Archive for September, 2005

Fun with Noise

Friday, September 30th, 2005

The new fish tank is finally coming along. I haven’t taken any pictures yet because the time I’ve had to spend working on it I’ve spent working on it instead of setting up the tripod and shooting. Nevertheless, soon there will be a gallery of tank pictures for those interested in the details.

The [...]

Picking Up

Friday, September 30th, 2005

Last Monday, Kathy had a second stroke. Her first stroke was two weeks before that, but we didn’t recognize the subtle symptoms. The second one happened while she was at work and left her in the hospital, unable to move her right side (leg, foot, arm, hand, face) and full of short-term memory [...]

Trees and Teeth

Thursday, September 15th, 2005

I got a root canal yesterday. It was a pretty long operation, about 90 minutes, but the anesthetic worked right away for once and it was otherwise painless. They have a cool tool called an Apex Locator that essentially is an audible ohmmeter. One regular clip lead gets hooked onto your gum [...]

Signs of Change

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

Understanding Valves

Tuesday, September 13th, 2005

I promised you that today we’d learn a little about valves. Valves are pretty simple, and there really are only three common types that you might encounter when working with plumbing:

Ball valves. These are connecting pieces of PVC that widen to surround a plastic ball that is usually a bit bigger than the [...]

Understanding Plumbing

Monday, September 12th, 2005

Here’s what you need to know about plumbing your aquarium with PVC:
PVC stands for Poly Vinyl Chloride. It’s chemically-strengthened plastic. Most people think of pipe when they hear “PVC,” but actually you can make all kinds of stuff out of PVC. We only really care about the pipe and associated connectors, though.
PVC [...]