Soda Can Stove
Last night, I made a soda can stove. Melissa has been reading about various people’s methods of cooking for the Pacific Crest Trail. We talked about the soda can stove, and I decided to make one. It’s pretty easily done, as long as one is careful to follow the building guide, and maintain strict tolerances during construction. That is, measure twice, cut once. 
It took about 45 minutes to make, from start to successful flaming operation.
So after building it, I of course had to test it out! We ended up cooking dinner with it. It will boil a cup of water in about 4 minutes. Faster than the “real” stove in the house. Wow. It took about 1 oz of fuel to boil ~7 cups of water for our ramen and udon noodle dinner.
I considered rewriting the build instructions here, but rather than do that, I’ll direct you to the instructions I used. They’re on this website.
Last November, I went to Portland, OR for some MySQL training for work (High Performance stuff). The training was great. I took the Amtrak Coast Starlight down from Seattle. The ride was pleasant. At one point, the train stopped, and I looked out and saw that there was a loco next to us. Since the opportunity presented itself, I went down to the lower level of the car, and opened the window. I quickly shot the Amtrak around the curve ahead, and this GP39 sitting on the rails.
Today, we went to the model train show for the 4th division[1] of the pacific northwest regional chapter of the national model railroaders association[2]. Whew, a mouthful. This group puts on a show every year at the pacific science center in Seattle. This year, I ended up going at the same time as the Flickr Meetup group, to which I had tentatively rsvp’d a maybe.