Crushed Red Peppers Treated with Radiation

Ordered some Papa John's Pizza the other night, and happened to notice that the packets of crushed red peppers now state:

CRUSHED RED PEPPERS TREATED WITH RADIATION

A quick google search didn't turn up much other than a few random blogs noticing the same thing.

I fully expect to mutate in some manner over the course of the following months. I'll keep you updated if I notice any extra appendages and/or superhuman (or subhuman) abilities. Thus far, it appears that my skin is flaking off, possibly from sunburn from being out in the sun all weekend, but more likely as a precursor to an "Incredible Hulk-esque" transformation.

Fishin'

Andy and I went boating / fishing in Lake Lanier today with my coworker Brian. Brian has a sailboat, and there really wasn't any wind, so we never put the sails up. Fortunately, he has a small outboard motor as well, which was good enough to get us where we were going.

I think Andy was under the impression that "fishing" is the same as "catching fish." He's since learned that "fishing" equals "old guys drinking beer, and kids being bored, because the fish aren't biting." Overall it was a good time, though. We had to cut the anchor loose, since the bottom of Lake Lanier is full of trees and junk, and we snagged one pretty good.

In the course of 4 hours, I managed to snag my line on

• The propeller
• The rudder
• The line from the fishing pole on the other side of the boat
• 2 unknown miscellaneous "things" on the bottom of the lake. Probably tree chunks.

No fish were harmed in the making of this trip.

Pictures below.


Andy holding on to the sail "thig-a-ma-bob". I don't know my boating terms. According to this site, it appears to be called the "boom".





Me giving the double thumbs up. At this point, if I remember correctly, we'd been out for about 2 hours and were taking a break to eat some leftover KFC.






And finally, a couple more pictures of Andy.

random site of the random time period

mobile posting

not sure how useful this might be, but I figured I'd test out posting from my phone. woo woo.

Attention Arby's: You suck.

Reasons why Arby's, with particular attention to the Arby's on Hammond Drive, sucks.

1. They switched to Pepsi products last year. I could forgive this somewhat, because the Jamocha shakes are still quite tasty.
2. They no longer have baked potatoes
• The guy behind the counter suggested I get an order of the "Loaded Potato Bites", which are essentially deep fried tater tots with cheese and bacon in them. Not that I have anything against deep-frying, tater-tots, bacon, or cheese; on the contrary, I'm a huge fan of deep-frying, tater-tots, bacon, and cheese. But it's certainly no substitute for a baked potato
  
3. They no longer have HomeStyle Fries.
   
• Worse - they guy behind the counter said they replaced them with the potato cakes. I'm not sure what his definition of "replace" is, but they had them both (along with curly fries) for as long as I can remember.
  

Many times in the past I've gone into Arby's and ordered a loaded baked potato, an order of homestyle fries, and a diet coke. (see.. the diet coke cancels out the sour cream and cheese, and the healthy "baked" potato cancels out the french fries. I never figured out how to counterbalance the bacon and butter, though...) Now, apparently, I'm stuck ordering a milkshake and a dry-ass roast beef sandwich.

In summary:
Arby's -- you suck.

Sincerely,
Jake

New Speakers

I finally finished the new speakers I've been building for the past couple of months. The whole process took way longer than I'd anticipated, and naturally cost far more than I'd anticipated also.

They started out as sheets of MDF that I picked up locally at Suwanee Lumber, and slices of veneer that I ordered online at veneersupplies.com. If you're interested at all in veneer work, and don't have a local supplier, I strongly recommend checking them out.

These are the veneer slices I ordered from them:

I ordered a lot of 7 or 9 sheets (I forget) of these to use as the fronts and backs of the speakers. They measured about 48"x9" each. The wood is imbuya, and you can see it has an interesting burl pattern. I'd never heard of imbuya before, but it smells funny when you mill it, so be forewarned if you ever buy a board. The veneers weren't so bad, since you're never really creating any substantial sawdust.



I chose a complimentary imbuya burl veneer for the sides and tops. These sheets were about 100"x12", and I was expecting to get only 3 of them. They threw in a bonus sheet that had a pretty nasty split/tear about 16 inches long near one side (for free.) Since I didn't need the entire length for the center speaker, I just used the "bonus" sheet, so that worked out perfectly, and it left me with an extra sheet that I can save for another rainy-day project.



Rounding out the wood, I picked up about 20 board feet of 5/4 cherry, and about 6 board feet of 8/4 cherry, to be used as trim and for a base.

(I don't have any pictures of the cherry prior to it being milled. Sorry.)

I also purchased several miscellaneous speaker components, such as "grill guides", which you use to attach the speaker covers, terminal cups, binding posts, grill cloth, etc. I ordered the bulk of these from PartsExpress and MCM Electronics


A few dozen biscuits, more than a few quarts of glue, and about 2 months later...


I'm finally done. Mostly. They sound pretty decent - the bottom end on the towers is a bit "boomy" - i need to tweak that a little bit. Other than that I couldn't be more pleased.

Note for any "speaker builders" out there - you won't find any specs on drivers, crossovers, etc, from me. This was, at its heart, a woodworking project, wherein I happened to be building speaker cabinets.


Here are some pictures.


A full view of the speakers, sitting next to each other. Note the bookmatching (mirroring) of the front veneers - the rears are done similarly.



This is an angle view of one of the speakers. You can see where I burned the cherry with the flush-trim bit on the router. (the dark horizontal lines on the vertical piece of cherry.) Master woodworkers would say that's a "flaw" or "mistake". I say it's "character" and a "spontaneous design element".




Here are a couple pictures of the front speaker, which is made from the same wood, but which is smaller and horizontal, such that it will sit on top of the TV. In the picture on the right, you can see Judi's collection of small animal skulls (and a Bender toy. And a home-made Betty Boop "fisher price little people" figure.) These are purely decorative, and are not components of the speakers. But they do add a nice touch of class to an otherwise pedestrian livig room.





Here's a picture of the back, top, and sides. Not much to say about this one, other than that you can really see the figure of the wood in this particular photograph. So look at it.




Finally, here are a couple photographs of the speakers with the grill cloths on them. I made these myself, based on ideas in these instructions, using 2 layers of 1/4" MDF, with an extra 1/4" layer on the top and bottom where the pins fit in, which gave enough clearance to fit over the speakers. I wouldn't have had this problem if I'd taken the time to recess the speakers flush with the surface, but that seemed like far too much work. I also didn't make a cover for the center speaker, for a couple of reasons. First, it would cover the entire surface, and you wouldn't be able to see the figure on the wood. Second, since it sits on top of the TV, it's less likely to get run into by a wayward vaccuum cleaner handle, or attacked by a random animal or small child in a fit of rage.