Category: Weblog

It’s been a hard month for Los Angeles radio listeners.
First, Indie 103.1 goes off the air. It’s online still at indie1031.com, but 103.1 is now ranchero music. A sad state for the station once named by Rolling Stone magazine as best radio station in America. Of course Michele would argue that WOXY is the best radio station.
Second, KLSX flipped formats and the Adam Carolla Show is off the air. I really enjoyed Adam’s show. It was a bright spot everyday. I would listen live when I could, but mainly listened to the podcast, which was a segmented recording of the actual show.
CBS Radio, in their corporate wisdom, decided that Los Angeles would be better served by a Top 40 (CHR) format station. And so, KLSX died and Adam was off the air.
Not a quitter, Adam decided to continue his “conversation with listeners”. His words, not mine. His new site carollaradio.com is now posting daily podcasts he produces at home with help from friends and former co-workers. His very first podcast, had over 200,000 downloads. Those numbers make any podcast saavy person sit up and recognize the size of his fanbase.
Adam absolutely gets where media consumption is going and is working to give it a shot and see what happens. Jesse Thorn (the man behind the wonderful Sound of Young America show) agrees and posted a good bit of Adam’s rant with a little commentary. I agree with Jesse, if you think of Adam as just the Man Show/Crank Yankers guy, you are missing what he’s all about. He’s honest and a bit of a blowhard, you won’t agree with everything he says, in fact you’ll sometimes think he’s wrong. But he speaks how he feels without resorting the the usual talk radio hyperbole where jocks say anything to get the audience revved up. That’s a very rare thing today, where almost all radio bits are heavily scripted, edited, and basically fake.
Give it a listen. Adam curses a bit on the podcast, so I’d call it NSFW, but it’s better than anything else on the radio these days.

• Still Tasty – How long food stays safe and tasty. My mom has guava in the freezer over 7 years old
• Steven Colbert accurately predicted the Oscar Winners – Perfection!
• Major League Gaming/ESPN Top Ten Kills – Amazing what good production values do for making video gaming a sport
• Louis CK discuss how everything’s amazing and no one’s happy – Remember this the next time you complain about something

Seems like I’m not the only one having trouble when printing Office 2007 documents to an HP printer and having the last line cut in half. Most of the computers in the house are running Microsoft Vista Home Premium with Office 2007 and trying to print on an HP printer.
We had continued problems in which the printer would cut off the last line in half. Very frustrating.
After a bit of research and trial & error, I came up with this solution.
Go to Control Panel
Select Printers under Hardware and Sound
Right click on the offending printer and select Properties
In the new window, select the Advanced tab
Select the Print Processor button
In the new window, select WinPrint (it’s likely set to hp-something instead)
Click OK (the window will shut)
Click Apply then OK on the Properties window
Try printing a document
Hopefully this works for you. Leave a comment here is if works or doesn’t so we can see if this a good solution.

Loyal Cruft Readers will recall my work on making sausages from scratch. The most difficult part was stuffing the sausage meat into the casing. I decided to get a better stuffer and settled on a Grizzly 5 lb. sausage stuffer I found on eBay. The grizzly company has a huge range of tools and machines. When the stuffer arrived, a huge catalog of all their products was also there. Everything from hand tools to lathes to welders to kits to build guitars from scratch.
I went to work prepping the meat for stuffing. On my second time around it went much more quickly. Soon the moment of truth was at hand and I stuffed the sausage. Here is a video of how it worked.

The family was in Palm Springs this weekend for a mini-vacation. Michele was riding in the Tour of Palm Springs. She did 55 miles!
We had some great Jewish food at Sherman’s Deli. The pastrami/latka sandwich was amazing. Their matzoh balls were gigantic.
Here is the obligatory tour of our hotel room:

I don’t like tangled cords or wires. Perhaps it’s my career as an engineer, but cords and cables should be neat.
The iPhone headphones are good, but they tend to make a nice knot when left alone.
Enter the Owl Wrap

A few things to share:
I made special nachos for the game:

I read the New York Times every morning. Today there were some especially good articles I will share with you. As one of the last families in America to actually read the news on paper daily, you might have missed these gems.
Bacon Explosion – Looking at the net’s love of bacon
A Last Bastion of the Necktie Throws in the Towel – The last restaurant in New York to require a man to wear a tie gives in to casual
Superbowl logos, past present, and other possibilities – My favorite is the logo intended to make football appear to a new audience, geeks. (obv, the 40 on the 20 sided die is a huge mistake…)

A few scenes from Inauguration Day

Me wearing a special tie for a special Tie Tuesday

My brother Matt and sister-in-law Yvette at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball

A few weeks ago, I received an email from the folks at Landrin Chocolates asking if I want to try their new stuff. I’m not one to turn down free candy, so I said “Sure!”.
Amazingly, I received a case from Landrin with six boxes of candy to try. 3 boxes of Coconut Almond Perfection and 3 boxes of Hazelnut Chocolate Perfection to try. There was even a presentation about Landrin where I learned that they are a Russian company, founded in the 17th century, trying to make it’s way into America.