Last year I read about home carbonation, and looking at the amount of club soda Kate and I buy it made sense. The only unknown was where to put the ugly tank that would be out of sight yet still convenient to use.
Months later coworkers and I were at the Red Stag, which carbonates their own sparkling water, and talked about doing the same at the office. I still didn't act until a friend got a soda club machine as a gift.
To look at this long neglected unblog one would thing I've stopped doing things, but quite the contrary there's been so very much doing of things that there's been no time for posting. In no particular order we have:
Add to those minor projects some time spent on general upkeep of an 85 year old home, scouts and a decidedly non-zero number of hours spent at work, and it becomes clear that what Kate and I need is a baby.
My company, Swarmcast, announced one of our first public releases today. Previously we've been primary selling to content providers, but now we're putting out a user facing free release. If you download our Autobahn Accelerator for iTunes you'll find your purchases from the iTunes music store come down three to ten times faster than they did before. We'll be adding support for lots of other sites (you tube, etc.) in upcoming weeks.
Between telecom troubles, warranty repairs, botched on line orders, and marriage related changes in insurance, mortgage, and bank accounts I've spent a lot of time on the phone with customer service representatives lately. Few issues get resolved in a single call and even fewer without a transfer to another office.
I put together a sheet to keep track of who I spoke to, when, how to get back to them, and what they promised me. Now I grab one whenever I'm about to dial a 1-800 number to talk to the almost-friendly, nearly-helpful people on the other end. Besides the convenience of being able to say "On January 21st at 3pm Janice, CSR number JA5692, told me she'd ship the replacement FedEx overnight," representatives seem on their best behavior when you start out every interaction asking for their name and customer representative number.
I forwarded a Simon Delivers order receipt email on to a friend, and he was able to view the order without being logged in as me. Turns out that if you have a Simon Delivers account at all they let you view any order. I created a quick web form to let anyone view any order using my account. Here's my favorite order so far:
| Qty | Item Name | Each |
| 1 | Cetaphil Moisturizing Lotion | $10.99 |
| 2 | Coke Diet - 24/12 oz. Cans | $7.49 |
| 2 | Dr Pepper Diet - 24/12 oz. Cans | $7.49 |
| 2 | Hershey's Milk Chocolate Candy Bars - 6 ct. | $3.49 |
| 2 | Life Savers Wintergreen Flavored - Individually Wrapped - Bag | $1.89 |
| 1 | Nabisco Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies | $3.79 |
| 1 | Nestea Cool Lemon Iced Tea Fridge Pack - 12/12 oz. Cans | $4.19 |
| 2 | Pepsi - 24/12 oz. Cans | $7.49 |
| 2 | Pepsi 8/12 oz. Bottles | $3.69 |
| 1 | Seven-Up - 12/12 oz. Cans | $4.19 |
| 2 | Seven-Up Diet - 12/12 oz. Cans | $4.19 |
I'm sure fixing this problem is simple as adding whatever the .asp equivalent of this is:
My favorite book in the Wren Hollow Elementary school library was The Gadget Book by Harvey Weiss. I must have checked it out a hundred times during the second and third grade and tried to build most of the half-practical projects it detailed. The best among them was the burglar alarm. It used wooden blocks, a door hinge, and a strip of metal to make a simple normally-open contact switch. It was the first electrical work I ever did and almost certainly shaped my interests and career path.
This one's dumb. We've got the same trash can that everyone who shops at Target has. The inner removable pail is handy for keeping spills from pouring out the foot pedal hole, but its air-tight nature creates quite the vacuum when you're trying to pull the bag out.
After ripping the handles off yet another Glad bag trying to get it out of the pail I went to get a drill to poke an air hole in the bottom -- leak proof be damned. Next to the drill I saw a piece of 3/4" plastic tubing, which I ran from the top of the inner pail to the bottom.
This weekend I put in a Honeywell 360A whole house humidifier. The instructions said it should take an hour, and it only took me four. Nothing went wrong, which what you hope for when a project means cutting holes in your duct work, tapping into your water, and some wiring. Now when we wake up our throats don't hurt.
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Update: If you don't tighten down the compression fittings on the water supply line it will let go and you'll drain water into the floor drain all night. d'oh
When I don't post here in a while it either means I'm not building anything new or that I'm too busy to write about what I am doing. This time it's the later. Not that any of it's been exciting, but almost all of it involved using a saw, which totally counts.
Gwin, our eldest cat, has always kicked toys into the basement sump for the joy of watching humans pick them out later. Milo, on the other hand, likes running into the muddy sump and then running up stairs. To keep the cats and their toys out I built a little wooden frame to fit and covered it with chicken wire. It's ugly but functional.
After moving into the house I started a series of small home improvement tasks. Some of them have genuine safety reasons but many happened only because changing things demonstrates residence. Here's an incomplete list of things I've done:
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