Archive for December, 2008

Another new blender…

Dec 31st

Posted by dledford in business

So, I replaced the blender of ryeth’s that I destroyed. The base unit was fine, the blades were fine, it was just the polycarbonate blender containers that I tore the holy living hell out of. So, I bought the same unit again, and because we have extra blades and an extra base unit, we were able to effectively come out with two functional blenders (this model comes with three containers and only one base unit). She’s happy, and busy making herself a smoothie in the new blender. I also went back to the store that sold me the two commercial blenders and got the parts to repair the units (plus extra spares in case it happens again). Then I ordered some new ice cube trays online that create little 1/2″ cube ice cubes so that maybe they won’t be so hard on the blenders. That should at least make up for my destructive streak.

Laptop is broken

Dec 28th

Posted by dledford in day to day life

After two days of drying, we tried to power up ryeth’s laptop and it has very serious screen artifacts. If I attempt to fix it myself, the warranty gets voided. If I send it in, it’s on our dime. She’s screwed. We’ll probably send it in since once they fix this, they will honor the rest of the 310 days of warranty (according to the tech support person I talked to). Probably gonna be expensive though. We’ll see when we send it off :-(

Freeze drying complete

Dec 28th

Posted by dledford in business

I was only running one tray this time. I specifically didn’t add any heat, although I stirred the mixture roughly every two hours. Total time to freeze dry was about 44 hours, including secondary drying. I’m hoping to get the total elapsed time down to 24 hours including secondary drying. Material appeared to be about 2/3 water based upon volume loss in freeze drying. I could probably condense the mixture further before drying and be just fine.

Freeze drying

Dec 27th

Posted by dledford in brilliant ideas

I started another run last night. Only a partial run, 1 tray out of the 4 is all that’s in use (although it was pretty full). I’m controlling the method in which this tray is dried in order to provide a control for some experiments. Although it’s not done yet, I can say with confidence that one of the ideas I had for a freeze dryer is current a definite win and something that will improve the process significantly. If I get to, I’m going to name my method of freeze drying the “Ledford Method” :-D

This computer incident reminds me of the time…

Dec 26th

Posted by dledford in day to day life

ryeth wanted to go somewhere one day. This was about 13 or so years ago. I had been up all night working on computer stuff for work. I was dead tired, had only had about 4 hours sleep, and the car battery was dead in her 280ZX. So, she comes in and asks me instructions about how to jump start the car. I give her some quick, very groggy, instructions about look for the red wire coming from the battery to the car and hook the red jumper cable up to it, and ditto for black. About 30 minutes later she wakes me up again. This is what transpires:

Her: “Doug… Sorry to wake you again, but I’ve been charging the car battery for about 30 minutes and it still won’t start.”

Me: “Does it even crank over?”

Her: “No. And there’s smoke in the car.”

Me: “Shit! What the hell!”

So, I go outside, and there isn’t a red and black cable coming from the battery. They are both black. And since they are both black, she took a stab in the dark at hooking the jumper cables up right (as opposed to either looking for the + and – symbols on the battery for the positive and negative terminals, or coming in and asking me for clarification). She got them backwards. After 30 minutes of repolarizing the battery to the wrong electrical output, she tried to start the car, and she promptly let all the magic smoke out of every electronic item in the car: the main computer, the ignition system, the fuel injection, the radio; all deader than shit.

I’m just saying….this laptop incident wouldn’t be the first magic smoke she’s set free if she indeed did so this morning. If she comes to your house sometime, you might want to hide your electronics ;-)

,

Sometimes…

Dec 26th

Posted by dledford in day to day life

For those of you that read both mine and ryeth’s journal and are wondering why she might be off-line for a while…

Well, she’s been feeling kinda sickly the last few days. Scratchy sore throat, cough, that sort of thing. General cold or flu. This morning, she takes a sip of her coffee, and then immediately gets one of those totally unexpected and uncontrollable coughs and spits coffee all over her laptop. We are going to need to disassemble it and clean it out to keep it from shorting and being destroyed. We’ve got it unplugged and the battery out right now, but there were some artifacts on the screen by the time we got it powered down :-( And this is on her laptop that was an early Christmas present a month or so ago. Sometimes, you just wanna tell someone to TURN YOUR HEAD WHEN YOU COUGH! (Ok, I didn’t need all caps, but it looks better that way ;-)

Interesting EBay question

Dec 25th

Posted by dledford in weird shit

So, I have my little freeze dryer and one of the extra vacuum pumps up on EBay to see if I can recoup any of my expenses. I gave a very detailed explanation of the freeze dryer and my modifications in the auction description. One person, though, had to ask me a question. I found the question intriguing and disturbing at the same time. The question? Will the freeze dryer freeze dry venom? I didn’t get what he would be using the freeze dried venom for, and I’m hoping he isn’t planning on sprinkling it on his wife’s corn flakes (a freeze dried chemical still works just like it always did, only cells or other complex things hurt by ice crystals are harmed by the freeze drying process, and a toxic chemical, whether ingested or injected, is still a toxic chemical). I think if he wins I might just notify someone about the question in case things aren’t quite on the up and up…

Merry Christmas!

Dec 25th

Posted by dledford in random junk

Have fun with the kids/friends/family/alcohol/pr0n/whatever rocks your boat on this break from the daily grind!

You know you’re doing it wrong when….

Dec 24th

Posted by dledford in business

OK, so I thought I would run another batch of freeze drying yesterday. As some of you may remember, I currently use a blender to convert the ice cubes of pre-frozen material into a snow like powder. Well, when running the blender, less of the ice melts if you pre-chill the blender container in the freezer for an hour or so. However, evidently, that makes the polycarbonate they make these blender containers out of sort of brittle. Go here to see what happens then…

So, after I destroyed all three polycarbonate blender containers, I called United Restaurant Supply and asked if they had any blenders with stainless steel containers. They did, so I went down and bought two. I came home, I pre-chilled the stainless steel containers, I put them both on their base units, I fired them up with about 4 ice cubes in each, and one managed to snap its drive shaft in the container and the other managed to chew up the rubber drive pieces that interconnect the blender motor and the blender container.

1 day, about a total of 3 ice cube trays worth of product blended. Three blenders, two of them stainless steel commercial models, destroyed. What a bitch. I have to wait until after Christmas to find out of I can take the blenders back for either a refund or exchange (refund preferred) or send them off to a factory repair center to get them fixed.

I did, however, come up with a plan to keep this from happening again. I want to get an ice crusher and use it to pre-crush the ice cubes before they ever go in the blender. I have a feeling that the smaller chunks won’t be so hard on the equipment and it will be able to hold up under that kind of load.

Why biker bars are safer than…

Dec 16th

Posted by dledford in random junk

This place…