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April 23, 2009
Today is my birthday, I am turning 34. My sister who is current living in Japan sent me a nice box of Japanese goodies and a birthday hat. Since I am at home today I will sample a few of them and gauge my reactions!
When I first opened the box last night I was greeted with a plethora of items, various kit-kats, some hard candies and some chip like items. Some had obvious pictures like the banana kit-kats, and some had English text describing the flavor like Teriyaki, some had a picture like little shrimp, and finally some were just Kanji text. Each was going to be a surprise.
Last night we saw this item, a teriyaki corn stick and decided to give it a shot. Upon opening the packaging Danith was the first to comment on the very strong odor. Yes it was definitely covered in a heavy teriyaki flavor. Brandon took the first bite and here is his reaction. I took the second bite.. Tasted like a really thick Bugle that has been soaked in Soy sauce a bit too long. Unfortunately this one we did not finish.
Next was a chocolate item, again we had this one last night. These were little chocolate pyramids with a pink tip. I assume this is supposed to be chocolate covered strawberries. These had an excellent chocolate flavor with the usual fake strawberry. They were quite tasty and Brandon and I quickly finished off the box. Now this is more like it!
Next was a snack from Calbee. I have had some of their previous snacks and they are always a potato based snack with some special flavors. Based on the packaging I would guess shrimp. I was imagining a cooked shrimp flavor but upon opening the package it smelled just like fresh caught raw shrimp. Popping one into my mouth the taste was very similar to the smell. Actually not too bad, but a different shrimp flavor than say a pack of Ramon noodles. I finished off the bag except for one that I tossed to Max. He did not see eye to eye with me on this one and after smelling it for a good two mintues decided to pass.
Stay tuned for more Japanese food sampling!
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April 20, 2009
First off I apologize for the lack of posts, no real excuses, everybody is busy, so chalk it up to being too lazy to sit down and write something.
Let me start with the recent and work backwards. This weekend we decided to replace our leaky kitchen faucet with a new one. The old one was leaky, cheap and ugly. It could have probably been repaired and saved, but why when we can have a nice new faucet in it’s place.
After shopping around at Home Depot, Lowes, and Menards we bought a Moen Torrence edition brushed nickel model. Looked nice except the sprayer was cheap looking, but we did not care as we have a better sprayer that I would just hook on.
After getting it home and the old sink taken off I took an inventory of the parts needed.. Two hose extensions.. Oh and I needed to hook up our old sprayer. Well that is the hard part I guess. Moen faucets come with a quick connector for their sprayer, however the Kohler one we have has a compression end. So first trip to Menards and I picked up what I thought would work.
Getting home I had to use the hack saw on the new faucet to remove the “quick connector” and was left with a 1/4 MIP male pipe fitting. The same connector as the Kohler sprayer! But alas the inside diameter of the pipe was too narrow so the sprayer did not fit. Back to Menards for an extension.
Second trip to Menards for the extension coupler. Well I forgot that I needed a Male – Female coupler and just picked up a Male – Male one. Doh! Third trip for the right connector and 30 minutes later we had a new kitchen faucet.
Other news.. Brandon had his friend Hunter spend the night Friday, his first sleep over at his house. It went very well other than the occasional melt down where he wanted to do something and Hunter wanted to do something else. Typical 6 year old stuff.
For Easter Aiden got a new big wheel. He loves it but is not big enough to pedal it yet. I will get a picture of him on it shortly. Brandon got new roller blades from the bunny, again a picture will be coming soon.
Summer sports are starting this week for Brandon… Tee ball Tuesdays and Thursdays and Swimming MWF. In May he is starting Golf lessons and Dad gets to come with to dust off his rust.. Hopefully in time for his Golf weekend on May 28th.
Danith is scrap booking again, so time to print out more digital prints!
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April 1, 2009
This week is Brandon’s spring break, so he does not have school. We decided to keep him out of his normal Kids Club so he could enjoy the warm weather and play with his neighbors. Well long story short the weather has been in the 30-40s, so no outside playing has occurred.
I was originally planning on working from home M-W and then Danith would take over Thursday and Friday. Monday started off well, but after only a few hours of being cooped up in the house Brandon was bouncing off the walls. This of course made it hard for me to get any work done.
For a break I took Tuesday off of work and along with one of Brandon’s friends we went to the Water park of America.
Brandon enjoyed all the smaller water slides, and went down them all by himself. They played in the wave pool many times, even though at times they went too deep and had to hurry back before the next wave came over them. It was a fun 4 hours in the water and a great diversion.
Today, Wednesday, I am again trying to work from home and Brandon seems to be doing better to stay occupied. Cross your fingers for me!
In other news, one of my trusty laptops decided it was time for spring break and decided to break. A few years ago one hinge broke but it was still usable. This past weekend the other hinge stopped turning and the screen broke completely free.
Well in true Macgyver style I quickly took a metal L bracket and screwed it to the laptop bottom. Now if I am careful I can open the screen, balance it on L-bracket and the laptop is still functional. Although I will have to replace it soon and dismantle this one and perhaps turn it into a WiFi picture frame.
Have a good week everybody!
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March 17, 2009
Friday morning Danith left for a sewing weekend in Eau Claire and I had a Dad weekend with the kids. Once I picked them up from school and day care we pitched in to straighten up the house. Otherwise Friday was not too eventful.
Saturday morning started off bright and early, as Brandon got up at 6am, excited for the day. His Grandma Braun was coming to watch his pinewood derby race at 10am. As I prepared the kids breakfast I started to notice feeling more and more tired and my stomach more and more rocky.. Not a good way to start the busy day ahead.
Around 9am my Mother arrived and the kids were crazy with excitement. Brandon showed off his derby car, Aiden was trying to show her the books he liked and the most needy kid, Max, wanted all of her attention.
The derby went well. Brandon had a good time watching all the cars zoom down the track. The overall excitement level was pretty high. His car was not first and it was not last. It finished right in the middle of the pack. As Brandon likes to point out, his car came in first during it’s last run. 
After the derby the kids were starving. My stomach was in bad shape so I knew I was not going to be eating much, so I let them decide where we ate. That was a bad mistake.. They choose Mc Donald’s. All in all not a bad place as they can run around, but the smells of the greasy food did me no favors. It was all I could do to give them 30 minutes to eat and play before I had to leave to get home.
My mother helped out a lot after we got back home. She took the kids on a walk to the park to play. I was able to lay down and rest for a few hours, everybody won. After a light nap I was in the middle of the fever but at least my stomach settled down some.
Grandma Braun left about 4pm for home, but I was not stuck with both kids long. Brandon’s friend Jack came home shortly after and he went over to play and was there until a bit after 6pm. Aiden was content to play in the playroom on his own and occasionally bug me for some juice or to help him go potty. I was very lucky to have such wonderful boys.
Sunday morning I had to get Brandon ready for church class. I was only feeling marginally better, but got him there anyways. While we was in class, Aiden and I got gas, some drinks and a car wash. That pretty much ate up the hour we had to kill while BG was in class.
Once we got back home the kids were up in the sewing and computer room playing. At some point someone stepped on Danith’s sewing machine acrylic table. When we were leaving the room I noticed it had a big crack in it. Uh Oh.
So Danith returned Sunday afternoon and took the boys to her parents house for dinner with the family. I stayed home to rest and to not infect the rest of the family. I felt bad about the table and Danith mentioned it cost $100. I figured it could not be more than $20 of materials in the table so went to Home Depot and picked up the supplies to duplicate the table. I was wrong about the costs.. It cost only $15 to replace the table. The picture shows my replication, not too bad, just a few minor imperfections.
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March 8, 2009
A side hobby of mine is tinkering with computers, I know quite a shock to those that know me. I always have lots of computer equipment littered around collecting dust and what not. About a year ago I started to put together a computer to use as our home theater PC, HTPC. HTPCs are usually connected to a television and used to show videos, pictures, play music, etc.
For the past year this HTPC was not really fulfilling it’s true potential. I was only using it as a file server for our TiVo’s. Now that unto itself was beneficial as we could place all of our photos, music and videos on the HTPC and all of our TiVo’s play any of the content on it.
Last month I decided that it was time for the HTPC to become more than just a file server and get all the required components to output true HD to our big screen TV in the basement. I ordered a faster CPU, more memory and a couple of Terabyte hard drives.
I was a bit surprised when I went to hook up the drives that my old motherboard did not have the SATA ports that were advertised on the box (Collecting dust in my closet). This required me to purchase a new motherboard, and a new video card.
When the motherboard and video card arrived I knew it would be better to reinstall Windows from scratch than to try to jury rig it all together. So a few hours of installs, updates and patches later Windows was installed. But I still had an issue, the computer would lock up when it tried to shut down, probably due to a bad driver.
So after moving all my drivers to a separate folder I reinstalled Windows again. Another 3 hours down the drain, but success as Windows could start up and shut down properly. Now I could play with the system and see what it offered.
The new video card could support 1080p but my older HD TV proved this was too hard to read the text on the screen at 1080i, so I switched to 720P, much better. I installed all my software to convert videos, stream them to my TiVos and to play movies in the basement.
About this time my last component came in the mail, a Blu-Ray drive. The new drive would allow us to watch the newer format Blu-Ray discs on the big TV in the basement. A simple upgrade, so I thought.
After removing my old DVD drive and putting in the new drive I turned on the PC. As it hummed to life I flipped through the manual of the new drive, anticipating what extra software I would have to install to play the BR discs. When I looked up I saw that Windows locked up while booting up. An hour of tweaking start up settings did not get my any further. Nuts, I have never had a windows boot up issue with a new drive before.
Three more hours later I had Windows installed from scratch again and was installing my software again. At least I was getting good at this part. I pulled out a BR disc, Batman The Dark Knight. The new, albeit crappy, default player loaded it up. The picture looked great, but no sound. Oh no, what is wrong now.
Flipping through Windows settings and defaults I ran across the fact that my new Video card has it’s own sound device for the HDMI cable. This was the default, so no sound was coming out my other sound device. A simple setting fixed this and I was getting sound. Not HD Surround sound due to the crappy video player bundled with the Blu-Ray drive, but at least sound.
So the only things remaining are to reinstall my TV cards so I can timeshift ATSC, Clear QAM, and NTSC cable and the HTPC should be complete enough… For now.
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Today is my birthday, I am turning 34. My sister who is current living in Japan sent me a nice box of Japanese goodies and a birthday hat. Since I am at home today I will sample a few of them and gauge my reactions!
Last night we saw this item, a teriyaki corn stick and decided to give it a shot. Upon opening the packaging Danith was the first to comment on the very strong odor. Yes it was definitely covered in a heavy teriyaki flavor. Brandon took the first bite and here is his reaction. I took the second bite.. Tasted like a really thick Bugle that has been soaked in Soy sauce a bit too long. Unfortunately this one we did not finish.
Next was a chocolate item, again we had this one last night. These were little chocolate pyramids with a pink tip. I assume this is supposed to be chocolate covered strawberries. These had an excellent chocolate flavor with the usual fake strawberry. They were quite tasty and Brandon and I quickly finished off the box. Now this is more like it!
Next was a snack from Calbee. I have had some of their previous snacks and they are always a potato based snack with some special flavors. Based on the packaging I would guess shrimp. I was imagining a cooked shrimp flavor but upon opening the package it smelled just like fresh caught raw shrimp. Popping one into my mouth the taste was very similar to the smell. Actually not too bad, but a different shrimp flavor than say a pack of Ramon noodles. I finished off the bag except for one that I tossed to Max. He did not see eye to eye with me on this one and after smelling it for a good two mintues decided to pass.
