount of eye candy turned on), I can't believe it is the same machine.

Oh, and suspend works perfectly when closing the damn lid.

Sympathy, please

2008-12-30T13:41:00.002-06:00

A year-end haiku. I would like to call it, "Insult to Injury"

Went to donate blood
Two arms, two needles, no dice
Pink Coban only

Wow

2008-12-24T07:47:00.001-06:00

My driveway isn't exactly steep, but when I pulled Holly's car out of the garage this morning and put it into park, the car continued to slide down the driveway until it leveled off.

Lovely

2008-12-23T19:54:00.002-06:00

Yum. Freezing rain.

Nerd Parents

2008-12-22T07:26:00.002-06:00

I was at my mom's apartment the other day, and she was giving me a recipe for a corn souffle that I had asked for. The awesome part isn't so much the recipe, but that it was written down back in the day on the back of a punch card.

And the nerds begat more nerds...

Why aren't there any birds at my feeder?

2008-12-13T12:03:00.004-06:00

Oh yeah, that's why.

My Thighs Are Cold

2008-12-10T07:41:00.001-06:00

That was quite the wind this morning. I don't think I've ever had to work so much to ride downhill before.

Carillon

2008-11-19T10:49:00.002-06:00

I heard them slowly running up a chromatic scale at the McFarland Memorial Bell Tower. That thing had better not suck, or I'll complain... or something.

Bells

2008-10-06T12:51:00.002-05:00

Bells ready to be hoisted onto the new carillon on the south quad of UIUC.

lazy

2008-09-24T15:29:00.000-05:00

Shot of the day from FLB.

Sauron Defeated

2008-09-22T18:41:00.003-05:00

A carillon is currently being built on the south quad. Mrs. tsandhol and I have remarked how much we think the Eye of Sauron belongs at the top of the tower. Fortunately, some students with climbing skills thought the same thing. We saw it while taking a walk Sunday night, but it was too dark for a photo. I made it with a camera just in time to get a few shots.

Vacated

2008-09-22T07:42:00.004-05:00

Mrs. tsandhol and I needed to go to Rhode Island for a wedding on the 14th. We didn't want to just fly out to RI, then fly right back, so we decided to make a little vacation out of it. However, we pretty much blew our vacation budget on India last year, *and* we aren't huge fans of the east coast, so we decided to make a road trip out of it. But not just any road trip, a hugely kitschy, Americana road trip.

Our route was essentially:

Urbana to Harrisburg, PA to see all of the Hershey crap.

Harrisburg, PA to Easton, PA to visit the Crayola Factory (which was totally awesome)

Easton, PA to Lincoln, RI. There, we did some hiking, visited my cousin in Providence, did the touristy Newport crap, and attended the wedding.

Lincoln, RI to Dayton, OH. We spent the morning (and some of the afternoon) at the USAF National Museum. It was cooler than I thought it would be. (Edit: And by "cooler than I thought it would be", I mean that we had expected to spend 2-3 hours there, and ended up being there for 7 hours instead.)

We had a great time. I really enjoy driving, and it was fun to stop and eat at family restaurants with crappy burgers and good pie. We ended up driving a total of 2336.69 miles.

Photos are in the usual spot. Carry on.

Virtual Earth

2008-09-05T19:12:00.004-05:00

My Urbana Crime Maps page (description here) had fallen into disrepair as of late. Yahoo changed some of their APIs for their maps, breaking what I had up. Their new apis are (in my opinion) more cumbersome to use, and have less functionality than the previous ones. A friend recently told me that Microsoft Live Maps (Virtual Earth) has Bird's Eye images available for Urbana, so I went to check out the api. Microsoft wins for best API yet again. They are rarely first out with a product, but when they do come out with one, the API and documentation (and demos) for the product are always top-notch. It took me literally 30 minutes to update my app to use the VE api vs Yahoo's (and 20 minutes to write up this post).

So, the score in API ease-of-use for mapping is: Microsoft > Yahoo > Google

That is all.

Friendly

2008-09-04T08:16:00.002-05:00

It amazes me at how many people in cars wave me through stop signs (which is kind, but really not necessary) on my bike when it's raining out. I imagine that they are feeling compassion for my moist plight, yet I'm puzzled when there's no love for the bike during the winter when ice is forming on my helmet from my breath.

People confuse me.

Yech

2008-08-20T21:23:00.002-05:00

And this is why I will be working from home tomorrow...

Really?

2008-07-09T20:09:00.003-05:00

Well, I suppose somebody would be angry when their property is stolen.

Yet More Evidence...

2008-06-29T15:17:00.001-05:00

I'm old. People named "Skyler" are now old enough to work in credit card call centers.

What Now?

2008-06-20T11:54:00.002-05:00

I have quite a vexing conundrum. Allow me to set the stage:

On Monday, I was home on a vacation day and decided to bake some bread (no-knead bread in a dutch oven, if you must know). The bread was baking away in the oven, and I was sitting on the back patio, reading a book. I heard a single beep from the oven, and went in, thinking that my timer had gone off. However, instead of a completed timer, I was greeted with a display showing a fault code. Not thinking, I pressed the "Off" button on the stove to get get everything to reset (no, I didn't write down the fault code). This cleared the display, but did not turn off the gas. A flame was still burning, even though my oven showed the normal clock display (as it does when everything is off), and a "locked" message, indicating that the oven door had been locked, as it does when in a self-clean cycle. Thus began the troubleshooting process.

I first turned off the power to the oven, thinking that a power loss would cause the gas valve to close. However, after having the power off for a few minutes, the gas was still on (with a flame still burning, thankfully). I turned the oven back on, and it then decided that it was on a cool-down from a self-clean, even though the gas was still on. I eventually had to turn off the gas to the house, as the gas shut-off for the oven is conveniently placed behind the now nuclear-hot unit. The flame eventually went out, and the oven cooled down. The door unlocked itself, and I retrieved my lump of charcoal from the rack.

The short story of what follows is this:

The unit is well out of warranty (even the extended warranty).
Sears was convinced to pay for a tech due to a possible product safety issue.
The tech found nothing wrong, and the oven behaved perfectly

The tech thought that it might have been either a stuck valve, or bad controller, but both tested out just fine. Now I am left with three choices:

Keep a possibly homicidal stove as-is until it breaks again.
Replace $400 of parts on an $750 stove
Throw away a potentially perfectly good stove and replace it

So I ask, what now?

The master at work

2008-05-17T09:27:00.000-05:00

Hmm...

2008-05-16T22:23:00.000-05:00

I believe this is *not* the way to start a cheese sauce.

Delicate Flower

2008-05-06T09:57:00.000-05:00

Ah, there's nothing quite like listening to your beautiful bride in the next room swearing like a sailor with Tourette's while trying to navigate the Sweet Sweet galaxy.

Sausage-tastic

2008-05-04T14:19:00.002-05:00

Last weekend, some friends and I got together for the first-annual Sausagefest. The wives were left at home, and the men got together for some beer, guitar hero, and sausage making. Dave already has a good writeup of the event with photos, so I'll point you there for detailed info.

Since then, I've consumed all three of the varieties that we made in:

Deep-dish pizza with an italian sausage patty across the bottom
Kielbasa on a pretzel roll
Poached eggs in salsa with chorizo and corn tortillas

Those meals tasted every bit as fantastic as you might think they would.

Carry on.

Good Times

2008-05-01T07:30:00.001-05:00

There's nothing quite like being in a bathroom stall when somebody leaves and turns out the light behind them, leaving you with nothing but your cell phone to bring you out of your inky-black tomb of unhappiness.

classic

2008-04-30T12:59:00.000-05:00

That's Crap

2008-04-16T11:15:00.003-05:00

Boo! I got a slow leak in my front tire on the dorkmobile. I was changing the tube at work, and was not pleased to find that my brand new replacement tube had a gash right through part of it. My "dead" tube holds more air than the new one.

Well, off to the bike shop at lunch.

Ewwww....

2008-04-05T11:59:00.001-05:00

We just washed the outside of our windows on the house for the first time since we moved in five years ago.

Wow, they were dirty.

Carry on.

Say it ain't so!

2008-04-01T12:07:00.002-05:00

Well, I guess that would be why harold's chicken shack isn't answering their phone.

Thanks

2008-03-26T18:57:00.002-05:00

On my doorstep this afternoon was a rather flat box from UPS. I hadn't ordered anything, so my interest was immediately piqued. Upon opening the box, I was presented with a new in-box Guitar Hero faceplate, and this note:

Not that I would care enough about a controller to decorate it, but I appreciate the gesture. I wonder how much money that mistake will end up costing in the end. They spent over $3 on postage for my disc alone.

Bad Timing

2008-03-22T14:12:00.002-05:00

Dear XM Radio,

Please use the computers at your disposal and have a look at some of the metadata attached to the songs you are playing before deciding which promo to run between songs. Your message is a bit muddied when announcing "New Rock, only on Squizz XL" and following it with some Alice in Chains from 1995.

Love,
tsandhol

Whew!

2008-03-17T09:33:00.002-05:00

Oh, the joy of owning a home. Yesterday, Mrs. tsandhol and I managed to:

Clean up flower beds

Prune our trees

Clean the gutters

Change the oil, air filter, spark plug on the lawn mower and weed wacker

Change batteries and lube threads on flashlights

Clean and vacuum the dryer vent

Flush water heater and check pressure valve

Fix the ice dam that was clogging the drain in the freezer

Clean fridge and freezer

Clean the nastiness under all of our kitchen appliances (oven, fridge, etc)

Lube garage door components

Fix my X10 situation at home (bad USB controller and finicky pci serial card)

I'm sleepy.

Wtf?

2008-03-15T11:27:00.001-05:00

"contents" had better catch fire. That's why I bought a bottle of gelled alcohol fuel.

GH3

2008-03-13T19:53:00.002-05:00

I received my replacement Guitar Hero III disc for the Wii. I have to imagine how much money Activision spent on the replacement program. They spent over $3 on postage just for me.

It's amazing how different the game sounds with actual surround sound vs complete mono. I'm not sure if it's just me, or if some of the sound effects have actually changed in the game (such as the sound when you miss a note). Another bummer is that the game seems to take longer to load, and will choke for a good five seconds when first loading the quickplay screen. Oh well. At least my music-based game can deliver sound in more than one channel now.

Trash

2008-03-03T14:54:00.001-06:00

Ah, the sweet irony of watching a garbage man throw his used cigarette on the ground while hanging on the back of the garbage truck.

Rain

2008-02-06T08:05:00.000-06:00

The Allen Hall (or "Red Oak") Rain Rarden is busy doing its job. Note that the water is away from both the tree and off of the sidewalk. This is on my walking route to work, and was a disaster to walk by whenever it was wet, as everything flooded.

Rare

2008-01-10T20:45:00.001-06:00

I wonder how many times this sentence has been spoken in the history of the human race:

"I just wanted to give you a monkey with substance!"

Oh yeah

2007-12-29T10:32:00.000-06:00

I need a reason to have a 5 gallon bucket of sweet baby ray's.

closure

2007-12-25T12:27:00.001-06:00

And another christmas concludes...

India (Finally)

2007-12-23T20:58:00.000-06:00

Mrs. tsandhol and I have finally gotten a chance to go through all of our photos of our trip to India and upload the ones of interest. I can't believe we took so many photos. I've also had a chance to organize my thoughts on the trip. Unfortunately, I've also lost the desire to write up a detailed account of everything, so I'm just going to stick to the highlights:

1) A huge thanks to Nick for sweet-talking the ladies at the flagship lounge into letting him have two guests instead of just one. Eating bacon-wrapped scallops and building a beer-fort out of free Guinness is a great way to start a trip.

"Lane driving is safe driving"
--A sign found in New Delhi

2) Nobody can ever complain about the drivers or level of traffic in any American city for any reason. Ever. The driving in Indian cities (or at least Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur) is absolutely insane. If a two-lane road can possibly fit three cars abreast with scooters in between them, you can believe that it will be done. The highways are even more frightening. The soccer-mom mentality of buying SUVs to make up for bad driving would work well. The larger vehicle always gets the right-of-way, which makes for some interesting situations when facing opposing traffic in a construction zone (or just a road with one passable lane). Our driver, Tassi, was a superhero. He was always speedy through cities and the countryside, and not once made a driving maneuver that I considered dangerous.

I also had my first earthquake. My notes from the morning afterward wrote:

"Earthquake? ~4:50 AM. I hope Bob [the gecko hanging out in our room] is ok"

3) Another interesting thing about being there was seeing just how many people they have. Everything is done with manual labor, because it is cheaper that way. Roads aren't built with backhoes and graders, they're done with women carrying loads of gravel in buckets on their heads. Just about any place that is sorta-nice is filled with hand-knotted carpets and inlaid marble, simply because it's easy to get a hold of.

4) Because we were there for such a short time, we pretty much just hit touristy spots. It was very easy to get into the routine of

Go to monument or ruins
Ignore touts and hawkers trying to take your money
Take pictures
Listen to guide
Pose for more pictures
Move on to next monument or ruins

I was in this mood while were at the Taj Mahal, when I suddenly realized, "holy shit. I'm at the goddamn Taj Mahal!" My mood was brightened at that point.

5) There was really only one unplanned and unexpected bump on the trip, which involved two flat tires. The roads outside of cities in Northern India are crap. Not Palatine road crap, but really horrible, horrible roads. Roads that aren't just dirt or gravel roads, but roads with huge chunks of asphalt sticking up from the ground. It was on one of these roads between Agra and Swadi Madapur that we got our first flat tire. We got out, and Tassi changed the tire in less than 10 minutes. As we continued on our way, I thought to myself, "damn. These roads still suck, and we just used our only spare tire." Sure enough, an hour or so later, we got another flat a few minutes outside of a very small village. Tassi gets out and surveys the damage. Then, he grabs his phone, some money, and one of the damaged tires and says that he's going to go into town to try to fix the tire or to hire another vehicle to take us the rest of the way to Ranthambhore National Park. While we waited for him to come back, we got to be the entertainment for the children of the village and one fairly persistent beggar. About 30 minutes later, Tassi comes back, sitting side-saddle on a motorcycle, holding a patched spare tire in his arms. Success! Tassi is still my hero.'

6) Thanks again to Nick for making the entire trip possible. Hopefully, we didn't annoy him too much with the shopping and beer drinking. Also excellent was everything provided by Rama Tours (shadeball website, excellent service), the company we used to book the hotels, guides, and driver. Everything went flawlessly, and each hotel was better than I expected.

7) Our photos are available in the usual spot. Nick also managed to get some GPS tracks for our tiger safari at Ranthambhore, and also for our time spent in Jaipur. I've tossed together some KML files for use in Google Earth, or Google Maps.

Ranthambhore National Park KML

Ranthambhore National Park for Google Maps

Jaipur KML

Jaipur for Google Maps

That is all. I might post more about my thoughts later, but that's it for now.

County Market

2007-12-23T20:27:00.000-06:00

Sweet.

Soupy

2007-12-22T19:08:00.001-06:00

Every time I make an awesome pot of soup, I think to myself:

"Damn, self. You make some awesome soup."

Huh?

2007-12-11T12:35:00.001-06:00

With the Ice Arena over capacity, Campus Recreation has decided to promote outdoor activities. Instead of "Skate On State", they've gone with "Slide Outside".

Back

2007-12-05T05:39:00.000-06:00

We're back from India, and a good time was had by all. I'll have a post or two and some pictures coming later.

Carry on.

India

2007-11-19T16:36:00.000-06:00

When notifying your credit card company that you will be traveling outside of the country, nothing makes the Indian call center dude perk up more than letting him know you're going to India. It's quite strange to have a robotic CSR become suddenly friendly and chatty.

Cheating

2007-11-09T07:49:00.000-06:00

I'd love to have a personal subversion repository available remotely, but I've never felt like setting up apache with ssl or using svnserv+ssh. Since I'm the only one using the repository, I've decided to cheat.

Using JungleDisk (which in turn uses Amazon's S3 service), I've simply created a local repository that I can now access anywhere that I can use the Subversion and Jungledisk binaries on my usb key. It's really quite nice (and dirty).

My Hero

2007-11-06T21:53:00.000-06:00

A big thanks goes to The Chocolate Guy and all-around Confection God Mike for saving my grainy-ass caramel that I needed for a batch of turtle brownies I was making. After some consultation, he managed to point me in the right direction. I believe the key was washing down the sides of the pot, and fixing the temparature.

Yay, caramel.

Heh

2007-10-24T19:39:00.000-05:00

That's just too easy.

Yech

2007-10-23T20:55:00.000-05:00

It was darker this morning as I rode to work. As I was rounding a corner on a side street, my front tire slipped out and I almost bit it. I stopped to see what I had slipped on, as it was cold and wet out, but not nearly cold enough for ice.

I had slipped on a dead, wet squirrel that had been flattened by a car.

That is all.

Sweet-Ass Clouds

2007-10-23T20:39:00.001-05:00

Yes, I'm going to blog about clouds. It isn't like you didn't know this was coming. You are reading boring crap, after all.

While I was making dinner, I looked out the kitchen window at the sunset. I couldn't believe the definition in the clouds to the west, so I grabbed the camera and took some shots.

As the sun went lower, the color just got more and more intense. I haven't touched these photos up at all. I just dumped them from the camera and uploaded them to fotki. No color correction or cropping at all.

It might get cold or rainy in Illinois?!?

2007-10-16T08:12:00.000-05:00

This outdoor staircase is part of a brand new building on campus.

Chicken

2007-10-13T15:31:00.000-05:00

Just an FYI for those still living in Central IL: A Harold's Chicken Shack opened a few months ago on John in Campustown.

Tasty.

Pumpkins!

2007-10-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

Pumpkins, and apples, and cider (oh my)!

So.... many.... baked... goods.

2007-10-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

This weekend was a baking extravaganza. On top of the usual wheat bread, we decided to take advantage of one of the last weeks of raspberries from the farmers' market and make some raspberry scones. While I was at it, I also made an apple cinnamon variety. I was going to make one of the batches for Sunday, but I decided that since I was already mixing up a storm, I should instead make some overnight cinnamon rolls, and freeze both batches of scones (shaped, but not baked) for later. We feasted on Sunday, and I threw in a batch of fresh drop biscuits to go with some of the leftover turkey.

As a side note, if you have the free time to make the cinnamon rolls, I would highly recommend it. They are incredibly easy, and taste freakin' good.

That is all.

Turkey!

2007-09-25T07:53:00.001-05:00

It's amazing how much food comes out of a 20 lb turkey. I think we've got leftovers for weeks, and I have gallons of stock from the carcass.

And can somebody please tell me why my gravy is so damn awesome? I just need to know.

Thank You

2007-09-18T12:37:00.001-05:00

I don't usually blog as a public service (this crap is usually too boring), but it is nice to receive thank you notes for doing so. My mother pounded into my head that thank you notes are required for any type of gift, and it affirms that I should always keep doing so.

Funny

2007-08-30T10:32:00.000-05:00

What a fantastic, non-destructive prank. I love it.

Whew!

2007-08-29T20:35:00.001-05:00

And....

I'm spent.

Yow!

2007-08-25T12:56:00.000-05:00

While jalapeños aren't all that spicy to eat, getting pickled jalapeño juice in the eye still really, really burns.

Ouch.

Yech

2007-08-21T14:11:00.000-05:00

A bird decided to drop a little bit of unhappiness on my shirt while riding to work this morning. I then spent some quality time with the bathroom sink at work. Fortunately, it was a synthetic shirt, so it has already dried out.

Carry on.

SQL Idiot

2007-08-09T13:45:00.001-05:00

Remember kids, if you vaguely care about a consistent ordering of the result set of your query, you must say so. Otherwise, the server just might choose a different ordering on you at seemingly random points.

I will now hang my head in shame for wasting 20 minutes of my life (plus two minutes for this post).

Nice Video

2007-08-07T10:42:00.000-05:00

This is a nice image representing the different video standards in relation to each other. Nothing earth-shattering, just more boring crap.

lines

2007-08-05T10:24:00.001-05:00

I've been standing in line at walker brothers for about 10 minutes now, and only one out of six parties has managed to go through the "entrance" door. The rest have wandered through the "exit only" and then were confused on how to get to the end of the line at the other end of the building (conveniently placed at the entrance).

Zombies!

2007-08-05T09:48:00.001-05:00

"kill the zombies by shooting them in the head"
"they can't get you if you make them dead"

"shoot the zombies!
shoot the zombies!
shoot the zombies!"

Nuthin'

2007-08-02T17:39:00.001-05:00

You'd think that living the fast-paced bachelor life in a big city would leave me with a lot to write about...

... oh yeah, I'm married and living in the middle of nowhere. That's not a bad thing, it just doesn't leave a lot of events worth sharing with the world.

When Word Wrap Goes Wrong...

2007-07-29T14:23:00.001-05:00

You got served, bitch!

yummy

2007-07-28T19:18:00.000-05:00

Why yes, that *is* nine cases of evaporated milk with sprinkles on top.

Well, that was random.

2007-07-27T11:14:00.001-05:00

I just picked up $100 in quarters, $150 in singles, and some smoked salmon from a chase branch in Gurnee.

Strippers

2007-07-25T06:51:00.002-05:00

I firmly believe that a good belt sander with 36 grit sandpaper is one of God's greatest gifts to man.

Well Then...

2007-07-17T17:03:00.000-05:00

There's nothing quite like sitting on the couch reading, when a hawk comes swooping down and takes out a mourning dove right on your back patio. The dove tried to fly away, smashed into the fence, then the hawk grabbed it and flew off.

Bad day to be a mourning dove, I guess.

Wii Sensor Bar Repair

2007-07-16T08:51:00.000-05:00

A lot of people seem to be making it to my blog looking for how to fix a Wii sensor bar wire. I'll quickly run through the steps to do so. The important part is to burn away the insulation that coats each conductor inside of the cable.

Cut the cable at the point of the break, making a clean cut on each side.
Carefully strip ~3 cm of the outside jacket from each side of the cable.
Remove the paper and expose the two inner wires.
(the important part) The two inner wires are coated with their own insulators. Burn away .5 cm of the insulation with a lighter or match.
(optional) Place a bit of shrink tube on one side of the cable. You'll need this later to tidy up your fix.
Solder the two wires on each side of the break to each other.
Wrap the soldered points in a bit of electrical tape to prevent a short.
Slide the optional shrink tube over the soldered area and heat with a heat gun or blow dryer.
Done!

Just Peachy

2007-07-16T07:35:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, Holly and I discovered that peaches were in full season at the Urbana Farmers' Market, and that large bags of seconds and overripes were available at a low-low price. After last year's success with freezer-jam, I decided to go and actually can peach jam properly. Everything went as planned, and I am the proud owner of eight pints of peach jam. That should last us for quite a while.

Oh, and my tetanus arm still hurts. Ugh.

Massage?

2007-07-15T11:58:00.001-05:00

Holly's massage website is up and running (finally). Go check it out and give her money.

Pincushion

2007-07-14T21:28:00.001-05:00

Ouch! I just got my vaccinations yesterday for our trip to India later this year. Fortunately, I already had my Hep B vaccination from working at a hospital during my college years. That saved me a bit of cash.

If you'll excuse me, I need to go feel like crap for the rest of the weekend.

Corn!

2007-07-11T10:50:00.000-05:00

I used to really not care for corn, but having creamed corn made with Illini Supersweet is a little bit of heaven that can be had in your kitchen for very little effort at all. That's tasty.

Movies

2007-07-10T07:38:00.001-05:00

Mrs. tsandhol and I saw Transformers on Saturday. This was an event for two reasons:

I was watching a movie featuring giant, transforming robots
I was watching a movie in a theater

Regarding point number one, the movie was fantastic. It was everything I could expect out of a 2.5 hour hollywood movie, and it didn't betray my childhood.

I was also pleasantly surprised at our experience at the theater. Holly had a gift card from work, so we went to a Saturday matinee for free. The theater wasn't full at all, the seats were clean, the picture was in focus (gasp!), and the children were quiet. So, I'd be willing to go see a movie in a theater again if:

It's free
It's during the day

That is all.

Too Important

2007-06-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

Why would you call into a radio show -- but decide to talk to someone else on another phone while on hold -- only to tell the announcer that you have to go *after* he puts your ass on the air? Just get of the effing phone if you don't think you'll be able to participate!

Idiot.

Rainy

2007-06-26T13:09:00.000-05:00

It's good to see that the reconstruction of the boneyard that was done while I was an undergrad here is actually working. A few years ago, a rain like we got today would've come close to flooding the area between Grainger and Engineering Hall. You can see in the photos that the re-grading and widening of the creek at critical points has done a lot to slow down the water and give it a place to gradually climb up.

Repair-Goodness

2007-06-25T08:56:00.000-05:00

Last week, I was commuting on my bike when I heard a *pop* noise from my back wheel. I thought I had either kicked out a rock or punctured my tube. I looked down to see if my tire was deflating, when I noticed that my wheel suddenly had a pronounced wobble to it. I made it to work and the wheel was wobbling so much that it was hard to walk the bike because it was rubbing against the brakes so much. Closer inspection revealed that I had broken a spoke.

I took it to bikeworks that afternoon to get the spoke fixed and the wheel trued. Bruce was busy as usual, so it was going to take him an hour to get it all done. I went over to Starbucks for a bit with Dave, then headed back to the store. The wheel was done and the whole thing cost me $5.

Ah... I love the sweet smell of boring crap in the morning.

Arrrggghhh!!

2007-06-15T07:22:00.000-05:00

Another day, another befuddled old person out in their car looking for fresh, young organ donations.

Seriously, why do I bother obeying traffic signals on my bike when they're treated as optional by so many others in cars? WTF?

Cheap Fire

2007-06-04T08:02:00.001-05:00

Mrs. tsandhol uses a paraffin bath to warm and soften her hands when she does massages. Unfortunately, she needs to change the wax often as even clean hands soon leave the bath dirty. I hated to just throw out the wax, since it is expensive (to me, anyway), and still useful for burning things. Sadly, we don't use a lot of candles around the house to make such an activity practical.

What we do use a lot of, though, are grill starters. I gave up on electric starters a year ago, as nobody made one sturdy enough to get through more than a year or two of use. I hate lighter fluid, so I bought a chimney starter for the grill. Sadly, the Central Illinois winds make it just about impossible to start coals with just paper on all but the calmest days. Enter the grill starters.

I picked up a box of starters that were nothing but wax and pine shavings. They lit easily, and stayed lit even through very windy conditions. So, what do I do with all of the extra paraffin? I go over to my buddy Dave's house and pick up a big bag of shavings from his jointer, and mash them into muffin cups. I poured the paraffin over them until they were well soaked and let them cool. This things work like a friggin' champ, and only cost a few cents for the muffin cups (if you consider the paraffin free, since it was going to be disposed of). They work so well, that I think I might try cutting one in half to see if that does the trick on its own.