thunkgeek.com

From: mrxloowpsjs@auna.net
Subject: Windows, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, We got them all. jowly

Anyone who owns a Panasonic DVD player from recent years has likely heard of or experienced the dreaded H07 error. This innocuous sounding thing pops up on the LED front panel display either during playback or upon insertion of a disc and basically is akin to a dying soldier sounding taps for himself.

Before I bought our current DVD player, a Panasonic CP67 5-disc changer, I did quite a bit of research. People raved about this particular unit. It had been out just a couple of months and people loved it. It held 5 discs, played MP3 discs, had progressive scan and was cheap at about $130. I bought one. Approximately 4 or 5 months later I started reading other reviews of people fed up with their DVD players whose warranties had just expired, because, ironically, the DVD players were starting to expire as well. The legend of H07 was born. Some people said it meant that the motor was completely shot. Some said it indicated a laser problem. Some said they didn’t know what it meant but that Panasonic was charging more than the player cost to fix the dumb thing.

When playback of the bonus features on Calendar Girls stopped suddenly late last friday night and H07 came up on the display I counted myself lucky that we had been able to glean such a long life from our Panasonic. We already had a replacement, the $30 Wal-Mart special that we bought to play foreign discs, so it wasn’t the end of the world… just one more thing to add to the ever growing list of electronic items that have given up the ghost in sudden ways lately. It had lasted just about three years, which was approximately 12 cents a day, so not bad. Saturday morning when it was still giving the error, though, I said to heck with it and pulled the thing apart. I hadn’t been inside a changer before and it was kinda fun. After removing the plastic around the laser and motor assembly, then the disc platter (kudos to Panasonic for using regular phillips screws!), I took a little flexible oiler to the motor shaft and lubed it up with a very light machine oil. It already seemed to be spinning pretty freely, so I didn’t think that would really do the trick, but it was worth a try. In looking a little closer at the laser assembly I noticed that there were little bits of fluff here and there so I vacuumed those up carefully. At that point I got out a pen light and took a very close look at the whole area. The thing about any kind of optical media reading device, you see, especially for a high density medium like DVD, is that the tolerances on laser movement and motor RPM are pretty darn narrow, so anything gumming up the works can make a big difference in how your device performs. I suppose I wasn’t really terribly surprised to find several of my wife’s hairs wrapped fairly tightly around the motor spindle since I find them everywhere else in the house. Anyway, to make a long story short, after cleaning the thing out and lubing it a bit I seem to have waylaid the dreaded H07 for at least a few days. Vengeance is mine.

Made this last friday night:

1 part hot italian sausage
2 parts ground beef (your choice of leanness.. though if you go too lean add an egg or two for stickiness)
grated parmesan or romano cheese - 3 tbs (or more if you want) per 1lb of meat
italian seasonings to taste (oregano, basil, whatever) - 1 tsp per 1lb of meat

Combine that stuff and form it into patties, the bigger the better. You don’t want a patty that is more than about 1/3 of an inch thick cause these will plump up a bit while they cook. I tend to go for about a 1/2 lb patty if I am hungry. Let the patties come up to about room temp. Grill ‘em over a medium low flame. Top with provolone or swiss and let melt. Prepare bun with your choice of condiments (these don’t need much) and some sliced and peppered roma tomatoes.

There you go… Italian Burger ala Thunkgeek.

Whenever we travel (and sometimes when we don’t), we try to find little local spots to eat or visit. It’s become sort of a tradition since Erica and I got married. If we can avoid national chains when we eat on the road we come home happy. So I figured it’d make kind of a fun category on here to post pictures and a little text about some of the spots we’ve visited. The real meaning of the phrase “by the way” has been mostly forgotten in our modern usage, but it used to mean “along the way,” or “as we travelled.” So with that in mind, here is the first in my “By The Way” series:

By the Way: Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner, Kingman, AZ

In January of 2004 we drove to Phoenix, Arizona to visit my brother Jordan, his wife Amanda and their brand new son, Samuel. At my sister’s suggestion, we drove down through Las Vegas, across Hoover Dam and then roughly southeast to Phoenix. We hit Kingman at about lunchtime and got off the highway to look for a spot to eat. The first thing we noticed was the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Engine number 3759, sitting in a little roadside park:

Half a block away sits Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner:

It looked like exactly the sort of spot we might stop for a meal, and the train next door sealed the deal (I’m as crazy about climbing on a steam engine as my kids are). We went in and sat down amid the fairly standard Elvis and Marilyn themed decor of this sort of place. We ordered hamburgers for us, chicken strip meals for the kids and rootbeer all around. Little did we know that Mr. D’z Route 66 Rootbeer is famous in the area. It was pretty good stuff… obviously freshly homebrewed and with a wonderful vanilla-caramel sort of flavor mixed in. We bought two six packs to take with us. The food was great but the rootbeer really left us impressed. We still talk about that stuff just about every time we drink rootbeer.

Mr. D’z is located on Andy Devine Ave (Historic Route 66) in Kingman, AZ. Here’s a Google Earth view giving lat and long and showing the position of the train in relation to the diner:

If you ever have the occasion to drive from Vegas to Phoenix, or to the Grand Canyon, Mr. D’z is well worth a stop.

I am still lusting after a Maxxum 7D, and it looks like maybe I will be getting one eventually. Konica Minolta today announced several new products and a price reduction on the 7D. If it keeps coming down this way I will eventually be able to snag one. Of course then they’ll introduce a 9D and I’ll want that.

Here’s what doesn’t jive for me though. The newly announced Maxxum 5D has a 6.1 megapixel sensor, just like the 7D. The Dimage X1, a consumer compact digital camera, on the other hand, sports the same anti-shake tech, but an 8 megapixel sensor. I don’t get it. Why put the larger sensor in the cheaper, consumer camera? From what I understand, their line on the sensor in the dSLRs is that it is plenty big enough to get good results, but why not throw in that extra resolution if you’ve got it, especially since everyone else is? Maybe there is some technical reason that would make it cost prohibitive, like the sensor in the Dimage series is from a different manufacturer and is a different physical size so they can’t just stick it in the Maxxums. I still want one of the dSLRs so I can make use of some of my Maxxum line accessories, I just don’t quite get it.

Looks like the plan is to stick it out in our current quarters, notwithstanding the increase in rent. It may set us back a few months in our plans, but it is unlikely that we would be able to find anywhere cheaper to live. Besides, I really don’t want to move twice in a year. It’s possible that with some fairly serious belt tightening we may be able to make up some of the lost dollars. I’ve adopted a sort of nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing, especially after reading the text of Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech, which my brother Andy forwarded to me this morning. As Jobs puts it, this may just be a dot in our lives whose connections will later become more apparent. I’ve also spent some time talking with my sister, Heather, who works for a mortgage company. She clued me into the fact that we are not as bad off either cashflow- or credit-wise than I thought we were. As she puts it, all sorts of losers out there have houses, so it shouldn’t be too big a deal for us to get one. She’s concise, yet precise.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have been trying to gear up toward buying a house. This involves paying off debts, saving money, etc., etc., and was supposed to be a gradual process that would culminate in having enough money available each month to be able to afford an adequate dwelling place. The plan was that approximately six to nine months from now we would be able to start really looking for our next place to live. Well, it seems our plans have been moved up in the form of a visit from our land lord this morning. He showed up to tell my wife that he is giving our job of managing the place to his granddaughter, who needs some extra money. Of course I can understand that, and I don’t begrudge him for putting family first, I would too, but it kind of throws a wrench into our precisely oiled, if slowly turning machinery. So, we now face the choice of renewing our rental contract at the end of August at the full monthly rent, which is doable, but would seriously hurt, as in setting back our grand design by at least a year, I would guess, or finding somewhere cheaper to live. We don’t have enough soluble cash flow on a monthly basis to be able to afford much of a house at all at this point, so it’s unlikely we’d be able to go that route without an interest only loan, which I refuse to even consider. I don’t want that monkey on my back, thank you very much. So the next few days promise to be interesting, at least, as we try to figure out what to do.

From: Mekte@getsharp.com
Subject: In need of rinderpest buccaneer