Window Tinting

May 15, 2010

The upstairs of our house gets really hot during the summers, so I decided to try to cool it down a little by tinting the windows. I also want to install one of those attic fans. I heard that helps a lot too...but that's for another day.
I decided to test out my tinting skills on one of our 3 pane windows that gets hit really hard by the afternoon sun. I figured that I'd do one just to see what it looks like and to see how hard it would be.

The installation didn't go too bad....but it didn't turn out as nicely as I wanted. It also took me about 3 hours to do 3 1.5 x 3 foot panes. Kind of long, but I think I can cut down on the time a lot since I learn a couple of things during the test run.

1. You need to leave a small border at the edge. The smaller the border the nicer it looks, but if you put the tint right up to the edge and it goes slightly over, the tint will pop up. Took me a long time to figure out that this was the reason it was popping up. I kept going back to smooth it over and a minute later it would pop up again.

2. Once you have the tint cut to the size of your window and placed nicely, you need to squeegee as much of the water out as you can. If you don't, the tint won't stick well and it starts to peel off at the top and you need to start all over again.

3. Use a sharp razor and take your time when cutting the edge. The edging on my tints have large gaps here and there, is crooked in places, and have jagged edges on some spots. I really hate that. But that's what happens when you try to stretch a razor.



Here's a look at the finished window. FYI, It just looks clearer because the un-tinted windows are really dirty. I did a quick test of the heat blocking at around 2 in the afternoon and it really does block almost all of the heat. Hopefully I can finish up the rest of the windows before the end of the month.

Making of the Cake Walk Cake

April 15 2010

The 7th grade class hosted a new game this year for the Iolani Fair. They call it the Cake Walk. I still have no idea what that is, but apparently every 7th grade family needed to provide a cake as prizes for this game.

So if you know Michelle, you know that this could go only one of two ways. And this is the extreme road we took...

Before we get to the cake, let's meet the baking crew.

Assistant Pastry Chef

Head Baker

We decided to go with a farm animal theme for the cake. So that called for a bunch of ...

Bunnies

and Piggies

Next we prepped and decorated the cake, a la Duff Goldman

First, Fondant all over

Then, Piggies in the mud

And The Cow and his Bunny friends

Bottom tier is home to a mouse, a brace of ducks, and a rickety fence

Finally, we wrapped up the cake and headed off to the Fair. We named the cake, Roman Farm, since the theme of the fair was "When in Rome..."

I thought the cake came out great. It was probably one of the best cakes at the fair, if I do say so myself.
I won't go into the other way this could have gone, suffice to say that I'm glad we took this road.

Broke the iPod Touch

January 27, 2010

So the other day, my iPod fell off the table. It was maybe a 2-3 foot drop onto a wood floor, and at the time, I thought nothing of it. I keep my iPod in a case and also inside of my homemade iPod coozie, so I figured it would be ok. But nooo.....

I went to the Apple store to find out how much it would cost to fix it. The guy there says, "I don't know, you will have to setup an appointment with an Apple Genius". Really? The Apple store non-Genius wouldn't know that? So I did a bit of research on my own and from what I could find out, Apple would have charged me $200 to fix it. That's almost how much I paid for it. So I did a little more research and found a place that sold replacement parts and decided to do the repairs myself.

After watching a couple of videos on how to take the iPod apart, I went at it.

Here is the glass touch screen that I ordered. It comes with a plastic tool to help you pry the iPod apart.

Here it is with the screen off. If you think it looks a bit messy, you are right. Taking off the screen was a bit more challenging than I thought. The clips didn't come off that easily and I managed to mangle a bit of a piece that is attached to the screen that I apparently needed.

Luckily, the replacement part store also had that part available. I also found out that they sell the two parts as a fully assembled unit, because apparently, its really hard to take the screen off without messing up that other piece. I wish they told me that from the start.

Here is the new part that needs to be attached to the screen by the handy dandy tape that is provided. After putting those two parts together and re-attaching the screen cable, all I needed to do was press the screen back into place. And there you go....works perfectly and looks brand new. There are only a couple of minor scratches where I used a screw driver instead of the plastic tool, but the case hides them.

It took about an hour to do the entire repair, not counting the week in between where I needed to order the extra part. In all, it cost me about $68 for the parts and shipping. It would have been slightly cheaper if I ordered the assembled part instead, but it was still a lot less than the $200 that Apple wanted. I would highly recommend Repairs Universe for your iPod parts, I even chatted with one of their repair techs, who helped me order the second part and made sure I knew what I needed to make the repair.

Fall Classic Baseball

October 18 2009 - December 13 2009

The Iolani 7th graders entered a team into the Fall Classic league. This league was open to Intermediate level teams. The field that they played on was a regulation sized field with 60' 6" pitching mound and 90' bases. They started off the season using wooden bats and switched half way through to aluminum bats.

Swing

and a hit

The 7th grade team had 20 players on the roster and they batted through the entire lineup and rotated the players in the field pretty evenly. So basically, what that meant was that each player got to play in the field for 2-3 innings and had 1 to 3 at bats, depending on how well we did.

Backhand grab

Throw em out

Blake started most games at second base and hit in the #2 spot in the batting order. He also played one game at catcher and played some at short stop and third.

Catching

This is the first time on an Iolani team and it was great to see Blake and his friends along side their other class mates on the field.

Next up is the Iolani Intermediate spring team tryouts which start on Feb 1st.

Thanks to Michael Walters who took all of these pictures

Disneyworld 2009 - Part IV

August 3-11 2009

Day 5 and 7

On day 5, we went to Discovery Cove. We were all looking forward to going there. The park had a dolphin encounter, something that Michelle has been wanting to do for a very long time. The park also has coral reefs and tropical rivers where you could swim with fishes and go exploring. I was looking forward to that since I like swimming with the fishes....but I usually am weary of, you know, sharks and stuff. No sharks at this park. :)

We bought an underwater camera, so I have no digital pics of any of the underwater scenes, including a close up of a school of mean looking barracudas. I probably should develop that sometime soon. But I did take a bunch of pictures of the dolphin encounter.

Michelle being pulled by Flipper

Discovery Cove was pretty expensive. Around $200 per person. I initially thought that was a bit steep, but after seeing them having so much fun with the dolphins, I decided it was well worth it. One of the other good thing about the park is that they only let around 1000 people into the park each day. Once they hit the limit, they do not allow anyone else in. So we didn't feel crowded in or rushed while we were there and were free to roam about and do whatever we wanted. Also all the food and drink is included with the entry fee. They have a nice size dining area where you could order whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. The food was actually really good, like high end hotel quality. And since the park is owned by Anheuser Busch, all the beer was free too.

By day 7 we had done everything that we had planned on doing and then some. So we decided to take in something a bit different.

If you are in Florida, you have to see some gators, and Gatorland seemed like a good place to do it. They had a pretty cool show with some huge gators leaping out of the water chomping down on whole chickens. They also sold hot dogs that you could feed to the gators that were living around the park. We got pretty close to them and let me tell you, those suckers were huge.

Our Orlando trip was totally awesome. Even though we've been to Disneyland a gazillion times, Disneyworld was a very unique experience. I'm really glad we came.

Disneyworld 2009 - Part III

August 3-11 2009

Day 3

Today we went to Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay. We got these tickets in a package deal along with our tickets to Discovery Cove. Since this was out in Tampa Bay (I think it was a couple hour drive from Orlando) we planned on spending the majority of the day here.

Busch Gardens has a bunch of roller coasters (which we don't really ride) and an entire section of animal attractions (which we *ahem* Michelle does like). The first roller coaster we saw was the SheiKra. It was huge, the beginning of the ride took you 200 feet up and suspended you over a 90 degree drop. Looked really cool....but of course we didn't ride it. In fact, we ended up not riding any of the rides. The lines were just too long and it was just too hot. The one line we did stand in seemed to take forever and we left after waiting for 30 minutes and only moving 20 feet. Disney had us spoiled.

The one other interesting thing about the SheiKra was that at one portion of the ride, the car ran through a river of water, splashing the spectators on the ground. The coaster was specifically designed to shoot the water up in two columns....that was cool.

A nice drenching to cool down a hot muggy day.

There were a lot of animals at the park. Nothing really spectacular, but it turned out to be a nice relaxing day.

Can't leave Florida without seeing some gators

Pretty obvious right? But Michelle still wanted to feed them.

After leaving the park, we went to a shopping mall in Tampa since Blake's favorite (for now) team is the Rays. Needed to pickup some Tampa Bay Rays stuff.

When we got back to Orlando, we decided to hang out at Downtown Disney. This one seemed to be twice the size of the one in California....but with basically all the same stores. Nothing new, just bigger and more extravagant .

This was pretty cool at the Lego Store. The Lego people were on the wall behind the register and the magnifying glass thing would move slowly back and forth in front of them.

We also spent a little time exploring the resort grounds. There was a huge lake where you could rent canoes, paddle boats, and motor boats. Not a little motor boat with rubber padding around to keep you safe from banging things, a real, fairly good sized motor boat....Michelle wanted to rent one but I talked her out of it because I thought it would be a bit uncomfortable if I sank one of them. We also checked out the pool. It was pretty nice. There was a slide and some water cannons but swimming in 90 degree weather with 80 degree water is not too fun.

Disneyworld 2009 - Part II

August 3-11 2009

Day 2

We got up super early (as usual) to get in when the gates opened so we could get on 2 or 3 rides before needing to wait in a line.

Today we decided to do the Animal Kingdom. Michelle was really looking forward to seeing this park. (She loves the animals)

The first area we went to was Dinoland U.S.A. They had a pretty cool ride where you went back in time to rescue a dinosaur. It's basically the Indiana Jones ride, but with dinosaurs.

We then jammed on over to the Asia area to ride Expedition Everest. On the way, I did manage to take quick stops here and there to take pictures along the way. During the early mornings, the water is super still and glassy, perfect for picture taking.



Expedition Everest is a pseudo-roller coaster type ride that is very similar to the Matterhorn ride. This one was a lot better, as you would expect, as a portion of the ride has you going backwards and the Yeti that they have lurking in the mountain looked totally cool and very realistic.

Our final morning stop was the Kilimanjaro Safari. This is an open tour bus ride through Disney's savannah land. We saw a lot of animals during the ride but didn't get as close as I would have liked, but at least they were active and out in the open.

We strolled around and rode a couple more rides before we decided to leave and check out Disney's Hollywood Studios park. Before we get there, I wanted to share a bit of strangeness that I saw at the Animal Kingdom. It seemed to me that there were an abundance of Rats around. Not mice, but rats. Not real ones, but an uncomfortable amount of them. Here's a couple that I took pictures of.

I dunno, maybe it was just me, but I thought that was a bit weird.

So anyway, next we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios, which is the Disneyworld version of California Adventure. This was in the early afternoon, which is when the park is the most crowded. We were a bit spoiled already since we didn't have to wait in any line longer than 20 minutes so far, so we went hunting for rides that had short waiting times. We eventually made our way to the Lights, Motors, Action Extreme Stunt Show. Those stunt drivers were awesome and the show was Action Packed.

We ended our day at Epcot. It turned out that we ended most of our days at Epcot. For some reason, we all enjoyed Epcot the most. I think it's because Epcot was unlike anyplace that we've been to before.....plus the food from the different countries were pretty good. And speaking of food. One of the things that I really enjoyed at Epcot was the School Bread from the Kringla Bakeri Og Kafe at the Norway pavilion. That was the best pastry ever. I ate it so quickly I totally forgot to take a picture....both times.

I did get a picture of the Norway pavilion area...the bakery is right behind that Viking. And a word of advice, skip the Maelstrom adventure ride there. It's a lame boat ride (like Pirates of the Caribbean) but taking you through the history of Norway. It could have been better, but they decided to not mention the raiding and pillaging portion of the Viking history AND they make you wait at the end to hear an additional lecture about Norway. WTF?!?! We found a side exit and ditched. Sorry Norway.