2.28.2006

Local Ads

The paper has a "Bargain Box" section where the ads run for free as long as the items cost less than or equal to fifty dollars. Sometimes there's good deals but I don't know why some of these people even bother. Here are some of my favorites as they originally ran.

1 Small Lamp
with Shade $2
320-555-9227

Jelly feeders for
Baltimore Irioles
$5 320-555-9120

Digital alarm clock w/radio
blue color very good cond.
$5 (320) 555-3846

6 Large Boxes of misc items
$2/Box
320-555-0823

moosehorn/old/ on-
ly one side $50
320-555-5630

3 snow scraper
shovels $6 all
(320)555-7487

2.27.2006

Not Your Standard Big Kahuna Burger: Hardee's Pull Quotes

Ages ago, I had a meal at Hardee's. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the quality of their food has gone way, way up since they were bought out by the delectable Carl's Jr, but the advertising on their cups made me raise an eyebrow. The cups feature two quotes from the media. The first is from the Marshall Independent (Marshall, MN Population 12,735): "Hardee's knows what America wants". The Independent only keeps seven days worth of news on their website, so I wasn't able to find the context of the quote, but I did notice that the headline today was also fast food related.



Is it a historically fast food friendly newspaper? A mouthpiece for the preprocessed food industry? Who's to say, but if the food is really that good couldn't Hardee's find a bigger source to quote than a rural Minnesota newspaper?

The second quote is quoted on the cup as being from NBC Nightly News: "Now Hardee's has thrown down the burger gauntlet." I actually found this line in a transcript of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. While that line is indeed in there, the news segment also contains a line not on the cups from the Center For Science in the Public Interest's Michael Jacobson: "This is a heart attack in a bun." I love looking up things quoted out of context because invariably the context provides some information totally contradictory to the short quote.

In my research I also came across an unflattering NYT article:


Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Published: December 11, 2004

Dan Aykroyd once played a toy manufacturer on "Saturday Night Live" who sold children perilous products like bags of glass. If he branched into fast food, Mr. Aykroyd's character would probably have come up with Hardee's new Monster Thickburger, an artery-clogging mountain of Angus beef slabs, bacon, American cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame-seed bun. It weighs in at 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat - quite possibly one of the most lethal pieces of food out there.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest calls it "the height of corporate irresponsibility." Jay Leno joked that it was being served in little cardboard boxes shaped like coffins. But Hardee's is hardly alone. Burger King's Double Whopper with cheese has more than 1,000 calories and more than 65 grams of fat, and Wendy's Classic Triple with cheese has 940 calories, with 56 grams of fat.

If restaurants want to serve food like this, they should print the calories and fat content on the overhead menus. But consumers have to be responsible, too, and start making the mental connection between gargantuan fast-food burgers and fries and heart attacks and strokes.

What is driving Hardee's is a simple fast-food formula: poor nutrition sells. The company says its sales have been up steadily since it introduced its Thickburger line last year. In its rollout of the Monster Thickburger, Hardee's has gamely played up the new burger's sheer excess with the ad slogan, "Be afraid. Be very afraid." It is a setback for public health, but a triumph for truth.


I ought to mention, the point of this post isn't to be critical of Hardee's food, but rather the silliness of their advertising. I apprciate that they're using quality hamburger in their products but their ad department is depending on no one googling their cup quotes.

2.26.2006

Life Happens Between Empty and Full

I gassed up the truck today. As awful as it is to get a ten dollar bill in change for a hundred, I noticed the Phillips/Conoco/66 station had a new slogan: Life Happens Between Empty and Full. This confused me. Surely they meant to say "between full and empty". The only thing that happens between empty and full is me putting gas into my tank and reading their slogan. That just doesn't make any sense.

Then I thought about it a little more: life is what's happening when I'm pumping gas and standing in line and paying bills. The boring mundanities of life far outweigh (timewise) the joyful moments, the heartbreaking moments, the memorable moments. It's rather depressing for a slogan, that every second that I'm pumping gas my life is slipping away. It doesn't make me want to buy gas. If anything it makes me want to peel into the gas station, jam three or four gas nozzles into my tank and then speed off without paying. That's living between empty and full!

2.25.2006

Bands names that would be unable to attract an audience at the all-important club scene level due to confusion in the local papers

TBA
Sold Out
Karaoke
Fifty Dollar Cover
No Beer Tonight
Open Mike
65 and Up Only
Last Call at Seven
Closed for Private Party

2.24.2006

Scene from a Brushfire: Aftermath

burntpano

These have been pictures from my forthcoming book: A Million Little Fires. Click on each image for the high-res image posted on flickr.

On Wednesday I was burning a pile and said to myself, "this pile is much drier than I thought, it's much winder today than I thought and there's far more wood than I remembered. I'd be a fool to burn this today". Of course I'd already started the fire ten minutes ago at that point and I was looking at a wall of flames 40 feet wide and thirty feet high and feeling that I'd created something I could not control. But after eight hours of shoveling, chainsawing, walking across hot coals and hauling buckets of water from a nearby puddle, I tamed it. Or perhaps the fact that it exhausted 200 feet of seasoned wood is what slowed it down. It was the biggest fire I'd ever seen.

Thursday's brushfire made Wednesday look like a tiny campfire. I wasn't alone this time and we burned about 700 feet of dry, dry oak. A very conservative estimate reveals that we torched about three thousand cords of firewood, producing 84 billion British Thermal Units of heat. Unless I dropped a decimal point, that's the energy equivalent of 14,586 barrels of crude oil.

2.23.2006

Scene from a Brushfire: Day Three

pitpano

2.22.2006

Scene from a Brushfire: Day Two

pano360

2.21.2006

Scene from a Brushfire

2.20.2006

What I'm Playing: Card Game Edition

Mathew Baldwin mentioned Tichu the other day and when I was picking up the littlest brother at Dirt Road Comics the other night I found a set and brought it home. I haven't rounded up enough people to play it yet, but the Yeti is seldom wrong. I also found a couple of sealed starter decks for Rage: The Apocalypse and made the little guy promise to play with me sometime. That's another one that's better with more players, so maybe I'll try converting the Thursday night Yu-Gi-Oh League to playing a CCG popular twelve years ago.

I also found a link at my old, unsucessful blog to the rules for Egyptian Ratscrew! There's a game!

Congrats to Jick

Jick got married this last weekend. Yay Jick. He and his bride were going to get "Sorry baby, I had to crash that Honda" inscribed on their rings in elvish but it wouldn't fit. Congratulations anyway!

What's Kevin Meaney Up To?



On my long long road trip I listened to XM's three comedy channels quite a bit: it's hard to fall asleep while you're laughing. I heard a few clips of Kevin Meaney (you'll put your eye out and We're big pants people and wondered What's He Up To?

While not currently appearing in many major motion pictures or television shows (outside of 2004's Shut Up and Kiss Me!), Mr. Meaney has been busy. He starred in a one-man play that he wrote that Steve Martin called "The most innovative, heart-rending and funny show I've seen in a long, long time." He's also a member of the Broadway cast of Hairspray: The Musical and continues to do stand-up comedy. He also has a blog (but it hasn't been updated recently).

When not getting arrested in airports he lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

2.19.2006

License Plates I Have Seen

I saw a couple of neat vanity plates the other day. I normally don't think most plates are funny, but these two made me laugh. States have been changed to protect the actual plateholders.



This person is obviously a Next Generation fan.



I actually wasn't sure that this was a vanity plate, as I can't see how anyone would get it past the Department of Motor Vehicles.



Alright I actually didn't see this one, but a list just isn't a list unless it has three items on it (Hi Opal!).

Custom plates via ACME License Maker.

Not what I imagined.

I saw this web address scrawled on a sign in front of an abandoned store outside of Altoona.

www.batwanger.com

I couldn't take my hands off the steering wheel long enough to grab a pen, so I had to commit it to memory. I assumed that a bat wanger was some kind of a curved metal stick for smacking away bats. The reality is very disappointing.

Blogging from somewhere deep in Ohio

Spending the night in Cambridge, Ohio. The first motel I tried to stay at was having electrical problems and wouldn't let me stay there. They sent me to the second cheapest motel in town and after I checked in and turned the heater on in my room (seven degrees outside), I went down to check out the Motel Lounge. The lounge was a tiny, wholly unremarkable room off the hotel office that was out of the only beer that they had on tap. I asked for my default beer in situations like this: a readily available domestic macrobrew. Budweiser in a bottle. Of course, they didn't have bottles... only cans.

So I want to "enjoy" my Bud in a can, I didn't want to sit and talk to either of the bar's regulars. Not that they didn't seem like nice people, nice older mole-encrusted people, but I wasn't in a mood to pretend to seem interested in people I didn't know. I instead toss two dollars in the video slot machine. It's actually a fairly interactive game (for a video slot machine) and before I know it I'm up twenty dollars. I order another Bud in a can and start to whittle down my winnings. A couple more rounds and I hit the big prize: two hundred and seventy five dollars! I then decided to upgrade to a better bar.

For a side project I'm working on:
Closing Time in Ohio: 2:30

2.17.2006

Roadtrip: Day One

Woot!

It seems that the titles to my posts have been ending with a goodly number of exclamation points. I'm just excited to be blogging, I guess. Besides, how many different ways are there to end a standard sentence? Not many! My last three sentences have used the big three already... I guess there's alwa-

Five. Five ways to end a sentence. And until my keyboard gets an interrobang key, don't look askance at my exclamatory nature. And anyway, the webpage I'm talking about has an exclamation point right in it.

Woot!

Woot is the crack cocaine of e-commerce. Sales lust in the purest form. Instead of offering a bunch of different items you can buy anytime you want, Woot gives you one item at midnight CST. Don't want it, don't buy it. Do want it? Don't wait. Although a huge majority of the items are refurbished, slightly outdated or just plain lame, the prices can't be beat. Items sometimes sell out within minutes. And because they only need to generate one piece of ad copy a day, they make it really funny. Here's a snippet from a video card that was on tonight.

With dedicated gamers in mind, BFG took a powerful NVIDIA graphics processor, encrusted it with top-of-the-line components, wrapped it in a riddle, dipped it in a moonbeam, and tied it up with a sparkly rainbow ribbon of true love and spun sugar. We’re not engineers, so we may be mistaken about the exact recipe, but we’re sure of this: the sucker runs faster than a standard card.

So far I've Wooted an ArcadeMX Two Player Joystick, a Pioneer DVD Recorder and a World Series of Poker Wireless Plug and Play 15-in-1 TV Game (for my brother).

But tonight is a special night for Woot! A night where they depart from their standard format to clean out their vast warehouse. It's called a Woot-off, and when one item sells out, they replace it with another. All sorts of cheap stuff of varying quality.

Sounds like heaven to me!

2.15.2006

Go Go Greased Monkey!

Browerwise, I use Firefox almost exclusively these days. Sure, Safari has some better downloading tools and I open IE for testing once in a while, but the speed and extendablity of Firefox rules the roost. One Firefox extension that I find myself using more and more is greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a piece of software that runs inside Firefox that changes the appearance of web pages based on specified scripts. In english, this means the user has better control on how web pages are displayed. Greasemonkey scripts also let a user download content more easily. For example, many of the links in my Closet Theater postings are to Google Video or YouTube. These pages are great for viewing video at the computer but don't allow you to save the video for offline viewing. Josh Kinberg has written a pair of Greasemonkey scripts to enable downloading of this content. I also run a script called Amazon Music Helper that streamlines downloading free music from Amazon.com.

A way to share geotagged photos without all the tedious mucking-about in Javascript that I detailed earlier is to display geotagged images in flickr using the Google Maps in Flickr greasemonkey script. Only people running the same script will be able to see all the extra geoinformation, but a link to the script in your comments will make it easy for everyone (everyone running Firefox anyway).

These are all well and good, but the greasemonkey scripts I use most often are for my favorite game: The Kingdom of Loathing. There are two main groups of greasemonkey scripts for KOL, available here and here. Check out my new, improved interface (click to enlarge):



You'll note easier navigation links and automated recipie information. Not visible (but still cool) is detailed Cake Shaped Arena information and, my personal favorite, the ability to see the outcomes of KOL's "choice" adventures before you chose: perfect for hunting down that elusive Miner's Helmet. Greasemonkey scripts save me a lot of needless clicking.

2.14.2006

Closet Theater - Vol. 2

Brokeback to the Future
LSD Tested on British Troops
Stanley Jordan Playing Eleanor Rigby
Oh So Many Retro Commercials
Fight Club: The Romantic Comedy.
500 Dummies go to the Rose Bowl
Cheney Hunting Accident Simulation
Lazy Sunday: Nick and Amelia remix (adorable!)

If I hadn't been uprooting and replanting trees all day I was going to figure out Video Bomb and set up an RSS feed for these things. The folks at the Participatory Culture Foundation want free internet TV too.

2.13.2006

Law and Order: Special Valentine's Unit

I'm a little peeved that these didn't get to me in time to get them mailed out, but I'll share them with the world!

2.12.2006

Log Construction Notes and Links

Thinking about getting into log cabin construction. Here's the links I came across in the research I did this evening.

Project Documentation
OurLogHouse.com
Paul Kahle's step-by-step pictures
The House that Mark Built
John's Guide Service
Heger Cabin Blog
Colorado Log Cabin
Alaskan Antler Works

Schools and Classes
Log Home Builders of America
Lasko School of Log Building
Pat Wolfe's Log Building School (one week class)
Great Lakes School of Log Building
Montana School of Log Building
Del Radomske’s Okanagan School of Log Building

Other Information
International Log Builders Association
Synthetic Chinking
Stihl USA

2.11.2006

Google Maps Quickstart Guide

Google Maps Quickstart Guide

Although the process to customize a Google Map seems intimidating, it's actually very simple. Each step is quite straightforward and the Google Maps API is well documented.

The first step to adding custom pictures to your map is, of course, to take the pictures. Since there's not currently (to my knowledge) a camera with a built-in GPS,
you'll have to document the location that you took the photograph yourself. This can be as simple as photographing the GPS screen before you take each picture. The GPS unit I used for my mapping project was my Garmin Rino 110. Because the location display is somewhat small on the Rino, I wasn't confident that the pictures I was taking of the screen would show up, so I wrote each estimated location on a topographic map and then took a picture of what I had written. This had the added advantage of making it easier to organize all the photos when I got home, but was a rather cumbersome process in the field. Certain cameras allow you to connect a GPS externally, but if you have a data cable for your GPS, you can do this automatically (I love this hack: you upload your GPS track to the computer and software compares the timestamp on your pictures to the location on the GPS track to tag the pictures with your location).

If you choose to write down or photograph the location data, do yourself a favor and make your GPS display the data in the format Google maps is expecting: decimal format. This means 36.27458 rather than 36°16.474799. On the Rino, this is done by changing the Position Format in Units section in the Setup menu to hddd.ddddd° (although it only displays the data in this format on the Trip Computer screen). If you forget to record your location data in this manner or are converting coordinates from another source, it's no big deal... just use one of the many online conversion tools (don't forget, it's easy to convert street addresses to GPS coordinates).

The absolute easiest way to generate a Google Map is to use a free map building solution, such as MapBuilder. This site lets you plug in a few data points and then paste the map source code into your web page. If you want a more customized map, you'll need to edit some javascript yourself. I'll be using the source from my aforementioned mapping demo for examples. Before you add any code to your web page you must first generate a free developer's key to add to your code. I won't go into all the details of the needed javascript, refer to the Google Maps API for full details.

function onLoad() {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
var map = new GMap(document.getElementById("map"));
map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());
map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
map.setMapType(_SATELLITE_TYPE)
var centerpoint = new GPoint(-92.211866, 36.621033 );
map.centerAndZoom( centerpoint, 1);

This chunk of code tells the browser to display a map, to add the needed controls, to display a satellite image (rather than a street map or hybrid map), to center it on the given point and to zoom in at a particular level. It's worth noting that Google Maps expects location data in the reverse order that a GPS displays it (the east-west location before the north-south).



var icon = new GIcon();
icon.image = "http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_green.png";
icon.shadow = "http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_shadow.png";
icon.iconSize = new GSize(12, 20);
icon.shadowSize = new GSize(22, 20);
icon.iconAnchor = new GPoint(6, 20);
icon.infoWindowAnchor = new GPoint(5, 1);

This code determines the shape and color of the icons that appear on your map. I used a generic green "pushpin" but determined developers can use their own markers.



var point0 = new GPoint(-92.211866, 36.621033 );
var marker0 = new GMarker(point0, icon);
map.addOverlay(marker0);

var html0 = "<center><b><a href=a.html><img src=athumb.jpg>Potential Building Site</a></b></center>";

GEvent.addListener(marker0, "click", function() { marker0.openInfoWindowHtml(html0); });

Now we're getting into mapping the points. The first point you map will be point zero (because that's where computers start counting). Set the location in the first line (in that backwards Google Maps format). The next two lines of code govern the icon behavior. The html line determines what will appear in the pop-up window when you click on the icon for that location. You can use words, images or a combination. Since I stored all the files for this map in the same directory on my server, I used relative links. The page a.html is a simple web page to hold the photos and description of that location (although the pop-up window could contain a link anywhere you wanted). Repeat this code for each data point you want, incrementing the number each time.


var polyline = new GPolyline([new GPoint(-92.2133, 36.62285),
new GPoint(-92.207566, 36.62285),
new GPoint(-92.207533, 36.6236),
new GPoint(-92.2133, 36.6236),
new GPoint(-92.2133, 36.62285)],
"#ff33FF", 2);

map.addOverlay(polyline);

The first few polylines I drew I did the hard way: point to point, then draw the line. The last few I did the easy way, as shown. This draws a line between the indicated lines in a dot-to-dot fashion. Don't forget to close the shape. You can set the color in hexidecimal and the width of the line in pixels. Polylines are great because they scale with the map when zoomed or dragged. An additional bit of code needs to be added to the very beginning of your page for the Polylines to display correctly in Internet Explorer.

All the script mentioned should be in the head portion of your web page. In your body this is all you need:

<BODY onload="onLoad()" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TOPMARGIN="5" LEFTMARGIN="0">
<center>
<br>
<div id="map" style="width: 700px; height: 700px"></div>
</body>

You can set the background color, spacing behavior and size of your map here. Although in my mapping demo I used the map as the only item on a page, you could include a Google Map on any part of a page (as long as the Developer Key you generated matches the page the map is displayed on).

Although it seems like a lot of complicated javascript Google Maps are pretty simple once you get used to them. Rumor has it Google is planning to revamp the developer interface in the next few months and a few tags or bits of code might change but once a person understands the basic concepts, the new tags will be easy to adjust too. Future projects I envision for my personal use include a clickable map of all my Geocaching pictures and tagging my flickr photos with geographic information.

...we salute you!

Are you a rocker? Do you rock out? Or perhaps you don't quite rock hard enough.

Whatever the case, there's very few among us who could ever rock enough. For those times you don't want to get the whole band together or those times you realize you don't play an instrument there's Guitar Hero.

As I've mentioned, I'm a sucker for unusual video game controllers, and they don't get more unusual than what you'll find in the Guitar Hero box. This 75% size Gibson SG has 5 brightly colored buttons along the neck, a flap-like strum sensor, a whammy bar and an internal sensor to determine what position the guitar is being held in (which is an accurate measure of how hard one is actually rocking). The guitar is manufactured by Red Octane, famous for high quality Dance Dance Revolution pads. The software for this hardware was developed by Harmonix, the good people behind Karaoke Revolution. Gameplay is similar to the two Revolutions, but get this: you play a guitar!

Of course, a music game is only as good as the songs it contains. With Guitar Hero you can rock out to such hits as:

Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple
Spanish Castle Magic - Jimi Hendrix
Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
Killer Queen - Queen
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
Higher Ground - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Thunder Kiss 65 - White Zombie
Godzilla - Blue Öyster Cult
Ace Of Spades - Motörhead
and
Iron Man - Black Sabbath

And many more! How many more? Try thirty seven! Gameplay is fantastic: it feels just like you're playing guitar rocking out. This game is incredible fun. I can't wait to get a second controller for two player rock offs (the game can technically be played with a standard PS2 controller, but seriously...)

If you're just getting ready to rock, almost prepared to rock or fully and completly committed to rock, please please play some Guitar Hero, the rhythm game that doesn't require singing or dancing.

Edit: The guitar can also be hooked up to your PC for freeform rockage. Also Penny Arcade got to "play with" the prototype.

2.09.2006

Interactive Land Mapping Demo

Alright, it took an enormous amount of work (mainly because I didn't know exactly what I was doing) but I finally completed my aforeblogged Google Map project. The other day I was marking some lines on a few parcels of land and I brought my camera and GPS. Whenever I took a picture, I took a GPS reading as well. When I got home, I plugged the points into a Google Map, added thumbnails and links to pages with full sized pictures, and mapped out the property lines so it would be easy to tell which parcel each picture had been taken on.

The results are here. It's a bit unpolished and the parcel lines may not show up in Internet Explorer, but it's a pretty solid demonstration of the usefulness of Google Maps to better visualize real estate.

2.08.2006

I never thought I'd see the day...

Warning: this post contains mention of issues related to human sexuality, albeit in as clincal a fashion as I can muster. Any family members who happen to read this should skip to the next post to avoid embarassment of us both.


With all the free images of women and men on the internet in various states of undress and lasciviousness, I naturally assumed that my needs of such images would easily be met over my lifetime... without resorting to exchange of currency. However, the old saying turns out to be true: one really does get what one pays for. This month I splurged and got a one month (non-recurring, thank you very much) subscription to a site called Beautiful Agony. Now before I actually provide a link allow me to make clear that unlike many websites in the so-called "pornographic" arena, this particular page has no nudity, male or female. Instead it offers closely cropped videos of the faces of lads and lasses as they bring themselves (or are brought) to orgasm. The site offers free samples and they're always fascinating. It's a bit voyeuristic without the feeling that you're violating the privacy of an unsuspecting person. Intensely erotic and equally interesting for any gender or persuasion.

Recommended.

beautiful agony

2.07.2006

Google Maps: Double True

Working on a Google mapping project, so here's the relevant links I'm going to need:
API Documentation
GPS visualizer
bumpr.com
Transparancies
Google Maps Mania

Edit: More Helpful Links
Auto Photo Geotag
Burlington Bikeride Geotag
MAKE's Geotagging How-to
Coordinate Translation

2.06.2006

United Nuclear is great!

Placed an order with United Nuclear today that will probably automatically put me on any number of government watch lists. I'm not going to list the items I ordered - but only because each one will make a fantastic blog entry in the future. I will say my order is radioactive, phosphorescent, magnetically reactive and extremely endothermic. Just like me!

2.05.2006

Let's call a spade a spade

In 1996 Richard A Bartle published a paper called Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs. 1996's MUD (or Multi User Dungeon) has become today's MMORPG (or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) and Bartle's concept of the four kinds of players inhabiting an online word still rings true. His work is a fascinating read for anyone interested in game design or simply want to know why the other people in your favorite online game act so strange.

In 2000, Erwin Andreasen developed an online test to allow one to determine where they fall on Bartle's four axes. Andreasen's test then links the results with a player's Keirsey Temperement Sorter results.

Also of interest to the audience of this blog is the BarKoL test, a version of Andreasen's test tailored for Kingdom of Loathing players.

2.04.2006

Artoo!



Also added to flickr today is the R2D2 manger scene.

2.03.2006

Super Mario Day!



Remix the Super Mario sounds like my favorite: duh duh duh duh duh da

Make your own question mark blocks and hang them around town

Super Mario Devo (plus 63 more, including another Katamario brother)

Mario Misconceptions

LET'S MAKE DOT CHARACTERS AND MORE YOURSELF!

Download a bunch of Video Game Remixes

Edit:
More Mario Katamari (via)

2.02.2006

Dewalt 2 Gallon Cordless Wet/Dry Vac

Yesterday I got a new toy and I'm simply in love. It's one of those things like Tivo or the internet that makes it hard to imagine your life before it. Yes, I'm in love with a vacuum cleaner. What makes it special? It's a cordless vacuum cleaner. Not like a Dustbuster, this is like a portable Shopvac.




DeWalt makes a 2 gallon cordless/corded wet/dry vac. They call it the DC500. I call it ten pounds of cleaning fury. Now, I've used Shopvacs before. The problem with them is that they've already got one cord: the hose. The second electrical cord is just an added complication, another thing to get tangled. A cordless wet/dry vac is always at your side, ready to whisk your messes off to the land of fog and ghosts. Too poetic? I find myself becoming a neat freak when I'm working because this thing makes it so easy.

The DeWalt DC500 uses standard DeWalt 12 or 18 volt batteries, like you'd use in your cordless drill or reciprocating saw or angle grinder or any of the other DeWalt tools you may have. That's one catch: that this vacuum doesn't come with it's own battery or charger. All well and good if you happen to be a household that's commited to DeWalt. Ryobi fans, Black and Decker fans, Makita fans... I feel your pain. This baby is a no-brainer if you've got a bunch of DeWalts around and I'd say it's almost handy enough to pick up a battery and charger just for it (maybe a used one on eBay). The battery plugs into a watertight compartment in the back of the unit.



Now even though this vacuum will operate cordlessly, it includes a cord in case you want to roll that way. I was thinking I'd never use the cord because cordless was so cool, until my battery ran out and the charger was all the way across the house. I'm happy to report that the suction is equally strong corded or not.

The only option to trick out the DC500 is a HEPA filter. Out of the box, the standard filter is good for 99.7 percent of drywall dust. With the 25 dollar HEPA filter, the vacuum will eliminate 99.97 percent of particles as small as three microns. I'm not sensitive to dust at all so I can't tell if that extra .27 percent is worth 25 bucks.

As cool is this wet/dry vac is, there's a couple things that would make the next revision even better. Mainly, if I'm plugged in beacuse I've got a dead battery, I want that battery to be charging. Build in a charger, guys. Second, the suction is fine but it isn't "pull the carpet off the floor" strong and sometimes that's what I need. The yellow and black color scheme is classic and should be left alone.

Readers of this blog know I do a lot of work in abandoned houses and areas without electricity. In the past to vacuum I'd string a 50 foot extension cord from an inverter hooked to the battery of my truck. Or I'd give a cursory sweep and call it a day. With the DC500 those abandoned houses will be a lot cleaner.

DeWalt DC500: $99 dollars @ Amazon

2.01.2006

State of the Blog address

Well, that's an entire month of non-stop action blogging. Time to read the articles I've been saving to read until I became a "real blogger":

Steve Pavlina

Tony Pierce

ehow.com

By my back of the blank white card calculations, I'm doing fairly well by Tony (writing every day), not as well by Steve (too much so-called disposable content), and decent by ehow (it's a fairly short, basic article that I only included so I would have three links). But running contrary to all opinions, as usual, is Warren Ellis who tells us: this blog is mainly for me, but everyone else can watch too.

So onward and upward. Based on my looking at other blogs, I plan to add a "favorite posts" section and also take more pictures. So far my ads have earned me... a dollar! So that's not the massive cash influx the Google people made it out to be. They're in enough hot water anyway.

Blog on!