» 2006 » September ToasterWaffles

Month: September, 2006

Mammoth Trip

25 September, 2006 (09:46) | Aquarium | 1 comment

Map To Mammoth Friday I loaded up Brahm’s truck, Jess and I packed up her car, and we headed up to Mammoth. On the way we picked up Charles so he could join in the fun. Somewhere north of Corona we got a great phone call — they guy with the 180g for sale still has it and will sell it to us! w00t! That tank will cost us $500 and includes a nice return pump. To order a similar tank (with nicer glass on the front) would have cost us about $1,600. Awesome. The drive up was pretty uneventful until we passed Bishop. Up to that point the truck had been doing very well on gas, but Bishop marks the start of the climb up to Mammoth and the gas needle plummeted as the truck ran out of air to suck in. I made it to the gas station in Mammoth but only barely.

Setting up the tank was your standard crazy affair. Here’s 12 hours compressed into 24 seconds:

AYFWM?

18 September, 2006 (23:25) | Aquarium | No comments

Our lovely new 180g has a crack.

A big crack spanning the entire height of the tank, near the middle.

It makes a lovely arc of despair and destruction.

We just finished getting it set up.

I didn’t get to take even one decent picture of Brahm’s aquascaping. In 30 minutes we had it gutted and the water down to the minimum.

I’m so grateful that rkd2 was still around. We put most of the rock/coral in there and left the fish in the tank for fear of them jumping out of the bin.

I duct taped the hell out of the crack to 1) stop as much leaking as possible, and 2) keep it from fully falling apart.

I doubt we’ll get much sleep tonight.

It was a damn lovely tank.

UPDATED:
History:

I saw two strange bubbles between the glass and the black backing on the tank
I also noticed the back of the stand had a little bit of water on it
There was a small puddle on the floor, nothing big.
Popped bubbles and had salt water come up
Tear off backing to find a crack going from the bottom of the tank to the right brace
Quickly siphon 80% of water into RK2 bin to relieve pressure
Move rock & most corals into RK2 bin
Duct tape the hell out of the crack to prevent further leaking/cracking
Leave fish in tank with pumps & heaters (they could jump out of the RK2)
Start looking for a new tank

It’s a little smaller, but still pretty big

17 September, 2006 (21:20) | Aquarium | 1 comment

These past few weeks we here at Toasterwaffles have been busy working out a trade for a new aquarium. Well, not new as in recently manufactured but as in new to us. (Side note: once you get over 100g, nobody seems to buy new tanks, they just trade them around. Odd.)

The amazing process goes something like this: Brahm trades his dad’s 29g to a guy in Ramona for Charles’ old 90g, Brahm takes the 90g to a guy in LA, Brahm breaks down his 90g takes it to the guy in LA and walks away with a 180g, Brahm brings the 180g down to us and we trade him for the 220g. The final bit of math from Brahm’s perspective being: 29g → 220g. Good deal.

220-Full You may be wondering “Why would they want a smaller aquarium?” and well you should. The answer is pretty simple. The new tank will be one foot longer (side to side) and one foot shallower (front → back). This will make aquascaping much easier. As you can see from photos of the whole tank (left) our aquascaping kind of sucks. Further, with all the depth (again, front → back) it’s hard to build up any structure that you can see from the front. This tank is much better suited to 3 sided (short side against the wall) or 4 sided (away from a wall) viewing than 1 sided (against a wall). Besides, the new tank comes with a real hood and a real stand and a real sump, not our home-made abominations. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to build all this stuff and I’d gladly do it again. In the mean time, should we ever buy a house we’ll be able to take the 180g inside without shame.

Tuesday (2006-09-12)

Rk2 Picked up an RK2 bin from a guy in Chula Vista. Strapping this thing on top of Jessica’s car was pretty fun — tie down straps to the rescue! I forgot my camera and it was too dark for Harold to take a picture. Damn. Driving down the freeway with a giant wind block got interesting at speeds > 65 mph. We made it home in one piece and called it a day.

Thursday (2006-09-14)

Cleaned up the garage a bit in preparation for putting tank in. Since we’re putting the new one on a different wall of the garage the move will be easier, but we have to clean up a bit first. I took some photos but I don’t expect they’ll stitch together very well.

Friday (2006-09-15)

We intended to move the coral into rkd2. We intended to catch the fish and leave the rocks & sand in the 220g (wtf?). We didn’t expect the water in the jug to be so icy and there was no way putting corals in there would be A Good Thing™. We ended up putting all our heaters and 2 pumps (for the heat!) in the 100g water jug to warm it up and making blended drinks and watching TV.

Around 12:45am Brahm showed up with our stuff! We unloaded the sump so his back seat wouldn’t smell like low tide and the hood so we could see the tank. The rest we leave for Saturday.

Saturday (2006-09-16)

Here’s 93,000 words in 15 seconds.

Sunday (2006-09-17)

I’ll have a few thousand more words at some point. I’m pretty exhausted.

Dive #58: La Jolla Shores

9 September, 2006 (17:41) | Dive Reports | No comments

Date & Time	2006-09-09 @ 9:00am
Visibility	20 - 30 ft.
Max. Depth	64 ft.
Min. Temp	56 ° F
Bottom Time	36 min.
Air Info	HP 80: 3,190 - 1,200 psi = 18.8 psi/min

We had a blast with the tropical-ish visibility! On the way out I swam a bit faster than Jess so I got to stop and check out the viz every so often — it stayed good all the way out.

We descended into about 18 ft. of water and were immediately hit with the viz. There was a layer of fish fry just a few feet thick right off the bottom. They made a very consistent layer that, once you were in, became quite obvious. It was awesome. We swam out a ways and right near the edge of the canyon found the patch of eel grass. Hunting around the top was one little transparent unknown fish and hunting around the bottom was a pipe fish! I pulled Jess around to see it but she couldn’t find it.

Heading into the canyon was awesome as you could see more than the next 5 feet. We started heading north west and had a blast. It was the day of ten million lil transparent fishies. We found a sarcastic fringehead — first. time. evar. There were of course some hermissendas and catalina gobies as well. On the way back in we came across two female sheephead with fat bellies.

The vis is great, the surf is small — GO DIVING!

So long, Miranda

6 September, 2006 (08:03) | General | No comments

Today is shaping up to be one of the sadder in a while. Today we decided that ½ of our kitty-assassin-ninja-squad needed to retire to that big grassy field in the sky. At this point Miranda:

is blind
is senile
can’t really walk
can’t use the box
can barely eat
is constantly dizzy
can’t play with Hannah, at all
can’t jump onto soft things like couches
when she manages to get up on soft things, can’t get back down because she doesn’t know how high up she is
roams the house at night howling for no known reason
is generally miserable

On the one hand we probably could have done this a bit earlier and ended her life on a higher note. On the other hand we’re still killing her
The people that knew Miranda will miss her. She was a pretty good kitty, even when she jumped straight onto your balls. Here’s a few photos of her, she’ll be missed

Housing bubble burstation — part deux

5 September, 2006 (09:16) | General | No comments

I cannot believe the timing of this. This seriously sucks.

11 months ago, our landlord Mark told us he wanted to sell the house we were living in. Friday morning (the first) we got a call form our current landlord (Mike) saying he wants to sell the house we’re living in.

This time, we’ll be doing things a bit differently. For starters, we’re staying put. We live on a large lot with two houses on it. Mike wants to sell the whole thing for $750,000 → $800,000. It’s a nice lot with two decent houses on it, but I don’t know if it’s that nice. Looking just at our house I can tell you that it’s not.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice place, but it just doesn’t feel right. Looking around the house with errant screws in the middle of the wall and such, it doesn’t look like the price is justified. But that’s my perspective. Obviously I don’t own any real estate, so what could I possibly know?

So while I don’t think Mike is over-pricing for the area (like Mark did) I do think he’s over-pricing for the market. Between people leaving and activity acting funny I don’t think it’ll sell in the 2-3 month span Mike is looking for. I can’t help but think that if you’re a non-investor (some schmoe looking for a place to live) with $800k to spend, you wouldn’t buy this place. Further, if you are an investor with $800k to spend, you can probably get more bang for the buck someplace else.

So we’ll stay put. We’ll deal with the real estate agent taking pictures and having an open house. If all goes well this will blow over and we can continue saving so we can buy our own place.

If all goes well.

New Nano!

2 September, 2006 (12:20) | Aquarium | 7 comments

So hot on the heels of my new photo equipment I got this awesome new nano-tank! It’s got a total capacity of 2 gallons, a thermometer sticker, and is REALLY energy friendly — no lights! no heaters! no pumps! no skimmer! Awesome! This is going to be the least expensive nano EVAR!

As you can see from the photo I’ve decided to stock it with two swallowtail angels. I figure they each only need a gallon to be happy, so I’m all set! It’s been a little while since I topped off, but you can see where I need to fill it to thanks to the convenient Sharpie Line of Justice!

Also, since I’ve only got the two fish in it, I figure I only need to do water changes every two months. You know, one month per fish should be fine. I’ve got 2 bricks of mysis (one per fish, now you get it!) but at the rate I feed it’ll be gone in a few days so I might have to go get more. Maybe this won’t be so cheap after all

New Stuff!

2 September, 2006 (11:57) | Photography | No comments

The cleaning kit is kind of obvious. Check out the rocket blower.

Having celebrated 5 years at my current employer I received a $200 gift card. I immediately turned around and looked at how I could get the most stuff out of it. Turns out B&H was the right place to go. I managed to get:

. I managed to get all this stuff for only $3.45! Sweet!

What this means is that I can use the tent + lights to take better product style shots, e.g. of gundams. To test everything out I took a picture of the Rocket Air blower I got. I think it turned out pretty well.

The spirit level means that taking panoramas will be easier. Having the camera totally level on the ball head, and the tripod totally level means less wasted data. That’s a good thing since more of each photo will end up in the final product.

w00t! Free toys!

September 2006
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Aug				Oct »
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

Month: September, 2006

Tuesday (2006-09-12)

Thursday (2006-09-14)

Friday (2006-09-15)

Saturday (2006-09-16)

Sunday (2006-09-17)

Categories

Archive

Search

generic viagra levitra and cialis pills

taking viagra woman

generic viagra levitra and cialis pills

taking viagra woman

taking viagra woman

herbal viagra forums

viagra anxiety

cheap generic kamagra kamagra uk viagra

taking viagra woman

taking viagra woman

cheap generic kamagra kamagra uk viagra

viagra andnot generic

viagra anxiety

cheap gerneric viagra

taking viagra woman

cheap gerneric viagra

cheap gerneric viagra

snorting viagra health

taking viagra woman

taking viagra after the expiration date

cheap gerneric viagra

cheap gerneric viagra

generic viagra levitra and cialis pills

snorting viagra health

snorting viagra health

cheap gerneric viagra

taking viagra woman