Does anyone have experience working with mind mapping software? What I’d really like to see is a product that runs on the desktop as a floating object – a la Adobe Air apps, or as they can be. The idea is that I don’t want to have to run an application each morning, I’d rather [...]

Guess who has the coolest costume on the block? Balthazar does! His best (and only) Uncle-figure went all out and got together a suit of youth Storm Trooper gear for Balthazar this year. He’s been working on it for a while now and it’s finally finished. Sunday, he brought it over [...]

At this time of year, every year, I start getting a fever for some serious woodwork. For some reason, the change to Fall brings out the craftsman in me and I begin planning new designs and reviewing old plans for carpentry projects I’d like to do. Some are extreme, long-term projects like a [...]

It’s now 2:30am Saturday morning and I’m finally getting home to get some sleep. Soon, anyway. I was with Jeff McClure working on a Ghostbusters Proton Pack replica. He got some new parts for it and had since lost the sound and light synchronization. I wasn’t sure what I was in [...]

How familiar are you with that acrid smell of burning electrical components in expensive computer equipment? That smell that pricks your nose to alarm at 100′ from behind sealed doors…
I was reacquainted with this noxious odor this afternoon while trying to reanimate an old Shuttle Intel P4 system I had laying around. It has [...]

Now that I have a case, the Antec Nine Hundred if you remember, I needed to get it powered…adequately. I went through quite a bit of research to try and figure out how much power I would need, but in the end I found it more difficult…and inexact to do the “right” thing. [...]

A while back I wrote about getting my water pressure back from the PSI trolls. It turns out, I was too ignorant to know what real water pressure was like and misjudged my victory. So recently I set out to avenge this injustice. I contacted the local water company to have a [...]

I contribute to a few other blogs out there as I’m able, all of which are WordPress-based like this one. A seemingly simple function has been lacking in my mind, and the community seems to agree with me. But for some unknown reason, the answer has not been produced until now.
My first WordPress [...]

If you’re about to do your first set of 4-wheel disc brakes, read this first! I’ll save you some frustration and a sore hand.
My 2005 Mazda3 was up for new brakes and that’s the kind of work I will do myself. What I didn’t realize was that rear wheel disc brakes involve some [...]

I couldn’t find a place to send my Zune wish list, so hopefully the Microsoft product managers are reading my blog…
Zune Hardware:
Alphabet ToC Navigation in addition to click-wheel
Ratings categories (so I can play 4-star or 5-star music only, for instance)
The ability to remove songs from my “quicklist”
Setting EQ attributes to a song or album uniquely
Inline [...]