john munoz dot com

Bike Hero

john — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:15:00 +0000

This was just amazing

Mcdonalds and a new pasttime

john — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:46:14 +0000

Went to lunch at mcdonalds here in weslaco. They have been doing some remolding behind the counter over the past few weeks. I was curious as to what had changed. It looks like they installed a robot in the drive thru lane. This thing would read the drink order from the POS unit, then dispense the cup, a claw would place the cup in a “cup holder” that would spin around the soda/ice dispenser. The cup would then rotate around to the proper position and it would automatically dispense the ice and drink. the person at the window still had to grab the cup from the holder, put a lid on it and wipe off all the splash that would fall around the cup.
The Lord of Funk shared a game this morning that i have found myself addicted to. He’s also the one who turned me me to Tower Defender. This is basically the same concept only geekeier. (is that even a real word?)
Check out Rack-A-Node for yourself. I’m assuming no responsibly for any lost productivity as a result.

Weekend

john — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:13:32 +0000

it’s been a fun weekend. Got to help Randell at the race track for “Nationals” It twas actually kind of fun. Watching 28 cars on the track all at once and everyone is tring to be in the top 12. It’s kind of like watching hockey but instead of sticks the guys have 1/4 tons of weight behind them. It’s also sort of wierd because your sitting around waiting for the next wreck.

Also working on a plan to upgrade the main console at the church. Going from a 14 year old mackie SR40×8 to a DigiDesign Venu D-Show console. I could go on an on about what this thing can do but it will probably just bore you. If you need a good nap click the link and read for yourself. In the mean while i’ll just sit here and drool.

and when the lamb open the 7th seal, silence covered the land

john — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:45:46 +0000

i got home, after an extraordinary long day. We are getting rid of two older storage sheds to make room for a new larger one at the station. So… we spent much of the morning throwing stuff out into a roll-away dumpster. Sometime later that afternoon i was throwing away some old computer and decided to chuck on in their as far as i could. it made it about half way in and even shattered the window i’d been triying to break all morning. (that was already thrown in the dumpster) Shortly after that my shoulder was letting me know that it didn’t appericate the treatment i had given it. Spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of things i’d been putting off here and then. I got a habbit of leaving stuff in my mail’s inbox until it’s done or needs to be seen again soon. otherwise it get’s filed away. nothing ever get thrown away. as of this moment i only have 1 item in my inbox from today.
So anyway… after a long day i get home, the house is empty or appears to be. i got to turn off the tv’s left on, the lights left on.. lift ozzie on my shoulder and sit in the rocking chair. in the quiet, peaceful house. it was so nice to come home to that. the peace probably didn’t last 10 minutes at most but it was 10 minutes well spent. i think i’m going to take something for this shoulder and get to bed early. tomorrow we get to clean out the storage units at the self-storage place.

Die Sauerkraut ist in mein Lederhosen.

john — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:12:55 +0000

Wow, haven’t been out here since October?
I guess i haven’t told you about Pigskin, or about Patti’s Christmas program. This going to be a fun one. It’s with the kids and i know patti has been wanting to do a children’s Christmas program for a while now. You should make an effort to come see it. December 14th at AGCC. Even going to have some guest actors.

It’s not even thanksgiving and their is already christmas stuff in our mist. At work we’re already planning for christmas music. Kind of hard to get into the spirit of the season when it’s 80 degrees outside.

Time Warner Cable Survey

john — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:27:23 +0000

while i’m on the subject about service that stinks.. take this survey. Apprently cities want to know how TWC-RGV is providing service.

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=994184

perhaps getting feedback on deregulating local catv service? Adding a competitor such as comcast would be a dream come true.

i voted, leave me alone now

john — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:09:35 +0000

The day the polls opened for early voting, i was their. I was number #31 on the list. I just couldn’t stand another news report, commercial, yard sign or email defaming one of the candidates. So i made up my mind, i pushed the button. They can’t sway me any longer.

BurgerKing

john — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:04:56 +0000

I guess i’m a sucker for punishment but it’s so close to church, when i need a quick meal it’s convenient. And the food isn’t bad at all. It’s just the service. and not just this burgerking, just about any burgerking i visit has the same results. I love the “Frozen Cokes (ICEE)” and the onion rings with the zesty sauce. But most of the time, the forzen coke doesn’t work, they don’t include the sauce, they include onions in the burger when i ask for none. Recently they began a national thing on the back of the receipts you could call a number and do an electronic survey. great! Now i finally have a chance to tell them how much the valley restaurants suck in service. (You can’t do it online, i’ve tried.) The first question in the survey is “what is the store number of the restaurant you visited” I turned over the receipt, found Store # but after that was blank! What, they new how much they sucked and so people couldn’t complain they took that off the receipt? So.. back online, looked up the location and it revealed the store number. So.. when you call to complain on the survey line about the BK next to church, it’s store# 12431

i just came back from lunch, stopped by BK here in weslaco (store# 13003) and of course they got the order wrong. Big surprise.

The survey phone number is 1-866-425-4745 and takes about 4 minutes.

Getting in the spirit of the season…

john — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:40:36 +0000

check valve

john — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:46:24 +0000

back at the ranch, the water source for our community of houses was back at the ranch, about a mile from the houses. The well had it’s own sump pump that would pump the water up to a mini water tower. The pressure from the water tower would then force the water down the 2″ pipe to the houses 1 mile away. Did you know that for ever 2.31 feet of elevation, 1 PSI (pound per square inch) is produced. So if you have a water tower that’s 100 feet in the air, 43.3 PSI is produced, usualy more than enough for any city to run on. Ours was maybe 10 feet up. never actually measured it. An important part of keeping the preasure was the use of a check valve. Several were placed along the road where the water pipe was laid all the way to the houses. These would keep the water from flowing backwards reversing the flow of presure. Once one of those went squirly and woudln’t let water flow in either direction. My dad had to go down the road finding all of them checking each of them. Soon after that, they were all clearly marked along the road. You’d be suprised how long a mile is when your digging up check valves.

I’m greatful for the built in check valve’s we have. So many times i want to respond to someone’s smart email with a quick relpy to all with some sarcastic responce. Just this past sunday morning. Mark (with a K) was running the projection computer. He can do a great job when everything is setup properly. but pricilla sent the list.. which meant that she didn’t use a formal song name, or ccli number or author, or any way of properly matching what her list says to what she actually wants. So the system is preset with the titles she uses.. and quickly into the service it’s obvious that the songs preloaded are wrong. he’s not skilled enough to find the proper songs to match. i was able to run in their mid song a few times to load up the proper one but it was a very rough service. mona took no hesitation to come up to me in the boot and make a remark something like “was I that bad when i ran the computer?” now.. my first responce would not have been very nice. Fortuantly for me.. my built in checkvalve saved me from saying something i would have regretted.

Other times i wish it had kicked in sooner.. right about the time i’m scrambling looking for the “unsend” button.. quickly followed by abusing my rights as an email administrator.