Unbelievable. He finished at 9pm tonight. One more video still to come.
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Category: General
Last night, I took a detour through downtown DC on my way home from work. Even though it was one of the heaviest traffic nights I can remember, I had a good time downtown. I had dinner at Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street in the jazz district. Ben’s Chili Bowl has probably the best hot dog I’ve ever had, and you can make it a chili dog with fries and a milkshake for even more eating enjoyment.
After dinner, I drove to West Potomac park, pulled my bike out of the trunk, and enjoyed the national mall and the memorials at dusk. I took several great pictures of the Washington Monument, some of which will likely make the Chris’ best pictures of all time gallery when I get that up. I also enjoyed walking through the 
FDR memorial after dark. It’s my favorite memorial, and it’s best to see it on a ranger guided tour once it’s pitch black outside.
It was a wonderful evening. Partly cloudy, but no noticable rain, low humidity, upper 70s. The only thing that could have been better is if there had been no oak pollen in the air. Since I realize that my time in this great city may be limited, I’m trying to get the most out of my proximity to the city while I can. There’s so much that I love about this area, but I don’t know if it’s where I’ve been called to spend the next part of my life or not.
Hope you all had an opportunity to celebrate national doughnut day. I celebrated by bringing Krispy Kreme in to work for breakfast today. Mmmm Krispy Kreme. Okay, I admit it. I’ve had four today.
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85 Degrees and no A/C
Tonight, our house’s central A/C unit froze up. I noticed just after 8pm that it was really hot upstairs. I checked the thermostat on the first floor, which was reading 80 degrees. It was set to 72. The A/C was running hard, but the air wasn’t coming out cold. I looked downstairs and all the refrigerant lines were iced over. Even the outdoor valves were iced over. Quite a feat when it was still close to 90 degrees outside. After three hours of thawing, I let it run for 25 minutes to see if it was working again. The temperature was 80 when the time started and still 80 when it ended, so we’ll have to get someone out here to look at it. It looks like we either have a very dirty indoor coil or a refrigerant leak. Not fun with the current forecast. I’m going to sleep in the basement tonight where it’s about 74 degrees at the moment.
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Beach weekend
This past weekend, my extended family took a trip to Virginia Beach. Vicki and Jim, my dad’s cousin and her husband, and their daughter Jessica opened up their beach house to my grandpa, my parents, my sister, one of my best friends Michael, and myself. We enjoyed a quick weekend of beach activities with perfect beach weather. It had been years since I had been down to the beach house, which was once my great grandparents’ home, so it was fun to see the old place and get a chance to swim in the beach. I went to the beach last summer, but in my opinion, California beaches are much too cold for swimming.
I also enjoyed getting the chance to spend time with Michael, since I hadn’t seen him since the semester ended. We took turns burying each other in the sand, like you can see in the picture above. I still need to get my sister to send me the pictures of Michael buried in the sand.
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Another thought before I go
I need to become more decisive. I can make big decisions, but I have a very hard time making little decisions and it tends to pull me down and drag me through the mud. If you catch me being very indecisive, please call me on it. It’s past time for me to do something about it.
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Out of town Saturday and Sunday
I will be out of town and likely without internet this weekend, so don’t expect to hear from me. Hopefully, I’ll have some more in-depth posts ready for you all when I get back. I’m also hoping that there will be less pollen in Virginia Beach than there is in the DC area.
My least favorite part of working at Digital Sandbox is the commute. This morning, I had my fastest morning since we’ve been located near Worldgate. It was about 40 minutes. My commute typically takes between 45 and 65 minutes, usually about 55 in the morning and 45 in the evening. The office is a little over 20 miles from my parents’ house in Springfield. That’s Washington traffic for you.
On Monday, I started my fourth summer working for Digital Sandbox. The commute gets a little worse each year, and the current office is a little farther from my parents’ house than either of the previous locations I’ve worked at. One of my personal conditions on going back this summer was that I would do something to improve the commute. The radio gets worse every time I come back, and I stopped listening to it on an at all frequent basis in January 2003. My CD player is a good friend, but I’ve wanted a wider range of options in the car. I decided that I would either get an iPod or XM radio for the car.
Either would have to be properly installed and look good. Also, because of its trapezoidal shape, I didn’t want to replace the car’s head unit because a replacement stereo wouldn’t look as nice. That meant that my best option for getting the sound into the head unit was the PIE HON-AUX98 input converter. This little box plugs into the CD changer input on the factory radio and tricks it into thinking that the CD changer has a disc loaded and playing. On the box, it has a set of audio inputs that can be used to get the iPod or satellite radio sound into the head unit.
Now that I had the problem of getting the sound into the car system solved, I had to choose between iPod or XM. The XM hardware has really come down in cost–I almost bought one over spring break, but in the end, I decided that I wanted to be able to listen to my podcasts in the car. The original plan was to buy a black iPod nano and attach it between the steering wheel and the climate controls. However, two things foiled that plan. First, the iPod nano is slightly too wide to fit in my selected space. Second, the price difference between nano 4 gigabyte ($250) and iPod 30 gigabyte ($300) was low enough that it made me want the larger capacity. My iTunes library is currently just under 19 gigabytes, so I could fit all my music on the 30 gig model. However, for just $100 more, I could put all my music and all my data files (~30 gigabytes) on the 60 gigabyte model. With my academic discount, I bit the bullet and went with the biggest one of all: the iPod video 60 gigabyte, plus a gooseneck car mount/power adapter, a case, and the input converter. I didn’t seriously consider other mp3 players because I use iTunes and very occasionally the iTunes music store.
When I returned to the Washington area on Sunday, I had all the parts waiting for me in boxes. Got the iPod syncing with my computer. Getting the car apart was another story. Two hours after starting on the car project, I had a working input converter. However, the second power outlet that I tried to add ended up stuck in my dashboard, half in, half out. Trying to put the second power outlet in also resulted in a blown fuse, making both power outlets useless.
A week later, I finally install the audio jack in a panel near the original power outlet, where the iPod holder now lives. I also relocate the second power outlet to under the dashboard at floor level on the passenger side of the car. With both jacks installed, I’m able to put the car back together for now. I’m going to find a plastic panel to replace the one that I drilled the hole in, but other than that, everything is installed and working well.
Click an image to enlarge
Good quote from Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. One of my largest frustrations is when someone has all the information available to them to make an informed decision, but chooses to not even look at the information, and instead makes a silly and uninformed decision. Alternate expression: “I’ve got my mind all made up, I won’t let the facts confuse me.”
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Good quote about wages
I liked this quote from Michael over at You Can Know God:
Waitresses make $1.50 an hour and a share of the tips, bringing them up to a “normal” hourly wage. But the tip is arbitrary and changes from night to night. That defeats the intention of a gratuity, which was to give the server a little something extra. A restaurant doesn’t pay the employee the fair wage, but counts on the generosity of the patrons to make up for their low wages. What other industry operates on this kind of pay scale? What if we lowered the salary of other people and made them count on tips to make up the difference? I think this might work for politicians.
See his full post here