Gmail Questions I Could Probably Google The Answers To

When I email a photo taken on my phone to myself,  when I download it from Gmail the default image viewer cannot keep the images save name our allow me to save the image.  Is this because the defaults setup with Gmail are bad,  or does my phone save the file in a bad format, or both,  or something else?

What's for Dinner?: Competitive post

Scrambled eggs huh? This was my Wednesday night meal:

Carnitas: pork with chile and pineapple sauce. Tomatillo salsa, cilantro and onion, served with limes on corn tortillas. Delicious.

Scrambled Eggs

Now that I am a real deal blogger, I thought I would go full on pinterest and share with y'all my favorite quick meal.

First the ingredients:

Pictured: Carrots, Cucumber, Rice, Eggs, Soy Sauce, Toasted Sesame Oil, Chili Paste

Step One: Cook your rice.  I use bagged rice from Trader Joe's as it cooks in 3 minutes.

Step Two: Scramble eggs, I tend to scramble two eggs. I've never heard of a person not being able to eat two eggs.

Step Three: Grab the food slicer of your choice.

Pictured: Japanese Mandolin Slicer, my choice

Step Four: Slice your vegetables with the food slicer of your choice.

Step Five: Assemble all ingredients.

Pictured: Added rice to the bowl. Sliced vegetables over rice.  Mixed in Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Oil.  Mixed everything.

Pictured: Top with scrambled eggs and home grown tomatoes and jalapenos.

Last step is to just mix it all up and eat it.  This takes about 5 minutes to cook.  Obviously substitute vegetables with what you have and add whatever leftovers you have, like chicken.

Sawsheezle vs. The Remote

Ok. Sometimes you just get to that point where you begin to question your sanity: is this thing broken or are the batteries just dying or am I ever going to make money off of my Greek dry-bulk shipping investments? The thing is question is my AV receiver remote and while I may watch my Greek shipping stocks crash and burn this quarter, I was able to conquer The Remote. Here's the problem:

What button do you think is the most commonly used? Answer, the only button I use other than power is the volume button on the far-right. Now obviously the engineers at Onkyo corporation would design such a button to withstand a disproportionate amount of use right? No. Every button is essentially the same: some rubberized shape with electrical contacts on the bottom that, when depressed, make a connection on the circuit board inside the body of the remote. My volume button stopped working so I knew it wasn't making contact with the circuit board inside the body. Solution: get that thing out of there!

 

And you can see the darn circuit board in there. After so much use it got warped and the button couldn't "touch" it anymore. After tearing the rubber around the button I was able to put it back in its slot and it was free to fall into place.

It works great! Of course it can and does fall out from time to time, but I just try to never toss the thing around. You should always respect your equipment dawgs.

In summary, if you use a button on your remote too much and tried to get it to work by pressing even harder on said button, you have probably warped the circuit board under the button. A simple fix is to rip the button out and put it back in. Sawsheezle 1, The Remote 0.

Meal 1

I promise, I'm not going to blog every lunch, but I thought I might document day 1 for a few reasons.

1. It might be a challenge to document lunch costs.  The photo above, depending on what metrics you use, was practically free. I got the hot dog for free from my father-in-law, the chips probably cost some money, maybe forty cents or so? See the next bullet for the cole slaw and bread.

2. Another reason I felt day 1 might be worth documenting is because the bread was the last piece from the last loaf.  We bought a new loaf of bread for this week.  I dont know if the bread would've gone stale, but its certainly possible, especially if I would've eaten 5 meals of my week out.  The coleslaw I also made with some cabbage and carrots that we bought for another recipe.  I used up the cabbage making coleslaw and, like the bread, this very well might have just turned bad and ended up in the compost (dump).  I think that these two points highlight some of the other stated goals of the lunch budget, is to use up what I already have, and not let perfectly good food that I already paid for go to waste.  With some minor constraints, and a little motivation I am thinking about how to use the leftover items to make something that I actually enjoy for lunch. It may or may not be worth mentioning, but not buying hoagies for the hot dogs was a decision I made. That is, to use up the sliced bread we had rather than loading up on more bread for one specific purpose.

3. The goal of the lunch budget is not just to save a grand every year, but to save a grand every year and eat just as well (or better).  Honestly, this lunch approximately as good as going out to a hot dog cart and buying a hot dog, some cole slaw, and a bag of cooler ranch doritos.  I am not trying to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday, but I'm sure there will be a quite a few of those just based on ease, cost, and taste.  The goal is to eat as well or better for less while reducing waste and being more productive.

Let's Talk Lunch

I'm a fan of frugal living lifestyles and one thing that I'm interested in is budgeting.  I have been thinking about a good entry point to get into budgeting and I think the easiest place to start for me is weekday lunches.

The Numbers:
By going out to eat everyday, I would be spending anywhere from $2,000 (50 weeks @ $8/day) to $2,500 (50 weeks @ $10/day) on lunch a year.

I am going to set the new lunch budget at $20/week.  If I can manage this budget, I will be spending $1,250 on lunch per year, or savings of $750 to $1,250 a year.

I think that $1,000 saved in a year is not bad, we could all use an extra $1K right?  An added benefit is not having to go out and wait in elevators or in line, which can really annoy me sometimes. Negatives include losing lunch as a nice break from the work-day and potentially reduced social interaction.

I intend to write a follow-up post in a few weeks.

What's this wood: stain removal pro tips

Well capital_prototype and sawsheezle have never been able to successfully monetize their groundbreaking app "What's this wood?",  aimed at educating the youth of America about our native woods and revitalizing the lumber industry in this country, but sawsheezle has managed to at least learn a bit about wood related issues by working on WTW?. Here is a pro tip he would like to share.

After moving here to central Pennsyltucky, I bought some used furniture for my unfurnished apartment. I really like this coffee table and didn't mind that it had a giant white ring stain on it when I purchased it. Then one day I bought a pizza and set it on the table and was saddened to see the following new stain:

The proprietor of the used furniture store told me the white ring could be removed with corroborator cleaner, but I never got around to trying it. When this new stain appeared, I figured it had to be due to either the moisture or heat from the pizza box. Then I did some trusty interweb searching and came across the ultimate stain fighting solution: steam. Luckily sawsheezle already had an amazing steam cleaner he had purchased earlier in the fiscal year. Enter the mean steaming machine:

After using the microfiber applicator and applying steam for a few seconds here are the results:

It worked guys! What happened is that the stain isn't a stain so much as it is a collection of the water vapor stuck in the polyurethane finish on the table. Steam can remove this "stain", but it can also make it worse. Just like in life, you have to find the balance between time and energy.

Anyway go buy one you turkeys.


http://www.amazon.com/Steamfast-SF-275-Canister-Steam-Cleaner/dp/B0000DBJ2J/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1406491959&sr=8-4&keywords=steam+fast

Garage Work In Progress

So, when I moved in I found water damage in the garage. The problem appeared to be a damaged gutter that when overflowed ran water over the garage door window.  This window was framed with wood, that was waterlogged.  I removed the wood frame and stapled up plastic wrap until I could fix it. Here are some pictures I have of the window after removing the wood framing:

I fixed the gutters, no pictures, and at some point reframed the window with PVC board, which is a plastic product made to look like wood, but is clearly waterproof.

The water damage also leaked into the wall, causing the insulation to get wet and moldy and the old wood siding to get ruined.  I don't have pictures of the process fixing it, because I really wasn't planning on showing anyone or blogging it.

And here are two pictures of the almost finished process.  I still have some work to do, such as reframing the window on the inside of the garage.

 Refinished the whole garage, which used to be a cheap wood paneling that I was never fond of.

Weird Al

In case you didn't know, Weird Al released a new album on Tuesday. He's also releasing 8 music videos over 8 days. Check out www.weirdal.com each day through the 21st for each newly released video. Here's the one from today. It's a parody of Lorde's "Royals."

Watch Some Grass Grow

I was talking to Sawyer who said he made something and that we should fur more, so here's some fur.

So my front yard has been a dirt/mud pit for the past few years.  I've since cut the trees in my front yard, which allows more light to reach the ground.  On 6/28/14 I went out with a shovel and loosened the soil in the front yard.  I picked up a 3 pound sack of quick growing grass seed and spread it around the front yard.  Since then I watered it everyday, but since its been raining so much, I've really only watered it the first two days.  The rate of growth since has been pretty staggering.  Here is a slideshow where you can watch my grass grow:

7/2/14 AM

7/3/14 AM

7/3/14 PM