The Mayhem Papers

I spent a little time today cleaning out the carpet and giving the car a good wash. I’m taking it into a shop on Monday morning to have them check out the transmission and brake system. I can’t for the life of me figure out what is making the noise in the transmission. Someone suggested it might be the torque converter, but I think I would be hearing the noise through all the gears instead of just 1st and 2nd. Hopefully, the transmission just needs some adjusting. It sounds like something isn’t quit catching right in there. I’m going to get the guys at the shop to fix the transmission, change the tranny and brake fluids, give the brakes a look over and just give the car a once over. It will probably cost me a bit, but I’d really like to drive it while I restore. Knowing me, if I’m not driving it every day, it will get pushed lower on my list of priorities

I have to admit, I am a little nervous going in to this project. I have never really been anything more than a tinkerer when it comes to cars, so every now and then I get a little overwhelmed with what I’ll need to do.

If you want to see bigger pictures, click on any of the pictures in the slideshow. (or click here)

I’ve been toying around recently with High Dynamic Range Imaging (typically known as HDR). Basically, you take 3 pictures of your subject but “bracket” the exposure. You take one under-exposed, one normal and one over-exposed shot of the same thing. You then combine them all together with software and play around with the exposure levels to get some really cool effects. On our trip out to South Carolina, we’re going to be taking a trip down to Augusta Georgia and I thought it might be a good place to look for some HDR fodder. I’ve been practicing with objects around the house since I can just walk over and take more pictures if I need.
Here’s one of my test subjects: Regular shot using the automatic settings:

Now with the normal exposure from my 3 exposure bracket used for the HDR processing:

And finally, after 5 minutes of monkeying around with HDR:

From HDR Experiments

Obviously I need some more practice getting the post processing right, but the nice thing about HDR is that all the fancy stuff is done after you already have the pictures, so you can try the same picture many different ways.

You may have noticed a little “twitter badge” on the left hand side of this site. You also may have not, so take a quick glance to the left. See it? Good. A few months ago I noticed a few people using twitter, typically your usual suspects of tech/art/music hipsters trying to be cutting edge. Twitter is a little web application that lets you make quick little “real time” posts about what you’re thinking about. Basically a mini-blog in 140 characters or less.

I’m pretty sure I told Maryanne I thought it was stupid. Like anything, there are people who think its some grand experiment in social networking that will revolutionize the way we communicate. In those cases, I still hold it is stupid. At its simplest usage, Twitter is a fun little diversion to post notes to your friends (and whoever else is looking) throughout the day. There are some interesting interactions that go on. I had someone add me to the list of twitters they follow because I used the word disingenuous in a post. Kind of funny. If anyone is interested, you can either check the little badge on the left or go to the site directly. If you sign up, let me know.

Update to answer some questions I have received about this:

My sinuses have been wrecked by my allergies. Its getting to the point where almost every other week I get severe sinus headaches. I have a doctor’s appointment to talk about it, but I needed to do something in the interim. What the video shows is a process called Jalal neti, which people have been practicing for hundreds of years in India and south-east Asia. What happens is the warm salt water flows through your sinuses and out the other nostril. When I was younger and was able to swim in the ocean almost every day, I never had any sinus issues, so it made sense to me that this would help. So far, so good.

Last week, Zoë put on one of Maryanne’s sweatshirts and started cruising around. Maryanne snapped a bunch of pictures of her since she looked like a little Jedi running around. So the next day I was bored at work and spent a couple minutes with my friend photoshop. Click on the slideshow below to see the pics in full size.

So Kimmy Kim has yet another quiz on her blog and since I think the “Which Friends Character are you” quiz is SOOOOO 90′s, I took these instead:

Which Office Character Are You?
	You are Jim. You are personable, easy-going, and always socially aware. Your great sense of humor and impishness soften the blow of what might otherwise be a dark, cutting cynicism.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Which Harry Potter Character Are You?
	You are part Harry. You’re a loyal and courageous friend. You’d do anything to protect the people you love, especially if it’ll get you a break from class for a little while.
	You are part Fred and George. You’re a joker at heart, but when push comes to shove, you know what’s important.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Apparently I have multiple personalities!

This last week, I finally pulled the trigger on a project that had been running around in my head. For the past few years I have used a “redistribution” method for my computer upgrades. How that usually works is that when I make an upgrade that requires a new motherboard, I typically get a new case and assign my previous system to act as a file server. Before I was married, I would just take the old hard drives and put them as storage in my new computer, but since being married means sharing everything, keeping a file server running to share music/photo/video files works out the best. This way Maryanne and I can have our iPods pull the music off the server instead of keeping separate copies on both computers. Ah, the troubles of modern life.

The problem with keeping this method going is that the current file server uses a LOT of power and generates quite a bit of heat. I had thought about just getting a Network Attached Storage (aka NAS. See, now the post title makes sense), but I like being able to run downloads and have remote access to my files without too much hassle. The existing solutions just didn’t quite cut it.

That was until a little company called QNAP systems released their new line of NAS systems. I picked up the TS-201 this last week and I love it! The test reviews I read showed the TS-201 using about 5 watts of power when idle and around 35 watts when in full use, which makes me happy from an energy saving side. The biggest purchasing influencer for me though was the functionality of this little box.

Some of the highlights for me include:
Built in web server: I can set up a front in to be able to access all my files from a remote connection as well as give my friends the ability to grab files as well.
Dynamic DNS: The box has the ability to interface with dyndns.com to update a DNS address for me to have easy access to the system (more on that later).
Extensibility: One of the firmware options for this system allows you to telnet into the box and set up your on applications running.

The one downside I ran into was with the built in bittorrent client. It seemed to allow for only one file to be downloaded at a time. Well, this really wouldn’t do, so I did a little research and found a version of mldonkey that was compiled for this system. I downloaded it, set up a little sandbox for it to play in and it works like gangbusters. There are a couple features that I miss from the bittorrent client I ran on my server, but the trade offs are totally worth it.

So now I have a secret URL that I can give my friends to remotely access my NAS. If you’re someone I consider a friend, send me an email and I’ll get you a login!

I’m in the process of migrating everything away from the old server so I can completely cut over to running on the NAS, saving electricity and reducing the heat generated by my equipment. Super cool!

Someone on a message board I read posted this story that I thought was funny:
This is even funnier when you realize it’s real! Next time you have a bad
day at work think of this guy.

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana .
He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.
Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station
103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne , Indiana , who was sponsoring a worst job
experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down
lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you
realize it’s not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few
technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the
office. It’s a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool.

So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial
water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the
sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature.
It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to
the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it
several times with no complaints.

What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and
stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm
water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.
So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse.
Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my
back, but the damage was done.
In agony I realized what had happened.

The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.
Now, since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to
it However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate.
When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the
jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.
His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other
divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing
in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could
reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.
When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.

As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running
down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as
soon as I got in the chamber.

The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt
was swollen shut.

So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it
would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.
Now repeat to yourself, “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.

Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?

May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!

My dear wife put a fun challenge on her site, so I thought I would put my response here.

Leader: Batman (Bruce Wayne) from Batman Beyond. I’m getting around the Batman not working well with others thing by using him from the future where he’s too old to run around in cape and cowl, but still sharp and ornery.

Warrior: Brock Samson from The Venture Bros. If I need to explain this, then you obviously haven’t seen the show.

Smartypants: Dr Gregory House. He really works for both interpretations of the word “smartypants”.

Hottie: Mrs. Smith from Mr and Mrs. Smith. Maryanne stole my idea for using this movie as source material for this category.

Comic Relief: Conspiracy Brother from Undercover Brother.