When you are a cyclist, life is often all about the goal. Sometimes the goal is the hill, the time, the stop sign, and for a lucky few, the podium.

Everyone is moving toward something. An objective that rolls around their brain pushing and pulling them past the comfort zone into the suffer.

A friend coaches athletes and his motto is "Train focused." For a long time I thought it was some new-agey bullshit. Kind of like the motivational speeches I've heard from coaches all my life, a purely emotional tug to pull that last ounce of energy from deep inside. I have to admit, that kind of thing can work, but the effects are fleeting.

Recently, I learned what he was actually getting at.

My cycling goals have always been stuff like beating my time on a local hill, staying with the fast group on the club ride, completing a century, riding cyclocross, and similar things that you read about in magazines. Most cyclists have their list of goals and ideas that percolate in their mind when they pull a jersey over their head. Staying focused on the goals is key to completing them.

But sometimes life doesn't go as planned. Recently, I crashed my bike. Hard. In a cycling trifecta, I broke my collarbone, wrist, and back. Leaving the hospital with both arms strapped to my body, pain shooting with every bump in the road, my wife's eyes still red from tears, I couldn't help but think about when I could ride again.

The first week I tried to do as much as possible, fantasizing about how to get back on a trainer or spin bike. And it was impossible. I literally could not feed myself and had to drink meals from a straw. Finally, my wife said, "Your job is to heal. That's it. Leave the rest to us."

At that moment I realized what Training Focused really meant. Knowing what you are trying to do and stop being distracted by all the crazy ideas. My job was to heal. My goal was to recover. Cycling could wait. And in reality, starting back too early would hurt my 'goal'.

Once I accepted my real goal, I could get back into my athlete's mindset and start focusing on doing what was needed to reach my goal. Getting enough sleep, eating right, ice, heat, taking pills on time, and even a little walking. Going in for the weekly x-ray became a event to be won, by focusing on my recovery.

Setting unrealistic plans of getting back on my bike too early, would have done nothing to help me with my real goal of healing. It's easy to be lured into the false goal of trying to be a tough guy that can ride through injury, but in reality, it's the worst thing someone can do.

Know what your goal is. Even when that goal is sitting in a chair wearing an ice pack. Work as hard to podium in the Doctor's office as you would on the road.

Last January 21th marked the first day of the 14th year of Cruftbox. I've been blogging for 13 years now. Clearly, I'm not on top of my day & date blogging lately.

I've talked a little about where my blogging has been in the past, and compared it to social media like Twitter and Facebook. But I'm going to talk about where I think blogging is going next.

First, let me define what I mean by blogging, since, like many terms, it means many things to many people.

Blogging is an individual's thoughts and interpretations on a particular topic, presented in a unified way that creates a fuller picture of the person and their ideas.

Not a perfect description, but close enough for my purposes. Sure there are the occasional group blogs that might qualify, but most could be considered group sharing, not group blogging. Metafilter is a site for group sharing, not blogging. Comments are not blogging.

Many of the popular sites may have their origin in individual weblogs, but have morphed into online magazines, newsletter, and newspapers. Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Drudge Report are all newspapers, virtually indistinguishable from print originated newspapers. Even sites like Daily KOS, Redstate, Talking Points Memo, and Breitbart are almost exactly the same as supermarket tabloids. They focus on gathering information and reporting on the information to their particular narrative for commercial purposes.

Some may quibble about my distinction, but they are the types that quibble about everything in life, so we pay them no mind. ;)

Social Media and your Digital Life

One issue going forward with individual blogging is how it continues in relation to social media, most of which is ephemeral, with an exceedingly short life of relevance.

I enjoy the social services as much as anyone. It's fun to get likes, retweets, and favorites. The majority of stuff posted there is OK to fade away. Your photo of a plate of pancakes captioned as "Noms!" is not going to be something your grandkids are going to frame and hang in the living room.

Social services like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ aren't going away anytime soon, but at some point they will essentially be gone, due to evolution of platforms, trends, and relevance. Don't believe me? How are your usenet posts doing? Maybe your explanations in the AOL forums are still easily accessible? Or your witticisms on MySpace?

But there are things from the social feeds that are special, that you do want to keep, and are important to you. But you need to realize that those things will fade unless you are the one to store them away. And you need to store them somewhere where you have a modicum of control.

I think that part of the future of weblogs is as a scrapbook of sorts for your social media 'moments' that you want to capture and preserve within your own control and outside the remit of ever changing privacy and usage policies.

A few groups are toying around the edges of this, but I think it's going to become more popular to exfiltrate your social media content to your own blog so you are not beholden to others. Thinkup is a start, but more focused on the analytics of social media feeds rather than sorting and storing the nuggets you feel strongly about.

The cost of storage and servers continue to plummet, in most cases far exceeding our ability to create content to fill what's available. Also, the faith in 'the cloud' to store your content as a service you pay for, like you pay for gas, electric, broadband, and water. It would be fairly straightforward to offer a blogging platform that allows you to write traditional posts as well and store whatever you want from your social media feeds.

Talking about this with my friend Greg, he talked about assembling the individual 'atoms' of social media into the large 'molecule' of an event or experience. Being to save and store these molecule outside the volatile they exist now will become de rigueur.

My friend Eric Freeman used to talk about lifestreaming and how we'd end up with a way to keep track of our 'digital life'. Today, most of us in the first world are living a digital life with bits and pieces scattered across the web and Internet. Time for people to take control of their digital life and bring it together in a way they like, rather than the way developers in Silicon Valley like.

I used to feel the same way. I'd wonder how I would ever get up to speed to what was going on around me in the world.

The truth dawned on me over time.

First, the group of guys I went to college with grew up and slowly started taking positions of power in the business and the military. We'd kept in touch since living in the fraternity house together. The same guys I watched do stupid, foolish, and occasionally felonious stunts, were now responsible for important things. Seeing a guy that put his motorcycle back together so poorly it literally caught fire was now flying a $25+ million fighter plan was a bit strange.

And then it dawned on me that maybe there weren't a lot of people out there that did everything right in life and had life 'scoped' completely.

Once I moved up the corporate ladder, I started working with the people that decide what and how you see things on television and in the movie theater. Surely, these people must be no nonsense, super sharp, focused individuals. I mean, how else do you steer a Fortune 50 company correctly? It didn't take me long to realize that the vast majority of people making the 'big' decisions in business weren't all that different than you and me. Some liked facts, some liked numbers, some liked their gut, but none of them I saw ever take everything into account like you might read in an MBA textbook. A lot of the decisions I saw get made were because they were the ones that helped them avoid blame.

But because of their title, most viewed their decisions as 'brilliant'. That is until they were ejected from the Company, upon which a new 'brilliant' individual would take their place.

My point is that you have it within you to be as good as anyone you admire. Even if you can't see it, others can see your potential to do great things. The trick is looking at your strengths rather than looking at your weaknesses. I'm not saying you should ignore your weakness, just that you shouldn't get caught up obsessing on how someone is better at something as you.

I guarantee you that you have a skill or ability that someone you admire is jealous of and wishes they could have.

I've only met a few people that were truly inspiring, innovative, and 'game-changing' in business and life for that matter. They all have the same basic characteristics.

Passion - They were driven by an ineffable passion to push forward. Not money, status, or reward, but by the prospect that they could move the needle in their field, even if only a little.

Openness - They wanted to hear what others thought. Not to refute or argue with them, but to listen to alternatives. They never lost sight of their goals, but were truly open to different paths to reach it.

Optimism - They are not cynical people. They see failure and problems as inevitable parts of the road forward. Rather than focusing on who is to blame for the tree that feel across the trail, they are busy climbing over it and leave a rope behind to help others get over it as well.

If there is anything we could all do to head toward having a 'pro account' in life, it is to follow our passions, listen to others with an open mind, and stay positive in the face of adversity.

Don't sleep in the same room as your phone.

There's no reason to be checking your phone first thing when you wake or last thing before you sleep. Let your mind rest a bit. Charge it in the other room when you sleep.

Send a gift to someone that doesn't expect one for no reason other than they could use some love.

Why wait for holidays? People can use a little boost any time of the year. Receiving something out of the blue is a wonderful feeling. Knowing someone is thinking about you during a tough time is sometimes just what's needed to get through. With internet shopping for pretty much anything you can conceive, there's no excuse.

Go outside and exercise at least two times a week.

Exercising your body is the best possible thing you can do for yourself. Being outdoors and away from screens and into the sunlight is also great for your body and mind. If you don't like to ride or run, even just walking during your lunch hour is great. Get outside, move your body, feel the sun on your skin and a breeze on your face.

Read book that is non-fiction, not self-help, and about a topic you don't know well.

Getting outside of your normal zone of information is the only way to expand your perspective. Learning new things will help you make connections that you might normally miss. Our world is amazing, take some time to see it.

Listen/Read/Watch these things:

Bullseye - Podcast w/ Jesse Thorn interviewing people involved with popular culture from today and the past, shining a light on great things. Jesse's interviewing is top notch, bringing people out from behind their standard PR answers and offering a glimpse of the person, not the persona.

Saga - Comic by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. The best written and most innovative comic book out there today. Romeo & Juliet meets True Romance meets Alice in Wonderland. Not for kids, it's an comic for thinking adults.

What Technology Wants - Book by Kevin Kelly - A look at how technology affects and drives human society. Are we technology's master, or are we doing it's bidding? Well written and comprehensive.

The Diaz Brothers - Song by the Mountain Goats - My favorite song of the year. Simple, but with strange allusions to films and literature. A catchy tune that earwormed me for months.

The Great Hobini - Truly wonderful music mashups with a hip-hop touch.

Moonrise Kingdom - Movie by Wes Anderson - Finely crafted movie about an adventure in the world of 12 year old children. Touching, funny, and with enough commentary on adults to add a few layers of meaning.

I was in a cyclocross race. Cyclocross is kind of like a steeplecross race for people on bikes. You ride over grass, dirt, sand, bumps and all kind of obstacles, occasionally jumping off the bike and carrying across barriers or up a hill. I'd wanted to do this for a while and had even built a bike up from the frame to ride.

Riding in my second race of the day, I was trying to make up some time on people ahead of me going over the flyover. A flyover is a big wooden ramp. This is what the flyover looked like. Here's a video of much better riders coming down and making the turn.

I guess I came down too fast or made another mistake. When I hit the first bump after the flyover I lost control and crashed into the turn. They told me my tire popped on the bump and that was the cause, but I'll never know for sure exactly what happened.

Over the handlebars I went, landing on my head and right shoulder. I tumbled a bit and landed on my back. I had heard a crunch and I knew I had hurt myself. I wiggled my hands and moved my feet, but couldn't get up. A race official hopped over onto the course and crouched to shield me from other riders still going past. I just wanted to get up but he insisted I not move. He asked several questions to see if I was able to think straight. The ambulance crew came over, but they didn't do much but put my arm in a sling in help me up. Everyone asked me if I wanted a ride to a hospital or other help.

Lucky for me, my buddy Ken was at the race too. He gave me a ride home. On the ride home I had to call Michele and tell her I had crashed and would need to go to the hospital. I hurt all over and had sharp pain in my shoulder, wrist and back. I realized this was not a trivial injury and my stomach sank.

Michele took me to the hospital where they cut off my cycling jersey to look at me and took a ton of x-rays.

After waiting the longest 15 minutes, the doctor came in and said, "You really banged yourself up today." I had broken my right collarbone, left wrist, and cracked some bones in my lower back called the transverse processes. I'd have to see specialist to determine if surgery was needed. They strapped my right arm to my body and casted my entire left arm. I now couldn't do pretty much anything for myself.

I'd had shoulder surgery before, but had always had my other arm free to do things why the injured arm was healing. Now I had neither.

I got a wrist cast on my left arm that allowed a little more movement and I stopped strapping my arm to my chest after 4-5 days. Over the next six weeks, I didn't do much but stay home and heal. Doped up on the serious painkillers the first week, I stopped taking them the second and started to have more time to think. Currently, I'm through the worst of it and pretty functionally, but still limited on lifting things and hurt all the time.

What I learned:

I'm lucky - I landed on my head. My helmet cracked. I could have been injured in so many worse and permanent ways. Many are not so lucky and end up dealing with the consequences for the rest of their lives. I am truly, deeply grateful that I got off as easy as I did.

I'm not 25 anymore - When I was younger, accidents and injuries happened and usually were gone before a weekend was over. At 45, nothing heals fast. Even though I'm in good shape, eat healthy, and have great medical treatment, my recovery is measured in weeks and months and not days. Realizing exactly how long I'd be 'down' was a tough thing to come to grips with, considering the doctors still hadn't ruled out a surgery on my collarbone. For all the wonderful things that age brings like wisdom, patience, and the long view, losing the ability to bounce back quickly really is a hard one to accept.

Cycling is mental exercise as much as physical - I love riding my bike. It's my preferred solution to resolving every issue. Hit the road and everything fades back into the calm parts of my mind and I think about the color of the sky, the smell of summer as hot wind blows over a brown hillside, the hearing the sound my heartbeat roaring my ears, the feel of rain hitting my face, the taste of cold water on a hot day. Not being able to ride removed this way for me to deal with the everyday issues of the world. Cycling is as important to my mental health as to my physical health. I hadn't imagine how much I'd miss this aspect and long to get away and feel the air on my face to help me process my feelings.

But the most important thing I've learned and need to continue to learn is this:

Humility - When I worked at Disney, I walked past a dedication plaque in front of the Frank G. Wells building regularly. On it was written "Humility is the final achievement."

I pondered that quote literally for years. In the high stakes game of corporate politics, money, power and secrecy, humility was something that I rarely ran into. Humility seemed like a weakness.

Immediately after the injury I tried to figure out how to do things for myself and continue to keep my routine at home even though it was ridiculous. Michele and girls had to help feed me, wash me, remind me to take medicine, and even make me coffee. At first I felt bad about this, like I was a terrible burden constantly apologizing. Finally, Michele told me, "Stop apologizing. Accept this and let us help you. Your job is to sit still, rest, and get better."

I've always viewed myself as someone who did the helping, not needing the help. I prided myself on being self-sufficient, stoic, and able to handle most things without needing help. But that wasn't working here, I had to realize that asking and accepting the help of others, being grateful for their kindness, and seeing that I needed others was the only way forward. Once I accepted that it gave me a bit of peace. Accepting other's making decisions for me, listening and accepting the advice of others based on faith in them not proof, and remaining positive during a tough time all helped me get through the first few weeks.

I hope that I can continue to find humility in my life going forward, not just in dealing with my injury, but in dealing with life on a day to day basis. I don't think you ever 'achieve' humility, but like a bike ride, it's a path you can take to help your mind and body.

Michele made a special Cruft Manor pumpkin!

As you Loyal Cruft Readers demand, once again, I made a timelapse movie of all of the trick or treaters as I handed them candy. I have a new GoPro camera, and it made the process pretty simple.

As I have in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. I asked every person what they were dressed as and wrote down the answers. I am careful to ask what they are, accepting their answers rather than interpreting what I see.

I now have eight years of data to compare.

Here are the top ten costumes for the last eight years compared.

It appears that Cat has leaped from the bottom to the top to grab the top honors from Witch. With generic Princess in the top 5 as well, I have to say that many young ladies are taking the easy way out, simply grabbing a hat from the closet and putting on weird make-up. Some of the ladies really stepped up their game though. I like the Weeping Angel from Doctor Who, Zombie Girl Scout, Video Game Console, Bride of Frankenstein, and Pizza Delivery Girl. The boys did OK, with a few flashes of brilliance like Starbucks Cup and Carl from Up.

Starbucks Cup

Two Zombies with mustache

Mexican hat wearing green person

Almost everyone had a costume this year, which is great. Only one person came close to the perilous "nothing" answer. BTW, my shirt is safety pinned together because I have a broken collarbone and can't lift my right arm. Michele cut the shirt so I can get into it easily.

After giving out ~250 full size candies, we ran out about 8:30PM and closed up. My daughters were still out roaming, as teenagers do.

This year's complete costume list of 231 people:

10 Cat
9 Witch
8 Spiderman
6 Princess
6 Skeleton
6 Tinkerbell
5 Ninja
5 Vampire
4 Candy Corn
4 Captain America
4 Ladybug
4 Pirate
4 Zombie
3 Buzz Lightyear
3 Cowboy
3 Darth Vader
3 Iron Man
3 Joker
3 Little Red Riding Hood
3 Superman
2 80s Girl
2 Angel
2 Angry Bird (Red)
2 Batman
2 Bumblebee
2 Cop
2 Devil
2 Dracula
2 Frankenstein
2 Ghost
2 GI Joe
2 Harry Potter
2 Hello Kitty
2 Mad Hatter
2 Michael Myers
2 Minnie Mouse
2 Nerd
2 Rapunzel
2 Scream
2 Snow White
2 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
2 Transformer
2 Werewolf
2 Zombie with mustache
1 "Robert"
1 Alice in Wonderland
1 Batgirl
1 Bee
1 Belle
1 Bloodsport
1 Bride of Frankenstein
1 Car Accident Victim
1 Carl from Up
1 Chucky
1 Chucky Girl
1 Cowboy Riding Ostrich
1 Cutie (tangerine)
1 Dead Bride
1 Dead Iron Worker
1 Dead Skater
1 Death
1 Diet Coke Can
1 Dinosaur
1 Dragon Ninja
1 Egyptian Princess
1 Elmo
1 Gangster
1 Ghost Guy
1 Greaser
1 Hula Girl
1 Indian
1 Jason Voorhees
1 Karate Zombie
1 Knight
1 Krispy Creme Delivery Person
1 Lalaloopsy
1 Leatherface
1 Little Bo Peep
1 Little Girl
1 Luigi
1 Mario
1 Mater (Cars)
1 Merida
1 Mermaid
1 Mexican Indian
1 Mexican Person
1 Michael Jackson
1 Midnight Witch
1 Mobster
1 Mouse
1 Mummy from Monster High
1 Navy SEAL
1 Ninja Shadow
1 Owl
1 Pinkalicious
1 Pizza Delivery Girl
1 Pokemon Trainer Red
1 Prisoner
1 Psycho Nice Witch
1 Pumpkin Spider Witch
1 Robber
1 Robin Hood (Animated Version)
1 Run Over Victim
1 Sailor
1 Scarecrow
1 Scary DJ
1 Sheep
1 SpongeBob SquarePants
1 Starbucks Cup
1 Supergirl
1 The Grudge
1 Thomas the Tank Engine
1 Tiger
1 Tigger
1 Troll
1 UCLA Student
1 Vampire from Monster High
1 Video Game Console
1 Volleyball Player
1 Warlock
1 Wednesday (Adams Family)
1 Weeping Angel
1 Werewolf from Monster High
1 Wolf
1 Wolf Spirit
1 Wolverine
1 Wonder Woman
1 Zombie Football Player
1 Zombie Girl Scout
1 Zombie Witch
1 Zorro

First, I completely disassembled the bike. It was an old Schwinn Free Spirit ten speed. It had an Ashtabula crank, which I had never seen before.

I kept all the components, just in case, but most of them were in bad shape.

At the hardware store, I asked what was the best paint remover to use. The paint specialist asked, "Safe and not so good, or dangerous and effective?" Obviously, I chose dangerous. We used Jasco to take off the paint. I can't emphasize how strong the stuff is. Careful it eats right through nitrile gloves and pretty much anything else it touches. More than once I had to rub baking soda on my hands to stop the acid.

Be careful! You are warned.

The fork paint came off much easier than the frame. The frame took a ton of elbow grease with the wire brush to get loose.

I used wire brushes on the drill to complete the job. Doing it all by hand would have been impossible. It took hours to get every bit of rust and paint off. Wearing eye protection, a respirator, and protective clothing made it a hot, sweaty job, but better safe than sorry.

Kinda neat to see the welds/brazes.

Clean. Having the bike stand was invaluable during the cleaning process.

I made a paint rig from coat hangers and bungie cords. About as simple as it gets.

I used a collapsible shed as a paint booth. Here's PJ putting on a coat of primer paint. I went with the Rustoleum white to help prevent rust in the future.

Primered.

Over the summer, we both got busy and the primered frame lingered in the garage for several months.

PJ wanted black & orange, the high school colors. So I went for a look with orange on the top, seat, and down tubes. I masked off for orange paint and built another quick hanger.

Painted orange.

I love this look, but PJ wanted black & orange.

I masked off the orange and sprayed on a couple coats of black.

Painting complete.

Decals applied for a retro appropriate look. I got the decals from VeloCals. I recommend them.

Lastly, I rehung the bike and applied three coats of clear coat for more protection.

PJ with his finished frame.

I had the fork headset pressed and put in a bottom bracket adapter to allow the use of standard cranks.

Yes, the bike isn't finished. That's up to PJ. His turn to step up and finish the job. I helped with the worst parts, but he can handle the rest and will continue to learn, which is the point of this whole effort.

I asked him for pictures when it's done and will update here when I get them.

She wrote about it on Boing Boing.

Many people asked how they could do the same thing. To be honest, it was super simple.

I went to Crown Awards, a site for all kinds of trophies and medals. I was amazed at the wide range of options.

You simply choose what ever medal you feel appropriate, click away and you enter what ever inscription you want. You can even choose whatever ribbon you want. Very straight forward. The cost was under $20. Takes less than 5 minutes.

When it arrives, the inscription plate is separate and you apply it to the medal. The medal comes with a small case. For Xeni, I wrapped the box and gave it to my friends Sean and Tara, who see her regularly.

If you know someone that deserves a medal, there's no reason not to give them one. Giving respect and happiness to people is one of the best things you can do.

Like many things in life it seems both like yesterday and a very long time ago.

I am happy to see the rebuilding in New York and the movement forward in healing these great wounds. The spirit of Americans to overcome adversity is unmatched and proven time and time again. I am always optimistic that we and our children will solve the problems that come our way, making the entire world a better place.

What concerns me is the continued rise of intolerance.

Intolerance, taken to an extreme, is what caused the attacks in the first place.

Seeing intolerance rise in America, is disheartening.

America, we are a better country than this.

We all love our country, our families, and want a bright future for our children.

We are all on the same side, trying to make the most out of life and liberty with as much happiness as possible.

We are all in this great experiment together and need to start treating each other better, assuming best intentions rather than malice.

Kyle Wiens of ifixit wrote a good opinion story on the new Mac Book Pro.

I can't disagree with what he wrote, it's completely accurate. But he's completely wrong that it's a problem.

ZDNet, MSNBC, and CNET have all jumped on the FUD bandwagon with the story.

Choo, choo, all aboard the Pundit Express to PageHitsVille!

Thanks to a lucky combination of good brain wiring, an electrical engineer father, and an understanding and patient wife, I do a lot of repair and fixing around the home. I've repaired everything from our house wiring, dish washers, dryers, ovens, lamps, clocks, to the assorted home electronics of friends and family. I build my desktop computer from scratch. I like fixing things. But it's a skill set that's in decline.

The decline is not due to some evil plan by manufacturers, it's due to the public desire for better products to appear regularly. The desire to buy good, low price, and reliable products that work out of the box is the driver for seeing the lack of 'fixability' in the new laptop line. And it's not a bad thing.

Back in the 70s, there were TV commercials for self repair of your television set. You picked up a set of stickers at the testing unit at the supermarket, went home, opened your TV, pulled out all the tubes using stickers to match sockets and vacuum tubes, took all the tubes to the tester, plugged them in until you found the bad one(s), and bought the replacement. Take everything home, replug all the tubes, and hope the problem went away.

Sounds a little crazy right? Driving around town with vacuum tubes and finding replacement parts at your local supermarket? It sounds quaint and fun, but trust me the whole process sucked. Such a thing is unthinkable these days.

Today's television experience is undeniably wonderful in comparison. No color drift, no warm up, no fine tuning, no horizontal and vertical lock, no buzzing, or any of the other symptoms commonly found with tube TVs. Today's TVs are also now nearly impossible for the average person to repair due to modern manufacturing techniques from surface mount soldering to sealed assemblies. Today's TVs are also better in every, single way than those from 20 years ago.

Most other technologies follow the same trajectories. I'm old enough that my first car had a carburetor and distribution cap, both of which had to be manually calibrated and was a huge pain in the ass. It took experience and skill to set them up properly. Today's cars have electronic fuel injection and ignition controlled by a computer in the car. It's exceedingly hard to tweak these things in the average car today. There is a sub-culture of 'tuner car' enthusiasts that rip out the standard car computer, replace it, and hack their performance to their heart's content.

But 99.999% of automobile owners will never consider such a thing. For the vast majority of people, cars have never been more reliable and easier to drive.

In both cases what we have today works better, is cheaper, and is far less of a headache to own than similar items in the past. And this is a VERY GOOD THING.

To meet the demands of today's consumer, modern manufacturing basically requires the very measures that the punditry is railing against. Fastening optimization, robotic soldering, minimization of variation, exacting tolerances, and made to order componentry are required to delivery great products.

To ask that every piece of modern electronics is designed to allow the tiny fraction of hackers to upgrade is the height of hubris, unreasonable, and a huge imposition on everyone else that has no desire to ever crack the case. All that 'upgradability' ends up making the product cost more and be more susceptible to failure. Catering to the fringe is not the way to make good products. Making the best product you can for a low price is the way to make good products, even if it means eliminating upgradability and home repair.

Hackers, hot rodders, and makers will always find a way to do what they want, but it shouldn't come at the expense of everyone else that simply wants a good, reliable product.

For internet pundits to prattle on about non-upgradability as a serious issue is the height of disinformation. Anyone that NEEDS more than 768 GIGABYTES of storage in a laptop is a huge exception case. Anyone that wants to replace their LCD panel at home is simply a masochist.

So settle down interwebs, relax, and enjoy the amazing time we live in that such products are available.

I run the earbud cable down inside my jersey, and in the past cut a small hole inside the rear pocket to pass the plug through to plug into my phone, which I keep in a jersey pocket.

I've wanted a better way to make the hole and experimented a bit with grommets to see what works. Here's how I hacked my newest jersey.

You can pick up a grommet kit at a fabric store like JoAnn's. It's not that expensive, under $10. Make sure you get the kit that includes the mini anvil and setter.

I place the grommet in my right rear jersey pocket. Since I'm right handed, it's the easiest pocket to reach into and pull the cord through.

When you are sure the setup is in the place you want, inside the pocket and only through one layer of cloth, you whack it with a hammer to set the grommet. You need to hit hard since you are bending metal. I used a nice, heavy framing hammer.

Pull out the setter and the anvil and you should have the grommet in place. You might have to trim an excess fabric.

I placed the smooth side of the grommet inside the jersey so it doesn't catch against my base layer or my skin.

Here's the grommet with the gigantic plug feed through. Your plug will probably be smaller, but I'm using the One Good Earbud which for some reason uses the giant plug.

Always lurking out beyond the homebrew scene was the idea of making spirits. More complicated than making beer or wine and requiring the use of a still, it seemed out of reach. Being officially illegal didn't help either. But the idea lingered on in the back of my mind.

Recently, I stumbled upon a device called an Easystill. Basically, it was a water distillation unit that could be used to distill alcohol as well. As Darth Vader would say, "All too easy..."

The idea of distillation is simple. Alcohol boils at a temperature less than water, so if you get temperature above 78 °C but below 100 °C, the alcohol becomes vapor, leaving the water behind. A still captures the vapor, cools it enough to turn it back to liquid, allowing you to capture it.

The EasyStill does all that in a tabletop device that you can store in the closet or garage when you are finished. Obviously, I had to order one.

I read up a lot at homedistiller.org and reddit/r/firewater while I waited for delivery.

I started with making a simple wash. Moonshine people call it a wash, beer brewers call it a wort, but it's basically the same thing. I used 5 pounds of sugar, 2.5 pounds of cracked rye, and 2.5 pounds of malted barley. Traditional whiskey is made with sugar and corn, but I was hoping to get some rye flavors.

I cooked the wash at 155 °F for about ninety minutes. I probably should have used some sort of calculator to determine the optimal time and temperature to convert the most starch to sugar, but I'm not taking this too seriously. The wash was super sweet when I finished.

I strained out the grain from the wash and let it cool to around 95 °F and pitched 3 packages of champagne yeast into the fermenter. Ideally, I should have used a distiller's yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance, but the local shop didn't have any. Champagne yeast was the next best thing for allowing maximum alcohol conversion before the yeast died.

Put the fermenter top on, fill the airlock, and cross my fingers that the fermentation starts. So far this is exactly like the process for brewing beer.

After about four days, the fermented stopped and I cracked the lid. Now was the moment of truth. The alcohol percentage was probably under 10% at this point. I didn't have a hydrometer, so I couldn't take an accurate reading.

I put 4 liters of wash into the fermenter and turned the EasyStill on. It had come with a long tube that I filled with activated charcoal. I couldn't figure out how they intended this to work, so I made do with this Rube Goldberg set-up.

The first things that evaporate are the nasty things like methanol and other distillates that you shouldn't drink. The recommendation is to discard the first 50 mL that comes out, but I played it safe and tossed out double that, 100 mL, the so-called foreshot.

I then tasted what was dripping out, and sure enough it was alcohol. Success.

I started capturing in a larger container. From turning on the still to first drops took about 45-60 minutes, and then ran around 2 hours under there was more water than alcohol coming out.

I did three runs of the wash and gathered up each into an old apple juice bottle, appropriately marked.

In total, I had around 3.5 liters of booze. I didn't have an alcoholmeter, so I didn't have an accurate reading, but it was probably 15-20% alcohol. The taste was smooth, but lacked any flavor characteristic of a whiskey or rye.

The guys are my local poker game seemed to enjoy it.

I wanted a strong liquor, so I ran the first pass through the still one more time. I ended up with 750 mL of final product.

At this point it tasted like a neutral spirit, like grain alcohol, without a lot of flavor, but smooth and not harsh. Enough to warm your insides, but not so strong to taste harsh.

I had acquired an alcoholmeter by this point and found that the moonshine was 75 proof, meaning 37.5% alcohol, just a little bit less than store bought whiskey.

The real test was to see if people liked to drink it. I took it to a friend's BBQ and everyone sampled it. And they liked it! Some people drank multiple shots.

Obviously, there is a huge amount to learn about making whiskey that I haven't touched on from more complex recipes to maximizing the "hearts" (best part of the distillation) to aging with wood. Nevertheless, I had a good time and found that you can make your own moonshine without a big investment or large amount of space.

So as long as you are willing to break federal laws against home distillation, give it a try.

For the last year or so, there was a strong smell of sulfur or rotten eggs that occurred when we washed clothes in our washing machine. It seemed to get worse over time.

I tried searching on The Google, but didn't find a lot of good answers. I cleaned the washer with various things like vinegar and baking soda, and even tried the washing machine cleaners sold at the store. They would help a little, but nothing solved the problem.

We even had the plumber out and he was stumped as to what was going on.

The clothes came out clean and had no smell, so I determined it wasn't in the washing tub itself. I was beginning to think I'd never figure it out.

Then one day I saw a clump fall out of the drain hose into the sink in the laundry room. I looked into the drain hose and saw this:

Sure enough, there was a bunch of nasty stuff growing in the drain hose. I could smell the sulfur coming from it. That made sense, the drain hose would have water in it even after a wash cycle since it never fully drained. Perfect growing medium for some sort of organic, foul smelling sludge that must suck the sulfur out of the lauryl sulfate that is found in most detergents. I studied engineering not biochemistry, so all I know is it smelled like hydrogen sulfide.

I went to an online parts store and they had the part for ~$30 and even a video that showed how to replace it.

Replacing the drain hose took me about 15 minutes (mainly since I've taken it apart so many times) and I did a test run. No smell.

I've run the washing machine about 5 times now and the smell seems gone. So if you are having the sulfur smell from your clothes washing machine, consider replacing the drain hose!