Saturday, December 27, 2008

Finished My nutritional info for the book

I am happy to report that I have completed 1/3 of my cookbook. I have completed the recipes, and the nutritional information.

It was nice to get this done.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Sticker shock or The real cost of calories

I was doing some nutritional analysis of my various recipes. I didn't know how many calories a Pizza can have. Just 2 servings of my pizza weigh in at 430 calories. A whole pizza = one whopper in calories. I might add that these are 'tiny' pizzas about 6 inches in diameter, not near the same amount that a 'normal' pizza that most American's can eat single handed.....I shudder to think what the meat lovers pizza would have??

I also was amazed at how much salt are in my recipes. Just 1 serving of my lasagna has nearly 60% of your sodium for a day. These are 'healthy' recipes that I have REDUCED the amount of sodium in....

Oh well. BTW: Gourmet rocks, its the program that I use for all my cooking. It does all of the nutritional stuff FOR FREE and runs wonderfully on my OS of choice, Linux.

Thomas

Thursday, December 18, 2008

An unexpected Meeting

I was looking as some zphone stuff, (a cool encryptor for voip) apps, and sent a message to the distro for the source code for asterix.

Guess who called? Phil Zimmerman himself. We talked for about an hour or two. He's a really pleasant person.

My first celebrity who I actually talked to 'in person' who I really admired. Most 'pop' stars are idiots who have entirely too much money, nice to meet a cool human being.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Pandora Update

Well, I received my refund today from the Pandora. I talked to the pandora lady (Debs) who was very nice. I will probably re-order. I did lose about $75.00 due to currency fluctuation. The Pandora looks like it is coming along nicely, and since I have recieved my refund I have some more faith in the product team.

Thomas

Disaster or Do Thomas's Dream of Electric Bikes?

Well, my personal project to electrify my recumbent have ended up in flames. I tried unsuccessfully for nearly 6 months to get the local recumbent shop to get me one ordered.

I had him modify my SatRday with a Schlumpf front end (its a set of planetary gears that gives you integrated gearing as part of the crank shaft), since we would be removing the 3 speed integrated rear shifter (taking me from 27 gears to 9). With the schlumpf I would have had 18 speeds.

Well, it turns out that the satrday aliment is very touchy. He had to completely re-tool the bike, which cost me $600.00. The dumb part comes on me. I borrowed a $1600.00 recumbent from him, and through my own stupidity and anger I destroyed the loaner. Add another $1200 after parts.

I called Bike Friday, since I no longer trusted the words of this fine salesmen, and looked at the mechanical laws myself: My satrday has 350 rims. The nearest bionix motor to this is 18 inches. That's 457mm, The satrday people said I MIGHT be able to fit it on the satrday, but that would require disc brakes (about $350.00), and that the satrday itself would have to be further modified to allow for such brakes ($60.00). The labor and parts for just the disc brakes is going to run $550.00, not including shipping ($60.00 w/ insurance), not including the $1600.00 cost of the bionix motor itself. There is still NO guarantee that this will all work together.

So rather than continuing to spend money on a lost cause, I have decided to give up the reality of the electric Bike, and wait till next year (more likely 2010!) to try again. Maybe by then my Scorpion folder w/ full suspension will be working. The cost (in today's dollars) for this: $6,000. Kind of more than I am willing to spend in this climate.

Thomas

Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Perfect Linux for desktop?

I have recently been using ubuntu server edition for my desktop of all things. It seems to be faster, more stable, and a whole lot more usable than the normal 'bloated' desktop they seem to ship. I installed basic kde 4.1 (which has come a long nicely), and feel no need at this time to go back to gnome. I had previously hated kde, and usually went with gnome or xfce4.

My load times from a suspended system to working (from power on) is 60 seconds. That means they FINALLY have hibernation working (never worked before on ANY linux distro for my desktop!), and things 'just work.' I am happily surprised thus time. Also my open office load times went from 45 seconds in fc8 to 9 seconds in Ubuntu 8.10 server edition.

Friday, November 14, 2008

The power of repetition and dress rehearsal

I just completed a large job for my employer. The only way that it was able to succeed was with two installs in a lab. Doing it the first time the entire system was hosed. The second time things went O.K. Even with all this rehearsal, there were still glitches in the upgrading (a kernel dump bug)...Thank heavens for load balancers!

THomas

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Not so free speech tunnel-- The slow road to fascism

I live in North Carolina, and a local news story came to mind. Basically there is a 'free speech' tunnel at NC state. Someone posted some 'hate' speech in the supposedly 'free speech' tunnel, and everyone is getting their shorts in a bunch.

I have yet to hear the sheer irony of a 'free speech' tunnel that limits speech to what we find 'acceptable'. Might be better termed a 'politically correct' free speech site.

The erosion of free speech by so called 'social' justice advocates is nothing less that restraint of free speech.

While I think that prejudice and hate have NO place in a society, 'free speech' does allow such people, no matter how much I dislike them, to have a voice.

If we want to get righteous about it, why not just go to various countries where people are killed for their opinions. The slippery slope to fascism begins with restraint of 'inappropriate' speech.

Thomas

Thursday, November 6, 2008

My lap dog

One of my favorite games that I play with my pet (whoose name shall remain anonymous, due to identity thievery), is to try to catch her. She will run all over the room, and finally I will trick her, and turn her into my lap dog. Its her penalty for trusting me. I sit her on my lap when I go on the computer. Keep in mind that she weighs 45 lbs!

Thomas

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Being spiritually in the right place

It is too easy to rely on the 'right things' in order to keep my life in balance. When I live by self-will, I cause myself to revert to old bad behaviors. I try to fill the emptiness with something, rather than my Higher Power, and suffer the consequences. This seems to be despite my best intellectual efforts to be self-reliant. Surrender is a very hard thing.

When I am spiritually in the right place, I rely upon something outside myself, and can draw on the strength that goes beyond my own.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Pandora Sadness

The Pandora (a new open sourced gaming system) has been delayed due to display manufacture inventory shortage. There also seems to be a little fishiness going on with banks as well, some people have to re-order.

I hope the dream (of owning an open-sourced gaming system NO horrid homebrew hacking required) doesn't become a nightmare.

Beware the ides of Faucets

Well, the studies keep coming in. I have read two interesting articles on science news that show Lead in new faucets can be really dangerous.

The first article cites a university that had new faucets and lead concentrations at 1000ppb a WHOLE LOT higher than epa guidelines. The solution? Keep running the water faucet for a while.

Second article cites the danger of faucet aerators and how they can collect lead. Clean out your aerators!

Thomas

My First Post

Well, it looks like my vote is the kiss of death. I have unsuccessfully attempted to elect 3 presidents in my voting life, and all 3 have lost. We will see if things continue down this bad road.