Mercwear.com – Curtis Morris

I spend a few hours this weekend putting together a ping pong ball cannon. No real reason to do this other than I thought it would be fun.

Here is the outcome:

With a few sprays of hairspray into the breach (the cardboard tube) it will shoot a ping pong ball about 75 feet and make a very satisfying boom. I put this together with materials I had laying around:

• 1 ½ inch PVC pipe – Used to hold the ping pong ball
• Mailing tube – Used as the breach (holds the hairspray and houses igniter)
• Gas BBQ igniter (piezoelectric igniter) used to set the whole thing off
• Duct tape – Used to hold it together
• A few screws – I wrapped wire around them and mounted them inside the breach, I then connected the other ends of the wire to the gas BBQ igniter, this will cause a spark to jump between the 2 screws inside the mailing tube which will then setoff the explosion.
• Hairspray

I plan on building a better version of this using all PVC pipe so I can shoot something bigger out of it (like a potato). This build was structurally weak since it used cardboard so be careful if you decide to do this yourself..

Our water heater quit working on Monday, the water was getting warm but nowhere near hot enough to take a shower (Andrea found out the hard way, sorry babe!). Rather than calling a plumber I decided to give this fix a shot myself, it was a learning experience but in the end I got it working for only $30.00 in parts.

What I learned:

• There is a racket for the “tool” used to remove the heating element from a water heater, the “tool” is nothing more than a pipe that has one end bent into the shape of a hex nut and it cost $8, there is a picture below

• Water heaters are very simple, there are less than 10 parts to check and the ones that break most often are very easy to access. In my case the lower heating element had shorted out so I replaced that and the lower thermostat as well

• I have hard water. Since I had the water heater take apart my uncle recommended that I try to remove the calcium deposits that had built up in the bottom. After building the right tool for the job using duck tape a shop vac and water hose I removed 10 pounds of calcium sediment from the water heater (gross).

Pictures are posted below click one to see the full set on Flickr

Burned up heating element and thermostat:

Thermostat after removal (Scary, looks like a small fire took place):

The $8.00 “tool” required to remove the old heating element (These are universal to most water heaters):

Old heating element, covered in mineral deposits:

Don’t forget to drain the water heater before working on it:

Shot of the inside of the water heater before I cleaned it:

The same shot after being cleaned:

The hose from my shop vac would not fit into the water heater opening so I used duck tape to attach a water hose to the shop vac (the water hose fit inside the water heater):

I ended up pulling over 10 pounds of mineral deposits out of the bottom of our water heater:

The old and new heating elements side by side:

I am in Six Sigma training this week and one of the tools we are using is a Pareto chart. Here is one that I made out of M&Ms

I came across a glitched free for all match on Xbox Live (It appeared to be a private game that somehow became public) that allowed 18 people into a free for all match and had unlimited ammo and increased fire rate on ALL weapons (including kill streak rewards). As you can imagine, the matches are total chaos most people use a grenade launcher to spam the whole map with grenades causing the whole map to shake due to the explosions. Someone will inevitably end up with an AC130 and because the glitch causes a major increase in your fire rate they will spam the 105mm shell across the whole map (watch the kill cam for this video for an idea).

Here is a video of the action (You will want to watch it at full size):

P9190050, originally uploaded by immense.

I put our San Fran pics up on Flickr a few weeks ago and forgot to update my blog =)

Click the image above to see the full set of pictures.

I am pretty big fan of Starbucks, Andrea and I stop there almost every morning before work to get our daily caffeine fix. Starbucks recently released their new Via instant coffee. In their words, Via is made by “microgrinding the [coffee] beans in a way that preserves all of their essential oils and flavors. No other coffee company takes this step, and it makes all the difference”. You may wonder what microgrinding is (I did) according to the barista at the Starbucks I frequent microgrninding is just another way of saying that they grind the coffee bean into a very fine “dust”. So when you make a cup of Via instant coffee you are only using ground coffee beans and this is where the exceptional flavor comes from.

I picked up a three pack of Via the first day it was on sale and have since gone through my original three along with about three more. The coffee is very good. So good in fact I cannot tell the difference between Via and the brewed coffee offered by Starbucks. Starbucks is so confident that Via is just as good as their brewed coffee they held a taste test challenge to prove it. I did not have a chance to take the challenge but Jason did and he could not tell the difference.

If you like Starbucks coffee and don’t mind paying about $0.85 for a cup of it (that is the average cost of a packet of Via) I highly recommend trying it out.

I just finished the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This was the first Gladwell book that I have read and it has reminded me to always look past the surface on not only people but places and events. All too often I will look at someone and assume that their social status, success or even failure must be related to the decisions they have made in life. I still believe that making sound decisions is critical in all walks of life however, Outliers showed me that something as simple as the day you were born can have a real impact on your life and who you become.

I will not go into a full review here, there are plenty available around the internet but I will say that if you are the type of person who really enjoys the “Ah HA!” moment reading this book will make you happy =)

Choe and I headed over to Choke last weekend, a great day on the lake (9 hours!!). Visit his site for pics:

Fishing Pics

I go to Costco to price out Hammocks.

I learn that Costco does not currently carry Hammocks.

While I am at the store I notice the TV I bought just over 3 months ago had dropped in price by over $200.

Costco has a policy that you can get a price adjustment on any item in the store for 30 days but I figured that there was no harm in asking about getting an adjustment.

I ask customer service about my TV and they quote the policy but tell me to ask a Manager (Ok so Costco should probably empower their front line folks to make these type of decisions on their own but I can look past that).

I find a manager walking the floor and explain my situation, her answer is “Sure, we will take care of you”.

It’s important for me to point out that getting the refund is not what makes me a promoter (although the cash is nice!). What made me a promoter is the fact that the Manager did not hide behind policy to avoid conflict with a customer.

The experience that I had made me want to learn more about the company. It turns out that this type of service is encouraged by Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, if you have a moment to read about his management style, his take on customer service and how to treat employees I would highly encourage it.

Nice work Costco.

I went to Fry’s yesterday and they had fry’s branded coffee on sale for 5 bucks a pound its whole bean too.. About to try it out.

We have been trying to get pictures of Daisy up on the site ever since we got her late last year, well they are finally here ;-0

Stats:
Breed: Monster Yorkie (ok ok.. she is just a Yorkie but she is VERY big)
Age: 11 months (birthday is 4/7/08)
Weight: Almost 13 lbs

Pics:

Our wedding pics are up at the following site:
http://andreacurtis.weddingherald.com/index.php/view_event.php

Password is Morris

They will be up until the end of the year – check em’ out!

Today at 1:38pm CST the results for the June 2008 Texas bar exam were posted online.

Andrea’s name is on the list (which means she passed).

Andrea is officially an attorney!

Andrea and I are visiting friends in Dallas this weekend. Part of the trip was going to a Dallas stars game, fun stuff!

Andrea and I are eating at BJ’s for the first time. They brew their own beer so I tried the pumpkin ale. Pretty good stuff! Even Andrea liked it which says a lot since she does not drink beer.

Here is what it contains.

Brian was wrong!! Line took a mere 57min

So.. Brian was right. We should have gotten in line to pickup our tickets a long time ago… Here is what we are dealing with.

That is about 1/5 of the total line

It’s pretty nice here, windy too!

Woot! There are already people in line and they don’t hand out tickets until 4. Here are some shots of the venue and some dorks: