I realized this morning that I’m about six months late in changing my air conditioner filter. I was in Home Depot, and I thought, “You know what goes really well with air filters? Beef jerky!” That’s right, I’m an unabashed Alton Brown fan. I saw this episode of Good Eats a few years ago, and I occasionally think, “Huh, I could do that.” Well, I bought three of the cheapest 20x20 filters and 1.

I am the proud owner of a Lodge 10" Cast Iron Skillet. I bought it at the Lodge Factory Store in Tennessee for, like, $12 because of a small blemish. I’d heard about making pizza in a cast iron skillet, and tonight, I thought, why not? I largely used this guy’s recipe (minus the part where he made his own dough and sauce. Maybe later.): http://www.macheesmo.com/2011/03/cast-iron-pizza/ One trip to Whole Foods later, and I had some Ingredients!

I was working on a piece of code today, and I decided to refactor some of it. “This method is beginning to smell bad,” I thought. “I should break this series of if/thens off into a different method.” One thing led to another, and soon enough I had some considerably better-structured, more readable code. But did it work? As luck would have it, this is the first project I’d gotten a chance to build from the ground up, and as such, the first project I’d been able to build with a whole stanking lot of test coverage.

So, I know I’m way behind the curve on the Arduino. I got caught in a vicious cycle of, “Can I justify ordering an Arduino? No, I don’t really have a project for it.” “Should I start this project? No, I don’t really have an Arduino.” Well all that changed, because I have an Arduino now (finally! Gosh!). I’d ordered a bag of resistors and LEDs on Amazon, and I have a passive IR motion sensor, so while watching Watership Down this evening I assembled my very first project.