Scott's Blarney

Published again

Nothing short of total Perl.com domination!

Here’s the direct link for when the main page is updated again.

About Penny

Penny is our 7 month old shih-tzu (here she is with Brooke):

Penny has a nose for beef:

Penny lets you know when she doesn’t want to be moved:

Penny sleeps on her back and snores like a trucker:

The bane of every washing machine

Girls. Specifically, girl things. More specifically, girls’ hair things.

The latest mechanical failure in our life occurred last week on Wednesday when the washing machine, which had been making rattling noises for a while, simply stopped draining.

Previous recent mechanical failures include:

September 15: car (‘94 Corolla) engine dies on way to airport near I-80 and Redwood Road. I was able to coax it over the hill to the off-ramp, start it a few more times as it died, and left it at a gas station nearby. Caught a ride from Diamond Parking and Shuttle (thanks dude!) and made my flight anyway. Car still in shop.
September 16: on the flight home, the zealous flight steward filled my water glass to the brim and as he handed it to me, spilled an unknown quantity on my laptop (‘10 MacBook Pro) keyboard. Keyboard behaves as if the Command key is down all the time. $300 to replace keyboard.
September 20: scooter (‘07 Genuine Buddy) loses all power on the Lindon hill going north into Pleasant Grove. I coast for maybe a quarter mile, goose it, and the engine revives, but with a new rattling noise. The next day I see that there is no oil at all in case. I add maybe 300ml and drive it up to the Scooter Lounge and it’s out of oil again. Dave says he’s not sure what’s going on there.
October 1: van bumper meets irresistible force (boulder) in Millcreek Canyon. New bumper needed. Van is in shop for 3 days (we broke down and got a rental).
October 5: washing machine stops draining, constant beeping (this is a Fisher & Paykel GWL 15, for anyone finding this from the internets) and then unfamiliar light patterns on the control panel (3, 6, 8 from left to right). A call to customer support let me know that that’s a pump problem. Saturday I took a few hours and disassembled the machine. Look what I found in the pump:

The silver chain you see in the picture was wrapped around the pump spindle. The bobby and straight pins were lodged in the impeller. Total time for repair: 3 hours. Quality time spent with my sons in learning new skills and, ahem, interesting conversation: priceless.

Love you, gals!

Published

I made the cover of Perl.com!

Here’s the direct link for when the main page is updated again.

Thanks chromatic!

Email win

I made myself a rule for email a couple of weeks ago:

The inbox will be smaller each time I check my mail.

I eventually agreed that the rule doesn’t apply when I’m sending a new message out; this keeps my workflow productive and simple. I’m checking email less often and my inbox is now at 16 messages. Win.

I’m not at rock bottom, because a few of the messages are important but hard to move (things that will take concerted effort over time to finish), but I’ll get there eventually.

Email: so far so good

On Tuesday when I started this little experiment, I had 359 messages in my inbox. This morning I have 45. I’m calling that a ‘win’.

I have, with one or two exceptions, made sure that each time I checked my mail that there was at least one fewer message in the inbox than before I checked it.

The messages left in my inbox are mostly reminders of important (but non-urgent) things I need to do. I’ll find another way to deal with those in the next few days.

I did make myself an exception that if I was sending a message, that I didn’t have to shrink the inbox. That helped me stay productive with my work.

Have I checked my email less? It could be that I’m just hyped up on the idea of a small inbox and eager to file away my messages. Here are the numbers:

Tuesday: 21
Wednesday: 13
Thursday: 9

A little better… but that still looks like the pattern of an email-checking addict to me. Maybe once my inbox gets small enough (I’m shooting for zero… or smaller!) I can deal with the craving better.

Managing email

Email is a problem for me: I check it too often and do too little about it when I check it, making for an unwieldy inbox. I think I’ve come up with a simple rule (it’s been working for me so far) that will help me beat my inbox:

The inbox will be smaller each time I check my mail.

This rule has two desirable economic properties:

work will get done each time I check email (in the form of answering, filing away, or deleting messages), even if it’s only one email. Eventually this will force me to deal with messages that are over a year old.
I will check email less often, as there is now a price for doing so

I’ll let you know how it’s going next week.

Wattvision setup

I broke down and ordered a Wattvision device a couple of weeks ago. Here is my setup experience.

Box arrives

Unboxing

I followed the setup instructions, but for some (bizarre, unknown) reason my MacBook Pro (June 2010) refused to connect to the Gateway’s (the little deck-of-cards-sized device is called the Gateway) IP 169.254 IP address under any network configuration or any browser. I used another web browser on another computer and finished the setup that way.

I should mention that I emailed Wattvision when I couldn’t connect. I received an email response within minutes telling me to call the support number. I did, and Savraj walked me through some things. He took my word that I really couldn’t connect. After going through everything both of us could think of, he promptly offered to send me a new Gateway at no charge. I agreed, but thought I’d try the configuration with another web browser first, which worked (so I called him back and told him not to worry about the new Gateway). +1 for great support.

Now with it working, here’s how I actually installed it. First I “repurposed” my phone utility box (I use a VOIP phone now):

Inside the utility box was a CAT-5 cable going into my house. This meant a lot to me: I didn’t want to drill any new holes in my exterior wall or fish a phone line through a finished basement ceiling. I grabbed my punchdown tool and wired up an Ethernet jack:

I tucked the cables behind the phone test ports for tidiness:

Here is the entire exterior setup. You can see the Wattvision sensor strapped to the power meter. To the left of the meter you can see the white phone cable, which emerges below and goes into the phone utility box:

Next, I found where the CAT-5 cable comes into the 66-block in my basement. I added another Ethernet jack (all standard Ethernet wiring):

I plugged in a standard phone cable into this jack and to the Wattvision Gateway, the supplied power to the Gateway. The lights flickered for a second then went dark. Gasp! Did I kill the Gateway? No, it does it again when I remove and add power. Hm…

I looked at the ends of the phone cable:

Ah! Phone cabling is straight through. I wired the CAT-5 cable as Ethernet, so that means I need to reverse the wires in the phone cable:

Plug it in and voilà.

Joseph’s vs. Taylor’s Biscuits

Our family took Heirloom Restaurant Group’s great biscuit showdown challenge. Here’s the summary (tl;dr at the bottom):

Mixing ease

Taylor’s biscuits were easier to make: dropping vs. rolling and a higher oven temperature made for quicker to make and quicker to cook biscuits. I think Taylor’s biscuits came out 10 minutes earlier than Joseph’s.

Texture

Joseph’s biscuits had a flakier and slightly more buttery texture. At the 10 minute mark on Taylor’s biscuits, I could see the butter bubbling at the bottom of the biscuits, some of which eventually soaked in. Joseph’s biscuits cooked more evenly but required rolling and cutting.

Flavor

Some differences: we opted for buttermilk for Taylor’s recipe and heavy cream for Joseph’s recipe. The difference was plain to taste. Joseph’s biscuits tasted familiar to me and were comfortable to eat. Ana thought Taylor’s biscuits had superior flavor, but then admitted that she liked the texture of Joseph’s biscuits and preferred eating them.

A funny thing

Ana followed Joseph’s recipe and I followed Taylor’s; each of us liked the other’s biscuits better. Our children showed the opposite pattern: the two oldest (who express more of my genes) preferred Taylor’s and the two youngest (who express more of Ana’s genes) preferred Joseph’s biscuits.

Caveats

Some things we probably didn’t get right: Ana cut the butter a little too much and possibly let the dough warm up too much: the result was that Joseph’s biscuits raised fine but then fell slightly. For my part, I’m not handy in the kitchen. I noticed I could have folded the buttermilk a touch more (there was some unmixed flour on top of some of the biscuits) and maybe been more careful sizing the drops (my biscuits were of all shapes and sizes).

Things to try

Ana thinks she’d like to try Taylor’s recipe using Joseph’s method (rolling and cutting).

tl;dr

Our family was split evenly between the two, but because this is my blog, I’m giving Joseph’s biscuits the edge. If Ana cooks up Taylor’s recipe with Joseph’s method, I’ll update this entry.

Letter to Senator Orrin Hatch on the Finance Reform Bill

Find your own senator here.

Mr. Hatch,

I am worried that Senator Dodd’s new finance bill (AYO10306.xml)[4] will harm small business investing by angel investors by requiring all investors to have a minimum amount of capital, requiring startups to undergo an SEC review, and subjecting angels to burdensome regulation.

I’m not an angel investor, but as a small business owner I’ve used them over the years to give necessary liquidity to my fledgling businesses. Small businesses represent a sizable piece of the US economy, as I’m sure you’re aware. Yes, many of them fail, but that risk is already borne by the investors who knew what they were getting into, and the economy at large is largely insulated from their failures.

Federal oversight will add no additional protection (unless the SEC has a magic crystal ball that will indicate whether a business will succeed or fail), and will hamper creative startups who had to really “shop” their idea until they found an investor who “got it” (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Apple all represent risky startups of this kind).

Please see:

Mashable

and:

USA Today

For the US economy to become strong again, we need the kind of innovation and jobs that come from small businesses. Please leave small business regulation alone—it’s worked remarkably well, even in these tough times.

I hope you’ll work with Senator Dodd in repairing this bill in these areas.

Scott Wiersdorf