J. Jason Lazarus Blog

Being the geek that I am, I’ve perused through ThinkGeek quite a few times over the years - always virtual window shopping and thinking that most of the prices made it unrealistic to purchase anything that wouldn’t be labeled anything more than a toy. One of the many things that caught my eye over the past few years are these Sun and Moon Jars - solar powered LED lights that turn on as the sun sets. I’ve thought that $34.99 was far too much for a cursory interest in what has recently become a pseudo-obsession of mine (oxymoron, no?) Months passed and I looked at them fondly, still refusing to muster the interest in them to buy them - until I stumbled upon a Digg link that redirected me to Instructables.com - a site dedicated to the techie side of DIY. Their own Sun Jar instruction used a limited amount of cheap parts to make a Jar for about $20 - provided that you bought new for each part.

Unable to find any used parts around town, I decided to run by Wal-mart on Saturday and see what I could find. I managed to find these perfect little solar lawn stakes for $4 a piece, promising 8 hours of light from a day’s worth of sun. I also managed to find a suitable glass jar for about $3 to put it in and, after dropping by Joann’s for some Glass Frosting, I had all the material that I needed.

In the end, I’m pretty proud of what I got - although there’s always room for improvement: The Instructables site suggested dismantling the lawn light and only install the parts into the jar - thankfully my jar was just big enough to install the entire head of the lawn stake light without dismantling anything ( a good thing too - I couldn’t have without a dremel tool!) In future, seeing that I am planning to make more of these, I’m hoping to purchase lights that I can dismantle in the attempt to put several panels in one jar - the more LED’s, the brighter the light!

In the end, I opted to not color the light so that I’d get the max output of the light - and overall I still love the effect. so, for about $8 I managed to do exactly what Thinkgeek was trying to sell me for $35. I can’t attest to the actual light output being the same, but mine are perfect for nightlights in the living room. In fact, I wouldn’t mind, if I can perfect getting about four of these solar panels and LED lights into a single container, using them as some sort of decorative back porch lights - either way, these contraptions look a lot better than the lawn stakes they used to be. Anyways, this is a great quick little project for kids or those young at heart - try it!

It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on Aidan - he’s doing just fine other than being sick a bit eariler this week and during the second week in January.  He was hit with a pretty narly stomach flu back then - everything spewing out from both ends on top of a 103 degree temperature at times - the poor boy, for about a week, only wanted to hold on tight to either one of our chests - and sleep.  Put him down, no matter how long he had been asleep, and he was instantly awake giving you the most pitiful look, begging “why did you put me down, don’t you love me??”

That being said - other than that, he’s growing fine (starting to completely grow out of his 9-12 months) and progressing fine.  He’s babbling constantly, smiling constantly and, now that his flu is done, overall a very, very happy baby.  I keep moving this date up further and further but I’m pretty certain that within the next two weeks he’ll take his first deliberate steps.  Currently he will, at times, stand completely by himself from being propped up by a parent or the couch - he’ll let go and just stand there, wobbling, for about 10-15 seconds.  Then, plop!  Onto his butt.  He’ll do non-deliberate steps already while in a standing position - if anywhere near the couch, he’ll do a “half step wobble fall-down onto floor” routine, but not much else.  We almost got a “full step wobble fall-down onto floor” yesterday, but I do recognize the difference between that and *real* walking.

Talking - well, I don’t think he’s interested in that yet - at least not anything that makes a lick of sense to us.  He’s obviously attempting to communicate verbally, realizies that his voice can get our attention and notices when we grab his snacks that particular cute noises will get them in his mouth quicker - yeah, other than that, he’s content.  We’ll wait on that.

He’s starting to eat more and more real food - as in non-baby food.  Although it’s not limiting our current purchases in that department, it is making meals a bit more interesting - watching the pleatora of faces he’s got for each different type of food we let him try.  He’s still not weening off of the breast - still gets it during his 1am/2am wakeup call, 10pm nightly meal and 6am breakfast - but the doctor is completely content with such a schedule.  The longer he stays to the breast, even though it is a hindrance to Deanna, is better for him.  The rest of the day, throughout his 10am/2pm/6pm feedings, he’s getting a mixture of jarred meals, oatmeal and Gerber fruits/vegies.  He is only iffy about a few foods - Peas and Country Chicken are apparently the only ones he really dislikes.

‘Coarse this update comes with its normal pleatora of pictures.  I had been bad and hadn’t done much updating to the gallery since November - aside from the late Christmas photos, but now we’re completely up to date:  Starting with the pics of him in his Frog Clothes Hamper through Turkey Day with Grandma/pa down in Kenai to Early January with another visit down to Kenai/Homer and ending with a trip to Lemongrass last week.  Speaking of which - I have never, ever been so pleased by a wait staff and how they responded to our child.  So many of them ignore his existance, place hot dishes far too close to his hands and, overall, disregard them.  Lemongrass’ servers came over, stole him for a good 15 minutes and let us dine without him as they played with him, showed him off to other customers and even played around a fake waterfall motive with him - he had a blast!  Seriously, any time this little boy gets to flirt, he has a freaking blast.

Well, here’s the <link to the gallery> - his 1 year birthday is just weeks away (we’re considering having some kind of party - who knows!) and we’ll get a health check come the second week in March.  Enjoy!

The conference call with Al Gore has just ended and it’s official - I’m a bad American - in fact, Al said that singlehandedly, my energy consumption for the month of January has ensured that our current ManBearPig investation will expand dramatically - all because of my personal neglegence.  It’s a sad day in the Lazarus household.

But I swear - there was rationale behind the steep increase in my consumption!  I swear!  Although I’d usually roll my eyes at such a claim from someone else, with the Lazarus household facing a potential and very real disaster during the first week of January, I restrain my own self-hate.  Here both Deanna and I are away from home and lo, the heater decides to give up the ghost.  Of coarse, it couldn’t manage to be a bit more conveinant in its disaster-making, no - it had to do it when the entire family was out of home and, on top of it all, the average temperature was between -40 and -50F.  Thankfully, my good friend Mike and my own parents were keeping an eye on the place and caught it before too much damage was done.

Water Consumption

Seems like the last time maitenance was done on the heater, the heater guy (is there a technical term for them?)  decided to lie and put in a couple incorrect parts - mainly a thinner nozzle that significantly restricted the flow of heating oil to the burner - and thus, causing limited combustion and thus, a complete lack of functionality.  In the end, the only “damage” was a frozen kitchen sink which took a couple of days to thaw as the heater was on the fritz for about four days.  This all explains the high electric bill - God Bless the electric heaters that kept my entire house from freezing completely.

So, even though you can see that there was a dip from the October ‘08 overuse, overall use skyrocketed during the -40F weather that we experienced for two complete weeks.  On the positive side, I’m sure this current month’s consumption will be far below January’s lofty heights.  After having an energy audit done during this fall, we’re planning several projects for the summer that’ll reduce our overall costs.  Additionally, now that the sun is starting to rise eariler (we’re up to 8 hours of sunlight again!), the huge south-facing window we have will actually be useful and hopefully we effect our overall use.  As for Water use, it’s slightly down but staying pretty constant around 90 gallons a day - pretty much right around national average.  I don’t forsee me doing much to reduce my impact there, but here’s to trying!

This one just really infuriates me.  Although it’s been a relatively constant stream of negative advertisements against this program over the last five years, recently, after Palin’s lost Vice presidential bid, “conservationists” have ramped up their opposition for the successful program.  Now, rather than targeting just the program, they’ve attached it to mainstream America’s distaste for all things Palin.  Of coarse, attaching more angry conservitives to this “savage” program is only muddling the facts rather than actually addressing the issue at hand:

Thank you - Defenders of Wildlife - you’ve just elaborated on how any animal that’s “savagely” hunted dies. Really proved a point there, high five. I’m certain that, from the security of your DC office, you’ve got a complete picture of the harsh reality that wolves, caribou, moose and rural people face five thousand miles away from Alaska - I’m also certain that the human effect that these wolves have on our native and rural culture in Alaska isn’t of any consequence. In fact, I’m certain that, confronted with a real wolf, that most of your members expect that it would come up and lick your hand - like your favorite pet at home - because, after all, dogs are just domesticated wolves, right?

<ADN Link to related story>

Get real.  Wolves in Alaska are overpopulating at an alarming rate.  Caribou and Moose populations, which many rural and native cultures throughout the state, as well as urban-dwelling hunters, depend on for their primary source of food, are being decimated.  As the above ADN article states, one herd was reduced from ten thousand to a mere 600.  Our entire state lacks the infrastructure to support the type of supermarket box-store mentality that any of these DC special interest groups are so accustomed to - in their eyes it’s more conveinant to go to the nearest Super Wal-mart and purchase a side of beef than hunt in the wilds of the National Mall.  I’m certain that if the coin was flipped and that the entire lot of these bleeding heart liberals were dropped twenty miles from McGrath (Google Maps Link) to see how’d they fare on the ground in the middle of wolf country - I’m certain that they’d blast away the first Marmot that crossed their path in fear of being eaten by the oversized squirrel.  Once you live the REASON for this program, you’ll rarely find opposition for it.

Whats worse is that this special interest group is touting what could only be called a conspiracy theory: that, in fact, Sarah Palin represents out-of-state special interest hunting groups and that’s why she supports this program.  Right - hunters have, en masse, organized - and have invested millions of dollars in insuring that their individual hunting trips to a small corner of the world will be protected and successful.  Right.  Next PETA will be saying that Palin has aligned with the Martians and established an intragalatic wolf pelt trading route.  Problem with their little theory is that the program, which is five years old now, was created before Palin’s administration existed - she’s done nothing short of cutting all ties from the previous Murkowski adminstration and I’m certain that any special interest bribes from Elmer Fudd, Inc. didn’t transfer over when the reigns of power changed.

Get your facts straight - she’s done this for the good of the state and to maintain a predator-prey balance that can only be successfully maintained by the current program - but I suppose the overwhelming scientific proof isn’t enough.  Here I sit in the second largest metropolitan area in the state, with over 100,000 residents in the entire Fairbanks Bowl area, and my parents contend with a wolf pack, six strong, less than five miles away from the center of town.  Even though Fairbanks isn’t one of the wolf-controlled areas, I’m confident that if this plan were to be repealed it wouldn’t be long till, in some areas of the state, the entire prey population would be decimated - and it’s only a matter of time that the wolves’ rather timid stance on humans as food would drastically change.

According to Washington, we should be ready and willing to starve our rural populations if it meant saving a couple dozen wolves - but once both people and wolves alike are starving, I wonder if their tone with change.  It’s easy to oppose a program that doesn’t directly effect you - it makes you feel good inside that you’ll be saving a couple of wolves thousands of miles away.  But why the hell do you think it’s your business to muddle in the affairs of a state-run program from five thousand miles away - Alaskans don’t, en masse, organize against white-tail deer control programs in Michigan - so why should District residents tell us how to handle our own problems?