Instantly Freezing Water in the Air Experiment

I was a little bored this morning and I decided to take advantage of the sub zero temperature to make water freeze in the air. Please be kind with the video, it was self videoed and the auto focus failed in the cold at the end. I think I'll try again later with someone videoing from the inside. Enjoy.

Temp: -15°F / -30°+F wind chill

Freezing water: take 2

This is my second try at the freezing water trick, I left the camera inside to avoid the frozen auto focus (and shakey camera). I think this is my best one yet... Pay no attention to the silly running at the end... It was cold.

Basis of my Obamacare Chart Calculations

Please be nice, I will fix stuff when I have more time to adjust the numbers (or the whitehouse releases the numbers)

Keep in mind these are rough numbers, run through quickly, and utilizing the fact that Google Docs (and MS Excell) allows you to quickly duplicate calculations across an entire screen. SOME NUMBERS MAY BE WRONG. it is a work in progress

Link to my graph and numbers chart:  [SOURCE]

--assumed total based on media sources--
48460 -- actually paying enrollment as of october 16th 2013  [SOURCE]

3029 (rnd up) -- people per day(PEpd) starting on october 1st 2013 (total divided by time)

494,620 -- Target for 10/31/2013 -- http://finance.yahoo.com/news/glance-state-goals-

health-plan-194353263.html

446,160 -- difference of currently enrolled against goal (494,620 - 48,460 = 446,160)

32,975 -- PEpd that need to sign up to meet end of October Goal (446,160 / 15days = 32,975)

-- 17th through the 31st)

16,000 -- PEpd generous approximation from day 1 to day 31 to meet end of October Goal

(494,620 / 31days = 15,955)

  o at an assumed PEpd approximation of 3029 per day fixed over the enrollment period

of October to March of 182 days (3029 * 182 = 551,278)
Per cent of Total Goal (7,066,000) if above assumed to be true -- 7.8% of Goal

  o end of October Goal aside, PEpd over entire enrollment period to meet goal

(7,066,000/182 = 38,824 PEpd)

  o current PEpd as a perentage of theoretical PEpd is (3029 / 38824 = 7.8%)

42274 -- Amount of people per day starting October 16th to end of enrollment period to meet

Ultimate Goal (7017540 / 166 days from october 16th)

My daughter, the future rock star drummer

My daughter, Lily, showing off her skills at drumming. She's the best.


enjoy :)

Quick build...GO!

I was busy looking at server and network stats, since that is boring I looked to my small "desk-sized" container - 'o - Legos for inspiration. I gave myself 2 minutes to build something recognizable.

18 Lego pieces later and I have a pretty neat office building with a front façade and a "light-tower" at the top.

Here are the Lego's I used and how I put them together. 

Picture Directions

1.  base plate and 1st two blocks	2.  2nd tier of blocks	3.  3rd tier of blocks
4.  Cap it with a penthouse suite	5.  add the first circle clear piece	6.  top if with two green clear pieces
7.  facade first layer	8.  last layer with pizzazzzzzzzzz

what do you think?

I think I'll call it the 2 minute challenge. Grab a handful of Legos and a timer, and build.

Father's Day Project: Part 2

For the Part one go HERE and read about my original plans for the Think Geek Build-On Brick Mug.

PART 2

Well, Unfortunately when I went to the Lego store near where I live, I searched long and hard on the parts wall for enough green, white, and black pieces to make the 1-up mushroom that I had hoped to make. I was unable to find, in fact, anything in solid green...only transparent green. There was, however, a lot of Blue and White bricks available on the wall so I made the next best thing...Well, let's call it THE BEST THING.


BAM!!

THE BEST THING

It says #1

It says Dad

I even added a blue light for the top, because, TARDIS

Let's face it, the fact that there were no green Legos and all blue and white Legos was pretty much the sign for me to take the design of this thing to the next level.

I call it the T.A.R.C.O.D. (Time and Relative Coffee On Desk), and I think I get more attention from people wanting to look at the Mug than actually asking me to fix network issues.

Awesome!

So, while you decide how you are going to design your Coffee Mug, I'll leave you with This.

Cause nothing says awesome like: Thumbs-up, TARDIS, and animated GIF

What time will I update?

MORE UPDATES SOON

As mentioned this morning, in reference to my original Blog Post:  Why I'm Angry with Google Glass I'll have another post up as soon as possible with more information pertaining to my conversation with them.

I'll also be updating my Father's Day project:  First read Part 1 and I'll pass along other New Stories I'm reading, and more stuff that I like later on in the day.

Stay tuned for more information from my corner.

In the mean-time Here's a picture of the first thing that popped up in my Google Image Search after searching the first word I saw on my desk:  "AMX" (name of a software package for where I work)

ooooooo Pretty

Father's Day Gift Project Part 1

So, on Father's Day I received what can only be described as the coolest present ever, a "lego compatible" Coffee Mug from Think Geek. Not only does it look like the coolest 8-bit representation of a Coffee Mug, but it can fit Legos and multiple other types of building blocks.

I also received the Vader's Little Princess book, which is a whole other story in itself. Perhaps I'll talk about it later, but it's definitely sufficient enough to say that this book is a definite must-have for any Dad who is a fan of Star Wars. Not only does it portray the Darth Vader / Princess Leia story in a different tone, but it almost brings you to tears with both comedy and the realization that, even though you may not have an intergalactic princess, she will grow up much faster than you will want her to.

Any ways, the mug. Since it attached to Legos, and there just "happens" to be a Lego store within a 5-minute drive of where I work, I decided to personalize the Mug with Legos to make it as Geeky as possible. I thought Star Wars, but that much of the Star Wars designs and emblems just won't fit too well onto a rectangle mug, I thought I would go with an 8-bit character from Nintendo. The mushroom (1-up, of course) will do nicely.

Now I can't very well just go buy a bunch of Legos and go to town on this thing, especially since: A.) I suck at 8-bit pictures, and B.) the Mug front is just a "little" too small for representation of the mushrooms. Sure I could cut out a few pixels, but then it might just look silly. then I came to the realization that the mug fits Legos all the way around it. This led me to the realization that I could attempt to design a 3D mushroom by implementing colored Lego blocks all the way around it (fixing the pixel size issue) and adding to the cool-factor.

But first I have to design it.

This should work for me to be able to design it. Drawn representations of the Coffee Mug front (and back) and the Left (and Right) sides and the handle. They're all identical to each other in the fact that the Front and Back and the Left and Right are the same number of "pixels" each. This allows for me to wrap the mushroom around the mug  for the full effect. The only issue remains what to do with the unfilled pixels, which I will probably keep as the base color (gray) until the last minute when I can decide what color to fill in around the mushroom.

Pictured here is a better view of the mug representation that I will be using to design the mushroom around the mug.

As of right now, this idea has only started, and since I have a lot of actual work to do at this moment I will have to work on this off and on until I get the design right and then it's off to the Lego store to get the required supplies.

Stay tuned to the progress of my "Mushroom Mug" and we'll see just how awesome this turns out.

Oh  yeah, and a happy (late) fathers day to all of the Fathers out there.

peek - a - boo I see you

more Lily cuteness, as she plays peek - a - boo with me. I love her so much.

Limeade Blast Awesomeness

So, after having to wait FOREVER for the Limeade Blast to finish its Kickstarter campaign and what seemed like an eternity for the Shipping information to go out, and an entire weekend where it was sitting in my mailbox (I was at National Guard drill); I finally got to check out my Limeade Blast battery.

First, a little background about the company.

---from the Kickstarter page

Limeade was cofounded by Paul Lin and Melissa Lau in November 2012 and officially incorporated March 2013 in Boulder, CO. The company produces cutting-edge external batteries for smartphones, tablets and other devices, maximizing battery capacity within the smallest possible form factors by pushing the boundaries of what current technology will allow. In the past year, the most talented team of individuals ranging from product manager to graphic designer have been assembled to work on Limeade products. The goal is to bring the coolest gadgets to the market. After months of preparation, Limeade is ready to launch the first set of products on Kickstarter.

Pretty solid intro and the idea behind the product and project just seemed too good of an idea not to back up...besides, I'd also get a battery out of the deal. Seemed like a great trade off, improve the mobile device world with an external battery option, and get a battery myself. Que the waiting, and the watching of the project.

A week later I got my brown envelope with my magical battery, that's when the fear set-in.

Wet, packaging was wet, condensation was everywhere, the cardboard of the packaging was just so soaked that it stuck to the outside of the battery (which has a rubberized "feel" to it so it was difficult to get off). The instructions were unreadable, I was truly afraid. I opened the package carefully just in case I would have to send it back, and pushed the button on the side and got the 50% status light. When I got that I decided that I could take the chance and see if this will work...or fail.

Fortunately for myself, it seems that the battery itself is a bit more resilient than I had thought and charged nicely. All 4 LED's came on, the light on the top works (took me a few to figure out how shut it off because the instructions were no good to me). Once all of the soggy cardboard was cleaned off of the device I held it in my hand and judged the weight and feel.

The weight of the device was beautiful, sturdy enough for me to feel confident in dropping it (I didn't, however) and yet light enough for me to not even really care about carrying it. The rubberized "feel" (it isn't actually rubberized) definitely feels good in my hands, smooth and comfortable and yet it isn't going to go anywhere. At this point the only thing keeping from sending it back is the fact that all of the LED's are lit. So I decided to actually charge something. The included cable is pretty cool, they definitely make sure that the included user base of  EVERYONE can use this guy. The cable includes a two part plug that has the Apple 30-pin connector, which comes off into a micro USB connector, I think that it's a pretty snazzy looking item to include with the device.

I took the cable that came with it, plugged it in to my Galaxy Nexus and BAM! the little guy turned on and started charging. It took me nearly 5 MINUTES to charge 10% of the battery. Pretty speedy for simple charging. The auto shut-off feature worked when it reached the full battery power (which gives me a good feeling about leaving it go overnight). Lastly, neither the battery, nor the phone got too hot during the process, so big plus to me.

After all of this I felt great about it, and plan on keeping it. Trust me when I say I exhaled a great sigh of relief when I confirmed for myself that the wetness of the packaging and the condensation did not affect the battery operation. The Limeade Blast works JUST AS ADVERTISED!

Downsides

There has always got to be a downside to everything, fortunately this device didn't have many at all (I mean it's a friggin battery, how hard could it be to use). One of the for me, it is the included cable, it fits in the ports properly enough. I had some issues where simply having the battery on the seat of my car and the phone next to it where over time the cable would slip out of the USB port of the phone, where I don't normally have that issue with my other phone charger cable. Though, you could just as easily use your own cable (as could I).

My other downside, The reliability of their shipping operation. Either their warehouse people had a freak indoor rainstorm, some sort of water leakage problem, or an incredibly high humidity issue caused the condensation (and possibly more problems). Checking on their Kickstarter comments page, I've seen a few other people with wet packaging and batteries, and more than a few more people APPEAR TO HAVE either bad batteries or other issues that render the batteries in capable of working properly.

Like this guy

Fortunately, the company appears to be very much on top of trying to figure out where the issue lies, so at the very least their customer service is top-notch.

Above:  top notch

 My final thoughts? Seeing as it would appear that the majority of people who got one did not have wet batteries, I would say go ahead and buy one when you get the chance. Unfortunately full purchasing is still not available on the main site, but with the success of their Kickstarter, and the fact that backers have a product, I would say it won't be long at all.

4 Out of 5!!!!


****UPDATE**** According to an Email that was sent to all backers, the Limeade Blast is not for General sale at Amazon: HERE for the Kickstarter prices (for a limited time that is). Get this wonderful device while it's hot!!

Smoke free day 1

Damn, I would  really like a cigarette.

YAY, since I cannot do this myself, I figure if I get hundreds or thousands of people to yell at me I can stop. It's not the nicotine that kills me, it's the situations where I would normally smoke...you know...like when I have a huge download to the server and some time to kill.

I will not, however, go away from caffeine...just putting that out there...coffee is the only thing I will not let go of.

picture day 1

What DOES my Traffic Say About Me?

sure I cut off Internet Explorer, no one
likes them anyways.

     Now, I wouldn't call myself a particularly vain person, but I am actually curious as to where the traffic that views my site comes from. Not that it really matters, or that it is a popularity contest, or that it makes me feel better about myself based on the traffic arriving at my site; it's just plain curiosity.

     So, when I looked at the traffic that my site received over its [two] lifetimes, I've come to slowly realize that apparently: 1.  while biased as I am against Apple, quite a bit of traffic appears to come from them. 2.  The operating system section looks like a peace-sign. I'm not quite sure what to make of that second one, but it has to be good...right?

SO WHAT DOES IT SAY?

I prefer to think about these graphs as a, "Thanksgiving dinner at a dysfunctional family's house." Where big brother Windows  and Macintosh (who have a long standing grudge against each other) are at the table keeping the little siblings:  Android, iPhone, and Linux; away from the adult-table. All of this while cousin Firefox is being eyed suspiciously because he's waving a lighter at the frilly lace table runner by his brothers: IE, Chrome, and Safari crack their knuckles and try to surround him.

In all, I am starting to think that I have an over-active imagination, but that I have a well-rounded supply of viewers even though I'm a little heavy on the big-boys. All I have to say is "Thank you readers" for making my information gathering more fun.

So now the question is:

WHAT DOES YOUR TRAFFIC SAY ABOUT YOU?

Feel free to take a look at your traffic and make your own stories and send them to your friends, or to me. I'm sure we can all have fun with it.

Bar-B-Que Pepperoni Pizza

**update** Go ahead and use this idea for the Superbowl, I'm sure everyone will love the idea! Chances are that you won't be able to keep these tasty single serving pizzas around long enough to last the whole game. **update**


Don't be alarmed, this food is not going to be "Instagrammed" in any way, it is, blogged (of course) so quit judging me. This is just what everyone needs to make when they are 1.  in the mood for pizza, and 2.  not wanting to order pizza, 3. Lazy, but not too lazy.

It's sooooo good that even a toddler will love it. No, seriously, I'll show you a picture later.


You'll Need:

1.  A Package of Tortillas (1 or 2 for the pizza)

2.  Bar-B-Que Sauce (any brand)

3.  Cheese

4.  Optional:  Pepperoni

5.  Oven

6.  Hunger

Step 1:  preheat to 350 degrees

Step 2:  Add Bar-B-Que to the Tortilla

Step 3:  Add cheese

Step 4:  Add Toppings

Optional:  Add more cheese

Optional:  Add another Tortilla

Step 5:  set timer for 5 mins, believe me this is more than enough time...tortillas are thin.

Step 6:  Check to make sure cheese is melted and tortillas are not burned. Ready to eat.

My daughter wondering why I'm taking pictures of her eating our pizza.







There you have it folks, in about 10 minutes you could have a tasty single serving pizza for about a dollar worth of ingredients. Enjoy.

Lily Can Skate

Greetings ***Random internet viewer:  61345***

In keeping with the very recent theme of mine where, I show my daughter do amazing things, I have now  even completely blown my own mind. My daughter, less than 18 months at the time of this writing, has taken to roller skates rather quickly (as evidenced by this wonderful video).



I know what you're thinking, "so what! She's got those toddler skates on, they're probably locked out and she's walking!" You are correct in that statement, random Internet viewer you, however, those skates also have a rather impressive ability to unlock the wheels. Those wheels, by the way, are pretty loose and you can get pretty fast in them.

Cut to the video, BAM!!!! she's got the wheels, unlocked, ready to rock, and she's rolling like she came out skating.

Be amazed, be very amazed.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: My daughter did, in fact, not come out skating...just saying ;

Taking Care of the Little Girl

The aftermath of a 100 degree temperature on the little one. She was obviously looking and feeling crummy and so when we got done with dinner I decided that we should chill out in my room and watch Star Trek and hopefully she would feel better. So apparently being sick and watching Star Trek means instant sleepy time for the baby, nothing a warm bath and a bed time story wont fix.

Daughter dances to "Gangnam Style"

I thought I should place this here, frankly, because my daughter is hilarious.

A little back story:

we were dancing to some music in our living room (where she obviously plays with all of her toys), and when ever I tried to video her dancing to the music I was listening to she would want to play with the phone. It was at that moment I was like, "hey! the computer has a web cam on it!" and this video was made. I, however, did not separate the music play back from the video recording so the sound sucks. There is also a section of he video where she decided she wanted to be curious about the video recording and gradually worked her way up to the couch to watch her self...watching herself...and do a little bit more dancing.

Once again, hilarious.