May 2007

Cheap Freezer Technology

According to this blog entry, there is a company which sells, well, a pipe from outside your house to your freezer. If it's cold outside, then use the outside air to cool your freezer! Good idea. Especially here where it is cold.

As an aside, I purchased a freezer a few years ago in the middle of winter. The clerk looked at me..."why do you need one of those?" she said. Good point.

My Backyard - Live Webcam

I realized that I never posted it, but here is my backyard webcam's picture. Normally not too interesting, but you might see some kids running around occasionally. Updated once every minute. Live! (Well, mostly) from Erie PA.

Bike to Work #4

I'm going to have to add a biking category. Biked to work again, this time along the Bayfront. The weather was beautiful, but I got a bit twisted up at Frontier Park and had to cut across the lawn a bit. It was a great, fast ride, and home was pretty good as well. Lawrence Park to State Street in about 20 minutes -- pretty good for me. I thought I'd be home a lot faster, but the uphill along Sterrettania is pretty brutal on me, especially after a mile long ride.

Support HR 1498

Support HR 1498, the transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters! Read the full text and details here. Tax breaks for cyclists!

`(F) BICYCLE COMMUTING ALLOWANCE- The term `bicycle commuting allowance' means an amount provided to an employee for transportation on a bicycle if such transportation is in connection with travel between the employee's residence and place of employment.'.

Too late for this year, though:

(d) Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2007.

Hello ErieBlogs!

Got a link to here from ErieBlogs...lots of different blogs there about Erie PA. On an unrelated note, I added a neat header to the ghofulpo.com homepage. Maybe I'll add it to the blog webpages. I'm still deciding which pages to clean up and move into the updated (well, forced to be updated) website.

Happy Memorial Day!

More Recovery

Still haven't found the files I was looking for with the comments embedded. Most of the website is a disaster...lots of missing pages, lots of old information, and lots of...well, junk. Time for spring cleaning, I suspect. I did redesign the main page and add a link to Sneakatron's website. The rest of the website needs a thorough cleansing, though.

More Website Woes

Well, I seem to have lost 99% of all my comments. Bummer. And it also appears that they are not recoverable. Hopefully I have a partial backup somewhere, but I definitely lost a fair number of them. Guess just another reason to back up your computer. Or, if you have a server out there somewhere, back that one up too.

Bike to Work #3

Third trip to work today. With every trip, the riding gets easier. I biked back on the Bayfront highway, which passes through downtown Erie PA. Nice, easy trail, no worries about traffic, and a beautiful view. My goal now is biking to work at least once a week. Maybe twice if I can get a friend to join me.

I did bike with a friend in. He has a road bike, and I had a difficult time keeping pace. However, I cut my time to work by 10 minutes! Hopefully I can keep that pace in the future.

Things To Remember While Biking

A friend of mine and I biked to work last week (ride #2, 12 miles each way for me). He got a flat along the way to work, but luckily enough, he had slime filled tires that sealed the hole. Here's a few obvious things that would have come in handy:

• Money. I had to load him a buck or so to fill up his tire with air since his pump wasn't working.
• Pump. Better than money to fill a flat. My friend's pump didn't seem to work at all, though. The other big problem is that after starting back home after filling up with gas station air, the slime broke out of the hole and the tire lost some pressure. It did stop the leak again, though.
• Patch kit. Unfortunately, this wouldn't have helped much in this case, as the slime self sealant really is slimy. I'm not sure if a tire patch would have helped as the patch glue would have to have something to stick to.
• Tool kit. Well, maybe this wouldn't have helped, but it would have been good if we had a patch kit.

For people who live in Erie PA: I live in Millcreek, and bike to Lawrence Park. It's really not that bad: an hour from end to end, and quite scenic at points. Please consider the alternatives to driving. Think green! And save green!

Pay Your Bills

Don't forget to pay your bills. Somehow I did, for this website, and lost quite a bit of it. Plus, at the same time, they were in the process of migrating to a new set of servers. Hopefully, I'll get it back sometime soon. At the very worst, all the comments were lost. :-( Anyway, at least I got my e-mail address back again so I can receive huge amounts of spam like I did previously.

Biking to Work in Erie PA

Today marks the first day I biked to work. Yay! Normally it takes me a half an hour to drive the 12 miles to work, but I biked it in slightly under an hour. I'm feeling a bit tired (surprise!), and I'm sure I can't do this everyday. However, if I can keep doing this occasionally, I'll be doing a small part to help the planet, and a big part to help my health.

The biggest surprise I had is how many people stopped on by to talk to me, and were inspired by my ride. It actually took less time to bike the distance than riding the bus would take, and it takes me from point A to point B pretty quickly. If a few more people ride their bikes, I'm sure that even more would be inspired.

Note that I'm definitely not in tip top health, but keeping a steady pace works wonders. There were a few hills that I wonder if I was putting more CO2 out than the cars next to me.

Maybe I should add a "Green" category to this blog.

Wegmans Plastic Bags

I sent an e-mail to Wegmans (the local supermarket chain) recommending that they charge 5 cents for plastic bags, as Safeway in California recently did. This not only saves them money, but the environment as well. I did get an answer:

Hi James!

Thank you for your recent email to Wegmans regarding your suggestion for the reusable shopping bags.

I have shared your suggestion with the appropriate individuals.

We appreciate that you took the time to contact us and hope we can be of service to you in the future.

Not terribly helpful, but another pro-environment voice. I wouldn't consider myself "green", but I'm trying to change. Need to think about my kids and their world. Note to non US readers: bags (both paper and plastic) in the US are generally free.

Click here to send your comment to them.

Update: Looks like they've started doing something. Evidentally not in my area, though.

American Money Under a Black Light

While screwing around at my dad's house, we shone a black light (ultraviolet light) on some US money. Not sure why we decided to do this, but we found an interesting result: the strip of plastic that is in currency glows different colors depending on the value. The pictures here really don't do the glowing justice. Next time you're out clubbing, take out some money and see for yourself...the strips really glow in a brilliant set of colors.

Ten American dollars has a red glow to it.

Twenty is green. 

Five is blue.

Dell Makes Strange Speaker Sounds

My work machine sometimes makes a strange set of sounds on the built in PC speaker by itself. It seems to be a set of rising notes or tones that come out. I have another machine at work that does it first, so I hit record and caught it happening. If you know what this sound is and why it's happening, please let me know. Note that one of the machines is not running Windows, so it is not spyware!

Maya 44 USB Vista Drivers

Finally - there appear to be drivers for the Maya 44 USB sound card for Windows Vista. After a few months of waiting, they seem to work. Finally, I think I have a complete Vista system. I did try them out and they seemed to work ok in ASIO mode.