06.28.07
Posted in About Me at 3:23 pm by Todd
After the success of Paint Fest 2007, I figured I would branch out and start a new festival, Stain Fest 2007. This time, I actually got others involved in the process. Ok, that is not exactly correct (why do I continue to lie?). I suckered my nice neighbor Scott (Wallace) into staining his fence (and deck) at the same time so we could share the work-load as well as the expense.
This festival has been in the planning stages for over a year now. I, with the help of my father in law, my father, and a couple of friends, built my fence in 2005. After the completion of the fence, I decided that I should find some good stain that would also protect the wood from decay and bleaching. But I knew that I should let it sit for a year to dry-out and age (at least according to the stain companies). So after the year was up, I found the stain I wanted, convinced the Wallace’s to go in on it with us, and then started the waiting game.
The waiting game was required because the temperature had to be within a certain range while applying as well as a certain range while it was drying. It also required that it not rain for a period before and after. And finally, it required that it not be windy while we apply it. Now I don’t know how many people that read this are from Kansas, if you are, you know how hard this is to accomplish. For those of you not from Kansas keep this anonymous quote in mind “If you don’t like the weather in Kansas, wait an hour, it’s bound to change.” So, the waiting game began.
Scott and I finally got tired of the waiting game and just decided to accomplish the task in one day. We rented the equipment, purchased the stain, and went to work early on a Saturday morning. The temperature started out great, no wind, and it was partly cloudy. By the end of the day, it was windy, hot, and fully sunny (enough so that I walked away with a pretty good sun burn).
The good news for the day was that we got it finished by 4:00p and got the equipment returned on-time and the fence looks great. Long story short, Stain Fest 2007 was delayed in getting started but came off quite well. Thanks Scott!
Few tidbits of interest:
- We used Flood’s CWF-UV5 Natural
- We rented a sprayer from Atwood Rentals
- The weather worked out fantastic except for a little heat that day
- We tested the CWF-UV5 Cedar and it turned out very orange
- We tried a hand-pump-stain-sprayer purchased from Home Depot and it was horrible
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06.18.07
Posted in About Me, Family, KSU, Programming at 4:20 pm by Todd
I found out some sad news this morning, Joseph Campbell passed away. He had been struggling for quite some time and finally succumbed to it this morning at 5am. And while it is always sad when death comes, it sounds like it was his time.
I have two great memories of Joe. First, a little background. My dad has been the head of the Computing and Information Sciences department as long as I can remember (I think he is going on 25 years). And for as long as I can remember, Joe was an instructor and advisor for the department. So Joe has known me for most of my life.
Anyway, I decided to follow in my dad’s footsteps and get a Bachelors degree in Computer Science. This meant that I had Joe as my advisor. And he was my advisor for all 4.5 years of my undergraduate degree. And every time I came in to prepare to enroll for the next semester he would ask the same question, “Should we enroll you in CIS 200?” For those of you not familiar with the numbering scheme at K-State, the first part of the course name is the department, in this case CIS meant Computing and Information Sciences department. The second part of the course name is the id of the course. This id puts the course into a category where the lower the number, the more “introductory” the material. So, to translate this, he was asking me if I was ready to take the intro course to computer programming every semester … even my last semester when I was taking 500 and 600 level courses! And to this day, I don’t know if he was being funny, or just an “absent-minded professor“.
The 2nd story is related. Joe was in the Navy, and very proud of that fact. So every chance he got, he tried to recruit me into the Navy. Every semester when we sat down to fill out my schedule, he would ask “Are you ready to enroll in the Navy’s nuclear submarine program?” And every semester I would say “Joe, I am just not interested in that, even if they pay my way through school. I just don’t belong in the Navy much less on a submarine.” He never let it go until the day I finished my Master of Science degree. He was a persistent son-of-a-gun.
Joseph Campbell was a wonderful, helpful, caring, funny, fun, entertaining, amusing guy. And I will miss having him around. My prayers go out to Joe’s family, friends, and colleagues. I know you will be missed by many.
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Posted in About Me at 7:43 am by Todd
During my life I try to impact the world in positive ways. Many times I will just perform random acts of kindness for strangers, other times, I help out good friends and accept nothing in return. Another method is to find cheap (inexpensive for me) ways to help.
The first cheap way I found this was through SETI@Home by donating time on my computers to this effort (started in April of 1999). This basically consisted of me installing applications on each computer and tell it when to run. This was very cheap (only cost me a little extra in power comsumption). As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure I got my major professor started on this project and we got into a little competition over it. That lasted for quite some time until the project got popular enough that they didn’t need more help.
Recently (December of 2006) I have started using the World Community Grid client to help several projects (FightAIDS@Home, Genome Comparison, Help Cure Muscular Dystropy, and Human Proteome Folding 2) that will (hopefully) impact the world in positive ways by finding cures for horrible diseases. This was easy to install and run. I haven’t found anyone to compete with yet but I am sure I will eventually. And when I do, I might have to steal some time on my lab’s computers.
I have also recently started visiting several sites that promise to donate to worthy causes based upon site visits. This has become part of my morning routine (login, startup my applications, read my email, browse the web, and visit these sites). The sites are:
Simply visit the site, click the button, and this help provide for those less fortunate.
I just wanted to share these in hopes that others will be interested in helping these sites and organizations. Really, it is easy to help others on a daily basis.
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06.15.07
Posted in Family, KSU at 12:33 pm by Todd
My wife, the DVM and now household renowed researcher, is starting her first clinical trial. Because she needs to recruit subjects I decided to use my only public face to advertise for her (if I will do it for my friend and his political ambitions, I should do it for my wife). So here is her announcement:
We would like to make you aware of a clinical study on a new treatment for canine thunderstorm phobia that is being performed at Kansas State University. This study will determine the efficacy of a product with the potential for treating affected dogs. We are currently in the recruitment phase of the trial and are looking for dogs with thunderstorm phobia to participate in the study.
The study is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study in which dogs will either be administered the product or a placebo as one of two treatment groups. Neither the researchers nor the owners of dogs in the trial will know whether they have been given the product or the placebo.
To be included, dogs need to be fearful of thunderstorms, indoor dogs, and in good health. If you are interested or know of someone who might be interested, please contact Dr. Kari Wallentine at 785/532-1089. We will obtain a behavioral and medical history over the telephone, and if your dog meets the necessary criteria, you will be invited to set up an appointment for a physical examination of your dog. Upon enrollment in the study, dogs will be assigned randomly to one of two treatment groups.
You will be asked to complete a behavioral assessment questionnaire prior to the start of the study to get a baseline of your dog’s behavior during storms. Then you will be asked to keep a diary of thunderstorm events during the eight week study as well as complete an additional behavioral assessment questionnaire every two weeks. This project has been approved by both K-State’s Institutional Review Board and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 785/532-1089 or kari@wallentine.com.
Thank you for your consideration.
Kari D. Wallentine, DVM
Janice C. Swanson, PhD
Thomas Schermerhorn, VMD, DACVIM
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06.14.07
Posted in Family at 8:56 am by Todd
Mom, I love you dearly but I had to post this on my blog. It was just too funny and too appropriate …
ps, Mom I tried to call you today. See, I sometimes call, just not often enough.
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06.13.07
Posted in Programming at 8:40 am by Todd
Previously, I ranted about how annoying Windows XP update behavior is. Today, I ran into it again and decided that I would win this battle of wills with Windows XP Update. So I asked the great-internet-brain and it responded with this. After mucking around with the system for a little while, I got it configured to still prompt me to restart but gives me 8 hours in-between annoying reminders. I figured if I did the update in the morning I didn’t want a reminder until it was time to leave work.
To be specific, I chose to edit the Group Policy by running gpedit.msc, navigating to the correct place in the tree, enabling the Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations and setting the value to 480 minutes, exiting the editor, and restarting the Automatic Updates service.
One thing that struck me as amusing is that I read Coding Horror on a regular basis. So more than likely I had seen him complain about this and just didn’t remember it.
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06.12.07
Posted in Family, Sports at 9:11 am by Todd
Although I hate to admit it, I actually love my family. But sometimes, they do everything in their power to try to change that. For example, they are sticking with “their team”, the Iowa State Cyclones. Here is a picture of the Appelgate family (Monte, Michele, Tim, and Emily) with the ISU Head Football Coach, Gene Chizik.
They would make it a lot easier on me if they would just pick the right team.
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Posted in Family at 7:26 am by Todd
This is posted a lot late on accident. Forgot it was ready to go.
Just wanted to say congratulations to Jeremy and Brooke Krause on their recent graduation from Emmanual House Seminary. Kari and I went to the ceremony on Sunday (April 13th) to help celebrate with them, their families, and their friends. At the same time, Tony and Carmen Classen also finished up.
Anyway, congrats to Brooke and Jeremy and I know you will do great things with the knowledge and skills you have learned over the last 3 years in seminary.
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