Kitchen Backsplash

This weekend past, we decided to put up a kitchen backsplash. I went to the local Home Depot and picked out some tiles and supplies, which cost less than I'd thought, and started working on it on Sunday morning.

This is how it started off - I moved things out of the way, laid down some newspaper, and sandpapered the wall a bit to let the wall give a bit more grip for the mortar adhesive backing.

I have a cement mixer attachment for my drill, that I'd originally bought to mix tar for my driveway. It made short work of mixing the mortar, and the actual process of attaching everything to the wall went pretty smoothly.

Here's the tile cutter - I had to get pretty handy with it to cut 3/16th inch strips of tile for the top edge of the backsplash. I had hoped that the tile would fit exactly after allowing for the spacing, but no such luck.

I had to clip a few tiles so that it would fit around the power sockets and phone socket. This nipper tool was actually more difficult to get the hang of than the tile cutter. I ended up cheating a bit - instead of cutting L-shaped pieces, I cut 2 rectangles instead. Not really too noticeable.

All the tiles are up at this point - I used the extras to extend the backsplash down a bit on the back of the stove - I didn't go all the way down since, well, it's not a part of the wall that we ever see.

After the tiles had some time to set, I mixed up the grout and applied it. These pictures are after it's been applied and the excess had been wiped off with a wet sponge. The lighting is a little bad, it was late and I had forgotten to turn the flash on.

Once the grout had some time to start drying, I applied caulk to the outside edges at the right end and the area behind the stove.

Here is the finished result, as per the top of the post. :D


It was kind of a tiring job, especially since the space I could work in was rather limited. I whacked my head on the range hood a couple of times pretty hard as well, but oh well. The results are pretty decent for something we suddenly decided on, on the weekend. 4 hours for the tile cutting and setting in the daytime, and an hour for the grouting in the evening, and a little more time for caulking and putting everything back together before the day was over. The only part I'd not thought of was the power sockets becoming inset on the wall after the tile was added, but all I had to do was remount the sockets and it turned out all right.

Only thing left to do is to put a sealant on the grout in a few days, and it'll be complete.

Cheers,

Allen.

New Car Stereo

I picked up a new car stereo - a JVC KD-R810. It was on sale at Best Buy, $250 marked down to $200 in one of their weekly specials. They always have some model or another on sale.

It's the first aftermarket one I've ever bought. Mainly, I bought it to get a USB port so I can listen to music on USB. This should replace the pile of unlabelled CDs in the car with a a single USB stick! (though it's likely that I will wind up with a pile of unlabelled USB sticks later.)

The secondary thing (which interestingly enough, is probably the most expensive component of the stereo) is a Bluetooth audio setup, so I can use my Blackberry in the car hands free.

I've never done any sort of installation like this myself, and I didn't like that I had to disconnect/reconnect the car battery. The last time I did something with the battery, I got some nasty sparks flying. I figured I'd let the Best Buy do the install. They finished the job in about an hour's time and showed me that all the speakers were hooked up correctly using the fade and balance controls. They demonstrated how it plays mp3s off of a USB stick. The tech couldn't figure out how to do radio presets so I guess Ill have to figure it out later. The rear USB cable sits in the glove compartment, and the microphone is sussed in the top middle of the windshield. It's pretty nice work I think.

They also said they can undo the install to put the factory radio back in for free, if I wanted to, such as if I was selling my car etc.

The install cost $70, the price of their USB/microphone deck install, and the only additional item I needed was some Corolla-specific wiring. So all told, about $300.

Anyways, looking at the unit in the dash now...

The unit sticks out of the dash a bit which I'm not used to - the old unit fit flush in the DIN slot. I'm also supposed to be able to change the colour of the displays and dials seperately... however a 2002 Corolla doesn't have a coloured lighting scheme unless you consider white lights on plain analog dials and plain liquid crystal displays some sort of theme. Maybe I'll just set the colour to white. :P

I can't seem to see the display when I'm wearing my sunglasses, what's the deal with that? Why is the protective cover polarized?

The bluetooth setup went pretty smoothly, you set a PIN and off it goes to sync with your phone. The voice dialling works very nicely. I hope the calls are clear too, but I'll have to find out later.

Its time to go root through my music collection. :D

Allen.

Banana Bread

Somehow the entire summer's slipped away, and I haven't blogged anything... or baked anything either! So I decided to bake a banana bread cause we had some bananas that were starting to hang around a little too long. I was intending to use the last 2 very ripe bananas, but Kathy decided to eat one, not realizing I was going to bake them. I was left with just one banana.

Anyways, I looked around the internet looking for a quick banana bread recipe, and generally they are like this:

350 degree preheated oven

dry stuff:

• 2 cups of flour
• 1 cup sugar
• a teaspoon each of baking power, baking soda, cinnamon
• half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

wet stuff:

• 2 eggs
• teaspoon of vanilla to make the eggs more pleasant
  
• half cup of butter (I used veg oil instead of butter)
• 2-3 very ripe bananas on the verge of fermenting into banana liquor.
  

Mix all the dry stuff in one bowl, mix all the wet stuff in a second bowl, then add the dry to the wet, and mix them all. I have this vague recollection that I'm not supposed to over-mix it or it becomes like chewing rubber. Put this in an oiled baking pan in the oven and let it bake. Typical time is about 45 minutes. Check with a toothpick or a chopstick lanced through it's heart, if anything sticks to your stick, it's not ready, bake for another 5-10 minutes.

Since I was short a couple of bananas, I just added a little extra oil and some water to shore up the moisture content, I didn't really measure. I probably didn't add enough.

Here's some pics of the end result:

after baking for an HOUR

Shiny...

I think I need a smaller pan or a bigger recipe, stuff always looks kind of flat coming out of it.

Looks good, tastes good, but a little bit on the dry side cause of the missing banana. Blah!

New Computer

Instead of crossposting from my games blog, I'll just point you there.

• New Computer
• New Monitors!
• Details
• and most importantly, Pictures!

Allen.

Thinking about Computer Upgrades

(crosspost from my games blog)

My computer had been acting a bit sluggish recently so I figured it was time to wipe the OS and reinstall it. However, the system kept bluescreening my Vista install. I couldn't get around it with whatever BIOs setting changes I had available, so I decided maybe it was time for this hardware to retire. I mean, I'd run it since about 2005. I figured I could at least save the CPU, which was a decent dual core AMD Athlon II 64 x2 4800+, which was a Socket 939 like my wife's single core computer. But when I installed the CPU on her system, it started crashing too. Also, putting her CPU in my system revived it.

It looks like my CPU had decided to go loony.

So, it was time to start thinking seriously about upgrades.

My system is at the point where if I buy a new CPU, it would start an avalanche of upgrades:

• Another motherboard with a modern socket to fit the CPU, since Socket 939 is obsolete.
  
• New RAM memory as well since my old DDR 400 is not viable for the new CPU/mobo.
  
• New power supply to match the sockets on the mobo and video card (why are they 6pin and 8 pin now instead of 4pin and 6pin? sigh)

The only things that I would be able to salvage would be my video cards, hard drives, case, and fans.

Each of the 4 new components - mobo, CPU, memory, and power, would mean $100 for a base model or a $200 for a future proof economical model, or even more for a hobbyist model. (Hello $400 motherboards and $700 CPUs) So I would be spending somewhere between $400 to $800 for the parts.

Those prices are fairly reasonable, however the problem is - what should I get? Or more accurately, which motherboard should I get? Everything hinges on the motherboard.

I want to have full bandwidth for my 2 video cards. SLI or not, I want it to have 16x1 PCIe for EACH card. Often, the data path is one 16x1 that they break down into 8x1 for each card. Thus you get reduced performance for each of the cards. I mean, you get more performance than a single card, but probably nothing like if you have 2 cards each with a dedicated full PCIe path. However, there isn't really a lot of data that I've found that tells me just HOW much bandwidth my video cards use, so I'm not sure if I REALLY need this or if I'm just being a hypochondriac when I think that 2 card SLI isn't running much faster than 1 card.

As a side note, I do want to run a 3 or 4 monitor setup someday. Probably not tomorrow though. The price of an ideal minimum bezel 3x1 monitor setup seems to be just under $2000 right now. I could get some regular widescreens and plug them in but I dunno how that will be. Plus, gaming - 3d games performance is geared for 1680x1050 or 1900x1200 screens, not... 3600x1900 or 4800x1900 screens. I would probably have to turn every detail off and it would probably still bring my video cards to their knees. Sigh. eyefinity gaming, which would handle it, would cost another $550.

I want it to support 3 Gb/s SATA, or even that new 6 Gb/s SATA and USB 3.0 However, I don't have any devices that go anywhere close to that sort of speed. I've always bought the best bang for the buck kind of drives usually. These still rate way higher than my bottleneck CPU and RAM though, so I'm not too concerned about that part of it. I definitely want it to have eSATA since I have an eSATA/USB2.0 HD dock. Especially since 1.5 Terabyte drives cost like $100 now. Currently I plug it in through USB2.0 and it's pretty slow - workable but.... slow.

I want the SATA jacks to NOT get covered by my video cards. My current mobo has 4 SATA jacks - and half of them are covered when I put in the primary video card. Is that on purpose? I mean I could understand if it was the 2nd card that covers the jacks, meaning you should either run the 2nd card OR 2 extra SATA devices due to bandwidth restrictions, but why is it under the FIRST graphics card?

Anyways, this means I am still looking for a good motherboard. Nothing really fits my criteria right now except maybe a 790FX or a 780n board, but those are like a year old now, shouldn't there be something newer/better?

Here's my two best bets right now (with google links):

• GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (crossfire)
• ASUS M3N-HT (sli)

In the meantime, I bought a used Athlon 64 x2 3800+ CPU for $35, my mobo claims it peaks up at about 100 degrees Celsius when running. :P I don't know if the CPU is bad or if my mobo sensor is bad, haha. It's still working, I mean, but I dont really have much hopes for it's longevity.

Allen.

btw, ebay is selling my old dead Athlon x2 4800+ CPU for like $200! That's crazy!

Shouldn't eggs be refrigerated?

This is at the local Chinese supermarket.


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Sent using BlackBerry

Baby Explosive Bowel Movements

If a crib was an aircraft carrier, and Connor was an F-14, I guess I could say that we have been having some surprising and powerful liquid jet blast accidents. I mean, the jet wash sweeps right over the deck to places we prefer to be untouched by jet wash. It even jets uh, things, right off into the ocean sometimes. Rescue and recovery efforts are a difficulty we don't like to deal with on a regular basis.

Yes, I know these are F-18s

So we jury-rigged a Jet Blast Deflector on the deck, in the form of a rectangular plastic tub, placed on its side, and aft of the engines. It's done the trick, preventing an accident just last scheduled maintenance even.

These F-14s can be tricky to maintain. :P

Allen.

Edit:

Click the button if you want to see sprayed poop below:

Messy but at least we didn't have to replace kleenex boxes or clean the whole bed and carpet beyond again. Just the underpad and the basin. :D

Salt & Pepper Shakers

These are on every table in the cafeteria at work, and are absolutely cute.

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry.

Bottle Warmer

This is a pretty effective bottle warmer, though it has a totally inconvenient filling system.

What is with this weird precision water measuring test tube? (its like it came out of a science lab or something) What is with this completely arbitrary 1 - 10 numbering scheme? Why not use millilitres, cc, teaspoons, or seconds' worth of steam?

Trying to put in exactly 4 units of water in the tube is so annoying. It is so easy to go over the limit.

Sometimes, if I'm not heating the exact amount I've measured out for the bottle warmer, I just use a bit of boiling water in a mug instead. Its faster than trying to figure out how many units of water I'll need for various amounts of milk.

Allen.

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry.

Peeling a Kiwi

Where the spoon fits

Given that peeling Kiwis is not something I commonly do, I didn't know exactly how to do it. I always knew it was with a spoon, but I didn't know what else was involved. So I cut the Kiwi lengthwise in half, and then the ends off. I wedged the spoon between the skin and the flesh and scraped the flesh out, worked out okay. I guess I should have checked the hundreds of how-to instructions that are available on the net, but when you're already up to your elbows with kitchen stuff, its hard to clean up and then go look it up. :P

What a curvaceous beauty!

Kiwis and more kiwis

P.s. the white stem part in the middle is hard to eat. :P

Baby Connor

Maybe I should get Photoshop...

Here's a pic of Connor. Just a few things to say for now, since it's only been a week or so:

• there is a lot of food and bottle preparation involved
  
• there is a lot of diaper changing involved
  
• there is very little sleep involved

One interesting thing I didn't know is that babies can drink from cups. During the first few days when Kathy was still in the low output colostrum stage, we supplemented Connor with formula from a medicine cup. The cup was a suggestion from the nurse at the hospital. The amount was so small (and frequent) that bottles would have been a pain to use. We're talking teaspoons (like 10-20cc) at a roughly hourly feeding

Cup feeding without spilling takes a bit of skill and practice for both you and the baby. The trick seems to be touching the liquid level to the baby's upper lip, while keeping the bottom curve of the cup pressed closely enough to bottom lip and tongue to prevent spillage, without pressing so hard that baby can't sip. It's what we do when we drink, if you have ever had to hold a cup to someone else's mouth so they can have a drink, you'll sort of know what I mean. The only difference is that the baby doesn't know to keep his lower lip touching the cup, so you have to do that.

The same trick seems to apply to bottle feeding too - if you keep the bottom round of the nipple touching his lower lip, you get a seal and don't get any spill. (unless you feed him so fast that he regurgitates something) The last day or two, I haven't even needed to tuck a napkin under his chin.

Anyways, I'm using up precious sleep time so I'm off.

Allen.

Test from Blackberry

Is this centered?

Allen.
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Sent using BlackBerry

edit -
Well it looks like this blackberry camera is not going to be replacing my 8 megapixel any time soon, blech. Maybe there are some settings I haven't found, but my hopes aren't high for it.

Let's see if I can modify picture upload centering with an uploaded pic? :P

Blackberry camera

Just checking out the quality of the picture and if its convenient for blogging or not.

Allen.
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Sent using BlackBerry

How much sugar is in a can of Canada Dry?

I bought a case of ginger ale on sale today, and while drinking one just now, I read the label on the side. It said it has 34 grams of sugar in it. It occurred to me that I didn't really know how much "34 grams of sugar" actually was, so I measured it out on a scale. Amazing.

That's a heck of a lot of sugar isn't it?

For you coffee and tea drinkers, that's roughly 8.5 packets of sugar, assuming an average 4 gram sugar packet.

That's actually lower than a Coke at about 40g (10 packets of sugar) as googled on the net.

There's blogs out there that have lots of pictures showing how much sugar is in food, such as this one:
http://www.sugarstacks.com

Check it out and shock yourselves. :D

Allen.

Private Numbers / Unknown Callers / Phone Scams

One of my pet peeves is when people call you but the call display says "Private Number". I mean, they are calling you, but they don't want anyone to call them. Hypocrisy, isn't it?

Usually, I just ignore the these calls, but this morning, some private number called my home number, and hung up before we could even look to see who called. Then my cell rang with a private number. I ignored it and went back to sleep, they can leave a message. Then it rang again, private caller, and I got kind of irritated by it. So I answered it.

The woman on the line claimed she was calling from the hospital and had some sort of appointment change. I told her that if she is really calling from a hospital, that her caller id should identify her as from the hospital, not "Private Number".

I mean, any yahoo can pretend to be calling from the hospital and reschedule our appointment, esp if its some other patient trying to score our time slot. These things are pretty easily overheard when booking the appointment after all.

Anyways, this person told me that this is how the hospital works, that it should be "Unknown Caller". I think that is terribly unprofessional of the hospital. It should display their hospital main line number if they dont want people calling their extension, right?

Jeez.

Anyways, the appropriate thing to do here is to confirm the appointment myself by calling the hospital and checking if anything has changed.


Never accept what someone tells you over the phone if they call you. Always say you will call their company/organization back to confirm what they are claiming, and source out the company phone number yourself, don't take any phone numbers they offer you.

Here's the classic scam - someone calls you and says they are your bank/credit card company calling to verify a purchase, say $4000 at some website. Since you haven't bought some $4000 item from soandso.onlineshopp.com, you want to know more and get this sorted out. They need your card# and/or PIN number etc to confirm. Once you give them the info, they clean out you account cause you have given them all the keys to access your account, basically.

This is why you can't trust incoming calls telling you to trust them. Always confirm it yourself, independent of the incoming call.

I should just see if I can make my phones not ring on private number calls.

Allen.

Tai Chi's over now

The old year has ended and so have the Tai Chi lessons I've been going to since the fall of 2008. I've learned a lot, though I wish I could have learned more in the time I'd spent there.

The 3 basic Chen courses were really enjoyable I learned a lot and it was fun.

The advanced level was a bit difficult for me though. Not so much because it was difficult physically, it was cause of a language barrier. It was taught in Cantonese, with various students picked to translate the lessons into English for the benefit of us non-Cantonese speaking students. (with varying degrees of success, depending on who was available to do the translation) So I feel that I've missed out on a lot of the context and nuances of the lesson. Sure I asked questions when I didn't understand something, but often, I get the feeling that I've missed hearing or learning something, and I don't even know what.

Anyways, I plan to continue to practice it whenever I have a bit of time. The tricky part is where do I practice? The routine actually covers a considerable bit of space if we're talking about a living room or an office cubicle, which is why I guess so many people will go to the open spaces like the park, and practice there. I'll figure something out.

Allen.

Gingerbread Cookies

Did you know that savoury spicy taste in gingerbread is not ginger? it's the ground cloves that give it that distinctly sharp taste.

How do I know? I am guessing this because I made a batch of gingerbread cookies without the cloves and the distinct taste is missing. :P

I'll have to make another batch when I have ground cloves, to confirm this guess.

Allen.