2006
- Reviews will say that all noise cancelling headphones create a sense of “pressure” when activated. This is certainly true, and was more pronounced than I expected. On a plane your head is already all messed up from the cabin pressure so it isn’t as noticeable, but in other situations it is very noticeable.
- The noise canceling works best when the noise generation is perpendicular to you. I got some odd results when my head was rotated 45 degrees making the sound hit them at an angle. Interestingly, after a couple of seconds it goes away so I would guess it is just the noise cancelling process catching up to a slightly different pattern.
- The NC circuitry does impact the sound. If you are a purist, you need to trade off a lower noise floor with some impact to the music.
- I found them comfortable to wear for a couple of hours. My ears didn’t get overly hot.
Save Some Birds
Over this past weekend I applied some bird protection to our house. We live in an area with a lot of birds, and we have large parts of our house where we have a lot of windows. On top of that, I like to feed birds and with the landscaping work that we’ve done over the last three years we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of songbirds that frequent our yard.
However, we’ve also seen a huge increase in “bird strikes”. Almost everyday birds would hit our windows, and sometimes the hit would be fatal. I searched for a while to find a solution to this problem and finally found Window Alert.
I’ve applied these decals to the major windows where we were having problems and so far it’s been great. No hits that we’ve heard since then. They don’t ruin the view – and while you can see them they are not annoying. They work by reflecting ultraviolet light which birds can see, but we cannot. If you have a problem with “bird strikes” you should give these a try.
Xcel Energy Cheating Customers
I’m mad.
I’m a big supporter of alternative energy. For the last 3 years I’ve voluntarily paid a surcharge to Xcel Energy to fund the purchase of wind power equal to the amount of electricity I consume. This program is called Windsource. I pay $2.00 per 100 kWh of electricity, and I buy 16 units of this to account for our total electrical consumption. Every month I tack on $32 to my electricity bill and have been happy in the knowledge that our entire house is powered by renewable energy.
In addition to the WindSource program that I just mentioned, Xcel also collects a “curtailment payment” from all customers to fund wind-generated electricity. This is not an optional payment. If you are a customer, you are paying it. Then the Star Tribune broke this article on June 1st, Public Paid for idled wind farms.
It turns out that in 2004 Xcel paid wind farms to idle their turbines because Xcel could not transfer the power. Xcel doesn’t have the transmission lines to accept the power. By the way, they aren’t doing much about it either as you can read in the article.
When I signed up for WindSource I asked the person “How can I insure that my money is going to wind power?”. Turns out there really isn’t a good solution for the individual consumer. Relying on the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission seems like the only real option, but they may be part of the problem.
Xcel Energy customers should be mad. We should be mad for being sold a bill of goods that wasn’t true. And we should also be mad because Xcel isn’t being a responsible corporation.
See also: KARE11 Article, WCCO, Minutes of MnPUC (page 2)
An Inconvenient Truth
It likely isn’t going to come as a surprise to anyone that the people who are currently finishing an installation of solar heat were at the opening showing of An Inconvenient Truth last night. I heard about this movie a few weeks ago and I’ve been eager to see it since.
Let me cut straight to the point: You really need to see this movie. Did you get that? I mean it. Go see this movie. I don’t care if you are republican or democrat, liberal or conservative, green or blue. Just go see it.
Calling An Inconvenient Truth a movie seems a little wrong, it’s really more like going to see a presentation. And you understand why fairly quickly. Al Gore has been giving this presentation on global warming for a long time, but one person can only be in so many places. The movie is a great way to get the message out to millions of people, and it is done very well.
I like to think that even skeptics of global warming will leave the theatre with a new perspective. I’m not going to try to summarize it here as I just wouldn’t do as good of a job. Go check it out – soon!
Slow Down
I left work late on Tuesday. I thought I would try to get home a little earlier and hopped into the MnPASS lane and hit the pedal. As I came out of downtown I was greeted by a cop holding a radar detector. He vigorously encouraged me to pull over and receive my due.
He clocked me doing 71 in a 55. Eek.
He had some generosity in his heart though. While there was no way I was going to get off without a ticket, he cited me for Unacceptable Acceleration instead of a full on speeding ticket.
That’s the first time I’ve been pulled over by a cop in probably 10 years.
Slow down.
Solar Project Update #3
In the last couple of weeks we’ve had a lot of progress with our solar project. The work on the roof and in the attic is essentially done now. This leaves the compicated plumbing work in the utility room the remaining items. This Wednesday the contractor is supposed to be out with the whole team to turn the system up.
In the last weeks we’ve pulled out the existing two gas water heaters and inserted a new Takagi TK-2 tankless hot water heater. Right now that is providing all of the hot water since the solar system isn’t up and running yet. I’ve been happy with it (it is the square unit on the wall in the picture).
I’ll post a detailed write-up once the system is up and running. Many of you have asked me about the project and I’ve certainly learned a lot having it done. One big lesson learned is added alternative energy and high-efficiency energy to an existing house is not trivial!
Safety Stairs
I’m a super-excited Dad! I’ve been on the search for a long time for a gate that we could put on the stairs in our house and was having no luck. And now that Mazie is mobile, the lack of a child gate was elevating my blood pressure significantly. The problem? One of the sides that the gate must connect to is relatively short.
The left side in this picture is only 30.5" high. This turns out to be a major problem with most child gates. I was lucky to find this one at USA Baby that turned out to be a perfect fit for the space. If you have a challenging spot this is a wonderful gate.
I can now relax a bit while Mazie runs all over the top level of the house.
Network Revamp
My home network has been pathetic for the last few months. While doing our solar project and other work in the utility room I had to make some quick cable moves. The unfortunate downside of this was that for over 3 months my gigabit network has been nada, since I’ve got a 100 mbit link in between it and everything that matters.
I decided I’ve had enough of this and decided to redo the network – right this time. I’m not done, but this weekend I got most of the physical work hung.
I put a 2’ rack on the right and have all the network switches where I want them. I still have to move the ethernet runs in the house from the other side of the utility room to this side and put them in the patch panel. This will be a pain as it involves rewiring. And once that is all done, I’m going to setup a proper secure home network with color zones for protection. I expect this project will be a month or more before I finish it completely. I’ll tell more when I do, and put a picture up of the pretty wiring.
Mazie Walking!
Two weekends ago Mazie really started to walk. She’d been able to take a step or two for a while, but while we were in Lanesboro on the Olson Family trip she “took off” and decided she was mobile. In the last two weeks she’s gotten pretty good at it and now pretty much demands on walking on her own. Here is a video of her walking at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. (Excuse the video quality, it was taken with my Canon S500 camera in movie mode, with a shaky hand.)
Add Video.
T-Rex Flying
This last weekend I finally said “uncle” and took my T-Rex to Hobby Warehouse in Richfield to get some help from the experts there and get my helicopter flying. There was a guy there, Rudy, who was awesome. He’s been flying RC helicopters for 12 years and has a T-Rex as well. He spent about 2 hours on my machine and got it working great!
The picture above is the helicopter I have. The picture doesn’t have the electronics on it, just the base frame and mechanical parts. After two hours with the pros it was going and I headed home to try on my own. The first encounter was not very successful – I never got off the ground but also didn’t have any major crashes.
The next day, Sunday, I took it to my father-in-laws for Easter. He’s been obsessed with heli’s as well. He emptied the garage so I we could play without the wind. After about a minute I took a hard landing and broke the base plate where the battery was connected. After we rigged a clothes hangar so I could strap the battery on we were flying again. After a while I got to the point where I could fly outside with a decent amount of wind. Until I had a decent crash at the end.
I ended up with a hard crash and a slew of parts needed. I broke the gears in two of my servos (Hitec HS-65HB), bent the tail, cracked the bottom plate, shredded the canopy. I got parts and spent last night fixing.
Tonight I went out and I was flying great! Hovering like a pro, things were really in control, until the very end. I was running low on battery and I came down too hard. The blades came down too far and one of the blades sheared right through my new carbon tail! Ouch!
The damage looks worse than from the weekend, but it’s all in the tail. I’m still in the phase where every trip off the ground with the heli is followed by a trip to the hobby shop. I’ll have to replace the tail, stabilizer bars and a couple other things. I should be flying again this weekend.
Solar Project Update #2
After much consideration and a meeting with our contractor I’ve decided to change the location and configuration of our solar array. I posted previously about our solar project and mentioned I had concerns about how the panel array looked.
We are going to change from the eight 4 x 6.5 foot panels that we have now to five 4 x 8 foot panels instead. The panels will be relocated to the front roof of the house, to the left of the skylights when facing the front of the house. We’ll be dropping our panel footage from 208 to 160 square feet in the process, but will still get a lot of heat collection.
The new location will make the panels only visible from the front of the house, and will not disturb the outline of the house as they will be completely on the roof face.
This will result in a 4 week delay to the project to get the new panels, but considering this is something that will be in place for years I want it to be right.
Noise Canceling Headphones First Impression
I got to try out my new Sony noise canceling headphones on my recent trip to New York. My impression is mixed, but overall I’m pleased with them. I haven’t tried other companies so I can’t comment on how they differ. Here are my key comments:
Mazie at 9 Months
It seems amazing that in only 3 more months Mazie will turn 1! She is doing great. She has recovered from her 2nd real cold with lots of coughing and sneezing, and most notably plenty of running nose. An almost never-ending amount actually. She’s decided she likes baby food and we think she has her 2nd set of teeth coming in since she’s been eating her hand pretty much constantly lately.
She’s turning into such a little kid now. She likes to babble at you for a while and will share some stories with you. They are pretty short still, but it’s just amazing to hear her voice and particularly to hear her giggle.
We had a trip to Ikea this weekend and Mazie and I had a great time while Tammy shopped with our friends Lisa and Eric who were in town for the weekend. All sorts of fun to be had at Ikea.
Mazie has chosen to stay fairly immobile thus far. She’s not crawling, and from the looks of things she is likely to just skip that whole process. She doesn’t like being on her belly at all. She does love it though if you hold her hands and let her walk around the house or around stores. She finds that to be a great old time. She can scoot around pretty well and can make it all over her play area.
I’m itching for spring to come and for us to be able to spend more time outside. We ordered a bike carrier/jogging stroller (Chariot Cougar 2 if you are interested, I’ll post impressions of it after we get it).
I put up a whole bunch of pictures from January and February. Don’t miss the pictures of her in the bowl.
Solar Project Update
I’ve referenced our solar project on this site a couple of times, and this last week marked the most visible part of the project. The collectors were put up on the roof on Thursday.
The collectors are mounted on the north side of the roof, but peeking over so they have a full southern exposure. There is still a lot of work to be done inside the house. The integration with the hot water and heating system are coming up next.
I’ve got some mixed feelings on how the collectors turned out and am going to discuss some alternatives with the contractor. It’s not exactly how I had expected it to look. Hard to imagine without seeing it. Not positive anything will change but am going to explore it. I’m not terribly pleased with the view from the deck.
Noise Canceling Headphones
I stepped off of my last flight, from Dallas to Minneapolis, and wanted to immediately go and get a pair of noise canceling headphones. I made a rookie mistake. Hoping for an empty middle seat back in coach I had moved from a row in the middle of the plane to the last row in the plane. I lost my bet when they shoved one last person onto the plane to sit in between me and the other guy in our row.
Add to the misery of losing the “empty middle seat bet” the fact that the plane is narrower at the back (less room) and the engines were about 6 feet from my head (ridiculously loud). It was a miserable 2 hours and 28 minutes.
This weekend I picked up the Sony MDR-NC50 headphones. Best Buy had a really good deal on them with a coupon I had. I fly on Tuesday and Wednesday so I’ll get a chance to give them a workout.
Deer at Bird Feeder
If you like to feed birds you are completely aware of the ever-lasting battle with squirrels. They will go through amazing gymnastics to get at the wonderful food in your bird feeder. However, the other morning this scene caught me off guard!
Slightly larger than a squirrel, and I don’t think there is anything I can do about this one. 🙂
Mazie Graduates to Bigger Car Seat
We got Mazie’s next car seat today, a Britax Marathon. They had a sporting pink one with flowers all over it, but we went for the more neutral and car appropriate (oh, and washable) version.
Mazie tried it out at the store and she loved it, or at least she didn’t yell at us right away. She is big enough now that she can use the bigger car seats but not too big for her infant seat, so we’ve still been using that. I’ve been thinking that she finds it annoying and wants to move up to the real car seat and stroller combination. That way she can sit up and see more things. She’s always craning her head around trying to look at things. I’d find it annoying at least.
Mazie is finally over her cold. Just some minor sniffles at this point. Tammy and I were able to catch it before she fought it off. Luckily we are able to blow our nose and have cough drops.
T-Rex Assembled
I just spent the last 4 hours assembling my Align T-Rex 450SE. Luckily I got the high-end one that comes 80% pre-assembled. That is why it was 4 hours rather than 40. Man are the parts small. Physically this helicopter is all together, and I’ve even slapped the electronics on it, but now I need to wire it all up. Time to break out the soldering iron and then start getting it all “setup”. That means getting everything just so and finally able to fly with the thing. I expect this process to take close to infinite time. 🙂
I’ll get another update when I have some breakthrough. I got the Reflex XTR training software for my PC and I’m hoping the actual helicopter is a bit easier to fly than the trainer, or that I had the trainer setup wrong. I crashed over and over and over.
Oh, and I got a new video solution for the remote control stuff. I’ll see if I can get a test video out sometime soon.
iPod Nano
Happy Valentines day! My wonderful, beautiful wife and daughter decided to get me an iPod Nano for Valentine’s day. How fun! When the Nano was first released I convinced myself that I didn’t really care. Then a little after it was shipping I went to Best Buy and touched one. I shouldn’t have done that. The form factor is just so small, and the screen is nice (if small) and it just feels so nice in your hand.
I updated the firmware on it, got it setup in iTunes and I’m downloading a ton of photos to it right now (the other reason I wanted a to upgrade from my iPod Mini). I like it so far, of course what is not to like.
I was considering the idea of getting the “big” iPod at somepoint. No need to now, however I may reconsider if the rumors of this big screen, wide iPod turn out to be true.
Mazie's Sick
So yesterday when I got home from work Mazie was having dinner and she was really sick. She didn’t seem nearly as sick when I went to work. She had a full-blown cold. She woke up this morning not feeling any better.
She has had a cold before, when she was very small. It wasn’t that big of a deal – runny nose and some mild coughing. This one is different though. This is her first, real cold. Nose is going crazy. She’s super-congested. Coughing stuff up. And I’ll tell you it’s killing me!
This morning I gave her a bath while Tammy was at the gym and after the bath, which I think she sort of liked with the cold and all, she would cough and then wimper. I could tell her chest was hurting when she was coughing. And what could I do? Zip. I just held her and she hung out with me a lot less excitable than she usually was. To prove the point, when Tammy got back from the gym Mazie just hung out with me and didn’t feel a need to jump into Tammy’s arms as fast as she possibly could (as is typical).
I sure hope she gets better soon. I don’t know how much of this I can take!
First Attempt at RC Camera
Yesterday I received my recent order from Helidirect, a wireless video camera. This little toy is to be put on-board of various radio control things to record video from the car, helicopter or whatever. I gave it a run for the money today, the results weren’t great, but I’m encouraged that it can get much better. Feel free to jump to the videos right away.
Find video `heli-20060212`.
Find video `car-20060212`.
I have to figure some things out. First of all, the E-Sky Llama was almost impossible to fly with the 27g of the video camera and the 9v battery strapped to it. It did get off the ground, but it took a lot of force. The T-Rex I just ordered wont suffer this problem, but as it is, not really flyable to any extent. The other issue was my mount on both helicopter and my nitro car. I just slapped it on there which didn’t work so hot. First of all, the car throws a lot of force around and the 9v battery flew off the car. On the heli, there is a lot of vibration that messes with the picture. I also think I need to deal with interference off of the electric motor.
I plan on working on this a bit. Need to develop a real mount that attaches to the car/heli for real, along with a battery carrier. I’m hopeful that will get rid of a lot of the video noise.