I found this pretty cool co-working space in Leechburg, PA.  It's inside an old bank building right downtown and for $15 for the day you can get a desk, high speed internet, and a printer if you need it.

Check out the space

Lakeview Resort at Cheat Lake, WV - Fix the Urinal!

Been staying here since the 80's and they can't seem to replace a bad urinal.  The place has gone through some phases with it being a Sheraton back in the last 80', then a Scantonton Conference Center, and then I think independant for a number of years.  About a year ago it went up for auction and is now part of the Wyndham program.  

It has been said that over $1M dollars has been put into it recently and some of the rooms look nice, but they have a problem with basic blocking and tackling in the maintenance area.

If you are looking for a flop house near WVU then you came to the right place.

Was here in September 2020 and they had a urinal problem.  Putting a bag over it until you can get it fixed is pretty common.

However when September 2021 rolls around and the same bag is there with a new sign, I don't think anyone gives a shit about fixing it.

They did add a new feature to to the bathroom with a few new holes in the wall.  Not sure how they will mark them since it would be hard to put a garbage bag over them.  I guess if this urinal quits working they are thinking ahead and you just aim a little higher.

Back the Blue rally in Natrona Heights to Lower Burrell

Don't use jaccard blade tenderizers on food that will not be cooked beyond 160°F

These nifty devices are designed to tenderize meat by slicing through tough fibers. You place it on top of the meat and press it down plunging thin razor sharp blades into the meat, and in the process plunge microbes on the surface deep into the interior. They work.

But there is a danger. A piece of meat often has contamination on the surface, but it rarely penetrates to the interior. When you cook, the flame pasteurizes it by killing everything on the exterior. If it has been worked on with a blade tenderizer, there is a much higher risk because the blades could essentially innoculate the interior by pushing in contamination on the surface. To be safe, you need to cook the meat to more than 160°F. That means that if you are cooking to medium rare, 130°F, this device can be dangerous. On the other hand, if you are doing a tough cut such as beef short ribs or beef brisket, which are cooked to 180°F and above, you can use the jaccard, and in fact, I recommend it. You should also avoid commercial meats that have been blade tenderized if you intend to cook it to less than 160°F.

WVU 2015 Schedule Strength

We started off pretty good, but then hit a wall of four top 25 teams and got our butt's kicked.  Lets try to finish the season strong!

Clean out that Dishwasher

The dishes were not getting very clean, so I started to do some investigation.  Turns out that there were two issues.  

The first is that a rubber gasket on the back assembly had bro off and fallen down the assembly and I assume restricting water flow.

The second was that it just needed a good cleaning out down by the food grinder.  Found some pretty interesting stuff down there.

I followed a very good video on you tube that can be seen below.

Amazon will rule the world!

Amazon has figured out how to beat the big box retailers.

I was sitting around on Saturday and went to Barnes and Noble to look for a puzzle for the family to build.  Did not see anything that interested me, so on Sunday I took a look on Amazon to use my Prime membership to get something for Wednesday.  Placed an order and got a confirmation later that day that my item had shipped.

It showed up around 10am on Monday at my house on Hilton Head Island.  This is not in NYC or somewhere like that were I can see huge demand, this is a small island off SC.

Hats off to Amazon for amazing delivery!

2013 Penguins Schedule for iPhone

If you want the brad new 2013 Pittsburgh Penguins schedule on your iPhone, just click the Penguins logo below and it will add it to your calendar.

UPS Delivery Times

Why is it with all the technology, my shipment that is to be delivered today shows that it left the UPS warehouse at 6:20am and here it is at 4:48pm and nothing.  I'm pretty sure that they guy does not just drive around haphazardly, but has a route he follows.

Where is my shit?

You would think they could get a more accurate delivery time than "sometime today".

This guy needs to go to Dos Gringos

Real cool Taco bar in Scottsdale - http://www.dosgringosaz.com/

Denver Broncos Recievers

What were Broncos practices like before Peyton Manning? Everyone splits into their individual groups, and the receivers all run over to the receivers coach and ask, "Hey coach, what are we working on today?" And then the receivers coach looks over and sees Tim Tebow launching footballs into the fourth row and says, "I really don't think it matters, boys."

Where our snow comes from

Thank-You Comcast for the Speed!

It gets even better today.....

Cart Rentals

2012 WVU Football Schedule for iCal

If you want the 2012 WVU football schedule on your iPhone, iPad, or any other calendar client that can read a iCal feed, here it is.....

webcal://icalx.com/public/bigbilltolbert/2012%20WVU%20Football.ics

Rebuilding Windows 7 on HP

UPDATE ON

 The Digital River site is no longer up to get the .iso files. I'll post a new entry when I find the .iso's on-line. Check more recently in the blog for new links.

UPDATE OFF



The kids computer took a header a week back. Would only boot some diagnostics screens and everything checked out, but would not boot. I have backups, so it was time to reformat and restore. I have a HP Pavilion and it came with a hidden partition with Windows 7 to recover from.

 Seemed pretty straight forward until when it rebooted to finish installing Windows I got the blue screen of death (BSOD). Tried a couple more times to reboot, no luck. Investigating the BSOD, it appears that there is some issue on the factory image that the drivers for Nvidia do not work. There are some posts on the internet about deleting a Nvidia file to get it to get past the BSOD, but I could not get a DOS prompt.

To make a long story short, I ended up installing Windows XP to get it to boot as that was the only DVD I had. I had assumed that the extra partition with Windows 7 would allow me to restore, but since it did not, I had to get something up and running.

My next quest was to find a Windows 7 distribution to download to get back to Windows 7. Found one here that worked.

http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso

That is Windows Home Premium 64 bit distribution. If you want some others look here.

Windows 7 Home Premium x86 ISO 32-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 ISO 64-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso

Windows 7 Professional x86 ISO 32-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65804/X15-65804.iso

Windows 7 Professional x64 ISO 64-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65805/X15-65805.iso

Windows 7 Ultimate x86 ISO 32-bit
 http://174.129.85.117/data/Windows7Ultimate32bit.iso

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 ISO 64-bit
 http://174.129.85.117/data/Windows7Ultimate64bit.iso

You will still need a key to activate, but at least you can get a DVD.

Rebuilding Windows 7 on HP

UPDATE ON

 The Digital River site is no longer up to get the .iso files. I'll post a new entry when I find the .iso's on-line. Check more recently in the blog for new links.

UPDATE OFF



The kids computer took a header a week back. Would only boot some diagnostics screens and everything checked out, but would not boot. I have backups, so it was time to reformat and restore. I have a HP Pavilion and it came with a hidden partition with Windows 7 to recover from.

 Seemed pretty straight forward until when it rebooted to finish installing Windows I got the blue screen of death (BSOD). Tried a couple more times to reboot, no luck. Investigating the BSOD, it appears that there is some issue on the factory image that the drivers for Nvidia do not work. There are some posts on the internet about deleting a Nvidia file to get it to get past the BSOD, but I could not get a DOS prompt.

To make a long story short, I ended up installing Windows XP to get it to boot as that was the only DVD I had. I had assumed that the extra partition with Windows 7 would allow me to restore, but since it did not, I had to get something up and running.

My next quest was to find a Windows 7 distribution to download to get back to Windows 7. Found one here that worked.

http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso

That is Windows Home Premium 64 bit distribution. If you want some others look here.

Windows 7 Home Premium x86 ISO 32-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 ISO 64-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso

Windows 7 Professional x86 ISO 32-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65804/X15-65804.iso

Windows 7 Professional x64 ISO 64-bit 
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65805/X15-65805.iso

Windows 7 Ultimate x86 ISO 32-bit
 http://174.129.85.117/data/Windows7Ultimate32bit.iso

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 ISO 64-bit
 http://174.129.85.117/data/Windows7Ultimate64bit.iso

You will still need a key to activate, but at least you can get a DVD.

Playing a little defense in Travian again

It only took one big hit to drive me into the top 40.

Four Team Dog Extravaganza

face="Trebuchet MS">Four Team Dog Extravaganza

Option Trade of the Day

Given some of the sell off on Wednesday and given that Ford seems to have got their footing under them, there is some opportunities to make some money on in the money calls.

Buy Ford at the market price of $14.78 and at the same time sell a $14 March call for $1.15 which gives a $0.37 profit. If you do it for 1,000 shares you can net $332.39 at E*Trade after all the fees.

Given you are only in the position for about a month, you are getting a 27% annualized return and you have down side protection of about 8%.

If for some reason Ford drops below 14 in the next month, you own Ford at $13.67 given the profit you made on the calls you sold. You can then come back and sell another call for April.

Moving Files to iPhone - Movies, Music, etc. without iTunes

Having trouble with iTunes as my iMac died, and need to get some files on to the iPhone for a flight. Tried a few things, and this worked out the best.

CopyTrans Manager

It worked really nice and the only other tip is that you need to install the drivers so the software can talk to the iPhone. The steps are on their web site here. You can always install iTunes to get the drivers.

Now don't get me wrong, iTunes works well, but there are times when you need a "less sophisticated" way to do some things.

BTW.... Who is ordering a iPhone 4 on the 15ht?

Now that's a shot!

Earlier this month, a British Army sniper Corporal Craig Harrison broke the world’s record for super-accurate shooting, taking out a pair of Taliban machine gunners from a mile-and-a-half away. It was a one-in-a-million feat — one performed under “perfect” conditions, Harrison says: “no wind, mild weather, clear visibility.”

Read More

Now that's a shot!

Earlier this month, a British Army sniper Corporal Craig Harrison broke the world’s record for super-accurate shooting, taking out a pair of Taliban machine gunners from a mile-and-a-half away. It was a one-in-a-million feat — one performed under “perfect” conditions, Harrison says: “no wind, mild weather, clear visibility.”

Read More

Tivo Wireless Adapters

I'm a little pissed off at Tivo. I owned a Series 2 Tivo unit and had to go out and buy an extra wireless adapter because it only worked with a small list of "certified" adapters. Can't remember what it cost me but it was not cheap.

Now I upgrade to a Series 3 and am going through the guided setup and it pukes on my wireless adapter that I bought special for the Series 2. Now I have to go out and buy their special wireless adapter.

They are getting like the cable companies with special adapters and a pricing model that could confuse a CPA!

Defenders

Troop Kills

Global Entry Queue

Test of Google Doc's

On his way to an Indian BBQ

Bonds & Brackets

Can someone tell me why the President of the United States is on a late night talk show and talking about his final four picks this week?

I thought he would be working on the fucked up economy!

I guess he has to do something so we will remember him for something other than fucking up our country!

Hope he picks the final four and hits it big on www.sportsbook.com so he an retire and let someone else that knows what the fuck they are doing run the country!

Can you read this?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Nice place for a hole!

My iMac started to go to sleep with no warning. It was very erratic and it was hard to nail down why. All I had to do was hit the shift key and it would come back to life, but it was annoying.

I did a few Google searches and was not having any luck and was ready to take it into the Apple store to get checked out. I don't mind paying to get something fixes, but I did not want to have them start swapping out parts until it worked again.

Then I stumbled across an article in how heat can cause the iMac to go to sleep. I looked in the system logs and there were error messages saying that the computer went to sleep due to hi temperatures.

I have vacuumed the vents across the top of the iMac before so I did that again, but what I did not know was that there is a 1.5" vent behind the pedestal. What a dumb place to hide a vent.





Once I did that everything has been going great. Keep those vents clean!

You want how much for that bottle of 2004 Jordan?

I was at McCormick & Schmick's on Saturday night and was looking down the list of wine prices and noticed a Jordan 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon.

They have had this wine for a number of years and the price of $178 seemed to be pretty high. Given that I have an iPhone, it was real easy to query for "Jordan 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon".


Now that pisses me off charging me four times the price I can buy the bottle for. I get it -- two times is fine, three times is fair, but four times is pretty steep.

Defrag This!

Every year some relative gets my kids a "cool" computer toy that plugs into the PC to get to the Internet. The shit is made in China, and for $15 now much computing power can be in the damn thing anyway.

So each year I spend the couple days after Christmas cleaning up the computer form all the stuff the kids did to it over the year trying to get the piece of shit toy to work.

This year the speakers were not working, so installing the latest drives fixed that problem, then I decided to "defrag" the hard drive.

What a load of crap. I launch the standard software that comes with windows and off I go down a path of pain-in-the-ass. The thing does not defrag crap!

The first issue is that it wants 15% of the drive in free space. You know how much that is when you have a 250Gb drive? Shit, if I have a 1Tb drive it would want 250Gb just to do some house keeping! Tell Bill to pound salt and get out of bed with the hardware vendors.

Being the nice corporate citizen that I am to Microsoft, I clean up a bunch of old crap to the to the 15% and then expect a nice packed in no fragementation drive when it's done. Bullshit! It's just a pretty graph and shakes and moves some colors, but nothing happens. How can you not defrag a 15Mb file that is in 562 pieces into one file when you have 25Gb to do it in?

This is crap, I need to go off and find a better utility.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure that defrag adds that much performance, again just trying to be a good corporate citizen.

OJ Simpson should have gotten probation!

I'm really concerned about the judge giving OJ a sentence that requires at least nine years in prison. Now who is going to continue the search for the killers of Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman?

Now this is a credit card I need!

You gotta click on the back of the card to see the details.

BCS vs. Playoffs

Gotta love the fact that Oklahoma jumps over Texas and gets to control their own destiny for a shot at the national championship. What does Texas have to do? Sit on the sidelines and root for Florida and Missouri.

Think Oklahoma is a lock against #20 Missouri? Think Pitt vs. WVU last year -- it can happen.

Would a playoff system make a difference? I don't know but if I had to handicapp it you would see the same match up Alabama vs. Oklahoma if they both win this weekend.

Got RAC?

AC/DC Bit Rate Up?

I just go the new AC/DC album in the mail and as I import it into iTunes to get it to the iPhone, I noticed that the Bit Rate is all over 1,000 kbps where some of there other albums are in the 700 to 900 range.

I guess it is the technology that captures the sound better, because I doubt that Angus has gotten any better with age!

Can your iPhone read the code below?

There is some new software out there called NeoReader that allows you to take a picture with your iPhone of a bar code and look it up on the internet. If you scan the above code it brings you right to this web page.

You can also scan bar coddes on books and go to the order page on Amazon, or you can scan the code on a product and shop the internet for the item. It's pretty cool!

Apple iPhone power options suck!

There are two things about the iPhone that piss me off and that is how you power and charge the thing.

I left my little square power block that came with the phone at a bar in the Boston airport, not that big of a deal, I have a bunch of them at home. NOT! Apple has decided to use all four connectors when you only need two of them to recharge the device. So you need to buy a new one from apple or one from a company like Griffin. The one that I bought at Radio Shack cost be $35 with tax and that is over 10% of what I paid for the phone. Imagine buying a $2,500 TV and paying $250 for the plug -- bullshit!

The second issue is why did they not just use a standard USB cable? I have bunch of them and other phones seem to use them fine. I have not done the research, but the last time I checked you only need two wires to charge a battery.

So to net it out, you can't use 90% of the wall to USB adapters that are out there, and the cable that you use is not standard either!

What do I do after golf?

Jason Gore who plays on the PGA Tour was recently participating in an interview.

Q: What would you be doing if you weren't a pro golfer?

A: Four hundred pounds. Maybe a beach bum. I really don't think I'm smart enough to be employed by anyone. Actually, I guess if I got a regular job I'd be okay. I've always loved music, but that's an even harder industry than golf to break into. But I have a degree from Pepperdine, so I guess I could come up with something.

Get your booze on!

Getting something to drink at a football game or concert besides the Coke you can buy at the refreshment stand has been a challenge since prohibition was repealed many years ago. It's not that hard to put a small airplane bottle in your pocket, but when it comes to bringing in a fifth, you might need some help.

I don't think this idea is new, but they packaged it up and at $15 counting shipping, the price is good enough to give it a try.

Booze Belly

Hotels charging for things you don't use

I spent the night at the Laveview Resort in WV over the weekend and when I was checking out there was a charge for $1.00 for the in room safe. I did not even know that there was one in the room until I saw the charge.

The only time I ever used the safe in the room was Las Vegas since I took some extra cash with me.

I started to do some math in my head to see how much money the hotel was making. They have 187 rooms and even if they only run at a 50% occupancy rate that adds up to 34,000 nights a year.

I took a quick look on the web and the "key" operated safe that was in the room and I can't even find them for sale, so I suspect that they have been there for a long time. Even a new digital safe can be had for under $150 and if you allocate $35 each to have them bolted to the wall your cost comes in around the $34,000 they bring in the first year.

I guess it's only a dollar, but I would rather seem then roll it into the room rate and not spell it out on my bill.

Airport Delays

For those of you that travel a lot it's important to know when there are delays at airports. You can go to the faa.gov site and see delays, or you can grab this little application for the iPhone called AirportStatus.

It's not real fancy, but a quick click and you have the data.

You want Duck Lard with that Steak?

Bacar


San Francisco, CA


From: Maxim's August 2008 Magazine.

What separates executive chef Robbie Lewis' prime rib from the meaty pack? A nice, long relaxing bath..... in duck blubber. The mesquite grilled rib eye steak ($34) is first slow-cooked in a low-temperature pool of herbal-scented Daffy lard. It's yanked from the puddle as the steak reaches rare, and is quickly finished off on a mesquite grill. "You get the best of both worlds," says Chef Lewis. "The flavor of slow-cooked meat, charred and grilled over smoky mesquite." And he's not just blowing smoke, friends.

It's located 448 Brannan Street in San Francisco.



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What song is that playing on the radio?

How many times have you been listening to the radio and a song comes on and you don't know who it is? You wait for the DJ to tell you, but he is more interested in plugging some product to earn a few bucks.

If you have a newer car radio, they scroll the artist and song on some of them, but not all stations provide that data with their broadcast signal. Or you might be riding in your friends piece of shit Vega with an AM radio.

Anyway there is a cool new application for the iPhone that does this for you called Shazam. You can get it from the Apps Store by searching on the name and it's free! Or you can click this link to go right to it.

You hold your iPhone up to the radio for five seconds or so and then it vibrates to tell you it's done and there you go -- artist, song, album, links to videos in youTube, etc.

I am not sure of the database it draws on, but it says it searches four million songs. It's VERY cool!

Waiting for FedEx

I am sitting here in my home office waiting for the FedEx truck to show up with my new iPhone. This pisses me off that I cannot go out for lunch because if I miss him he won't leave it in the door.

It's not that bad since it's a 3G iPhone.

But this has me thinking, why can't they set it up that they have a better window than "sometime today up till 6:00pm" -- they know the route they are going to follow. They don't just drive around and drop off a package, go in the back and grab another box, drive somewhere else. They have a preplanned route so that they can be as efficient as possible.

They could even come up with something that sends a text to your cell phone when they get close. They know the packages that they need to deliver and the order they are delivering them in. They could page me with 5 homes to go, or they can even look at their GPS and calculate the time left to get to my house.

Maybe i'll send my ideas to the CIO of FedEx.