Scott McLaughlin

So some time ago I was bitching about the lack of good working CAPTCHA programs for WordPress with the last upgrade I did.  Tried everyone I could find and none worked or their implementation sucked.   So since then I’ve been fighting constant comment spam and most annoyingly random account creation spam. (multiples a day to gmail addresses).

Well I’ve been saved and this is so damn cool I had to write about it.  You can use it as well on forums, blogs, anywhere you want to block lousy form spam. (I’m currently looking to see if Gallery can take advantage of it because that’d rock).

This is the same CAPTCHA stuff that Twitter and Facebook are now using as well as other big sites.

How RE-CAPTCHA works:  http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

Here’s the wordpress plugin:   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recaptcha/

Here’s the ReCAPTCHA site you create your setup on:  http://recaptcha.net/

Digg it!

–UPDATED: 17:23–

There’s a recaptcha plugin for PHP Gallery if you use that.  Saaaweeet.  Here’s the link:  http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Modules:recaptcha

As you can see I’ve been quiet recently, and its not because I don’t like you…really. I do. But I try to take the stance about blogging that most people should. If you don’t have anything to say, then STFU.

I don’t expect the blogs I read to be updated everyday, unless they have something meaningful to say, so why should I do that with mine. Now with all that said, I’m writing you today to explain this (does that make me a hypocrit?) and more importantly to do a weight loss update since its been awhile and a coupe people have asked me.

Today I weighed in at 183.0 (much to my suprise). To be honest, I never thought i’d get this far, especially without killing myself. Which I haven’t had to do in anyway. Thats a total loss of 40.3 pounds since June. I’ve opened up my eating habits a tiny bit more, worrying less about the cost of every meal and more about whats in each meal and eating less of it. Eating 6 times a day makes this a lot easier beacuse I’m not hungry all the time, which makes it easier to not pig out at main meals.

I don’t know what my next goal is, i think I need to pay more attention to protien and potassium intake so I don’t lose muscle mass. I’ve converted my workouts to more weight lifting and a bit less cardio. Doing a lot of Abdominal work lately. I guess I’ll shoot for weight in the mid 170′s and building some muskly muscles. I have no desire to be some ripped dude with big muscles, but I think keeping some tone in them will help me especially when doing manual labor task or sports…less soreness the next day WOOT.

At the last family reunion I got to check out this really cool pistol laser site on a guys Glock. Ignoring the fact that I’m not a fan of Glock, or up until that point, any laser sight I had seen, I was really impressed with this guys setup. When I got back I look into them and ended up buying one for my Springfield XD40. This is my brief review of the device as well as link to picture gallery of the installation.

If you are interested in one of these for your favorite pistol, drop me an email, I can get it for you and even install it if you are ultra-paranoid about shooting off your pinky finger during installation. Maybe, just maybe, you should email me and ask me to order you a brand new beautiful Springfield XD with one of these already installed…I just bet I could get you a smokin deal. Onward!

First, background. Why do I dislike Glock? Well you’ll have to ask me in person because this post is about laser sites, not Glock. Why have I previously disliked laser sites? Do I think they are cheating? Are you a wuss for having one? Well, actually I didn’t think any of those things and still don’t. Honestly my main turn-off for lasers on pistols was A) the way they mounted and B) the way they triggered.

Almost all of them either mount to the front or side of the gun or even on the front rail. Which is okay, except for the fact the gun will never fit in a descent holster again (my personal favorite being anything made by Fobus…ya i can order you those too). Worse yet though they required some way for you to quickly turn them on and off. Really stoooopid ones had a manually switch no where near your hand or fingers while holding the gun. Others had a switch on the grip somewhere and a WIRE that ran to the laser site. Ya thats fine and dandy until the wire catches on the holster or your clothing and you drop the gun or break the laser. All for sucks.

Honestly with a pistol, you own one for self defense and the fun of shooting. Well when it comes to self defense the more “ammo” in your favor (pardon the pun) the better. Someone comes into my house or jumps me an alley i have to spend less time worrying about aiming and where the barrel is pointed, and more time on the situation and making the right decision. As for the fun of shooting..ya these are really fun. And hey you can disable it at any time so you don’t even have to use it if your friends give you a hard time at the range.

Would I own one of these on all my pistols? Naw, they are a bit spendy and I really only wanted one for my primary carry gun. I think its smart for carry, but thats about it.

Okay, well this thing is beautifully packaged and comes with a nice cloth mat to place things on during installation (same kind you get with nice scopes). It also comes with the 2 required CR lithium batteries as well as several tools for adjustment and some special cleaning tools for cleaning the laser hole/light if you get goop in while carrying it in the jungles of Da Nang.

Installation is pretty easy, you can see it in the photo gallery, pretty much in the order every step was taken to install it. The really nice thing is these are form fitted to the specific firearm model and they are pre sighted at the factory for 50 feet. Mine was actually right on and required no adjustment, but if you do, adjustment is very simple. It also allows you to get crazy and adjust for wind compensation and stuff…ya, you can do that while the criminal waits holding his knife.

My favorite part of this device is that it doesn’t interfere with the pistol grip or how you hold it in anyway. And the laser trigger button is so light weight and positioned well you don’t even notice its there, the laser just turns on. I’ve played with this on a Glock and a Springfield and the experience was identical. I’d be interested to see it on a S&W pistol, but I’ll never own one, so if you have one, buy a CTC and let me know.

This device is made by a company called CTC (Crimson Trace). They make a nice variety of these and i have to say manufacturing quality is A+, packaging is very nice and the instruction guide and users manual (both very small) were very well written and easy to follow. The also aren’t afraid of including all the little things you might need and not going cheap.

Highly recommended if you are looking for a laser site for your carry gun.

They also make cool stuff for AR-15′s. Based on the quality of the pistol device, i wouldn’t hesitate to buy one for any of my AR-15′s.

No thats not thankless love thats TANKless love. Contractors were here today replacing our giant energy wasting, water wasting monster of a hot water heater with some brand new tankless inline water heating love.

I went with the Rinnai based on its reputation and reviews I read. The unit is pretty small as you can see in the pictures and i had them mount it up high above the water inlet/outlets so i free’d up a huge amount of garage floor space.

It also can have up to 4 (I have one at the moment) wireless controllers to it, which allows you to instantly change the hot water temperature to anything you want.

The real beauty is that instead of heating water in a tank up to 150 degrees only to ship it to a faucet somewhere and then mix it with COLD water to get the temperature right, the water temp can be exactly what I want right when it gets to the faucet. (both efficient and not stupid!) I have the unit at 110 degrees right now which is perfect for showers so when you get in the shower you just jam the hot water on all the way and ignore the cold…no scalding accidents or cold water surprises.

I might get another wireless unit for the kitchen (current one is in the master bath) but we’ll see if we need it or not. Since my washing machine and my dishwasher heat their own water and use the convenience of keeping the inline heater at exactly a temp I want for humans.

First test I ran was turning on as many devices as I could and see how it did. At max gas usage this bad boy can suck down 200,000 BTU’s (yikes) but it has to have serious load on it to do that, which we’ll rarely do. So when we aren’t using hot water we aren’t burning any natural gas since the unit is like a furnace and ignites when it needs to (no pilot). The advantage of keeping the unit at a much more reasonable temperature is it can power a lot more devices at once. I turned on the shower and 3 faucets. All 4 devices were running hot water and none of them went cold. I’m sure if I jacked it up to 120+ i’d drop temperature but that shouldn’t ever really happen in our house.

These things are still a bit on the spendy side, I’d expect them to come down over the next few years at the rate they are being installed, but if you have to replace a tank or are building a new house you really should look at them. You’ll use a LOT less natural gas and the convenience features of it alone are worth even the current price.

If you are strictly looking to switch to save money every month the long term capital cost is probably not worth it yet. You have to look at it as A) being “green” or more energy efficient B) nice features for personal convenience and C) less gas bill per month and not weigh that against the cost of installation. (just like corporations, lower your monthly recurring costs and ignore the cost of the capital).

I’ll be sure to do an updated review in a few months after we’ve had it to let everyone know if its still working out or not.

Convenience Features

1. No cold water mixing, just turn on the hot at any location
2. Instantly change water temperature to exactly where you want it
3. No scalded kid accidents, without sacrificing a toasty warm personal shower
4. Run hot water forever without running out. Nice when you have lots of guests or people taking showers in the morning…no more cold water!
5. Reduced monthly gas usage
6. Reduce footprint in garage or house (unit can go inside a closet in your house if you want)

Known Negatives

1. Can’t change water temp while unit is running (by design to prevent you from accidentally scalding someone taking a shower while you jack the temperature up in the kitchen to wash dishes.
2. Slight delay added to your faucets to receive hot water. Its pretty minimal but add about 2 seconds to any faucet for water to get hot. It takes the unit about 2 seconds to fire and heat the water.
3. Cold Sandwiches. The units flush the hot water out every time they shut off (done by using the existing pressure available in the line) so that the hot water doesn’t corrode the inside of the unit. So if you turn your hot water on and off a bunch of times in a row constantly you’ll get these little sections of cold water every so often rather then hot. This is just a side effect of the technology and nothing you can do about it. The only scenario I could ever see this happening in, is if you are rinsing dishes and keep turning the water and off. My solution to that is…uh I have a dishwasher, why do i need to rinse my dishes in HOT water. I just rinse them in cold and shove them in the dishwasher.
4. Bath tubs will fill slightly slower. Plumbers are not required to put flow restrictors on bathtubs, but all other plumbed locations contain them. The reason for this is you want a bathtub to fill fast since it will get cold if it doesn’t. The plumbing in the inline hot water heater is not full size pipe like your house (may or may not be, depends on your houses age). So you may see a slight reduction in tub fill times. Honestly at my house I couldn’t tell.
5. I’ll let you know if I come across any I wasn’t pre-warned about by the installation company.

Things to Note

1. If you do not have natural gas, don’t bother. You most likely do not have enough power to your house to run one of these units.
2. They require a gas line equivalent to a furnace, so more then likely if you have more then your furnace on natural gas the installers will have to run a separate gas line straight from the meter. I was lucky the gas meter was like 10 feet away from where the water heater was. This can get a bit spendy if you have a long gas run. Check out the size of the gas line going to it in this picture…ya thats my finger in front of it.

Let me know if you want the contact information for the local Portland/Vancouver installation company I used, they were great to work with and did a nice job.