My Shit

Yay! Angus made SOMM.

I just submitted a draft of my 2nd year paper to my committee. I have 7 weeks left. I have to announce 2 wks before I present and I expect 2 major revisions that take 2 wks each. I have one week of slack. I might be hosed. But at least it is submitted.

I love fall. Fall has finally arrived in Georgia. The weather during the past couple of weeks has been just fantastic. I could handle this all year 'round. I get to drive my old car with the t-tops out. We open up the house during the day and the close it all up at night. It has been getting a little cool at night, but the house seems to retain the heat it has absorbed during the day. Even if it gets a little cool, that's nice for sleeping. A dog, a cat, and a warm comforter make for a good nights rest.

Sierra Nevada has started using bottle caps that require a bottle opener again! Now if they'd just start bottle conditioning again.

Our refrigerator has been on the fritz. It would quit cooling the 'frige section while the freezer section stayed frozen. We took some advice we found on the internets and ended up defrosting the entire thing, not once, but twice. Every time we would plug it in, it seemed like within 12 hours it would throw this error code up on the display (though you would never know it was an error code unless you were a EE or CS with some experience) and eventually the upper section would quit cooling well and then finally quit cooling at all.

Being a former EE, I decided to pull out my trusty digital multimeter from Radio Shack (I love the little cheapo clam shell one) and started ohm'ing out the connections. I soon realized the defrost mechanism was showing as an open circuit. I ohm'ed out the defrost element on the coil and it was fine. So it had to be somewhere in between the control board and the defrost element. I finally found the circuit, ordered the parts to replace those that failed, and $20 and a day later it is still running. Yay.

Sometimes in life you might get the feeling that you've seen it all.

Then you go to a Nickel Creek concert where, for part of the encore, they do a cover version of Toxic.

Moments like these are a less than subtle reminder that there are many things out there yet to be discovered.

Most days I like having older cars. They are neat and idiosyncratic. But then there are days where I'd really like a new car. The picture of the Porsche Cayman below would work out just fine.

• Palila got a job
• The truck is running again
• My shoes finally arrived from Zappos today