Similar to the constable in charge of the Watch of Messina, I try to be sincere and try take writing seriously but fear I will use the wrong words to convey my thoughts and that my desire to speak eloquently will become an occasion for parody.
I have been reading about LCHF, which stands for Low Carb – High Fat and pretty much turns the food pyramid upside down. It is probably not right to call it a diet since the word ‘diet’ has come to mean something temporary you do till you loose a certain amount of weight rather than how you eat on a day to day basis.
I really like the way this video answers the questions people naturally have since LCHF goes against conventional wisdom. Interesting thing is, the arguments all make sense.
Favorite Quote: “People around you will tell you that you are crazy but still they cannot tell you you are wrong either”
When touring the ruins at Chichen Itza, vendors are everywhere.
Seems that the original property owners are able to sell the rights to vendors to set up stalls inside the park.
You are regularly approached and asked to buy something for $1 or as they refer to it “Almost Free.”
As we were leaving the park, along with the banter “Cheaper on the Way Out,” I saw this table of colorful skulls for sale.
Besides being worried about suitcases being overweight, we had spent almost 2 hours saying ‘no, thank-you” constantly and so we ended up not buy anything at the park.
Now I wish I had hefted one of these to see how much they weighed cause they would have made great office gifts to our staff.
I have never quite understood the whole “Dia de los Muertos” or “Day of the Dead” thing.
I am not sure how the Catholic Church, a Christian faith, can back such a non-biblical idea and at the expense of its people.
Many families spend a month’s (or more) wages to appease their ancestors and here I thought the dead ancestors were in purgatory begging for us to pray for them! I guess the Gospel was not the Church’s primary objective when they came to Mexico.
On our vacation to the Mayan Riviera outside Cancun, we decided to visit the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza again.
The tour was paid for by Fisher Communications, the company that was sponsoring this week-long getaway, so why not!
Once you get past the vendor stalls along the entrance to Chichen Itza, the Temple of Kukulkan aka El Castillo dominates the scene.
Built by the Mayans before the 12th century, El Castillo served as a temple to the god Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent deity.
The temple stands about 98 ft high and each side is about 181 ft at the base. The stairways on the four faces of the pyramid rise at 45° angle.
There are 91 steps on each side, and in 2004, the first time we visited Chichen Itza, you were still able to climb to the top.
Climbing up was not a problem. But those short steps at a 45° angle were enough to scare anyone on the way down.
Besides keeping the temple from being destroyed by the thousands of tourists who visit each year, another advantage is that it makes getting a great picture much easier.
Here is a link for more of my Chichen Itza, Tulum, and Aventura Spa Palace Resort photos.
It will take me a while to get them all processed so keep checking back.
Was needing a hotel room near the Spokane airport here in a couple of weeks, so once again I turned to the trusty BiddingForTravel.com website. I read through other people’s ‘success stories’ on the BiddingForTravel Washington Hotel forum and saw that $50 had won a room on Priceline.com before but not often. So I figured I would start my bidding low and use BiddingForTravel’s rebid strategy to rebid twice more today and again tomorrow if needed.
What is BiddingForTravel’s ‘free rebid’ strategy? Priceline will not allow you to just increase your bid without waiting the obligatory 24 hours to try again. But, if you ‘significantly’ change your bid then you can rebid again right away. One of the acceptable changes is to add another ‘area’ to your bid. The trick is to add an area that you cannot win. In this case, Spokane Airport has hotels available from 1 to 3 stars. Liberty Lake and North Spokane only have hotels available up to 2.5 stars. So, if I am bidding $50 for a 3-star hotel in the Spokane Airport area and lose, I can add the Liberty Lake area and up my bid to say, $55. If I loose that bid, then I can add North Spokane and try $60. Failing that, I start over tomorrow at $60. If you have the time and inclination, you could use $1 or $2 increments instead, which I have done when spending a week at a hotel.
Based on previous successful bids by others on the forum and the BiddingForTravel list of Spokane Airport hotels used by Priceline, the 3-star hotel that seemed to come up most often was the Ramada Spokane Airport and Waterpark. The hotel’s website showed that I could book a room direct with them for $124/night.
Priceline’s normal rate to book the hotel without bidding was also $124/night. So, I started my bid at $50 for a 3-star Spokane Airport hotel, figuring it would be rejected but I could try 2 more times today and start over tomorrow if all failed. My $50 bid was accepted! Now I am feeling foolish. Did I start too high? How much lower could I have bid?
Luckily, I still had to book the return hotel room, so this time I started at $40. It was declined. Added Liberty Lake and bumped up my bid to $45. Priceline countered, telling me they could get me a room for $58. I declined. I then added North Spokane and bumped up my bid to $50. Accepted. Now don’t feel so silly about my first $50 bid being accepted.
There are a number of other strategies to use for getting free rebids on Priceline. I think my record is having 6 different ‘areas’ I was using. I was willing to stay in 3 of the areas and used the other 3 as free rebids. Even with just the 3 areas you are willing to stay in you have a number of ways to get free rebids by combining them into multiple permutations but that should be another post at another time.
Just purchased a 2012 Prius V (why have I not written about that yet?) and one of the more active topics on the PriusChat forums is how to disable the annoying backup beep that sounds continuously while you are in reverse.
Now, you might think that a backup beep is a great feature.
Only problem is this beep is very loud and is only inside the car!
It cannot be heard by those behind you as you would expect.
In the previous Prius incarnations you could hold your tongue a certain way and press a series of dash buttons along with your key fob to disable this ‘safety’ feature.
Now, Toyota says to take it to your local dealer for them to make the change.
Only problem is many dealers don’t even know it can be done (or at least the people you and I would talk to don’t) and many new owners report that the dealer wants to charge anywhere from $50 to $100 to do a 2 minute job.
Some dealers do the right thing and turn it off free of charge but some only do it after the owner called Toyota corporate and complained.
Me, I know my dealership would do it if I asked but why have them do something that I can waste hours figuring out for myself.
First, I needed a way to talk to the car’s computer.
I had already bought ELM 327 Bluetooth OBD2 scan tool from Amazon that plugs into the ODB-II slot under the dash so I could monitor some of this little hybrid’s inner workings (here is another post I should have written).
The device uses bluetooth to communicate to the outside world and wouldn’t you know it, a number of Android apps have been written to accommodate.
(Note: Seems that the OBD2 port has a constant power supply, so even if you turn the car off the device stays on as does the Bluetooth, so probably best not to leave it plugged into the car overnight any more than you would leave your dome light on.)
Seemed like this little scan tool should be able to send data as well as receive, so now I just had to figure out how.
I tried using the android ‘Torque’ app that I was using to monitor the vehicle but had no luck then I remember I had seen a program called ‘ELM 327 Terminal‘ which claimed to allow you to communicate with the ELM 327 adapter, sending commands to your hearts content.
My first attempts to just send the strings I had seen in the forums did not work.
Then I ran across a post explaining how to send these commands to a USB connected ELM327 device using a laptop and a terminal program and figured the same commands should work with the ELM 327 Terminal Android app as well.
Out to the car.
Plugged in the ELM327 device.
Activated Bluetooth on my phone and told the terminal program to ‘connect’.
I had the terminal program send a AT I command just to make sure I was communicating with the device.
Now I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
I turned ‘Timer’ (right side of screen above ‘clear’) off otherwise the command you send gets sent over and over again.
(Not sure it matters but in case it does, I had the car ‘on’ with the ‘Ready’ light showing and all the doors were closed.)
First we need to tell ELM327 where to direct our commands, in this case we want to talk to ECU (engine control unit?) 7C0, the combination meter.
Type: AT SH 7c0 (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: OK
Type: 21ac (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: 61 AC 00 (00 means continuous reverse beep)
Type: 3bac40 (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: 7F 3B 78 (no idea :)
Returns: 7B AC (meaning done)
Type: 21ac (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: 61 AC 40 (40 means only a single beep now)
Now for the real test, I popped the Prius into ‘Reverse’ and joy! joy! only 1 beep.
Guess now I will have to figure out what other options I want to configure.
Got a kick out of some of the answers Patrick Rothfuss, author of the ‘King Killer Trilogy’, gave in an interview on SFFWorld. I have read the first two books and am looking forward to the third.
When asked if the “fantasy genre will ever come to be recognized as veritable literature?”
Rothfuss’ response that many of the ‘classics’ are fantasy was something I had never considered:
The lion’s share of old-school literature IS fantasy, they just pretend it isn’t. The Odyssey is full of gods and spells. Oedipus Rex has a sphinx and a prophecy. There are witches in Macbeth, faeries in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a ghost in Hamlet. Dante’s Inferno? Beowulf? All looks like fantasy to me….
As I try to read my way through the Pulitzer and Newbery award winners, I couldn’t agree more with his final conclusion:
As far as having my book recognized as literature? [Pat shrugs] Why would I want that? I mean, have you read Great Expectations? Gech. Why would I want to invited into their little club? Give me Tim Powers and Phillip K Dick. Give me Le Guin, Gaiman, and Pratchett. Give me McKillip and Whedon. These are the storytellers. These are our modern mythmakers. Our oracles. Our dreamers. I want to be on that team.
When Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cancer in 1951, cells from her tumor became the first human cell line that scientists were able to keep alive in vitro, not dying after a few cell divisions. These ‘immortal’ cells were shipped to researchers around the world and used for conducting many experiments.
As the book states, these “HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.”
This was a very interesting book. I learned a lot about cancer research in the book but the book is so much more than that. It is impossible not to feel empathy for Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, as you go through this story but my heart really was moved by the devastation that poverty had on her and her family.
In my middle class life I cannot imagine the horrors that her and her family had to endure primarily due to being poor but of course also exacerbated by being black.
The lack of education kept impeding the families understanding of what had happened to Henrietta’s cells and caused misunderstandings on both sides of any conversation.
The strange spiritual beliefs also made me ponder my own beliefs while trying not to be judgmental. Bible verses are used to explain the ‘immortality’ of Henrietta’s cells; promises of eternal life twisted to show that Henrietta is one of God’s chosen but I ‘know’ these verses are for all believers, not special proof-texts to explain anything else. The author said that these verses are the result of taking the Bible literally, I must disagree since for me ‘literal’ also means ‘in-context’. I want to conclude that mine is a ‘rational’ faith but am sure that my beliefs must appear just as ‘strange’ to others.
This is not a book about beliefs or education but about a family. In reality the immortal cells are just the glue that holds the story together and it is a very interesting story and highly recommended.
I listen to quite a few audiobooks and I find that my MP3 players have never been able to play them at sufficient volume.
Sometimes it is the fault of the player but sometimes it is the fault of the original material.
On my old Sansa MP3 player I installed a hack that allowed you to boost the volume of the file above normal.
Now, since I use my Android phone, you would think it would be easier but sadly no.
I have tried a number of programs that purport to boost the output of the phone but none seem to work on my phone.
What to do?
I realized the easy solution is to fix the ‘volume’ of the MP3 file using Audacity.
Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder that works in Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
According to the web site, you can use Audacity to:
Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
I have used Audacity before when I was listening to podcasts during my drive time.
I used it convert each podcast to a single mono channel and speed up the playback 25%.
A 30 minute podcast would only take 20 minutes to listen to and I could wear one earbud and not miss a thing.
Now, I just need to boost the volume and Audacity makes it an easy task.
I created a ‘chain’ (Audacity’s version of a batch file) that converts the file to mono (why not) then amplifies it and finally saves the file..
These ‘chains’ can be applied to a single file or to a whole folder of files, making batch conversion quite easy for each book.
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You can see from the two images on the left that the original sound file’s amplitude was way low. (No wonder I could barely hear it.)
Below it is the same file after it has been amplified using Audacity.
I am sure if I was amplifying music files I would have to be more careful but for voice I have found that I can even amplify the volume more without any noticeable degradation.
Now I can play my audiobooks and not have to strain to hear them.
My 6th book to read for 2012, “The Road by Cormac McCarthy” was on my to-read list because it was the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Set in post-apocalyptic America, the story is about a father’s love for his son.
The father and son are heading south in search of warmer weather.
Along the way they are able to find food even though marauding gangs and other travelers have been scavenging the bleak and barren land.
The father protects his son by avoiding all possible encounters with others yet, in the end, gets wounded by a sniper with a bow and arrow, a wound that would prove fatal.
The ending was a let-down and seemed like a easy-out.
I read a few reviews on-line but nobody addressed the ending, so maybe I missed something.
It seems the father spent the whole book avoiding others only to have his kid hook up with a stranger 5 minutes after the father dies and the kid and his new family live happily-ever-after.
Was the father wrong the whole time or was the kid just lucky or….?
This bookstore owner looks like they had way too much time on their hands, but I love it!
“After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West).”
Told much in the fashion of a murder/mystery, O’Reilly provides a good introduction to this tragic saga. The story contains a lot of detail and O’Reilly does not find a conspiracy theory he doesn’t like.
Though a fun read, it appears the authors took some liberties with some facts based on some online reviews by historians.
I am sure the desire to fan the conspiracy portion of the story is part of the reason. I don’t think either author is a historian which probably is another reason for the errors. Hopefully ‘real’ historians will learn to write for the masses so we can get both enjoyable reads and fewer errors, till then….
After my adventures the other night taking some night shots around the Cable Bridge area (guess I need to put more of those photos up) I decided to try some more night shots. My luck with the ugly “Ash Grove Cement Plant” made me think of the old abandoned General Mills grain silo off Clearwater Ave. in Kennewick.
Rather than shoot the picture from Clearwater Ave, I crossed the railroad track to shot it from the other direction, putting the empty railroad cars in the foreground.
I think it turned out pretty well except for some of the bright lights that shined through.
I looked online for info about the grain silo but couldn’t find anything about when it was built, etc.
Anyone know?
Just finished John Grisham’s “The Litigators“, book 1 towards my goal of 100 books in 2012.
I only read 69 books in 2011 but I only read 9 of the 12 months, so, if I can stay on track this year I should be able to read 100.
This book was added to my ‘to read’ list because it had been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 9 weeks and is currently still at #4.
It was a fun read. Although predictable I wanted to keep going to see what would actually happen.
My Summary:
In a highly unlikely scenario, a young Harvard-trained lawyer looses it after 5 years of 100-hour work weeks at a large corporate firm and finds himself passed out in the shady Chicago law offices of two curmudgeonly lawyers who spend most of their time chasing ambulances when not tied up in divorce and DUI cases.
A multi-million dollar liability case falls in their lap and with big dollar signs blinding their judgement they are drug into a case that threatens to not just sink the firm but the three lawyers as well.
By day Ash Grove‘s cement plant in Kennewick is a fairly bleak. A large gray structures surrounded by gray cement dust. But by night it takes a much more ethereal quality.
