Rochester Lights

If it wasn't zero degrees and windy it would have been fun walking and looking at the lights that hang from the buildings in downtown Rochester.

Working in the Snow

Last week for work i went to Michigan's upper peninsula and Wisconsin to survey cell phone towers. It reached record low temps in some areas and lots of snow. I also saw 5 bald eagles over the entire trip. Here's the 48 sites that we surveyed. There were 8 of us that went on the trip.
Crossing in to the U.P.
A view of a cell phone tower from one of the cable wires
I realized after the first day that the boots i usually wear to walk on the roads weren't going to cut it, even with the hotel's "boot" dryer.
I ended up spending more then i planned on a pair of really nice winter boots that said they were good to -94 degrees. Fortunately it didn't get that cold, it only got down to -20 degrees, a record low in the town in Wisconsin. The boots turned out to be really warm and comfortable.
Dogs like following us through the snow and woods.
There were lots of iced over trees.
This was on some guys mailbox.
Wisconsin. They have cheese and food.
A custom one of a kind truck door.
And here's some other pictures from the trip.

The End of Kenny vs Spenny

Kenny vs Spenny is an amazing show. On December 23rd is it's season finale.
The show is from Canada, it is one of the funniest shows ever where two friends compete each episode over an agreed on challenge. It started as a small, low budget show, but after season 5 was co-produced by the creators of South Park. It started to "jump the shark" a bit in the last two seasons though. Kenny, by far the funnier and brains of the two, began to move on to other things, like the show Testies, which is also very funny...and got canceled after 1 season.

But this is quintessentially a GUY show. With episodes like:
"Who Can Eat More Meat"
"First Guy To Stop Singing Loses"
This episode was "Who Can Keep a Dead Octopus on Their Head the Longest"

The Droste Effect

According to Wikipedia:
The effect is named after the image on the tins and boxes of Droste cocoa powder, one of the main Dutch brands, which displayed a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate and a box with the same image.

I always thought it was pretty cool so here's what i came up with, i think it turned out alright.
Here's another really cool version that someone did, notice the title.

Who Needs Heat?

A few weeks ago my furnace stopped working. The fan would come on, the flames would light the burner but the large blower would not turn on to blow the air throughout the house. However it would work if i switched the thermostat from "auto" to "on" but this meant that the blower would run constantly.

There are a lot of pieces in there. The blower is the big metal thing at the bottom.
So after a week of reading online i figured it had to be one of these things:

• blower control board
• heat sequencer
• temperature limit switch
• fan limit control switch
• temperature sensor
• relay switch

Then i realized that my furnace was a newer model and half of those things were all incorporated into a circuit board (the blower control board). At the furnace i could hear something click when the blower was suppose to come on but nothing happened. I checked many things with the volt meter but everything seemed ok until while switching the power on one time i notices something spark. It was coming from the relay that turns on the blower, on the circuit board. So i took a bunch of pictures of the wires so i would know where they plugged back into and remove the board. Sure enough there was a burned spot on the back cover where the board was shorting out.
The shorted out board behind the blower relay switch.
I soldered the wire back to the connector, hooked everything back together and amazingly enough it worked, the blower came on when it was suppose to.

Time for a New Coach????

I went to my first football game in Ann Arbor to see UofM vs Wisconsin. Of course UofM lost.

(click to see full size)

The stadium was huge and i was amazed at then amount of people in the streets and at the game.

The best part was that all of the fans were cheering whenever they showed the score of the MSU vs Purdue game because MSU was down by 14. The reason is was so good was that MSU came back in the 4th quarter to win.

Here's what 20,000 depressed wolverine fans look like.

New Faucet

I've never really liked the faucet that was on my bathroom sink. So i finally bought a new one. It was less than $30. Here's what it originally looked like.
After removing the faucet and the putty.
New plumbers putty. Not sure if this is the right way to do it but it seemed to work and the directions didn't even say to add it.
The new faucet. Once again, something i see now that i should have done a long time ago.

MSU - November

I went to the MSU vs Minnesota last week with John. First i parked in front of my old house on Gunson and Linden. It looks the same.
Stopped by Sparty.
Then watched the game. (click to view full size)

Top Gear coming to America

It just came out that November 21st on the History Channel is the premier of Top Gear in America. It's a spin off of the very popular British show which talks all about cars.

Top Gear is that it's an awesomely funny show on the BBC, it's up to 17 seasons and has 350 million viewers per episode world wide.

Some of my favorite episodes include things like:

• Driving across Africa in a $500 car
• Drive to the North Pole in a truck (the first people to ever do it)
• Homemade electric car
• Turning a car into a boat (the best out of the 3 they made is the one below, the TOYbOTA)

If you want to know the most economic Chevrolet for 2011, don't watch. But if you want the know whether the Maclaren F1 is faster than the Bugatti Veyron, or if you have $1000 and need to buy a car to drive across South America then this is the show for you.

The thing that makes the show so great is the 3 hosts. If the new hosts of the American Top Gear are even half as funny then it will be worth watching.

New TV Show?

Back in October i was driving by I-75 and the Davison freeway, through an industrial park and i saw people filming a movie or tv show. It's not the best picture, i took it while i was driving. Right next door there were tons of trailers and semi's with filming equipment in them.
The cameras weren't there yet but they had the green boards set up to look like columns or something. If it's for a tv show it might be that Detroit 187 show??

IQ Light

IQ stands for Interlocking Quadrilaterals because it is made up of several of the exact same shape which lock together. There's a few different designs you can make with the same shape. The 30 piece light is the most common. They have kits you can buy but i just traced and cut out the shape out of old mylar plans that work was throwing out. Here's the shape of the pieces and what it should look like when you're done. A few of the possible shapes All 30 cut out
1st row
2nd row 4th row All done, notice i have the youtube video on the tv in the background. I had to watch 2 different instructions a few times before i figured out how to put it together. The 30 piece was hard enough, i can't imagine putting the 120 piece light together.