Monthly Archives: January 2005

ForecastFox

A couple years ago, I installed a little application called The Weatherbug. It was cool. It was a window that would show the current weather conditions in your area, plus forecasts, radar, etc. It also let you know if there were any severe weather alerts, which is nice for Austin because we have flood warnings, tornado warnings, and strong thunderstorms. The problem was that it had lots of banner ads. When I got a new computer at work, I didn’t reinstall The Weatherbug.

But now, there is a cool Firefox extension called ForecastFox which sits in one of the browser’s toolbars (I have mine in the status bar at the bottom of the browser) and shows the current conditions, and forecasts up to several days (configurable). When you hover your mouse over one of the days/nights, it gives you a little more detail. It’s unobtrusive, lightweight, and free. It’s great!

New Sink

A couple weeks ago we bought a nice new kitchen sink. It’s a white Thermocast Breckenridge acrylic model, and looks very nice. On Saturday of last week, I installed it, starting at about 9 in the morning, and finishing at about 3:30 in the afternoon.


The original stainless steel sink

First, I had to remove the old sink. This included cleaning out all the things from beneath the sink, turning off the water hoses, unhooking the pipes to the faucet and removing it, and unhooking the garbage disposal unit.

The sink was glued onto the countertop pretty good. I had to wedge a couple screwdrivers under the lip and work my way around the whole sink to pry it loose:

After that, the sink came out pretty easily. I then had to clean the old glue/caulking off of the countertop. This was easy and only took a couple minutes. Here’s a couple pics of the open countertop:

Next, I pulled out the new sink, only to find that the corner of it was broken. So, I packed it back into the box and drove to Home Depot to exchange it. Luckily they had another in stock (which was undamaged) and I brought that one home. The new sink fit in the opening perfectly, and so I applied a bead of glue/caulk to the countertop and set the sink down:

After an hour, I put the faucet back on, connected the water pipes and re-attached the garbage disposal. Now came the hard part. The drain openings for the new sink are spaced farther apart, so the pipes under the sink did not match up perfectly anymore. And the main sink section of the new sink is two inches deeper than the old sink. So, after a few measurements, I headed back to Home Depot to buy some extra pipe fittings. I bought three pieces, but it turned out I only needed to add one curvy section to it (and trim a couple other sections with a hack saw). After a little elbow grease and a lot of plumber’s putty, the pipes were done. It only had one small leak, but a quick tighten fixed it. It has been leak-free for a week now, so I think it’s a success!

The new sink is much better than our old one. First, the main sink “well” is bigger than the other, so you can fit a big pot in it. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, it is deeper than the other one. It’s nine inches deep as opposed to seven. That makes for a lot less splashing. Lastly, the new sink looks a lot nicer!

Real Page-turners

Over the holidays, I read Dan Brown’s “The Davinci Code”. It really kept my attention. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. Usually, if I read while in bed, I am dozing off within a few minutes. But this book kept me up late a few nights. Now I am reading (an almost near the end) of one of his other books, Dan Brown has done is incredible, and the questions raised between Science/Religion are very interesting. I can imagine that the historical sites in Rome, Paris, and London where the stories took place are popular tourist attractions these days. I highly recommend these books!

Edit 1/20: I finished “Angels & Demons” last night, and I am so glad I did. On NPR’s Morning Edition today, there was a story about landmarks featured in his books, and during the story, some plot secrets were revealed. The last plot secret is revealed right at the end, and I read it last night. I would have been pissed if I learned that last secret over NPR just before I read it in the novel! I guess I got lucky on the timing. At any rate, this book is riveting all the way through!