Greg In The Desert

An Ecto 1 from the Ghostbusters movies is for sale on ebay.

There is not a lot that can be said about this car once you see it you know what it is. This car was owned by Universal Studios as you can see by the copy of the title. This is the real Universal car not a copy. The car runs and drives good it has new tires on it know. The car is in a car Museum right now, when it goes on tour it draws a VERY VERY LARGE crowd.

One reason I’ve been regularly watching the Albuquerque Craigslist is that I’m determined to one day own a Delorean. About 10 years ago I came across one for $10,000 and I regret not buying it. Although Deloreans rarely show up recently a red one appeared.

1981 Delorean LOW MILES!!!!! – $12000 (Albuquerque)

1981 DeLorean 4.3l Chevy engine conversion 200hp (almost twice stock hp) approximately $9000, Corvette pistons, cam ext. Auto trans. Fresh Interior and 28000 miles. Couple of dings on passenger door. Good tires. New door, hood, trunk struts. Sorry pics taken at night if you want more pics of interior contact me.

The craigslist ad includes a link to ebay motors. I would much rather have a Delorean in it’s original configuration, no chevy motor and I would much rather have one not painted. It’s a stainless steel body, what’s the point of painting it?

• Astronauts Spot Mysterious Ice Circles in World’s Deepest Lake | Wired Science | Wired.com – Astronauts aboard the International Space Station noticed two mysterious dark circles in the ice of Russia’s Lake Baikal in April. Though the cause is more likely aqueous than alien, some aspects of the odd blemishes defy explanation.
• Groceries for iPhone Review | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld – I don’t really get excited about single-purpose utilities for the iPhone and iPod touch. But Sophiestication Software’s Groceries app merits the excitement. It makes grocery lists easy to create, manage, and—dare I say—a little fun.
• Pro AV Products and Providers – Lectrosonics, Inc. BUCKCHERRY ROCKS OUT WITH LECTROSONICS – Rio Rancho, NM – May 2009… Buckcherry, the Los Angeles, California-based hard rock band that achieved critical acclaim with the 2006 RIAA platinum, Grammy-nominated album 15, is back with a vengeance and touring once again in support of their latest album Black Butterfly. Consisting of Josh Todd (vocals),Xavier Muriel (drums),Jimmy Ashhurst (bass),Keith Nelson (guitar), andStevie D. (guitar), Buckcherry is in the midst of an extensive tour that has them travelling both domestically as well in Europe. No matter where the tour takes them, guitarist Stevie D. and his guitar technician Dean Mitchell rely on a wireless setup to deliver Stevie’s signature guitar sound while providing the mobility to roam freely about the stage—and for this, they count on Lectrosonics.
• New Mac clone maker to open retail store in Calif. | Apple – CNET News – "It's exciting. We are trying to stay as close to Apple as we can with our products," Rashantha De Silva, Quo founder, told CNET News. "We are trying to mimic things as much as we can. I'm hoping that Apple sees the value in what we are doing."
• Patients On Hookworm Therapy Swear By Treatment – cbs5.com – Musician Scott Richards and artist Debora Wade are two Bay Area patients on the hookworm treatment. Richards and Wade both suffer from an inflammatory bowel disease called Crohn's. When faced with using a parasite as therapy, both patients felt they had nothing to lose.
• How To Tell If You Have Religious Food [Get Rich Quick] – Over the weekend, I picked through a bag of Cheetos—or "my retirement chips" as I was calling them—looking for any recognizable icons I could sell. My theory was that any average bag of Cheetos should contain at least one auction-worthy chip. I had mixed success—out of one bag, I found four recognizable icons, but only one of them was definitely religious in nature. I have emailed Frito Lay to inquire about a buy-back program, but have yet to hear from them. I'd really rather not bring eBay or PayPal into this.
• Atlantis, crew land in Calif. after Hubble mission : NPR – Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts returned safely to Earth on Sunday, detouring from stormy Florida to sunsplashed California to end a 13-day mission that repaired and enhanced the Hubble Space Telescope.
• News : Officials consider raising speeding fines – Rio Rancho Observer – Speeding over 35 miles per hour over the posted limit could net you a $459 fine, that’s more than double of the $225 fine levied now.

  Drivers going 10 miles per hour or less than the speed limit will be fined $159, opposed to $50 it now costs.

• www.KOB.com – 4 Investigates: Swimming pool drain covers – It was a horrific accident for a 6-year-old Minnesota girl named Abagail Taylor that drew the nation's attention to pool drains.
  In 2007, the girl had 21 feet of her small intestine sucked out of her body when she sat on a kiddy pool drain.
  "You don't think about your child being disemboweled in 18 inches of water," her father, Scott Taylor, said.

Exclusive to eBay. This rare Bible ( discovered by a shepherd in the NW of Lake Gennesaret ) has been carbon dated by the Institute Of History, Ohio, USA and is said to originate from around 60AD. Further tests have been conducted in association with Bibliotheque National experts. Theologian Jessica Wycliffe has said, after reading the research, ” There is a definite possibility this is the real deal.” So do not miss out on this thrilling offer. Bid now! sponsored by www.stylusbarbed.com

Only ONE MIIIIIILLLLLIION dollars, shipping $3.50. Bible signed by Jesus himself At Ebay.

I would have never imagined creating this sentence. Turtle Mountain Brewery company has had it’s anti-drunk driving talking urinal cakes stolen. If you do a search for “talking Urinal Cakes” you will learn how the Rio Rancho based Turtle Mountain is the first to get them in New Mexico.

I saw the report on channel 4, I will update with a link once they decide to put it up.

Update 2/20/07 10:22PM] Here’s a AP article.

At the Turtle Mountain, the urinal cakes have proved so intriguing that three have been swiped already. “I’m mystified why someone would stick their hand into one of our urinals,” Ortiz said. “But I’m sure we’ll see them on eBay. Hopefully, the seller will advertise it as, `Stolen from Turtle Mountain.’”

I first got into Home Automation for one simple reason, because I always forgot to turn off the lights. Lighting makes up a large part of my system, and I want to optimize the efficiency of the lights as much as possible. I want to not only produce the right amount of light in the right color, but reduce their energy use at the same time.

At first, I used Compact Florescence all over the place. They are a obvious choice for reducing energy because they use a quarter of the wattage of incandescent bulbs for the same amount of light output. But as I have found out, they don’t mix well with the PLC (power line communication) switches that I use. You have to find specific dimmer compatible switches (or don’t buy dimmers). The CF bulbs produce noise, sometimes for no apparent reason, that interfere with the signals being sent by the switches. The dimable CF bulbs seems to make even more noise than non-dimmable bulbs!

So far my experience with dimmable CFs has been mixed. About 6 months ago I bought some LightWiz 75 watt equivalent dimmable CFs from ebay pretty cheap, around half as much as anywhere else (right now you can get them for about $7 a piece). I had put one in the garage upside down, one in the front porch vapor proof fixture upside down, one in the back porch simple fixture upside down and one in the halway on it’s side. [Update] The lights I had outside were not the Lightwiz brand. 4 of the 6 I bought are still installed and working (Haven’t installed the other two yet). Including the one mounted upside down in the garage.

One reason I wanted the outdoor fixtures to have CFs is because because I have all the outdoor lights on from sunset to sunrise. Birds tend to rest on the fixtures because they are warm in the winter. Initially they did not produce enough powerline noise to interfere with my Insteon switches. Last week I was unable to get any the status of any switch on one leg of my circuit. Turned out to be one CF bubls producing too much noise, because it was about to die. I would have expected the back porch light, which has the least amount of protection, to be the one to die. It was the one at the fount porch, which is in a vapor proof fixture.

The bulb in the front porch was replaced with a 60 watt halogen, because of the fixture, not much heat is making it out of the fixture. I also have a 100 watt equivalent GE CF dimmable bulb in vapor proof fixture above the garage and so far so good for that one. The CF bulb I have in the halway has since been replaced with a track lighting fixture that has 3 50 watt halogen spot lights.

Don Klipstein has a excellent website on everything you would want to know about bulbs and good advice on when to use bulbs. Based on my experiences and what I read there, I will probably not use CF bulbs as I did before.

[Update 01/08/07 2:21 PM] I forgot to mention some other bulbs. I bought three, pretty pricey, approx. 9 watt, dimmable florescence for a kitchen ceiling fan. These bulbs were incased in a glass bulb so they looked closer real bulbs instead of the spirall-y things. At the time they were hooked up to a X10 switch. 2 of the 3 burnt out within 2 months. I’ve since replaced these three bulbs with 60 incandescence bulbs. I’ve heard that X10 can actually kill CF bulbs so this might be more evidence to this fact.

[Update 02/23/07 8:24 PM] Two Westinghouse 20W “mini-twist dimmable” bulbs that I bought last year have died. A MaxLite 15W bulb that I bought several years ago died. This was 1 of 2 that I have, the other one still works fine.

Think Secret says:

Apple and Cingular have signed an agreement that will make the US’ largest cell phone provider the exclusive carrier of Apple’s forthcoming phone, sources report. Apple’s iPhone remains on track for an early 2007 release.

Apple’s exclusive contract with Cingular is said to be good for the first six months, sources report, meaning other providers will be able to sell the phone in the second-half of 2007. Cingular had an exclusive on the Motorola ROKR—the first phone to feature iTunes—when it launched last year.

If this is true I might be willing to switch, but I’m not going to buy a crippled phone like what Cingular does to the Motorola phones. If Apple designs the phone like Motorola, then hopefully it has a sim card and I can use it with T-Mobile. In which case I will wait patiently and buy a unlocked version off ebay.

In either case I really hate this Motorola SLVR that I bought. I should have stuck with Sony Ericsson.

PalmInfoCenter is celebrating 10 years since the original Plam 1000 by giving away a Palm LifeDrive and a Palm 1000 (new in it’s box). To enter to win the LifeDrive simply make a comment in this article about your first Palm. Here’s my entry:

I bought my first Palm (a 1000) on ebay, which was the first thing I ever bought on ebay. In the excitement of things I ended up paying way too much for it. To add insult to injury I ended up dropping within a few weeks, forcing a upgrade to the next version of Pilot (the 2000? don’t recall). Since then I owned several versions of PalmOS computers including the IIIx, Prism and Sony CLIE. I “upgraded” to most of them after I broke the Palm that I had at the time, keeping each model for a year or two. Currently I have a T3 which I have managed to own longer than any other Palm (and did have to replace a broken screen). I’m looking to upgrade to a TX sometime in the future mainly for the WiFi capabilities, but a LifeDrive would do quite nice too!

Lastminute Auction is a handy site that shows all the ebay auction that are under a dollar and have less than a hour to go. Right now there are about 8500 auctions and they are categorized. There’s probably a way to do this with ebays search feature, but now you don’t have to try to figure that out.