Category: FWIW

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A Lil “Notahowto”

This is not a “How to” as much as it is a pointer about styli for capacitive touch screens. (Love the pun or don’t. I DGARA :-))

Love the Kindle Fire. I use it far, far too much. I’m almost back to the average numbers of books per week read that I indulged myself in for decades before I discovered the Internet in ’93, and I have watched more movies and obscure (mainly foreign) TV shows since Christmas than I care to count.

But I had a small bone to pick with the device. While I have relatively small hands (a curse when I was trying to play piano or guitar), using my fingers to navigate–and especially to type on the onscreen virtual keyboard–was something of a pain at times.

Enter the stylus I received with my matte-finish screen protector from HandHeldItems. Yes, it was the company’s low-end, throwaway stylus, but it worked a charm. Soon, though, I missed being able to store it easily. Oh, it had a lil thingy to plug into the headphone jack, but that was clearly sub-optimal. What to do?

A quick search on the web for “DIY Stylus for Kindle Fire” turned up a raft of possibilities, but the one that suggested using the conductive foam padding used in packing electronic parts seemed ideal, so… dig around in parts to find some that’s easily sacrificed, look around for some pens or other “stylus materials” that can be modified, a lil shade tree mechanicking and…

A couple of styli that work great for my purposes. One is from a nice, heafty-weight metal-bodied “gimme” pen that had a built in laser pointer with dead batteries. It offered a way to embed some conductive foam padding in the top of the pen, just above the clip, once the tiny lil laser pointer was removed. A sized Q-Tip holds the foam in place, jutting from the top of the pen, nicely rounded. Nice, sturdy clip. I even had an ink refill for the pen. Excellent stylus!

Another as a backup for the lil 2″ (though extensible to 3″) HandHeldItems throwaway stylus? Sure. A small metal screwdriver (removed the bit end), a piece of conductive foam padding secured with wire and live rubber tape and, voilà! Nice lil 2.5″ mini-stylus. Works just as well as the other two.

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I’m sure it’s just me…

No, really.

OK, I can understand and accept execrable grammar in dialog. Heck, I write in a way I find nearly inexcusable myself pretty regularly here, for effect. But when ALL David Weber’s characters in ALL his books have difficulty properly using adverbs… (almost) ALL the time (and always when forming adverbs from adjectives or using adjectives in an adverbial position, if you’d rather), it grates a wee tad.

Just sayin’.

(I keep wanting to send Weber–or his editors/proofreaders–a link to this page. *heh*)), it grates a wee tad.)

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Another Baby Step In the Kitchen Stuff

Ordered a couple of these last Friday. They arrived today. Nice.

All-in-all, I’m rather pleased with the stools (chairs?). There were a couple of assembly speed bumps that might throw some folks off, but nothing that I feel strongly detracts from the purchase/assembly experience. Some of the holes for the upper side supports/step stool guides were difficult to insert the side support bars into, making screwing the bolts in a potentially frustrating experience. The problem was that those four holes (on each unit) had simply been rather crudely punched, and needed to be deburred in order to insert the parts. Notaproblem.

More difficult was installing the back on the second chair I assembled. The right back support simply would not fit closely enough to allow the bolts to mate with the legs. No problem. Turned it upside down, very, very slightly bent the part, detached the upper back support and installed the thing, then reinstalled the upper back support. Added maybe five minutes time, what with determining the problem and effecting the solution.

Now that the chairs are assembled, they feel quite sturdy and comfortable (that’s my coffee cup in the picture; sat at the counter drinking from it while reading a bit from the Kindle Fire).

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“One misty, moisty morning… “

“…When cloudy was the weather… ” etc.

Only, the “moistiness” this morning was snow flurries, tiny ice balls and black ice on the roads. Two lane, hilly, curvy country road with no shoulder (but a nice, deep bar ditch! :-)) and ice, in patches and sheets, often covered in loose snow a fraction of an inch deep: this was this a.m.’s driving, between ~6:30 and 9:00, when I was out and about.

Fun. *heh*

America’s Third World County, where very drivable roads are available in all sorts of weather… as long as one sticks to the four-lane that now cuts through the county with sneers of disdain for the little towns it swoops on by. 🙂 Actually, in this a.m.’s weather conditions, it would probably have been safer to stick to dirt and gravel back roads, although it would certainly have taken quite a while longer to get places.

Good day to have stayed in until the sun came out. If it had.

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Petty Puny Peccadillo

(Yeh, yeh, one more example of scesis onomaton, as if anyone really gave a rat’s patootie. ;-))

Sometimes I am more than a wee tad irritated by otherwise literate folk misusing the first (and third) person singular past tense of “be” when the speaker or writer obviously means to express the subjunctive mood.

Irritating? Yes. *sigh* Just one more erosion of useful language by acquiescence to the lowest common denominator of society, more evidence that the least fit are shaping our culture.

Ah, well. At least I might not live long enough to witness the complete, absolute and utter collapse of civilization… (But it’s looking more and more as though my grandchildren almost certainly will.)

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RTFM

Or at least the warning label printed on the bottle. Just sayin’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The warning reads,

Use this product one drop at a time. Keep away from eyes, pets and small children. Not for people with heart or respiratory problems.

I’ve spent a lifetime enjoying increasingly spicy foods and find jalapeno, serano and habanero peppers to be tasty lil tidbits, although jalapenos are, IMO, more for children and delicate flowers with “the vapors” who faint at the mere sight of black peppercorns. This stuff, while tasty, is HOT. No, not the very hottest thing around, if Scoville measurements are on target, but very, very close.

Use with respect. 🙂

Note: Recent college graduates may need to have someone who’s literate to translate the label for them, so if you’re in this category (and having someone read this blog post to you), please seek help.

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Fun On the Road

So, went out of town (out of county by a couple) this a.m. with Son&Heir. On the way back, about 6 miles out of town, saw the gas gauge go from nearly full to almost empty, really quickly, lost power, coasted off an exit (the one I’d planned on taking anyway) and about 400 feet on down the road.

Weird. Popped the hood. Gas fumes. Gas dripping from the fuel rail. *sigh* Under car? Sure enough, gas “streamed” from engine compartment all the way to the back of the car, beside, around and apparently evaporated off hot exhaust components. How no fire, I don’t know, but no fire. (Yeh, yeh, I know: no sparks :-))

Plastic clip on fuel rail failed. Had no tools and no clip… and no gas anyway. Called our mechanic. He sent his son&heir with their small tow truck and he dropped us off at the house.

Now, the guys had installed a new fuel pump several months back and gone ahead and also installed the new fuel filter with integrated fuel rail that I’d had a short while but not gotten around to installing myself.

Get that: my part; they installed. If it’d been a faulty installation, it’d given out long before now, so it had to be a faulty part. My hook. Got a call that the car was good to go, but… Asked ’em to double check (“Tug on that thing REAL hard, ‘K?” ;-)) make SURE the part–especially the clip–was good before I picked it up.

I hate fuel leaks.

Sure, I could’ve had the guy drop it here and torn into the thing, but it’s colder outside than my “old bones” like for doing mechanicking, so better to have it done than do it.

Oh, well. 🙂

*heh* Picked the car up. Drove off, on a windy country road, no shoulder, very few turn-offs. Three miles to filling station. Got a mile. Called the guys. It took three of them *heh* to bring me a gallon of gas. 😉

Fun on the road, indeed.

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Down to the Wire

The kitchen redo for my Wonder Woman’s Xmas present is getting close–well, apart from repainting the kitchen cabinets… again (just done this summer, but still ;-)). Below see an almost finished “coffee shrine” replacement for the former coffee brewing nook. Needs some trim finishing out and the new surface for the cabinet, etc., isn’t fully painted yet, but most of the rest is done, and I even got the dining room painted the new wall color, first tested out on the south wall of the kitchen.

OK, so I also don’t have the plate rack installed for the dinner plates. It’ll come.

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Yee-Haw…

(Wake me when it’s over.) 😉

They really should have titled it, “Cowboys and Outlaws and Indians and… Alien and BEMs*,” but I imagine it would’ve taken a bit to work that onto a marquee.

Just watched the DVD. Not bad for a B- Movie quality script, A and A-minus cast and special effects that shared “best parts of the show” with some horses and a dog (apparently named “Dog” *sigh*).

All-in-all, very nearly worth the $3.27 it took to rent the thing, though I’m not quite sure it was worth the time spent watching it. Although, I must admit it was moderately amusing trying to predict when Daniel Craig’s hat would change from brown to black and back again… in the same scene, often as not. Oh, there were bunches of continuity issues and lame sound effects to go along with the amusingly B- script, so I suppose it was worth the time to watch, just so I could have things to sneer at.

So, would I watch it again? Not sure. I do have a weakness for weak movies, so I might, even given my distaste for “re-runs” (“Seen it” is a phrase my Wonder Woman sometimes tires of hearing *heh*).

The music for the sound track wasn’t bad, and the “making of” bonus material was quite interesting. In fact, more interesting than the movie itself, for me.

*Bug-eyed Monsters

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It Ain’t Exactly the Hokey Pokey ;-)–Updated

Take three steps back; take one step forward…

I think we’ve finally found the paint colors we want to use on the walls and cabinets. Oh, and the two shelves on the former “coffee shrine” have eight hours dry time before the next three paints can be applied, then a few more past that before the first top coat of sealer. Looks to be the end of the week, at least, before the walnut shelf supports can be reinstalled and my Wonder Woman’s baskets (which we picked up Saturday) can all be put in place. But by that time, the walls, at least, should be painted. Not promising the cabinets by then. Nuh-uh. I know better than that. 🙂

N.B. This post was really just an excuse to use the new drag ‘n’ drop file upload capabilities of WordPress 3.3. Didn’t work. Oh, well.

OK, now the new paint color for the walls is on one section that can be seen in the pic below. It’s also “sampled” on a cabinet door. Nope. Not painting the cabinets that color. Under-cabinet lighting: almost finished. Shelves on former “coffee shrine” (to the left of the microwave): finished (a piece of trim still needs to be reattached to the left side of that semi-open cabinet). The window area is still a mess, and where I had built a desk attached to the counter area (from long ago days of yore when my Wonder Woman needed a dedicated but open area for a desktop computer–long story) is awaiting removal so a plate rack and new, small (about same size as the former one) “coffee shrine” can go in on the dining side of the counter top.

Fun.