Jan
27
2008
Today I learned:
- I’m going to die some day.
I discovered today, thanks to Death Clock, that my projected day of death is Wednesday, March 8, 2023. No worries right, I’ve still got 476,552,655 seconds to live. A bit disconcerting but I still don’t see why I wouldn’t at least hit the average life expectancy, given that I entered a low BMI, and I am a non-smoker. I did specify that I was pessimistic by nature, but 20 years for being Eeyore? Not to mention that you get a different death day each time that you submit your data. I worked on a similar “death calculator” applets when I worked at Revolution Health.
- Jet pilots can cheat death.
I took my two year old to his first movie this weekend, an IMAX flick called “Figher Pilot: Operation Red Flag” here at the Air and Space museum in Virginia. He loved it! Did you know that the risk of dying for fighter jet pilots drops significantly after ten combat missions? That’s why each year the United States takes part in intense simulated combat missions (with live munitions) four times a year. Over twenty nations participate in the exercises, called Red Flag, which take place in both Nevada, outside of Las Vegas and Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. If you have some spare time one weekend you should stop by the Steve F. Udvar-Hazy center in Chantilly and check it out.
Jan
26
2008
Today I learned:
- I’m still an impulsive buyer.
What a day… I decided to go to Circuit City to buy a new house phone, and came back with a 40" 1080p LCD television. Talk about impulse buy!
They wanted $400.00 to install it, but even then, they wouldn’t install any electrical outlets, so I decided to brave it and do it myself. Well to be fair I did invite a friend over to help since he’s a bit more handy than I. We’ll just call him “Handy Manny”.
- How to install a wall mounted flat panel television.
Before Manny came over, I was successful in fishing the coax to the new location. He showed me a thing or two about safely daisy chaining my existing outlet to a new location behind where the television would be mounted. We then installed several new wall outlets to be used for component cabling from the tv into the wall, and back out the bottom. All this went pretty smoothly, though once things started getting tight we could no longer fish the wires easily, so I just went into the adjacent room (luckily it’s our unfinished garage), and carved a chunk out of the drywall so I could feed the wires cleanly.
- Universal flat panel TV mounting brackets are for the birds.
Lastly we bolted the mounting unit to the wall and attached the brackets to the television. It’s a universal kit (Verge VFXLGMT) that Circuit City provides for this model, to support 40" to 60" televisions. The problem is, my TV is on the low end of this scale, so the brackets stick out like a sore thumb. So next time I do this I will make sure the mounting kit I buy is well short of the television height.
Next project? Hacksaw the ends off those suckers!
