Things are greening up! I definitely won’t be using Excel anymore.
–Simon
9 Days Later
Aquarium over the Years
Sometime in the 90s I won a goldfish at one of those rigged carnie games at the county fair. What followed is a very common narrative for new fish keepers: I loved the fish, kept it in a bowl on my nightstand, overfed it, and it died within a few days from a lack of proper equipment and my own ignorance. Some years prior the family had made an attempt at a small aquarium, and the results were similar. I find these outcomes odd, considering my father is an environmental scientist with a specialization in decomposition. I would have thought that an intimate understanding of the nitrogen cycle would have armed him with some background on cycling aquariums, but maybe his experience was limited to the terrestrial variety, or more likely – he was just absent-minded and didn’t care about keeping pets.
Despite the initial failure, my interest was piqued, and so began my lifelong involvement in the hobby. In the beginning, it was mostly trial and error, until I acquired some books on the subject (the early days of the internet didn’t have much to offer), and I finally understood how nitrifying bacteria prevented the water column from going toxic – not to mention the limitations on the total bioload tanks of a certain size could maintain. These are lessons that curiosity and experimentation continually forced me to relearn, but what fun is a hobby that doesn’t allow for constant tweaking?
I maintained a 10 gallon tank throughout high school and college, eventually getting a 29 gallon from Liz, which I kept in 4 different apartments and now currently resides in the house. Its size is just big enough to give me options, without being so big that I’d worry about the floor joists (one day I’ll have something huge). It is this tank that I’m documenting here, since it existed in the time of digital cameras and smart phones. So here’s a fun look back in my personal aquarium history of this particular tank:
And here’s where things went wrong:
- I started dosing Flourish Excel (polycycloglutaracetal) to control algae. Excel has algicidal properties, and it worked well for a time at keep algae to a minimum while supplementing the plants with additional carbon, but it turns out that more than just algae is sensitive to it. The moss effectively died off, and the vals melted. I won’t be using it anymore.
- We had an extended power outage. A filter not running will turn anaerobic, which meant my tank had to cycle again. I lost fish as a result.
- I mistakenly set the needle valve on the CO2 tank too high. This asphyxiated half the remaining fish.
- I pulled the dead moss and other dying plants out of the tank, and in the process disturbed the substrate sufficiently as to circulate toxic anaerobic microorganisms and kill off the remaining fish.
I hadn’t intended to reset the aquarium this year, but events necessitated it. With some lessons learned on caution and chemical dosing, I’m back on track to what will hopefully be once again a pretty tank, this time with mollies!
–Simon
Vikings Interior Decorate too…
What point is it in owning a fancy weapon if no one sees it?
So it has been mounted!
Skull-cleaving capability available to use against home-invaders, provided I don’t get shot first.
–Simon
Hold Fast
A long-deprioritized project, Liz wanted old people handlebars in the tub out of concern that my father would kill himself in a failed bathing endeavor. Apparently dad’s mortality was insufficient motivation as I hadn’t gotten around to the project for years (plural). But the recent bone-shattering event, coupled with me trying to clear off the workbench, was. Plus I got a new drill, ironically from my father, and it was a chance to try it out. Time to project!
Initially concerned with mounting procedures, as it’s impossible to drill through glazed tile, I was able to align the brackets with the grout in such a way that each end received two screws. And since the provided mounting hardware is always pitiful, I traded the plastic mounts out for heavy-duty expanding metal versions that reached through 1/4″ of tile and 3/4″ cement board.
Safety protocol!
Bonus: the kid’s embarrassed we have old people handlebars in the bathroom.
Don’t fall.
–Simon
Complex Safety
541 words, 3 minutes read time.
There’s a saying out there something along the lines of: a complex design has a lot of failure points, so it isn’t a good design. Something like that. Of course, sometimes the additional complexity outweighs the detriments. For example, safeties! I very much appreciate that my pistol has dual safeties, because even though their necessity might be low and cause a malfunction, to not have them at all presents potentially lethal consequences.
But this does not apply to all safeties, because the consequences of misuse are not always so extreme. For example, my coffee bean grinder! Am I thankful that the manufacturers took the precautions that prevent me from turning in on and being able to stick my finger into the gears? Um, kind of indifferent there, as that’d be difficult to do even intentionally. But am I annoyed that the spring switch broke inside it and bricked the damn thing? Yes, yes I am. So I opened it (the act of which many designers take pains to prevent, so they can sell me a new product), removed the switch and wired a bypass circuit. Now I can use it again, though I have to be careful to not snake my finger down and around and up inside the extractor chute (again, never a problem to begin with). Bad design!
But the Ninja blender was especially egregious! I always had it in for this thing, because it’s designed to be a smoothie maker primarily, which is fine if that’s all you want to do with it, but the lack of top access prevents other culinary applications, like making emulsions or staging liquid additions. Plus, it’s all made of plastics – yes, the material that makes it possible…to break and have to buy a new unit. Because it’s of course non-user-serviceable (unlike the grinder), and replacement parts are more expensive than the unit!
Specifically, the Ninja is armed with a convoluted safety that stops the blades from spinning if I take off the lid. This alone isn’t a bad idea, since the full-length blade setup needs to be secured by the lid or it’d wobble and fly off across the kitchen. That at least is understandable. What isn’t, however, is everything else I just mentioned. It’s cheap material, the lid keeps breaking, and I can’t buy reasonably-priced parts. The lid activates the safety, so warped lid = no blending.
So at the risk of making a negligent mess or poking out an eye, I again bypassed a safety, because the warped lid still works! I pine for the days before my own when things were actually made to last – a defunct concept gone before I was born. Sigh.
Anyway, here’s what I did, for the archives:
Safety tab #1 determines which modes can be used with which attachments. Whatever.
Safety tab #2 is the universal failsafe. If it’s not depressed, then the unit won’t run. The warped lid failed to depress this sufficiently, so…
I drilled a small hole through which I could insert a toothpick to depress the safety all the way. It’s far enough down that the lid’s safety doesn’t get snagged on it, and I snapped off the excess wood.
And so, anti-consumer hostile design thwarted. Suck it, SharkNinja LLC!
–Simon