I have to admit the way this heat pump turns on and off is very cool.  I didn’t know it did this before we had it installed, but if I had, I may have decided to buy it based on that factor alone.  A few of the other factors gave me some pause (and still do to some degree).  Chief among them is that the units we have do have a side button to turn them on and off, but that only places them into an automatic mode that has them move the temperature towards the range 68-74 as appropriate.  For any of the fancier features, such as specifying if you want to have it heat or cool only and setting a target temperature requires a remote control.  Even with the remote control, it seems you can only set a timer to turn the whole thing on or off, not set it dynamically to different temperatures during the day.  No thermostat is connected, so driving it that way won’t work either.  This has led me to the idea of building an arduino based device with an IR blaster of some sort to allow for fine grained control of the environment, but I haven’t gotten the hardware for that project yet, let alone started actual work on it.

As far as heating and cooling goes, our experience so far has been fairly reasonable.  We got it late enough in the year we only cooled with it a little, but we did have it through the winter.  As long as the outside temperature stayed above 25 degrees Fahrenheit, it has done very well at keeping our main living space and upstairs bedroom warm.  We usually have it targetted at between 66 and 68 Fahrenheit by the way.  The other rooms still have their baseboard heater.  And while it runs louder than our baseboards, so we notice it on somewhat often, it seems to have used less power as advertised.  We did have one cold streak where our temperature ran 12-25 Fahrenheit for almost a week, which is fairly unusual for the Puget Sound region.  That week it did have a hard time keeping up, especially at night.  Those mornings the downstairs had dropped to around 60 by morning, but warmed up quickly once other heat sources started contributing (cooking breakfast, tv, etc) and as the sun came up.  That performance was in line with the specifications of the device, which is why we have supplemental heat in some of the rooms adjoining the living room/kitchen if needed, along with a fireplace as a last resort option.

On the first night I was there, I discovered that a block away from the conference hotel was 6th street.  Google was telling me there were lots of eateries there, and since I arrived at about 19:00 local time, I was somewhat hungry.  Turns out almost all the eateries were bars or clubs packed with people and cover charges, especially on a Saturday night.  Of course I discovered the next night that on a Sunday, the street is basically dead.

On Sunday morning, I had a few hours of dead time, so I took the opportunity to walk to the state capital building, which was a mile or two away.  I didn’t really expect the grounds to be open, let alone the building, but it turns out they were open for anyone to walk in and look around, so I did.  One of the things that really struck me was this statue I saw listing the various states of the Confederacy along with the dates they seceded.  It also had a statement on it proclaiming states rights to do such a thing.  I found it interesting, as I never really think about Texas as having been a part of the Confederacy, so it caught me a bit off guard.

Inside the capitol were the normal arrays of statues, such as Stephen Austin and Sam Houston.  A youth mock Congress was going on, so both chambers were occupied with high schoolers giving speeches and such.  At least I choose to believe that was the case and that real representatives don’t tend to spin around in their chairs while debating the finer points of legislation during weekend sessions.  Arrayed around the multiple levels of the dome were paintings of past Governors, such as this guy.

After that morning it was back to the hotel and work for a few days.  I did see my first snow of the year on the Tuesday I was there, which shut the city down.  That would have made a bit more sense if it stayed on the ground for more than a second or two, but I’ve seen how people panic when the weather is not as expected, so I can’t say I was totally surprised.
View Austin in a larger map

Other times they sort of look like they are up to something.

To do this, you really have two basic options.  One is to use a reader on your computer.  Thunderbird has one built in as an example.  The other option is to use a web based reader, with Google Reader being my choice, and that of 10 other people according to the statistics.  The advantage of a web based reader is you can use it on any computer or most mobile devices and have everything in sync.  And it makes it easy to integrate sharing of articles to Facebook, Buzz, etc.  After selecting a reader, you simply need to subscribe to some feeds.  To do this with Google Reader, hit the handy subscribe button on the left hand side and enter in the url of http://www.shanehall.net/blog/ and it should auto find the feed.  Or get really technical and put the feed in by hand, which is what most standalone tools will want.  That address is http://shanehall.net/blog/feed/ for the blog entries themselves.  If you want to see the comments in the reader also, subscribe to http://shanehall.net/blog/comments/feed/.  Once you get started, you will start to notice rss or atom feed buttons on most blogs you read.  Subscribe to those also.  After a bit you will start to simply check your RSS reader and see the fresh content in one place without needing to poke around abandoned blogs.  Every now and then you get a treat when a blog suddenly has it’s first post in 4 months pop up and you are able to comment in minutes if you are so inclined.

Any other methods people are using to keep up with blogs out there we should know about?  Any questions on how to get this setup for your own use?  Feel free to post comments in either case.

To make our crystal, I super saturated some sugar into water, without getting too much on the glass stove top even.  I believe I used a ration of 2:1, sugar to water.  Then I poured this into a clear tumbler so we could watch the crystal grow over time.  To give the crystal something to grow on, I rigged up some string to a popsicle stick.  Danelle helped me get the string wet and then we rolled it into some dry sugar and let that dry for a bit.  We then lowered the string into the tumbler and set the lid over the top.

After a week, this is what the setup looked like.

The crystal was pretty cool, really showing off the squareness of the sugar.

One other thing we did at the start of the process was add a bit of orange flavoring to the sugar water.  This resulted in a very tasty crystal that was devoured by two children as quickly as we could get pieces off the string.  Overall a very sticky, tasty and successful science project.

She is starting to really enjoy dancing just like her big sister does.

And sometimes she smiles a bit goofy like.

Or flat out refuses to look at the camera.

Notice an abundance of round toppings, approximately Pi number of toppings to boot (I’m not counting cheese or sauce as toppings).  These guys were actually really easy to make, and both kids always love to put toppings on pizzas of any size, regardless of whether or not they like the ingredient.  In fact, the less they like the ingredient, the more likely it is to end up on the pizza.  For the curious, here are the steps to make amazing Pi Pizza:

1. Split English muffins in half and lay them out on a pan that can go in the oven.
2. Put on some pasta sauce.
3. Add some mozzarella cheese to taste.
4. Top pizza’s with ingredients of your choosing
5. Turn the oven on broil and stick these guys in for a while (5 minutes seems about right).
6. Take them out before smoke or flames dominate the kitchen
7. Let them cool a few minutes
8. Enjoy!

After pizza for lunch, we then got serious and made an Oreo Cream Pi for dessert later that night after Mommy got home.  It was also pretty tasty if I do say so myself, even if the crust sort of stuck to the pan.

Danelle thought she saw a baby penguin through one of the windows, so Thea kept repeating baby while we were there.

The birds were excited to see food being offered to them.

Danelle managed to get two birds on her stick at once.

We managed to get a picture here with some monkeys in the shot.  There is also a siamang.

Near here we also saw the Tapirs playing in the water, which was a first for us.

And as always, on the way out of the zoo, we have to stop at the Zoomazium.

And of course, to me the highlight of this post, here is a map of our track as we walked through the zoo.  We kind of go in circles it would seem.

View Zoo Visit in a larger map

The reason it is my favorite part probably has something to do with it was generated by my new phone, along with all the pictures and videos in the post. I really enjoy playing with new electronics.

Thea may be the only 19 month old I know that enjoys eating salsa. She likes to eat it plain in a pile from which she can pick out chunks of salsa.