Waterbed
I saw this on Fark today: City Rag: 30 Ugly Ass Waterbeds
I had a waterbed for awhile. I don’t remember when I got it or when I got rid of it, but I know I had it in 1994 and 1995. I can picture it in the house we rented on Logandale, off Econlockhatchee near UCF. I talked myself into the master suite… 16×12, with adjoining private bath featuring jacuzzi tub.
Two-thirds of the room was for me, and the other third was for the UCF InPrint. Every Sunday night a bunch of odd people would invade my house and my bedroom to sit around PageMaker on a 14″ monitor and put together a newspaper. I’d lay on the waterbed and sleep in fits and spurts, waking up periodically to give advice or ask how things are going.
That waterbed was a friend.
The thing I liked most about it was that it was a constant issue. With a normal bed, you crawl into it and are cold. Within 10 minutes, you are hot. So you kick some sheets off and gradually cool down again. It’s an all-night balancing act to find just the right temperature. This is not the case with the waterbed. You set the thermostat and, unless there’s a problem, you’ll feel not-too-hot, not-too-cold all night long.
To me, that year of college is forever linked to Logandale Drive, the UCF InPrint newspaper, and that beloved waterbed.
Apple iPhone 4
Enough has been posted out there that I don’t need to post all the facts and figures about the new iPhone 4. I did follow along courtesy of the Apple Blog, who did a terrific job of relaying the action compared to my experiences with other sites for past announcements.
Somewhat unfortunately, the media has decided to focus on a technical glitch Steve Jobs had towards the end of his demo, where he was unable to demonstrate some features because of too many wifi networks in the room. It’s an interesting technical challenge, though one without a great solution. You’d have to figure that if they had a pool camera and audio, however, they wouldn’t have 500 different people all trying to upload the same picture of Steve Jobs in front of a giant screen at the same time using limited spectrum.
Digression: I wonder if any of the people sitting in that room of 500+ wifi networks then go home and complain that so-and-so cell provider is trying to build a tower a mile from their house and “oh, NIMBY! The radiation! Think of the children!!1!!!”.
Anyway, despite everything, I put myself on the list to get one as soon as they come out. Call me names if you want — Apple fanboy, open source traitor, enemy of free (as in speech) software — but I just want something that works. And, for me, the iPhone fits the bill.
More fun with Google Voice transcription
Poor Google Voice. It’s not kind to the foreigners.
Hi Brian, This is from involving from Beat The Netherlands working flip flops account.
Frankly, the rest of the transcription isn’t bad. Decent enough so that I can’t post the rest here, anyway. But the first sentence really grabs the reader’s attention, doesn’t it?
Printer made from Lego
Amazing use of Lego! I like the extra touches like the guys sitting on the carriage.
Expanding Tastes
I like more kinds of food now than I did in the past. Why is that?
When I was growing up(*), I wouldn’t eat:
-
Squash or zucchini
Mushrooms
Asparagus
My, how the times have changed. For whatever reason, I am hopelessly in love with mushrooms and asparagus. I buy asparagus at the Celebration Farmers Market almost every week and either grill it or roast it. For the mushrooms, they are purchased weekly, as well, and make their way into either homemade spaghetti sauce, caramelized onions & mushrooms for steak topping, chicken marsala, or whatever else I can work them in to. The mushroom smell as they start to cook is music to my nose. Squash & zucchini… well, I don’t seek it out… but I certainly don’t abhor it like I did before.
So what changed? I can’t rightly say. I don’t think I was simply being difficult before. That takes a lot of work, and honestly… who has the energy? I truly think my palate has adapted to more foods. This leaves me wondering what I’m consciously or subconsciously avoiding because I didn’t like it when I was 5 years old.
Yes, I’ve tried oysters recently… and yes, they still taste like sand and death. And don’t even get me started on soapy cilantro.
* – for the purposes of this entry, “growing up” is from 1974 to 2005.
Fake movie titles in Seinfeld
For your amusement, I submit to you a list of the fake movie titles in Seinfeld.
My favorites:
-
Rochelle, Rochelle (“A young woman’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk”)
The Pain and the Yearning (“An old woman experiences pain and yearning”)
Death Blow (“When someone tries to blow you up, not because of who you are, but for different reasons altogether”)
I think if I sat down and tried to write these down I could get about half of them.
Primetime had it coming
This little note was in the 30 Rock Season 3 DVD set. Haunting.
Top Internet websites
According to Alexa, the top 50 sites on the web as of today are:
1 google.com
2 facebook.com
3 youtube.com
4 yahoo.com
5 live.com
6 wikipedia.org
7 baidu.com
8 blogger.com
9 msn.com
10 qq.com
11 twitter.com
12 yahoo.co.jp
13 google.co.in
14 taobao.com
15 google.de
16 google.com.hk
17 wordpress.com
18 sina.com.cn
19 amazon.com
20 google.co.uk
21 microsoft.com
22 myspace.com
23 google.fr
24 bing.com
25 ebay.com
26 yandex.ru
27 google.co.jp
28 linkedin.com
29 google.com.br
30 163.com
31 flickr.com
32 mail.ru
33 craigslist.org
34 fc2.com
35 google.it
36 rapidshare.com
37 vkontakte.ru
38 conduit.com
39 google.es
40 bbc.co.uk
41 soso.com
42 imdb.com
43 livejasmin.com
44 doubleclick.com
45 go.com
46 aol.com
47 youku.com
48 bp.blogspot.com
49 apple.com
50 google.com.mx
It was interesting to see some of the other sites that cracked the top 50. In the top 20, I’d never heard of qq.com or taobao.com, but no surprise, since they’re Chinese-language sites. There are a lot of country-specific variations of popular engines. Yahoo.com.jp is the highest country-specific version of a popular site, just above google.com.in. Google’s Japanese version (google.com.jp) comes in at #27. For auction sites, Baidu sits at 7, while eBay is 25.
Other sites of note:
flickr.com – 31
craigslist.org – 33 (they must be grouping .com and .org)
adobe.com – 60 (wonder what it would be if they didn’t have Acrobat Reader?)
digg.com – 117
foxnews.com – 194 (to cnn.com’s 57)
slickdeals.net – 701
woot.com – 725
slashdot.org – 1304
fark.com – 2189 (I would’ve thought digg and fark would be closer)
wilwheaton.typepad.com – 74424 (thought this would be higher considering his millions of Twitter followers)
Interesting…
Thermostats: single stage vs two stage
I bought the wrong thermostat. I discovered this today, two months after installing it, when we went to run the air conditioning and it was blowing out heated air. Which is not ideal when it’s 84 out. So today is when I learned the difference between single stage and two stage thermostats. My immediate concern was to get the air conditioning going, and then deal with the problem of installing the right thermostat later.
This entry is meant as a reminder to myself so that, come December when we need heat again (this is Florida, after all), I’ll know what to do. Assuming I haven’t put a two stage thermostat in place before then.
The wiring to enable cooling on my two stage system using a single stage thermostat is:
Old stat -> New stat
G -> G
C -> Taped off
R -> R
R and Rc jumpered
Y -> Y
O -> W/O/B
W2/E -> Taped off
When I want to enable heat again, pull and tape off the O wire and put W back into W/O/B.
The *old two stage thermostat* wiring was:
The *new single stage thermostat* wiring was (before doing the A/C fix):
Again, after the A/C fix the white wire is taped up and the orange one is in W/O/B.
In the stat setup, function 1 = 1 and function 2 = 0.
Once it’s time to install the two stage, the wiring will be:
G -> G
C -> C
R -> R
R and Rc jumpered
Y -> Y
O -> O/B
W2 (white) -> Aux
Aux and E jumpered
Then function 0170 = 7, 0910 = 0, and 0270 = 9. That applies to RTH7500D and RTH7600D
Google Voice transcript
Google Voice voicemail transcription seems to have some trouble with the English accent.
Hello Brian, This is closest from us, so I was just a little for 12. I’ll send you an invite for a meeting we say. Indian food and she’s been the my judo tonight with yeah i’m my jury’s stand that she sent try to do with if you had a bit of a small just now software so quickly. Talk about hand-offs if you were. Vitabon if you could come on nickel at the brilliant I’ve lost last time we can pay for tomorrow. Just.