PING: Hobbs, re "laser" beams

I'm impressed. I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday and she can recall almost a year ago!

I haven't read the entire thread. Has anyone suggested wife 2.0?

Gives me an idea. The garage door has potential for getting in the way of something hanging near the entrance. An elastic bungee cord could connect from the top of the garage door to the back wall ceiling so when the door is closed the string is taut and high (not strangling anyone). When the door opens the string is relaxed allowing it to arc touching the windshield at the bottom and still visible at the top. The bungee can be attached nearer to the bottom with a separate cord pulling toward the door at the top when closed but still allowing it to be drape when the door is open. Use a bright orange bungee and she has a runway stripe all the way along her path of vision.

The mirror could be put on the door since this is likely the only part she sees at first.

Ok, here's a good one, though not exactly what you asked. You have two problems (centering and front separation) so you need two variables.

Attach two line-optic lasers, one to each side of the windscreen. Angle the lines at 45 degrees from vertical, with the top of the line inwards. Angle them so the beams cross in front of the car.

Paint a vertical stripe down the wall on the centreline, and continue it across the ceiling if necessary. The two laser lines will intersect on this stripe when she's in the centre.

As she approaches, the intersection point will move across the ceiling and down the wall. When the car is the right distance forwards, paint a horizontal stripe at the intersection. This indicates distance from the wall and tell her when to stop.

ASCII art time. The vertical and horizontal lines are painted, the angled ones are converging beams with an inward slope.

Too far away, but on center:

\ | / \ | / \ | / \|/ /|\

--/-|-\-- / | \ |

left of center: \ | / \ | / \ |/ \ / / \

--/--|\-- / | \ |

Too far forward:

\ | / \ | /

--\-|-/-- \|/ /|\ / | \ / | \

I would expect such an answer from a misogynist like shortbit but I suppose it's a common leftist's disease.

Umm, I meant the October 1st that comes around in about a month, not last year's.

So what is the design goal? Helping your wife or impressing your neighbors?

Wow! I don't even have future memory. She is *very* impressive. ;)

Only you would think that "what is for dinner" is past tense.

Are they mutually exclusive goals?

A lot of nights, we compete to be the first to say "There's nothing to eat!"

Well, there's always grits and eggs.

Probably so.

I remember that from when I was young and not married. Looked in the fridge ... oh no! Except that was in Europe where they didn't have 24/7 supermarkets so I had to live with whatever was left. An apple, a tiny yoghurt beker and beer. I never ran out of beer though, ever.

In all that time I am married that never happened. My wife is always super-organized and when something is missing to cook a certain meal there can only be one reason: The store didn't have it.

I am that way in only two respects. For business and tax matters, of course, everything is always caught up and organzied. The other area is brewing for which I set up a few databases to keep thing flowing and give me the ability to plan. I guess nowadays they'd call that "apps". Without that computer we might some day end up with lots of Saison but no more Pale Ale.

Well, don't assume that we are total idiots and degenerates. There's barely room in the 2-car garage for Mo's Fit, but there's always an ample stock of beer. I park on the street.

Mo works harder than I do, so we both get home around 6:30, hungry but not well stocked. And not feeling much like cooking. Thank goodness for cheese and grits and peanut butter.

We make a monthly attack on BevMo. They have exotica like Harp and Purple Haze and the big Stella that actually tastes like beer. Guinness Blond and Widmers and Anchor Steam and Fat Tire we can get at Safeway.

We like variety. Do you get tired of the beer that you brew? Seems like large quantities would be efficient to make.

Sort of our situation, except our garage is a so-called *tandem* arrangement... two cars deep on one side, one car deep on the other.

Right now I use the deep side for my shop, and park the truck on the street so that "N" can get her doors fully open.

I'm toying with the idea of parking the truck in the deep slot since it's so rarely driven, and move my workbench, etc, to the side-by-side location, since its width requirements aren't as much as a vehicle.

Thus the inquiry for "park assist" ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Meals and beverages are some of the few things we do not compromise on no matter how busy we are. Even when I was a studnet and studied hard for some engineering exam I cut out 1-1/2h in the evenings and cooked myself a nice big meal. All from scratch and fresh, no TV dinners, frozen pizza or similar low grade food.

I make 5-gallon batches and we have 5-10 very different beers on hand at any given time. Home brew's shelf life is much longer than store bought. Very quickly we realized that if we ever have a store bought beer we must drink that first. Unless it is a Belgian Trappist Ale or similar it'll taste bland if we had a home brew before.

My main motivator for home brewing isn't saving money or absolutely wanting that as a hobby. It is the taste. With very few exceptions you can't buy that. Every brew taste like fresh from tap or from a growler. Plus we have modified recipe beers such as out American Honey Wheat that you can't buy anywhere.

Time-wise a lot of hours are sunk into brewing, depending on complexity and combining sessions somewhere between four and six hours per batch. Sometimes I can bow out for 10-15mins at a time during the boil, to help with yard work or on a hot day to jump into the pool. Always keeping an eye on the pot because a boil-over would be nasty.

While on brewing, you might find this follow up to the video on that 18th century brewery interesting,