Okay, I’m probably going to step on some toes here, but I have to say—what’s the big deal? Yeah, they’ve been down on the main street for 100 years (really, they were established in 1907!). Lorien and I went down there yesterday for lunch. For the both of us, we left a little over $20 poorer. We both had two double cheeseburgers and a drink. Nothing else. They don’t serve fries or chips. They also don’t grill their onions (a slice they put on your burger is really powerful), which I would prefer.
I can cook a hamburger the same way at home, and I won’t even be able to tell the difference taste-wise. You’ll pay almost $4.50 for a double cheeseburger there. I’m convinced that this is a nostalgia thing. My wife grew up going there with her family, so it’s a childhood tradition for her. But for me, if I’m going out for a greasy burger, I’d rather spend less money somewhere else. Especially somewhere else I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for a seat. Hudson’s doesn’t have more than 20 seats (and I’d be surprised if it’s that many).
So, overall, I have to say go there once if you’re visiting Coeur d’Alene, but as a local, I’m going somewhere else.
I’ve fixed two “computer problems” this week by suggesting a bill be payed. I’m a great technician.
I’ve had this link for a long time, but have never posted it. NASA has a cool page on how to make constellations in film canisters. Personally, I would add a red LED inside the canister with a small watch battery and mount a switch on the outside so I could project them from each canister. Great for amateur astronomers or for teaching constellations.
Sorry, no picture today. Since I was off on vacation, it doesn’t look like a lot has been done, but those big machines are out there every day doing stuff. Most recently they’re burying pipes in the ground and pushing a lot of dirt around. The whole construction area looks like a giant dirt and mud field right now. There isn’t much else to look at since they pushed most of the trees over and scraped off all the grass.
You may have read in the news recently that those wacky British people (not to be outdone by us crazy Americans) have started giving prison inmates “privacy keys”, to teach them “respect and decency”.
I hope someone goes around and steals stuff that they lock up, so they know what it feels like for the rest of us.
I’ve never heard of it until this very minute, but it should work: Make clay from sawdust. I have a lot of tools in my garage that generate sawdust, and up ’til now I’ve just scooped it up and thrown it away. Now I have an alternate use for my sawdust.
Sawdust Clay
2 parts sawdust
1 part flour
water
Mix flour and sawdust. Add water until it forms a stiff clay. Make into shapes (use cookie cutters), let dry. Sand it with sandpaper, then apply your favorite finish.
Believe it or not, I’ve had a bit of time to work on my old MUD codebase. Had a few problems with loading data, but I think I worked them out. Now it’s time to get collections and assemblies working…
I had to come in to the office at 5am so I could call APC about the wonky UPS we have in our server room. Unfortunately, it has to be shut down completely, along with all the servers attached to it. Their support is only open from 8am to 8pm Eastern time, which means 5pm my time. And I can’t take the servers down before 5pm, so early morning it is. Too bad they didn’t really resolve it. We have these Smart-UPS 1500 XLRM2U units, and one of them freaks out every two weeks or so and says it has an internal temperature threshold violation and goes into bypass mode, but never comes out of it.
Their suggestion? Upgrade the BIOS (I did that), replace the power module, or replace the battery module. Yeah, thanks.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but on the cruise Lorien bought several paintings (already framed) by Shan-Merry and Felix Mas. While it may take us some time to pay them off, they are all beautiful works, and I can’t wait to get them (they’re being sent FedEx) and hang them up. Perhaps of everyone that reads this, my sister Jodie would be most interested in them.
My wife’s cousin Julianne Hough is on Dancing with the Stars. I don’t care for the show at all, but her whole family is really excited about it. She was on Shatner’s Show Me the Money before this, which I though was cooler. I mean, come on, it’s Shatner!
My sister Betsy is going to be in Portland next month, from the 5th to the 10th. I guess she won’t have the time to make a trip up this far North, but I think Lorien and I will take a short weekend trip down there to see her. It’s also my aunt Patsy’s 50th birthday, so it would be a good time to visit. Betsy lives in Virginia now, by the way, so I don’t get to see her very often.
Apparently the broken car is no longer broken—it seems to be holding a charge now just fine, and the lights aren’t staying on any more. I don’t know how it got fixed, but I’m glad it seems to be okay now. Lorien has an appointment with a mechanic to have it looked over anyway.
I have a dentist appointment (regular 6 month checkup) in just a few minutes. I hate going to the dentist, even for just a checkup and cleaning…
PS Turns out it was the battery, as I suspected. Unfortunately, Lorien paid $75 for a new one (I said to just get a quote, they don’t cost that much and only take a couple of minutes to put in).
Well, I got to work this morning and had a crisis as I walked in the door. Mostly due to the daylight savings time problem. I don’t understand why Microsoft didn’t fix this at least a year ago. The law was passed either two or three years ago, so it’s not like the problem was unexpected. I fixed this on my 10 year old linux server without a single hitch.
Aside from that, my wife’s car battery looks like it died, and after I jump-started it this morning, the parking lights come on even though they’re not turned on. I think it’s an electrical problem somewhere, but I’m very unhappy about it—this is yet another problem with her car that we’ll be forking out money for. It will soon be cheaper to make payments on a new car rather than continuing to fix the old one…
After our wonderful cruise in the Mediterranean on the brand new Carnival Freedom, I began searching for the recipe to the warm chocolate melting cake. It didn’t take long to find, but it was huge—enough to feed an entire ship, with 800 eggs and 50 pounds of sugar, etc. I’ve reduced the recipe (apparently acquired by calling Carnival), but haven’t tried it yet. So without further ado, here it is:
Warm Chocolate Melting Cake
1 lb dark baking chocolate
1 lb butter
10 eggs (at room temperature)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
Melt the chocolate and butter together.
Mix the eggs and sugar and whisk for a few minutes, then add the flour.
Add the egg mix to the melted chocolate and mix
Pour the mix in a greased pan (use ramekins)
bake in the oven at 400° F for 14 minutes
We made it back home, although it was a long day between the flights and stops we had. The flight from Rome to NYC was about 9.5 hours, then we had a 3 hour layover, a 5.5 hour flight to SLC, then another hour layover and a 1.5 hour flight to Spokane. It seems the biggest thing that went wrong while we were gone was Lorien’s car battery died.