Random

So the question has been bothering me for quite some time, how many times can I really write to one of these USB memory stick things before it finally dies. With as popular as the USB drive based distributions are becoming, I was wondering, how practical are these distributions. The stick used in this experiment is a 1G Sony Microvault USB Flash Drive.

I'm going to see how many times I have to write to this before it dies. (more after the fold, this is a very long post)

Overheard earlier today

You better not have that toilet brush again!
put it back
put it BACK
put IT BACK
...
NOT IN THE TOILET!

I finally got around to carving out my pumpkin last night (nothing like some last minute work). I'm rather pleased with the results.

I expected my Saturday to be a rather relaxing day, where I would mow the lawn, and install the new water heater I bought. I don't usually post random personal things to my blog, but I just need to complain about this one in public where it can make me feel better

I never got around to mowing, and installing the water heater went something like this:

1. Go to hardware store, buy what I think I need
2. drain old water heater
3. remove old water heater
3. Find out parts bought in step 1 don't fit in my basement, back to the hardware store
4. Start building the connectors to go from the pipe to the heater, notice one of the fitting bought in step 3 was wrong
5. Go back to the hardware store to buy proper fitting
6. Finally get the water heater hooked up, start filling it with water.
7. notice the primary water shutoff valve is leaking, badly (it was 30 years old)
8. Go to hardware store, buy new shutoff valve
9. drain and move new water heater
10. Cut pipes to remove shutoff valve
11. notice I cut one of the wrong pipes
12. Go back to hardware store to get what I need to fix the wrong pipe I cut (at this point, I bought lots of extra things "just in case")
13. install new shutoff valve
14. Put new water heater back in place, fill it up
15. rejoice as nothing leaks and the house has water again (at this point, it is 11:30pm, I started this project at about noon)

At this point I'm claiming that the reason I didn't hire someone to do this, is that when the primary shutoff valve broke, it would have likely ended up costing me a fortune in plumbing fees.

I'm a rather big fan of carving pumpkins. I'm not entirely sure why this is, maybe it's because I get to roast the seeds afterwards. A few years ago I tried to find a Tux pumpkin stencil and came up dry, so I made my own. This year after many many hours of Gimping around (har har har), I have a THREE color stencil. Orange, lit up candle color, and sort of transparent orange. I created my artists rendition below. As you can see, I'm not a very good artist. The idea here is that the parts that look sort of like a cross between yellow and orange, are where one would just carve away some of the pumpkin, rather than cut it out completely. You end up with something a bit like this picture of a Gollum pumpkin I found (Note it is a three color carving)
http://www.boston.com/ae/events/halloween/2005/pumpkins?pg=2

My original stencil, along with the new one can both be found here:
http://www.bress.net/mediawiki/index.php/Tux_Pumpkin_Stencil



When I finally get around to carving this in a pumpkin I shall post a picture of the finished product. I figured since I finished with my stencil early (I planned ahead due to how little art skill I have), there's no sense in not sharing this.

Thanks to Andrew Tobias I found this video. It's rather amazing to think about what this will mean for the future.