I ran across this site and I’ve enjoyed it so much this morning I though I’d share it with you all.
http://www.improveverywhere.com
They perform *missions* with small or large groups of people and document the results with hidden cameras. Some are funny and interesting while others are strange and more on the experimental. I suggest you check out the latest mission: Slo-Mo Home Depot, Best Buy (50 people dress similar to Best Buy employees pretending to shop while helping out customers) and McDonald’s Bathroom Attendant.

that you probably can’t use!

Introducing The Giant Knife Version 1.0:

It weighs 2lbs 11oz, is 8.75” long, contains 85 tools and costs $1200. Even the marketing director for Wenger (makers of many other *Swiss Army* Knives ) said “This is not exactly going to win any awards for lightest, smallest or most efficient tools…” and I’d have to agree!

If you know me, then you know I love to BBQ. When we first moved into the apartments I was excited to see we had access to 4 BBQs… however, the more I used them the more I became disgusted with them (dirty fish remains often left on the grill by the Tilapa / Football fish cooking lady) and most of the grills had weak flames or didn’t work well. I finally decided we just needed to get our own grill and put it on our balcony. The problem with our balcony is that it’s small. So when looking for girlls I ended up buying a Weber Q grill.


left;” hspace=”8”>
The weber is smaller than most standard sized grills (it’s like a larger / improved coleman stove) but it cooks well. It has a cast-iron grilling surface which radiates plenty of heat and leaves nice char marks on your food. Initially, I felt it was not putting out enough heat, so I ended drilling the brass connector to make the opening double the size, this really improved the heat output.
A few months back I decided to try to make a pulled pork roast on the grill, my first attempt. I learned a lot from that trial; my grill cooks too hot and too fast! After a few more attempts I was able to *tweak* this grill and finally I think I’ve reached Q grill perfection.
The first thing I did was to *trip* the propane tank’s safety valve in order to lower the flow of propane from the tank to lower my heat output. All tanks produced within the last 5+ years have a safety valve in them which is supposed to guard against accidental leaks (basically it’s a small ball that is triggered by the wrong amount of pressure in the line; usually caused by turning on the tank valve too fast or by leaving the grill valve on then turning the tank on). This valve will restrict the amount of propane and will limit the maximum temperature (mid 200s) the grill will reach, which is perfect for slower cooking!.
Next, I realized that for most cooking the cast-iron grilling surface is perfect… but for slower cooking it is not and will often burn the outside of meat too soon. To solve this problem I went to BBQ’s Galore and bought a small grill (which was on clearance!) and I put a few ceramic bricks under the grill to raise above the standard grill.
Finally I added a small smoker box which I could load up with different wood chips to produce distinct smoke flavors (and fantastic smoke smell). The result is finally allowing me to slowly cook roasts while adding *natural* smoke flavoring

I guess the biggest reason why I wrote this post is to introduce my new section Food where I plan to document different trials at cooking on the grill. To start, I’ll probably post my photos, recipe and methods/experiences on cooking a Beef Brisket last Sunday. More to come!

left;” hspace=”8”>
For a long time I’ve wanted to build a Home Theater PC. When I returned home from vacation I found my Home Media Server/PC was crashing so I figured since I had to rebuild the system I may as well upgrade and buy a new case and build my HTPC. The end result turned out nice and as you can see it just fits in the cubby in my entertainment center. Next I’ll layout specs and some configuration experiences.

• I reused most of my Hard Drives for the system: The OS / Emulation Drive is 160GB. I have a Video Drive which is 500GB (HD Video takes up a lot of space!) and finally I have a General Media Drive (Photos, Music and Documents) which is 200GB.
• I scrapped the old Motherboard / Processor and replaced them with the ECS 945P-A Motherboard and the Intel Pentium D 950 processor. (The Dual Core for now is more for rendering, though I should be HDDVD/BluRay ready.)
• There are 2 Gigs of DDR2 PC4200 RAM (I’m not a hardcore gamer or system tweaker so PC5400 is too expensive).
• For now I stuck with the onboard Audio because it has optical S/PDIF out and the sound is fine (though I still have my SB Live setup I could use).
• I scrapped my old crappy NVIDIA video card and put in a 7600GT. This card seems to drive the TV well and with NVIDIA’s video drivers you get hardware acceleration for MPEG2/TS material (supposedly they will support HD/Blu-Ray acceleration in the future).
• I also reused my NEC DVD +/- RW drive

        

I am using MediaPortal as the Media Center / front end and to play video I’m using the highly configurable ZoomPlayer. It does take a lot of configuring to get DirectShow filtes to work with all the various formats out there (MKVs are such a huge PITA, it’s the encoders fault really, most don’t tell you what codecs they use!). I have been able to get all surround formats to output true multi-channel sound (my receiver decodes WMAPRO 9 so it’s just a pass through).

It’s nice using my TV as a monitor for reading the news / RSS feeds, watching watching the latest (HD) Apple trailers with surround sound and full screen video, browsing the low-fi youtube videos or *testing* N64 emulation. Eventually I’d like to build some kind of lap or tabletop friendly set of modular arcade controls to further enhance MAME *testing*!

Looks like it’s time to retire the old Snazzi Netcinema HD, though it did a great job This computer can do far more.

Lori left this morning for Utah and she will return Friday evening. This will be the longest time we’ve spent apart since being married. I will miss her but I am glad she is able to spend some time with her good friend Kelsey. What will I do while she is gone? Tonight I go to a Dodger game with Donovan and Nicole and the rest of the time I will work during the day and probably play video games or watch some *man* movies (you know the ones the wife doesn’t like because they’re too loud or violent) in the evening. So, if you’re feeling like doing either, call me up I’ll be around.

We’re back (I’ve been busy) and I’ve posted some photos of our trip and here are a few highlights:
**(I brought my GPS and marked some of our POIs… so for my GoogleEarth / nerd readers, click here to download/open this KMZ into GoogleEarth to get a geographical feel of where we vacationed.)**

• We spent two nights camping along side a small Coeur d’Alene river tributary creek.
• We rode the world’s longest Gondola (located in Kellogg) up to the Mountain Haus, jumped on the the chair lifts and made a short hike up to the Kellogg Peak Lookout.
• Drove to Montana, stopped at the crappy tourist trap/gift shop/mini casino: Lincoln’s 10,000 silver dollar bar (currently up to 46,785) and on our way back we saw a Moose.
• We hung out at the beach (on Lake Pend Oreille) and had a nice picnic.
• We played frisbee golf, were interrupted by a deer and we cooled off in the sprinklers, because it was HOT!
• Made a few trips to Spokane to go to some unique (ethnic food) stores.
• Played many a games of Blokus (Lori’s new favorite).
• Ate a lot!!

We sure did a lot of stuff but there was also plenty of time to relax (cook dinner, watch movies and play games) with our friends and just enjoy being on vacation. I had a great time and look forward to returning there for vacation again.

A HUGE thanks to our hosts Julie, Ian, Haile, Ren and the Dogs (Josie, Dooley & Maggie).