Tony's Why Am I Writing Here

A posting

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:37:00 GMT

I figure my account may deactivate some day based on neglect, so here's a post to keep it going. I do check my friends page at least once a week, probably more. More so now it's just reading 'where do I find' posts from the twin cities communities. I've moved to facebook for all of my social needs, and I'm not sure there is really anyone around here left to write to anymore. No matter, I haven't got the motivation for it anyway. Random thought posts are so random. It seems like it needs a purpose that I haven't found.

Tonight I will make one of my easy favorite childhood lunches. Kraft Savory Chicken Noodle Dinner. Only one grocery chain up here (Rainbow) even sells it anymore. If it wasn't for that once in a while, I would never go into Rainbow. Grocers take note.

Oh yeah, the corner grocery store is always out of Cherry Coke Zero too. I'd give you more of my business if you were not!

Spotted in St Paul

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:33:20 GMT

At the highland Starbucks:

Water in the basement

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:54:42 GMT

Short story: My outdoor faucet was turned on (without an attached hose) for probably 18+ hours, causing water to get into the basement and soak all of the carpet. I spent today ripping it out and putting it outside, and throwing away all the super soaked padding. The concrete floor is drying very nicely now.

On to my post:

Since I can't sleep after today, I've been researching how this may have happened. I'm feeling more confident I know how the flooding happened. My contractor mentioned this and initially I thought it was unlikely, but after doing some web research and remembering more, it is likely. I recently bought a new rubber O ring for my faucet to hose connection because it always leaked at the faucet. With the new one, it doesn't leak at all which is good. Except I got used to seeing the leak as a sign it was on. Early in the weekend, I switched the hose end from the sprinker to a closeable nozzle. I left the nozzle on the hose after using it, with the hose left stretched out across the yard, with plenty of it exposed to the sun. The water was probably left on, and I didn't drain the hose like I usually do. Monday was a hot day, which heated up the hose with a lot of surface area exposed, and likely caused a lot of pressure to build up. I know Monday morning it wasn't burst, and Tuesday morning it was. It must have burst at the weakest point being the hose coiler connector at the faucet sometime Monday afternoon.

I think it was a combo of the first hot day since I got the hose fixed, left it pressurized (closed nozzle), and left on unintentionally that caused this to happen. I've learned you can buy pressure relief adapters to keep this from happening too.

With the hose on, this pressure may have gone back into the house a little before it burst and dripped into the washing machine (I'm not confident on that though, the washer is still a mystery). I can't find any other leak evidence though elsewhere.

Translation

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:13:43 GMT

On a page selling the Spacewarp marble roller coasters, using automatic Japanese translation:

BANDAI SPACEWARP 3500/5000/10000 finally revives exceeding the time of 21 years.
Occasionally, please put man's romance on Tetstama that rolls speedily occasionally in the rail slowly.

Man's romance?

Link

Did you know?

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:56:51 GMT

That the US microwave popcorn industry is worth $900 Million?

I used to eat a lot of it. I'd have it from dinner some nights. I think I'm healthier now for only having it on occasion, and the snack size at that.

Downtown Minneapolis Pics

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:30:50 GMT

From a 20th floor apartment, click on thumbs on the first two to see the full size:

Public Transit to work

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:55:06 GMT

I've been thinking about what it would take to do 100% public transit on my Rochester commute day. It would be expensive and a lot of time, but then I found out it's impossible, there isn't way to get from my house to the commuter bus by 6 AM. Here's how it would work if say, the bus really left at 7 AM. I could also do this for real from Amy's house, which is a lot closer and is on a route that runs all night.

Leave home at 5:15 AM
5:23 AM Board city bus
5:56 AM Transfer downtown to another bus
6:46 AM Arrive at commuter bus
(time travel back an hour)
6:00 AM Board bus
7:35 AM Arrive in downtown Rochester
7:45 AM Board Rochester Bus
7:57 AM Arrive at work
(Total of 3:45 accounting for time travel)

Work to home:
4:55 PM Leave on bus to downtown
5:04 PM Arrive St Mary's Hospital
5:12 PM Leave Rochester on commuter bus
6:45 PM Arrive at Bloomington Park & Ride
6:50 PM Board train to downtown
7:20 PM Catch Bus to 9st & Nicollet
7:45 PM Catch Bus to near home
8:15 PM arrive home
(Total of 3:20)

Appx cost (could save $20 off this if I had a multiride ticket): $48
Total commute time: 7:05

Current gas commute cost: ~$20
Total car commute time: 1:40x2 for 3:20

If I drove to the park and ride, cost would be $44
Leave home: ~5:20 AM, arrive 7:57 AM (2:35 commute)
Go home: 4:55, arrive ~ 7:15 PM (2:20 commute)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:06:22 GMT

Lots of pics and a great video of churning water

Down in Iowa the reservoirs are nearing 1993 capacities and Coralville
 (near Iowa City) is already overflowing the spillway for only the second
 time.  As a teenage I was there in '93 and the power of the water was amazing,
 and a nice cool bath too.  Eventually, they closed it off to people as the water
 was coming up onto the observation area.

 Last weekend I was at Saylorville Reservoir near Des Moines, which is also at a
 high level, though not as high as Coralville.  Still, the churing water is
 amazing to witness.  Below is a video of the water, along with a few still.
 The video is quite amazing!  You wouldn't want to fall into it.

Hail yeah

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:08:41 GMT

I have some house damage after last weekend's hailstorm:
Info and pics

And some pictures from last week's storms in Nebraska:
Nebraska

Hum de dum

Fri, 30 May 2008 17:12:32 GMT

I don't really like to use LJ anymore, because I just don't know a lot of people who use it. I've gotten on the facebook bandwagon and I really like it. Myspace is horrible. Facebook is clean, and while it lacks any type of blogging or meaningful personal updates, it's great for posting pictures, videos, playing scrabble, etc. I find myself spreading links via email now more than LJ, because LJ is kind of a black hole. I don't response to other's less frequent posts, and rarely get responses to mine. It's more of a information search utility now.

I wanted to post a link, and since facebook doesn't work well for that, here I am. 2 nights ago I heard what I know are gunshots for the first time while over at Amy's house in south Minneapolis. She lives in a decent neighborhood, though anyone from the country would probably think it was ghetto. It's very average for Minneapolis and not a crime spot. Anyway, we convinced ourselves it was firecrackers since there was no other noise, cars screeching, yelling, sirens later, nothing. Then we got news today that a mere block away there was a party with some cops who were parts of a street get-to-know-the-hood team, who decided to fire off their guns (into the air for fun?) when leaving the party.

The good news is that it wasn't any violent intent. The cops have been suspended, and it's not the first time this task force has had issues. But now I'll know what it sounds like in the future and be able to call it in if it happens.

Story link

Paul Douglas

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:47:26 GMT

Sounds a bit like my life:

"Douglas has served the Twin Cities market for 22 years, starting with a stint at KARE. He took a break to work in Chicago, a decision he came to regret. He joined WCCO in 1997. Douglas's letter stated that he's going to stay in the area."

"We are dedicated to Minnesota," he said. "Our Chicago experience proved to us that bigger is not necessarily better. Minnesota is an extraordinary place and we are here for life."

Ugh

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:40:24 GMT

Eagles

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:44:54 GMT

I went to Wabasha to try my luck at eagles. It was nice and sunny this morning, but it turned into a dark cloud mess by afternoon. I'll estimate I saw 30 eagles on the trip, with most being way off in the distance. There were 2 nests within shooting range though.

Best nest shot:

More pictures behind the cut

2 eagles in a different nest:

A flotilla of small waterfowl:

Geese:

Small bird either taking off or landing or running on water:

This gulls wants to know what you're looking at:

Vacation Pictures

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:54:18 GMT

Picture albums from the Feb trip to New Mexico... click on the pictures to open albums.

White Sands:

Guadeloupe Natl Park:

El Paso:

Carlsbad Caverns:

Roswell:

Best of Video

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:39:02 GMT

I made this video for a party earlier this year and am just getting around to putting it on the webpage. It's 7 minutes and is about the evolution of taking time lapses out the window with a webcam in 1999, to storm chasing and everything in between. It's very sped up and fast paced, enjoy!

Video Here

Network Upgrade

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:55:25 GMT

Earlier this year I made a short weather video to show at a chaser party. I keep all of my original video files on the rather safe Linux server in the basement. The PC I edit videos from first must copy gigs and gigs of video before I can do anything with it. That takes a while. If my network was faster, it would be less painful, and for shorter stuff it may be reasonable to just edit over the network. I also keep all of my pictures on there, so when I bring up folders and get thumbnails for preview, it may be faster for that too.

I found I had about $250 sitting in my PayPal account, a lot of which came from selling a $30 toy Darth Maul lightsaber on Ebay for a ridiculous amount of money. So I took this forgotten 'free' money, and got myself a gigabit ethernet switch. Using it required me to moves some stuff from the basement up here, so I just got to it this weekend. I also had to put new ends on 3 cables, because what cuts it at 100mb/s just doesn't for gigabit.

Before the install, I could get about 11 MB/sec over the old LAN. With the new install, it's now about 21-26 MB/s. That's 2x as fast so I'm happy.

I tried enabling Jumbo Frames (That's MTU of 9000 instead of 1500 for you techheads), but that didn't improve the speed. I blame one of the two ends not really having it enabled, and it's probably windows. More to try.

Eclipse Photos

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:10:04 GMT

Beans

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:34:07 GMT

I'm eating some roasted beans from Taiwan. On the package, it says:

"This product is made of high quality material new processing methods and under equipments."

My product is made of material gathered from under mystery equipment. Maybe Cameron can shed some light on it.

Winter Carnival Pics

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:50:36 GMT

Click on each picture for the album:

Como Park Zoo:

Parade:

Ice & Snow Sculptures:

Flower show:

Portland

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:48:26 GMT

Just another night of broomball

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:05:55 GMT

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHANHASSEN HAS ISSUED A WIND
CHILL ADVISORY...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 9 AM
CST THURSDAY.

WIND CHILL READINGS DURING THIS PERIOD WILL BE BETWEEN 25 BELOW
AND 35 DEGREES BELOW ZERO.

Another cold game night.... :) 4 hours till game time, and it's 2 Degrees F.

Freedom Rock

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:55:37 GMT

Well turn it up man!
(Ah the memories)

One of those days

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:03:48 GMT

Been holding steady at 1 degree F since 10 AM. If only it were balmy like 7 AM.

3 PM (20) Jan 18 1.0 (-17.2) NW 15
2 PM (19) Jan 18 1.0 (-17.2) NW 16
1 PM (18) Jan 18 1.0 (-17.2) NW 16
Noon (17) Jan 18 1.0 (-17.2) NW 16
11 AM (16) Jan 18 1.0 (-17.2) NW 17
10 AM (15) Jan 18 1.0 (-17.2) NW 17
9 AM (14) Jan 18 3.9 (-15.6) WNW 14
8 AM (13) Jan 18 8.1 (-13.3) NW 18
7 AM (12) Jan 18 12 (-11) NW 17

Cheese Curds

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:16:32 GMT

CUUUUUUUUUURRRDDDSSS!! CUUUURRRDDDSSS!!

I have a hankering for cheese curds.

Some pictures for you all

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:05:58 GMT

Here are the Portland/Seattle pictures. No descriptions probably...

Seattle, WA
http://www.gyruss.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=26941

Portland, OR
http://www.gyruss.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=26846

Salem, OR
http://www.gyruss.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=26881