Reading List and Blog O' Whirl

Salonpas

2008-04-15T19:12:00.003-04:00

Salonpas... like a chemical heating pad and ice pack. The menthol wears off quickly, and the heating affect is as hot as the thermacare heat wraps.

The Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Featured on the Travel Channel

2008-03-07T19:41:00.000-05:00

Mavis Bank, not the shipper.

Hot Stuff

2008-02-15T11:35:00.002-05:00

Kashmir Dum Aloo by Ashoka.

This is described as "Curried potatoes in medium hot sauce." "Medium" is definitely an Indian palate relative rating, because this is definitely near the "hot" scale for me, and I love spicy Thai and Indian food.

Thai and Indian Meals

2008-02-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

Pad Thai, Curry, and Pad Grapow Mix

Pad Thai

Palak Paneer

Dal Makhani

Buffalo Wild Wings calorie equivalents?

2008-02-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

I've been searching extensively for Buffalo Wild Wings calorie content on the web, and have heard of many responses that they don't provide content because of their extensive menu.

Whatever.

Well, here is at least one "similar" option for the wings:
WingStreet's (Pizza Hut) Nutrition Guide

Garmin 305s now going cheap

2007-12-26T09:26:00.000-05:00

It looks like the Garmin 305 (with heart rate monitor) is going for less than $200.

35 Years of Sesame Street Music... Boxed Set

2007-11-17T11:14:00.000-05:00

Good stuff at mile 20 of a marathon

2007-11-12T09:23:00.001-05:00

The OBX Marathon had this stuff at their medical stations. Excellent stuff. Got me through some quad and calf muscle pain.

1997 Toyota Corolla Parts Store

2007-09-28T13:40:00.000-04:00

Toyota Parts and Books on Amazon.com

If you're a fan of Office Space...

2007-08-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

Office Space Kit, including:

Red Stapler
Initech Mug
"Is this Good for the Company?" Sign
Starter "Flair"
"PC Load Letter" Copy Machine Sticker
Your Very Own "Jump To Conclusions" Mat

An Initech mug by itself:

Norton Ghost 12.0: My latest favorite tool

2007-08-20T13:04:00.000-04:00

Just used Norton Ghost to upgrade/replace a hard drive that was in the early stages of failing--it had had a few intermittent blue screen/reboots:

This was a HP Pavilion zv5000 laptop with a 60GB drive and XP Home.

Event Viewer showed several things of note around the reboot times:
Got a bug check: 0x0000007a (0xc03dd9a4, 0xc000000e, 0xf7669130, 0x0737e860)

The error is The device .\Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period.

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

Ran the whole chkdsk /r and chkdsk /f bit. Found 4KB in bad sectors--but more importantly, I heard the tell-tale sound of a hard drive beginning to fail.

Miraculously, Ghost 12.0 was able to make a disk copy of the hard drive (and properly resize) to an 80 GB hard drive. The only catch left is that the "bad sector" flags are copied as well. Not a big deal in this case, but here's a page with a resolution: The $BadClus metatfile.

Because of the failing drive, the copy operation for 10 GB of data (4500 RPM drive) took close to two hours. I'd imagine the faster hard drive in better condition would have a significantly better transfer rate.

Once the disk copy was finished, I swapped hard drives out and the new drive booted almost exactly as old. One glitch: XP Pro/2003 boot option was added as a second option, in addition to the valid XP Home boot. No problem... I just had to edit the boot.ini.

Split times necessary for a 4 hour marathon

2007-08-16T12:09:00.000-04:00

You can now buy your tank on Amazon.com

2007-08-14T13:42:00.000-04:00

"Not recommended for a drunken rampage"

Apple iPod Nano World Travel Combo

2007-08-06T14:20:00.000-04:00

The basic 2 GB iPod nano (2nd generation):

Apple iPod USB power adapter:

Apple world travel adapter kit:

Gladware versus Pyrex Containers (cost-wise)

2007-07-24T22:42:00.000-04:00

I prefer the Pyrex for packing and warming leftovers, and apparently the cost difference is not that great (the 8-cup Gladware is more in this instance). I find that the Gladware (or any plastic-ware for that matter) gets lost much more easily, and requires replacing from loss if not from wear. Moreover, the blue lid and glass of the Pyrex containers are definitely more forgiving when it comes to forgotten leftovers.

Pyrex 18-piece storage set; $29.99 or $1.66 per piece.

versus Gladware:

Gladware 1-3/4 cup (6 pack of 5 piece); $19.32 or $0.64 each

Gladware 8 cup (3 count), $5.99 or $2.00 each

Giant beige bath towels

2007-07-24T19:26:00.000-04:00

Nothing says, 'I have no idea what to get you,' quite like giant beige bath towels.

Larabar vs. Soyjoy

2007-07-21T14:59:00.000-04:00

Larabar wins hands down. Much better, sweeter taste. Moist texture. Pecan Pie has been one of my favorites. Over 50% fat, but most is polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat. 100% raw food, made from dates, nuts, etc...

Soyjoy is dry, flavorless (mango coconut was horrible). 60 out of 140 calories from fat. 3.5g of the fat is saturated. Other flavors have 40 out of 140 from fat, with 2g of saturated. One of the things that surprised the most was the ingredients list:

Ingredients: Whole Soybean Powder, Raisin, Butter (from milk), Sugar, Dried Coconut, Frozen Egg, Maltodextrin (natural fiber source), Dried Papaya, Dried Mango, Dried Pineapple, Natural Flavors, Salt.

I have nothing against soy, but I'd figure that soy would generated be eaten as a meat or daily substitute. Soyjoy is definitely not a vegan product, despite the name. It's not very enjoyable, either.

Larabar

Soyjoy

With most PC options out there shipping with Vista, I think I want a mac.

2007-07-18T16:46:00.000-04:00

$1499 versus a $1250 with Windows XP Pro, I'm really starting to consider a Mac as my next computer. Thinking about it and doing it are two different things, though.

Saving for Retirement with Living Like a Pauper or Winning the Lottery

2007-07-16T00:07:00.001-04:00

The title may sound like the book is going to uncover lost secrets of getting rich, but in reality, this is book is a retirement savings manual written especially for novices. In addition to explaining the magic of everyday retirement savings, this book gives links to several additional resources and explanations of how to use those resoucres.

Sites that I bookmarked from reading this book:
http://www.americasaves.org/ - savings ideas
http://www3.troweprice.com/ric/RIC/ - T-Rowe Price Retirement Income Calculator, using a Monte Carlo simulation to determine how long your savings will last.
http://www.moneychimp.com/ - compounding calculator under calculators
http://www.dinkytown.com/ - lots of calculators, including a retirement income and mutual fund fee calculator
http://www.choosetosave.org/ - site partially funded by the AARP which includes a "ballpark estimate" for how much you will need for a comfortable retirement.
http://www.bloomberg.com/invest/calculators/index.html
http://www.livingto100.com/ - Life Expectancy Calculator

They still make TI-89s?

2007-07-12T09:06:00.000-04:00

I thought for sure that TI-89 graphing calculators would have been obsolete by now. But not only are they for sale on Amazon, but they seem to not have changed in price much.

Mac OS X Leopard Pre-order on Amazon

2007-07-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

MAC OS X Version 10.5 Leopard is a available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Product will ship "sometime in October."

Jamaica Blue Mountain for $31.24 per pound

2007-07-10T10:52:00.000-04:00

Not a bad price for Jamaica Blue Mountain, cheapest I've heard of is $35 per pound.

I have got to get me one of these.

2007-07-10T08:45:00.000-04:00

I was searching for quad core on Amazon.com. I noticed that there were (5) desktops and (1) notebook. Actually, I think it was more like 2 desktops in reality... the others were processors.

I clicked on the quad-core notebook result. Not a notebook... 70 lbs. I believe it also sells for more like $2400, anyway.

Somewhat haphazard technical specs...

2(two) Quad Core Xeon Intel Xeom X5355 2.66 Ghz (xeom... that's a new one on me. I wonder if the misspelling is intentional)
BOOT 160gb sata hd, 10k rpm with 16 mb databurst cache
160gb sata hd, 2(two)500 sata hd, FD,
16 GB ddr2 sdram(8 DIMMS), 48X/32X CDRW/DVD
Sound blaster X-Fi, 256 MB PCIe nVidia quadro FX3450. DUAL DVI

Favorite Crystal Light Flavor Ever

2007-07-07T09:18:00.000-04:00

I know that people either love the White Tea Blueberry Crystal Light (TM) or they hate it... I generally don't like the fruit flavored Crystal Light (TM) or Sugar-Free Kool-Aid (TM) because they have too much fruit flavor and the aspartame flavor really seems to accompany that fruit flavoring. The white tea and blueberry are just strong enough to balance with the artificial sweetener in this case. Strangely enough, this flavor for some reason reminds me of RealLemon(TM) and Lipton(TM) Tea that I used to brew and add a 1/4 cup of sugar to.

Romancing the Clock

2007-07-06T13:13:00.000-04:00

"Accentuate the positives and reduce the negatives in your life." Reduce stress. Put things in perspective. Hire someone to mow the grass if you don't like doing it. Don't fight battles that cost you the war.

Some points of this book seemed a little bit excessive if taken literally, but I think the book as a whole is more of a self-help book for examining how you are spending your time. Sometimes the "accentuate the positives" and "reduct the negatives" is over-simplistic, but the stark examples help drive home a point as well. Since I enjoy having perspective shaken up once in a while, I enjoyed this book. If you're not both open-minded and willing to take advice with a grain of salt, this book may not be a good fit for you.