That’s one interesting ejection system.
Archive for February, 2007
Kel-Tec RFB In Action
Monday, February 26th, 2007Score One For Insulation!
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007The woman and I live at my house, but she’s got one of her own that’s sitting unused at this point. She just informed me what her last gas bill was, and I realized how lucky I got with this house being built by folks that were keen on heavy insulation.
Oh, and all exterior walls are built with 2×6s, not 2×4s.
Hers:
- 1954 construction
- 1400 square feet
- Thermostat: 61 degrees F
- Gas Bill: $130
Mine:
- 1999 construction
- 3000 square feet
- Thermostat: 61 when gone, 64 when home, and usually 70-72 in the living room area at night thanks to the gas fireplace.
- Gas Bill: $112
I was initially pretty worried about the gas bill with a house this size, but I’m been comfortably surprised.
Zumboed
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007Looks like we’ve got a new word in the blog world: Zumboed
I followed this over the weekend and the fallout earlier this week but failed to comment on it. I considered writing a summary but why bother? Tamara did it better than I could have
Long story made really short: A hunting write spoke out against using AR and AK pattern rifles for hunting, calling for a ban, and promptly lost sponorship from Remington, and probably everybody else.
Snagged a new TV
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007When I got the house I simply moved my old TV and its “stand” into the new place.
A six year old Samsung 27″ CRT sitting on an end-table from Meijer that I bought for $20.
Less than stellar.
Soo… the woman I went TV hunting. There’s a lesson on how to run your electronics store here.
We went to Best Buy because we had a 10% off coupon for them. That right there is a good way to get people into your shop. An intelligent and obviously knowledgeable salesman got to talking to us, figured out the budget, and got us SOLD on a 51″ DLP and shortly after that we picked out a stand that would suite our needs.
While a few hundred bucks more than I expected to spend I was comfortable with the sale and told him to go ahead and pull it.
Well, looks like they’re out of the stands… he can talk to the manager about getting the floor model. Oh, they’re out of the TV too — but they can get it from another store in a couple of days. Oh, the manager doesn’t want to sell the floor model stand (I didn’t want the floor model anyway) but the other store has one of those too.
OK, spiffy. I’ll just drive to the other store and pick them up then.
Well, pulling out of Best Buy I realized that Circuit City was right next door, so I might as well stop by there. The lady also wanted to hit up a shop near there so I got to do my tech shopping while she did some lady shopping.
I found a couple of 37″ LCD TVs there that I figured would suite my needs quite well. I snagged the woman from he store, talked her into buying the one I thought was best, and since they actually had the on-sale item in stock, unlike Best Buy, I bought it.
Seriously, why the hell would you put an item on sale and have your salesmen talk me into buying it when you can’t put it into my hands that very day?
Now, maybe I’m odd but when I’m buying something that I don’t need what-so-ever I want it now. I’m indulging myself. I could have easily been sold by the folks at Best Buy on another model that was $100 more, but better in some way, quite easily.
In the end I ended up at a different store, on a whim, and bought something different than what I had already been sold on, and without any interaction with a salesman.
There’s a lesson to be learned there somewhere.
Are You Serious?
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007If you don’t get this post that’s fine
What yahoo at Microsoft thought that smacking a ? at the end of a variable declaration made sense?
I ran across some docs on the newest .NET stuff today and I found out that in C# you can declare a Nullable integer like this:int? nMyNumber
WHAT!? Seriously, Microsoft has to do some extra drug testing or something.
That… stuff… is syntactically equivalent to:Nullable<int> nMyNumber which is far clearer than than the above.
My reasons are simple: You cannot communicate a declaration like that in normal human conversation if you rely on the conventions used within the code There’s no way to express there being a ? after that ‘int’ unless you shrug your shoulders or you actually say “Nullable int”.
Further, I can’t imagine the level of confusion encountered when you end an email with something like… “very odd because I declared it of type int?.” Or, “.. perhaps it should be of type int??” Or worse, “that idiot declared it of type int?!”.
I predict some confusion coming out of this, but as I don’t actually work with C# I probably won’t experience it first hand.
Oh, and yes, I know this is a silly thing to nitpick a language for, especially one that I’ve always found rather easy to work with.
Heh. Indeed.
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007Personally I think DreamWeaver needs to develop a way of shocking the “designer” if they use the <blink> tag in addition to the warning but I tend to be overly harsh.
This makes me wonder what nimrod at Microsoft came up with the <marquee> tag.
Aramalite AR-24
Monday, February 19th, 2007Bill St. Clair posted that the Armalite AR-24 is out.
Seeing the post title I was geeked. “Oooohh, a new pistol! Let’s see what it is!” I thought.
Yeah, it’s just a CZ-75B clone, and the fixed sight version, the cheaper one, has an MSRP of $550.
It better hae some sort of impressive finish on it to command a price anything above $420.
Snow Removal: Brilliant!
Sunday, February 18th, 2007I’ve been thinking I need to get a snow-blower lately, and mentioned this to my dad, who then alerted me to a solution I hadn’t thought of.
Damn! I want one!
Random Fun
Sunday, February 18th, 2007So, the woman is more of a liberal than I am. We actually don’t talk politics much, but it’s fairly apparant when we actually do delve into that realm.
It doesnt bug me in the least. In fact, it gives me something to joke about.
Her last car died a horrible death so she got a new one this week. A Saturn Vue, light-duty SUV type vehicle.
While joking about her owning a “gas-guzzling SUV” I mentioned that she also lives in a house now with an oil rig in the backyard. Then she said something about living in a house with a bunch of guns. And a big dog.
I then looked at her with a jokingly-horrified look on my face and said in a hushed tone: “You’re becoming a…. Republican!”
I’m glad she puts up with me.
Getting a Rep’
Sunday, February 18th, 2007The woman and I went out furniture shopping Saturday and had an interesting interaction while buying some furniture.
The young woman behind the counter taking down my address for delivery actually aked a very pointed question:
Her: “Is it a Zero-dash address?”
Me: Err, yes. Well, actually I believe it’s supposed to be an ‘oh’ that stands for Ottawa County because there’s some confusion about…
Her: Oh yeah, I know but the system won’t let me put an O there, so I just use zero. My parents live at <Justin’s address-38> on the same road.
Me: Cool.
Driving home the woman noted that the address of the young woman’s parents were our next-door neighbors.
The same neighbor that came over and helped me clear my driveway of snow.
Sunday I headed back because I had a 15% off coupon for Art Van and was informed at the time of purchase that it was fine that I didn’t have it with me — they’d refund me the money if I brought it in the next day. Super cool.
The same young woman was there. A different clerk handled my transaction with them but I was able to bring up the subject with the orignal clerk again. When I told her that her dad helped me clear my driveway she said something along the lines of “Oh, you’re that guy. Yeah, my dad said he saw a young man trying to clear his driveway with just a shovel and thought, ‘This can’t end well.’ so he came over.”
So, I figure I’ve got the rep as the idiot neighbor at this point.
Oh, and the 2nd clerk was the original clerk’s sister. So now the whole family knows who the idiot neighbor is.
I really need to get a snow-blower. I don’t know how much longer my brothers are going to be willing to snag my dad’s plow truck and do my driveway out of boredom.
