My problem isn't with a lightbulb, it's with a smoke detector 20 feet up on my living room ceiling. It started chirping when the battery went low a couple years back, then the chirping went away for a long time. It just started up again. If I can't scrounge up a tall enough ladder, I might take a few shots at it with a basketball to see if that'll shut it up again.

got 10' ceilings in my victorians. All I got is a step ladder.

I'd think that by the time the smoke accumulated enough 20 feet up to trigger the alarm that the fire would be rather large and established.

Yeah, If my life depends on that particular smoke detector going off, I'm fucked. I've got smoke detectors all over my house since it was remodeled a few years back. It seems like there's one for every decent sized room. I don't mind that there's a smoke detector in my living room, but I wanna choke the person who decided it should be at the highest point in the room.

a ham.

this thing I bought will probably twist a smoke detector off.

Some grab bars for my bathroom, brushed nickel soap dish, heat tents for the grill, flashlight, key carabiner at Lowes. 98 bucks or so.

New hat for $0.99 plus tax:

1x General Tso's Combo Platter Special [w/pork fried rice and egg roll]
1x Small Broccoli in Garlic Sauce
8x Fried Chciken Wings
1x Small French Fries
2x can of Ginger Ale
------------------------------------------
$21.50

I've been cooking so damn much lately, that I finally went online and found a cutting board that's just right. 12x18x2, maple & walnut, from Brooklyn Butcher Blocks. It wasn't cheap and, of course, as soon as it shipped to me they announced their Black Friday discounts of up to 20% off. Oh well. I love it. The went nuts putting mineral oil on it before shipping it to me, so I have to keep wiping it down every so often and it's still pretty damn oily.

BTW, notice the copper oil can behind the butcher block. I put some extra virgin olive oil in that about a month ago and for some reason the color of the oil has changed to radioactive bright green. Anyone know why that would happen or if I should worry about it?

No idea why it oxidized, Steez. Any chemistry ppl in the house?

Black leather split sole ballet slippers. 'On Stage' Madison Av. $30
Sebastian 'Sharper' hairspray. $1 travel size. Sally Beauty supply

copper oxide turns green.perhaps the oil absorbed some of the copper and when it hits air the tiny flakes of copper turn green as they oxidize. I don't think we tried this in college chemistry 101 but it sounds plausible.

You do that and you'll shit bricks!

Four Brooks Brothers white dress shirts, 16½ x 34 Regent fit, US$199. Less than fifty each is a nice price for these staples.

Rockabilly/bowling shirt Red with cream panels. About 32 bucks.
2 Cramps Tee shirts about 30.

4 Angry Bird Space plush toys from Amazon. $42.62 My kid wanted them for X-mas. I thought they would be price gouging, since they haven't been out for a couple years, but when I saw they were so cheap, I just got em all. Cheapest was $8.xx, priciest was $13.xx.

Also, I was at Walmart last night to get a money order, and I saw the Star Wars Lego set he wanted, so I grabbed it. Death Star Final Battle $79.00

iRobot Roomba 880. $580.

Gaff tape a blow up sex doll to it. Hours of fun

J Crew sample sale yesterday. Garment district
Total $150. Wouldve been $230 before markdown
Periwinkle courds.
Straw clutch purse
White cropped netted texture chemise
Cashmere grey sweats

Menorah candles. $4. Pathmark. Brooklyn.

Are you a member of the tribe now?

I thought she was Jewish by injection.

12 Month(s) of GRAPEVINE ONLINE $34.97

I like to think of things in terms of their worth in alcohol. That's about a half gallon of Bacardi. I prefer Bacardi Gold for mixing with cola.

pomade

A "Make America Great Again" trucker hat, courtesy of the Trump campaign. I like to wear it around the airports. Gets a lot of thumbs up.

A new 1/2hp Craftsman garage door opener from Sears.

Fop or Dapper Dan? .......my hair!!!!! Are you two days from everywhere?????

I'm a bit of both maybe. Ladies like good hair. I shaved my head forever so I'm catching up on lost time.

Date and Time: 12/10/2015 04:44 PM
Application Number: 140770
Total Amount Paid: 31.20

PLEASE KEEP THIS FOR YOUR RECORDS

Your dog license numbers will be assigned and tags mailed out within 24-48 hours after bank approval.

this candle

http://www.amazon.com/Paddywax-Candles-Apothecary-Collection-Cardamom/dp/B00H2X53UU

there is also a room spray thingy i bought. same.

Should have gone w/ the Tobacco & Patchouli one, then every time you light it and bang a chick, you can pretend she's a dirty hippy.

Cool drawing by an Inuit dude on the street. There are a lot of FN people who come here and wind up panhandling and all that shit. Some of them are actually fucking great artists.

Both of these things are fscking redundant, Brah.

Rock shirt w my friend on it. xmas gifts

shitty glasses. socks. there wasn't any super awesome boxing day deal anywhere. and i'm pretty sure they stash really good shit when they have some "40% off entire store" deal. Panzer knows I'm sure.

Hands free Bluetooth car speakerphone thingy that clips on my sun visor. I found it online from the company store and got it for half-off. Looks pretty slick. Does calls over the car radio or through the speaker, does voice activation for calls, turns itself on and off when my phone is within range to save battery, and has a car finder for when you forget your parking space location.

Car finder sounds like the best feature.

A new knife sharpening system. The Wicked Edge Pro Gen 3. Ridiculously expensive, but I have a ton of knives and I've never been good at using sharpening stones by hand. And I don't trust anyone locally to do a good job on my knives because I think they all use machines that grind off a lot of metal. Also, during the fishing season, I might need to sharpen my knives every single day to deal with all of the salmon filleting we do.

With this, you clamp the knife down in the middle of the vise and then dial in the desired angle you want for the blade edge. Then you start sharpening, progressing through the various grit levels of stones that you can attach to the sharpening wands, from 100 grit to microfine ceramic. I absolutely love the design of this product. I wish I owned the patent.

Speaking of knives, I just bought a Shun Classic 10" chef's knife. Wanted to see what all the rage was.

My daily use chef knives are made by Shun and they're part of the reason why I bought that sharpener. Japanese knives use a very hard steel that will take a nice razor's edge, but if you aren't extremely careful with them the edge can be kinda.... chippy? I had to use my coarsest sharpening stone on a couple of my Shun knives to grind out little chips in the edge.

Yeah. Some might say "brittle" but I like "chippy" better because it describes that specific sort of brittle perfectly.

I bought the 10" just because I wanted to see what all the rage was. And that way, if I bought a larger set, I wouldn't have a redundant knife. The cut is incredible. I do worry about chipping. I guess the way to reduce that problem is to use them for their intended purpose only. I'll have to do some research, but my best friend's ex father in law (is also the guy who sang at my brother's first wedding) is considered by several sources to be the knife sharpening master of the DC-Baltimore area. I'll take some of my junk knives to him to see what he can do.

That looks cool but damn dude $300. This does the same thing for a fraction of the cost. A little more work and doesn't look as cool....

If you want the knife sharpened right, they have to take metal off to thin the blade. All you do with a set up like the one you have is edge the knife, which is why you will have to do it every day during salmon season. As you go further into the blade, the edge will be thicker and last a shorter amount of time.

That said, I understand why you wouldn't want to get pricey knives hollow ground. Same reason people have a Nissan to commute in and a Benz for the wife and weekends.

P.S. Next to no one, professional or amateur, knows how to put a rolled edge on a forged knife anymore, much less how to do it and make it look nice.

I know you know a lot more about this than I do. But it seems like you'd have to sharpen (edge) a knife quite a few times before you get far enough into the blade to made the edge super wide. Anyway, I'm enjoying using the system. I can get my old knives to sharper-than-new condition in under 10 minutes.

I know a rolled edge is impossible for me, but I think with this system you can do a compound edge or double bevel. I don't know enough about sharpening knives to know why you would want to do that though. As far as a cool looking edge, after finishing up with the finest ceramic stones, you can use leather strops and diamond paste to get a "mirror polish." This isn't my knife below, but it's an example of what you can do with this system:

I guess I could've bought one of those instead. I didn't do a lot of comparison shopping to be honest. I was back on the liquor for the holidays, so I ended up purchasing quite a few items around 2am-4am which I'll call liquored up impulse buys. I had started off looking at an Edge Pro system, but I ended up liking the Wicked Edge system more. I know it's a lot of cash, but it's going to get a lot of use.

Since I've been thinking a lot more about knives in general these days, my latest liquored up impulse buy is a new folding knife. I settled on a knife made by Spartan Blades called the Akribis (pronounced ak-ree-VEES). Spartan is a company owned by a couple of former Special Forces snipers and they give all of their knives Greek names. Akribis means accurate & sharp. I love this knife. The craftsmanship is perfect and I love the design. I have large hands and it fits them like it was made just for me. And the flip open action is great and sounds almost like a switchblade. Plus, it's beautiful. I got black steel with a gray titanium frame and carbon fiber inserts on the sides.

It depends on the knife. Forged knives are often a thicker blade, so it will happen quicker. Stamped knife like a Victorinox/Forschner, they have thinner blades and softer steel, so you can get away w/ edging them probably 1/3 to 1/2 way through the blade w/ very little noticeable difference in how long it lasts.

I looked into the wicked edge system a long time ago. I don't know if they improved it but back when I was looking there were after market parts everybody was buying to make the system more durable and managable. The older system had some cheap guide rods that were prone to bending during use. The after market rods were better quality and longer to let you work on longer blades.

The longest blade I have is 10" and it worked fine with that. One change with the latest system vs. previous ones is with the vise. Both sides open and grip the blade, whereas with past systems only the right side would open and that caused the right and left side to have a different angle for the blade edge. Now there is perfect symmetry.