Recently in Life Stories Category

This post future-dated to keep at the top. New posts below!

Some friends and I have just launched MindThrow, a new website designed to help people find new things to do. How many times have you sat around, bored, looking for a new hobby, a new book, a new movie, or just anything to do? Yeah, me too. Well MindThrow helps solve that problem by using some sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques to connect interests together so that you can find new things to do based on what you already know you like.

Because the system learns as people use it, the quality of search results will improve over time. We're just getting started, and there are sure to be a few bugs here and there, but I'd love for you to check the site out and let us know what you think.

Originally posted at 080711@14:03:35.

Just visited some family in Springfield for a few days and discovered Lambert's Cafe. My new favorite restaurant, bar none. They actually throw food to you. It's all you can eat, and the food is great. Best of all, however, is that when they drop the food on your table it's actually too hot to eat, every time. Made me realize that most restaurants serve luke-warm food that has been sitting on a counter for several minutes before you see it.

Either there hasn't been much to blog about recently, or my brain has been too stressed to find anything. Everything in my life feels crazy right now... not all in a bad way, but argh. Maybe I take on too much, I don't know. I definitely have a "if you want something done right, do it yourself" mentality and it's hard for me to leave responsibilities to other people when I think I can do it better. I'm not sure though what I could cut out:

1. Work. Gotta pay the bills. I'm not working overtime or anything, but work is stressful and very busy.

2. Church. I'm the director of my Sunday School class of 40 young married couples. This isn't a huge amount of work, but it can be draining at times. Fortunately there are a ton of spiritual leaders in our class.

3. Family. Jessica is pregnant! Yay! Very exciting, but the pregnancy is taking a real toll on her and therefore indirectly on me.

4. Hobbies. What hobbies? I play Travian (sign up there to get me bonus gold) but that's mostly a stress relief. Mostly anyway! A 24/7 game can get a little stressful at times.... But I've got to do something fun sometimes.

5. Side projects. My partners and I are getting very close to launching a new website we've been working on for almost a year. Can't quit now.

Anyway, woe is me, right? It's just life, I know, and I'm tremendously blessed to have the life I do. My complaints ring so hollow in even my own ears.

I need a 150 Ohm 10 Watt power resistor, and I can't find anyplace around me that sells electronic components. This is when I miss Fry's the most.

Update:

Awesome!

Gateway Electronics

2220 Welsch Industrial Court * St. Louis, MO 63146

A relay on the control board of my home furnace buzzes when the furnace blower is on. (The blower is also used for the A/C.) The buzzing started recently, but is fairly loud. I assume the buzzing means that the relay is going bad and that I'll need to replace the control board. Can anyone tell me if it's safe to continue operating the blower until I can get the part I need to fix it?

The two most common guidelines I've seen for thermostat placement is: don't put it on an outer wall, do put it in a central part of the area to be regulated. The first is certainly a good idea, but the second leaves out a lot of important considerations.

Whoever built my house put the upstairs thermostat in a central location... in the upstairs hallway at the top of the stairs. This is a terrible location, because:

• people are only rarely in the hallway
• there are no vents in the hallway
• cold air flows down the stairs to the bottom floor
• hot air flows up the stairs from the bottom floor

When the bedroom doors are closed at night it's virtually impossible to keep the rooms at a comfortable temperature. They get too cold in the winter, because the thermostat is warmed by air from downstairs and the bedrooms are cooled by their outer walls. In the summer, the A/C just runs continuously because none of the cold air reaches the thermostat, and what little gets into the hallway just flows down the stairs.

Two weeks ago I spent a day investigating what it would take to relocate the thermostat, but the difficulty is prohibitive. The thermostat wires come up from the basement, through the ground floor walls, to the second floor. Ugh. I was hoping they came down from the attic, but no such luck.

So, yesterday I ordered a Venstar Wireless thermostat sender and receiver set. Theoretically I'll install the receiver at the existing thermostat location and put the sender in my bedroom. The sender has a thermometer on it, and will tell the receiver when my room is the right temperature. The set cost $210 with shipping, but if it keeps my A/C from running all night I'm sure it will save me money over the course of the summer.

Anyone have any experience with these? I couldn't find many reviews, and it didn't seem like wireless thermostats in general are very widely used.

I am exhausted. The past couple of weeks have been extremely hectic, and I'm very excited about my upcoming four-day weekend. The weather promises to be warm and sunny, and I've hardly got any plans at all!

What about you?

I know you've all been on pins and needles waiting for my decision... and the winner is... the BlackBerry Curve 8310! It doesn't have WiFi, but I barely use the WiFi I've got, so I decided to save my money. It comes with built-in GPS, which sounds cool. Anyway, I'll let you know how I like it when it arrives.

I'm eligible for a new mobile phone from AT&T, but I don't know what to get. I'm not going to go for one of the top-of-the-line phones and pay hundreds of dollars, but there's a vast selection of free or almost-free phones and I don't know how to decide. Any advice or opinions?

Update:

P.S., I want Wi-Fi. I'm considering the BlackBerry 8820. I can get a refurbished one for $129.99. Thoughts?

Here's a retirement calculator that's a lot slicker and simpler than many I've seen. I also like it because it shows that Jessica and I are in pretty good shape.... Gotta remember that our ultimate security comes from God though, not our jobs or assets.

I find it difficult to carry on conversations about current events with people who don't read Drudge. C'mon people. Get informed.

Not sure if the right term here is phishing or trolling, but I've been getting a lot of unsolicited password-reset emails recently from various sites I belong to. I can only assume that someone is flooding these sites with random password reset requests, and that the sites are then sending automated confirmation emails to any account hit by the flood. Theoretically there shouldn't be any danger as long I don't click the confirmation links in the emails.

Anyone else seeing the same thing?

My vote yesterday for John McCain counted and mattered more than perhaps any other presidential-related vote I've ever cast. Despite my preference for Mitt Romney, I voted for McCain because he has more appeal to "independent" voters and has a much better chance of beating the Democrats in November. (Ah, "electability".) I was very conflicted about this decision yesterday, and now that I've seen the Missouri election results I'm even moreso.

• McCain: 194,304
• Romney:172,564

22,000 votes isn't that close, but I bet a big chunk of that difference was made by people like me. Romney convinced me that he'd be the best President out of the Republican field, but he couldn't convince the majority of voters who weren't paying very close attention. (As evidenced by the strong showing for Mike Huckabee, who is basically a socialist who happens to be a Baptist.) It's too bad Romney isn't (yet?) as skilled at politics as he is at business. McCain has a great chance of beating Hillary, and a decent chance of defeating Barack Obama. As demonstrated by his cache of "silver medals", Romney just couldn't close the deal most places he went.

John Mccain will prosecute the War on Terror with ferocity, which is the defining issue of our time. He's also consistently pro-life. Those are my two main issues, so I think I'll be satisfied with a McCain presidency. Unfortunately McCain isn't as strong on my third and fourth top issues: illegal immigration and tax cuts. His incursion into free speech with "campaign finance reform" is repugnant, but has apparently been largely ineffectual. I don't think McCain is a foe of free speech in general, but he does have a tendency to flail against perceived problems without a great deal for forethought. Perhaps the blowback from his failed comprehensive immigration reform will teach him some humility?

Anyway, despite cries of anguish from much of the right I'm prepared to embrace John McCain as my presidential nominee. Keeping Hillary and Obama out of the White House is essential to our national security and to the lives of millions of unborn children, and those issues trump any others for me at the moment. However, I sincerely hope that McCain doesn't pick Huckabee as his running mate....

Update:

Instapundit has a pertinent admonishment from Bill Whittle to conservatives unwilling to support McCain against the Democrats.

Largely because of the electability and supreme court issue I filled in the bubble for John McCain this morning. Ehhhh.

Interesting note: when I approached the sign-up table the lady there reached for a Democrat ballot until I told her I wanted the Republican one. Do I look like a Democrat? Or were there just so many Democrats voting this morning that she was acting by reflex?

I had a dream last night that I was at Disneyland, and in my dream there was a children's maze-like attraction with a haunted/pirate theme similar to Pirates of the Caribbean meets Haunted Mansion meets Tom Sawyer's Island. Despite the elaborate decorations, my dream-self considered the attraction to be pretty boring and designed just for kids. The maze was too simple to be interesting, and once you did it there was no replay value.

But then, as I was walking through the maze I noticed a kid go through a door that I had thought was merely a decoration nailed to the wall. I followed him and discovered that in addition to the simple maze all the kids saw, there was a whole labyrinth of secret rooms that most people never knew about! In order to get access to the various rooms you had to solve puzzles hidden throughout the park. Naturally this made the attraction a lot more interesting, and I spent the rest of my dream running around Disneyland and exploring the secrets of the maze. It was a pretty awesome dream.

Does anyone else ever dream up challenges for themselves? I love puzzles and exploration, so this kind of dream was right up my alley. I can't recall hearing about dreams like this from other people though... most stereotypical "good" dreams are more result-oriented.

If this is global warming then count me in. Yesterday was sunny in the mid-seventies and I barbecued out on the deck in short sleeves. Needless to say, that's unseasonable for St. Louis in mid-January. It smelled like Spring and all the birds were out. Pretty sweet.

It's nice that we occasionally have better weather than California!

I loved my Roomba Discovery while it lasted, but unfortunately that was only about a month. Two days ago the motor that drives the counter-rotating brushes stopped working (though it still makes noise) and I've been unable to fix it.

I knew it was too good to be true :(

I hardly ever buy anything expensive or "luxurious", but I really love my Dita Pusher sunglasses. I got them for 1/10th normal price because I had a friend who worked for Dita when I lived in Los Angeles and he gave them to me for my birthday a couple of years ago. I've got a big head, and these are some of the only glasses that have ever felt comfortable for me. Alas, despite taking good care of them they're starting to wear out. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I really can't justify spending hundreds of dollars to replace them. Sigh.

I've got a steep slope in my backyard and I'm concerned about erosion, so I'm going to build a short retaining wall this afternoon. I've read directions several times but I've never done it before, so it should be a challenge. Assuming it goes well, I need to build another wall on the same slope for a terrace effect, and that should considerably slow the erosion. Wish me luck!

Update:

Mission accomplished! Pictures to follow, when I find my camera.

Update 2:

Pictures after the jump!

I'm turning 30 in a few months and feeling all nostalgic. I woke up this morning with all sorts of memories from my childhood, and I've spent the past few hours beginning a chronicle of my family history and a year-by-year account of the major events and the memories I have of my life. It's an interesting project, and I hope I can stick with it long enough to write down everything I can think of.

But today I'm going to the zoo with my lovely wife, so the past will have to wait till later!

Since I tore a tendon in my right ring finger playing basketball several years ago I made a conscious decision to avoid playing strenuous sports, especially any with significant physical contact. Some may consider this to be wimpy, but it seems like a reasonable decision to me considering the life-altering injuries many of my friends have sustained because of their sports activities in high school and beyond.

My friends are not high-level athletes like Kevin Everett, but their collective inventory of broken bones, torn muscles, back problems, knee problems, ankle problems, and messed up fingers convinced me that playing sports isn't generally a worthwhile endeavor. I've got friends in their 20s who can't lift their arms over their head without pain and who can't walk a mile without knee braces, all because they like tossing balls around. No thanks!

My knees are stressed from running for a decade, but I stopped that and bought an elliptical machine instead. I love it, and it's easy on my joints. I also work out with free weights, but I avoid quick movements or anything likely to cause injuries. I'd like my body to stay usable and healthy into my old age!

As a corollary, I've got a lot of respect for Tiki Barber's retirement from the NFL. It takes a lot of willpower to change direction in life, especially when the costs and rewards of your current position are so high. However, Mr. Barber recognized what football was doing to his body and decided he'd like to leave while he was still intact. Smart man.

The Image 8.25 elliptical machine I bought from WalMart a couple of months ago has broken, and Icon Health & Fitness wants $55 for three replacement bolts. Uh... no. I'm going to return the broken machine to WalMart for a refund and buy another machine.

But what to get? I'd like to get a nicer machine that will last longer than my previous two machines, but I don't want to spend a lot