Month: November 2004

LED christmas lights

We just finished putting up our new LED christmas lights. They use 80% less energy and the diodes are rated for 200,000 hours. Assuming the cords don’t break, we’re set for a long time.

I also helped my parents put up their new red LED christmas lights. They’ve been using the same strings of red C7 bulbs for nearly 20 years, and the same decorating scheme for the same. In fact, I’ve helped my dad put up the lights for most of those years. Some years we couldn’t find red replacements so we’d spray-paint clear bulbs red.

Anyway, the dilemma now is what to do with those old strings of lights. Give them away? Or remove them from use? They’re quite inefficient, but by giving them away we’re at least preventing the purchase of more. But hey – 20 years is a pretty good stint for christmas lights.

Addendum:
It just turned dark enough for the new LED lights to be appreciable. In contrast to the small incandescent bulbs, they’re rather blue and dim. Michelle is kind of disappointed because they “lack warmth”, but that’s exactly why they save energy – they aren’t producing heat. I think they’re beautiful, but we could work on twisting them to line up better.

The joy of an authentic Flowbee® haircut

Flowbee how you wanna be
There is little in the world that rivals the joy of an authentic Flowbee® haircut. The relaxing hum of the vacuum, the airy massage of your hair being lifted, as if by magic, the simple snip of rapidly oscillating blades. And afterwards, a generic, repeatable, and inoffensive haircut that only costs you 30 minutes of your time and much of your wife’s dignity. And that’s without posting pictures of it on the internets.

This is actually the second Flowbee my family has owned. They still have the original pre-Wayne’s World Suck-Cut model. It still works, and they’re offering it to me. The new one is much quicker, and was kind of scary. It cuts faster, and my hair was longer than the attachment I had selected. But its done. And the only remaining problem is the tangle of neck hair that someone who really cares for you will trim.

So on this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for a free hair cut, family who will help trim my neck, and a wife that puts up with me. And the internets to share all this on.

Send Immediately?

When you mash down the control-R & E keys simultaneously in Eudora, you are in effect hitting reply and send immediately to whatever message is highlighted. This doesn’t work well when you’re still groggy from lack of coffee and coming in early. Did not the folks at Qualcomm consider the danger in this? The statistics in the program show that most of my email activity occurs in the morning. They should put the Send Immediately shortcut on a separate part of the keyboard in the same way that large weapons have separate switches to prevent accidental launching. Well, it was just a blank reply, neutron bomb.

Eudora Usage is morning heavy

Chapstick

I don’t put chapstick on until my lips are chapped. And when I do put it on, they just taste good, so I unconsciously chew the flavor off, which just makes my lips hurt more. Why does it have to taste so good? The stick I have now is cocoa flavored. mmm…

Final Yard Work (right…)

Raking off the roof
Since my nose was plugged, the sun was out, and the walnut leaves down, Michelle and I decided to finish up the leaves. You can’t compost walnut leaves because they contain the toxin juglone, otherwise we’d have shredded them up like the others.

Barley somehow found a paintbrush in one of the piles, and was quite pleased with himself.

My parents gave me their old leaf shredder, and it wasn’t happy with the dampness of the leaves, so I ended up mowing over the piles several times before covering the beds. Its a good thing I didn’t mow over the paintbrush.

Finally, I raked the leaves off the roof and cleaned the gutters. Barley caught the leaves as they came off the roof. He was fascinated by the maple helicopters.