[Toshi]

Thankfully I had all the proper locking stuffs for both the spare tire (!) and the lug nuts as well as a full size spare and a tool kit replete with bottle jack.

While figuring out how to lower the spare tire with its anti-theft mechanism was a minor adventure in spelunking, what with working through a small cutout between the bumper and tailgate, it was nothing compared to what I went through today. What was this arduous spatial task? Trying how to fit the double stroller into its astonishingly compact travel bag.

It goes from this:

to this:

That stroller is one solid piece of engineering with a weight to match, but it magically collapses down to a tiny package that rolls on its own for ease of intra-airport travel. The problem with this magic collapsing process is that it must be done precisely, with any deviation from the routine resulting in it not fitting even remotely. I tried to figure it out on my own but failed, but youtube knew of its magic ways.

My family's going to be quite the sight on the jetway: wife with baby strapped to her, toddler holding her hand, and a big diaper backpack. I'm going to have a light backpack on my back, a trumpet case slung over my shoulder, a bulky infant car seat in its non-rolling bag hoisted in one hand, and this packed-tight double stroller rolled along in its bag with the other...

 

[Toshi]

Rental car review: 2015 Chrysler 200.

Rented from Alamo at SEA. Unknown miles since I can only seem to pull up the trip meter, not the odometer.

Pros:

- looks nice for a family sedan
- good sized trunk
- physical controls for temperature, volume, tuning the radio
- inaudible engine, aided by the transmission upshifting early and often

Cons:

- big left A pillar and the rear view mirror are right in my field of view even with the seat down, by virtue of that swoopy profile
- transmission is balky in transition from coasting to throttle at low speeds
- tight rear seat requiring even short legged me to scoot up to fit a rear facing convertible seat
- rental car spec audio and climate touchscreen (super hobbled Uconnect?) is pretty terrible, and so is the underlying A/C when not on full blast

Verdict:

Fine as far as bargain rental cars go ($360 including tax and fees at Seatac for 6 days isn't bad at all). I can see why the plebeian Accord and Camry far outsell it in real life, though.

 

[Toshi]

My family's going to be quite the sight on the jetway: wife with baby strapped to her, toddler holding her hand, and a big diaper backpack. I'm going to have a light backpack on my back, a trumpet case slung over my shoulder, a bulky infant car seat in its non-rolling bag hoisted in one hand, and this packed-tight double stroller rolled along in its bag with the other...

We made it: car-shuttle-flight-shuttle-car. So much crap to bring, not aided by my trumpet case (audition in a week and a half) and my wife bringing her hospital grade and correspondingly heavy pump among other things.

Latching Mariko's car seat to my rolling duffel using the LATCH buckles was key to making this even physically possible.

 

[Toshi]

This looks pretty sumptuous inside:

http://truckyeah.jalopnik.com/2016-lexus-lx-gets-evil-cheese-grater-face-and-a-sweet-1723622428

It also looks amazingly ostentatious outside, not to mention that all that cladding and shit has totally compromised the underlying Land Cruiser platform's off-road chops.

Again, not relevant to the Beverly Hills types who will buy this new, but still disappointing at some level. Body on frame construction, published fording ability, and huge scores on the ramp travel index mean squat when even approaching a trail would rip off the fascia.

 

[Toshi]

In March 2016 I'm presenting a 35 (?) minute workshop at a radiology meeting. It'll be at this resort:

http://www.hiltonwaikoloavillage.com/

Not bad, eh? The catch will be how to travel there economically. We will probably shuttle my mother in law along as an extra hand for the two kids (as I'll actually be busy for at least part of each day with this conference). Not wanting to repeat our hands-more-than-full airport experience and with the financial incentive that my academic funds can be used for shuttle service but not for rental cars (unless shared with another faculty member), I think a shuttle service + rented car seats just for those shuttle rides is totally the way to go.

Per the speedishuttle page it'll actually be quite reasonable: $150 round trip, including car seat rental, seats for 5, and more than enough baggage accommodation... I can dig that.

Now to figure out if flights make any sense at all...

 

[Toshi]

Traveling from Denver to Kona airport is actually really easy. Non-stop flight on United, 11:30 AM-3:49 PM. Done.

Getting back seems to be a royal pain in the ass, though... There's apparently only one non-stop flight, and it's overnight. That'd be a deal-killer except all the 1-stop flights are +1 day as well. Again, this would be traveling with a 3 year old and a just-shy-of-1 year old. I think I will just have to make the non-stop flights work.

I'm within spitting distance of 90,000 miles banked with United, which is good for a round trip from the mainland to Hawaii, in theory, so those miles should save me $1,300 and change. (My ticket will be covered by my academic funds, but not so for the family, of course.) It'll still be a cool $2,500 worth of plane tickets for the other two that I'd need.

Then there's the room. To sleep three adults and two kids is going to require another room. If I'm lucky I can convince the reimbursement people at work to let me just front the difference between the smallest room and a suite (about $200/night). If I'm not lucky then it'll be a whole extra room at $350/night or so, it looks. Oof. Perhaps we won't be staying longer than the week of the conference!

So it'd certainly be possible for everyone to go, and at least my portion of the trip's costs will be covered by virtue of this being a work meeting. Even if we axe the mother in law's presence then it's a minimum of about $3,000 out of pocket, though. How much are experiences in lovely tropical locales worth, again, and will my young kids appreciate it? (I know my wife would.) Hmph.

 

[Toshi]

The astute reader will note that I experimented with several dashcams back in our New York era (along with a helmet cam for my motorcycle riding antics). Those all went back: two failed dashcams, and one unwieldy helmet cam that made my neck hurt.

I'm dipping my toes back into the dashcam waters. I decided to go with the cunningly named Matego MG380K as it has good reviews on dashcamtalk, and a recommended (eBay) seller that hopefully will not sell me a fake. Fakes are a huge problems with dashcams both then and now, for the curious.

Anyway, this wraps up a spate of minor purchases that I finally got out of the way tonight, delayed by our trip to Seattle and my resultant desire to not have packages laying on our porch for days on end:

- 2014-2015 navi data DVD for the Land Cruiser, which will hopefully have our current neighborhood's roads but will have no chance for several years yet to have our new house's local mapped out
- generic replacement charger for wife's Chromebook, which has not impressed me thus far with its lack of longevity (currently charges at a ~2%/day rate with the Kindle charger, and not at all with its OEM brick)
- aforementioned two dashcams, one to be hardwired in each car via snaking the cable around the windshield trim
- two SD cards to slot into said dashcams

All of these were via eBay, as the prices there were significantly (~50% lower for the dashcams, and about 80% lower for the navi DVD!) lower than Amazon, save for the SD cards.

 

[Toshi]

Unordered thoughts from our first appointment at the design center:

- cabinet upgrades seem reasonably priced given that there are a ton of cabinets in the house (and upgrading them upgrades all of them, not just the kitchen)
- shelf drawers inside cabinets and door pull hardware are not reasonably priced, on the other hand, but I'm not going to spend a day lining up a template and drilling hundreds of holes
- tile isn't cheap, and unfortunately we upgraded tile from the standard plain white in a lot of places: backsplash, master and half bath, master bath shower floor, master bath shower wall, around the gas fireplace
- hardwood/engineered hardwood is about as expensive as I thought it'd be
- it's odd that quartz is more expensive than granite, with the latter standard and therefore "already paid for"
- extra fees for undermounting kitchen and bathroom sinks are annoying, but I'm biting that bullet, too
- carpet is similarly not cheap, which makes sense since there's probably going to be 2000 carpeted sq ft, but oddly the nice, cushy upgraded carpet pad is expensive, too, on the order of 70 cents/sq ft
- I really wanted to be ok with uncased windows (with drywall surrounds) as their casing options seem really expensive, but I'm checking that box as well as it'd be something I'd realistically never get around to doing myself
- kitchen appliance upgrades (e.g. gas range, nicer dishwasher) are actually reasonably priced when the credit for the standard appliances are taken into account

What we have left to spec out at this point is lighting (as in fixtures, not as in location--that ship sailed long ago), toilets (I demand elongated toilets rather than the antiquated, too short front-to-back round ones, not to mention my parents are giving me? selling me? a Toto Washlet that only fits on elongated bowls), and not much else. I was hoping to stay under $30k in design center upgrades but will probably sail past that to $35k. That'll still be ok overall, and that difference is not going to break the budget in the long or short run.

Here are what uncased windows look like, noting the 9.5" deep walls leading to really deep sills and a funny look when between windows:

The green tape is on painted drywall.

Here's the schematic of uncased (left) and cased (right) windows, along with the depressing sum of money I will be on the hook for to get a few extra pieces of painted wood:

 

[Toshi]

Baby Yuna turned 4 months old on Sunday. The light wasn't great (overcast) and she was much less smiley than last month, for whatever reason. (Probably because she had to poop?)

Snuggling babies, d'aww

 

[dan-o]

So it'd certainly be possible for everyone to go, and at least my portion of the trip's costs will be covered by virtue of this being a work meeting. Even if we axe the mother in law's presence then it's a minimum of about $3,000 out of pocket, though. How much are experiences in lovely tropical locales worth, again, and will my young kids appreciate it? (I know my wife would.) Hmph.

Dump kids with MIL, just you and wifey hit HI.
Do it.

 

[Toshi]

Dump kids with MIL, just you and wifey hit HI.
Do it.

If only they lived closer. I don't think my parents could handle a solo week with the kids, and Jessica's mother lives in Seattle. She does come out often, but it's a thorny issue for something like this since she's hourly and would have to miss a week of work so that we could play. Even with us paying to fly her here that seems like a poor deal.

I think Jessica will suck it up and manage without her mom in Hawaii: me, her, two kids. That way it's just one extra plane ticket and the upgraded room can be charged to my travel funds without batting an eye.

 

[Toshi]

Background: 90% LTV total (if we close in December I can't hit 20% down), 30 year fixed jumbo loan in a county with a normal conforming limit, good credit score.

4) Bank of America. They will do 90% LTV jumbo outright for Doctor Loans. They'll even do 95% LTV up to $1M.

They have a (for a price) option to lock in rate for up to 1 year (!) and for shorter intervals, with the chance to float down once.

It looks as if I'll be going with Bank of America, Countrywide debacle notwithstanding.

There's a Colorado energy efficient mortgage incentive program that would have netted me between $3-4k depending on exactly how efficient this house turns out to be when completed (noting that we're not electing for extra solar beyond the stock 2.5-2.6 kW up front--extra solar would have driven it down to near-0). It turns out that Bank of America isn't willing to participate in this program... but they are willing to grant me a $3,500 credit towards closing costs in lieu of program participation.

I'll take that deal any day of the week given that their underlying rates are lower than the rest and because they're so flexible in terms of LTV with no PMI: 95, 90, 85, etc. are all fine with them.

I will be locking in rates for 90 days probably so as to grab a rate before the December FOMC meeting (with the Fed's probable rate increase) and have it valid through closing.

 

[Toshi]

It turns out that Bank of America isn't willing to participate in this program... but they are willing to grant me a $3,500 credit towards closing costs in lieu of program participation.

Turns out their actual deal is slightly different, and not for the worse!

Context is of these prices for 30 year fixed rate jumbo money with 20% down:

Instead they offer two 10% down options to me:

1) 3.75% rate with $1,487 lender credit towards closing costs
2) 3.875% rate with a $5,490 lender credit

Choosing between these two for a 30 year fixed loan is a wash. The lower rate would result in me paying $14,000 less in interest over 30 years, but we'll most likely pay off the loan early. Furthermore, the true difference is $14,000 * (1 - my marginal income tax rate) due to deductibility of interest. Finally, the future value of the $4,003 difference in lender credits at 5% is actually just over $17,000… I was all ready to say that the lower rate was better, but this arithmetic seems to indicate that the credit is worth more.

Of course, this assumes that I would invest that difference, and given how many more expensive things we still have to buy post-close that's probably not a true assumption. (Witness: window coverings, furniture in spades, washer/dryer, refrigerator, instant hot water, ceiling fans, Nest and other smart home stuff, EVSE for the RAV4 EV, garage overhead lights, gas grill for the patio…)

 

[Toshi]

What we have left to spec out at this point is lighting (as in fixtures, not as in location--that ship sailed long ago), toilets (I demand elongated toilets rather than the antiquated, too short front-to-back round ones, not to mention my parents are giving me? selling me? a Toto Washlet that only fits on elongated bowls), and not much else. I was hoping to stay under $30k in design center upgrades but will probably sail past that to $35k. That'll still be ok overall, and that difference is not going to break the budget in the long or short run.

The final design center appointment is done. There were a few more items left than I had anticipated:

- lighting (cheaper than expected--$700 to upgrade fixtures throughout whole house to something we liked)
- mantel (standard one, gratis)
- grout for the various and sundry tile (included in tile cost already)
- doorknobs (standard--easy to upgrade later)
- light switches (also pretty cheap--$270 to upgrade the dozens of switches throughout to rocker switches)

… oh, and the shower enclosure, too. That wasn't cheap. $2,640 for frameless glass. It would have been perhaps $2,000 cheaper to go with a "semi-framed" one, but that just screamed "rental house". We also went for the upgraded stairway banister after all, another similarly not cheap option.

All said and done there are just over $40,000 worth of interior finish options that we picked, and that brings the grand total to a hair over $611,000. I was shooting for $575-600k so missed my target, but some degree of creep up from that price was inevitable the way these sales are structured: "low" starting price with most everything else a marked up extra.

Oh well, money is cheap as the last post on mortgage rates shows…

 

[Toshi]

1. We have (some) windows! Whole house is still wrapped in that pink stuff.

2. Double thick walls are doubly thick. 24" spacing for studs, offset with an air gap. This particular area is where cabinets will be hung from, thus the reinforcement between studs, I guess?

3. Prefab framing for the roof over the front porch.

4. Engineered joists (?). This is the roof of the first floor.

5. These metal things don't seem to be load bearing. Some doorways had this many-boards-tied-together construction.

6. Elder kid has chosen the righthand room as hers.

7. Underside of main, more highly pitched roof where it overlies the kids rooms and the master bath. I have to imagine these were prefabricated, too.

8. Underside of main roof.

9. Thick walls make for equally ridiculously deep window sills.

10. More of that highly pitched main roof. There'll be mechanicals up there for the AC but with all this structure in the way (and R-50 worth of insulation) nothing else.

 

[Toshi]

11. Window specs. U = 0.30 is decidedly less insulation than the R-36 walls around it...

12. No shingles yet, just this underlayer stuff.

13. Forced air heat ducts.

14. Red thing is a metal I beam, resting on the concrete foundation and providing support for the first floor. Shim material looks questionable but does it matter? There were pieces of wood under others.

15. Whole I beam for context.

16. Panoroma. Left is front door, middle is kitchen cabinets and the like, right door is to garage.

17. Panorama completing the circle. Left is to garage, middle is great room (open to kitchen), right is front door again.

18. Really thin/elongated ductwork. Is this typical these days?

 

[Toshi]

Booked. As best as I can tell nothing is charged until check-in. Whew. I'll get reimbursed, as below, but not until perhaps April 2016 given that this will be in March.

Traveling with kids isn't cheap. The upside is that this should be covered by my employer--I'm going to be presenting a 25 minute workshop at a conference that runs March 13-18. Of course this huge hotel bill + my flight (getting family there will be on my dime) + the per diem for food will blow through my whole academic year's travel budget in one week, but it'll be a nice week with the family.

 

[Toshi]

We went by the site today, as the mother in law is in town for the first time since Yuna was born (4.5 months ago). At that time we had a contract and a dirt lot with some stakes. Now it's fully framed, fully sided, has ductwork and plumbing, and has at least most of the electrical.

My custom addition 240V 50A circuit in the garage appears to be in place. I couldn't see where the wire gauge was printed (they used separate wires in a sheath for this one and the AC, Romex cable elsewhere such as 10/2 for the laundry room dryer outlet), but I can only assume it'll be up to code snuff.

The electricians don't seem to have added any of the other extra outlets and the like, however. Perhaps they finished up halfway and left for the day? It seems odd that they'd do the standard outlets in a room and not the extra ones, though. I will have to keep an eagle eye out when we do our pre-drywall walkthrough. This builder (and their subcontractors who actually do all the work) is(/are) very busy, for better or worse...

In other news, in rereading all these old contract documents to try and pull out a few layout maps with extra outlets, etc. annotated, I've discovered that we'll already have 3.060 kW of solar on the house to start with as a base. That's more than I thought. Score. (Page 122/149 of the original executed contract, if I need to refer to this later.)


Update: 3.060 kW was apparently just the example contract. I just got a 2.6 kW thing to sign electronically. Meh. $5,512 20 year prepaid lease for a 2.6 kW system... with a $10,101 buyout at the end of 20 years. That is hilariously bad: it'd cost less than that to buy a system outright now (before the 30% Federal tax credit), let alone the cost of a system after 20 years of depreciation and wear!


Update 2:

Extra outlets and plumbing that the subcontractors have added correctly:

1) 220V wiring in garage right back wall
2) porch can lights
3) basement can lights
4) ceiling fan prewire in all upstairs bedrooms
5) extra 110V outlet in master bath by toilet

Extra outlets and plumbing that isn't in place yet:

1) garage outdoor 110V outlet by driveway: Change order 2, line 020
2) garage dedicated circuit indoor 110V outlet in back left corner:
Change order 2, line 018
3) garage 2 x 2 outlet plate on indoor 1/2 section wall (there is the
standard sprinkler outlet already there--in addition to this): Change
order 2, line 017
4) garage two 110V switched outlets, one over each car bay in the
rafters: Change order 2, line 019
5) porch 110V exterior outlet (mirror image of the standard exterior outlet
that is already there): Change order 2, line 020
6) porch 110V exterior outlet up by soffit: Change order 2, line 020
7) porch/front of house hose bib: Change order 2, line 002
8) basement two sets of 2 x 2 outlet plates (8 receptacles in total)
centered in back wall of rec room. Right now there's a note on an off
center stud that says "additional 110V" and indeed there's an
additional single outlet plate there. That's 2 receptacles, not 8.
This was also part of Change order 2, line 017, as was the (completed)
extra outlet by the master bath toilet.

(Yes, when I emailed them I cited the change orders. It's an executed change order, part of a contract, and they haven't delivered. Seems simple to me. These are definitely things I want to have fixed pre-drywall, of course!)

 

[Toshi]

Mr. Money Mustache: 2000 Miles of Justice: My Year of Riding Electric Bikes

Almost one full year ago, I built myself an experimental electric bike to see what all the hype was about. As a profanely vocal proponent of muscle-only transportation, I was skeptical of the idea at first. But in the spirit of a good experiment, I decided to just add the thing to my bike fleet and see how it went for a year.

As the months and seasons have rolled past, I have found myself blazing around town more frequently, with greater speeds and heavier loads than I ever thought possible, which has turned me into unapologetic convert. The electric bike combines some of the distance-devouring advantages of a car, with the city-friendly flexibility of a bike (you can bypass all traffic jams and jump freely between roads, bike paths and even dirt and unpaved areas to find the most direct route, and park for free right at your destination).

This is why electric bikes give me the feeling of Justice. You are riding a bike like you should be, creating virtually no pollution or noise, but you have a tireless olympic sprinter in your back pocket that you can unleash at the twist of a throttle. You can EAT gigantic hills for breakfast and DUST entire pelotons of spandex-riders from the comfort of your flipflops and flannel shirt. These things could have a revolutionary impact on the lazy modern lifestyle and make cities of all sizes vastly more livable places. So my official position on the matter is now that Electric Bikes are Awesome.

...

 

[Toshi]

In this continuing market turmoil (don't raise rates, FOMC!) Betterment's tax loss harvesting product is doing its job for me:

The market losses don't bother me since I'm not going to drain this account at closing time and will continue to buy in periodically.

The tax loss harvesting means that I'll pay $851.03 * 33% less this tax year in exchange for paying $851.03 * 15% more in LTCG in some future year. I'll take that 18% difference + the value of having money now any day.

(For those following along with my down payment fund's project, note that this is in addition to ~$21k in earnest money the builder holds, and is prior to injection of foreseen October bonus money of goodly nature. I'm ok even now, and will be more than ok come December.)

 

[Toshi]

My ideal vehicle was apparently made by Ford as a concept in the 70s: http://jalopnik.com/when-ford-was-bonkers-the-ford-econoline-kilimanjaro-1728335832

 

[Toshi]

Happy baby is a happy baby. She is all full of smiles and laughs.

 

[Toshi]

(getting family [to Kona, Hawaii] will be on my dime)

Hmph. Looks like it'll be entirely on my dime for the family's tix, as United's mile redemption scheme falls flat for the Denver to Kona route.

The above is the best I can wrangle, and that'd be 90,000 miles for that one round trip ticket with a connection each way. (There is a direct flight but it's outright impossible to book with miles, and using the cheaper 45,000 mile round trip option is nearly impossible as well: only three days that whole month are eligible, all random Wednesdays spaced 14 days apart. Nope.)

I think I'll pay for proper non-stop Hawaii tickets out of pocket and reserve the use of (70,000) miles for a solitary round trip non-stop ticket to Japan later in the spring. Disappointing, this.

 

[DaveW]

#firstworldproblems

 

[Toshi]

Purse strings are loosening as bonus time (and closing time thereafter!) comes nearer:

This 2.0 lb beast shall replace both Jessica's 2008 MacBook and the Chromebook that recently died. Education pricing got me $50 off but also got the questionable extra value of a free pair of headphones.

 

[Toshi]

Today I confirmed that musicians from the medical/higher education community are no more skilled than those from the community at large.

I just sat in at a rehearsal of the UC Denver orchestra, where probably 90% of the people are faculty, staff, or grad students of some sort. The piece programmed was Beethoven 5. It was not pretty.

I will not be playing with this group, needless to say.

 

[Toshi]

My patience with my Hackintosh is wearing thin. I built it in 2010, updated it in 2012 (SSD), and then updated it a tiny bit more last week (gigabit Ethernet, which proved to be useless in my 100 base-T office).

In installing software for this latest update I totally broke the Mac OS X side of things, and my usual recovery tools are not working. I'm making one last attempt today/tomorrow to reinstall OS X: torrenting a Yosemite installer, bring this home to wife's new MacBook, using UniBeast to copy this to a USB drive in bootable-by-Hackintosh-in-theory form, and then reinstalling via this USB drive tomorrow.

If this doesn't work--and, honestly, this probably isn't going to--then I will proceed to bleed a bit more money yet because I want a working OS X computer. Or will I? I guess it's probably useful to look at what I have and what I need, functionally.

 

[Toshi]

What I have now:

1) Work-issued Dell E6540 laptop. 15.6", 1080p, Core i7 albeit probably some bastardized mobile version, hybrid 512 GB SSD/HDD drive, Windows 7, PGP encrypted up the wazoo from the BIOS level upwards.

It's heavy. The trackpad sucks. On the other hand, it does run MATLAB and Office/EndNote well enough. It also has a work-provided docking station that saves me from carting around the power adapter, adds mouse + real keyboard, and lets me drive my two 24" external monitors.

2) Hackintosh that I built up in 2010. Two 24" IPS monitors. Old-revision Core i5. 240 GB SSD + two 1 TB internal SATA HDDs + external USB 2.0 (boo, hiss) 1.5 TB HDD. It runs Windows 7, and used to run Yosemite until I broke it.

It never ran MATLAB on the Mac side because of stupid Hackintosh-specific hardware issues + stupid MATLAB installer assumptions regarding hardware being present. I therefore use it for writing on the Mac side (Word + EndNote) and MATLAB-ing on the Windows side, syncing files back and forth with the Dropbox and Google Drive apps. Not quite ideal, but it has lasted me quite a long while despite being a ~$1k build with a few hundred more dollars trickled in. I suppose if you account for my labor cost, as it were, it hasn't been such a deal, on the other hand.

 

[Toshi]

What I'd like to do:

1) At work: Have lots of screen space for "thinking area." Run Chrome. Run MATLAB. Run Excel, Word, and EndNote. Manage email with Exchange and IMAP accounts (via Thunderbird when on Windows, Mail.app on OS X).

2) At home: Have small form factor for use on couch. Sync with my iPhone using iTunes, run Photos (formerly iPhoto), run Lightroom, which more or less dictates running OS X. Similarly run Chrome, MATLAB, Excel/Word/EndNote, and Mail.app.

 

[Toshi]

At first I thought of essentially replacing the Hackintosh at work with a Mac mini. It'd drive both displays and could certainly accomplish my work tasks. That'd leave me with my work laptop at home, though. This is essentially what I was doing with the Hackintosh at work, laptop at home setup before so would be doable.

A reasonably speced Mac mini would cost $1,068 with education pricing: 2.6 GHz Core i5, 16 GB RAM upgrade, 256 GB SSD upgrade, HDMI to DVI adapter although I could skip this last technically as one if not both of my monitors can take HDMI in.

Instead of using a bunch of SATA to USB 3.0 docks/adapters then I could haul in my gigabit hub, hook both the Hackintosh and the Mac mini up to it, and then have that hub connect to the wall jack via standard 100 base T. This way I could still get at the internal drives via fast-network file sharing, at least after getting a $35 academic MacDrive license.

Hmph.

 

[Toshi]

On the other hand, my docked work laptop actually handles my work related needs quite well. Funny how that works out. (Of course, one of these two monitors is actually my own. I like lots of pixel-room to have a web browser open, both for time wasting and Google Scholar checks, MATLAB on one screen, email on the other, Word with a manuscript in progress, etc.)

The Hackintosh clearly does not handle home related needs well, though: huge desktop case, useless without its monitors that are much more needed at work, and now doesn't even run OS X.

Solution: another Mac laptop in the household for me? (An iPad +/- Pro wouldn't do me any good since I need iTunes sync/Photo/Lightroom functionality.) It seems overkill since I could install iTunes and Lightroom on my work laptop, cart its bulk around twice a week, and call it a day.

Hmph indeed.

 

[Toshi]

Sort of related random joy to the computer crap above: Visa is going to reimburse me for my wife's just out of factory warranty dead Chromebook + the diagnostic charge from taking it to a useless computer repair shop that basically said "yup, it's broken."

It still would have been better ultimately had she called Google within the warranty, gotten it replaced, and then subsequently not needed her very nice but not cheap new MacBook, but one can only do so much.

 

[Toshi]

Hackintosh is revived yet again! I probably put in about 6? hours of labor this time around. Lots of resorting to google.

This time I used a different method: last time I couldn't use an official Yosemite installer .app because my wife's MacBook (the old one) couldn't run it and therefore was barred from downloading it from the Apple App Store. My wife's new MacBook came with Yosemite and the App Store let her redownload the installer without an issue.

From there it should have been straightforward, but it wasn't. Many trials and travails involving video drivers and lack of booting were experienced and overcome in turn.

The net result is that I have a working Yosemite installation that's actually better than before! The key difference is now that I have a PCI gigabit Ethernet card working instead of the USB adapter. This is a trivial difference but its presence allows the MATLAB installer to work on the OS X side, and therefore now I can run MATLAB in peace under OS X on the Hackintosh. No reason to boot it into Windows now (or at least until the Mac side breaks again).

Win/not a very good use of my time. Oh well--my employer won't promote me before 3 years minimum anyway, so no sense in rushing out too many publications, eh?

 

[Toshi]

My patience with my Hackintosh is wearing thin. I built it in 2010, updated it in 2012 (SSD), and then updated it a tiny bit more last week (gigabit Ethernet, which proved to be useless in my 100 base-T office).

Uselessness of the upgrade in raw numbers:

1) Apple USB 2.0 to 100 Mbps Ethernet adapter, no VPN.

2) Apple USB Ethernet, yes VPN.

3) Realtek PCI gigabit Ethernet card, no VPN.

4) Realtek, yes VPN.

I'd call it useless except that its PCI card-ness let MATLAB install.

 

[Toshi]

True story, bro: Tires are bulky.

 

[Toshi]

For those of you who don't frequent the GMTs, particularly today's:

That's footage from my own dashcam looking over the hood of my Land Cruiser. Meh.

 

[Toshi]

In other news, this Lightning Rods Luna Cycle could be a candidate for my commute-to-work-not-on-roads machine:

That mid drive assembly slots into this frame that has been designed to accommodate the pack and the mid drive somewhat sleekly:

 

[Toshi]

Just the tool for snowy Denver commutes:

http://lanesplitter.jalopnik.com/the-snowbike-is-the-awesome-lovechild-of-a-snowmobile-a-1732317914

 

[Toshi]

I banged and pulled away at my fender after getting the proper Torx bit. It kind of worked:

Before

After

Most of those speckles in the after shot are soap bubbles but there are a few small patches of full thickness paint loss. If I'd noticed this dent as opposed to just the scratches on the bumper cover (that wiped cleanly off with a paper towel and dish soap) then I'd have gone after the other guy's insurance to get me a new fender. Oh well.

 

[cecil]

The metal shims are fine, but typically structural engineers want 8" of bearing, that beam is short it should go all the way into that beam pocket and technically should be sitting on and welded to a bearing plate