I have a soft spot for reusable water bottles. I had my Nalgene for 13 years before it died on a marble floor. I could not resuscitate it with heat or adhesives, and had to replace it. So when I was given a water bottle that clearly had a lot of sentimental value but a…
Category: Personal Projects
Heat Pump Water Heater Installation
In the endless effort to improve the home’s efficiency and reduce contributions to climate change, I took on replacing the water heater with a heat pump water heater. There were a few reasons for this, and the stars aligned to make it happen. There’s a lot of hype about heat pump water heaters. They’re super…
Bibimbob
Yes, I know it’s actually bibimbap, but I’m Bob, so get over it. This dish usually takes me 3o minutes to prepare, but on your first time you should budget an hour. It’s sort of like a salad on rice, so you can choose which goodies to use. In advance (or first thing), I take…
Do Treehouses Need Permits?
The short answer, as far as I can tell, is no. And the neighborhood seems surprisingly cool and impressed with it. I looked at the city websites to do some diligence, but the closest I could find was a deck or a shed. Decks have certain accessibility requirements that are not possible in a treehouse,…
Installing Solar
I installed a 4kW solar array.
Competitive Jigsaw Puzzling
In December I started doing competitive jigsaw puzzling. This is a sport where people are all given the same puzzle, and none of them know what it is before the competition starts. At the same time, everyone opens the puzzle and it’s a race to be the first to complete it. Categories include individual 500…
Building My Bed
Since moving in, I had planned to have a Murphy bed, and style it in the same theme as the rest of the room; spacey without any specific branding. Here are the after photos. Continue on for the full process. To start, I modeled it in CAD, and here are some renders: When I purchased…
Nerd Nite Madison 063 – The Other Side of the Buy Box
In January 2019 I gave a presentation at Nerd Nite about my experience selling Wacky Dancers on Amazon. There’s no video, but someone recorded audio. I finally got around to syncing it with my slides, so if you didn’t get to see it then, here’s as close a chance as you’ll get. Also, an update…
Gluten-free, Dairy-free, mostly Sugar-free Pecan Pie
This turned out really well. I modified my cherry pie recipe. Before starting, put 1/2 cup shortening in the freezer to get cold. Then work on the filling, then the crust, then put it all together and bake it. Filling 2 Tbsp quick-cooking tapioca Pinch of salt 1 Cup sugar substitute – I used 1/2…
Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Sugar-free Cherry Pie
I’m not going to write some super long back story behind this pie. It’s a good recipe. It took me three tries to refine it. I made it for my partner, and she really liked it. Filling I tried corn starch but it wasn’t very good. I tried all Stevia but that left a bad…