nuxx.net blog

A few days ago I received what I thought was spam from a company called ISCG offering up very cheap office furniture. After realizing that the email was actually from a local who sells office furniture from whom I’d requested info in the past, I gave it a closer look. It turns out that the message was an advertisement in which they offered up some demo, used, and otherwise unwanted pieces for rather cheap.

The message showed a table which I thought would work out well for Danielle to sit at in my office, so I called them to inquire about the piece. It turns out that they have a warehouse / repair shop over on Lincoln in Royal Oak, so I met up with someone there at noon today to check out the table. The table looked great and I ended up picking up two office chairs as well. What’s best is that the chairs are the same models I’ve been sitting in at work for the last number of years, the Haworth Improv HE and Accolade.

The total price ended up being $100, broken down as $25 each for the table and Haworth Accolade, and $50 for the Haworth Improv HE. This is an excellent price, as I was looking into a brand new Improv HE earlier this year and it was going to cost $375 or so. I figure that $50 for one with a few scratches is perfectly fine. The Improv HE can be seen above or here, and here is Danielle sitting at the table on the Accolade where it was first set up in the living room.

While most people have been favoring the Herman Miller Aeron chair I’ve found the plastic frame of the seat to be a bit awkward. I occasionally sit with one leg to the side, but on an Aeron the frame gets in the way. While researching chairs I’d realized that as I’ve been sitting on an Improv HE since moving to my current work facility in 2001 for hours a day with relative comfort and that maybe I should just get one of these. Now, I have one, and at a very reasonable price. Even better, Danielle has a proper place to sit, not just at the end of my desk.

Oh, and I just passed gas on the chair for the first time. I guess it’s christened and ready to go.

Back when I first moved into my apartment I purchased a nice plastic screen to cover my garbage disposal opening. It’s worked well, but due to my putting it in the dish washer, things being dropped on it, and general exposure to cleaning stuffs it’s begun failing. I suspect that it’ll break any day now.

Looking around online I found that I can get them for $2.49/each from Organize.com, but there is also $5.95 shipping. I also spent some time designing a replacement for it in to be made at eMachineShop.com, (screenshot of the part being designed is here) but their system was estimating a price of ~$400 for an anodized aluminum part, and ~$700 for ten pieces.

I’d prefer not to pay rather high online shipping prices, but I think that just ordering two will be worth it. I’ve been able to find plenty of other strainers, but they usually have too few holes and don’t drain well or are mesh and thus hard to clean. This one has worked out great for years, it’s just time to replace it.

Needing some warmer clothing for biking I stopped by REI today in hopes of finding something to keep me a bit warmer while riding. I ended up picking up a pair of Pearl Izumi Gavia Gloves to (hopefully) keep my hands warmer in colder temps, all the way through winter riding.

I also came across a bright yellow Canari Razor ‘07 jacket at REI for $43.93. It is a size medium, but after trying it on I ended up purchasing it. I’m still not sure if it’s too small and should be returned for a large or not. It fits well over another layer and I can comfortably move my arms around, but it feels slightly snug in the shoulders if I wrap my arms around as if hugging myself. Maybe a slightly larger size would be better, just so it’s more free while riding and I can wear more layers beneath it, if needed. That said, I don’t want it too large otherwise it’ll just flap in the wind. I’ll decide tomorrow before leaving on a ride, I guess.

Kohl’s has the jeans I prefer (Levi 569) on sale for $29.99 a pair, and with both of my current pairs having growing holes in the knees I picked up two new pairs. I also grabbed three cheap ($5.40/ea) plain t-shirts to add to my growing collection of comfortable t-shirts without logos. Yes, I still prefer to wear t-shirts and jeans.

Here, have a photo of everyone who went for a ride tonight from Mt. Clemens High School to Metro Beach and back, except for me. It’s not a very good photo. This one of Marty and Nick is better, despite the huge amount of noise from the high ISO.

After getting home from the ride I stuck the extra RAM in the printer and my Mac, and everything seems to be working great. The printer (Xerox Phaser 6130N) got a 1GB Crucial SO-DIMM (CT12864AC53E) to bring it to 1.1GB and the Mac Pro got 4GB of RAM bringing it to 7GB. I now can run multiple VMs with ease and deal with multiple large image files without a bunch of paging.

It’s been a good day and a good evening.

A few weeks back I mentioned that I really needed a new printer, as my old HP LaserJet 5L had mostly ceased working. Well, last week Costco had a Xerox Phaser 6130N listed on their site for $249 shipped, with a Tripp Lite surge protector and USB cable.

I ended up jumping on this deal, because it has all the features I was looking for in a printer, except a duplexer, which really isn’t that important anyway. In short, this is a networked color laser which speaks real Adobe PostScript 3 (Wikipedia PostScript article), making it properly usable from any OS without silly Gutenprint (GIMP-Print) drivers and their crappy dithering.

The price was also outstanding, as Newegg sells this printer for $359.99 and most other places want even more than that. I also made a quick trip over to Crucial for a $16.99 piece of CT12864AC53E should bring the total RAM in the printer up to 1152MB. That ought to make printing complex documents fast.

Having acquired a NiteRider TriNewt Wireless headlight for biking I wanted to compare it to my other lights, so I put together a small setup in the garage to see how they all compare.

In short, none of the other lights I have compare to the TriNewt.

These test shots were taken in my garage with both the light being tested and camera set up on my workbench 30 feet from the garage door. A Robin Myers Digital Imaging Gray Card (buy them here) was propped up along the base of the door for use as a color reference, if needed. All comparison photos were taken with a Canon EOS 20D and a Canon 24-70 f/2.8L lens at 24mm, ISO 100, f/11, six (6) second exposure, with the white balance native (aka “As Shot”). This exposure was based on an automatic test exposure of the target using the NiteRider TriNewt on high and chosen to set an upper limit of brightness.

Here’s the items and their results:

NiteRider TriNewt Wireless: High · Low
Planet Bike Blaze: Single Setting (On)
2D Cell Mag Lite w/ OEM 3W LED Upgrade: Single Setting (Focused As Narrow As Possible)
Planet Bike Superflash: Steady Mode
Reference Overhead Lighting: Two 300W Incandescent Bulbs

It’s pretty obvious that the TriNewt on either Low or High blows everything else I’ve had away. I can’t wait to try this out in the woods.

Today I received my new bike light, a NiteRider TriNewt Wireless. I’ve been needing a head light of my own if I want to do any riding after work and this one should work pretty well. It’s a lithium ion battery powered helmet or bar mount 486 lumen LED-driven bike light, and based on my initial tests it’ll work very, very well. The on/off switch is on the battery itself, which would normally be a hassle, except that this version comes with a keyfob-like remote control switch and hardware for mounting it on the bike.

I plan on posting beam shots comparing it with some other lights I have around the house later on, but for now if you’d like to see photos of the bundle as I received it, please feel free to take a look at my NiteRider TriNewt Wireless photo album. Here’s one photo I find particularly interesting, a macro shot of the LEDs themselves in the lamp assembly. I don’t dare look at these while they are illuminated.

Clarion Fund isn’t doing a very good job spreading around copies of Obsession. I received a second copy today in one of the crappy local throw-it-against-your-garage-door-in-the-middle-of-the-night newspapers, making it a 2:1 propaganda:resident ratio in this household. This area must be thought of as really important.

Today I received two nifty things in the mail. The first was these Olympus knock-off batteries from Eforcity for my new Olympus Stylus 850 SW.

The second is the winner, though; that DVD up above there, of Obsession The Movie. In order to form a proper, informed opinion of it I’ll be giving it a viewing, but I suspect that it’ll live up to its reputation of being a neocon-backed piece of anti-Islam propaganda. We’ll see, though. My understanding is that its production has a bunch of neocon backers and copies of it are being mailed out en masse in swing states. Yes, that’s how it came to me… Completely unsolicited, via the US Mail.

I guess it’s time to cue Göring:

Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Here’s one of the first photos out of my new Olympus Stylus 850 SW which was purchased so that I’d have a decent pocket-sized ruggedized point and shoot camera. It is the business end of my shower head, taken from within the cone spraying water, while taking a shower after today’s bike ride.

I’ve been wanting something like this for when out on my bike, traveling in the expectantly rainy UK, and other random places where I don’t want to bring or risk my DSLR. (Here are a bunch of photos of the Olympus Stylus 850 SW and the SanDisk 8GB microSDHC which make up this camera setup. Thus far it all seems to work well together and holds 1992 of the highest quality photos the camera can take.)

Today was a mostly-day-off from work, in exchange for some rather frustrating work this weekend. While leaving my parents house at 10:30pm on Saturday I was called into an issue which I worked on until 7:30am on Sunday. This was not fun and pretty much ruined my Saturday evening and Sunday, so I needed another day to do stuff. Today worked out well, though, as I ended up…

…buying what I believe to be an undervalued stock.
…getting banstyle.nuxx.net installed. (More on this later.)
…receiving my Stella 180-N head light, which I may return as a better deal may have come along.
…receiving and photographing my new Olympus Stylus 850 SW and the SanDisk 8GB microSDHC card and taking the aforementioned photo in the shower.
…going for a nice evening / night time bike ride at Stony Creek with the MMBA.
…using a bike headlight for the first time, although it was borrowed (thanks, Mike!) as I don’t want to use the one I received.

So, all in all it’s been a good day, even with attending a few conference calls here and there. Now I just need to sort out what’s going on with me and bike headlights, relax a bit more, then get a good night sleep. This shouldn’t be too hard as it’s only 11pm or so.