It’s 3 am I must be lonely…

I hate being reminded at 3 am that I forgot to change the smoke detector battery.

Day off

Today has been a rather relaxing day of doing absolutely nothing. I’ve not been sleeping well lately, and doing absolutely nothing today has felt good. Granted I feel like I’ve been very lazy, but frankly I don’t care…

It’s beginning to look a lot like Halloween…

Halloween? What? John, it’s June… Yes, yes it is. I have had an idea for a prop I want to build since the after Halloween sales netted me some faux planters. The idea is to have a skull burst from under the “dirt” of the planter. To do this with enough speed to startle anyone will require theist of pneumatics. Tonight I sat down with my Dremel in hand and built the inner workings. I’m proud to say that as of 10:15 pm I have a basic working prop.
the solonoid I’m using is a low amp model capable of being directly driven from a micro controller. This means I should be able to add in lighting, sound and perhaps even fog all controlled by whatever trigger I wwant.
Muahahahahaha
I’ll post pictures soon.

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Open Mic Night

Last night Karl and Gabi joined me for my weekly open mic night at the StoneFire Pub in Yorkville, IL. It was nice to have some friends there with me for a change. Granted I’ve made strides in befriending the regulars but it’s much nicer to have a chance to hang out with my regular friends too. It’s especially nice that I didn’t have to go a hundred miles out of my way to do so too.
So anyway, we sat around had dinner, talked, and listened to the regulars that show up. There was much silliness, and beer. Speaking of, is it a bad sign that I can walk in and sit down and the bartender immediately walks to the back to the “special” cooler to retrieve beer for me? No questions asked, no nothing… Yeah, I’m a creature of habit… I like my Hacker-Pschoor, what can I tell ya…

A/C Update

Well, last night was night two with the new A/C unit. Here’s the deal so far. The new unit is one of those free standing variety of A/C’s on wheels. The manufacturer states that it is a super quiet model and really, it is much quieter than the old window unit in the hallway. The problem is, it’s now in my bedroom, next to my bed. I’m still very much a light sleeper and I do still wake up violently if disturbed on occasion… Cue the new little unit humming away… that at various points in the night changes modes with a random clunk or odd “thwip” noise… So far the unit has only been hit once. Oops…
Me, I’ve not had a full nights uninterrupted sleep since I installed it, but last night was much better… I suspect tonight will be a full nights sleep…
Over all , the unit does as advertised. It cools the room, it does it very efficiently, and is mostly quiet. (would be fine for people who are not paranoid sleepers) Last night I turned it on about 30 minutes before going to bed and it cooled the 86 degree room down to 74 in about 40 minutes. I like that this model doesn’t require me to drain the water tank. (It has a mister hose that spurts out the window) I wish the exhaust hose was a little longer so I could move it farther from my bed, but I think I can fix that with some creative furniture re-arrangement though.

A/C

Thanks to Karl and Gabi, they went with me today on my quest to locate a new A/C. We went to 3 stores before I settled on a free standing unit. It comes with a hose that fits into a panel that actually works in my sliding window in my bedroom. I finally have an A/C unit in my room. Previously the A/C unit I was using sat in the window in the hallway, I then had a set of fans I used to “pipe” air into my room. This will be MUCH more efficient, and best of all, to remove it from my window takes all of 2 minutes time, tops and it requires NO modification of the window.

Phone Numbers

Hey gang, I had some trouble with my cell phone. I had to reset it fully, when I did, I synced it, and expected all my numbers to return. Sadly that was not the case. I lost a lot of my more recently entered numbers, and anyone who’s last name started with K. (Karl, I have your info from elsewhere so no worries) So, If I should have your cell phone / home phone / dog’s pager number, whatever… please email me your contact info so I can put it back in my phone. email to: john@wohlershome.net
Thanks All!

Yep, really, I am Legal

Well, I took the paperwork to H.R. today, and made it a point to only speak to them in my faire accent just to confuse them. 🙂 Hey, if I have the accent, why not use it 🙂

So, as far as HR, and the Department of Homeland Security are concerned, I am a legal U.S. citizen…

Yes I am legal…

I have to take paperwork in to work to prove I am a legitimate US citizen… Think I should talk to H.R. using my Cornish accent?

New Credit Card

This was supposed to be posted 2 weeks ago but somehow wasn’t.

Ok, so perhaps I’m a little nuts… Yeah I know.. “a little?”… I have been seeing those Capitol One “Card Lab” commercials, and found them kinda silly. “WAR KITTENS?” But I got to thinking, you know… It would be kinda cool to have a custom card… So I dinked around in the Gimp (photo editing software), and came up with an image to use on my card.

Yeah, I’m a dork… but hey, I really have fun playing Hawser…

And no, thats not my real card number!