Do you hear that?! That isn’t coyotes, it is the wind howling outside. Good thing we’re safe and sound inside.
As is usual for Friday night, our neighbor Sarah came over to have dinner with us and watch West Wing on DVD. We’re up to Season Six, where President Bartlett has the MS attack on his China trip. We had to turn up the volume a bit so we could hear over the blowing wind. We had just started the second episode of the evening when there came a knocking at the door.
It was Jarred, our neighbor. A tree was down on the road and he couldn’t get home. He wanted to borrow a chainsaw because he really didn’t want to hike up to his place in the dark to get one. We grabbed both of our saws and headed to the downed tree. This thing wasn’t the biggest tree in the world, but with all of its foliage, it formed a barricade as tall as a man. Jarred and I started at opposite ends, limbing the tree so we could get at the trunk. Once all the limbs were out of the way, we cut the trunk and rolled the log to the side of the road. (Tomorrow I’ll go back with a truck and drag that log to the house, it will make good firewood. :)
The job done, Jarred ran me back to the house. I stowed the chainsaws in the garage and wished him safe driving. He drove up our driveway, and then started to back down again. Yep, in the time in took him to drop me off and turn around, a tree had fallen across the driveway up by the road. I grabbed a saw and trudged up to the top of the drive. This was a little tree, one cut, then the two of us pushed it off to the side. This time, I sent the saw with him, wanting to make sure he could get home.
Back inside Christie and Sarah had finished the episode and were ready to watch another. After the third episode, in which President Bartlett struggles with his disability and watches his last China Summit fall apart, Sarah went home. Not wanting to take any chances, we sent our other saw with her in case she had to clear any trees.
She did. A while later, our neighbor Regis stopped by to return the saw we sent with Sarah. He was coming up the hill and arrived in time to help her chop up yet another tree. Good thing she had a saw with her, huh?
What do you want to bet that every single resident of this mountain has a saw in their car/truck tomorrow? Heh, I wouldn’t take that bet!
Monday, November 13, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Water, water, all around. (Or, why it was raining in the garage.)
Sunday morning. A rare opportunity to sleep in. I woke up from a dream in which I was searching for a bathroom. You all know what that means, right? I stumbled to the bathroom, did my thing, and headed back to bed. I only got a few steps because the toilet was making a whistling sound. Darn, I was SOOOO looking forward to sleeping in.
I knew this whistling sound from experience, the cistern that supplies our water was empty. We don't have a well, we have an underground spring, which is captured in a cistern up on the hillside opposite the house. The cistern is higher than the house, so our water pressure is supplied by gravity. It is a sweet setup. That is, unless someone leaves a water hose running overnight. It happened a few times this summer, which is why I knew the whistling sound.
Still in my PJs, I put on my mud boots and headed outside. I was going to turn off the hose and go back to bed. Peculiarly, the hose wasn't on. I opened the hatch to the crawlspace under the house and cocked my ear. Nope, no sound of running water (as from a broken pipe, which also happened this summer). OK, where else do we have pipes? The garage.
In the summer of '05, we had a young couple living in the apartment above the garage, and they installed a water line from the house to the garage. Predictably it froze in the winter, and in the spring of '06, there was a tiny crack seeping water onto the garage floor. I patched it with silicone tape and went on with life. Well, this lucky Sunday is when the pipes really cracked, and it was raining in the garage.
One of our winterizing tasks was to crawl under the house and turn off the water to the garage so it would not freeze again. Now seemed like a good time. Christie volunteered to do the crawling, bless her sweet, angelic heart! From deep under the house, she called out "Which valve do I close?" I told her it was the one on the line to the garage. She called back "There isn't one."
I'm trying to keep this blog family friendly, so I won't repeat what I said next, or about whom. What it came down to was that the only way to shut off the garage was to shut off the main valve. Nice.
Home Depot here I come. Christie went back to bed and I drove to town. I got a 3/4" valve and PVC cement, then headed home. The 3/4" valve did not fit the 3/4" pipe. This is when I learned that there is a difference between CPVC and PVC. I bought the wrong thing.
Fast forward to 9PM, we finally have the right parts to install a valve, so we turned off the main valve and put in the new valve. The PVC cement needed 2 hours to cure, so we left the water off overnight. This morning we turned the water back on and everything looks good, no leaks.
It is currently raining outside the garage, but I'm told that is normal.
I knew this whistling sound from experience, the cistern that supplies our water was empty. We don't have a well, we have an underground spring, which is captured in a cistern up on the hillside opposite the house. The cistern is higher than the house, so our water pressure is supplied by gravity. It is a sweet setup. That is, unless someone leaves a water hose running overnight. It happened a few times this summer, which is why I knew the whistling sound.
Still in my PJs, I put on my mud boots and headed outside. I was going to turn off the hose and go back to bed. Peculiarly, the hose wasn't on. I opened the hatch to the crawlspace under the house and cocked my ear. Nope, no sound of running water (as from a broken pipe, which also happened this summer). OK, where else do we have pipes? The garage.
In the summer of '05, we had a young couple living in the apartment above the garage, and they installed a water line from the house to the garage. Predictably it froze in the winter, and in the spring of '06, there was a tiny crack seeping water onto the garage floor. I patched it with silicone tape and went on with life. Well, this lucky Sunday is when the pipes really cracked, and it was raining in the garage.
One of our winterizing tasks was to crawl under the house and turn off the water to the garage so it would not freeze again. Now seemed like a good time. Christie volunteered to do the crawling, bless her sweet, angelic heart! From deep under the house, she called out "Which valve do I close?" I told her it was the one on the line to the garage. She called back "There isn't one."
I'm trying to keep this blog family friendly, so I won't repeat what I said next, or about whom. What it came down to was that the only way to shut off the garage was to shut off the main valve. Nice.
Home Depot here I come. Christie went back to bed and I drove to town. I got a 3/4" valve and PVC cement, then headed home. The 3/4" valve did not fit the 3/4" pipe. This is when I learned that there is a difference between CPVC and PVC. I bought the wrong thing.
Fast forward to 9PM, we finally have the right parts to install a valve, so we turned off the main valve and put in the new valve. The PVC cement needed 2 hours to cure, so we left the water off overnight. This morning we turned the water back on and everything looks good, no leaks.
It is currently raining outside the garage, but I'm told that is normal.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
I have the power!
At last, our primary generator is working again. Over $400 later, and putting some old parts back on, we have the 15kw propane generator charging the batteries again. There are still a few minor parts that need changing to get it running smoothly, right now it tends to backfire on startup. However, it is only about $20 worth of parts, and I can install them myself.
For the gearheads out there, we had the points and the condenser replaced, and the generator seemed to have good spark, but would not start. The tech suggested a new pressure regulator, which I installed myself, but didn't solve the problem. I checked each component of the fuel delivery and found them in working order. The tech came back out yesterday, and finally got it running by putting our old condenser back on. Evidently the new one was bad, out of the box. We've ordered a new distributor cap and rotor to complete the electrical overhaul, and that should help with the backfiring.
I'm still primarily a software engineer, but each time we get something fixed, I quiz the guy until I understand why it failed. I'm getting to where I almost understand internal combustion engines and how they work.
For the gearheads out there, we had the points and the condenser replaced, and the generator seemed to have good spark, but would not start. The tech suggested a new pressure regulator, which I installed myself, but didn't solve the problem. I checked each component of the fuel delivery and found them in working order. The tech came back out yesterday, and finally got it running by putting our old condenser back on. Evidently the new one was bad, out of the box. We've ordered a new distributor cap and rotor to complete the electrical overhaul, and that should help with the backfiring.
I'm still primarily a software engineer, but each time we get something fixed, I quiz the guy until I understand why it failed. I'm getting to where I almost understand internal combustion engines and how they work.
Friday, October 20, 2006
My momma told me...
...if you don't have anything nice to say, then say nothing. I don't know if I can do that this time.
My employers are going to red-tape themselves right out of business. My contract came up for renewal in mid-October. They renewed me for another 6 months, the maximum allowed by policy. That was nice, because knowing where my next mortgage payment will come from helps me sleep better at night.
However, and it is a huge however, they neglected to sign me up for another 6 months of network access. I'm not talking about my ISP, I pay for that, and it is up to me to make sure it is working. I'm talking about the privilege of logging into their network so I can do my work. On Wednesday when I logged in for work in the morning, I was able to connect to their VPN, but I could not use any of their services, like e-mail, chat, or remote desktop. I knew what this meant, I'd seen it every six months, like clockwork, since I started working for them. They'd turned off my account.
I called the Help Desk, and they confirmed that it was disabled. They told me my boss had to submit a request on an internal website. He did. A few hours later he received a message saying his request was fulfilled. It wasn't. The Help Desk confirmed that my account was still turned off. You might think the Help Desk could do something about it, but no, the group in charge of allowing me to work is a secretive organization that works solely from an e-mail drop-box, with no phone number, and no way to find the name of a real person belonging to the group.
The request to re-enable my account was assigned a case number: A141631. Don't you feel all warm and fuzzy? In order to communicate the failure of A141631, my boss had to send an e-mail with "A141631" as the subject to the mystery drop-box. He got back a message that they had assigned case number A141848 to his request to look into case number A141631's failure. Go ahead, sit down, my head is spinning too.
On Thursday morning, my friendly Help Desk person confirmed that my account was still disabled. Luckily, a few hours later, the cloak-and-dagger squad dispatched a message to my boss that A141484 had been resolved. Great, now I can get back to work!! Oh, if only it were true.
Do you recall that on Wednesday, I could connect via VPN? Well, on Thursday, I could not. My ever so helpful Help Desk person confirmed that my network account had been enabled (hooray!) but that my internet proxy account was disabled (boo-hiss!). Was my internet proxy account covered under the original request? Nope. Does the same group handle the request? Nope. Was there a phone number I could call to expedite the request? Nope.
This time ... get this ... I had to log on to an internal website, download and fill out form #210, sign it, have my boss sign it, and then fax (yes, FAX) it to the number listed on the form. Well that first step was a doosey since I could not log on the their network at all. Thankfully, my boss was kind enough to send the document to my gmail account. I printed it out, signed it, then scanned it back in as a PDF and sent it back to my boss so he could print it out, sign it, and fax it to Whoever-They-Are.
If you think there is something wrong with this process, join the club, my friend. A quick Google shows that the fax machine was invented in 1843. Here I thought I lived in the 21st century, the information age, but we're still using an antique process by which the 25 kilobytes of data from the original document is blown up to 272 kilobytes and, as a bonus, is no longer machine readable. What do you bet that on the other end of the fax line there is a computer which translates the fax data into a digital image and stores it in an optical database archive, wouldn't that be a hoot? (OK, I'll admit that my sense of humor might be a little skewed on this one.)
So, here we are, it is Friday morning, and I still cannot log in. Do I have anything nice to say? Well, I can say that the Help Desk people, while less than helpful, were very friendly. Hey ... that's it! I said something nice, so I can justify the preceding rant without upsetting my mother!
My employers are going to red-tape themselves right out of business. My contract came up for renewal in mid-October. They renewed me for another 6 months, the maximum allowed by policy. That was nice, because knowing where my next mortgage payment will come from helps me sleep better at night.
However, and it is a huge however, they neglected to sign me up for another 6 months of network access. I'm not talking about my ISP, I pay for that, and it is up to me to make sure it is working. I'm talking about the privilege of logging into their network so I can do my work. On Wednesday when I logged in for work in the morning, I was able to connect to their VPN, but I could not use any of their services, like e-mail, chat, or remote desktop. I knew what this meant, I'd seen it every six months, like clockwork, since I started working for them. They'd turned off my account.
I called the Help Desk, and they confirmed that it was disabled. They told me my boss had to submit a request on an internal website. He did. A few hours later he received a message saying his request was fulfilled. It wasn't. The Help Desk confirmed that my account was still turned off. You might think the Help Desk could do something about it, but no, the group in charge of allowing me to work is a secretive organization that works solely from an e-mail drop-box, with no phone number, and no way to find the name of a real person belonging to the group.
The request to re-enable my account was assigned a case number: A141631. Don't you feel all warm and fuzzy? In order to communicate the failure of A141631, my boss had to send an e-mail with "A141631" as the subject to the mystery drop-box. He got back a message that they had assigned case number A141848 to his request to look into case number A141631's failure. Go ahead, sit down, my head is spinning too.
On Thursday morning, my friendly Help Desk person confirmed that my account was still disabled. Luckily, a few hours later, the cloak-and-dagger squad dispatched a message to my boss that A141484 had been resolved. Great, now I can get back to work!! Oh, if only it were true.
Do you recall that on Wednesday, I could connect via VPN? Well, on Thursday, I could not. My ever so helpful Help Desk person confirmed that my network account had been enabled (hooray!) but that my internet proxy account was disabled (boo-hiss!). Was my internet proxy account covered under the original request? Nope. Does the same group handle the request? Nope. Was there a phone number I could call to expedite the request? Nope.
This time ... get this ... I had to log on to an internal website, download and fill out form #210, sign it, have my boss sign it, and then fax (yes, FAX) it to the number listed on the form. Well that first step was a doosey since I could not log on the their network at all. Thankfully, my boss was kind enough to send the document to my gmail account. I printed it out, signed it, then scanned it back in as a PDF and sent it back to my boss so he could print it out, sign it, and fax it to Whoever-They-Are.
If you think there is something wrong with this process, join the club, my friend. A quick Google shows that the fax machine was invented in 1843. Here I thought I lived in the 21st century, the information age, but we're still using an antique process by which the 25 kilobytes of data from the original document is blown up to 272 kilobytes and, as a bonus, is no longer machine readable. What do you bet that on the other end of the fax line there is a computer which translates the fax data into a digital image and stores it in an optical database archive, wouldn't that be a hoot? (OK, I'll admit that my sense of humor might be a little skewed on this one.)
So, here we are, it is Friday morning, and I still cannot log in. Do I have anything nice to say? Well, I can say that the Help Desk people, while less than helpful, were very friendly. Hey ... that's it! I said something nice, so I can justify the preceding rant without upsetting my mother!
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Late for Work
I was late for work today, but I didn't oversleep, there was no traffic, and I didn't miss my train. I was late today because we had to load a little colt into the trailer so he could go to the vet. The colt however, had other ideas.
A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that Mariah's baby, Cordova (or Cory) had a goopey eye. That is a technical term which means his eye was draining lots of fluids. Upon closer inspection, his eye was also cloudy, so we whisked him and his mama off to the vet. Cory wasn't halter broke yet, so we were lucky that he hopped right into the trailer behind his mama.
At the vet's office, we found out he had a deep cut right in the middle of his eye, and that, left untreated, the eye would likely rupture and eventually he would lose it. The vet installed a very thin tube in Cory's eyelid and then sewed the eye shut. We've spent the last two weeks squirting medicine into his eye through the tube as often as we could, up to 10x per day. Needless to say, the little guy has had a hard couple of weeks.
This morning, we led mama into the trailer, and Cory decided he'd rather eat frozen grass. We tried to herd him towards mama, but he was very clearly saying "Thanks guys, but I'll pass, the last time I got in there you sewed my eye shut!" So, there was nothing left to do but halter break him in order to lead him into the trailer. About 30 minutes later, we had him on a lead line, though he was clearly not happy about it. With some coaxing and lifting of feet, we got him in the trailer and quickly shut the door.
Then I went to work, late.
A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that Mariah's baby, Cordova (or Cory) had a goopey eye. That is a technical term which means his eye was draining lots of fluids. Upon closer inspection, his eye was also cloudy, so we whisked him and his mama off to the vet. Cory wasn't halter broke yet, so we were lucky that he hopped right into the trailer behind his mama.
At the vet's office, we found out he had a deep cut right in the middle of his eye, and that, left untreated, the eye would likely rupture and eventually he would lose it. The vet installed a very thin tube in Cory's eyelid and then sewed the eye shut. We've spent the last two weeks squirting medicine into his eye through the tube as often as we could, up to 10x per day. Needless to say, the little guy has had a hard couple of weeks.
This morning, we led mama into the trailer, and Cory decided he'd rather eat frozen grass. We tried to herd him towards mama, but he was very clearly saying "Thanks guys, but I'll pass, the last time I got in there you sewed my eye shut!" So, there was nothing left to do but halter break him in order to lead him into the trailer. About 30 minutes later, we had him on a lead line, though he was clearly not happy about it. With some coaxing and lifting of feet, we got him in the trailer and quickly shut the door.
Then I went to work, late.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
16 degrees
I doubt you'll ever hear me complain about the cold. I love it. I might have complained last February when one of our mares foaled in -30 degree weather, but really, it wasn't the cold so much as having to be awake in the middle of the night.
So let me just say for the record that being out in 16 degrees of chilly goodness doesn't bother me. I'm writing this not so you will feel sorry for me, but so you will get a real idea of what it is like "Living the Life."
My alarm went off at 6:30AM like always. After a couple of snoozes, and a little staring into empty space, I was ready to start my day. Morning chores today included feeding the cats (so they will stop complaining about how we starve them to death) and feeding the wood stove. Once I coaxed a bit of flame from the new log I threw in, I checked the power.
Earlier you saw my solar array. That solar power feeds into a bank of 12 6-volt deep cycle batteries arranged to produce 24 volts. Whatever the sun doesn't provide, our generator does. Whenever I come in or out, I check the battery level, it is a good habit to be in as it avoids some nasty surprises. At 23.8 volts, it is time to charge the batteries, at 22.0 volts the system shuts down to avoid damaging the batteries. I consider this a nasty surprise.
After feeding the cats and the stove, I checked the power, and we were down to 23.4 volts, which means we need to charge the batteries SOON. I threw on a flannel jacket, grabbed a flashlight, and trudged out into the pre-dawn darkness. My shoes crunched in the frost on the lawn. I gassed-up the backup generator and started it.
Our primary generator runs on propane and is fed from a 1000 gallon talk, so it never needs to be gassed-up. Our primary generator operates on a remote switch, so there's no need to trudge anywhere. Out primary generator can be started automatically by the power system without any intervention from me. Our primary generator, as you may have guessed by now, is not working.
So there I was trudging back into the house. Luckily the morning fog had lifted from my brain enough to wonder why the batteries weren't charging. Turing on the generator isn't enough, you have to make sure the power is actually being consumed. OK, back outside, yep, the breaker on the generator was popped. Aha, that explains why last night's run didn't charge the batteries enough...
Welcome to life off the grid. Would I trade this in for power lines and electric bills? Nope.
So let me just say for the record that being out in 16 degrees of chilly goodness doesn't bother me. I'm writing this not so you will feel sorry for me, but so you will get a real idea of what it is like "Living the Life."
My alarm went off at 6:30AM like always. After a couple of snoozes, and a little staring into empty space, I was ready to start my day. Morning chores today included feeding the cats (so they will stop complaining about how we starve them to death) and feeding the wood stove. Once I coaxed a bit of flame from the new log I threw in, I checked the power.
Earlier you saw my solar array. That solar power feeds into a bank of 12 6-volt deep cycle batteries arranged to produce 24 volts. Whatever the sun doesn't provide, our generator does. Whenever I come in or out, I check the battery level, it is a good habit to be in as it avoids some nasty surprises. At 23.8 volts, it is time to charge the batteries, at 22.0 volts the system shuts down to avoid damaging the batteries. I consider this a nasty surprise.
After feeding the cats and the stove, I checked the power, and we were down to 23.4 volts, which means we need to charge the batteries SOON. I threw on a flannel jacket, grabbed a flashlight, and trudged out into the pre-dawn darkness. My shoes crunched in the frost on the lawn. I gassed-up the backup generator and started it.
Our primary generator runs on propane and is fed from a 1000 gallon talk, so it never needs to be gassed-up. Our primary generator operates on a remote switch, so there's no need to trudge anywhere. Out primary generator can be started automatically by the power system without any intervention from me. Our primary generator, as you may have guessed by now, is not working.
So there I was trudging back into the house. Luckily the morning fog had lifted from my brain enough to wonder why the batteries weren't charging. Turing on the generator isn't enough, you have to make sure the power is actually being consumed. OK, back outside, yep, the breaker on the generator was popped. Aha, that explains why last night's run didn't charge the batteries enough...
Welcome to life off the grid. Would I trade this in for power lines and electric bills? Nope.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Toys for boys
It is nothing new, but a few months ago I got a PSP, that is Playstation Portable for those of you who are acronym-challenged. It is a pretty decent game machine, but that isn't really why I decided to write about it. This device, dismissed by many in favor of Nintendo's DS-Lite, is a multimedia extravaganza. Those of you who know me will notice right off that I'm not one to use the term extravaganza lightly! ;)What impresses me most about the PSP is its ability to handle all manner of portable entertainment. Of course you can play games on it and load it full of MP3s, but there's so much more. You can also load it with your favorite photos like a virtual leather wallet filled with pictures of your family, or if you don't have a family you can keep the picture that came with the wallet and tell everyone she's an old girlfriend. From there, you can amaze and captivate your friends with full motion video! Anything encoded in MPEG-4 video plays just fine on the PSP, and looks very good. Yep, that old collection of Star Trek episodes you have on VCD can now go mobile!
Now how much would you pay? Wait there's more! In addition to all of that, the PSP supports wi-fi internet access and has a built in web browser. One day I was in town and wanted to see a movie, so I pulled into the parking lot of a hotel with free wireless internet, and checked movie times for the local theaters. Also, because the browser has flash support, you can download Shockwave Flash games and other content to play offline, just in case you managed to get bored with all the other features.
Nope, not done yet! Along with the web browser is an RSS feed reader. If you click on a feed link, it will ask if you want to add it to your feeds. From the feed reader, you can download all your favorite podcasts, video podcasts, pictures and music for your viewing/listening pleasure when you're not near a hotspot. If you're not up on RSS, it stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is an easy way to subscribe to your favorite feeds, whether they are current events from CNN or the latest of Strong Bad's Emails.
Surely you're done now, Dave?!? Not quite. While I have not dipped my toes into the homebrew scene, there are thousands of programs out there written by Joe and Jane Schmoe. Not all are games, one person recently came up with software to turn the PSP into a digital voice recorder if you plug a mic into the headphone jack! There are also more than a dozen emulators available for your favorite game consoles of yore. Miss the SEGA Genesis? There's an emulator for that.
Now how much would you pay? Wait there's more! In addition to all of that, the PSP supports wi-fi internet access and has a built in web browser. One day I was in town and wanted to see a movie, so I pulled into the parking lot of a hotel with free wireless internet, and checked movie times for the local theaters. Also, because the browser has flash support, you can download Shockwave Flash games and other content to play offline, just in case you managed to get bored with all the other features.
Nope, not done yet! Along with the web browser is an RSS feed reader. If you click on a feed link, it will ask if you want to add it to your feeds. From the feed reader, you can download all your favorite podcasts, video podcasts, pictures and music for your viewing/listening pleasure when you're not near a hotspot. If you're not up on RSS, it stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is an easy way to subscribe to your favorite feeds, whether they are current events from CNN or the latest of Strong Bad's Emails.
Surely you're done now, Dave?!? Not quite. While I have not dipped my toes into the homebrew scene, there are thousands of programs out there written by Joe and Jane Schmoe. Not all are games, one person recently came up with software to turn the PSP into a digital voice recorder if you plug a mic into the headphone jack! There are also more than a dozen emulators available for your favorite game consoles of yore. Miss the SEGA Genesis? There's an emulator for that.
As you may be able to tell, my enthusiasm for this machine is unbridled (please excuse the pun). There's so much more that this little box can do, I haven't even scratched the surface. There's an IR port on the top, but none of my software uses it (yet?). Sony is releasing a GPS receiver and webcam for it this December. What other uses might we come up with? Who knows, the sky is the limit!
For now, I'm working my way through Daxter (37% so far) and using it as a PMP (Portable Media Player) almost every day.
For now, I'm working my way through Daxter (37% so far) and using it as a PMP (Portable Media Player) almost every day.
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