To Hell in a Handbasket

As a follow-up to my post yesterday about my success with the 3M Headlight Restoration Kit, I got up early this morning, and did my wife’s Ford Windstar. The headlights were not in as bad of shape as those on my truck, but they definitely could benefit from a little restoration to their old glory (that is if headlights had such things). The good news is that I achieved very good results with her van as I did on my truck.  Following the same steps here is a photo journal of the progress.

After a quick wash, I masked of the headlights using green automotive masking tape.

Then I sanded off the yellow and dull areas of the lenses using the 500 grit sandpaper discs.

Next I finished off the sanding with the 800 grit discs.

Once done, I switched over to the 3000 grit trizact disc, and wet sanded the lenses until they were clear and smooth.

Once all the 800 grit scratches were no longer visible, I wiped down the headlights, and attached the buffing pad and applied a bit of rubbing compound. After giving both lenses a good buffing, I wiped off the lenses and looked at the results.

Even with mildly faded and yellowed headlights, the restoration kit did a noticeable and fantastic job bringing the clarity and shine back to the headlights. Below is a side-by-side to get the full effect of the restoration.

Once again I can’t say enough nice things about the 3M Headlight Restoration Kit, except maybe “c’est magnifique”.

I recently picked up a headlight restoration kit by 3M at Wal-Mart for around $15. Amazon and a few other places sell it as well. I chose this kit on the advice of a colleague who had good success with it on her Volkswagen Passat. I figured for $15, it would be worth a shot to try and restore the headlights on my Ford F-150 that have been yellowing for many years.

The best part about the kit is that it provides everything you need except for a towel, some green automotive masking tape (also sold at Wal-Mart), and a good drill that can operate between 1200-1600 rpm. The kit also contains enough sandpaper and rubbing compound to do two sets of headlights.

Here are our tools:

Here is what my headlights started off looking like after I gave them a quick wash.

Next I masked off the headlights with the automotive tape.

Starting with the 500 grit sandpaper discs, I sanded all the yellow off until I could see the clear plastic. Then I switched to the 800 grit discs to remove the scratches left by the previous sanding.

After that I attached the 3000 grit trizact disc, wet it down with a spray bottle, and wet sanded the lenses until they were nice and smooth. I did this until I could no longer see any scratches in the lens.

Finally, I attached the buffing pad, applied a bit of rubbing compound, and buffed the lenses until they were shiny and bright. Finally I wiped the lenses down with a towel to observe the final results.

I first thought was “Wow. That’s fantastic.” The lenses came out just as good as I hoped they would. Here’s a side by side comparison to see the full effect.

After seeing the positive results, my wife now wants me to do her car tomorrow. I guess it’s a good thing the kits comes with extra sandpaper.

Something learned on Mad Men, Conrad Hilton was born in San Antonio, New Mexico. A town I have been to on more that one occasion. It has a restaurant famous for its green chile cheeseburgers, and for being eight miles south of the middle of nowhere. Speaking of middle of nowhere, he also attended my alma mater, New Mexico Tech.

Who says you can’t learn anything from television?

We have a Dell 3115cn color laser printer at work.  The color toner cartridges are individual, and we buy them in these multipack deals (Dell Part #4BC3115).  The problem is that inside the box are four cartridges wrapped in that silver foil packaging and are not marked as to which color is inside.   You never have to replace all four cartridges at once, so it becomes a lottery scratcher to find the cartridge you need.

Each cartridge does have a unique part number on it, but Dell’s website has nothing, nor Google, nor Bing, and Wolfram Alpha politely told me to piss off.  For future reference, I am writing down the individual codes and the color cartridge it corresponds to.  Hopefully the search bots will pick up this post and save other owners of the 3115cn the same hassle.

I did figure out after decomposing the product numbers, that the important part is after the ‘CN-0′ bit at the beginning.  For example, if you Google PF028, you should get a link to Staples website for the Black cartridge.  Using the corresponding string section from the other cartridges yields the correct results as well.

Black: CN-0PF028-71971-958-3080

Yellow: CN-0NF555-71971-95D-7143

Magenta: CN-0MF790-71971-95D-1978

Cyan: CN-0RF012-71971-95D-8088

To the entire Green Bay Packers players, coaches, organization, and the city of Green Bay, thank you from the bottom of my heart for a most excellent season, and the best Packers post-season that I have been witness to in my life.

I am and will always and forever be one of your greatest fans.

That is all.

GO GREEN BAY PACKERS!

Ever since I got my Kindle at Christmastime, I was thinking that there should be an application that lets you view your Kindle bookshelf, and share books with friends, share what you are reading, have read, and may recommend.  I have been using the weRead on Facebook for quite awhile, but you have to manage the bookshelf manually. This is not a complaint as I have many physical books that would not work with a Kindle-only application, but the majority of books a Kindle owner has will be the electronic formats of the books.

I did a little research this morning and came across the ReadSync Facebook application which syncs with your Amazon Kindle bookshelf. The application lets you view all the books you have sync’d to your Kindle. It lets you share a book on your wall with friends, and even see your friend’s bookshelf (if they are also using the application.) This looks to be exactly what I wanted.  The only drawback is those hardcover and paperback books I still happen to pick up from time to time (mostly technical books which I want to quickly be able to thumb through.) For these I will still rely on weRead, unless ReadSync makes an update to allow a reader to manually add books to their bookshelf.  I think a hybrid application containing both eBooks and tangible books would satisfy all readers.  Maybe I will contact the developer and try to get that ball rolling.

Happy Reading!

To root, or not to root: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The crap of HTC is not outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of useless apps,

And by opposing end them? To root, to be free;

No more; and by freedom to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand worthless apps

That cannot be uninstalled, ‘tis unavailable option

Devoutly to be wish’d. To root, to be free:

To freedom, perchance to control: ay, there’s the rub:

For that freedom of rooting what mistakes may come

When we have removed the controls in place that make us mortal,

Must give us pause; there’s the respect

That makes calamity of superuser privs;

For who would bear the segfaults and core dumps of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the geek’s contumely,

The prags of despised garbage-ware, the sudo’s delay,

The insolence of Footprints and the Peep

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his rm –rf make

With a bare sudo? Who would fardels bear?

To grunt and swear under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after root,

The undiscover’d access from whose bourn

No n00b returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those typos we have

Than make other that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the stability of my phone. – root you now!

The fair Incredible! Fantastic, in thy orisons

Be all my sudo remember’d.

(from Hamlet 3/1 – slightly altered by Eric Silva)

For the third year in a row, Beck’s Oktoberfest is still one of the best brews of the season.

I just recently started using iTunes Ping, and my first impression was ‘Facebook/Twitter for Music’; pretty neat.  If you have friends on Ping, then you can follow them, and see what they are listening to and/or interested in.  Finding your ‘actual’ friends is pretty easy, since you know there name and often times e-mail, but finding the ‘real’ artists is another matter.  Apple apparently didn’t learn or pay attention to the problem Twitter had a few years ago when it started: fake accounts.  Another neat feature of Ping, is for actual artists to promote other artists.  If you like Trent Reznor or Paul van Dyk, you might want to follow them and see what they are listening to.  But in the event you pick the wrong account, or perhaps the artist doesn’t even have an ‘official’ Ping account, then all you end up doing is following some asshat douchebag who thought he would create an account using the name of an actual artist.

I think the ‘verified’ or ‘official’ account identifier that Twitter put in place should be Enhancement #1 on the Ping backlog.  I’m still liking the service, and will continue to use it, but I’ll stay away from following artists until this gets resolved.

I learned that Fryderyk Chopin, the composer, had his heart removed before burial because he had a fear of being buried alive.

I also learned that Thousand Island dressing did not originate in the Thousand Islands area of the St. Lawrence river. It originated in New Orleans before 1900.