2005-Sep-16 14:32:39 +0000 @647

I just got off the phone with T-mobile, my cellphone carrier. I had a small problem with my phone and was calling for tips to resolve it (which they did). On the call, the customer service rep said that I had to provide T-mobile with a “physical address” not just a PO Box. She said that they would continue to send the bill to my PO Box, but that their policy now required a physical address.

I declined to give them one and the operator could not tell me why it was needed or what would happen if I didn’t provide one. She was a little insistent that I have one, but let on that she could still help me without one. It sounded like they have a quota of physical addresses to convert or something. I suggested that maybe it was an E911 issue, but that I would rather not have an address sent to 911 when I’m not at that address. It would be better not to send incorrect information to the emergency services because a fire truck or ambulance could get sent to the wrong location. She agreed.

We tried entering the street address of the Post Office, but it would not take it. That surprised me and makes me wonder what the deal is. It could be innocent, as in needing to have an overnight address for phone swaps, etc. Or it could be some Patriot Act, FCC requirement, or other conspiracy theory. Anyway, this was the first I ever heard of it.

2005-Sep-16 12:24:09 +0000 @558

I sold my last television on Craig’s List this week. It was a tiny 11 inch that I got from a college roommate who upgraded. I didn’t use it much, having slowly weaned myself off broadcast (and cable) television several years ago.

A few weeks ago, a big shelf in my storage closet collapsed (metal fatigue, probably) and caused me to clean the closet. The TV sat on a top shelf that had about 3 feet of vertical clearance. So, this small television was taking up a lot of cubic feet of space and never getting used. I’ve kept it and a VCR around for those oddball times I want to watch an old VHS tape or something, but the last few times I have needed to do that, I hooked up my camcorder to the VCR and jacked it in on the firewire to my laptop so I could use headsets.

It’s heavy and doesn’t have much value, so I decided to try and get rid of it on Craig’s List instead of eBay or GoodWill. I listed it for $10 and indicated that they must pick it up as I wasn’t interested in boxing and shipping it. Within two or three hours, someone e-mailed and said they’d take it. That was really easy and there were no fees.

If you are cleaning out your closet and want to just get rid of common “stuff,” I recommend giving them a shot. Remember that they are classified ads and that users won’t sift through them for oddball stuff. I tried to off-load some broken routers and a Silicon Graphics workstation, but there were no takers. Probably too specialized.

2005-Sep-09 10:15:42 +0000 @469

This has been one of the better years for me. For starters, I haven’t had to work part of the weekend, so I’ve been able to stay at the con longer.

The economy seems to be up from last year – at least more people were in costume.

The very best part was that the folks at needcoffee.com put on a “Gonzo film festival” that was just terrific. They found all sorts of short films like upcoming indy film trailers, Adult Swim material, old G.I. Joe safety clips, 80s Saturday morning cartoon commercials and intersitionals, cool clips from Sesame Street and the Muppet Show, etc. It was a fantastic mindblur of cool intellectual stuff, ephemera, and nostalgia. What a rush for 300 people to scream “and knowing is half the battle – GI JOE!” or sing along with one of the counting songs from Sesame Street. They also were giving away huge cans of Jolt cola. I rarely see it to begin with, but these we’re nearly double the length of regular cans. They were very light and I was able to squeeze one hard enough to make it pop the screwtop. They look more like mortar shells than soda cans. I really need to find where to buy them. The only downside was the incredible volume of swag they were giving away. It took several hours of trivia to fairly distribute what must have been two pallets of swag.
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2005-Sep-07 13:50:46 +0000 @618

I was just looking at my electric bill and noticed my cost per kilowatt-hour is up 14% from this time last year. That’ s not my “consumption” or number of hours used… that’s the cost for the same amount of power.

Some of that is due to a small increase in taxes, but I bet most of that is due to the rising cost of fuels. The rate of increase is a lot faster than inflation.

On the positive side, I have made a lot of modifications to my home over the years that decrease energy consumption. Now they are paying off even more than expected! Get with the program everyone! Tint your windows, replace light bulbs with CF and LED bulbs, get a programmable thermostat.

2005-Sep-06 11:16:29 +0000 @511

I feel sorry for older people who are having a hard time adapting to new technologies. This is a growing trend. It used to be that not-technologically-savvy people simply couldn’t use high-technology. Today, the technology is penetrating everywhere. In five or ten years, I think that the knowledge gap is going to become a serious handicap to a lot of people.
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2005-Aug-30 15:30:14 +0000 @687

I’m thinking about buying a Flickr account to post photos to. I’m up in the air about it. My giant photo site, which has more than 2000 photos, is hardly trafficked. It gets an average of only two or three visitors a day. I would like to extend that some. Flickr’s community would allow that to happen, but it doesn’t have a very good way to track statistics.

I’m also a little annoyed with Gallery, which I’m using to run my current photo site. It’s a nice product and has a good API for things like Galllery Remote, but the package itself is bloated. I don’t need voting and all the other stuff that it comes with. I would also like to be able to organize photos in more than one dimension. For example, I would like to separate black-and-white vs. color vs. 3D, but also group photos by topic. Flickr doesn’t support this either, which makes me hesitate to switch to them. Maybe they’ll support it in the future, I do not know.

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2005-Aug-23 10:58:00 +0000 @498

I’m not a home décor kind of guy, so before I saw the giant IKEA store opening downtown, I hadn’t given much thought to them – but my trip to the store was quite an experience.

IKEA, for those of you who are unfamiliar with them, is a Swedish home furnishing company that places a heavy emphasis on low price. This isn’t to say that their furniture is inexpensive or low quality, as the prices are reasonable and the quality is probably above average for the price. Most of their furnishings are modular, come flat packed to save shipping costs, and require some assembly. But, it represents a different way of thinking compared to traditional American values. Contrary to my preconceptions, not all of the furniture is particle board – some of it is real, unstained, untreated wood.

The store itself is huge. Even though it has been open several weeks, police were still directing traffic. The building is twice the size of the largest Home Depot and has two floors of showroom. It also has two parking decks and a regular parking lot. Staff is plentiful even though IKEA markets itself as a “help-yourself” store. Shopping baskets consist of big yellow plastic canvas bags tote bags along with some carts and pallet trucks to help carry larger items. Most items are picked up from the warehouse (again, flat-packed, some assembly required), so they have little posts with sticky notes for you to write down the item numbers you want. They also had paper tape measures, which I thought was handy.

The showroom consists partly of the typical retail “here is all out stuff” layout, but also small mock-up homes that served as demonstrations for how someone can live in small spaces such as 550 square feet. They also had 700, 1000, and 1200 foot models. Personally, I’m very interested in efficiency. I live in a small place myself by American standards (supposedly 990 square feet, but I think the usable space is really only 850) but seeing their examples made me ask three questions: 1) what is the average square footage per prisoner in prison? 2) Where to people who live in these places put “stuff” like Christmas decorations, old tax returns, groceries, movies, linens, clothes, books, old magazines, etc.? 3) Where are the windows? Obviously, the person with 550 square feet eats out a lot and takes their laundry out to be cleaned.
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2005-Aug-21 18:48:00 +0000 @825

Whew. A month and a half has flown by without much blogging.

Well, not much bloggable stuff has been going on. It’s hot and humid outside and we’ve had lots of rain. That’s been slowing down cool outdoor activities. I’ve been working on a couple of development projects (about 5 at once, actually) and none of those are bloggable yet (some never will be.) Then some other time-wasting projects have popped up. I had to de-mold the HVAC system, and the shelves in my closet collapsed and scrambled everything. My closet is big – about the size of a small self-storage locker. I knew getting sidetracked was a risk when I started blogging again.

Anyway, I’m starting to break free from the doldrums again and have a few things to blog about. I’ve also finished burning a stack of CDs for friends with more Italy pictures, so I’m kind of excited to start writing about those too.

Look forward to a few posts about things like –

• my trip to the new IKEA store,
• fixing up my bike and doing some street riding,
• maybe some modifications to my bike,
• hopefully a few road trips,
• a more detailed write up about my trip to Italy (along with a bunch of photos),
• DragonCon and
• a new on-line handle and site design.

So, long story short, I expect to have more to write about in the next few weeks, so don’t drop your feed just yet.

2005-Jul-13 23:01:23 +0000 @000

I’ve had these flares for about 7 years. They expired quite a while back, but I haven’t disposed of them. This year, the State of Georgia relaxed the laws on fireworks, so I decided I was probably legal to light them up. This would not only render them safe for disposal, but would also be fun to do.

I’ve often worried about whether or not one of the flares could accidentally ignite, as well as whether or not it would light easily if it needed to be used in an emergency. I’m pleased to report that they are very well designed on both counts. The ignition appears to be a mixture of chemicals in the igniter tip and the striker. It would not light when striking it like a match on the asphalt, but easily lit when using the accompanying striker. A test flare did light when wet, probably because it was based on the chemical reaction. The striker and igniter are both in (mostly) water-proof caps and you have to remove and invert the striker to get it to work. No amount of force would cause it to accidentally ignite.

Even though the flares were expired, they burned for 2 minutes 10 seconds each – just a little more than expected. The flares are bright enough to be uncomfortably bright, but not painful. The flame color was red-orange as opposed to the cherry red I expected. It is certainly brighter that streetlights and car lights, but not mind-blowingly bright. I think the indicated visibility of 5 miles is about right. It didn’t spark much at all, although it did ooze a very hot white goo that remained hot even after dousing with water. It turned very hard, but looked like dried toothpaste. I think it was still reacting for over an hour. The handle remained cool the entire time and the flare burned all the way down to the line where it says “hold below this line.”

2005-Jul-11 09:48:24 +0000 @450

I’ve done about 50 entries in the blog now. I’m getting slightly better at posting regularly. I’m sure some posts are a little innate, but I’m trying to be frequent in addition to interesting.

I have noticed a couple of things about blog writing that I didn’t expect that are just differences in the medium or the format.

First, when I choose pictures, I’m looking for an almost panoramic composition. I’m now thinking about that format in addition to the usual 4:3 for backgrounds, vertical for posters, 3:2 for mouse pads, square for calendars, etc.

The other thing is that there is a field for an “excerpt” or summary of each post. I like to think of myself as being a pretty brief and concise person, but I now realize that sometimes I’m overly conversational when I write and highly detailed when I verbalize. It’s good practice to try and condense the entire post into three or four sentences.