My friend, Ryan Harper, made another home-brewed beer for me to try out. He called it a Winter Warmer. Unfortunately, I was not able to notice the subtle tastes that he was associating with it. But it was a good beer!
Winter Warmer beer
Author Archives: Mark
Air Conditioner woes
Sigh. My new air conditioner unit failed. I’ve been a customer of Autumn Heating and Cooling since April of 2008. When I bought the new Air Conditioner unit. The outside unit (condenser) is a Rudd Ultra with a product id of UANL-042JEZ. The inside unit (evaporator) has a product id of RFCL-HM4821AC. That cost me $3311.
I was talked into buying a surge protector on December of 2008 for $129. In November of 2009, I bought a new gas control valve for $375. In November of 2010, I renewed my service contract for three years for $97. In March of 2011, I had a semiyearly checkup. And then I noticed that my air conditioner was not cooling.
Unfortunately, I was told that the labor only had a two year warranty. To replace the evaporator would cost me $800. I was able to talk them down to $500. I consulted my my neighbor, who had a relative in the air conditioner business. He said that it was a good deal. The labor and freon would cost at least that much.
The only strange thing about the repair process was that they took the evaporator back with them to their store. Maybe they needed the physical part before they could get a new one to replace it. But I have no idea if the coil was actually replaced or not. The could have just patched it without me knowing any differently. Or substituted it with a refurb unit. Odd.
GeekBot-3000
I woke up on a narrow ledge, bleeding profusely. Large clouds of dust are swirling around within the confines of my safe haven. But the muffled sounds of explosions are steadily growing louder. I must move on. I roll down and splash into a muddy drainage tunnel. Dim lights are receding off into the distance. It must be other survivors leaving the area. I start running in an effort to catch up with them. But I must have been mistaken. There is only one light now. I am not giving up. Even one person can make a difference now. However, my hopes dash when I see that it is not a human. But a steadily plodding machine. I’m too tired to care now what happens. I only have enough energy to tie a rope around a protruding plate and hang on for the ride. My efforts seemed to have uncovered some stenciled letters. GeekBot 000000010000000? A one in a sea of zeroes? At least the writing is in English. I pass out again…
BMW problems
I don’t know if I’m just unlucky. Or are BMW cars poorly made? I’ve had one consistent problem ever since I have owned the car. My key is a remote access fob. Just by having it in your pocket, when you place your hand on the door handle, the car will automatically unlock. You can lock the car by touching the top of the handle. And you can start the car by pushing the On button. But the locking/unlocking part is unreliable. Sometimes I have to try multiple times. Other times, I just give up and use the button on the fob. Of course, the dealership never does anything about the problem. I doubt they seriously try to see what the problem is.
But I have had other problems. I have had the check engine light come on, had rough idling, erratic idling, and no power during acceleration at various times. Each time I brought it in and it was fixed.
On July 6th, 2010, BWM replaced all of the injectors, the coil, and the spark plug of an affected cylinder (unknown which one it was).
On September 23rd, 2010, BMW replaced the intake solenoid.
On December 20th, 2010, BMW exchanged the HDP. Which I think was the N54 high-pressure fuel pump because of the warranty recall number 10E-A02.
On January 14th, 2011, BMW replaced 3 piezo injectors. They also removed my aftermarket car computer software (which is fully warrantied and sold by BMW by the way). Apparently, there was a software bug that dealt with the torque sensing.
And on February 15th, 2011, they reinstalled the Dynan car computer software with an upgraded release.
The positive thing about these problems is that I get a new loaner car. And I have tried different models of BMWs. I really liked to drive the Z4.
This may not bode well for the future. I doubt I will keep this car when the five year warranty is up. I am guessing that this is an expensive car to fix.
Chocolate bars
For some reason, my local H.E.B. doesn’t carry a good selection of dark chocolate bars. I don’t know why that is. Isn’t there anyone else around here who likes more than three choices? So I drove down to H.E.B.’s Central Market. I bought a selection of 9 different kinds of flavored dark chocolate bars for $58.36. That is 27.5 ounces of chocolate at an average of $2.12 per ounce. Which is pretty expensive. I guess that just answers my question. People around here don’t want to pay that much for candy. The Chipotle and Oaxaca were the best of the bunch. But that’s nothing new. Chocolate pairs well with spicy peppers. I didn’t like the bacon bar (too gimmicky and flavorless). Or the black salt caramel bar (the caramel was too liquid). The Black Pearl and Naga were not strong enough flavor-wise. The strawberry and mint were okay.
The Sherwood Forest Faire
Jeff, Jill, Tim, Buffy, and myself went to the Sherwood Forest Faire. It was located close to Austin out East along Highway 290.
There was this small, human powered, roller coaster set up like a joust. It was fun. Tim went first and I took some pictures. I used high-speed burst mode, but the camera’s computer assisted auto-focus didn’t track that well. Sigh. Then I took it for a whirl…
Next, we watched the performance of the Fatima Belly Dancers. They were pretty good. I took some video, but not during an entire song. Oh, well.
Then we went to see the Knights of Mayhem and their jousting show. Unfortunately, there was no real joust. Only a couple of passes with a horse throwing a spear at a stump and then taking a swing at a melon on the top of a participant’s head.
Then we went and watched the Filthy Rotten Scoundrels Mud Show. I was lucky enough to get a spot at the front row. Well, the fourth row actually, because the first three rows were within the “splash zone.” I took a bunch of pictures and some video. Unfortunately, the video was hand-held with a long lens. So it was a little shaky. I played around with Adobe’s After Effects and figured out how to stabilize certain sections of a movie. Well, mostly stabilize as it wasn’t 100% effective. Still, I learned something.
Filthy Rotten Scoundrels Mud Show from Mark Hamzy on Vimeo.
Jeff and Jill posed for a picture in one of those picture-posing-thingies. They make a very regal couple.
The Flash Bus
When one of my favorite websites announced that he was going to do a local presentation, I jumped at the chance to sign up! Both David Hobby from the Strobist website and Joe McNally would ride a bus around, called The Flash Bus and visit 29 cities.
David was up first. He did a 2 hour presentation and talked to a bunch of slides. He was very informative on how you go about taking pictures with manual camera settings and small flashes.
Then we took a one hour break for lunch. I rushed over to Osmo’s which was a Cajun/Italian food trailer (along with a couple of other trailers) across the street from the Parmer Event center. I was glad I ran over there because the trailers were not prepared for the amount of people.
After lunch, I took a quick, hand-held picture of the bus which was parked inside of the auditorium. I felt bad about not using my flashes to take a better picture. Especially since David talked about taking his picture here. But there wasn’t that much time and there were a lot of people there.
Joe then gave his two hour talk which consisted of taking a bunch of picture with different flash modifiers and using the camera’s automatic TTL system. I didn’t learn anything at all and hated his talk. He did spend about a half of an hour taking a picture of the bus with a bunch of flashes though. And then David and Joe got up on the stage and answered questions for an hour.
I also bought David’s new DVD set called Lighting in Layers.
French Onion soup
I came across this recipe from Serious Eats and had to try it. The baking soda had some sort of chemical reaction to the onions and quickly broke down the cellular structure. I wonder why.
Once I had the oniony paste, I then caramelized some sliced onions the old fashioned way. And I toasted some jalapeno cheese bread in the toaster with a slice of Monterrey pepper jack cheese on top. I also opened up a box of chicken broth. I then combined all of the previous into the finished product. Mmmm… It was pretty tasty!
Mocked by OkCupid
I think Ok Cupid’s similar users feature is mocking me. They are calling me kinky, old fashioned, and not independent.
Austin 2011 snowfall!
We got a light dusting of snow this morning! I stayed home of course. There ain’t no way I’m going to drive around in that weather. No one around here knows how to drive in rain let alone snow.
So what did I do? Make a snow angel, duh!