For all you non-truck owners

Ok, so I know that almost everyone that reads this has a truck, but I don't. This can make things a bit hard when I need to do something like haul around bags of manure or pick up lots of free mulch from the city brush recycling center.

Well I just thought I'd tell you about a nifty item I found, probably in the back of Family Handyman magazine or something. It is called the InteraTARP, and it basically a tarp made into a big box shape to fit the interior of a SUV or van. With it I was able to cleanly haul about a yard of free mulch this morning, with very little effort and virtually no mess.

I'm sure you could do the same thing with a regular tarp, but it is handy to have one that is already shaped like the vehicle. I especially like the flap on the back that keeps the back of the van clean. I also found today that to unload I could just set the wheelbarrow next to the back of the van, place the flap in the wheelbarrow, then use my rake to pull a whole load of mulch into the wheelbarrow.

So, if you don't have a truck, and want to haul messy things, take a look!

Customer Service: HP vs Costco

I had a problem with my HP printer the other day. This was a new OfficeJet that we bought in February, because we wanted a wireless printer. Our previous HP had worked fine for years, so I didn't feel bad about buying another HP.

Boy did that change last week. About a week after replacing the print cartridge for the first time, it started complaining that an incompatible ink cartridge was installed. After running out of ideas from their website, I called HP technical support, who rather quickly decided to send me a new printer. This seemed crazy to me...how did they know it was the printer and not the cartridge? Oh well, I figured they knew what they were doing.

They didn't. After receiving the printer, I was required to install my old ink cartridge, after which the new printer gave me the same incompatible cartridge error. I called HP, thinking they would quickly send me out a new ink cartridge, and we would be done with it.

Once again, they didn't. They wanted me go through all the same troubleshooting steps I did the first time. When I refused on the basis that I had already done it all, they said they could do nothing to help me. I have to admit that I became the stereotypical furious consumer at that point. Through the course of the call I was put on hold for long periods of time, was told that I could not speak to a supervisor or manager, and was refused when I requested any way to identify the person I was speaking to (all he would tell me that his name was Richard). Finally while being put on hold, I went ahead and did the troubleshooting again just to get this call over with. After I told this to "Richard," I was placed on hold and he never came back...

Wow.

After this I was so mad I packed everything up and hauled it back to Costco--four months after my purchase. I no longer had the original packaging, just a ziploc bag with all the manuals and cables. After spending at least two hours on the phone with HP, Costco took about two minutes to refund all of my money for my printer and the open pack of ink I had purchased. This gave me almost the exact amount of money that I needed in order to buy a new Canon Pixma printer (from Costco, of course).

After comparing the HP OfficeJet J4680 I returned to the Canon Pixma MX860, there is no comparison between the two. Everything about the Canon build quality and feature set is superior to the HP. I don't feel like going into the details, but compared to the Canon, the HP just seems like something the HP "engineers" churned out as fast as possible without regard to quality.

Two things I learned from this:

1. Just because a company's products were once good, doesn't mean they will stay that way.

2. Costco's return policy rocks. After this experience I want to make all my major purchases Costco, even if it is a bit more expensive (which it usually is not).

Parental Guidance May Be Required

Ok, so I have had problems with the movie rating system for a long time. My major complaint has been that gratuitous sex and violence seem to earn a PG-13 rating, while anything related to a serious subject matter--such as war--seems to automatically be rated R. To me this says that since teenagers have no capacity to think, they should only be presented with mind-numbing humor and vulgarity--you've gotta love that logic!

So where am I going with this? I just read an article on CNN about a group which is recommending that movies which contain smoking should automatically be rated R. WHAT?!?! You have got to be kidding me! My neighbors smoke on their porches, people smoke while they drive all the time, and people smoke on the street--in clear view of our children! Like it or not, smoking is a part of our lives, and I don't really see how eliminating it from movies is going to miraculously cure underage smoking. I am not recommending that smoking be glamorized in film, but an R-rating? Come on. With all the filth in PG-13 movies, you are going to decide smoking is the worst of it?

Since the way to prevent our children from doing something is to make it earn an R rating, I would propose that the following items be removed from any so-called youth film:

• Sticking gum under tables
• Farting
• Earning less than an A- on any school assignment
• Walking on the grass
• Throwing a recyclable bottle in the trash
• Failing to carpool
• Driving an SUV
• Eating fast food
• Crossing the street without looking both ways

I am sure that I am forgetting many other things that are destroying our children's lives, but lets get real. We can't solve the world's problems by changing the movies people watch. Maybe it is a factor, but why don't we try something significant--like actually spending time with our kids instead of just telling them to watch movies all day.

Finally Fixed? Realtek Audio Stops Working After Standby

Ok, so my blog doesn't normally include technical items, but I haven't found this solution out there anywhere, so I wanted to post it SOMEWHERE on the off-chance that somebody else may find it and be helped by it.

Problem: After my recent computer upgrade, my Realtek HD Audio occasionally died, and I had to reboot the computer to fix it. I finally figured out that the problem related to returning from standby, and that I could force the failure by going to S3 standby while watching a video on Hulu.

Solution: I saw some other people in several old threads I found through my Google searching, who said that if they remove their wireless PCI card. WHAT!?!?! The wireless card makes the audio die? Anyway, I decided to upgrade my drivers and see what happened. My network card is a cheap AirLink101 board, and their latest driver is from 2006--so of course I already had the latest version.

Wait!!!

I looked in the device manager and decided to Google the PCI Vendor and Device IDs and found a long list of matching hardware. As it turned out, the AirLink101 uses a Ralink chipset, and different manufacturer's products are differentiated only by the subsystem ID.

On Ralinks website, I downloaded all of their PCI drivers, and then sifted through the INF files until I found the one which supported device ID 0302, which turned out to be the RT256x Driver. Wow, a 2009 date! Wouldn't it be nice if all the OEMs like AirLink101 would at least rerelease the reference drivers once every couple years? I downloaded this and did a driver-only install on my system.

Next hurdle...I try to update the driver in the Device Manager, and it says that there are no other drivers on the system. No problem, we just have to force it to use the right one. Examining the new INF file showed that Ralink includes a bunch of vendor's subsystem IDs in their file, but not the one for my AirLink101 board. I decided just to force the driver install and see what happened. From the INF, I learn that device 0302 is called the Ralink Wireless LAN Card V2. By choosing to select the driver from a list and browsing to this driver, I was able to force the installation--ignoring all the complaints that the world might end if my driver mismatches.

A few seconds later my computer reconnected to my wireless network, and I have since suspended and resumed repeatedly in the middle of Hulu videos with no problems whatsoever, hopefully this fix is permanent. Thanks Ralink!

One year older and wiser too...

So this week has been busy, largely because we were getting ready for our daughter's 5th birthday. Emily isn't very good about bragging about her cakes, so I thought I would do it for her. This was a cake she "threw together" for the party. Emily made all of the flowers and the bow out of fondant, and the rest is buttercream. It was filled with some sort of delicious chocolate pudding also.

Homemade Corned Beef

One of the things I remember from my childhood is that once a year we would eat corned beef (I called it string meat) and cabbage for Saint Patrick's Day. I decided to cook some up this year, but took it a step further and decided to make my own corned beef from scratch. This supposedly makes for a better flavor, and also doesn't have any of the nitrites (or is it nitrates?) that make the store-bought ones bright red even after cooking.

I used a recipe from our Best Recipe book from America's Test Kitchen. There is some debate about which part of the brisket is better to use. Point cut is fattier and more flavorful, while the flat cut is leaner but more bland. I decided to do it Texas style and just cook up a whole brisket, so that I wouldn't have to bother making the choice.

You can see the brisket in the picture just after I finished putting the rub on it. My hand is there for scale, and keep in mind that it is completely filling a 2-gallon Ziploc bag.

After five days in the refrigerator we cooked it up and had ourselves a huge corned beef dinner, along with an accompaniment of potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, carrots, and cabbage. It was actually a very easy meal to make, and I wouldn't hesitate to do it myself again. For any of you who like corned beef (or even for those of you who don't like store-bought corned beef), you should give this a try.

Disposal of a Garbage Disposer

We have been a bit of a spending spree lately. February was good to us, and we were able to make some purchases that we have been putting off for a long time, in addition to eliminating our last remaining credit card debt.

When we finally settled down and stopped our spending, of course something broke. While retrieving dish detergent out of under the sink, I noticed that the box was wet. I was not surprised that the leak was coming from the garbage disposer, but I was surprised to see a 2" crack in the side of the unit out of which water was leaking. So, off I went to research garbage disposers, and continue our spending--albeit reluctantly.

Our old disposer was an Insinkerator Badger 5, which according to a quick Google search is notorious for cracking right after it exits the warranty period. Ours lasted just over three years, while the warranty expires after two.


I finally reluctantly chose to buy a new Insinkerator after doing research. The factors which made me choose a new Insinkerator were noise, quality, and size. The Insinkerator Essential I purchased uses stainless steel components where the old Badger used plastic or galvanized steel. It is much smaller that the competitor's products I could have purchased, and it has insulation and a few other items to reduce the noise output of the unit.

So, this morning I installed my brand new disposer which I ordered from Amazon. It installed with not problems, to the existing plumbing, electrical, and sink flange. Hopefully the experience with this one is better than the last.

I suppose the positive spin I can put on this--and the rest of our "spending spree"--is that I am doing my part to boost up the economy. I know this is contrary to what I said in my last post, but I am spending money that I already have, and buying things that my family actually needs (OK, so I am using a loose interpretation of the work need). Through our past two years of budgeting using You Need A Budget we have reached the point where we can absorb some unexpected spending without adverse consequences, and our financial life has been much less stressful.

Two Wrongs Equal a Right?

I find it very ironic that the solution the government and economists provide for resolving the financial crisis is exactly the problem that caused the financial crisis. It seems to me that our current crisis was largely caused by people spending money they didn't have. Whether the money was spent on a $1000 TV or a $500,000 house, people were just living beyond their means.

The irony is that people are now being criticized for being thrifty and budget-conscious. We are being told to spend our hearts out to improve the economy, while at the same time we are told that we must learn from our past mistakes.

Reduced consumerism reduces manufacturing and product design jobs. I don't really see any way around it. The solution, however, is NOT to return to our old ways and spend our way out of the problem. At some point all that we consume must be paid for. We can not expect an economy spending money wisely to support the same manufacturing that was supported by an economy on a crash course with bankruptcy. Those jobs have to be lost. It is painful and undesirable, but sometimes we must get worse before we can get better. When our bodies require work, we do not emerge from surgery 100% better. Our bodies require recovery time to require, and the economy is the same way.

So to this I say, let home prices come tumbling down. Let those who purchased homes they had no prospect of ever being able to afford lose them, and let us all strive to live within our means and live a sustainable economic life.

The excesses of others have made life hard for those who chose not to buy in to the economic madness. The rise of double-income homes, childless marriages, and cheap credit allowed the price of homes to skyrocket of out control. I didn't even apply for jobs in California, because I knew that the lifestyle my family chose would not be possible due to the price of housing.

Two wrongs do not equal a right. We cannot spend our way out of the current mess--unless we are all spending money that we already have. Let us and our country move forward without our blatant disregard for the sustainability of our practices, so that life can be better for all of us.

ants Ants ANTS!

Emily will often complain about little tiny ants in our house. I never notice them, so I don't tend to do much about them. The other day she insisted that there were lots of them under our oven, and it's no wonder! When I pulled out the oven, the ground was covered with Cheerios, raisins, M&Ms, and just about anything that you can imaging a kid dropping on the floor.

We decided that instead of just plugging their hole we would try to take care of them with homemade ant bait made from borax. Apparently borates are very poisonous to insects, but completely harmless to us. The bait would have been better with roach powder (which is just boric acid), because the texture would be a lot finer than the laundry booster I used. We tried making a mixture of corn syrup and borax, but they showed no interest. What really got them was borax and peanut butter. We haven't noticed any more ants lately, so maybe it just worked!

Beef, It's What's For Dinner

Ok, so this isn't really about the beef, it is about the pan. I contemplated buying a new set of cookware for Christmas, but decided I couldn't justify the cost--especially since I already have several decent pans. The one item I was really missing was a good saute pan.

I have been eyeing a clad saute pan for some time. This means that the entire pan has a layer of aluminum sandwiched between layers of stainless steel, so that it conducts heat evenly, without taking a long time to heat up like the pans with the thick bottoms do.

After Christmas I spotted a JCPenney brand cooks Tri-ply Covered Sauté Pan tri-ply saute pan for about $50 after shipping. The cheapest I have found anywhere else was $100, so I decided to give it a try. I have used it for cooking a few things, but nothing that let me really judge how evenly it cooked, until I browned this roast in it today. I was very impressed by how evenly it browned. An added bonus is that the handles have thin spots to prevent heat from transferring into the handles. Even with this pan sizzling hot, I can use the small helper handle without a hot pad.

My only regret is that I waited seven years to buy this!

Round Rock Dirt

I decided that you might not all care about everything I want to say about my garden, so I have created a new blog called Round Rock Dirt. If you are interested in the details of what is going on in the yard, give it a visit! I will probably still talk about the garden occasionally here, but the detail of it will all go on the new blog now.

Staying Thin

I think that mentally one of the hardest things to do in the garden is thinning. It can be hard to go out in the garden and chucking what are otherwise perfectly good plants into the compost bin, just because they are a bit to close together. In the end I know that thinning helps the plants to grow better, but it can be tough to put into practice.

Thinning is not all hard though...if your timing is right, the plant can be great eating--even if they aren't quite fully grown yet. Earlier this week I picked over three pounds of beets and beet greens, just by thinning out those that were too close together.

This morning I pulled one of my miserable tiny carrot plants, only to find an almost full-length carrot underneath! This inspired me to go thin my carrots this afternoon...I hadn't done it yet because my carrots patch looked so sad that I had given up on them.

The pictures reflect purely thinning my beets and carrots this week. I am getting excited for the real harvesting!

Great gardening, and remember to stay thin!

Sometimes A $25 Tomato Seems Like A Bargain!

I hear people joke that with their home garden each tomato cost $25! I don't think that is far from the truth for me, and it got even closer when I tried to start up my rototiller last week. Extra stress on the tried. It turns out that I needed to replace my fuel pump and fuel lines. Today I did just that, and it still wouldn't run right.

After dismantling the carburetor I was surprised by what I found inside. The photo doesn't really do it justice, because you can't see just how thick all the garbage in the carburetor bowl was. It was huge chunks of hardened filth...the accumulation of years of neglect from the previous owner. After spending most of the day and about $70, I finally have a running rototiller again.

It's things like this that make me question my gardening efforts. I just have to look at it as my hobby. My friends spend their money to buy TVs, video games, computers, and whatever else they want. I can't do that, because I have a garden...and a rototiller...and kids.

Bored? Bust a Hole in the Wall!

So the day after Christmas we decided that we would bust a hole through our living room wall to build ourselves a new pantry. This is in the corner of our living room just off of our kitchen, and consists of what used to be the far depths of the girls' closet. It took about two weeks to finish, and cost more money to build than we expected, but it is finally (almost) done. All that is left is to paint the door and trim, and to try to do a better job with the scrap of carpet I have inside.

We decided to take a leap and buy Elfa shelving from The Container Store so that we would have something adjustable that could change with our needs--especially since we weren't exactly sure how we wanted to use the space. It hurts a little bit paying for it--The Container Store is not normally the most affordable place to shop--but with their current sale it was about the same as buying similar Rubbermaid shelving from Lowe's. This was my first time using the Elfa shelving and I was very impressed that from start to finish it only took 23 minutes to install--including reading the directions and running out to the garage for tools several times. You would think that when all I need is a drill, level, and screwdriver that I would be able to do it all with one trip.

Our old pantry has 12" deep shelves, so I was amazed at how much stuff we were able to fit on these 20" shelves--and as you can see we could fit a lot more in there with some skillful arranging or possibly additional shelves. We were able to move so much stuff out of our old pantry, that we are actually thinking that we might be able to turn it into a laundry room! At least a laundry room with storage shelves, instead of the pantry with a washer and dryer that it has been so far.

What came first, the couch or the potato?

A while back I decided to replace my four remotes in the living room with a universal remote I picked up from Target. What a piece of junk! I could control everything from one remote, but watching a DVD required something like this:

TV button, Power, wait, channel down, channel down, DVD Button, Play

Switching back to the TV then required:

Power, TV button, channel up, channel up, Sat button (for my DTV converter box), Power

It was so bad that I dreaded trying to explain to a babysitter how to show the girls a movie!

Logitech's Harmony remotes solve this problem by letting you connect the remote to the computer to fully customize. They are the perfect combination of nerd and couch potato, but are usually around $100--which seems a bit much for a remote. After a friend's testimonial and a $30 deal for a new one on eBay, mine showed up yesterday.

It took me a couple hours to get it all working right, because I have some weird equipment attached to my TV, but those long sequences from before have been replaced by two button presses each. I can fully customize different activities, programming the correct button sequences for each device, making everything much easier to use.

I still have room to control eight more devices with this remote, so I guess I am going to have to start looking for some more toys. I am confident that no matter what I add to my pile, it will be so easy even the babysitter could do it.

Harvesting All Year

I laugh every time I see gardening recommended as a way to save money on food. Sometimes I feel that I might as well compost money and use that as the fertilizer for my garden, because it certainly consumes more than it produces. Rather than trying to justify the cost through the value of the food, I just call it a tradition and a hobby that is worth the expense.

That being said, I continue to garden, and each season my garden grows larger. Being in Texas, we can grow pretty much all year, but it is much different than gardening in Washington, so I still don't really know what I am doing. Last spring's garden failed miserably, but we were able to can 27 pints of green beans from our fall garden, along with giving away piles of Okra that we planted out of frustration in July when the heat killed everything else.

Yesterday was my first winter harvest ever. I have peas, beets, and carrots growing in the garden right now, and I finally decided to pull some of the beets up for dinner last night. I remember hating beets as a child, but the microwaved beets and buttered beet greens we ate last night were fabulous.

Hopefully this year will be better for my garden. I just ordered seed potatoes online, since they will be the first thing to be planted in February. By the time the gardens are being planted in Washington, we should know how the first harvest is going here.

Good Gardening!

The Links I Like

I just added a section to the right side of this page called Links I Like. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you what they are and why they gain a spot on the front of my page.

GB-PVR is free media center software for Windows, similar to MythTV for Linux (although GB-PVR is not open source). I placed a link because I feel it is a good product for anyone else looking to record TV on their Windows computer.

You Need a Budget is budgeting software along with a system for budgeting your money. We have been using this for close to two years and it has been a big help in helping us control our spending and greatly improve our financial security. It does cost money, but upgrades are free and the authors of the software are very responsive to suggestions. I know the web page looks like an infomercial, but it a legitimate product that I use and fully endorse. I would recommend that any of you looking for a change in your finances enroll in their free budgeting course to see what it is all about.

Gifts That Last

With Christmas this year came many gifts in our home. I would consider our gifts to be relatively few and modest, but already they have reminded me of the words of Matthew:

"But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal" - Matthew 6:20

Perhaps the words of this would be different if plastic has been around when it was written, since moths and rust have no power over it. Already since Christmas my daughters have been struck with the sorrow of broken toys. There is nothing worse than raising the hopes of a child, only to see them crash back down when the wonderful toys they had hoped for are really worthless hunks of plastic to be thrown away.

The greatest gift I received and gave this year, was that I was able to spend over two full weeks home with my family. We did not go on any fancy vacations, in fact we barely left the house, but we were able to spend time together, which is worth more than all of the other gifts I received combined. I must go now, as my daughter is telling me that I need to finish on the computer because she has a surprise for me.

These are the gifts that truly last...

Nuggets of...Jason?

Why the name? Well, I intend this blog to be a place for me to place a random sampler of things I feel like telling people...which could be rants, praise, projects, ideas or whatever else I please! These are not always going to be nuggets of wisdom, just nuggets of...Jason.

So anyways, I have never attempted to blog before, and I will not be surprised if this becomes a dusty relic of me lingering for the world to see once I lose interest, but lets give it a shot!