Attention Deficit David

What makes you think I was playing in the spider webs again?

What makes you think I was playing in the spider webs again?, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Begin forwarded message:

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Squeek, thud, ouch.

I ran over a squirrel today while riding my bike. He ran out in front of me, I bumped over him, he ran to the wall where he'd come from and up a tree. I watched him for a while, no obvious bleeding, nothing seemed broken. Still, that wasn't cool.

Pizza Dome Fun For (≠) Everyone

I just... I don't... why?

http://www.pizzadome.net/index.php

The Washer Dryer Cycle

About a dozen years ago Hurricane Floyd hit our neck of the woods, flooded our basement, and left us pretty wet. Our washer and dryer was under about 3 feet of water and we were told they wouldn't last long. They only put in another ten-years of service before giving up the ghost, with the washer finally unable to keep up. We replaced it with a nice front-loader unit, which had gotten great Consumer Reports ratings.

We decided a few weeks ago that the front-loader isn't really cutting it for us—the super-soft water pumped into it from our Culligan filter combined with all the super-smelly bike clothes i have didn't seem to be a good fit. Clothes often came out smelling cleaner but when you're starting with a bike jersey, you don't just want cleaner. It's a great unit, just shouldn't be attached to a water softener. It's easier to get a new washer than to re-run the pipes, and that's what we're doing.

(Which reminds me, that washer is now for sale, anyone want it? It's going for cheap and I'm going to put it up on Craigslist.)

So we went to Sears and ordered the biggest-capacity high-efficiency top-loaders we could find—big enough to do full-size sheets and blankets—and ordered that for delivery.

Yesterday the guys showed up and brought us the new washer and dryer, and had them take away the old dryer and the hosing for it that survived the flood.

About an hour later the Sears-assigned plumber shows up to connect the dyer. This has got to be an easy gig for those guys. Connect dryer, leave. Get paycheck from Sears.

They were surprised that the old gas hose had been removed. They attach dyer, leave.

About half-an-hour later I go to the basement, smell gas. I call the plumber, who thinks that it might be that the dryer just needs to burn off the gas-air mixture that it's go in there. I look behind the dryer and the gas hose is a bit of tubing that's even older looking than what was taken out—clearly this is some kind of fitting they had laying around in the truck.

Basically, their advice is to run the dryer to see if the gas smell burns off. Now mind you that the dryer works by creating fire from electricity and gas and is right near the gas smell. After a while it still smells like gas and I have them come back.

They put some of their blue bubbly gel stuff on the hose to see if they can find where it's leaking and pronounce very quickly that they don't see a leak, so i should call O&R to come check with the sniffer. (For those of you not living nearby O&R is the local gas utility.) I call O&R, who is super friendly and they say they'll send a guy out within the hour. (Faster service is expected if you answer the question "do you read books by open candles" in the affirmative.)

The O&R rep has been here before, I recognize him from some building project we did, and he's got the sniffer and wouldn't you know it the ancient hosing is leaking in several places. Luckily, O&R guy is smart enough to have a few brand-new in-bag hosing connectors in his truck (no doubt for guys who have dealt with Sears' recommended plumbers) and offers to put it on for me, thereby saving me a $150 plumber house call. Awesome.

So here's my question—if you were a plumber under contract with Sears and you were putting on shitty, old gas connectors, and someone has one that's obviously leaking, isn't it worth a trip to Home Depot to get a new hose? Because I'm sure as shit going to call Sears and whatever body licenses plumbers in the county and tell them that these guys gave me faulty gas connectors and then recommended I create a spark and flames right near the leaking area. Why not spend the thirty minutes and ten bucks to save your contract? And why not, like the utility guy did, have the right parts on the truck in the first place?

Mantis

Mantis, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Bowl-E

David: The Interviewer

A series of video interviews I did for PDN at the Photo Plus Expo trade show have just gone live. See me "man on the street" a bunch of photo industry folks. Can you tell which ones are nervous to be on camera?

Check out the videos (link now fixed).


Bonus points if you can find me in a video wearing a scarf and gloves.

The Final Continuity Issue

Okay J.J. Abrams, I appreciate you taking on Star Trek and refreshing it. It was a stale franchise, and even I lost faith in it. I know you've got to throw some things out, and I know you're trying to be judicious.

I also appreciate the trailer in front of the Bond film (actually more than I appreciated the Bond film itself) but one thing. Enterprise was built in space dock at Utopia Planitia, orbiting Mars. Couldn't be looked at from the ground. And the guys building it, probably wouldn't be arc welding. Cause you know, they would have phasers.

It's going to be a lot to swallow for us geeks.

Pocket Full of Posies

I'm working at Starbucks today, watching a pair of girls, both of whom are almost five (thanks chatty kids) who have just become best friends. The two of them came in separately, and were sitting across the store. They sort of gravitated toward each other—no doubt helped by the Madagascar Happy Meal toy one of them was playing with.

Now they're both playing, hugging and singing "ring around the rosie" together.

Why can't adults get along this well?

Warning fail

Warning fail, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

A few forgotten items

I usually have my travel shit together, at least when it comes to packing. However, I often find myself without nail clippers for some reason. I can't tell you how many pairs of nail clippers I've bought in the last few years of constant business travel. Luckily, they're cheap.

This trip though I forgot the handle of my razor, bringing only a pack of blades. I was going to head over to a pharmacy before some meetings here, but I never ended up with time, and so I discovered that one of the virtues of the Gillette Fusion razor blade is that the part that mounts to the handle is actually big enough to hold comfortably. So comfortable in fact that on space-limited trips I might leave the handle at home. I haven't yet figured out how to make the blade vibrate without the battery powered handle—jumping up and down does not seem prudent—but I'm working on it.

Yes, I know that most hotels have razors at the front desk. The single-bladed plastic torture items that pass for razors do not do good things to my face. It's better to go to most meetings with stubble than with toilet paper stuck to recent wounds.

The continuing hallway series.

The continuing hallway series., originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Outpost

Outpost, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Give A Little Bit

I hate cancer.

My grandfather died of esophageal cancer, no doubt picked up from decades of smoking. My friend Wil's mother Helen, a really great woman, died while being treated for cancer. I have known friends and strangers with it. As the blogger Elden of FatCyclist.com pointed out recently, "cancer is evil." He knows, his wife is dying slowly and painfully from it.
I've given money regularly to organizations like the American Cancer Society (cancer.org) and to the LiveStrong foundation (LiveStrong.org), and now to Susan G. Komen (komen.org). But I don't think that's enough. Our country could, if it wanted to, spend enough money in research to eradicate cancer from the planet. It seems more important though to focus on foreign policy blunders. Maybe that will change now.
Today I gave a platelet donation for the first time. Platelets, part of our blood, are vital to cancer treatment, among other things. Platelets are used in treatment of bone marrow transplant, organ transplant and other treatments (A friend of mine recently came close to lapsing into a coma due to a yet-not-quite-figured out condition causing her to have low platelets.)
The process takes just about two hours, and isn't much more involved than giving blood. Well, it IS mostly giving blood, though the blood is passed through a machine that separates out the platelets. Most of my time was spent watching The Soup on my iPhone, and sipping apple juice.
Other than the first stick, it's painless. If you're low on calcium your lips might tingle and so the phlebotomists have Tums on hand. (Next time I'm taking a few first.) Since I'm a pansy and prone to lightheadedness when giving blood, I had to have my very-comfy-donating-recliner tilted back all the way. Other than a few seconds of lightheadedness when I was still too upright, the process was fine.
Platelets only have a five-day shelf-live and they're vital to cancer treatment as they are to other medical treeatments.
Please, please, go give some platelets. Give blood too, of course, that's crucially important, but giving platelets will have a direct and intense effect on the life of someone with cancer or blood-based illness before the week is out.
If you're in the area, you can schedule a donation at nybloodcenter.org. Platelets can be given every three days, because the body makes them so quickly, so you can do it more than once a month. (And right now, if you donate four times before January 31st, you get a $35 Mastercard Gift Card.)
Of course, I'm going to keep giving money until there isn't any such thing as cancer, but I'm also going to give my time and my blood as well.

Happy Change Day!!!

When Fox reports it, it's time to celebrate!

My eyeball

My eyeball, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Hallowen - It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Hallowen - It's the most wonderful time of the year., originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Every video of teh Evah!

Interested in watching all the videos of your youth? Great, cause MTV Music has them all. ALL.

Video kills the radio star, indeed. Free video does at least.

Thursday and Friday haunted maze building and repair

Due to the horrifically odd/bad/annoying weather (flurries, are you shitting me?) we won't be doing any maze building Tuesday and Wednesday. We are going to be into emergency maze building and repair, all day Thursday and Friday.

Please, if you can help us build, we'll be starting at 10am Thursday and going to sunset. We'll be up again in the morning of Friday to get the walls finished.

Popcorn for the troops

Teddy Bass (Foster's son) is a Boy Scout, and they're raising money with a popcorn drive. (The Girl Scouts get the cookies, Boy Scouts get popcorn snacks.) I usually buy a bunch, but I'm going to buy a ton this year because the company's sending tins of popcorn snacks to our troops if you buy the Support Our Troops pack. You pay for the tin, a soldier gets it. Awesome idea. Doesn't matter your political leanings, the troops deserve a snack and some love. Go to orderpopcorn.com AND USE ORDER KEY TEKGN36 so Teddy gets the credit.