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Summer lovin’

August 10th, 2010 . Posted in Interesting bits, Me | No Comments »

I’ve never been a fan of the heat and humidity that summer brings to our area, but I recently remembered a reason to love summer.  After owning a motorcycle for 5 years, I can’t believe I spent the last 2 years without one.  Now I’m back on two wheels, and I can’t get over how much it feels like a part of me.  I hope that I can always own a motorcycle.

For those interested, it’s a 2005 Harley Sportster 1200 Custom.  It sounds quite nasty, in a really good way.

I remember when I first decided I wanted a motorcycle.  I was 20 years old and had just begun working at the Sears shoe department.  I remember riding in the car with my family in Branson and watching with awe and lust as motorcycles passed all around. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to buy one the next summer.  My new job turned out to be good enough that I bought one that fall.

My old bike, the one that started it all… the lowly but stylish Yamaha V-Star 650.

Biosphere

April 15th, 2010 . Posted in What I did the other day | 2 Comments »

Lately I’ve been seriously jonesing for the outdoors.  My apartment features no grass whatsoever — everywhere I look it’s pavement, asphalt, cement.  So I decided to import a slice of outdoor life.

A few weeks ago, a blog I subscribe to ran an article detailing how to make your own biosphere.  I knew this was a project I would enjoy.  I’ve tried houseplants, and I invariably kill them.  This would work well, because I knew it would hold my attention for an entire afternoon, then once I sealed up the biosphere it would never require my attention again.  It should be totally self-sustaining.  I can enjoy it as I please and ignore it the rest of the time.

I needed a bottle, so I bought some vodka and drank it all in one night found this one somewhere.  I thought it would be kind of funny to use a liquor bottle.  I went to the pet store and got the critters — 3 snails and a ghost shrimp named Alfie — and went to the pond for some sludge, water, and (hopefully), some tiny creatures called amphipods, copepods, and ostracods.  I also bought a couple little plants to live inside.  When I got home I put it all together with some small rocks I got from Lake Superior.  It was fun.  I did it all last night.

So, do you know how much Alfie the ghost shrimp cost?  Thirty-three cents!  That’s how much his life is worth.  When I told Alfie this, he was very depressed.  I regret bringing it up with him.  I particularly regret it now, because it turns out that those were my last words to Alfie.  When I got home from work tonight, I found out that he died, only 24 hours after his new life in my biosphere began.  I don’t know if I killed him with my careless words or with my manufactured environment.  The snails seem to be fine.  The good news is, since he was only 33 cents I can afford to replace him.  I will be more careful about how I speak to the new guy.  I actually felt a little sad to find Alfie dead when I got home tonight.

I hope this biosphere makes it.  I changed several of the instructions to fit my irregular bottle, and I was supposed to use a particular kind of plant that I just couldn’t find.  Still, I have reasonably high hopes that it will work.  At least it’s fun to try.

Expensive internetz

March 13th, 2010 . Posted in Interesting bits, Me | No Comments »

It recently occurred to me that I spend an awful lot of money on internet access.  It costs $30 every month to have the internet in my home, and another $30 to have it on my phone.  That adds up, baby.  $720 a year is quite an investment.  I’ve lately begun to wonder if it’s worth it.

The problem doesn’t really lie in the money.  The problem is in the principle.  No matter how much money I make, I believe that if I pay $720 for something, it had better be good.  So how good is internet everywhere I go?

Well, half of that money goes to buy internet at my home.  I think that is definitely worth it.  I use the internet to watch all of my TV and most of my movies.  Plus all the other crap like hockey scores, banking, paying bills, facebook, homework, etc, etc.  Internet in my home is indispensable.

I’m not so sure that it’s worth doubling the price of the internet just to have it on my phone everywhere I go.  Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love my iPhone.  But do I really use the data plan that much?  I use my iPhone a lot when I’m at home, but at those times I’m always on my wireless network.  Same thing at work.  The only times I really use the mobile data are in my car or when I’m shopping and want to do some quick last-second research before I buy something.

I decided to test how much I would miss having mobile data.  If you jailbreak your phone, you have access to an app that allows you to turn off mobile data.  I spent a week without mobile data access on my iPhone — wifi only — and, no big surprise, I found that I hardly missed it.  There were only a couple of times I wanted to use the internet and couldn’t, and those times just required me to wait a little bit.

My AT&T contract expires in June.  Until now, I’ve taken it for granted that I’ll buy the newest iPhone this summer and renew my two-year contract.  Now I have a new plan: keep my iPhone, disable data, and cancel my $30 data plan.  That way I still have my iPhone, it would just be limited to wifi networks for internet access.

As a bit of warning, don’t try this unless you jailbreak your iPhone.  The iPhone pulls data all the time, and the charges would add up quickly if you don’t have a data plan in place.  But if you have an iPhone, you should be jailbreaking it, anyway.

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