Life Stuff

Nov 14: Some Random Family Videos

For my birthday this year, Cyndi gave me a Flip Video Camera. It's a little larger than the size of a cell phone, a couple gigs of internal storage (an hour's worth), and a flip-out usb connector so you can plug it straight into a computer. It's brain-dead simple to use. Its simplicity & small size make it ideal for actually using, as opposed to a 'real', more expensive camera that would have a good chance of sitting on the shelf most of the time.

I've had it since July, but only got around to doing anything with the videos the other day. I setup a YouTube account and uploaded a bunch of vids there. The vids are mainly just family stuff around the house, and feature a lot of the kids (both in front and behind the camera--be prepared for some motion sicknes when they're running the camera). They also feature a fair amount of me being impatient with the kids.

Annoyingly, someone had already taken the username furiousben, so on YouTube, I'm just furiousblog. You can see all the vids or subscribe via RSS on my channel:

furiousblog's youtube channel

Here are a couple of the vids:

Kids at Washington Monument:

Lori, After Crying

The last Obama rally before the election was held in Manassas, which is just about 20 minutes from our house. We went with the two older kids and my Dad:

The kids jumping in one of the five or six piles of leaves we raked on Tuesday:

Posted by ben in Life Stuff on 11/14/08 10:51 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Aug 20: Die, lawn, die! Oh, wait. You're already dead.

Over the past several months, I've become somewhat of a treehugging hippie (I know some of you think I already was, but I've taken it to a new level). I've started composting in massive quantities and started gardening. I also have a lot of plans for rain barrels, a gray water reclamation system and a homemade solar hot water heater amongst other things.

One of the things that I've been giving a lot of thought to is my lawn. Lawns are a pain in the butt to maintain, require unholy amounts of water, collectively generate more pollution from fertilizer runoff than farms and are completely unnatural.

For a month or two now, I've had a tab open in Firefox to this great article in the New Yorker:

Turf Wars

It talks about how we ended up with the absurd and unsustainable idea that everyone needed to have a patch of land covered with the exact same type of grass. It also discusses what we had before and a lot of the problems with lawns. I highly recommend reading it.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my lawn. I have a hill in my back yard that I planted grass on to keep it from eroding, but now it's mostly dead. For the bigger part of it, which is a little ways off from the house, I'm going to plant a 'meadow mix' of seed that will grow a mix of wildflowers and other plants. This will control the erosion, but will also require less water and maintenance, and will look good.

I've got big plans for the other half of the back yard, too, but they're a lot more involved and so will take a lot more time and effort (and money...) to pull off.

It's the front yard that's the real problem. Currently, it's just grass with some mulched areas next to the house. I've basically decided that I won't water the lawn, so it's not very nice right now. I'm not sure what I'm going to do there, but whatever it is, it will involve the elimination of most of the grass and replacing it with some sort of drought-tolerant, low-maintenance landscaping.

Posted by ben in Life Stuff on 08/20/08 19:32 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Jul 3: Long live the Yaris!

To replace the newly-dead Camry, we bought a used 2007 Toyota Yaris. I had been looking into them a few months ago, but couldn't justify buying anything until the Camry kicked the bucket. It's too bad, though, because with the price of gas going up, everyone is buying Yarises (Yarii?) and the prices reflect the increased demand. When I was first looking, I found several used ones for around $10,000. Now, though, they're really hard to find and the prices have gone up. The dealership I bought from had two and was the only dealership within a hundred miles to have two. All the others had one or none. When looking, I would see a new listing and it would be gone

I wanted something small, looked ok and was more fuel-efficient. Oh yeah, it had to be affordable. The Yaris is definitely all of these things. It's small enough on the outside to park basically anywhere. Yet, it's surprisingly roomy on the inside and is quite comfortable even in the backseat. I was nervous about picking up slugs in it, so I got in the back even before the test drive. I did have two huge guys as slugs the other day, and it was a little snug.

I found a list of the top 8 or 10 most fuel-efficient cars of 2007 & the Yaris was #7. The rest were hybrids and costed on average twice the price of my Yaris. The 2007's mileage was listed as 34 or 35 city and 39 highway. The EPA changed how they calculate mileage, though and the new ones (same exact car) are listed as 29/35. Using some moderate hypermiling techniques, I'm hoping to get over 40, though. I plan on posting more on this later.

So, I love my Yaris. I've never really had a car that I actually liked. They've always been just cars. But, I actually enjoy driving the Yaris. It's like driving a go-kart (in a good way). Here are a bunch of pictures of it that I snagged from the dealership's site.

Posted by ben in Life Stuff on 07/03/08 18:33 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Jul 2: The camry is dead, a eulogy

On Friday, June 20th at approximately 5:15 p.m., our Camry died a quiet death. It was very old and it was time for it to go. When something has lived a long full life, it is not a thing of sadness when it goes softly into the long sleep. The Camry was originally my parents' and I had been driving it for almost half of my life. It was model year 1994 and had 214,000 miles on it.

Recently, it had stopped working and was out of commission for several months. When he was finally able to revive it, my mechanic friend told me that the cooling system was rusting, the transmission was going and that massive timing belt failure was imminent. The coolant was a deep orange/copper color. I took it in and had a life-extending radiator flush performed. After what seemed like an agonizing eternity, but was really an agonizing two hours, the mechanic performing the flush came to me and told me that he had done all he could; he had flushed the radiator twelve times with little effect. I thanked him and took my ailing car home.

I put in some transmission fluid, and after that it performed beautifully--almost like it used to. I drove it every day with no problems. I could almost pretend that the inevitable was not near. Then, the window died and wouldn't close. I took it into the shop and they told me the cost and asked if I really wanted to spend that much on a car that is obviously on its way out. They were able to close the window and advised I not open it again. I thanked him and took my ailing car home again.

A few weeks later, I accidentally pressed the wrong button and opened the window a smidge. I couldn't get it back up, so I performed a little open-door surgery of my own. I cut the wires that are responsible for raising and lowering the window and attached a rope to the window sled. This way, I could close the window simply by pulling on the rope and then tying it onto the door handle. It was not an elegant sight.

We, the Camry and I, went on this way for a couple months until that fateful Friday, two weeks ago. It is only now that I can bring myself to speak of it.

The day was unremarkable, unlike any other. I had driven a couple slugs to work and a couple others home. Upon arriving home, I left again to take Elise to gymnastics. I dropper her off and started home. About two miles down the road the engine cut out and I drifted over the side of the road, knowing this was it--the Camry would never move of its own accord again.

There was much discussion of whether it even made sense to pay someone to tow it to the shop. In the end, we decided we should do so, just in case. We all knew it was futile, but still we hoped. Within hours, the shop called with the cause of death; the timing belt had given out. It gave its all right up to the last. It ensured that the slugs made it home and that Elise arrived safely at gymnastics. But then it could give no more and was gone.

Farewell, Camry. We thank you.

Posted by ben in Life Stuff on 07/02/08 14:05 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

Jun 10: Lori pics

I've posted a bunch of photos of Lori & miscellaneous family members on my family photos site. Click the screaming baby if you'd like to check them out: