Third cooking class was all about soups and sauces. Lots of seemingly random things going on but it makes sense... sorta.

Trying to lower the radon levels in the dirt room. First try was this dual fan setup that should have been able to vent the entire room per the manufacturers claims (spoiler: it doesnt' even come close). I built a mount so I didn't have to try to drill into the cinder block walls:

When that didn't work to lower the levels, I added some duct work to try to get it to draw from a little further away, thinking it was just doing some mini vortex action right in front of the fans.

That didn't work either, so I got a different fan with a higher rating and put it on the other side of the room. That didn't work.

Thinking maybe the radon is pooling in the HVAC room (they say to dig a hole to put the intake in, so the gas must be really heavy) I moved the intake. Lots of noise, but the readings keep going UP. Everything I do makes them go UP, no idea how that's happening. More experiments to go.

I tried to recreate the dish from class with the mushroom sauce.... failure. Wasn't inedible, but it wasn't exactly good. Just made the strawberry pound cake last night, it looks correct but we'll know here in a few minutes if it's good (with coffee).

With the fan hard mounted to the floor joists it was turning the entire kitchen into a massive drum... the fan noise was loud enough it was bugging me. By hanging the fan from some rubber straps the noise is basically gone. I also make a ghetto airbox out of the cardboard box the duct came in, so now the exhaust noise is less as well but we're still getting 100% airflow. #engineering

Got my clubs re-gripped. Not the grips I wanted, but it turns out these 1990s carbon shafts are 'bubble shafts', some fancy short lived innovation that flairs out the ends a bit. Means that most modern grips won't fit. I had two choices that they could get onto the shafts, and this was the better looking of the two. They feel fat in the hand even though they're a normal profile, but compared to the dried out 25 year old grips that were on there I think normal will feel larger. We shall see how they perform in the next week.

More mods to the radon fan setup. I moved it so that the exhaust is as straight as possible. My thinking is that exhaust restriction is worse than intake...? On cars a fancy intake does little without opening up the exhaust flow, and just a higher flowing exhaust with no other mods makes more power so.. I dunno. Seems legit.

Also changed the bracket by removing it, just hung the rubber straps directly from the joists with screws.

After a lot of nonsense I got the sight on the practice hellcat adjusted. I bought a sight pusher tool but it BROKE trying to adjust the sight. I used penetrating oil, heat and the tool and still couldn't move it. I took it to FG&G and they had an even larger pusher tool and a huge vice and got it to move.

Paul says that they're put in at the factory with a hydraulic press, they're way too tight. Yea, no shit. The test target from the gun shows it perfectly centered by for me it's left. The low left is totally me, but after 100s of rounds the entire (sad) group is always left. After the adjustment, it's right on the money or as close as you can get given the 'just drift it around' method of sight adjustment on handguns like this.

I took the carry gun in for the same treatment and the guy who did it last time wasn't there, and the guy this time.... didn't do it. He said he did, but the sight was not moved. There are tiny alignment marks on the slide which show on both sides when the sight is centered. They started centered and after his 'adjustment' they were still... centered.

I stopped by Sean's to return the stapler spring (it fell out of his stapler at the range and I went and got it today when testing the first adjustment) and using a BIG hammer and a torch for heat we got it to adjust on the 2nd gun. Ugly, but it's done and I suspect that since it's now aligned about the same as the practice gun it should impact the same. Are my eyeballs that much off maybe?

Last Hellcat update, promise. While at FG&G waiting I was checking out holsters and found one that looked interesting and it said it was for the "Glock 43/43x and Hellcat". It was kydex so not a lot of wiggle room there but are the guns basically the same size? I pulled out one of the Israeli G43/G43x holsters and reduced the trigger guard tension all the way and... pop, the hellcat fits perfectly. Readjusted the tension for the new trigger guard and we now have a new hellcat holster. It's about 1/8" too long, but that's nothing of importance. What is important is that the 'flap' part that protects your gut from the sight/frame doesn't have a reinforcing rib molded in. That means it would be easy to trim that off when it's time to mount an optic on the pistol. Hmm...

A while back the neighbor Tim lent me an electric guitar with a little amp widget that plugged into the iPad and using headphones or my crap speakers it didn't sound very good. I did not enjoy playing it. I then borrowed an actual amp from Marchi, and... I still don't enjoy playing it. It just sounds wrong for the music I'm playing and the guitar is not comforting. It's like a giant brick with no feedback and no character. I'm sure it's 'fine', nothing wrong with it it's just not a resonate thing like an acoustic.

Have to drive back up and return stuff, but it taught me that I do not want an electric at this time (vs. a nicer acoustic).

I went in for that ear test last week to see if my balance is effected. Was supposed to get the results today, but they didn't call.

Long story short, I've got my guitar upgrade. We went to the shop today, I played and fiddled with a lot of guitars and narrowed it down to 2. We went into one of the student rooms there because the showroom as busy and I could play without an audience. The woman really strongly suggested I get the more expensive one, it just fit better and the beveled edge keeps it from digging into my arm. It was over 2x the budget, so that's a little crazy... but her take is that it's the last acoustic I'll need. It's true, it's better than I'll ever be and has all the features I wanted.

If they had just shown us the case first she would have picked it right away. Crushed red/purple velvet?

Saved web page: here

Long ago we made a house for the cat in the barn out of an old foam cooler and filled it with hay. She sleeps in there all the time, but now that the cat is much older the woman was worried she would be too cold so she got this thermal bed thing. It fits in the cooler pretty well, we'll see if the cat actually goes in there now that it smells different.

The cat was in the cooler when I just went out to do the upgrade, the hay was very warm and it was a comfy little nap spot for sure.

The woman took this to show her mom the size of the guitar. Without a picture of the old one like this I'm not sure what good it does but here we are anyway.

The original guitar is now wall art. I was going to keep it in drop D tuning so that when I wanted to play some Nirvana I could just swap guitars instead of re-tuning... but the new one just sounds so much better it sucks to have to go back to the old one. So, now it's art and I just have to re-tune every other day.

I'm learning the finger style version of "hit me baby" by the old megastar Britney Spears, it's actually a fun song to play. I went to add it to the guitar playlist and couldn't find it on the phone. I found a bug where some albums show up as 'compilations' which do not get synced (bug since 2014 apparently, guess apple doesn't care to fix it) which explains why some of my music isn't on the phone but Hit Me Baby wasn't on the computer either. I thought I had the album, but it wasn't on the CD shelf. I started going through all the really old CD-Rs and found some of it but not all of it. I didn't think recordable CDs would actually last over 22 years. The oldest was from 1998.

I didn't have all of it there either, but did find the song. I checked and it's $12 for the digital download, but only $5 for the actual CD so I ordered it. Except, I got the wrong one:

Sigh. Didn't have that one either, had a few songs pirated but not the whole album so I'm keeping it. Ripped and on the phone, and I'll order Oops in the future when it's cheap too. Why it's $15 and the more popular one is $5, and why the downloads are more than the media.... all questions that will never be answered.

The weather was nice so I went for a scooter ride, and when I got back I found this hay net right by the garage door. Secret code for "take this down the street to the other goat people" so I loaded it up and zipped down. Ruckus hay wagon express.

Another flat on the van, this makes 3 this year. The previous cheap tires got 3 flats and I replaced them thinking the tires were the problem, like they were more susceptible to flats or something. Apparently that wasn't it.

Final cooking class, this time it was pasta and sauce. The pasta is way way different than the recipe I use, and it's not as good I don't think but the technique tips were helpful. Using the dumb pasta filling gizmo though, failed with that as always. Just easier for me to do by hand.

Thanksgiving today, the usual spread. I mixed up some of the 'open cans and toss in a casserole dish' dishes, did all the cuts for the hickima salad, made the whip cream, ice cream and these oddball pumpkin cookie cakes. The woman doesn't like the cookies, dad took 750f them home. I like them, was hoping he didn't. :)

I let the main mac update and it broke backups. Doing some forum searching it appears they (apple) keeps fucking up the SMB implementation each release which requires more and more workarounds to still allow backups to SMB shares. They killed the time capsule product, and are trying to kill time capsule software as a backup method. Presumably they want people to just give in and pay monthly to backup to iCloud. Sigh. You can still do mac to mac backups, so I setup the external USB drive on my main system and will backup to that locally, and to two SMB shares off it to the other two macs. I'll then rsync all the data from there over to the linux VM so it's not physically sitting next to my system only. Stupid apple greed, just let us backup!

Leftovers aren't as fancy as the first serving...

Guy on the forum had a case of 165gr 40 ammo, wanted to trade it 1-for-1 for 9mm. Offered steel case and he rejected it so I cracked open a can that had 1000 rounds still boxed up and offered that. He took it, and after hitting the driving range we drove over and did the swap. Old dude, 'recoil sensitive' now so he wants to switch to 9mm. Fair enough. I have less than 500 rounds of 40 and its' not like I shoot more than a box a year but 40 is expensive and these are my preferred weight so a swap made good financial sense. Probably $100 in my favor on this one?

The bathroom remodel project has begun.

Die Hard is a christmas movie, so this is officially christmas music. Will play it for the mother in law when she's here.

The other news today is that I'm signed up for more (virtual) guitar lessons. For only $5 more than the local dude, I can do lessons with one of the Fender Play instructors live. Hmm.... is it worth an extra $5 for that? Wonder....