I started by drilling a hole with a regular bit from the inside all the way through the siding.

Mitch hanging his head over the back of the couch.

Mitch

This was part of my breakfast at Rudy's Hot Dog during my visit to Toledo last weekend. Also had eggs and coffee.

Because I'm me I wanted to figure out a way to visualize the sun's position throughout the day. The graphic is what I came up with. It shows from what direction the sun will be shining, and at what elevation, on the hour for my location on May 5, 2010.

The two really small triangles that just look like lines are the direction the sun will rise and set. They look like lines because the angle is only 0.1 degree. I think it's interesting that the sun rises north of east and sets north of west.

The point of view of the graphic is looking to the southwest.

I created the graphic in SketchUp and got the sun positional data from the U.S. Naval Observatory.

This is what the "range" looked like at the archery class yesterday. It is the highest point in the county and I could see the entire Chicago skyline perfectly.

I was like a kid in a candy shop yesterday and stocked up on some good beer. The letter grades are from beeradvocate.com.

Lagunitas' Maximus Imperial IPA B+

Green Flash Brewing's West Coast IPA A-

Great Divide's Yeti Imperial Stout A

Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout A-

The funny thing is after I got home I only drank my homebrew. I hope to try a couple of them this evening.

Miscellany

I have always wanted to try shooting a bow. A few weeks ago I happened to look in a program guide from the county forest district and saw they had a free introductory class, so I signed up. It is this afternoon and is an hour and a half long. If I like it I might think about looking for a target bow on craigslist.

A few weeks ago I got Google's Android phone the Nexus One and love it. An interesting thing is watching the reaction of iPhone users that try it out. Every one of them was really amazed at the thinness of it, the nice solid feel it has, and how fast and responsive it was when checking out the different apps. I think I will make a post sometime describing the apps I use the most.

At work over the years I've had to occasionally use SQL Server to edit or add a value in a table for an application, export a table to get some statistics on application use, change the value in an existing SQL string, light stuff like that. This week I've had to actually design queries, write stored procedures, and design reports to use in some internal web apps and it's been a lot of fun. Fortunately for me my brewing friend at work is also a SQL developer and has been invaluable in pointing me in the right directions.

So far this year my lawn is looking amazing. I still need to put some work in on my flower beds though. Mostly weeding and recutting the borders. I've decided not to plant tomatoes this year. It's usually more cost and effort than the few tomatoes I get each year are worth. I am going to look for something else to plant that might be a little less temperamental. I have to see if the space I have would work for eggplant. I love eggplant.

The routine used to be once I settled into the family room for the evening to relax and watch TV Mitch would go upstairs to the bedroom and after 10 minutes realize he was lonely and I could hear him whimper at the top of the steps. After 10 minutes of that half the time he would realize the solution would be to come back downstairs, the other half he would fall asleep. To fix that I got a couple baby gates at a church yard sale. I have three paths to get upstairs from my family room. One is sealed off just by closing a set of pocket doors I have from my family room to the living room. I have a baby gate that stays in place by pressing against the door frame from the laundry room hallway to the dining room. The other baby gate is free standing so it is easy just to move around and I keep it in the main hallway leading to the front door.

I bought the 4x4, 2x4's, cement mix and carriage bolts a few weeks ago to make a support for my hop plants but I still have not put it together. I think today is the day I do that. I got the grass cutting out of the way Thursday evening.

When I was visiting the fam a few months ago I tried the FURminator on Mitch that Tim and Lisa got for Cody. It worked so great on Mitch that I ordered one that night from Amazon while I was still visiting. It also works amazingly on Amy's Rottweiler, but a friend at work borrowed it to try on his German Shorthaired Pointer and it did nothing for her coat. They have a list of dogs that it will and will not work for on their website. German Shorthairs were on the will work list but with an asterisk saying the hair within that breed varies from dog to dog and it may or may not work. The list is in the FAQ section of their website. I would link to it but it is a Flash app. Most retail places sell it for about $60, but Amazon has it for $30. Worth every cent.

Probably the biggest thing I missed most about not having a house cleaner come in every other week was scrubbing the kitchen floor. Also thanks to Tim and Lisa I discovered the Hoover FloorMate. There are three modes of operation. First is dry vacuum mode. You do this first to pick up all the dry crumbs, dog hair, etc. You empty out the catch bin and then switch to the wet scrub mode. The brushes lower to contact the floor, and water with cleaning solution is dispensed. Once the floor is scrubbed you switch to squeegee vacuum mode. The brushes stop and lift off the floor and a squeegee lowers to contact the floor and it vacuums up any remaining water. It works really well. For light touch ups I sometimes just use hot water only without cleaning solution. I found the best price ordering from Walmart.com.

Last year I got a new roof. I think this year I am going to get a new furnace and air conditioner. I think there is still a 30% tax credit available from the feds which will be nice. I also want to get an estimate to paint my aluminum siding white, but I don't know if I will do that this year or not. I think it will be about 1/3 of the cost of installing new siding.

I am really excited about the HBO miniseries "The Pacific" that starts tomorrow night (Sunday 3/13/10) at 8:00 PM central. I called my cable company last week and had them turn on HBO just so I could watch the miniseries. It is only $15 per month. I don't know if I will keep it after the miniseries is over. I'll see how much I watch it.

"The Pacific" is like "Band of Brothers", but instead of the war in Europe it tells the story of the war in the Pacific theater. It was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks with Dreamworks.

Being who I am I have already created a Google Earth map with all of the locations that will be in the 10 part series so I will have a better geographical context while I am watching. If you are going to watch it and want the Google Earth .kmz file let me know and I will e-mail it to you.

The Pacific trailer #1

The Pacific trailer #2

I went pheasant hunting for the first time this weekend. I shot 3 of the 9 birds we took. I cooked up two pheasant and 1 chucker for dinner tonight. I just pan fried them with a flour/egg/bread crumb coating. Very good. Like chicken only better.

The picture above is near the end of the hunt and we were trying to look for tracks. The dog did an amazing job of sniffing them out.

Here is the Toyota page where you can enter your VIN number to see if your car is included in ANY recall or service campaign.

I had a tough time reading the one on the windshield in my poorly lit garage. It is also on an easy to read sticker with bar codes in the driver's door frame.

My Toyota is in the clear!

I already had that edgy look at four years old.

Note to self: If I needed to replace my GPS today I would probably get the Garmin Nuvi 1450.

Amazon has it for about $310.

Update 2/24/10: I think I've changed my mind and I still would get the Garmin Nuvi 755T I mentioned last month.

I've been practicing using GIMP to correct the green eye effect dogs get when you take their picture with a flash.

Before


After


You can't just use the red eye removal tool that a lot of image manipulation programs have, like Irfanview, because the reflection from a dog's eye isn't red, and the program is looking for red color in a person's eye.

One of the big reasons I stayed home for Christmas finally happened this morning. The sump pump hose outside froze shut and when I woke up this morning the pump was running continuously. It has happened a few times before when we have really wet weather followed by a few days of really cold weather. It takes a few days for the excess ground water to dissipate.

So before I even had my coffee I was outside in 2 degree cold trying to remove the frozen hose so I could bring it to the kitchen sink to thaw it out with hot water. Of course little bits of dirty ice got on the kitchen floor and counter. I think it took me a little more than an hour before I finally got the thawed out hose reattached.

The dirty ice bits on the floor were not as big a deal as they could have been since I bought my Hoover Floormate. I just used it in wet vacuum mode and it sucked up everything. I use it quite a bit. I mostly use it in dry vacuum mode to pick up dog hair and crumbs on the floor. I've used it a few times with just hot water in the tank for spot cleaning little messes, and I've used it once with the cleaning solution to do the entire floor. I pull it out at least a couple times a week. The wet vacuum mode is great when Mitch tracks snow in from the backyard. Even when the floor looks clean I'm always surprised by the grey color of the water in the waste tank.

I watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine last night and recommend it if you want a fun mindless popcorn movie.

We tried Five Guys burgers a month or so ago. The hamburgers are some of the best out there and the portions are HUGE. I rarely order French fries, but we split an order just to give them a taste. Even splitting them we couldn't finish them without jacking my blood sugar sky high. Amy had a great idea: I froze the rest in a zip lock bag to use later for hash browns. This morning I did just that and it worked out great! I put some Smart Balance in a hot pan and then the fries and cooked those for 10 minutes or so, and then moved them to one side and cooked my eggs. The fries reheated better than I thought. The outside crisped up really nice and the inside was nice and hot.

Even though it is only 4 degrees outside Mitch is panting from getting overheated laying in his sunbeam. The cloudless day has the temperature in my southern-facing family room up a little over 4 degrees.

I thought Mitch napping with his head on Bella's butt was great.

Mitch playing with the squeaky sock monkey Shawn and Kate sent him for Christmas. He LOVES squeaky toys! I love it when he tosses his head back with the toy in his mouth.

For Christmas I planned on driving to Ohio on Christmas Eve morning but at the last minute aborted because of the big ice storm over Illinois and Indiana. It was a huge bummer, and I also missed out on the 5+ gallons of fresh IPA Tim had on tap from Original Gravity Brewing.

Amy was flying to her Mom's on Christmas day and was going to kennel Bella, and since I was going to be here the whole week I saved her some money and am dog sitting. For the most part she is a good guest. When the neighbors' dogs are out I have to put her on the leash in the backyard because she will just run back and forth along the fence and bark.

I didn't have any food in the house because I wasn't planning on being here, so the first thing I did is went to the store to get some fun Christmas Eve food as well as some staples. I also swung by a Redbox and picked up three movies. Amy came over in the late afternoon and helped me make hummus and baba ganoush and then we watched District 9.

Christmas Day I purposely did nothing except lay on my couch and watch movies all day and eat hummus and baba ganoush. It wasn't the same as being with family, but it was kind of a nice change of pace.

I ended up watching seven movies over the Christmas weekend:

District 9
Inglourious Basterds
Angles and Demons
Wrong Turn at Tahoe
Maiden Heist
Tyson
The Hangover

It was a short and quite week at work. Friday is New Years day and I took off New Years Eve day, so I only had three days of work.

Last night I got the movie Up, made another batch of hummus, had a wedge of Roquefort, and a bottle of really good sparkling wine (Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut).

For New Years Day (today) I got a pork loin and sauerkraut that I will start in the crock pot soon, and will of course be watching the Buckeyes play in the Rose Bowl. As of right now we are four point underdogs against Oregon.

I'm not sure what else I have planned for today. I still have the other half of my French press of coffee to drink, and I haven't brought the newspaper in yet. I may or may not do some laundry. It is very very cold here today. Two degrees right now. I might swing by a Redbox again and get another movie.

Happy New Year!

I let my on-line subscription to www.consumerreports.org lapse for a couple years, but I just renewed it last week. This post is more of a note to myself on what laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, and dish soap (for washing by hand) I am going to buy next based on their latest reviews.

Laundry detergent
Tide 2X Ultra for Cold Water
Simplicity Hypoallergenic Non-Toxic 2X

Dishwashing detergent
Cascade Complete with Bleach Hydroclean Action Powder

Dish Soap (washing by hand)
Dawn Direct Foam

Liquid Fabric Softener
Ultra Gain Joyful Expressions