IT Legends – Tech in Connecticut

One of these windows is not like the other.....

So.. Since I recently bought a 130 year old house and we are having a super cold winter,  I’ve been looking for cheap cost effective ways to improve the insulating qualities of my house.

Guy Marsden Sustainable living  to the Rescue!

I followed (with slight modifications) his plans for DIY, inexpensive indoor storm windows. or INTERIOR WINDOW INSULATION PANELS as he calls them..

The pic above shows the results. (taken with awesome FLIR thermal camera)  I’ll post some Pics of my actual built windows in a little bit.

Disclaimer: I’ve got no relation to FLIR or Guy Marsden, they havn’t sent me a thermal imaging camera or a truck load of spare solar collectors. But as far as I’m concerned they both Rock.. Except that FLIR used to mean Forward Looking Infra Red.. so using that is like calling your company LASER..am I nit picking?   but still.. awesome product.

So..   This.. Very awesome informative  image is the reason for the previously described water cooling blocks for my video cards.

Check out this thermal Image I took with a borrowed FLIR Thermal Imaging Camera.

Inner Video card is RED

For Reference:

Yellow blob on bottom is Video card getting enough air.
Red Blob on top of it is the inner video card cooking,
This is why I need to find the time to setup the water blocks!
Blue Circle on top is the copper Water block on my CPU, That is doing it’s job!

Disclaimer: the FLIR Camera is AWESOME and super easy to use and I would be happy to take a review Unit  from the company and would then post tons of more crazy pics. But unfortunately they and I have NO relation and I had to borrow this one.  oh well.

So, I love my crockpot.  They are so great.  Efficient, slow cooking, set it and forget it (wait, did Ron Popeil trademark that phrase?)!  I love chicken.  Its fewer calories for the protein than beef.  Its usually cheaper.  So, I wanted to cook it in my crockpot.  A lot of recipes out there say to use boneless, skinless chicken to cut on fat.  Well, ok – but you also can cut a lot of flavor that way.  And end up with tough, though wet, chicken.  Also, in order to save money I bought some whole chickens.

Now the dilemma: how do I cook a whole chicken in the crockpot without getting it super greasy?  Vegetable steamer – stainless steel and some of them have removable center posts (like the one I bought).  Take the center post out (if you can’t, just spear the chicken – I’ve done this too).  Do your normal roast chicken prep, like dry rub or something.  Keep the cavity empty for this one, though I suppose since you’re cooking 8 hours you could technically stuff the bird.  I put some seasonings on the skin, then cut up some veggies (specifically this time red peppers, onions and carrots) and placed all of this on the steamer in the crock pot.

I cooked it on low overnight.  Basically had it in there by 9 pm, stopped it about 7:30 am.  All that grease drops to the bottom.  There’s still some fat in the chicken, but the meat isn’t sitting in rendered fat.  Its tender, fall off the bone kind of chicken.  Easy to separate bones from meat (use the bones later for stock).  And you have the stock at the bottom for use later (maybe in making rice…  i usually cool it off in the fridge first and scoop off the congealed fat before using).  So…  rice, chicken and vegetables – so good.  Take the skin off or your personal trainer will yell at you!

We’ve decided over here at IT Legends that we need a new theme.  So, we are looking for WordPress Themes (we use the latest stable release, always).  We’re dark and according to James very 90’s – they want their background back.  Hey James, we want you to write again – get back up on that horse man…  or maybe we’re just looking in the wrong place?

So, if you’re getting this post on facebook or an RSS Feed instead of going to the site directly, please run to the IT Legends site and poke around a bit.  We like the layout, but we can be convinced to find another theme.  Does it need to be free?  How about free as in beer or less than $50 (but we prefer free since we’ve only made $3 – actually considering the cost of the domain, hosting, etc – we’re still in the red).  Yes, if you send a theme suggestion that we end up using, we will buy you a beer (or a beverage of your choice) the next time we are in proximity.

Repairing a friend’s PC tonight. She got it for free and it didn’t work.. Someone had previously tried to fix it and replaced the Power Supply with one that is so not correct it is silly… They put the 20 pin connector into the 24 pin slot on the mother board.. hmm Why won’t this power on???

I know, I know.. those pins aren’t “Required” but with a Pentium D class power hog, what do ya expect..

Luckily we had an extra PS around the house(surprise)

Anyway.. to the point.. I’ve mostly managed to avoid Vista.. really, but this PC has it installed and I have to say.. WoW.. It really sucks!

First I couldn’t connect to my own wireless networks, so I disabled the  firewall, then it displayed that it was back on, then it displayed that it was off again,  is not on.. now it is on..Then Windows showed it ON but not at recommended settings. So I click on what is recomended.. mistake…

So I mange to get onilne and head straight to windows update… more fun…

First, There are no important updates, just optional ones.. So I click to see those.. oh wait.. now there are actually 69 critical updates right next to those… . sigh..

I’ve used Windows 7 for a couple hours, nothing like this crap….

Disclaimer: I’m still on XP on my main PC.