The Big Think

Check out this webpage next time you’re searching for good deals at Amazon.

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And here, in no particular order, and off the top of my head, are some things I’m thankful for.

1. A great marriage. Better than great, actually. Can you call a marriage Epic? Naw, neither one of us are ancient Greeks so that doesn’t feel right. Anyway, it’s great.
2. A job/life that I really love.
3. A clean car! We replaced a whole slew of stuff on Erin’s Accord during a major maintenance kick yesterday. Timing belt, water pump, all the belts, coolant, brake fluid, transmission fluid, seals, gaskets, spark plugs, ignition wires, balance, rotate, align, and newly turned rotors (soon). It did serious damage to the wallet, but the car is almost back up to brand-new status. After a thorough cleaning today (and I do mean thorough!), it feels, smells, and drives like new, which is something for a 6 year old car with 110K on it.
4. Time enough do do what I love and indulge in learning about all kinds of cool stuff.
5. Hitting a major milestone in my work this week
6. Living in America
7. Finally being done with my studio. I love my new office.
8. The new server host! Thanks again to the inestimable Sean McMains, who so graciously offered hosting. The site is so fast now I can hit “post”, make a change, and hit “post” again within ten seconds. Total joy to be able to blog at will. I know the readers appreciate it as well.
9. My friends
10. The cold weather is finally here. 39 degrees tonight, whoopee!
11. Erin and I are spending Thanksgiving home with just the two of us. We’ve gotten all the fixings for a truly epic dinner (I can say Epic since it’ll be positively Roman in its excess). Turkey, dressing, mashed taters, cranberry sauce (schlorpped from a can, of course), homemade bread, with homemade blackberry cobbler and eggnog ice cream for dessert. We’ll spend all day cooking tomorrow and all night regretting everything we’ve eaten. Got a stock of movies and hot wassil ready to go.
12. The telescope design. It’s slowly developing and it’s going to be a real beauty.

So how about you? The comments are open.

Free audiobook available on iTunes today. Unabridged. Looks interesting. link.

By any conceivable measure, Frank Buckles has led an extraordinary life. Born on a farm in Missouri in February 1901, he saw his first automobile in his hometown in 1905, and his first airplane at the Illinois State Fair in 1907. At 15 he moved on his own to Oklahoma and went to work in a bank; in the 1940s, he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. When he returned to the United States, he married, had a daughter and bought a farm near Charles Town, W. Va., where he lives to this day. He drove a tractor until he was 104.
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But even more significant than the remarkable details of Mr. Buckles’s life is what he represents: Of the two million soldiers the United States sent to France in World War I, he is the only one left.

Read the whole thing.

So I spent most of the day today patching up the entry holes for our little fuzzy friends. I did a real number on my hands while cutting up metal mesh to fasten over the exterior dryer vent area, and then caused a few more scratches and cuts putting a second mesh barrier on the inner part of the hole. I also completely cleaned out the inside of the dryer and replaced the expand-o-tube that vents hot air and lint outside. The old tube had fallen off the back of the dryer and the mice were crawling up the outside of the house, in the unprotected 4″ hole (which isn’t covered by the little cover because it was bent when it was installed 6 years ago!), then exiting the tube that had come detached from the back of the dryer. Now the thing is so ingress-proof I feel confident that the house is (or will very soon be) completely rodent free.

One last one had to be taken care of after we returned for the night tonight. Unfortunately the trap didn’t finish the job and the Great Protector (i.e. me) had to do the dirty work. I’ll just leave it at that.

Due to the fact that I lost an entire day today mouseproofing the house and cleaning my studio I have to spend most of the day tomorrow catching up on work. Sunday is Wash Everything In The House Twice day, as prescribed by my lovely better half. What can I say? If you had mouse droppings in your tea cups you’d want to do that too.

Don’t worry, if you ever come over to eat you’ll know that everything will be clean.

Our too-seldom seen friends (and fellow travelers on the self employed trail) Darla and Jason Cohen invited us to their annual cookout/campfire/commune with the donkeys at their property in far southwest austin. Even though we had to fight rush hour traffic for 90 minutes on a friday night it was still worth it. Hot dogs, chips, apple cider, and smores with a bunch of creative and interesting strangers. I stood back from the fire at one point and looked at the ring of people huddled around the warmth and was struck by the thought that I was viewing a common experience that is both very familiar and unbelievably ancient. A knot of humans standing around a fire with their backs to the darkness. It’s been that way for thousands and thousands of years. It was just a nice moment when I could almost feel the weight of history.

Darla is a personal chef in Austin (check out her page here). She’s become phenomenally successful in the past four years and we spent some time talking about the benefits and pitfalls of staying small. Jason, one of the founders of Code Bear software, is also of the self employed ilk. We all met through a mutual friend and whenever we get together with them it always feels like no time has passed at all. I just wish that there was more time to do stuff with them. It’s great to be able to vicariously experience their business ups and downs.

I may have taken one of the little rodents out, but two more have taken his place. One was coming and going in the holes I drilled a few months ago in the studio (where the cable bundles exit). That was the one I took out. A few hours later his partner in crime showed up. I think I chased him back into the hole. I set a trap right under the hole and closed the studio door for a few hours (it’s the solid core door with full weather stripping). When there was no result I got a can of expanding foam and emptied it into the wall cavity. Now I have a giant mass of expanding foam with cables running out of it, but I’m SURE that he can’t get back in that way.

We finished watching Ratatouille downstairs tonight (I know, the irony) and turned around to see yet another mouse sniffing at the peanut butter on one of the (4) traps in and around the pantry and fridge. He was able to make off with a small bit of peanut butter a couple of times, but instead of freaking him out we left him alone. I figure he’ll get used to the idea of snacking on the PB and one of these times he’ll pull too hard on the trap. Snap.

Finally, I used the rest of the expanding foam to fill in some of the known small holes around our house. Under cover of darkness and with no telling what was going to crawl up my pants I knelt down beside the garden shed outside to look at the dryer vent. It had a glob of old lint stopping the mechanism from closing completely. The result is a 4″ wide hole in the side of our house leading straight into the pantry. I guess that mystery is solved.

I’ll have to tear off and replace the vent completely, hopefully with something more mouse proof. In the mean time I’ve soaked a couple of paper towels in peppermint oil (which purportedly keeps mice at bay) and stuffed them into the outside opening of the vent. No activity or noise anywhere for the last few hours. I think any survivors have gone back to their nests for the night. Tomorrow I’m looking to either plug their entry holes or up my score. I just hope I can outwit the thing.

Jason: 1
Remy: 0

For the last few weeks we’ve seen evidence of some little rodent friends around the house. Mysterious scuttling sounds and random droppings here and there have led us to believe that we definitely have a roommate. With the help of Scott we were able to track him down and dispatch him the other day. However, we heard the same sounds early yesterday and discovered that we still have one somewhere in the pantry. And just a few minutes ago Erin saw one in the upstairs master bathroom, so either we have a single mouse that gets around VERY well or there’s at least two in here. We got some of those humane “no-kill” traps with the special mouse attractant bait and set them out yesterday, but the one we saw in the kitchen literally climbed over the thing without even pausing.

Sorry little guys, we tried to be nice, but now I’m off to the hardware store for some serious ammunition.

I’m back from the show and just noticed something… did I really write “Halloweed” in the previous post? I mean, I know I was around college students and all, but I assure you that wasn’t a Freudian slip. Or even a Chongian one.

MAKERFAIRE!

I play piano at the local Vino 100 every so often. As part of my remuneration, the owner gives me a couple bottles of wine (my choice!) and a class for me and Erin. We went to the class tonight (pairing wine with food), and had an absolutely wonderful time with chef and chief sommelier Brian. Brain brought several different kinds of foods and opened about a half-dozen bottles of wine for us to compare and contrast between them. There were about 9 of us in attendance and we got to try some truly wonderful vintages. I used a birthday gift certificate to pick up 2 bottles of 2003 Pasa Robles Petite Syrah. It was almost as good as the $40/bottle stuff that Dimas (the owner) opened for us. We can’t wait to figure out what we’re going to make to enjoy this wonderful stuff.

but we can do a pretty good job of being isolated with this Master List of Opt Outs.

Catalog Choice is a new service (free) that essentially acts as a Do Not Call list for junk snail mail catalogs. Huzzah!

Because Natalie is no longer spelled with a “G”.

This makes me sad.

Dang, I shouldn’t have busted up Fafner. He’d have come in handy.

I’m going to open up comments now and hope the spammers don’t invade. Post away if you’re in the mood.

Attention, please. Attention! This means you.

Let it be known that Sean McMains is a real mensch, which my Jewish friends assure me is Yiddish for “great technical brain”. Sean has managed to wrangle all of my old content from the pre-move site into this here installation. This involved having to do a complete reinstall of an old version of WordPress (the software that’s running this blog), converting all 2600 or so old posts over, and reposting them here (hope you had a batch script, Sean).

I’ve been wanting to do this for about two years now, and had honestly given up hope that it would ever happen, but Mr. Brainy went and tackled the job. No doubt he had to postpone his anniversary, neglect his children, shun the advances of his wife, and almost get fired from work, but he did it anyway.

I declare today officially Sean Day. Everyone please join me in raising a glass.

Thanks, Sean!