Reefer

Remember a while back my brother gave me his old 10 gallon fish tank?

It died. The electrics stopped electrifying. No more light for the creatures.

Super Girlfriend to the rescue!

She got me a JBJ 12-gallon Nano Cube Deluxe. It's gorgeous, with nice blue and white daytime lighting, surface skimmer, filter media, great flow, and LED "moon lights" which look awesome in a dark room. It also fits on the same old stand, which is nice.

Three weeks ago the brother came and coached me through the tank transfer -

Man, I really hate the Southwest Airlines "bags fly free" commercial.

HATE IT.

- what was I saying - oh, right...

We took out all the live rock and creatures, dumped half the water, and poured the other half in the new tank, put the rock and sand in to the new tank, made a saltwater mix with a package of sea salt from local fish store and tap water (found out this is bad, more later), and filled the new tank up.

- shit, stupid Colts took the lead. I hate you Manning. -

- Oooh, Mass Effect 2 commercial. Cool. -

Umm...oh yeah...moments of truths came:

• Tank does not burst under pressure, check.
• Plug in, flip the switch and stuff turns on, check.

Sweet. My girlfriend didn't get me a piece of junk...I will keep her around...

Minutes after adding everything and turning it on, the water is already starting to uncloudify, showing how strong the pump and filtration is in the tank...

Shot with LED moon lights:

Jump forward two weeks. I have put a few snails and hermits in the tank.

Zoidberg, the alpha-hermit from the old tank is still alive and well:

Next to another hermit, really showing size:

Snails in the moonlight:

For a healthy tank, water conditions must be just right.

Among other things, you have to maintain healthy parameters for:

• Temperature
• Salinity
• pH
• Ammonia
• Nitrites
• Nitrates
• Phosphates

I picked up a test kit, made by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals at the fish store. I will wait until the tank is healthy and stable before adding fish.

Brother also gave me a heater, so my temperature is maintained around 77 degrees fahrenheit.

Ammonia levels are ZERO, good.

Nitrite levels are also zilch, good.

pH between 8.2 and 8.4, good.

Nitrates at highest part of scale, BAD!

Nitrate is the last effect of the nitrogen cycle before being released as nitrogen into the atmosphere - aka, living room area behind my couch.

So why are my nitrates so high? Hobbyists keeping saltwater tanks will often have nitrate spikes when adding to or removing something from their tank. This changes up the chemistry of their tank and will usually correct itself.

However, since half of my water came from my old tank, my suspicion is that the old water, with no light, improper maintenance routines, and other general newbiness on my part, such as overfeeding, are to blame. Another possible culprit is the tap water used to make the saltwater. Tap water is treated with all kinds of chemicals and could very possibly contain chemicals you don't want to put in your tank, so I should have instead been using RO/DI (reverse osmosis and/or de-ionized) water.

How do I rectify? Water changes. Patience. I purchased some water from the fish store and will use this when I do water changes:

Create a syphon, drain portion of tank, dump, and add new water.

Hopefully in a few weeks the tank will be good to add some fish.

Until then, I'll keep watching crabs and snails...

Like this crab looking for a new home to grow up in...

Watching

The Jets lose their lead. Stupid Colts. I hate you Peyton.

Mad Men

District 9

Playing

With my new phone - LG Env3, hooray for me.

Batman Arkham Asylum

Bioshock - sequel coming soon!

Listening to

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus

Massive Attack - Splitting the Atom

Deftones - White Pony

In Groveland, we'd swing at deer...not people...well, sometimes people...

This is hilarious in English, but let's expand our horizons...


I don't know if you know this or not...but I went to Italy (everyone, cheer for me)...so um, let me help with the last lines, starting around 1:37...

D-Fens: What's wrong with you?

Golfer: Heart...

D-Fens: Your heart, something's wrong with your heart? What can I do?

Golfer: Pih...my...pills...

D-Fens: Pills? Where are your pills?

Golfer: ...On...the...cah...cart...

D-Fens: Well I guess you're outa luck aren't you? Your little cart's going to drown. Now, aren't you sorry you didn't let me pass through your golf course?

Golfer: My...golf...course...

D-Fens: Yeah. And now you're gonna die wearing that stupid little hat. How's it feel?

General Oversight

So I just finished watching the second Transformers movie on Blu-Ray, "Revenge of the Fallen".
I enjoyed the first one. And even the second was entertaining. Yeah, it was reviewed poorly and most will complain about plot holes, but the sequel was entertaining. I liked it.
What are you expecting anyway? It's a film about robots that have an exclusive deal with General Motors.

Yep, the autobots can only transform into marvels of humanoid engineering if what they scan is derived from the great minds at GM.
Chevy (those controversial, illiterate ghetto twins and Bumblebee), GMC (Ironhide), even Saturn (the Astra used to escape from evil robots at the college) were all pushed by the film.

This exclusivity (all-)sparked a train of thought...maybe we pay taxes to keep GM in business because they threw all their money into the movie and forgot about that secret to capitalistic success...innovation.
What's that? Transformers 2 was still a success?
Well that's the the sticking point isn't it?
...But I'm convinced there is an explanation.
While Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg realized about halfway through the film that they had a bunch of compost in between their fingers, they also knew there was a perfect solution: throw in a few more scenes with Megan Fox in a low-cut top running from danger in slow-motion.

General Motors had no such hottie to salvage their incompetence, resulting in any tax-paying U.S. citizen dumb enough to purchase a new GM vehicle not only paying for the (eventual) pink slip and right to drive it off the lot, but also putting up the dough for its production.

I don't know what the big deal is though...I always return to Safeway and pay (in full, with a huge markup) for my plate of pasta after I go grocery shopping (at Safeway) for sausage, cheese tortellini, peppers, tomato sauce, salad, and bread.
That's...the American way...?

Mi Muñeca

My girlfriend is la bomba.
Apologies in advance to any male or lesbian readers. Jealousy will likely ensue.
Quite simply, she is the best girl. Ever.

For instance...

• She walked right past the What Women Want, The Devil Wears Prada, Failure to Launch, When Harry Met Sally (which I actually really like) DVD's on sale at Target, and picked up Predator. On Blu-Ray, on sale for $9.99. She said, "We are watching this tonight."
• She likes good music. That's not to say she only likes music that I like. That would be boring. But she is appreciative, vocally so, of the not-so-on-the-radio-or-download-able-as-ring-tone catalog that pleasures my ears. And she exposes me to some really good stuff. She said yesterday, "I really like that elbow song, Grounds for Divorce. It's so bad ass. It just makes me want to tear something up." And then continued to swing her hips to Shakira. I always wanted eclectic love.
• She, like any girl, has a friend that visits every month, let's call this friend...oh...I dunno..."Redding". However, she doesn't transform into an enraged demonic aggressor, throwing the salt shaker squarely at my forehead for placing it too close to her cup of cranberry juice causing it to sprinkle on to her place mat. Nope, she is well aware that she might be a little moody, but in reality is just a little more quiet and indecisive than usual...and even goes as far as (unnecessarily) apologizing for that.
• She has no capacity for falsehood. When she says something to me, there is no question in my mind or heart that she means it. Entirely.
• She bypasses Sex and the City and watches The Simpsons and Futurama with me. And she turned me on to Futurama. She also has the insider info on when a season of The Simpsons is going on sale.
• She doesn't hold it against me when I let my silly Canadian friends convince me to have just 4 more shots of whiskey and I end up making (even more of) an ass of myself.
  
• She tells me I'm hot when I'm being a complete nerd. I have no qualms about telling her that Sunday afternoon, I really want to re-image my hard drive, swap out my CPU fan, and tweak my BIOS settings.
• She might like the Predator, but she sewed up the hole in my PJ's while we watched it.
• She personifies my guitars before I even get the chance to do it myself: "You haven't had time to play guitar in a long time baby, I bet you miss it. I'm sure they miss you too."
• She'll skip a walk through some garden to go to the Academy of Sciences, the Planetarium, the Tech Museum, or to just stay in bed and watch Transformers and The Rock all day.
• She is open to trying new things. She is as excited as I am to go snowboarding, having only gone twice. And when she gets tired and sees that I want to leave the bunny hill, she tells me to "Go on, I'll be in the lodge saving us a spot with some drinks and fries." And there is nothing behind that, no strange guilt trip because I went snowboarding for a while without her.
• She gives me a big sympathetic hug when one of my tank creatures passes away.
  

I could go on and on, but I don't want to make you too jealous. You might accuse me of blogging about my girlfriend just to score some brownie points...and get her to bake me some brownies later...and while that might be a happy side effect, it's not the case.
I just like to brag about how lucky I got.

Like

facebook. A grand old place.
These are all posts I saw when I was pretty angry with life a few weeks back. I was inclined, with all my cynicism, to "Like" every bad status post I could find...
Here are some of them...


We had a good run but nothing is forever. Gibson Stratocaster will be missed.
(Dead Cat?)
...Like

Another month with no driving = super sad XXXXXXXX.
XXXXXXX has no car...DUI? Wrecked? Can't afford insurance?
...Like

Tow company said it would take 20 minutes to come jump my car. Called at 30 minutes to see if they got lost and they said it will be another 10. :/
(Car trouble)
...Like


XXXXXX is sort of pissed to be paying for this calculus class. What a joke.
XXXXXX decided to take a course at an all Russian school? The professor is her junior high school teacher that got fired for reaching down some young man's pants?
...Like


Just not my day.
...Like


XXXXXX was hit today by a guy speeding through a red light. I'm okay. My car is not. My poor poor car :(
XXXXXX's car is totaled?
...Like

But who's to say I wasn't happy that all these people, with their rough times and hard situations, were still in a place where they could log on to facebook and troll for sympathy...

Obscure Hilarity

Caught this over at Geekology (yes, the one with a 'y', not 'ie').



I lost it at "Twit on My Face".

Wow...I've become a nerd...

Like minds like mine

Musicians I enjoy tend to flock together. And I don't mean those from the same label or even the same genre - that would be expected.
I guess those I like also like who I like.

Excited for Massive Attack's new album, I did some internet poking and found a flash player with tracks from their EP (click "Media Player" on the top left of their page).
It seems Guy Garvey - the vocalist for one of my other favorite bands, elbow - will be appearing on their new record, Heligoland.
There is also a track featuring Tunde Adebimpe - the cat from TV On The Radio...

Here is a remix of the track with Garvey from the EP:


This makes me happy.