new tv

the television on the left has been at mock manor since about the time i bought this house. it has put in ten long, good years. it was starting to show some wear with odd green coloring on the right side of the tube after being active for a little bit of time. it was time for a change.

i had been planning a replacement for a couple of years. other things seem to get in the way, but the pricing on 1080p plasmas finally hit a price the tax return could help me out with.

now, i can enjoy “house” in a very large screen format!

pancakes

it took me a while to get up and get moving this morning.  well, not quite moving that much yet.  i feel so tired still.  but i was able to finally rouse myself after benig awake for two hours to make some breakfast of some blueberry/cranberry pancakes, eggs (over medium), and bacon.  i fired up the griddle and made the morning goodness.

the time change this evening will take its toll on me if i don’t get to bed rather early.  here is where planning ahead is key.

naming node 3

nasa is running a poll right now to take votes on the next node to be added to the international space station.  node three is headed up into space during a december launch and will add room to the earth-orbiting facility.

node one was named unity.  node two was named harmony.  as of this post, node three is running high on the list to be named serenity.  (all you browncoats get over there and vote!)

the poll can be found at the following link:

nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

where did you get that scale?

if you know me, i am a big fan of the centigrade scale for measuring temperatures.  (it’s 8°C outside as i write this up.)  it is easy to explain what celsius represents: 0°C is water’s freezing point at sea level and 100°C is water’s boiling point at sea level.  one hundred points between these two standard occurrences.  it’s easy and makes sense.

this is where fahrenheit came up with his scale:  fahrenheit put a mercury thermometer in a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride.  when the mercury stabilized at a point, he marked it as zero.  he put the same thermometer in water just as ice was forming and presto, 32 on his scale.  the third point was putting the thermometer into the mouth or under the arm of a human to register 96 as the body’s temp.  as you an see, fahrenheit used two different sources for coming up with his scale instead a single baseline.

and the plot thickens.  later on, scientists noted that water boils at about 180°F and decided to make it exactly 180°F, so they adjusted the units to make that happen.  that’s why normal body temp is considered to be 98.6°F.  additionally, fahrenheit based his scale on that of one ole rømer. rømer’s scale shows brine freezing at 0 degrees and water boiling at 60 degrees.  (water freezes at 7.5 degrees on that scale.)  fahrenheit took that work as a starting point and increased the units to elminate fractions, which ended up back in the scale as the beginning of this paragraph notes.

today, the united states and a few other countries such as belize use the fahrenheit scale, and not every part of the united states.  primarily weather forecasters and non-scientific are those left who still put an F after their temperature numbers.

i don’t know about you, but celsius just makes logical sense to me.

information about fahrenheit and celsius came from wikipedia.com.

bacon for valentine’s day

my parents know me very well.  what better way to say “i love you” than with bacon?

bacon for v-day! from mark mcintyre on Vimeo.

why i will never switch to verizon

these are the people who charge you for phone service.  be afraid.

0.002dollar = 0.002cent

snow finally

yay!  we got some snow yesterday.  i realized this morning that if i didn’t take any pictures of it, i’d regret not capturing the one moment we ended up with the white stuff (not the white stuff in the middle of an oreo).



a friend of mine took a few more pictures of the snow.  check out her shots at flickr.