CPU paperweight

March 1, 2011

A year or so ago I was gutting computers for handy pieces of metal (primarily the sheets for the case sides as well as aluminum heatsinks).  One of them happened to contained an old Intel 486-33mhz CPU, circa 1989.  As far as I’m concerned, this was the chip that really brought low cost home computers to market.  I removed it from the machine and am planning on making it into a paperweight using an EasyCast clear epoxy casting kit.  My dad did a similar project when he was younger except he put coins and stuff into his.

Posted in Computers and Hardware, Hobbies, Ideas | Comments Off on CPU paperweight

OffTopicForums.net Closing Down April 15th

February 23, 2011

It is a sad announcement, but I will be officially closing down OffTopicForums.net on April 15th due to user inactivity.  It’s been a good time.

Posted in Web/Internet | Comments Off on OffTopicForums.net Closing Down April 15th

Replaced my battery

February 22, 2011

I finally replaced my truck’s battery.  I decided to spend the $110 and go with another MotorCraft.  Hey, the first one was good for 10 years, why mess with a good thing right?

It should have been a 10-15 minute job.  But, it was 10F out and windy as all get out and I was doing it at night in the dark.  So of course, the bolt holding the battery down had to break.  I then had to use my angle grinder to grind the old bolt’s shaft down.  Went on to drill it out, then had to run out to get a new bolt (didn’t have anything handy the right size) and then install the battery.  All seems well now and it came out just fine, but I sure was cold!

Here’s to another 10 years on this battery!

Posted in Cars, Trucks and Tractors | Comments Off on Replaced my battery

Search engine wars

February 18, 2011

I’ve been frustrated on and off over the years with search engines.  When the internet started to get popular 17 years ago in 1994, there were multitudes of search engines and they all varied in search results, speed and ease of use.  About 10 years ago I started using google.com and until they started adding in their auto search function, I was happy.  I started using yahoo, but only through it’s search.yahoo.com interface which is a cleaner and quicker to load start page than just yahoo.com.  It works quite well.  But I’ve decided to try others.

I tested Bing, Google, Yahoo, GigaBlast, Ask, Web Crawler, Entire Web and Dog Pile.  What I found is that Google, Yahoo and Bing all have similar search results that are quite accurate as well as a relatively pleasing interface.   The others tested substantially slower with EntireWeb.com being the slowest of them all and Dog Pile a close second.  Yahoo still wins on speed and results I want as well as the most comfortable interface.  The only other notable search engine I tried really was EntireWeb.com.  The big feature it offers, it loads a thumbnail of the pages it finds to the left of the title and description.  This does slow it down a bit, but is actually handy in some scenarios.

End results: it’s still Yahoo for me with an honorable mention to EntireWeb.com.

Posted in Web/Internet | Comments Off on Search engine wars

Selling effects pedals

February 17, 2011

One more hair-brained scheme for making money at home.

I’ve been building guitar effects pedals for 5 years now and I’m considering building a few to sell to local music shops and see how that goes.  Any pedals I would be selling are of my own design including all circuitry, no “clones” here.  I have one all ready to go and two more than need bread boarding and testing.  Once I get all three ready and at “production” quality, I will build one of each and take them around to a couple different local stores and see if anyone wants to carry a few of them.  All of my pedals are true bypass, use Carling switches and Switchcraft jacks.  They are hand wired and built like tanks.

Think I’m crazy to figure I could make a few bucks on the side doing this or is Raymond Effects a bad idea?

Posted in Ideas | Comments Off on Selling effects pedals