Pick #90

Death Cab for Cutie - "Bend to Squares" from Something About Airplanes

Recipe #2: BBQ Chicken Subs

Ingredients: chicken, canola oil, Nature's Season, BBQ sauce, hoagie rolls, provolone cheese

Chop chicken into 1" cubes, fry in canola oil. Top with Nature's Season while frying.
Cut hoagie rolls down middle, line with provolone, fill with chicken, top with BBQ sauce. I like to put another slice of cheese on top at this point, but it's optional.
Now, put the filled hoagie rolls in the (toaster) oven @ 400° for about 5 minutes, until the bread is crunchy & the cheese is melted.
I like to take BBQ sauce to the table in case I want to add more.

Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

When I was up in Virginia, my family that we were staying with had a refrigerator from the 1940s in their garage. I think it was a Westinghouse. You open it up and there's an icebox on top. It kept things very cold.

I'm sure that the energy efficiency of this old thing would make it eat more electrons than my air conditioner, but it still works. I can almost guarantee that a refrigerator purchased today would die in under 40 years, not even coming close to the life of this 70-something year old appliance.

It's a shame that in this day of improved technology (as compared to the good old days) that not everything lasts as long as it used to. It seems that companies think that planned obsolescence will earn them more profit in the long run. They are flawed, at least theoretically. If they made a better, longer lasting product, then they could capitalize on its superiority by charging a higher price.

I've mentioned the same thing with my HVAC unit & water heater, which are both still original (house was built in 1977). Current estimates for water heater life spans are sub 20 years. I guess new ones are more energy efficient, but I doubt that they offer much advantage over the old ones (unless you compare apples to oranges and say that now you can get a tankless one).

Picks #88 & 89

I've been out of town for a week straight with limited computer access, so here's this week's & last week's picks:

Eddie Money - Think I'm in Love

Splender - Yeah Whatever

Seakeeper

This company made a gyroscope to minimize zero- and low-speed boat roll. Check out the video on their website. We're staying with my mom's cousin's husband in Virginia and his plant was working on this. He said that the next project he's working on is something about an electric motor for putting fins on the bottom of cigarette boats so that they don't flip up in the air when going fast.

Virgin Galactic

I've heard talk for a little while now that Virgin is preparing to send ordinary people (with a little bit of disposable income) into space. I didn't realize that they are so close. Apparently now it's only 12-18 months until they do their first commercial flight. I went to their website and it blew me away. You can watch a couple videos and read the FAQ.

I think the thing that I found most amazing was the low price tag. Tix start @ $200,000!! I know that I'd go into space if I had a chance. I don't want the negative health effects of spending weeks up there (although I'd probably stay that long anyway if given the chance). I'm not exactly sure how long the trip into space lasts, but I think it's about an hour of air time.

Computer Crapping Out

It looks like my computer's starting to show signs of old age. Recently, it's not been wanting to wake up from naps (aka after being in standby). Sometimes it decides to display a black screen when I try to turn it back on. I was thinking about it and decided to ask Drew if he still makes computers. Affirmative. He's willing to help guide me through building my own.

I'm trying to decide what kind of specs I want on this new computer. I've been thinking about learning Linux. I'm concerned that if I use an OS like Ubuntu, then I might not be able to use software that I've purchased in the past that's for Windows. I'm especially concerned about RosettaStone and Stata. It would also be nice to have Excel when I need it for something that I'm not yet ready for in Calc from OpenOffice.org.

As for cool stuff, I want to be able to watch (and maybe capture the stream) live TV on my computer (hey, that sounds like TiVo). I want a Terabyte or more of hard disk space, blazing dual processors, lots of memory, eSATA, maybe hook up dual monitors...

If you have any other ideas that would make my computer rock out, comment here.