successful repair

The dryer is back together and fully functional. Let the wiving commence!

Firefly scene

We started watching Firefly via Netflix recently. Last night we watched the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" which included the following exchange between two characters:

Mal: Whoa, hey. Flesh. Um... Saffron... i-it-it ain't a question of pleasing me. It's more a question of what's... um... of what's morally right.
Saffron: I do know my Bible sir. "On the night of their betrothal, the wife shall open to the man as the furrow to the plow and he shall work in her, in and again till she bring him to his full and rest him then upon the sweat of her breast."
Mal: Whoa, good Bible.

Now that is good television! Apparently too good since it only got half a season before being canceled.

unplanned activity

Saturday night the dryer stopped working. Based on its behavior (relay clicking then motor struggling then circuit being broken) I guessed that perhaps something was jammed in the blower or the motor itself. So I commenced taking it apart. I found nothing lodged in either the motor or blower. Instead I observed the motor coils smoking when the current was delivered to the motor. OK, after 11 years it has burned out (I am sure the massive layer of dust and lint on it did not help). Removing the motor seemed straightforward enough, until I tried to remove the blower fan from the motor shaft. The threads between the motor shaft and brass insert in the fan were so fused together that the square, plastic shank you are supposed to use to keep the fan from turning disintegrated rather than unscrewing the fan. I went in behind the dryer and drilled a few holes through the fan and then cut the fan down to just the hub so I could extract the motor.

After much frustration and a few cuts on my hand I now a shell of a dryer and parts in the hallway. I also have a motor, belt and fan on order.

does size matter?

I am not a "breast man". Size is not critical to me and I do not like fake boobs. Shape, proportionality and the total female package are what matters. That being said, ladies concerned about their breast size should check out either of these articles: from the New York Post and from Glamour citing the same study.

Obama succeeding

There has been a lot of talk and several polls about whether people want Obama to succeed. None that I have seen or heard defines clearly what that means. Do I want Obama to succeed? It depends. If, by succeed, you mean: implement his Leftist plans/agenda/philosophy which will take us ever closer to the end of American civilization, then hell NO, I do not want him to "succeed". Do I want him to "succeed" in the sense of not harming American civilization? Emphatically YES! The problem with a poll question like: "do you want Obama to succeed" is that the reason a person answers the question one way or the other is more important than the answer itself. The answer is meaningless without knowing how the answerer interpreted the question. The same goes for the poll question: is the country on the right track? For the last eight years, negative responses to this question have been touted as proof that the people do not agree with what Bush is doing AND that they want a Leftist alternative. How many of the negative responses are NOT because Bush has been too Right, but because he hasn't been Right enough?

advantages of snow

Generally speaking I think winter sucks. Trying to stay positive, here are a few bits of silver lining:

• mandatory fitness activity: shoveling!
• increased ambient light for jogging: evening jogs are a little easier with the extra brightness from light reflecting off all the snow
• proprioceptive training: with the snow on stretches of sidewalk or the Rock Island Trail imprinted by footsteps and then consolidated, jogging on the undulating surface hones your balance, body awareness and core muscles
• easy excuse for being late to work
  

The list of things that are bad would be much longer, but again, trying to stay positive.

snow policy

While I jogged along University this evening I noted no consistency as to sidewalk clearing. Some residences had cleared their sidewalks, most hadn't. Some businesses had, some hadn't. Does Peoria have a sidewalk snow ordiance? Where I used to live you had to have your sidewalk cleared within 24 hours of the end of any snow more than ½".

Yes it was cold, 0.9°F, and justifiably or not, choosing to go out into that kind of cold with only 2.5 mm of fabric and your own ability to generate heat to keep you from freezing to death makes one feel like a bit of a bad ass.

recent movies

Before Christmas I watched Waiting based on Katie's recommendation at a blogger bash long ago. It was billed as Office Space for restaurant workers. It was entertaining, but lacked the deep connection to workers' angst that Office Space made. Seeing Justin Long in something other than the Mac vs. PC ads was interesting. Turns out he is pretty much the same.

After Christmas I watched Broken, featuring the beautiful Heather Graham. Included in the cast were Linda Hamilton, the girl who played Kendra in BTVS and Jessica Stroup (mega hottie from the new 90210). The story is not told linearly, it jumps around in time with flashbacks. At the end, J had to explain to me which parts had been real flashbacks and which parts were imagined or dreamed. I enjoyed this movie as it fits well into the dark genre of films I dig.

alternative to medical insurance

While listening to the Greg and Dan show on the way to work this morning I heard an interview with a guest talking about his health care sharing ministry. From what I can tell, it works like this: a bunch of people band together each agreeing to put X dollars into a pool and then each of those people/families can withdraw from the pool to pay their medical expenses. An interesting idea. Similar to insurance, but without the insurance company involved as the middle man.

It occurs to me that Liberals might like this idea because of its collectivist nature were it not for the religious aspect.

I can't handle Facebook

I joined Facebook recently after J did. It has been somewhat interesting, but now I have a problem. I made the mistake of listing my actual high school and now I have a bunch of people from then asking to "friend" me. Many of them appear to be Facebook friend sluts who will cozy up to anyone regardless of how tenuous their connection might be. Several people whom I cannot remember ever saying a word to have made friend requests. While annoying, those don't really bother me, I can ignore them easily enough.

Two of the friend requests are more difficult. One is a guy (G) that I spent a lot of time with in high school, but lost contact immediately thereafter. I was friends with the second one (R) in high school, all through college, had him as best man in my wedding and was friends and in contact with for a few years after college. We drifted apart not too long after J2 was born. Our life paths just diverged.

I am very curious to know what became of G. He was quite the independent spirit in high school (J thinks he was a poseur) and hanging out with him those years was a formative experience for me. I have heard nothing about him since 1990.

Even though I have not communicated with R in about 10 years, he has been in occasional contact with J (we were all part of the same group of friends) so I am familiar with the general course his life has taken.

I have a strong, visceral reaction holding me back from accepting these two friend requests and I have been thinking about its source. In both cases I think it arises, at least partly, from a sense of potential embarrassment or shame; worrying that what they are doing with their lives is somehow better than what I am doing with mine. Another aspect is fear of, or distaste for, the inferred obligation to have some ongoing dialogue with them. I do not yet know what I am going to do.

2008 beer data

2008 is complete, the beer caps have been counted and the data put into pie charts. I did things a little differently than last year. First, I broke down the data by brand/brewery/manufacturer:



The Michelob was almost entirely Ultra Amber and the Leinenkugels was almost entirely their Oktoberfest which left only Sam Adams with enough quantity and variety to bother breaking down further:



I don't have a particular point for this, just one of the things I felt like graphing. Not sure if there is something new I am going to graph for 2009.

server etiquette

Bartenders and waiters never seem to collect their tips while you are still there. Why do they always wait until you leave to pick up the tip?