Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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It seems that my efforts to establish cost savings performance metrics for making coffee at home distracted me from coffee grinder maintenance responsibilities. My aforementioned coffee grinder problems were because of some manner of clog.
Good thing this never happens in real life.
(It seems that during a single day of disuse the grinder stopped working, and the only “fix” needed was to empty and clean it. Also, can you tell how I occasionally have to write?)
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Almost every morning before work I grind some coffee then prepare it in an AeroPress. Not this morning. Today when I went to press START or GRIND or whatever the button is labeled nothing happened. Because it appears to be somewhat microprocessor controlled I don’t think the problem is mechanical, which means that hopefully I’ll be able to easily fix it.
Unfortunately, this was also half-way through a study I was doing on exactly how many cups of coffee I can get out of two pounds of coffee, how many grinds it takes, how many filters are used, etc. Although maybe this will just prompt me to restart and this time take into account amount of electricity consumed, cost of the grinder, etc. I’m wanting to know just how much money I’m saving (or perhaps not) and how much less waste I’m generating by making coffee at home every day, using what I perceive to be an easy process.
Since I uploaded a few more photos today to my moblog, I’ll point them all out:
Leave a Comment· This praying mantis was found next to a gas pump. It was alive, but its abdomen was full of ants which were eating it.
· My coworker Brian gave me some Airborne to try and help make me feel better. It doesn’t taste horrible.
· Some of the urinals at work have these new scented mats in them. The result is that hot urine makes a very strong fragrence waft up while going. It’s unplesant.
· One of my coworkers gave me this cupcake. It’s very, very good.
Breaking down the large pile of cardboard boxes in the basement and carrying them upstairs has worn me out. It’s a good thing I didn’t give into temptation and go for a bike ride.
Now to find some dinner. Last night was some nice Thai curry, but as I also had that for lunch, three meals of it in a row is a bit off putting. Pizza is tempting, but unhealthy. Someone come make me soup? And bring a movie?
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Tonight Danielle and I rearranged my bedroom, and I think now it makes more sense. In the above photo (also here) the door to the hallway is at the far left side.
The bent blind will hopefully be replaced this weekend. This damage was caused by my sister’s dog Molly on Monday. When my sister was here picking her up, Molly got really excited as my sister carried things to the car, ran from window to window to look out, and jumped up on the blinds bending the bar of one set and tearing the plastics on another.
The blinds were dirty so I guess I don’t have to wash them now, but still…
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Over the years I’ve ended up with quite a few sample-size tubes of toothpaste. I dislike the strong, lingering flavors of most of these toothpastes, so I normally use Tom’s of Maine (or Trader Joe’s equivalent, but not Tom’s of Finland) plain mint toothpaste. As a result, I had a bunch of old tubes which were past expiration and needing to be thrown out. 23 tubes (and four small sample packs), in fact.
Before throwing them out I decided to squeeze them all into one bowl. Next I stirred it all together, found that a spoon will almost stand up in it, then put some on my toothbrush and brushed my teeth with it.
This multi-sample toothpaste concoction didn’t taste bad, but was overwhelmingly mint backed by a few other unidentifiable herbs. Even after rinsing my mouth a number of times the taste still lingers, but this matches my experience (and complaint) with all of the Colgate, Crest, etc toothpastes I’ve tried in the past.
Now to figure out how to dispose of it. Maybe dumping it in the trash then attempting to wash the bowl…
Here’s an index of the photos taken of the 23 Tubes 1 Bowl ‘experiment’:
· 23 small tubes and four sample packets of toothpaste from companies like Crest and Colgate.
· The 23 tubes of toothpaste and four sample packs squeezed into a bowl, surrounded by the remaining packaging.
· Labeled image of the bowl filled with toothpaste showing which is which.
· The previous image of the bowl filled with 23 tubes (and four sample packets) of toothpaste, without the labels.
· Closer view of the bowl containing 23 tubes (and four sample packets) of toothpaste.
· The bowl of toothpaste was rather difficult to stir and made an interesting swirled pattern before coming together.
· Mostly homogenized, it is almost possible to stand a spoon up in the bowl of toothpaste. It falls over after two or three seconds.
· Top down view of the nicely mixed bowl of toothpaste.
· Having mixed together all the toothpaste I decided to dip my toothbrush in and try brushing my teeth with it.
· The damage: empty toothpaste tubes, packets, boxes, and a bunch of caps.
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Over the years I’ve ended up with quite a few sample-size tubes of toothpaste. I dislike the strong, lingering flavors of most of these toothpastes, so I normally use Tom’s of Maine (or Trader Joe’s equivalent, but not Tom’s of Finland) plain mint toothpaste. As a result, I had a bunch of old tubes which were past expiration and needing to be thrown out. 23 tubes (and four small sample packs), in fact.
Before throwing them out I decided to squeeze them all into one bowl. Next I stirred it all together, found that a spoon will almost stand up in it, then put some on my toothbrush and brushed my teeth with it.
This multi-sample toothpaste concoction didn’t taste bad, but was overwhelmingly mint backed by a few other unidentifiable herbs. Even after rinsing my mouth a number of times the taste still lingers, but this matches my experience (and complaint) with all of the Colgate, Crest, etc toothpastes I’ve tried in the past.
Now to figure out how to dispose of it. Maybe dumping it in the trash then attempting to wash the bowl…
Here’s an index of the photos taken of the 23 Tubes 1 Bowl ‘experiment’:
· 23 small tubes and four sample packets of toothpaste from companies like Crest and Colgate.
· The 23 tubes of toothpaste and four sample packs squeezed into a bowl, surrounded by the remaining packaging.
· Labeled image of the bowl filled with toothpaste showing which is which.
· The previous image of the bowl filled with 23 tubes (and four sample packets) of toothpaste, without the labels.
· Closer view of the bowl containing 23 tubes (and four sample packets) of toothpaste.
· The bowl of toothpaste was rather difficult to stir and made an interesting swirled pattern before coming together.
· Mostly homogenized, it is almost possible to stand a spoon up in the bowl of toothpaste. It falls over after two or three seconds.
· Top down view of the nicely mixed bowl of toothpaste.
· Having mixed together all the toothpaste I decided to dip my toothbrush in and try brushing my teeth with it.
· The damage: empty toothpaste tubes, packets, boxes, and a bunch of caps.
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Yes, I too picked up a copy of the October 2008 issue of Esquire. The magazine itself is going in the trash, but I pulled the front panel apart so that I could poke with an e-paper / Electronic Paper / E-Ink display. I must say, this is a very nice, very high contrast display. If this were put in some more portable, more durable, more cost effective form than the Kindle (and without the data network crap) I could see myself getting one to use for reading.
When the magazine was sitting on the front seat of my car, glancing over at it reminded me of $RANDOM_NEAR_FUTURE_SCIFI where magazines are shown sitting on tables and racks blinking and flashing away. To be honest, I found it as irritating as a banner ad. I hope this isn’t where things actually go tech-wise.
Also, when I arrived home today I noticed a lot of dust and cut marks in the asphalt near my garage door, which makes me believe that something is being done about the sunken area there. What’s strange is that it’s been like this for years without issue. I’m not sure why it’s being fixed now.
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I’ve had a small stack of scraps of paper on my desk for a little while now, each bearing rather important passwords. I’d intended to burn them, but that is a hassle with both my neighbors wondering why I’m burning things out front, finding a can to do it in, etc.
Wanting to clean up my desk a bit I decided to destroy the passwords in a different manner: soaking in a pint glass of water, then pulping with a stick blender.
This worked so well that I took the week’s worth of receipts which I’d just entered into Quicken, soaked them in a larger container of water, and pulped them as well. I thought about then experimenting with making some new paper from this pulp, but I don’t have any screening handy, nor do I need another project.
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After last night’s run-in with a tornado (or maybe it was just a funnel cloud right near the ground, not sure) I wanted to get some daylight photos of the damage. In short, this was really lucky.
As you can see there, a large portion of the tree was detached from it and this fell right next to my neighbor’s house and my porch. Here is where the limb was ripped off of the tree, here is the damaged end of the limb itself, and this shows how far the limb ended up from the tree.
While the fallen tree limb was completely covering my neighbor’s air conditioning condenser it just barely touched the building itself, hitting it only hard enough to slightly bend the gutter and create a low / sagging spot. Because my neighbor was having some difficulty getting in touch with the condo association’s emergency number to get the tree limb moved three of her sons came by and cut it up and moved it out of the way. I guess my neighbor is also having a new fridge delivered today so she wanted to ensure that there was a sufficient path for the Sears delivery people to get the fridge to her door.
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So, uh, there was a tornado here. Around 8:40pm Danielle and I were heading back to my house. Right as we got close to 22 Mile along Schoenherr we saw a VERY large column of white-ish cloud maybe 100′ across extending from the bottom of the rest of the clouds down to the ground right about where my condo is. It was scary enough that I immediately turned the wrong way and started heading west on 22 Mile to avoid being near or crossing its path.
After traveling for about a mile we turned back and what had been a column was now dissipating, tumbling along and eventually breaking up. I then drove up to 23 Mile (next road north) and looked around for any signs of damage, but I didn’t see anything obvious. The wind had also calmed until it was almost nothing, so we just went inside to eat.
Later this evening Danielle and I wandered outside to view the lightning and saw that the tree right next to my porch had had a large section, around 25′ long and weighing enough that I couldn’t budge it, torn out of it and deposited right next to my porch and on top of my neighbor’s air conditioner. Thankfully it only brushed the building, slightly bending the gutter.
(Yes, I know that photo is crap, but it’s very difficult to focus in the dark, particularly when only using flash. I’ll get more pictures tomorrow. Here is another photo of the downed tree limb and broken main tree, but it was taken while standing in the rain and is equally crap.)
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I do declare, Southern Tier makes some of the finest beers I’ve ever had. They are consistently good, with only one or two of their styles ever being something that didn’t set well with me.
Tonight while eating a rather late dinner of leftovers† I had this nice bottle of Souther Tier’s Jah-Va, a 12% coffee stout. I think I spent two hours on this bottle, sipping the 1.5 (or so) pints of it while watching some TiVo’d stuff, balancing my checkbook, talking to friends online, and relaxing. It’s very, very good. I’d highly recommend trying some yourself if you like thick, strong stouts.
Also, based on the flags and sprayed markings in front of my house it appears that either Comcast is installing new boxes or Wide Open West is bringing service to our complex. Here is a photo of the new box, and the short one behind it is specifically labeled Comcast. Maybe I should give WOW a go.
† Thanks, work. At least I got some stuff fixed, I guess.
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