Life News – Page 6 – ::: jeffphillips.org :::

Vacation Planning

Once again it’s that time of year where we are dying for a vacation [well, isn’t that always, though?] and the destination of Belize has been chosen. It looks like we’ll be doing a fall dive trip to the Turneffe Atoll – which will be quite cool. It’s basically an island with a hotel on it – and a small one at that. That’s it. Just relaxation and diving.

For the second part of the trip, though, we’ll head inland into the jungle where we might do any number of things like canoeing, hiking, horseback riding, but certainly photography.

We have finally made our reservations.

It wasn’t easy, though. At first, we wanted to go to Cayman. However, the entire island is celebrating some kind of anniversary and all flights were sold out. Then, the search began in earnest with me looking from the Seychelles to Galapagos to the Marshall Islands – each of which was deemed too far. Belize finally won, but even choosing the hotels/resorts was tough. Each resort has different features and activities and prices things differently leaving us with a very difficult task of comparing apples to oranges.

It’s planned and booked now, though, and I’m ready to leave… but… I gotta wait a couple of months now.

More Travel And Kitchen

Last week, I added a new airport to my list: Fayetteville, NC. Not big news, just one of my rare (at least now) business trips. There’s not much to do in Fayetteville, so I don’t really have anything to write about.

However, I do have some things to say about our “completed” home remodel. I’m beginning to learn that project completion is a fluid definition. All the flooring, cabinets and counter tops are installed, true, and most of the electrical is done. The last piece of electrical will be our over-bar pendant lights which we have yet to choose. We still have to finish the kitchen backsplash as well, but that is what I’m calling “phase 2” of the project. At least, I’m calling it that so I can say this one is finished… when it’s finally done.

One of the big unfinished things is that our dishwasher was leaking and we only found out about that after it was re-installed and began to leak on our new floor. So we have been doing without for a couple of months now. A couple of weeks ago, we ordered a new one that was supposed to be installed last week. However, it was damaged on arrival and another had to be ordered. Luckily, the new one came in the next day and will be installed this morning.

As if that wasn’t enough, several manufacturing flaws were discovered on the cabinets that now need to be fixed. Fortunately, the manufacturer has sent us all the replacement parts and will be swapping out the bad pieces for us.

Maybe we’ll be done with this thing eventually.

Sadness

Today is a melancholy day.

Oh, most things are looking up mind you. The remodel is coming along and I’m sanding and painting the patches in the wall and ceiling. The electrician will be in tomorrow to finish most of the work. And, I even have a new opportunity at work which should help my career.

However, I just sold my motorcycle. That makes me sad.

Here are some pictures just before I sold it:

33,000 miles is quite a long tenure for a bike and it will probably get even more with the new owner.

I almost cried as a watched it ride away. Almost.

But I know that I will one day have an even better one.

One day.

A Proper Cut

Having attempted barbeque brisket a couple of times before in my smoker and not being completely satisfied, I’ve sought advice on how to proceed from those who have tasted success… literally. The key, it seems, is the meat. Not just the quality of the meat, though, but the cut. Most briskets here are trimmed and very lean. These just don’t smoke well. What you need is a whole untrimmed brisket. like this:

As you can see, I finally found one. I have been shopping around for quite a while looking for one. Even Whole Foods, which usually carries quite a variety of cuts doesn’t stock this. We finally found it at The Organic Butcher in McLean, VA. The butcher was so nice as to get us this cut as well as some beef ribs to smoke next to it. He said that he never trims the brisket without explicit instructions from customers to do it.

Tomorrow, I will be firing up the smoker to take a pass at this 11-pound pile of jiggly fat and meat. Since I’m going to be working from home, it will be a great time to try it out.

Of course, it’s supposed to rain, too… 😦

Not All Coming Up Roses

The FiOS install went great, but…

After turning in my cable box yesterday and cancelling my residential cable service through Cox, they came out this morning and disconnected my business internet service as well. Argh.

And just as I was getting packed to head to Los Angeles for TEC2010.

As you can see, though, all is back up and running. I did say that Cox customer service was great, didn’t I?

Media Center and FiOS TV

Two words: Awesome.

Well, that wasn’t two, so I’ll compensate by adding a few more.

Today, we ditched Cox cable for Verizon FiOS TV. Cox, the regular local cable provider, is actually not bad. They have great [for a cable company] customer service, but I’ve been disappointed with the service itself. The signals are low and I absolutely deplore the DVR. If you’ve been reading the blog [here, here, and here], you know that I have finally put together a media center PC.

What’s not listed there is that it’s all new. Over the past several months, in order to “make it right” I’ve been working on the computer to make it behave like it’s supposed to.

The old PC just wasn’t up to the task. I had been thinking about upgrading it when an opportunity fell into my lap. I mistakenly ordered the wrong CPU for my server and was unable to return it. So – I “repurposed” it. With the addition of a new motherboard, matching 4GB of RAM and a case, I was all set to build a media center out of a Quad-Core Xeon server processor. That’s total overkill for those not geeky out there.

The first problem, though, was that I ordered the wrong motherboard – it wouldn’t fit in the case. I returned it and ordered another one only to find out that I actually had the wrong case. I replaced the case and found out that I had the wrong power supply. I quick stop by the local computer store solved that problem. I assembled all the parts and it was working. Performance-wise, it’s the fastest “desktop” I’ve ever owned. Only, it’s not a desktop: it’s a server with a server case… which sounds like a jet engine.

So: to solve that problem, I replaced the power supply and it got a smidge quieter. Hmm… the case has 3 fans. I replaced those with whisper-quiet 120mm case fans and wow… Except: it was still very loud. All that was left was the CPU fan. This tiny little thing must have been making the most noise. It was spinning at 6000 RPM and so I replaced it with a large heatsink and fan combination that is now virtually silent.

Media Center “Server”: Awesome!

It’s VERY fast, responds very quickly, and I have about 1.2TB of storage. I think I can record several weeks of TV in HD without stopping. It all works just like it’s supposed to.

But…

All the problems didn’t go away. We used to get digital artifacting [little random squares on the screen] and noise which I thought was due to performance of the machine. It was still there. Come to find out, our signal with Cox was so bad, that some channels were just plain unwatchable. I couldn’t even eliminate the cable box like I wanted to. So much for saving money.

Now, along comes my friend Jack who tells me of his experience with Media Center, CableCARD and FiOS. Now, I was hooked. See, Cox requires a “tuning resolver” to allow you to change channels on their less-watched shows. That way, they can save bandwidth by not showing stations to a neighborhood that no one is watching. Only it doesn’t work all that well. There were many times that our shows wouldn’t record because of some switching error.

No more! I called and scheduled my FiOS appointment and I’m now free from the Cox prison [except for Internet]. The media center is working as it’s supposed to and the signal is strong and clear. Life is great!

The only thing left is to get an additional tuner. I have a Ceton tuner on order which has 4 tuners in it. That will solve the recording conflict problems and should be the final upgrade of the machine for some time to come.

I took the Cox equipment in to the store today. That alone should save us $20/month or more on our cable bill.

Snowpocalypse: Reprise

It looks like we’re in for it again. The snows have begun and they say it could be another 20 inches. Wow. You know, after what happened over the weekend, I’m not exactly sure where we’re going to put the extra snow. Our sidewalks and shoulders are already full.

This is our street:

20 MORE inches? I don’t think so. I may not get to work until Friday at this rate.

I’m sure there will be even more snow tomorrow… And we’re already ahead of Buffalo, NY in total inches of snow for the year. Now, THAT’S sayin’ something.

Snowpocalypse: 2010

I have to say that this year has been the most snow I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s really not saying much since I spent my formative and most of my adult life living in Houston, but I’ve been in winter storms before. I’ve even been in one in Wyoming that had more snow overall than this, but I didn’t stay for the whole thing.

This, however, is the most I’ve ever had to shovel from the driveway by far!

There were over two feet in the driveway – possibly more, since by the time I got around to shoveling, it had packed itself down quite a bit.

We did have a brief power outage, but I’m sure none of you noticed since it was in the wee hours of the morning and only lasted a couple of hours.

We’re all right here now, but my back will suffer for several days. Snow is heavy. Very heavy.

Step Three: Diving With Sharks

Late Wednesday night of our cruise, we arrived in Nassau, Bahamas – our first shore experience began shortly after. We docked around 9PM and were able to push our way out of the boat a half hour or so later.

Everything was closed.

Well, not everything. The Atlantis resort was open. We all piled in a taxi and went to go see it. I have to say that it is an amazing place and the aquarium is … well, amazing.

After that evening, we got up very early the next morning [breakfast at 5AM is early, yes?] and met our dive boat owner at the front of the docks. She drove us to the other side of the island and we hopped on the boat and went out to sea.

I have to say I don’t think I’ve had another dive as relaxing and fun as this boat trip was. We originally asked for a two-tank dive, but they arranged it so that we had one deep dive and one shallow dive which used up only half of our air. There were quite a few lion fish in the water there – not natively, but accidentally introduced there.

Then, they took us to a spot where we could swim with sharks.

A previous boat had fed the sharks and they were clustered around the boats when we got there. That boat left and we dove in – well, I dove in, while the rest of the team followed slowly.

Some of the sharks came quite close.

I wanted to pet them… well, maybe not, but it was tempting to reach out and touch them.

The dive master said that there were about 30 sharks around us, but only a few were close at any given time.

I really like this one of Laura and our friends. Notice how they are tightly clinging to the rope while the sharks circle behind them… 🙂

This was a dive that I will likely never forget.

Then, we got out of the water and back on the boat. If the rest of the trip could have only been so good!

Merry Christmas!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas Day!

Enjoy!