Last month our electric bill was off the charts.I was secretly hoping someone was playing a pratical joke on us. Once the full amount sunk in I decided I to do something about it. I decided to buy a tool that would let me see exactly how much electricity was used by various devices.

I logged on to Newegg and bought a Kill-a-watt.

With this little device and I see exactly how many energy anything plugged into it is using. It provides information on voltage, amps, etc. I only care about instaneous watts and long term watts numbers.

I set out to document how much electricity various devices around my house use. I didnt bother testing devices like my refrigerator- devices that I would leave on regardless of the results. I only looked at devices that I might power off if they were using too...

Nikki and I started dating back on December 6th of 2002. We were both from the same home town but never met each other until we were living in different states attending college. Nikki and I met through common friends back in our home town but it was not until junior year of college that we finally got to know each other well.

Once we finally started dating we had a long 4 hour drive long distance relationship. Which quickly shrunk to 1 hour when Nikki transferred to Eastern Illinois University, only about 70 miles from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

The long distance relationship continued once I graduated in ’04 and moved to Maryland. Nikki still had one more year of school to finish up before she was done. But, as soon as she graduated in ’05 she moved out to Maryland with me - which marked...

Well the 4.5 OS finally came out for the Blackberry Curve. I have been waiting for this to come out for about 6 months now. It really upgrades the funtionality of the device. Some of the major upgrades are:

• Video Recording capability
• Ability to read html formatted email
• Streaming Audio/Video
• Voice Recorder

I have played with youtube and it seems to work fairly well. The streaming videos on mobile youtube are pretty downgraded in quality. This is to be expected I guess since youtube has to cater to all mobile devices. Since the resolutions on their videos arent as big as my screen the videos wont go truely full screen. They seem to be the perfect size for the Blackberry Pearl though. I have not yet found a site to stream audio from. I am praying that I can somehow finess this thing to hook into di.fm. I’ll let yall know when I get this working.

The...

I created this blog with the intention of recording out my every thought. After spending a few days writing all the code for the blog I created a flurry of posts but quickly have subsided to 1 post every couple months. I have a couple of ideas why this might be the case.

Most people blog about family, friends, or hobbies. I already have the photos section of the website to essentially ’blog’ about experiences I shared with friends and family. I also have a sections for all my hobbies; computers, cars, and our house.

Whats left for the blog then? Not much. Every once and a while I will rant here rather than creating a new webpage on the website, but only when the rant is not about something already featured on the website.

If you want to see what I am doing on a weekly basis, check out these other sections of the website:

• Photos - see where I have been and what I had to say about it
• *More*

It was a year ago today I complained about lots of stuff breaking simultaneously. I always thought this phenomenon was cyclical but now I am sure. It seems to happen once a year.

This time more things broke but over a longer duration. For starters, the Bronco’s front left brake pad completely worn down without any indication. This is strange after just 20k miles. Normally you hear some screeching when the pad is getting low. All I heard was the grinding of the pad backing on the rotor. I replaced the rotor, both sets of front pads, and both front calipers. After all is said and done it still clicks when driving thanks to a troublesome ABS tone ring not fully seating on the wheel hub.

Next was the XS1100. All of a sudden one day the engine sounded like it was going to blow up when it hit 4k RPM. I replaced the cam chain but no luck, the wicket vibration was still there. I have since replaced the exhaust gaskets hoping that will take care of it. As soon as it sto...

Hello there,

Thanks a ton for having the coolest website possibly made by any Jonathan that i know.  I played super nerd this evening, and I ended up here.  This was my fun evening of joyous entertaining activities of usefulness.

Alan bought an air conditioner from craigs list for $40.  Awesome.  I could not take a hot bedroom any longer.  Once i hooked up my AC, i realized it was possible to be in my bedroom.  I yoinked my original television that i bought in the summer between 8th grade and freshman year from my little brother, and got it in my room.  Since my television took over the place that my speaker was located, my poor speaker got placed on the ground.  That aint cool.  Soooo, i needed a speaker stand, but luckily i had a second metal electronics rack at the shop.  I vacuumed it out, and brought it home with a 300 disc sony cd player i got at the electronics junkyard, and a dolly plate.  I installed any...

Its easy to get caught up in the day to day grind. When I am not at work I am working on the house or working one of my fleet of vehicles. Its easy for me to get lost in all the things I need to get done.

Today I took a break from all that and took a motorcycle ride with a friend from work. We headed into northwest Maryland. It was by no means a long ride but it was incredibly refreshing. The weather was beautiful, the grass was green, the sky blue, and the air just smelled like summer. I had missed all this until I got out of the traffic in Baltimore and made my way into the country on my bike.

On a motorcycle you are closer to your surroundings. You can smell the fresh cut grass, you can feel the air temperature drop as you ride through shadows, you can see everything with an unobstructed view.

I got the impression of expansiveness I looked upon the distant landscape from the road as it peaked on a hill. It really puts things in perspective. Life is not abo...