http://cougarlife.com/

Life throws in some turns. All of sudden, you hate it all: the scene, the work, the people, the “friends.” And what was once precious is gone, evaporated, dissolved.

Life can also throw you back on the path. Time off, reflection, reconnection. To go on without that pure and innocent energy would be folly. It’s the reason why amateur athletes and honest performers offer the most mind-blowing experiences because they lose themselves in the moment. Not in their stats or sales or reviews.

I will be picking up one of my greatest loves again. With the renewed energy and passion that existed before the wheeling and dealing, before the salesmen, and before the numbness.

Stay tuned.

http://abovethelaw.com/2009/10/lawsuit_of_the_day_defective_u.php

I get the impression that the Windows 7 launch is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend suddenly show up on your doorstep wanting to get back together. She’s had some work done, apparently: stomach stapling to take off some of the weight, breast augmentation, and a radical nosejob to make her look as much like your current girlfriend as medical science will allow.

She’s pretty, of course, almost too pretty. She still wears far too much makeup and carries that desperate look in her eyes. The fragrant haze around her is the perfume she overuses to mask the scent of failure.

But standing there in that low-cut top, you’d almost forget for a moment what a psycho she was- how she used to shut down in the middle of a date and forget everything you were talking about and how she was only happy when you were buying her things. You’d almost forget about carrying around her legacy baggage or those nights when, for seemingly no reason at all, she would simply stop speaking to you and when you asked what was wrong she’d just spit a string of hex code at you and expect you to figure it out.

You complained about her for years before finally deciding to get rid of her, and here she is again. Though, somehow she seems like a completely different person now.

“I’m up here,” she says when she catches you staring at her chest.

Tempted though you may be, you know that over time she’ll get bored and slow down on you just like she always does. And then you’ll be right back where you started: trapped. She keeps you by convincing you that you don’t have a choice. You’re just not smart enough for one option or rich enough to afford the other.

“But I’m different now,” she says, batting her eyes innocently. “I’ve changed.”

Indeed she has. Apparently, she’s really into Cabala now or something like that. It’s helped her discover loads of untapped potential in herself. But it also means that you’ll have to buy all new furniture to fit with her understanding of feng shui. That’s not the only change she has in store for you. The minute you let her move in, she’ll have a new alarm system put in that succeeds only in preventing your friends from coming over on poker night.

She doesn’t love you, but she doesn’t hate you, either. The truth is that she couldn’t care less one way or the other. She’s here because she doesn’t want to be alone. Like all human beings, especially those well past their prime, she wants to feel wanted and, after a string of lost jobs and bad investments, she needs a place to stay.

But all in all, she’s OK. She’s a seven. She’ll do, I guess.

At the beginning of this summer I decided to replace my 9002, which was purchased in February.  I didn’t feel I was getting very good performance out of it.  Dry skimming on the unit seemed useless as all the gunk would built-up in the neck and never spill over.  Wet skimming gave me an overflowing collection cup full of clear water.  The unit also sat in the “sump” section of my AIO tank, and it just didn’t have the power to pull out the big gunk, which sits at the bottom and it just a cesspool of bacteria.  Ironically the pump in the Tunze died the day I ordered the SWC and I’ve been happier with the old backup BakPak I put on in the interim.  I have a primarily SPS dominated tank with 4 fish (2x clowns, Golden Tonga Blenny and a mandarin dragonnet) with a few LPS and a zoanthid rock (maybe my favorite part of the whole tank).  I have a tailspot blenny and maybe a small school of chromis left on my fish list.  When my mother purchased an Octopus BH-1000 for her tank and performed better than anything I’ve ever had, well I guess that would be the last straw.

After looking at a ton of Octopus hang ons, I narrowed it down to the 800s, and randomly found a link to the SWC.  I decided on the SWC for two reasons: 1) bigger neck and 2) input and output design.  The last thing I want to do on a new skimmer is mod it, and cutting off pinwheels or drilling holes in the skimmer body – which it seems everyone with an 800s has to do – was not very attractive.  The SWC has a much larger neck (3″x5″, essentially a SWC 160) that eliminates the overflow story heard by EVERY 800s owner I’ve ever spoken with.

If you take a look at the input and output design of the SWC, it is just ingenious!  The preskimmer can be adjusted up or down depending on your water level.  The output bends into a bubble trap before entering the tank.  Yes the part in the tank is white and we would all prefer black, but that just means more corals to purchase to cover it up . . .

The Deltec MCE600 fell out of favor, numerous reviews I found thought it was a good skimmer but not for the money.  An ATB Multi use would be at the top of my list if I had $650 to blow.  But for that price I would just buy a bigger tank with a sump and a SWC/MSX in-sump.

The skimmer arrives Tuesday via UPS, expect much more to come . . .

http://gallery.me.com/cminerd#100024/IMG_0010&bgcolor=black