When you suspect you have a problem

I thought I drank a lot of coffee. Never did I suspect that this habit would nearly start a fire that could burn down my house.

Ok, not quite that simple. My coffee maker has been making really bad coffee for a while, though I've started using more cream and sugar than normal. But this week I've noticed that the inside of the maker is somehow caked with coffee grounds, and even found a couple of half-decomposed coffee beans in the water well in the side. It has a grinder on top that has managed to spray coffee grinds all over the inside of the machine. Not to mention that a gross black sludge pours out of the base from time to time, from dripped coffee that landed on the burner and got smushed around by the coffee pot.

Naturally, it was time to clean the damn thing, after four years.

I decided, just soak it in water, wipe it down, and let it dry for a day. Then back in business. Works for the waffle maker, after all, which has yet to try to burn down my house. So I soaked it in the sink for a little while with dish soap, resulting in a few gallons of really brown, disgusting water. So I changed the water and tried it again. Then a soak in clean water, which remained clear. Then I wiped it some more, and declared it spotless.

The next morning, I made coffee in my coffee maker, all nice and sparkly and all. It was the best coffee I've ever made at home. I even drank it straight, without sugar or milk, or anything else to distract from the light, complex sweetness of Fairway's "Life Begins at 40" whole beans. So, with class time approaching, I get ready to run for the door, but just decide to check my email again.

As I'm sitting in front of the computer, I hear a strange revving noise. If you've ever done electrical technician work and recognize the sound of a transformer overheating and about to catch fire, a bit like an electric motor which is seized up and is likewise about to torch, you'd know what I heard. Immediately, I run to the kitchen, unplug the coffee pot, and then touch it. I got two blisters to verify that the goddamn thing was, indeed, hot. So much for the stainless steel casing...

So I spray it down with the sink sprayer, since I'm now smelling burning rubber which I guess is from the wiring. Promptly it sprays steam all over the kitchen like it's a scene out of Thomas the Tank Engine. I decide it would be really great if it didn't catch on fire. So I take out my toolkit and start taking the thing apart to see the damage, or at least vent some smoke and open an access to spray in some more water.

But it cooled down quickly enough, and the smell of burning insulation abated. I doubted it would actually burn at this point, but threw it into a roasting pan anyways just in case. By the time I came back after class, it had completely cooled down, in pieces, in the middle of the kitchen. I looked at it, put it in a box, and dumped it on the front porch with the other Stuff I Intend to Deal With Later. (You know, the porch I primed two years ago and never got back to repainting.)

But I still had the coffee pot on the counter with the best coffee I've made at home in a few years. I saved it in the fridge for tomorrow, because it will be the last really good home brewed coffee I'll have for a while, narrowly averted house fire notwithstanding.

Fun with Legos

So after my first few days playing single dad, I promptly took the kids to my sister's house to try to get some work done. Not much luck there, either. But before heading home, she gave me a portion of my nephew's enormous Lego collection. (After all, he's 22 now and hardly ever plays with them on workdays.) My 5-year old boy and 7-year-old daughter love them.

We had the small Lego kits, the ones where you get a box of a few dozen parts specifically shaped to form helicopters, fire engines and the like. The problem is that custom pieces completely violate my belief about Legos-- namely that you should be able to make more than one or two things out of the same kit. (When I was in the same age group, they didn't have custom kits. They didn't even have people until a little later, which I still think are the coolest single Lego piece, by the way.)

But what we got was probably a couple of cubic feet of mismatched Lego sets. From what I can tell, there was an Egyptian set, a Western set, an Army set (in desert camos, no less) and what looks like a Medieval set and some boat hulls. And a Lego dinosaur.

The only problem was they were really filthy from storage, some dog hair, etc. But some searches on the Web yielded a Lego wiki, from people who deal with kids who play with Legos. Dishwashing and Washing Machines for cleaning Legos are out, unless you want to replace said appliances when the little flat one-bump pieces fall out and get caught in the machine. Their approach: dumping a few at a time into a colander to power wash, then dumping them into hot soapy water, rinsing, and drying.

I'm a little more extreme.

Once "clean" from this process, they still looked a little dirty and filmy. So I dumped a bunch of them into the bathtub with a little bleach. Then soak for a while. Then drain. Then shower with cold water, draining them. Then soak in clean water. Then drain. (It's about 5 minutes of work over the course of an hour.)

Then repeat 2 more times.

I realize that sounds nuts. But, I've had kids for 7 years, and had numerous rounds of Strep, colds, fevers, and countless trips to the pediatrician. So, maybe I'll do another round of bleach and then another rinse/soak for good measure.

But, a few hundred gallons of water later, the kids have nice, clean Legos, and I have a little more peace and quiet to do more grading, and a little more research, without the guilt of melting their little brains with more Pokemon videos (in Japanese). I still have one last, really filthy batch left to wash, but that can wait. Or I may just have to decide when to call it quits and dump the rest. After all, this GPS project isn't exactly writing itself...

And I'm secretly wondering if, I get the teaching job I'm interviewing for this week, I'll get assigned to the Lego Mindstorm class. It's the one where you program Lego robots. Then I guess all this work will be job-related, after all...

Seventh Inning Stretch

It's occurred to me this week that I'm halfway through my seventh semester of the PhD program. My recurring habit of blogging the banalities of my everyday life has just reached the 250th post with this little update. I'm in this process a year longer than I imagined I would be, but am still stuck with the last paper that will put me into candidacy-- the final step before doing my dissertation. This isn't the least bit encouraging.

At the moment, I'm home alone with the kids, and my wife is in Italy at her brother's wedding. She'll be back in a week. I've gotten a bit used to the role of single dad already, though my daughter has left the house on more than one occasion without her hair brushed or clothes that quite match. (I think Garanimals were as much designed for dads as for kids.) She left a few days ago, though getting on the plane proved to be a bit of a challenge through three successive transfers. It's a whole lot easier to take a train to Newark International Airport than it is to try to fly to JFK and make a connection. But nobody up here seems to know about the Air Train as I do, having worked at the Port Authority when they built the thing...

But it's been a long haul back to Albany to do the PhD program. It's been a hell of a lot harder than I imagined, with kids, the house, and the extra teaching to build my CV (and pay bills). But I've got a job interview this week, at a local community college. I've taught there, and liked a lot about the place. I feel optimistic about it, though realize that full-time work will likely drag out my dissertation even longer. On the other hand, it takes a lot of pressure off of trying to finish by next December.... just so long as I ultimately finish. But I've become a lot more interested in the teaching and consulting than in the research lately. It might be nice to take a break from research and just teach for a little while after I finally graduate... and maybe get into a little development work again. (I never thought I'd miss that!)

Productivity Booster / Time Waster

I just won this on eBay. Actually, a set of 2 for about $50. And not the one with Bluetooth or WiFi. Still, way cool.

However, it just dawned on me that I've spent a couple of days setting it up, off and on. We'll just call it about 5-6 hours of real effort, getting software, etc. So far, they haven't boosted my productivity yet... far from it!

But it has a Word/Excel viewer that works, and a bunch of other cool stuff. My older Handspring PDA is now going to be enlisted in the cause of Science now. Like with a GPS add-on that kills the battery after 2 hours, or something like that. I'm now thinking of a way to power the old one off rechargeable batteries and some solar cells, so that I can just seal it in something waterproof and use it outside for data collection.

Yea, I'll get around to that someday. For now, I'm stuck trying to download YouTube videos to watch on the new one. Or I was until I remembered that YouTube kind of sucks and it's not worth the bother... it's just faster to watch them online.

Then, there's some series called "Afterworld" I wanted to watch...