Month: March 2006

This is really useful, extends the NetFlix service in some really helpful ways.

Netflix Freak:

Netflix Freak is a full-featured Mac OS X application for managing your rental queue that enhances the Netflix experience. The program offers many unique features not available on the Netflix website.

But I wonder what it means for this whole webservices/Web 2.0 business if desktop application still trounce websites. I think the NetFlix site could stand some improvement so it’s not clear you would always need this application.

Impeachment is a shortcut for oversight:

Since talk of impeachment is in the air, it seems incumbent on all vocal critics of the president to go on the record with their points of view on this momentous question. So let me devote this column to explaining why I think it’s a bad idea on both policy and political grounds.

Well-reasoned. I think it’s an interesting idea to let things get to where even the most rigid of GOP rascals has to realize things have gone too far. But his main point — that no effort has been made to manage this reckless administration and impeachment is an admission of failure more than a statement of principle — is, I think, correct.

Letting the Republic, and the Constitution on which it was founded, twist in the wind until that time doesn’t fill me with optimism.

After struggling mightily with some slow drains and being unwilling to pay a plumber for so trivial a task, I decided to employ the advice embodied here (Boing Boing: Explosive sink and toilet plunger is a gift from the gods).

I can testify that yes, this is effective. But.

You may as well grab a second set of the CO2 cartridges on your way out. If you have luck like mine, they won’t all be used effectively. First piece of advice, if you’re working with a tub drain, buy a hydraulic/drain bladder (about US$10). You want to use it to plug the overflow completely and in many cases, you may be able to just use that and a lot of plunging. After all, a plunger makes use of the incompressible nature of water: where it fails to work is when there a pocket of compressible air or an outlet that isn’t plugged.

The bladder resembles a thick-skinned rubber balloon, with a hose coupling on one end and a small hole on the other. The principle is that you slip it into the pipe opening, turn on the hose to make it expand and block the pipe, and the water from the other end will eventually push the blockage away. Couple this with the blast of CO2 and you’re bound to get stuff moving. I noticed that as soon as I turned on the water, the overflow filled and the tub drain started backing up. That made it clear that the clog was pretty close to where they join.

Choosing the right side of the plug to use is something you’ll need to think about. I found the one that fits in the drain rather than over it to be more effective.

If you want to use this is a double sink, you’ll need to get someone strong to plug the one you’re not blasting or kneel on the stopper yourself. That was what I ended up doing, and it worked just fine.

But I can say this thing is worth having around. Seven cartridges later, used on two sinks and a bathtub, and things are running smoothly. The cartridges, at US$6 for 4, are not as expensive as a plumbing call. And the addition of the hydraulic bladder to my toolbelt will make old-fashioned plunging a more useful option.

As a side-benefit you can demonstrate the properties of gases to your young learners. Let them feel an intact CO2 cart and a freshly discharged one and marvel at the temperature difference. A bicycle pump would complete the lesson, I suppose.

Will Rogers’ old joke about not being part of any organized party, that he was a Democrat, was funny in it’s day, but they’re beyond disorganized now. Dysfunctional is more like it.

Think Progress » BREAKING: Feingold Accuses Senate Democrats of “Cowering” To Bush:

Sen. Feingold said the following to Fox News’ Trish Turner:
I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists.

There was some hope that Howard Dean would breathe some life into its moribund carcass, but it might not be possible.

And true to form, a Republican colleague of Senator Feingold has accused him of aiding the enemy by introducing a censure resolution.

This isn’t your father’s democratically-elected republic.