Love this stop motion video from SumoScience for Nokia’s N8 phone. Not only is the video itself great, but I appreciate the end of the video where they make it easier to see “how” they did it.
Category: Personal (Page 14 of 47)
It all started innocently enough.
It was a Friday morning that looked like any other Friday morning. Except this time, as I headed through the kitchen on my way to work, I noticed the sink was backed up. I’m not very handy, so these kind of things fill me with dread. So, I walked over and followed the process adhered to by every man who suffers from my lack of home improvement ability.
- Look at sink and say to self, “(Sigh) This doesn’t look good.”
- Turn on garbage disposal, and think, “I’m a genius” as the water goes away. However, as soon as the disposal was turned off, the water returned.
- Stare at garbage disposal and try to figure out what law of physics caused Step 2.
- Grab plunger, plunge, and watch water spray out of the silly useless little release valve on top of the sink that I had never noticed before. Plunge more, and notice how all the water from one side of the sink was being pushed into the other side of the sink. Stop plunging, and watch the water return to its original home.
- Look under the sink. I’m not sure why we do this. It’s like we’re expecting to see a little elf with his hand stuck up the pipe, and a sly mischievous grin saying, “Ha, you caught me.”
- Look at sink again and say, “Well maybe it will magically fix itself while I’m at work.”
I successfully made it through all 6 steps, and headed to work. And to my surprise and delight, when I returned home, the sink was clear. Sure, there was residue, but no more clog. Life was good. I was a home repair genius for not panicking.
Now just to be safe, I called for a moratorium on kitchen sink usage. I wanted to make sure we were safe. No dishwasher, no washing machine, no sink. And so when I looked that evening at a messy (but not smelly) kitchen sink with dirty water backed up, I had to scratch my head. Where did that water come from? I decided to worry about that later.
Attempt 2: The solution seemed easy enough. If it was a clogged kitchen sink pipe, all I needed to do was undo the pipes, find the clog, replace pipes. Piece of cake. So, I emptied the sink out the kitchen window, pulled out the pipes and…..found no clog. (Sigh). Now I had an empty sink, but one that wasn’t connected to the pipe system.
Attempt 3: After careful consideration, it was now my expert plumbing opinion that there was a clog somewhere below the second floor. So I grabbed about a gallon of Drano, and dumped it down the kitchen wall pipes. Surely, a gallon of Drano would do the trick. Environment be damned. It was with a certain amount of displeasure that I watched the Drano come back out of the wall pipe, and into the bucket below the pipes. Side effect – Child was starting to find this quite funny, and I was becoming a trending topic in her text world.
Attempt 4: It was clear I needed some professional help here, so I consulted the place that all amateur home repairmen go – the Internet. And the Web provided a genius solution – the baking soda and vinegar bomb. Child was particularly excited to find out how this would play out, as my battle with the pipes was achieving Movie of the Week status, and her frequent updates were giving her unemployed friends something to focus on. So the next day, I carefully mixed a few boxes of baking soda with water and salt, and poured them down the pipes. Then I dumped a bottle of white vinegar down the pipes. I could hear the compound getting ready to fizzle back up, so I shoved a sock in the pipe to force the mixture in the right direction. In my head, I imagined a gigantic, organic explosion, blasting its way through my invisible clog, like a supernova soaring through space……In reality, I have no idea what happened, but the clog seemed unfazed. All I had were pipes with baking soda in them.
Now, somewhere along this time we had a discovery. Remember, I still never figured out how that sink filled with water again a few days back. However, suddenly upstairs I heard a toilet flush, and watched with horror as water came from the pipes and filled my bucket. Our problem was somehow related to the pipes associated with the toilet upstairs. Not a happy discovery. The upside was that now we had introduced a new set of drama into Child’s broadcasts, and ratings were up.
Attempt 5: It was time to do some real man’s work on this thing, so the next day, I commandeered a 25′ snake from a friend, and shoved it down the pipe. I went down 25′ without issue. No blockage. I thought maybe I had saved the day, and confidently went back upstairs to flush a clean toilet just to test and confirm my successful snaking effort. Alas….I once again had a full bucket. At least the water was clean.
Attempt 6: It was time for some real professional macho man work on this thing, so I did what us men do when we want to release our inner caveman. We head to Home Depot and rent big tools. Tools so big, they get their own room in the back corner of the store, back where women refuse to wander. In this case, I got the big ol’ 100′ mechanical snake to run through the clean out valve. It was dirty, heavy and nasty, and I prepped myself for the mess that would come from opening the clean out valve. Except….. I couldn’t get the clean out valve open. It was glued shut. Now, I could have forced it open, but I took a moment to pause and reflect. Whoever had built my house had gone through a lot of work to stop a yahoo like me from successfully acting upon the thought that it would be a good idea to open the pipe. He obviously knew something I didn’t, and I trusted that opinion. The clean out valve would stay closed, and I would return the super snake. Child had mixed emotions on this. She was anxious for some real open pipe drama – though admittedly less so when she realized the clean out valve was in her room.
So now we’re close to a week without sink, laundry, dish washer or upstairs toilet, and the natives are getting restless. But I’ve invested enough hours into this process that stubbornness trumps practicality. It’s been kind of the theme for the month anyway, dealing with some toxic people and situations, so what’s one more.
Attempt 7: There seems to be one solution left, and if I had known what I know now, it would have been Attempt #1, not #7. It’s time to remove the toilet, and go in through the pipe. I’ve never removed a toilet before. It certainly doesn’t look hard on YouTube, so what the heck. I get another mechanical snake, this time a slightly smaller 75′ version. And I go to work on it.
I’m not going to lie, it took me a good 20 minutes to figure out how to use this machinery without either getting my hand or shirt stuck in the wire and almost getting flipped upside down. I mean, there was a pretty good chunk of time where that snake was beating the heck out of anything in the bathroom that it wanted to. But for the grace of god did I make it through that “training period” with all my fingers and not winding the power cord into the spinny thing. But I eventually settled into a nice rhythm, and only had to jump out of the way and hit the emergency stop button every 10-15 minutes or so.
And then suddenly, success! There was a silence down the hole, as whatever the snake had been banging on for 30 minutes finally gave way. I recoiled the snake, and the size of the clog I brought back up made me pretty sure I’d solved the problem.
I was riding a pretty high level of confidence, and thus the re-assembly of the sinks and toilets were accomplished at a speed normally reserved for someone who knows what they are doing, not me. It was a pretty crowning achievement in my home repair merit badge list. I felt like Foursquare should have a check-in for “I fixed my plumbing” and give me 100 points.
Anyway that’s my story. 9 days, 3 snakes, 4 trips to Home Depot, 2 trips to hardware stores, a gallon of Drano, a few boxes and bottles of Baking Soda and Vinegar, and about $80 in supplies. But in this episode of Man vs Plumbing…..Man wins.
I don’t usually like when people post the same thing in all their channels. It seems pointless and a little lazy to me. But in this case, I think this story is interesting enough that I’m embedding the video I previously posted on Twitter. (And yes, I know the story is old and you’ve all probably seen it 100 times already.)
Also, here’s the full story from Adverblog.
So 3,000+ people have already liked this blog post on Facebook, so it makes me think this has been around awhile. But it’s the first time I saw it, so who knows, maybe my faithful readers will view this kind of street art with the same kind of amazement. Warning – make sure your jaw isn’t too close to a hard surface.
https://plus.google.com/photos/106526452034734966566/albums/5626567803379889857
Now, if you can’t view that because you aren’t in Google Plus, this link is pretty good too.
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/absolutely-stunning-3d-street-art-paintings/
Here’s a teaser:
Sure, I know we all equate July 4th with a nice 3 day weekend in the middle of the summer. But I want to take 2 minutes to reflect on exactly what we are celebrating. Now, I don’t know what really happened 200-300 years ago, but I’ll try to remember what my history teachers told me.
Sometime in the 1600’s, we were all living in England. And then some of our friends and neighbors decided they had had enough of religious oppression. So they hopped on boats like the Mayflower and headed to the new “colonies” in America.
Eventually, enough of us moved over here that we developed some sort of free market up and down the Eastern seaboard. And we must have been doing pretty well developing new products, exporting new crops and creating a nice sustainable economy that didn’t require subsidies or loans. Because the guys back in England said, “You guys are really showing success. We need to raise taxes on you so we can spread that money around over here.”
Eventually, we got tired of a bunch of professional politicians and lifelong royalty-types telling us what to do. We were sick of a government that reached out too far, who taxed us too much, and who got involved with things they had no expertise or knowledge about, passing arcane laws that made no sense.
So, as one big group we denounced our relationship with the oppressors. We announced independence, and developed a loose government in which the colonies – now called states – would govern themselves. The national government would pretty much be in charge of monitoring interstate commerce and running a national defense made up of all the state militias. But at the core of the idea, was that we would govern ourselves in a manageable, state by state way. We’d be responsible for our own welfare, and only rely on the federal government to arbitrate disputes and manage a defense – where if you attacked one of us, you attacked all of us.
Obviously times have changed and we’re in a more complex world now. But every Independence Day, I like to reflect back and remember what our whole country was based on. I wonder how many ways we’ve deviated from the original plan, and whether that’s a good or bad thing.
I was recently asked the following. “So, after the lip surgery, funky knee thing, bizarre disc thing in your back, and freakazoid frostbite incident with the dry ice, did you finally accept that the fates are telling you to bail out of the 1/2 Marathon?”
Well, I’m actually THAT stubborn. I’m not bailing out. I just stopped writing about the training.
There’s no question that I’m going to be one of the slower perfromers. I’ve done a few 8 mile runs so far, and it’s clear that while 13 miles will be doable, my time is not going to be impressive.
But with 2 weeks left, there’s still time for some slight improvements. Barring any other “out of left field injuries,” look for some results here 2 weeks from today.
So let me paint the picture for you….
It’s the day after the child’s prom. In either a moment of wisdom or stupidity, I had allowed child and friends to have their post party at my house, which sent us to a hotel. So, we went to the SAM Remix party that night and had a great time with friends. Then, we stopped by the house and brought the kids pizza late night just to make sure the world wasn’t collapsing.
So now it’s noonish on Saturday when Garrett and I head down to Safeco Field to catch the Mariners vs Rays game. And I admit, I feel a little like an old guy who went to one party, stopped by a prom party and then spent a night in a hotel.
So Garrett and I are walking thru the north lot, and we can hear Lenny Kravitz’ sound check. We ask ourselves why we aren’t going to this concert. What stopped us from buying tickets? And hearts full of regret, we sullenly walk past Qwest.
Except….. suddenly….. we notice…..
There’s a line outside the Qwest field box office. We investigate. We ask a few questions. We do a few mental calculations. And a few short minutes later, we are holding U2 concert tickets. AND we’re walking to Safeco for a Mariners game on a 72 dgeree day. You go draw up a better day than that.
Anyway, here are some pics from the 300+ level. Great show. Fun pics.
We had the chance last week to check out SAM Remix at the Seattle Art Museum. Now, a few weeks ago, I complained about the lack of unique events in Seattle. So of course, here comes the slew of unique events – SAM Remix being one.
If you haven’t checked out SAM Remix before, it’s definitely worth blowing a Friday night for. You get to bundle together some cocktails, a trip through a cool exhibit, 1000 or so party revelers, and some wild cards, all in a single evening. It happens every quarter, so I suggest you add it to your “date list.”
Anyway, I didn’t take pics from the party, but I did break every rule at SAM and took pics of the exhibit itself. Apologies to both SAM and Nick Cave, but the exhibit was pretty cool and should be shared.
Lazy Friday? Great video to watch over coffee. Thanks New Yorker.