Family Matters

Well Sinan got to spend the day at the Hospital yesterday to get a hernia repair - as he describes it a “bilingual hernia” repair. My question was what the other language was?? Anyway he did fine and felt pretty good last night - Of course that would be the local anesthetic and drugs talking. He did ok during the night, didn’t sleep very well but that is probably because he slept so much during the day. I on the other hand craved sleep but read quite a bit of my current book and kept getting woken up to get ice and make sure he did not fall on his nose any time he got up.
Mom called at around 2:30 AM because of pains in her chest. We talked for a while and figured it was not a heart attack and finally she felt good enough to try to sleep. By that time I was awake and so was Sinan so I read some more…..
Today Sinan spent most of the day in bed taking the percocet every 4 hours or so. He told me early in the morning that he was going to call and cancel the operation….. Just need that time machine.
Tomorrow should be better.

Water Boxes Update - Vinegar Eels

Got home a little late tonight feeling a little anxious about the new fry but when I looked in the tank they where flitting around and looked fine. Still pretty tiny but they all seem to have something in their bellies. I squirted in some vinegar eels and got a few walter worms from the box I started last night also.
I have tried both vinegar eels and microworms as tiny fry food in the past and much prefer vinegar eels. They have a few big positive attributes as far as I ma concerned - They don’t stink - even when old. They live in the water column of the tank for about a day - (hard to really tell) They do not sink to the bottom and die right away, polluting the tank on the way like microworms can.
I keep a total of 4 bottles of vinegar eels - 2 are florence flasks that I use to feed from and two are old wine bottles I use for a ready backup stock. I had poured off a lot of one of those bottles to distribute at the meeting last night so when I got back I freshened all 4 bottles by pouring off the liquid to a bowl, dumping the old apple slices I have in all the bottles. I then added more apple to each and some of the old liquid plus some 50% water and 50% apple cider vinegar solution. The wine bottles are filled almost to the top and stoppered with bits of old filter sponge washed and cut to size. I fill the florence flasks with apple/ old liquid (with worms) and new vinegar solution to the bottom of the neck I then insert cylinder plugs of old filter sponge. I push it down to the bottom of the neck and fill above it with plain water. The worms go through the sponge to get to the fresh water above and gather there. It is then really easy to use a dropper to get them off and squirt them straight into the fry tank! I learned this trick from this livefood culture Site.
The wine bottles with the stock just sit in the back of my shelf for club meetings or a sudden need for a gizzilion worms….

A New Fry to Raise

Attended the GSAS meeting last night and one of the other club members brought in some Pearl Celestial Danio fry. As luck would have it my two fry tanks have been sitting empty since I transfered the albino angels out to a bigger tank. So I won the auction and came home with 7 fry and a walter worm starter.
Now I have raised lots of livebearers and also killie, angel & rams from eggs and from fry both but these are new. I had read a little about these fish but had not thought about getting them, as it happens I may just end up with a species tank of them!
First I have to get them grown up!

Quick Discus Update

Well the discus tank is looking good. The wild discus are plumping up pretty well and eating great! I give them blood worms and some misc. frozen food morning and night. I added three discus last weekend and they are all getting along well except for the biggest wild formerly emaciated one tends to lord it over the others.

The RAID Game

Well the RAID saga continued on Sunday. I spent the day trying to make Esra’s old RAID box work with smaller disks - Turned out it did not support the 750GB disks she was trying to use.
Well it turned out it did not support the mix of smaller disks I tried to add either. The consensus is at this point that it handles 3 disks but not 4. Probably a bad power supply. I am leaning toward getting a new case but how much money do I really want to spend on a bunch of older smaller IDE drives? It might be better to just buy 1 big drive and use an existing single drive case….
This is a box hooked up to our mac mini. This machine plays mp3s and also has a HD TV tuner (eyeTV) so it needs the 300GB disk it has for the iTunes library and it would be nice to have a larger disk as the time machine backup disk. I have available to me the existing 300GB as well as a 400GB and 250GB and 2 160GB disks - all IDE. I am leaning towards just using the 400GB and 300GB in individual drive boxes.
stay tuned…..

Vesper Martini

OK - As you may remember I just watched Casino Royale (Blue Ray DVD version). I have had a mind to try the Vesper Martini since then. So tonight I delved into my bottle collection and pulled out the Gin, Vodka and Lillet. I found the recipe on the net at the Art of Drink. It calls for 3 parts Gin 1 part Vodka and 1/2 part Lillet. Shake over ice an add a lemon twist.

It is a rather stout drink - and I have to admit I am a Vodka Martini person not a Gin Martini person so not too found of the Gin - but it is ok….. I will have to order it in a bar or two.

Oh BTW the Vesper has been more successful than the RAID…. Turns out 1 of the 4 drives is bad so the RAID will have to run in degraded mode until we get a replacement drive.

Sitting around watching disks RAID

Quote of the night: “So you want to do anything or just sit here and watch Esra’s disks RAID?”

Esra has been rearranging her room and computer and with the addition of Leopard’s Time machine to the mix she decided that a trip to Frys for a set of big disks was in order. Now she is trying to get 4 750GB disks RAIDed together. As it happens MAC OSX does not have software RAID 5 - a surprise for us since Linux has had it for some time now. No worries… how about a RAID 0+1 or 1+0 or whatever that is. Currently I think they are working on stripping mirrored disk sets.

I would rather be working on a martini…. hmmm what was that drink in Casino Royale? A vesper? Wonder if I have some Lillet….