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