So. Two days of work and then a day off. Then two more days of work and two days off. I could get into the habit of this pretty easily. We are chilling at home today. It's actually rare that we get to spend a holiday at home. We are usually traveling to visit family and such. I mean it's great to visit family. We love all of our family very much. It is also nice to relax and not travel. We woke up this morning and fixed breakfast and then went to about 4 garage sales. Garage sales are great. I used to think they were just places to get cool junk, but i have come to realize that they are great places to get practical stuff for a fraction of the cost. Sometimes people will get a new patio furniture set when they really don't need a new set, they just want one. They don't know what to do with the old one so they put it in their garage sale and say "make offer - paid $500 for this set new" I mean, the set was in great shape. it had two corner benches and two chairs and two foot rest things. They were all painted aluminum frames with cushions that were in great shape. Seems like if you could pick up that set for $150 or $200, it would be a good deal. There are also other things that you can get for only a dollar or two when it is just as functional as the new item that would cost 10 or 15.
Today, we used a hand crank ice cream maker that Melissa's sister bought for us at a garage sale. It's a 5 quart ice cream maker with a wooden bucket, a metal ice cream can, and a plastic lid and dasher. The crank has plastic gears in it. I was a bit skeptical of how it might work, but we bought ice and salt and cream for the endeavor and found a simple ice cream recipe that took cream, sugar, and vanilla. We cranked and cranked and it seemed like nothing was happening, but by and by the crank was getting harder to crank. And my arm was actually getting tired. We grilled some bratwursts while we cranked and finally, i thought it was time to open it up and look inside There was ice cream! Up to the top! It was pretty good, and i must say that the ice cream maker worked amazingly well. We will be using it again. And again. We may need a better recipe though. This one called for 4 cups of heavy whipping cream and 4 cups of half and half (about 7 dollars worth of dairy). I would like to try one with less expensive dairy ingredients and maybe a custard base too. Anyway, i'm excited to make more ice cream. And next time, we may have to get someone over to help us eat it too.
I guess i still owe a narrative on the camping trip the other weekend. We packed up three cars and put three canoes on them and drove about an hour just into PA. Here's where we put in:
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We paddled about 3 miles to Hook's Brook campground. I guess it's really only accessible by boat. Here's where the campground is and about where we stayed:
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We stayed from friday evening through Sunday noon time. we had a great time. Jake and Laura and Sam and Leyenda came. Sam and Leyenda had hammocks that they slept in and the rest of us had tents. we had tons of food and went swimming and cooked food and burnt food and went fishing and all kinds of great stuff. It was really relaxing and we are pretty excited to try to do it again soon. All the pictures i have are not here at the moment so you will have to wait a little longer for those.
Until Next Time....
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
PE (Professional Engineer)
OK. SO. A. Long. Time. Has. Past.
In February, I got a notice that my PE application had been reviewed and I had been deemed qualified to take the spring exam! I quickly had to decide whether I had enough time to study and take it. I had pretty much already decided that I wanted to take an online review course.....you know, study hard the first time and pass the test the first time so i didn't have to go through that again. I decided to do it. I payed the registration fee and decided on a review course right away. Then I waited a week for my materials to come in the mail. I had to take the review course at a faster pace than most people because it was supposed to start in January. Anyway, to make a long story short, I studied like crazy, went out to Rochester, NY with Melissa and took the exam. We stayed in the hotel that the exam was being held in. It was pretty much the worst night of sleep I have ever had. I got up early and had a granola bar and a cup of coffee, lugged my crate of reference books down to the exam room and waited about an hour with about 70 other testees. I felt pretty good abouut the exam (except for the fire alarm going off in the middle of it). Melissa prayed for me while she was waiting :) SO, the exam was in April. Now I have found out that I passed and that I have been issued a License Number and am registered with the State of New York as a Professional Engineer.
There's a website you can go and search Henning, under engineer and my name will pop up with about 6 or so other hennings of some sort or another in New York. http://www.op.nysed.gov/opsearches.htm
In other news at work, we underwent some pretty major network upgrades. We have a much better server that is more reliable than our old one. We also have a good reliable backup solution implemented. In addition to those things, we have switched to Time Warner Cable Digital Phone for our three business lines. Sometimes it seems like the phones are ringing off the hook. I have seen all three lines tied up at work fairly often these past few months. I have also been working some on our website. http://mdaengineers.com/home.html We don't get a ton of traffic on our website, but it is a good thing to have these days. It seems like people are much more likely to search for something on Google than look it up in the yellow pages. Well, at least I am :)
Melissa went garage garage saling on Saturday and found a 2 gallon air compressor for me for $25. It is small enough to fit in our apartment and will work very well for filling tires and such. It reminds me of the "spare air" can we had back home that we would fill up and take to a flat tire to give it enough air to get back to the shop. I could let this little guy pump up to 100psi and then unplug it and carry it out to the car or bicycle without having to stretch an extension cord. Oh. And I picked up a nice air chuck for it that has a pressure gauge built into it for another $2. I think it will work great.
Ok, well i better get going.
Until Next Time...
In February, I got a notice that my PE application had been reviewed and I had been deemed qualified to take the spring exam! I quickly had to decide whether I had enough time to study and take it. I had pretty much already decided that I wanted to take an online review course.....you know, study hard the first time and pass the test the first time so i didn't have to go through that again. I decided to do it. I payed the registration fee and decided on a review course right away. Then I waited a week for my materials to come in the mail. I had to take the review course at a faster pace than most people because it was supposed to start in January. Anyway, to make a long story short, I studied like crazy, went out to Rochester, NY with Melissa and took the exam. We stayed in the hotel that the exam was being held in. It was pretty much the worst night of sleep I have ever had. I got up early and had a granola bar and a cup of coffee, lugged my crate of reference books down to the exam room and waited about an hour with about 70 other testees. I felt pretty good abouut the exam (except for the fire alarm going off in the middle of it). Melissa prayed for me while she was waiting :) SO, the exam was in April. Now I have found out that I passed and that I have been issued a License Number and am registered with the State of New York as a Professional Engineer.
There's a website you can go and search Henning, under engineer and my name will pop up with about 6 or so other hennings of some sort or another in New York. http://www.op.nysed.gov/opsearches.htm
In other news at work, we underwent some pretty major network upgrades. We have a much better server that is more reliable than our old one. We also have a good reliable backup solution implemented. In addition to those things, we have switched to Time Warner Cable Digital Phone for our three business lines. Sometimes it seems like the phones are ringing off the hook. I have seen all three lines tied up at work fairly often these past few months. I have also been working some on our website. http://mdaengineers.com/home.html We don't get a ton of traffic on our website, but it is a good thing to have these days. It seems like people are much more likely to search for something on Google than look it up in the yellow pages. Well, at least I am :)
Melissa went garage garage saling on Saturday and found a 2 gallon air compressor for me for $25. It is small enough to fit in our apartment and will work very well for filling tires and such. It reminds me of the "spare air" can we had back home that we would fill up and take to a flat tire to give it enough air to get back to the shop. I could let this little guy pump up to 100psi and then unplug it and carry it out to the car or bicycle without having to stretch an extension cord. Oh. And I picked up a nice air chuck for it that has a pressure gauge built into it for another $2. I think it will work great.
Ok, well i better get going.
Until Next Time...
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