Cast Iron

I found some cast iron rusting away on a friend's porch. I asked if I could take it, clean it and return it to her and she accepted. It'll make a nice coming home present for her when she gets back from field work in NC. I cleaned a lot of the rust off with steel wool but I think it was mostly unnecessary, because scouring with salt and oil really did the lion's share of the work.

It needs a little more work around the handles which I am only noticing now in the photos, so maybe cooking on it can be a project for TaD.

Thing a Day

February is Thing a Day month. Kind of similar to NaNoWriMo, NaBloPmo and the photo-a-day projects others have done. I'm going to try and participate in TaD but only at home, I'm not registering at the site. Then I'm going to blog about each project and maybe even a photo! Then I'm going to go back to school, punch god and eat the sun.

all in a month.

I have 4 or 5 ideas written down and am suddenly struck with the fear that I won't find enough ideas. Also I found out about TaD after I'd rescued this cast iron, it would've been a good choice.

Headphone cable

I have a fancy chair thanks to Vincent, it's seriously comfortable but the arm rests like to wrap my headphone cable around itself. It's so frustrating because it likes to tangle itself around the arm rests, wheels and base of the chair. For a while I was clipping the cable to my shirt and that helped a little bit but I don't always wear a shirt (cat sound!) at the computer. Today I had an epiphany and used a small hook to manage the problem. The majority of the cable sits on the other side of the hook creating enough weight to keep the cable retracted on that side instead of pooling around the chair.

Forester is credit to team

I've been putting extra work and care into my Forester recently. I never imagined I'd drive an SUV, but it fits my needs pretty well. It has AWD, lots of cargo space in the back and the Weather band.

• I just had it detailed. Mind you I don't pay for this, it's a work exchange for computer repair
• I bought new floor mats with red dragons. They look completely rediculous.
• Applied Rain X to all windows and exterior mirrors
• Bought a CD folder for the visor.
• Registered an account on SubaruForester.org and found a way to disabled the seatbelt alarm firing more than once.
• Removed the license plate covers, so now I only advertise for Subaru and not the dealer. Currently looking for awesome replacements.

These are minor things but they make a difference.

productivity 2

I've done so much that I need to make another post about it. Lucky you.

1. Changed the headlamp in my moped
2. Encrypted the drive in my laptop. This way when it gets stolen they'll only get the hardware, not the data. Really the joke is on them, a 3 year old Inspiron with a wobbly screen is no gem.
3. Installed WinPE 2.0 to a flash drive. This is most useful with computers that have no optical drive, or ones that do but no Windows discs are available; when you need to run chkdsk because the machine won't boot, not even in safe mode. Most netbooks don't have optical drives and my desktop didn't for the first 3 months of its life.
4. I had a bunch of 1GB flash drives, so I created purposes for a coulpe of them for work. I made an office installer for one of them with both Mac and Windows versions of Office. 2nd drive is Lotus Notes installer for both OS flavors. This means instead of 4 CDs and a printed paper with IP address and CD keys, I know carry 2 flash drives. They also install in a fraction of the time.
5. Read World War Z
   
6. The wife drew a picture on the side of my WHS and I' in the process of spray painting it. It'll probably make most color coordinated people vomit but it's fun and I'm trying to do it using only the pain we already have. Pics when it's done.
   
7. This isn't directly related to my video card being gone, but I've started a 2600 meeting in Hilo. First meeting was in October and it wasn't until February that anyone actually showed up, but someone finally did. Now Kevin and I meet with the other regular once a months and show off and talk about different tech stuff. It's fully awesome.
8. Today I got an email from the RMA company saying they've shipped my card and it'll be returning on Monday. So the end of productivity is nigh here.
   

productivity

The video card in my gaming machine was crashing and showing artifacts during POST. It's being RMA'd.

This has stopped me from playing computer games which has let me accomplish all the other chores and projects that've been waiting to get done:

1. Installed uTorrent on my WHS. I have it watch for torrents in whs\public\torrents. I've also set up RSS feeds for the shows I like, the feeds come from feedmytorrents.com. It downloads them all to one dir and then moves them into whs\video\tv\%showname% to make it easy for the wife and the rest of the hosue to find.

I also set up the scheduler in uTorrent to only download and seed at night when everyone else is asleep. uTorrent's scheduler is tedious to configure but works. I tried at first to figure out a way to do with it Task Scheduler in Windows but hade a very difficult time and scratched that idea.

2. RMA'd a bad stick of memory back to G. Skill. I don't really like evanagalizing products but now I will. G. Skill offers everything I like: the memory is good quality, cheap, comes with a lifetime warranty and they have an easy RMA process.

3. I filed my taxes. It's depressing to see how much money I've made compared to how much I have, but it's exciting to think how much I'll get back. No matter what, it has to be done and I don't mind paying taxes. But I recognize the need and the corrolation between the taxes I pay and the services I use and I often feel that I get more than I pay for. I appreciate the roads, the schools, the police and the EMTs. I just wish more of my taxes went to them than to war.

4. Laundry! Yes! I've done 4 loads this week.

5. Hollowed out a book. The next best thing to do with a book after reading or burning is to gut it.

6. Cleaned up the htpc menus. fixed some error messages and added the photos from WHS.

7. Spending more time with my wife. Always a good idea.

What have you been up to?

Posture

I made a monitor stand! I came across a DYI monitor stand via stumble upon about 6 months ago and have been thinking about it since. The author paid for a fabricated stand and a custom cut steel plate with another custom cut glass plate on top. His TCO was about $125. It looked ultra cool.

I do computer work for Aloha Machine & Welding (best name evar), a local machine shop I considered asking them to cut me what I need in a work exchange, but decided I wanted to be more integral to the process and I didn't really want to spend much money on this, I don't have a lifestyle that dictates form over function.

I took measurements of what I wanted covered and headed to the hardware store. I bought a board, had it cut and came home to paint. I had some spray paint leftover from the previous painting projects: keyboard and mouse. I managed 2 coats of blue on the base before I ran out.
2 x steel cans got 1 coat of white before it ran out and the other two ended up getting several coats of black. I gave the blue base 3 coats of clear finish.

I used a liquid nails equivalent and a real nail fasten them in. I was less concerned about exact measurements but everything is more or less where is should be. My monitor now sits 5" above where it was and I'm sure my neck and back will thank me for it shortly.


Parts:
Board: $8. Still have 3/5ths of the board left
steel cans: free
spray paint: free
4 x nails: free