Halfway there

The Recovery Website reported new numbers on April 30th, an uptick in spending means the alloted money is now half spent.

itunes 9.1 ipod wont sync fix

I have a second generation Ipod, and after updating to itunes 9.1 it would not sync without timing out, or crashing itunes. There were several file in use errors. To rectify this follow these steps:

OPen Itunes and goto Preferences->Devices

Check Prevent Syncing Automatically

Plug in your iPod.

Deselect any dynamic playlists.

Hit Apply

That worked for me and i hope it works for you

Recovery Act Spending One Year Out

Its been a while since I checked the recovery act website the most current spending totals there were updated march 5th toaling 291 billion.

Interpolating over the period when I last checked and the current reported total 63% of the allocated funds have yet to be spent. A linear interpolation also shows a slow down in the money spent per month but the spending probably is not linear. For example the Holidays would makes December/January slow months.

According to their timeline accounting work for the period of november thru february is due soon which may alter the totals. If anyone has a place on the web with more detail on the month to month spending let me know in a comment.

Its whacking day

Jules Vernes, to borrow a joke, predicted the stately walnut paneled submarines we all travel in today. If his reputation were examined with scrutiny it would pale in comparison to the prescient powers of the collected wisdom of the Simpsons writers.

The florida everglades are wrought with Pythons. The proposed solution is whacking day.

There is a slideshow article about the proposal at the daily beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-26/the-giant-python-hunt/

Helping Haiti with Credit Card Points

One of the charities acting in Haiti i am familar with is Zamni Lasante ( Partners in Health ) founded by Paul Farmer. He came to speak at at VT.

http://www.pih.org/where/Haiti/Haiti.html

If you have capital one rewards you can use the site

https://www.capitalone.com/give/faq/

to donate to PIH as well as other charities.

Both cash and reward points can be redeemed.

Recent Wins

Number 1:

On a local trash night a few friends and I discovered a air hockey table. Realistically who needs an air hockey table so we didn't pick it up. One of my friends was wise enough to go back and grab the AC fan off of it. I took the fan, splice a dimmer switch in, attached onto a caterer's style coffee box and ran a piece of channel out the other side. The results is a pretty decent laptop cooling stand. With the voltage cranked down the fan is quiet buts its large enough to move a fair bit of air under the laptop. Placing a re-freezable ice pack in the coffee box help the fan cool my laptop cpu 10 degrees celsius in both normal uses and under load while compiling.

Number 2:

My Check Engine Light came on while I was driving out of town over the break. I pulled into an Autozone (or Advanced) and had them read the code. It was p0065 which on my Subaru correlates to a malfunction in the "Valve assembly-air assist injector solenoid". After some googling I decided I could fix it myself. It was easy to get at, held on by two bolts and from what I read probably only required cleaning.

I disconnected the battery ground, unplugged the electrical connector to the solenoid, unbolted it and wiggled it free from its hoses. Blowing through both hoses demonstrated they were unobstructed. Finally I shot the valve with some carburetor cleaning spray and a whole bunch of nasty black deposits came out.

I hooked all back up and started the car and the CEL was off. I thought I would have to have my oil change mechanic clear it next time i went in but the battery was disconnected long enough for the memory on the ECU to reset. So far the thing hasn't thrown a code so I think the cleaning did the trick.

What Happened to that Sweet Trend

I am Mixing Data Sources, I missed the spending totals as a monthly basis and am using the reported total for October from the recovery website in addition to the data sourced in my previous post.

Because I was missing data I assumed even spending between July and October. You can check out data for your self at www.recovery.gov or if you don't like the government recovery.org

If you find spending totals by month let me know.