I don't know why I usally did not before but on (e:tinypliny)'s suggestion I started hanging clothes to dry. It really is a waste of gas and electric to run a clothes dryer when with a little more time they could dry themselves. Especially when it makes clothes last longer. I guess I've always had access to one, even a "free" dryer in college, so I took it for granted.

I think I'm going to need to string more line up. I can't wait until summer and it'll be even easier.

In other news of my energy kick I took a look at the hot water heater efficiency. According to the energy star label it seems it was mid grade for when it was built but I need to find out when that was. The label's benchmark is for 1994, so maybe then. I wonder what advances have been made since then.

In my dream world it would be a green powered tankless electric water heater. I'm not sure the capacity of of solar here would support that, but even a gas model would be so much more efficient than maintaing a hot tank of water all day.

After going without a personal computer for two weeks, I'm finally back up and running. I really miss not having a computer - work ones don't feel like home.

I replaced my LCD screen in my 5 year old Dell when it got cracked in November. Unfortunately it started to flicker and die in the two weeks ago.

So I returned the old one, and tried to order a new one from Amazon reseller Techorbits. I wanted to upgrade from 1600p to 1080, and one with a better color gamut, contrast and brightness. The screen I ordered was this - - pretty much the highest quality 17.3 display my video card could support (only a 40pin connector)

Despite paying for the better screen, they sent me a terrible Chi Mei panel with even worse viewing angles and colors than I had before. The resolution is better but that is all. I called the company, and their rep insisted the panel was just as good and that's why they could send it. Nowhere was this mentionedd and it's obviously not true just looking at the spec sheets.

Resolution | Response Time | Contrast | Brightness | VIewing Angles | NTSC Color Gamut | Backlight
AUOptronics
B173HW01 V4
1920x1080    8ms    600:1    300    140/120    262k (6-bit)    90%    B+RG LED

Chi Mei
N173FGE-L21
1600x900    8ms    650:1    220    90/65    262k (6-bit)        W-LED

I'm using it for the time being and not reassembling the computer because I want to this up with Amazon - completely false advertising. Techorbits of Aliso Viejo, CA, what a shitty way to run a business.



In the mean time, I also needed to replace my wifi card, as it had died, and the LCD LVDS cable as it was starting to lose contact. So now everything works fine again, besides the old battery. Maybe one day I'll buy a new computer but with an SSD this does everything I need.

I also finally got around to upgrading to Fedora 21 via FedUp- look, transparent terminal windows!! I never knew how much I needed them. Not too many obvious changes but I haven't poked around too much.

Paul and I were at lunch and picked up a copy of the Allentown Association newsletter - it was all about the Allen Street reconstruction meetings. Apparently the assocation, city engineer, and design consultant all voted to remove parking for a pedestrian friendly and better streetscape (versus widening the road and removing feet from the sidewalk). Despite this fact their going to back to the design phase - more money spent on consulting, less on the actual construction :(

It turns out I was semi-anonymously quoted in the article about the debate as a Roswell employee!

Anyway if you believe at all in a sustainable future for Buffalo and making Allentown a nice place for people, not cars - write Peter Merlo, City Engineer at pmerlo@city-buffalo.com, and Stephen Stepniak, DPW Commissioner at sstepniak@city-buffalo.com and let them know what you think

Allentown Association doesn't put out an electronic version of this :( So i took a picture.




Joe Herzig said...

A Roswell Park employee also said a walkable, attractive Allen Street was essential for merchants to gain customers from the BNMC. He reminded the crowd that they could potentially get a lot of patronage from students, staff and visitors to the new UB Medical School and the new Children's Hospital now under construction. ...
Another suggested shuttles from BNMC lots at night when they are underutilized

Just to be clear I never actually said anyone needed a shuttle from BNMC to Allentown (unless you're disabled). Not sure where that came from. Walk your butts a block or two!

So (e:Paul) broke his ring. I thought it was ridiculous that Paul wanted us to buy him a new ring. I don't understand jewelry and I never will - even cracked, the ring was still very beautiful. But in true Paul fashion, he constantly browsed eragem.com looking for other rings, and once he found one he wanted and made sure (e:terry) and I knew about it. Non stop. For weeks. Through every method of communication we use, including dance.

The price was $1600 for a diamond band in gold. Terry and I broke down and decided we might as well make an offer to negotiate - not having any idea of what a band like that is worth. I emailed the owner via his site yesterday, offering $900 for the ring and linked to Paul's post explaining his situation.

Less than a half hour later, the owner of the site, Michael Michael, called me at work. He wanted to let me know he felt terrible that Paul's ring cracked - that sometimes it can happen with a heavy ring like that due to the occlusions in the gem, but he wanted Paul to be happy with his business.

I was mentally preparing to haggle when he mentioned the diamond band. Before I even said anything, he offered to send it out next-day free of charge. I couldn't believe it. I don't think I've ever seen awesome customer service like that before.

The only thing I wish I would have done was to have asked him to not contact Paul about it so it could be a surprise. I was so shocked I forgot. As soon as he sent the both of us an email, Paul flipped out with excitement.
So (e:Paul) broke his ring. I thought it was ridiculous that Paul wanted us to buy him a new ring. I don't understand jewelry and I never will - I thought his cracked ring was still very beautiful. But in true Paul fashion, he constantly browsed eragem.com looking for other rings, and once he found one he wanted and made sure (e:terry) and I knew about it. Non stop. For weeks. Through every method of communication we use, including dance.

I'm so happy that Paul is happy.

On Sunday, (e:terry) and I wanted to go sledding or skating, something active. It was pretty warm out. So we walked downtown to the new rinks.

No dice. The line was almost a half hour long just to pay for admission, not even the line for skate rentals. It's good that it's so popular - the space is awesome and it probably brings more people downtown on a weekend than anything else.

So instead we continued our walk over to Riverworks. It was much less crowded and the ice looked way nicer. It was already closing when we got there, so we'll have to try another time. Some weeknights they're open until 10pm.


This house on Franklin has been done completely in white. Blank white walls inside, fresh white paint on the outside, white snow on the lawn.


The dreamland crew made these pretty ice globes out of water balloons

Riverworks and the river

When we got home (e:terry) and I made a delicious curry with the leftover paneer from my sandwich.

I continued my work on porting the Paul's CSS color themer away from surebert while we watched a terrible zombie movie called World War Z. It's amazing how all so much of the javascript that needed to be abstracted into toolkits and frameworks has been standardized in the past couple of years (if you want to ignore IE8).