This is a Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly that dropped by to see me and Edgar today.

Swimming pools are open, families are on vacation trips, kids are at camps, rivers are clear waiting for skilled fishermen, lakes and oceans sparkle beckoning boaters, libraries are cool waiting for summertime readers, lemonade stands appear staffed by young entrepreneurs, sounds of firecrackers pop up in the distance, twilight lingers filled with sounds of play, the days are long and warm. When you are young and out of school summer is a long book full of possibilities - now it's a footnote to days, weeks and months filled with other things.

I'm putting new spark plugs in a 2002 Infiniti G20 for the first time. It's got just about 70,000 miles on it. Like the old joke goes - usually I just tighten stuff until the threads strip and then back off a quarter turn - but I want to do this in a more professional manner.

I figured out from the Autolite website that these plugs should be tightened to 15-22 ft-lbs in an aluminum head engine. I have a torque wrench somewhere but it's been so long since I used it I can't locate it. I think I saw it hanging somewhere but my memory might be playing tricks on me and I might have seen it hanging in an old house 30 years ago. I know I had a torque wrench.

The link above from Autolite says for a 14 mm gasket type plug you can tighten it 1/2 turn past finger tight and that works. Actually I've changed spark plugs and done various other shade-tree type mechanic stuff for a long time and I like to think I have a "feel" for how tight stuff has to be. It's worked fine so far - except this car has an aluminum head and I've never done anything to it. That's a pretty good car if you think about it....70,000 miles and all it's ever had is the oil, oil filter and air filter changed. The OEM plugs are good for 60,000 miles so I'm a little late on that. My almost 25 year old Chevy S10 is easy to work on but this Japanese car kind of scares me.

I got the Double Platinum plugs which as the box says provide "NASCAR Performance" - that'll be interesting because the engine in that car has always had more like sewing machine performance. I've gone back and forth from expensive plugs to middle of the road plugs (generally I don't buy the cheapest). These plugs are 3 bucks a piece and you can get a $1.50 rebate per plug so they end up being the same price as the cheapies. High end plugs use a coating of iridium nowadays. For this car the NGK IX iridium plugs are $13 a piece and the NGK Laser iridium are $20 a piece.

Usually I don't care what brand I get. I sort of like NGK and Bosch - but I'll buy Champion, ACDelco or Autolite - because I never really thought it mattered. Just yesterday B told me she happened to encounter a mechanic from the far Northwoods of Minnesota who was cursing about Champion plugs. I just thought it was a joke, but I don't know - this is a guy who works on a lot of different cars and boats out of his house so maybe he knows something. When I bought these plugs today I asked the manager of the auto-parts store, who's been there for as long as I can remember, what his favorite plugs are? He said it's a matter of personal preference for the most part - but he thinks Champion spark plugs are no good. The insulator is made out of talcum powder or something...I didn't quite follow it but apparently he sees more returns than any other brand. That's weird because I've used Champion plugs in small gas engines, cars, pickups and never had a problem. What's even weirder is that I'm sitting here on Friday night typing about spark plugs...


To summarize - Changing plugs, the distributor cap and rotor is a fairly simple task. When you are working on an ignition system it helps to to have a basic knowledge of what these parts do. High voltage electricity from the ignition coil passes to the contact on the top of the rotor, through the rotor to the contact on it's side and then as the rotor rotates, to the contacts inside the distributor cap which provide a circuit to each spark plug to provide a spark when the piston compresses the fuel/air mixture.

Plugs come gapped correctly for almost all cars - although you can check them to be sure the gap is correct with a gauge/gapper that costs a couple of bucks. You have to be careful not to cross thread the plugs and know that counter-clockwise loosens things and clockwise tightens things. Hold your hand out in front of you and turn it right saying "righty tighty' and then turn it left and say "lefty loosey" if you forget. Usually you remove spark plug wires by pulling on the boot on the plug (rather than tugging on the wire since that can break it). Before you remove spark plug wires from the spark plugs or distributor make sure you note which wire goes where so you can reinstall them correctly.

The distributor cap is held on by a couple of screws and has contacts inside it for each cylinder - if the contacts are worn/pitted or the cap is cracked you should replace it. Try not to drop the screws that hold the cap in place into the engine compartment. Once you get the distributor cap off you'll see the rotor. The rotor is press fit on the distributor shaft - you pull the rotor off using even pressure on all sides. Take note which way the rotor was pointing when you remove the old one so you can install the new rotor pointing in the same direction.

Inward/outward is a good place for inspirational ideas and interesting comments. You can sign up to get their thought of the day in an email if you like this sort of thing. I liked the post from yesterday titled "We Have Enough" by Cecile Andrews -

"Being mindful is hard for us because we are always anxious about time…. Learning that we have enough—money, time, love—may be our most important lesson. Even when we eliminate the apparent obstacles of working and consuming too much, we still have trouble relaxing and enjoying the present moment. So the problem is not just the scarcity of time, it’s our attitude toward time. That little voice always creeps in: You’d better hurry, you’ve got a lot to do, you’re not getting enough done, time is running out. What does this mean in terms of feeling alive? Surely, if things keep on this way, when we come to die, we will discover that we have not lived."

Source - inward/outward

They carry on the theme of taking time in today's post with the poem Invitation by Mary Oliver which starts out -

"Oh do you have time, to linger, for just a little while..."

Edgar the TFT loves to catch his rope. I have to put it up on top of the refrigerator sometimes so I can do something else. Usually he's okay with putting the rope up for a rest but sometimes if he isn't ready to stop playing catch he stages a sort of food riot where he kicks his water or food bowl around spilling water or dry dog food around in the kitchen.

He loves catching/chasing balls too but we had to stop that in the house because he also loves to "bury" balls under furniture and pillows and then try to dig them out which tends to cause a lot of scratches on furniture and feathers flying from pillows. With the rope he can't push it under stuff as easily.

Toy Fox Terriers are small but sturdy and love to play. Edgar can jump a couple of feet in the air and run and dart around really quick (really really quick). He thinks he owns this neighborhood and can be a bit of a diablo, particularly around other people or dogs he doesn't know. He's still a pup and will learn to be sociable and play nice. I've been watching The Dog Whisperer trying to get tips on how to take care of a very active little dog and we are working on walking with a leash.

I'd highly recommend a Toy Fox Terrier to anyone who wants a small dog that can live in a city environment. They like to go for walks of course but they get a lot of exercise just running around the house, up and down stairs and jumping from one piece of furniture to another.

A comment from thundergoraq166 on the Pets & pet parts price list at Last Chaos - Guides & Information at wetpaint.com -

"dude the last time i got a dragon tooth i sold it for 5.000 and that was 2 years ago.... what happened?"

That's a good question - a dragon tooth is going for 12,500,000 now.

I know nothing about the MMORPG game Last Chaos but it looks interesting.

The Last Chaos wiki is nominated for the 2009 - Wetpaint Golden Paint Can Awards along with a lot of other cool wikis like Oh Snap Science is Cool! - Ms. Genta's Science Website. Be sure and check out the Science Song - Science Science Baby.



Random Note - The acronym MMORPG reminded me of the hilarious Emmy Award Winning South Park episode "Make Love not Warcraft." Here's a link to a clip, but you have to watch the whole episode to get the full effect - it's available here.

This meditation from interluderetreat.com sounds like something worth thinking about as we start the week.

From the meditation -

"The guru, meaning spiritual teacher, and more literally translated as one who brings light into darkness (Sanskrit: GU (darkness) RU (light))—the one who reveals and embodies the light, can show us the way, correct our errors, and very importantly, acts as a role model...

A proper guru does not come out of nowhere. It is recommended that the guru be part of an established lineage. They should be learned in the scriptures of their tradition. Their life should be exemplary in its virtue. The true guru does not exploit followers financially, sexually or any other way.

Different traditions have different perspectives on the nature of the guru. He or she could be seen simply as a spiritual teacher. To some the guru is an enlightened being. Guru may mean the function of Self Revelation; so that the person who is a guru represents the nature of enlightenment—God-Realization, or a related idea."

As Bob Dylan sang you Gotta Serve Somebody, you might as well make it somebody who helps you on your path to joy, peace and enlightenment.

One of the nice things about the Interlude site is that it isn't centered on any single spiritual tradition - if you read through the prayers and meditations you'll see Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions incorporated in the writings.

I've tried Kubuntu, Debian, Knoppix, DSL, Fedora, Ubuntu and Xubuntu (still on one laptop with XP as the other option).

They all have their good points - but for overall ease of use, availability of support, customization capability and functionality, I'm sticking with Ubuntu. It works great for a home computer. I'm not sure how practical it would be for a work computer if you need a VPN, and compatibility with Microsoft - Exchange, Office and servers. I might try that sometime to see.

I'm back to a single-boot machine for my primary computer, and have access to Windows for my iPhone and Pod on a backup hard drive or my old laptop.

Now that I've spent hours and hours getting my OS just the way I like it I'm going to see if I can do something with my computer (other than trying one of dozens of different desktop themes, icons or window borders - playing with wobbly windows, painting fire, rotating desktop cubes, dockys and all the other fun stuff you can do with Linux).

I'm not a purist when it comes to this kind of thing; I'll use whatever works best for me and whatever I like - right now that's Ubuntu. It would be fun to have a Mac to play with and when Windows 7 comes out I imagine I'll get a computer with that operating system on it.

Linux allows you to customize your desktop using GNOME, KDE ,Xfce or a variety of other desktop environments.

One of the challenges with so much choice is that customizing your computer can become an end in itself.

For example Knoppix Linux has really cool startup and shutdown sounds that you (if you're a nerd like me) might want to use for your computer.

Does that make your computer any more useful?

No, but it might make it more fun to use - and you can learn more about how computers work by doing something simple like that.

To get those startup and shutdown .wav files I downloaded the Knoppix .iso (image) file, burned the .iso file to a CD, found the .ogg audio files, installed Audacity to convert them to .wav, used FileZilla to FTP them to my web server and then added the links to this blog post using a simple right-click extension for Firefox built by Phil Ringnalda.

Playing around with computers is the best way to learn their, and your own, capability - as you learn more you may find that when you have something you want to do (besides playing) it's a lot easier.

I was reading that Fedora 11 will have a 20 second boot time to login screen.

That made me curious how quickly the operating systems I'm using bootup, get on the network and shutdown.

I used a stopwatch to time Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, Debian Lenny and Windows XP Professional.

Time from power on to login screen:

Ubuntu 24.9 seconds
Debian 37.7 seconds
Windows 75.5 seconds

Time from login screen to wireless network connection:

Ubuntu 22 seconds
Debian 14 seconds
Windows 82.7 seconds

Time from power off to shutdown:

Ubuntu 12.9 seconds
Debian 7.7 seconds
Windows 74 seconds

Total time to boot up, get on network and then shutdown are:

Windows 232.2 seconds (3.82 minutes)
Ubuntu 59.8 seconds (.99 minute)
Debian 59.4 seconds (.99 minute)

If we assume there are 1 billion PC users in the world running Windows and they each turn on their computers, get on a network and shutdown once a day - that's about 3 billion minutes per day. That means people are spending 50 million hours a day waiting for a PC to do something. If those 1 billion PC users switched to a faster operating system they could eliminate 2 minutes of waiting...that's 33 million hours a day.

I'm trying out the Lenny release of Debian today. It works - not exactly out of the box; wireless, sound, and video take some tweaking.

It runs fast and I can see why it would be appealing to someone who likes to work on, or play with computers to get them to work with a Linux distribution. It's like playing a game or doing a crossword puzzle - something to keep your mind active.

I've tried Knoppix, DSL, Ubuntu and Debian so far. They all have their good points. I think it's all a matter of what you like and what you intend to do with a computer. For me Ubuntu is a nice compromise between usability and customization. I was curious to see what Debian was like since Ubuntu, Knoppix, DSL and a variety of other Linux distributions are based on Debian.

I'd say Debian would probably not be a good choice for someone who doesn't have any computer hacking skills or at least a lot of patience. I'll probably be sticking with good old Ubuntu but Lenny will be around anytime I want to check out what's going on with the source of a lot of the goodness in Linux distributions.

I think I started this about 20 hours ago so I better be going to bed now...

I installed a new Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB hard drive in my laptop yesterday. This is a SATA 2.5 inch 7200 RPM hard drive that originally sold for $250 when it was introduced last year. It goes for around $70 now. This hard drive replaces the original Seagate 80GB 5200 RPM hard drive that came with this Dell E1405 laptop.

Installing a hard drive in this laptop is really easy. Remove two screws from the back, slide the old hard drive out, remove the hard drive caddy from the old hard drive by removing 4 screws (if your new hard drive didn't come with a caddy), install the new hard drive in the caddy, plug it into the laptop and tighten the 2 screws. You have to reinstall your operating system, programs and any files you want from your old hard drive of course.

I decided not to reinstall Windows and dual boot with Ubuntu which I had been doing. I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 and the ext4 file system.

I upgraded to 2GB of DDR2-667 RAM a few weeks ago. This is a little trickier since the laptop has two locations for the RAM chips. One under the laptop which is easy to access and one under the keyboard which is a little more difficult. Dell's manuals are online and if you follow the instructions it's no problem. I bought the RAM for $10 from a computer hobbyist who happened to have some spare memory. It replaces the original 1GB of DDR2-533 RAM.

For 80 bucks I quadrupled my hard drive space and doubled my RAM, my laptop runs faster and I can keep using it for awhile.

Taobao is China's Ebay. It's part of the Alibaba Group which includes Alibaba.com "The world's largest online B2B marketplace."

Taobao and Alibaba are interesting to look at. In the case of Taobao.com all I can do is look since it's in Chinese. Non-Chinese language readers need to use Google Translator or something like the Taobao Field Guide to check out what's for sale.

You can find some sweet bo staffs for 50 renminbi or about 7 dollars U.S. (if you can figure out how to transfer money to China). You may want to check out the Bo Staffs how to select guide before buying your staff.

Otherwise it's fun to look at what people are buying and selling.

It's almost 4 in the morning and I'm about ready to go to bed - again. I slept for a couple of hours early tonight. I've never been much for sleeping. Naps sure - but going to bed and staying in bed for extended periods just doesn't really work for me. There's always something more interesting to do.

Usually I go to sleep reading or with the TV or the radio on, because I want to get the last bit of being awake in before I drift off. Lately my awake time at night isn't as productive as it once was when I'd spend that time reading and writing, now I tend to spend time fiddling around and not really accomplishing anything...and then all of a sudden it's 4 in the morning. That goes in cycles though - sometimes I'm studying something or writing or working.

There's something really appealing to me about the early morning hours, whether I'm in the outdoors, in a city or just sitting by myself - maybe the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks touches on that early morning vibe. Some people think that painting is gloomy - I think it looks interesting; I'd like to be sitting there drinking a cup of coffee - with my laptop and a good wifi signal of course.

Innerfence has an app that allows you to use your iPhone to process credit or debit card payments. At first glance I thought it sounded like an application for drug dealers and hookers but I've read it's intended for people selling things at farmers markets, craft/art fairs and other street vendors. The app is 50 bucks and there are setup, monthly and transaction fees so you'd need some profit margin and volume to make it worthwhile.

I remember watching the news briefing where Donald Rumsfeld made this statement and thinking, what the heck did he just say?

The Unknown

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know."

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

From Slate Magazine, "The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld" - by Hart Seely

Postscript one month later - I left the purse and a few other items at a bus stop today in hopes that someone else could use them. I probably should have put a few bucks inside it...maybe next time.

I've been playing with the Labyrinth mind-mapping tool this morning.

Why is it that we don't act more like Jesus?

Some people say the U.S. was founded on Christian principles, and is a Christian nation - but how is it that we twisted what Jesus taught into justifying the displacement of Native Americans, slavery, war, torture, solitary confinement, executions, exploitation, usury, discrimination, idol worship etc. etc. etc..

We are not a Christian nation - we are a nation of pragmatists. We do what works, which isn't all that bad - but don't be a hypocrite about it.

There are no justified wars, there was no manifest destiny, white European's have no special insight into God's ways. We used religion to accomplish things - some good and some bad. What we have yet to do as a nation is take what Jesus told us and made it a way of life.

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you."

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Luke 6:27-38

I've been listening to the U2 song "Grace" quite a bit lately and was looking for it on YouTube when I ran across this video of Mother Teresa with the song as background.



One of the most fascinating and heartening things about Mother Teresa to me is that she accomplished so much good in her life, outwardly giving the appearance of a person with a deep and abiding belief in God, while internally she struggled with her faith and questioned whether God exists at all.

I think for Mother Teresa, like other people who work in extremely difficult circumstances helping alleviate other human beings suffering - that having faith, and maybe especially faith that is unsure, questioned, struggled with - allows those special people to accomplish things that people who only believe in the scientific view of the world could never survive.

There is a pretty interesting and hopeful article in the New York Times stating evidence shows that the belief that I.Q. is overwhelmingly inherited is wrong. Maybe not all that surprising, but I.Q. is not determined mostly by nature after all - nurture plays a big role as well. High School students who understand they can improve their I.Q.'s tend to do better in school, and early childhood education can really help give children more brain power. Our I.Q.'s have increased over time and the article makes this surprising statement -

"Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says."

You can download the release candidate of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) now or wait until next Thursday for the released version.



Ubuntu 9.04 supports; the ext4 file system which allows up to 64,000 subdirectories, one Exabyte volume, and files up to 16 Terabytes. Ext4 also adds two bits to the time stamp field thus delaying the Year 2038 problem for 500 years, allows faster boot times and has improvements over ext3 file systems in preventing disk fragmentation.

I've been using Ubuntu for several years and am pleased with it. It's not perfect but no operating system is. It does almost everything I want with the exception of running iTunes and occasionally not being able to open some videos on a limited number of websites. Open Office works fine for the word processing, spread sheet or presentation type work I want to do. Gimp is a very powerful photo editing tool, Picasa is good for organizing and minor photo retouching and there's a ton of other free applications available. Support is good because the people who post questions and answers on the Ubuntu bulletin boards tend to be people who know something about writing or modifying code...or at least aren't afraid of playing with a computer and learning something new.

One of the interesting things about Ubuntu compared to some other operating systems are the system requirements needed to run this version of Linux. For example, there are other flavors of Linux that require even less memory, but Ubuntu will run reasonably well on a computer with 256 Mb of RAM. This may not be fair but I think there is an inverse relationship between the amount of memory taken up by an application or operating system and the elegance of the programming, and therefore to some extent it's usefulness and reliability.

Mainly I just like Ubuntu because it's free, fun to play with, and it works fine for what I need an operating system to do.

I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 pre-release version and so far it's working fine. I think it boots up and shuts down quicker than the last version Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) even though I didn't change to the ext4 file system. Canonical provides a new release for Ubuntu every six months, one in April and one in October. Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) will be released October 29, 2009.

I'm looking forward to hearing Joe Raiola, senior editor of Mad Magazine, talk at the Everett Public Library tonight. His ideas on our first amendment rights to free speech sound thought provoking.

For kids who grew up in the 1960's Mad Magazine was "the" source for anti-establishment humor, goofy humor and satirical digs at everything from politics to Hollywood to Madison Avenue and advertiser driven consumerism. It was funny and edgy for it's time. I was lucky to have teachers and parents who believed it was better to be reading something (even Mad or comic books) than nothing at all.

I like his advice quoted in this article -

"Question authority to the highest possible level whether it be political, religious, or that of any expert," said Raiola. "Continue to think for yourself; don't let anyone silence you - consciousness is power."

This isn't my list of lessons but I like the simplicity of the ideas. I might post them on our fridge if I can find a spot.