Landed

My first vacation in two years has started off – for lack of a better word – slow. But that’s expected of modern travel … isn’t it?

Had everything worked out perfectly I would have taken a bus last night from Seattle-Tacoma Airport to Bellingham, WA. But things don’t always work out ‘perfect’ and the flight ran late in complete disregard to the slim window I had to make it from the plane to the bus which departed promptly at 9pm. The next bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until after 11pm, and was already full.

I’m staying for a week with my Uncle Mike and Paul for both work and pleasure. In the end, Uncle Mike drove down to pick me up from the airport. A 3.5 hour round-trip drive that was supposed to have been avoided via the aforementioned bus. We made it home around 1am, had a bowl of ice cream, chatted a bit and went to bed.

The “work” part of this trip involves installing a structured media system in Uncle Mike and Paul’s new home. All the wiring is (added when the house was built) so I don’t expect any back-breaking work. Most of the work is placing pieces of equipment in and on walls in the correct place and connecting the correct wires.

I’ve been planning this system for a while now. Although the ultimate plan I came up with was bitchen (excuse the language) it was too much work. It would have required pulling new wires (quite a few) all over the house and was, in the end, simplified such that we will be able to just place equipment. I’m storing the design away for use on the fictitious home I plan to buy with my imaginary lottery winnings though.

I sit this morning in the spacious living room after a late night with my laptop and a cup of coffee, listening to the multitude of birds in the small forest just in back of the home. I’ll be running into town soon to pickup all the equipment and getting the project started. I have plans to meet up with friends on Saturday, a trip to Vancouver B.C. either Friday or Sunday and a day’s visit to Seattle on Tuesday before my flight leaves.

I am very much looking forward to all of this.

One Score And Seven Years Ago

Yesterday, I turned 27. The number twenty-seven holds no magical properties and this particular age does not signal any great change is my status as person (except maybe the inevitable shift from my ‘mid-twenties’ to ‘late-twenties’). I have already passed the magical ages: 16 years old (I can drive without benefit of having a grown up in the car), 18 years old (I can vote, often a disheartening proposition at best), 21 years old (I can buy booze, something I stopped caring about not too long after turning 21). The only thing turning 27 years old really means is I am now in shouting distance of 30.

Even approaching thirty, I don’t really feel grown up. However, there are times I feel old. It seems like not that long ago I could happily drink a veritable cornucopia of alcoholic concoctions, go to bed and wake up the next morning ready to run a marathon. Now, it takes me a full day to recover from such a binge. Similarly, sleep has become more of a necessity, and where I used to be fully functional on mere hours of sleep, these days I become something akin to the extras in Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video when I don’t get enough beauty rest.

I celebrated yesterday with a group of friends who came downtown last night. We saw a couple of bands at concert in the park. Had sushi and sake bombs at Nashiki for dinner and we wrapped the night up at a couple of bars. I ultimately had 4 beers, 4 sake bombs, 1 shot and a couple mixed drinks. This morning, a few of us made it over to Cafe Bernardo for breakfast. Tonight a few more friends are coming into town and we’ll do more of the same (although, maybe a little less alcohol for me). Tomorrow, my parents are planning to be in-town for lunch which means that I will have successfully extended my birth-day into a birth-weekend. Huzzah!

I’m thankful for the friends and family who’ve shared the last 27 years with me and look forward to many more.

Pondering a Trip

15 years ago in late November, I set out on a trip, a trip I’ve pondered re-creating for years.

Myself, Russel Friedrichs, Aaron Clark, Rand Sevilla and our fathers (Larry Klaus, Keith Friendrichs, Milt Clark and Roland Sevilla) strapped everything we needed for a week to our backs and made a walked 50-miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, to the north rim and back again. We had spent more than a year preparing for the hike so we knew what we were doing and except for some some foul weather on the North rim which held us one extra night on the canyon floor, we all made it without much trouble.

I can recount many fond memories from that trip, it was the first 50+ mile backpacking trip I had ever done (I was 11 at the time) and it inspired me to do many more long treks. A few years after the Grand Canyon trip I did a 50 mile trip in the Northern Sierras. I did 50 miles at Philmont (New Mexico) in 1998, 100 miles in 2001 and 50 miles again in 2003 (you can watch the 2001 trip on YouTube). Since then, I’ve done some trips with Paul, Matt & Travis Lockyer in the Sierra’s and contrary to any complaints I made at the time, every trip was challenging, exciting and wholly worth the effort. In the last 4 years though, my nights on the trail have steadily diminished, and I miss it. I’ve got back in-shape lately (through fits and starts) and the warm sunny weather, long daylight hours and even longer working hours all have me yearning to spend a week away from computers, phones and multitudes of people.

I don’t believe there is time to plan and prepare for a rim-to-rim-to-rim trip in the Grand Canyon for 2010. I’m not even sure who would join me yet, it takes a pretty serious commitment of time and money to make a trip like this happen. However, I can start planning for a Fall 2011 trip, which is exactly what I intend to do. The logistics of the trip itself are fairly simple, and most of it wont fall into place until 4-months before the real hike (the furthest out we can get a permit). It’s the mental and physical prep that takes time, finding extended weekends to do shake-down trips and conditioning trips is difficult for a group of working Adults. I want to start planning now to have a hike every other month, starting small and working ourselves back into the swing of backpacking.

This could be the start of a very good thing.

This Blog has Super Cow Powers

Just thought I would let everybody know.

Make a Time-Lapse Video

In the past year or so I’ve made a few time-lapse videos and I thought I would share the very basic method in which I’ve created all of them using something as simple as Windows Movie Maker. I did use Photoshop as well in this tutorial to get the images to the right size and shape, but its not a requirement to making the video.

A word of warning, this tutorial goes VERY fast. Its designed to be more of an overview than a step by step guide. If you have any questions though feel free to ask in the comments below and I’ll see if I can add to this guide some with more video’s or explanation, but without further adieu:

Batch Convert Images Using Photoshop

The other day my boss asked me if it was possible to batch convert a whole bunch of images. He had a folder of TIFF images that needed to be converted to JPEG images at 100 DPI. Since I was already at home I quickly threw together this little video to outline how the process is done using Photoshop.

Look for more of these sub 5-min video tutorials in the future, as I think its a great way to express a task without boring the learner with paragraphs of text.

Driving Economy

The average driver puts about 12,000 miles on their odometer every year¹. In the past year (Jan 13, 2009 to Jan 19 2010) I’ve put 16,244 miles on the tC. I know the exact number, because for the past year I’ve been using an iPhone app called Road Trip Lite to track my fuel economy and since this marks the roughly one year anniversary of very diligent tracking I thought I would celebrate by both purchasing the full version of the app (here) and disclosing some fun stats and extrapolations.

First off, some fun stats. In the past year, I’ve been pretty consistent on my fuel economy, which was the main purpose of this data gathering, as you can see from the graph below I sit right at about 25 MPG. For the sake of comparison the EPA rating of the ‘05 Scion tC was 23/30 (city/highway) so I’m smack where I expect to be. Its hard to tell from the graph, but a close inspection shows an increase in fuel economy when I moved downtown in September.

Putting some of that into real dollars and useless ratios; I’ve pumped 655.65 gallons of gas in the last year at an average price of $2.686 per gallon for a sum total of $1,761.04. A little more number crunching and it looks like I spend a little under five bucks a day on gas, or more precisely I burn a little under $0.11 per mile, at 65 miles per hour that’s $7.15 per hour.

As interesting as it is (or isn’t) those numbers doesn’t really paint a full picture of the cost of owning and operating a car, there’s also the considerations of loan payments, insurance, maintenance and repairs to consider. Thanks to the miracle that is Mint.com, I can get those costs, and even put them in a fancy pie chart for your eye balls:

The small discrepancy between what Mint has for my fuel spending and what I’ve tracked is due mostly to using cash for fill-ups, I’ll be using my actual cost from the previous section for number crunching. The number for Service & Parts is also misleading; I put new rubber on the tC in January 2008 and it was no small expense ($837 for all four ties, mounted and balanced). Since I’m replacing the tires again in the next few weeks, I can conveniently say that the tires are an additional $418 per year.

So total cost for the year period (actually, its 372 days) is roughly $7,600 to own and operate my car. Going back through some of the previous calculations that’s $20 per day, or $0.47 per mile I drive.

So what’s the point? Why take such a close look at spending on one item? Truth be told, I did it mostly because I like working the numbers, but it really does give me an insight into some of my spending and points out the areas that can be trimmed to help save money.

There is no responsible way to reduce my auto payment short of selling the car and my auto insurance has actually gone down recently. Fuel, as well, isn’t really in my control other than keeping my foot free of lead.

What I can control then, should be rather obvious. Parking in the garage downtown is convenient, but at $100 per month its just not worth it. I’ve found that with my typical work schedule I can easily find parking on the street and at worst spend a buck on a parking meter (but usually I’m home well after 6pm). I already do all my own maintenance so I save a bucket load of money, but this tire situation is way out of control. Stock tires would be at least half the cost per year, saving me about $200 per year.

The final word? Park on the street, and get back on stock wheels and I’ll save myself $1,400 per year on auto expenses. Just one more way to get where I want to be financially. Better yet, if I could find a way to ditch the car completely …

So you think you have a Virus?

I would imagine you’ve come here looking for help in removing said virus? Perfect, because that’s exactly what I intend to help you do! I get this question many times a week and through literally years of trial and error there are some tricks I’ve learned that I’m very happy to share.

Step 1: A good defense is the best offense (yes, I know that’s backwards). I’m hesitant to just throw out numbers without any backup, but its my guess that 99.999% of viruses are self induced. Meaning you did something stupid to get it in the first place. UPS doesn’t send emails out with tracking numbers in a Zip file, your bank won’t ask you for your account information and P2P networks are more filth ridden than “K” street. If you do have anti-virus, know what its called and what its logo looks like. I’ve seen websites pop-up boxes claiming to be your anti-virus program trick people into downloading a virus and actually installing it under the guise of being an “update for your anti-virus”. In summary, be wary, if your not sure about something, stop and find somebody who does know.

Step 2: Get a safety net. Anti-virus programs have sorely disappointed me for years now, which is why I don’t consider it protection. Your anti-virus is nothing but a safety net, if you make a mistake the hope is that your anti-virus will catch you before you hit the ground. But just like a trapeze artist, if you don’t keep your anti-virus in good working order your asking for tragedy. Make sure you know how to update your software and if its sitting down there blinking at you, pay attention. Now is a good time though to re-iterate step 1: If you have “AVG Anti-Virus Free” (my personal recommendation) and a box pops up called “AntiVirus 2010″ telling you there is an update, ignore it, its a trick to get you to do something stupid.

Step 3: Banish the demon. So you boldly ignored step one, lapsed on step 2 and now you’ve got some gremlin inside your computer running a muck. Let me give you some tricks to try to get ride of the thing. Obviously I can’t lay out step-by-step instructions, there are simply too many types of infections and no one way to go about removal. GENERALLY the first thing to do is download and install “Malwarebytes Anti-Malware“. The name is a mouthful, but the software is free, easy to use and has a very good success rate. Just install the program, make sure you update it fully and run a full scan. Typically a full scan takes an hour or more, so go make a sandwich. When its done, click on ‘Show Results’ to see what it found, and don’t forget to click ‘Remove Selected’ to actually remove the infections. Very likely, you’ll have to restart your computer to finish the removal. Even if Malwarebytes doesn’t tell you to, do it anyway and then run another full scan, rinse and repeat until nothing shows up when you do the scan. If the same things keep showing up then you’ll probably want to skip to step 4.

Sometimes though, installing and/or running Malwarebytes is tricky. Below are some things to try (in order of ease to execute) to get the program installed.

• Rename the installer and/or the program (mbam.exe) to iexplorer.exe and try it again.
• Log in to the computer with a different user and try again.
• Start the computer in safe-mode (without networking if you can) and try again.
• If you are comfy at a command prompt, safe-mode with command prompt can be handy since explorer.exe never gets executed and can often mean that the viruses core never gets loaded.
• For advanced users only, check HKLM>Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Run for suspicious entries, delete them, restart and try again.

Step 4: Psalm 23. If you’ve run Malwarebytes over and over only to have the same viruses pop up then really your best choice is to make a backup of your data, format your computer and start over. This was the hardest lesson to learn for me, I don’t like to give up on something but frankly, there comes a point where you have to pull out the big guns and drop a nuke on civilization to get rid of a problem. If you have me come over (professionally or as a friend) to remove a virus, I’m going to spend not much more than an hour trying to get Malwarebytes to install and run, and If a virus isn’t gone in two scans I’ll ask you to backup your data. Its not worth anybody’s time to screw around with.

So that’s it folks, my 4-step virus protection and elimination plan. The goal is to never get to step 3, but if your reading this you’re probably already at step 4. My condolences.

Until next week!

Resolutions 2010

First off, Happy New Year. I hope you had a wonderful holiday with friends and family. I thoroughly enjoyed my holidays even though they were over too soon. I was happy to see the friends and family I did, and regret not taking the time to see those I didn’t.

I am generally opposed to setting resolutions, particularly “New Year Resolutions”. I feel that most people set themselves up for failure by listing broad resolutions without any plan and they never get started. A resolution by itself is too vague to have substance in most cases, it needs to be split into goals and sometimes further into smaller action items to make sure you don’t lose site of the bigger picture.

A good example that I see all the time is the infamous ‘I want to lose weight’ resolution. Unless you set goals (“I will weigh 175 by the end of the year”), and break that down to manageable pieces (“I will lose 2lbs per month”) you’ll likely lose interest within the first month. Make sure you answer Who, What, When, Why, and How when you set your resolution. Don’t skip ‘Why’, its arguably the most important question of all.

That all said, I have a few resolution of my own that I’ve decided to plans out and act on. I’m writing them down here for a few reasons; primarily that writing out goals is the best way I know of to commit to something. Also, by writing them down where all can see I become accountable to my goals; an important bit in my own self motivational needs.

Resolution #1: Write More

More specifically, write more consistently. This blog goes though periods of dead silence and stints of furious postings. I want people to to come to my blog on a regular basis and find interesting information every time [why]. I actually started this with the “Flavors of the Holidays” series between Thanksgiving and Christmas and really liked it.

The simple goal is that I [who] will have have a new post every Wednesday morning [what] for you to read, starting today for the entire year [when]. WordPress allows me to create a post well in advance, and schedule it to be posted Wednesday morning. this is the secret of how I plan on achieving the overall goal. And means that I don’t have to sit down every Tuesday night and write a post, instead I can write two or three in one sitting and schedule them out.

Resolution #2: Better Cash-flow

“Better Cash-flow” is much more vague than the previous resolution and involves a couple smaller goals (broken into even smaller pieces). This isn’t going to be something I can complete in one year, or cover in a single post so I’ll be breaking this resolution down in multiple posts over the first part of 2010. But in summary, my committed expenses (read here about committed expenses) are nearly 100% of my income, which means I’m cash broke all the time. The main contributing factors are reduced income (compared to previous years), lingering debt and increased living expenses (living on my own). I want to be able to go out with friends and not borrow cash, I want to be able to buy a new TV with cash to replace my aging panel and I want to stop giving money away to the banks.

So until next week, when we can go over things in more detail, thanks for reading.

Homemade Eggnog

This post is part of a series called ‘Flavors of The Holidays‘.

Its fall and the flavors and aromas of the holidays are upon us. Join me for the next few weeks as I reveal some of my favorite holiday dishes from family, friends and around the world. Check back every Wednesday for a new recipe until Christmas.

Eggnog, the love-it/hate-it drink of the holidays. Personally I love the stuff whether from a carton bought at the supermarket or made at home from scratch. But I challenge you to find ANYBODY who doesn’t absolutely love this homemade (and spiked!) version of the holiday cocktail.

Amazingly Good Eggnog
Cook Time: 10 min | Level: Advanced | Yield: 12 servings

“It’s taken me several years to perfect this recipe. Now everyone asks, ‘When are you making the eggnog?!!’ This uses cooked eggs for safety, and you can use more or less rum to taste. It’s a bit of work to make, but well worth it. You’ll never buy store-bought eggnog again! Enjoy!”

Ingredients

4 cups milk

5 whole cloves

2-½ teaspoon vanilla extract (divided)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

12 egg yolks

1-½ cups sugar

2-½ cups light rum

4 cups light cream

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Instructions

Combine milk, cloves, ½ teaspoon vanilla, and cinnamon in a saucepan, and heat over lowest setting for 5 minutes. Slowly bring milk mixture to a boil.

In a large bowl, combine egg yolks and sugar. Whisk together until fluffy. Whisk hot milk mixture slowly into the eggs. Pour mixture into saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly for 3 minutes, or until thick. Do not allow mixture to boil. Strain to remove cloves, and let cool for about an hour.

Stir in rum, cream, 2 teaspoon vanilla, and nutmeg. Refrigerate overnight before serving.