brian schettler

This is my first Ask Metafilter question. I want to know what’s a good, cheap way to make your apartment/house/dwelling smell better. It’s not necessarily covering up or removing bad odors, but just making it smell good for cheap. There are many air fresheners, but they may not be made of the best chemicals and they are definitely cost-prohibitive. There are lots of good responses so far. I had never thought of planting some natural herbs, or simmering cinnamon and/or other spices in water on the stove to make your house smell good.

Oh, and this in no way is related to me getting married in a few months…

Tags: apartment, house, oder, smell

I guess sometimes you just have to get things done. In a short amount of time. Like, one night. But I feel pretty decent today, and I’m glad I’m not rushing to turn in my project at 6pm tonight.

Tags: Projects, School, sleep

I don’t think I’ve posted this before. A reminder: If you use a USB drive, stick a text file in the root directory called “IF FOUND” and then put in your contact information (and maybe reward info?). Whether you get your drive back or not depends on the soul who found it, but at least it’s better than nothing. I’ve found a drive before and was lucky to find a homework paper that had the owner’s name in it, which I then looked up on Facebook. Someone without these tools may not be lucky enough to find the original owner.

Tags: lost&found, owner, return, usb

I was thinking about renaming my blog (or maybe starting another one?) all about the good things in life (bah, it sounds cheesy). I think it’s good to focus on some of the nice things instead of the bad ones all the time. Here’s a nice thing I found recently: a free online countdown timer that shows the time remaining in the title bar to help you keep track of time. I will definitely be using it this week to help me stay on task.

Tags: app, free, gtd, timer, website

I’m trying to be optimistic about spring break, but it went by quickly. Too quickly. Plus, I was pretty upset at the amount of work I had to do over the break. But, I don’t want to be negative about it. Often times if I had to choose between homework and spending time with my family, I spent time with my family (or my future in-laws). It might hurt in the short term, but I think in the long run it was the right decision.

Tags: break, family, School

I’ve added some widgets on the side here. First is Twitter, which for the longest time I thought “how stupid!” but I’m going to try it out. I think it’d work a lot better if I had unlimited texting. The second, and more important in my opinion, are my del.icio.us bookmarks. I love del.icio.us and am always finding new links, so if I haven’t made a post in a while, you might check out what I’m finding interesting at the moment.

I’m ready for spring break next week, but I have quite a bit to finish before that happens.

Tags: delicious, twitter, website, widgets

From commoncraft: Twitter, Google Docs, Social Bookmarking.

Tags: commoncraft, cool, internet, videos, web

It’s good to see a company get it right…taking something that is usually unpleasant and making it a pleasant situation for their customers. Like changing your oil…it can be a miserable experience if you don’t have anything to do, but at Janzen’s Toyota, it’s not that bad. Prices are reasonable, and the customer waiting area is awesome. They have free wifi (although I haven’t checked it out yet), internet-enabled computers to use while you’re waiting, free cappuccino, coffee, soft drinks, and bottled water. They also have big, comfy chairs with a nice flat-screen TV. It’s not a bad experience at all. I had quite a bit of studying to do today and I got my and my fiance’s oil changed.

Tags: business, car maintenance, economy, oklahoma, stillwater

I like listening to the stuff coming out of TED. There’s a lot of cool ideas like this. Someone is researching crows and their ability to be trained. He’s trained them to pick up coins and deposit them in a machine that gives out peanuts. Further applications could be pieces of trash, or who knows what else.

Tags: boingboing, cool, ideas, ted

Well, I don’t believe they actually ever went away, but I did “outgrow” their notes some time ago, after I finished Calculus. Then while searching today for hash tables, I found their notes on the subject. So, if you need some free “Cliff Notes” to get you through, SparkNotes is a great resource.

Tags: computerscience, cs, help, notes, shcool