Nice hack IG.  I need to implement that one.  I still have most of the wiring from the old security system at my disposal.  Many inputs on the window sensors, so how did you mux them for best results?

And it would call the cops if it got above 85.

Looking outside it is a calm night.  No ninjas will overtake my electric snow blower.  Mwa ha ha.

Damned Pervect Ninjas.  <grmbl>

Mon Dec 17 2012 07:37:10 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: HVAC nerd

The thermostat wiring in our home was very messy so I ripped it all out and re-did it.  No more wires taped together and zip-tied to the pipes.  And of course I couldn't resist the opportunity to add an indicator panel that shows the status of everything, including which floors are calling for heat.  Yes, I'm a nerd, and proud of it.

Nice labels.  What is the label printer you used that does 2 rows?

Fri Dec 21 2012 11:45:03 AM EST from dothebart @ Uncensored Subject: Re: HVAC nerd

oh, and in doubt, starting out on elementary school with the troubles is also possible.

It probably depends on if you started on a 386 or a teletype hooked up to the local power companies mainframe.  Most of the trouble probably started shortly after that.

Sat Jan 05 2013 10:35:00 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

There's some TV show called Geek, right? bunch of high school kids
feeling hated and walked all over and they break out into song like 5

times during each episode.

It's called "Glee" and it totally doesn't help the situation. All of the songs are really awful renditions of the originals, and the show really works hard to glorify stereotypes.

I want to see a show about a high school where the nerds totally bludgeon the jocks and other in-crowd people to death with baseball bats.

hm, do I loose nerd-state if I ride 10kkm bicycle but continue to hack about?

its just... it makes me happy. and gives me good ideas what to hack.

Did the latter for the first and the former for the second, actually - thus the surprise.  Oh well....folks are welcome to check it out on my LJ, if want.

you either need to have a window with the html displayed, and cut'n'paste what you see, or press the tiny html button, and paste it into the window that pops up.

Interesting...had expected the picture to embed....

<a href="http://ladyhawke-wings.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/266/2423" target="_blank"><img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ladyhawke_wings/7779527/2423/2423_900.jpg" alt="Nerds" title="Nerds" width="700" height="516" /></a>

Nerd Herd is the 'geek squad' from the tv show Chuck.

I was called a nerd in school and mistreated, but not for being interested in computers. More for just doing my own thing. 

oh, and in doubt, starting out on elementary school with the troubles is also possible.

Fri Dec 21 2012 07:33:25 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: Re: HVAC nerd

Here's the bottom line: unless your interest in computers (or whatever) caused a PAINFUL SOCIAL STIGMA for you in high school, you are not an authentic geek/nerd.

yes, for some reason them simply letting you alone doesn't work out.. neither it happens in reality nor you would become the person you are now.

What does it sound like?

Wed Dec 19 2012 12:30:24 PM EST from triLcat @ Uncensored

Nerd Herd!!!

Nerd Herd!!!

But "nerd" is now mainstream, too. People are purposefully buying glasses that let them look like Clark Griswold... and they call them "Nerd Glasses".

You're a geek, IG, not a nerd.  ;-)

The thermostat wiring in our home was very messy so I ripped it all out and re-did it.  No more wires taped together and zip-tied to the pipes.  And of course I couldn't resist the opportunity to add an indicator panel that shows the status of everything, including which floors are calling for heat.  Yes, I'm a nerd, and proud of it.

IG...are you planning on refilling the pool once it's drained?

If not, do you fully drain it every year?

I had an above ground pool, and always left it about half full, in order to provide the necessary pressure to keep the sides as upright as possible. I've always been told that fully draining (and leaving drained) an above ground pool was bad mojo.

Laugh it up, fuzzball.  It just so happens that I'm using the very same pump that I use to dewater the basement during hurricane floods.  I started a couple of days ago just with a siphon but today I added the pump because the outfall site is about a foot and a half higher than the bottom of the pool.

I've got all the parts disassembled and labeled for next year, but I'm sure I'll be making some "improvements" before then.  This year's assembly happened in hot July when we just wanted it finished so we could go swimming.  Next year I'll be starting the setup two months before swimming season starts.  The first thing that has to go is the cheap plastic hoses Intex supplies with their pools.  Those will be replaced with good quality flexible rubber tubing from the hardware store.  I might also plumb along the back wall of the patio with some sched-40 PVC and build a little "pump house" behind the garage so I don't have to extend electric out to the pool site.

At this point my project is to drain the pool.  And I have to do it very slowly to avoid a flood.  My plan is to get a siphon going through a garden hose and let it trickle out over the course of days.  This should be fun.  :)

If you put the pump on the "cold" end, it should have no trouble pulling the water out of the pool and delivering at least 3 bar (note this is a metric unit, you probably use "square tripple pounds per quarter feet" as units) of pressure to pump the water up on the roof.
The cheap pumps (a little less than 100$) can only lift water, they can not create enough underpressure to pull the air out of the water supply pipe. Manual says it should be able to lift water 10m on the output side, so reaching your should be easy.
 can at least clean our verandas roof with the same method and there is plenty of pressure still left, it doesn't just trickle out of the hose. But thats only about 2.5m height.

I guess once the coil is filled with whater its less work for the pump since all the lifting is done by then...

you also should calculate the weight of these coils, to check with your houses static.

I guess, if you fill the coil while on the ground, plugging a cork into the ends you can do the lifting for the pump ;-)

heh... if that gardenhouse has sunshine on the roof,  you could just wind a coil of that hosepipe on the roof, maybe put some black foil above and under and you're set.

otoh, you wouldn't need a fire then. ;-)

Mo Jun 18 2012 18:34:44 CESTvon IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I still have several "mushroom" style fixtures in my house. I went through half a dozen CFL's in them before I realized that the heat which builds up inside these fixtures is enough to fry the electronics inside a CFL or LED lamp.

Yes, maybe the expensive ones last longer. Can't say if that would be true for our wiring here. But if 25$ lamps only last one year...

Another concern I have is that powersaving or not, their production has some ugly deformed ecological footprint considered to the footprint of normal bulbs. Maybe I will try one of those Philips things. 

The problem I see with all these LED and other CFL lamps is, that they never live up to the promised life time. This may be due  to our wonky wiring, the guy doing the wires was probably drunk.

We replaced all the halogen lamps in our living room with el cheapo leds (20 lamps for 20€) and they all died within weeks. They were also too dark and the light was some ugly blueish artificial light. Therefore we are back ob halogens which last way longer. And I do not care that they emit heat, since in winter you want it warm and even in summer, our living room is always 10 degrees C under the outside temperature, if we keep the windows shut. So we need the lamps even in summer and the additional heat isn't that bad. 

your fuel tank should have a tiny whole in the screw, so it can replace the fuel the engine uses by fresh air.

if this hole is clogged up, a vacuum builds up in the tank making it harder and harder for the engine to suck the gas out of the tank until it fails and dies.

The previous owners of my apartment were in love with Halogen spots... We have them in the living room, kitchen, and one of the bathrooms. It would take some serious money from an electrician and some kind of designer to get rid of them... oh well. Someday. Thankfully, it's not really my problem (my parents own the apartment - we rent from them). 

The LED replacements for the halogens in my new kitchen fixture arrived today:

 (click to enlarge or go to http://goo.gl/AMv2J to see it)

When the package lists its features as "Efficient / Energysaving / Esecurity" and the flap reads "This photo is only propaganda to prevail in kind inside the box" ... I think it's safe to say that the label which reads "Made in China" is completely redundant.

I'm probably going to regret buying these but they were $5 each so it's a decent experiment.  If the light color is too cold I'll just buy Cree replacements and string these up in my garage or something.  GU10 base have been popular for halogens for some time now but the interesting thing is that the greenazis have started pushing GU24 as part of the "energy star" program; a bulb with a GU24 base is required to be Energy Star compliant.  So now, not only are we evil Earth-hating neanderthals if we buy incandescent bulbs, but we are also going to be gradually forced to change all of the fixtures in our homes.

Of course, E27-to-GU24 and GU24-to-E27 adapters are already available for $2 on eBay, completely circumventing the whole thing.

Once LED light bulbs become cheap enough for me to buy them in bulk packs and replace every single light in my house, I'll do that. Until then, CFL's it is.

I admire how much work goes into LED fixtures (I used to work with Bluestone Lighting on projects at my previous job), but the technology and required electronics are becoming cheaper and cheaper. Once they're cheap enough for me to pick up 20 - 30 of them, I'll do it in a heartbeat.

Halogen lights are the work of an evil mastermind... They're terrible power hogs, produce too much heat (unless you're into that sort of thing), and are fragile, not to mention expensive. 

Incandescent and CFL lights have run their course and need to be replaced by LED's, pronto.

-- 
http://skpacman.hopto.org

Looks nice :) Enjoy! And you reminded me that I need to contact someone about seeing an apartment...

Came out nice, IG!

Between a destructive dog, a climbing cat, and a moody 3-year-old boy, my back screen door had taken a beating.

1 new roll of fiberglass screening, 1 spool of rubber screen rope (the black rope that holds the screen in the frame), and 2 metal-mesh bolt-on screen guards, one on either side of the door.

yep.. that ought'a keep them from destroying the screen on my back door.

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

You can build your own water powered pump.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Worlds-greenest-water-pump/

Sat Sep 10 2011 20:20:01 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Update: the "knocking" wasn't the engine after all. It was something under the deck that I fixed. Now the problem is that the engine is "missing" a bit. What should I be cleaning/replacing ?

did you check the distance of the spark? with a feeler gauge?

and maybe clean it a little with sand paper...

@waterpoweredwaterpump: Ah, now it makes sense.

@lawnmover: I refilled ours today and thought about "cleaning" the engine, too. Was thinking about adding some of these oil/fuel additives like you get for cars. Only a drop or two, since it might simply blast away if I use more. Not sure, though. They always worked on my cars, made the engine run more smooth and silent, easier starting, etc.

something like

http://www.google.com/search?q=sifon&hl=de&client=iceweasel-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=BHRoTu7fLsXEsgaZtYmbAg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CDIQ_AUoAQ&biw=1276&bih=609

just the other way around?

and once the whater is over the top point, its going by itself

does it work like communicating tubes? so you have to suck the whater through a pipe which has some way up, and some down, and unless air comes in, the whater in the down-tube pulls up the rest?

Tue Sep 06 2011 20:04:37 EDT from Ford II @ Uncensored

it's a water powered water pump.
you pump water out of the ground, then use that water to pump water out of the ground

weird...

Wait.. a what?! Is that some kind of perpetuum mobile?

I'd rather not have people sabotage my brand-new trampoline... If I catch anyone attempting to ruing it, or harm the people intended for using it, they'll be blugeoned to death with an aluminum louisville slugger baseball bat and a metal tiki lamp...

great sabotage ideas for my neighbors though.

This weekend I realized putting together a trampoline is more difficult and physically demanding than actually jumping on the damn thing.

I got more of a workout smaking the pieces together with a bit of 2x4 and a hammer than I did getting on the thing and using it.

Mind you, this was a 14' trampoline with full safety enclosure.... my 3-year-old better love me, damnit....

<laughs>

And yet snowblower sabatoge remains the rage!

Don't Pervects like the cold?

IG- is this your revenge for the snowblower?

Homeownership on a fortune cookie!

Feh.  Went through that myself in March.  Hope it's cheaper to replace for pervects than hawkes!

A little more upscale than Hell, but with less interesting neighbors.

Hell?

ah. well. and no mailorder? ;-)

maybe its the belt that got tired?

or... a capacitator which tells the motor which direction to turn is dead...

Mine is a real basement with a real poured concrete floor.  This is only the third or fourth time we've ever had water in it; nearly all the time it's bone dry.  But when the water table rises above the bottom of the basement floor, there are places where it seeps in.  Due to all of the rain we've had and all of the melting snow, it's still seeping in even after two days.  It's never been this bad before.

I burned out a small water pump because I didn't notice in time that it had sucked up one of my daughter's teddy bear hair bows, and the pump ran dry and melted.  So today I bought a new one (difficult to do during a flood, but a cow-orker gave me a heads up that the local Home Despot just got a new shipment in).  Aaaaaaand...

I am now the proud owner of my very own PUD-L-SCOOP!  Behold my PUD-L-SCOOP!!!1

(If you can't see the image, go to http://tinyurl.com/68l3gka )

@IG: the difference between a Cellar and a Basement is if it's 'finishable' or not. (usually... depends on what part of the country you're in or if the builders were lazy or not)

If it's dirt floor with either CinderBlock, Stone n' Mortar, clay brick n' mortar, or gravel-crete (loose concrete), then it's a cellar. A cellar is only meant to keep the house above the ground, and water is supposed to collect there. Cellars are for wet and humid climates. Or places with little seismic activity. Almost all of the cellars are impossible to finish or turn into a 'basement'. most under-floor crawl-spaces are considered cellars.

A basement has finishable, discernable rooms with electricity and/or plumbing running to the rooms. A poured or pre-formed concrete base, built on top of sewer/water lines that are permanently connected to the house, not 'soft-lined' to the house. Much less likely to get water in it since it's supposed to be a sealed section of a house, not just a base to keep it off the ground.

My house sits on a cement slab...I've never had basement/cellar flooding issues. ;-)

This week it's difficult to find someone who *doesn't* have basement water.
We're still bailing out.

My house only had a problem with basement water when the main sewer drain in the basement got clogged and spewed all of the water used in the house into the basement... that was fun.

The only other problem with water I have in the basement is our garage is part of the basement... so snow covered cars leave puddles (that quickly dry up because my basement is heated)

I haven't really had a water _problem_ but it's been a nusense in the past. No water in my basement now.

Mon Mar 07 2011 11:09:18 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: Re:

This week it's difficult to find someone who *doesn't* have basement water.
We're still bailing out.

Look no further, I don't have basement water ((I live on the third floor) the one above Luka)

Wed Feb 16 2011 11:28:25 PM EST from Ford II @ Uncensored Subject: Re:

Ford, gutters are also intended to help by redirecting the water flow
to an area that is (supposed to be) sloped away from the house so

You can still do that with grates in the floor.

Actually, some of those grates work surprisingly well (I'm using a few myself).  Unfortunately, these also get clogged and ice-damned....but at least it's ice damned on the ground vs the roof.  What they don't do well, though, is redirect the water away from the foundation when it falls off the roof, which has a tendency to cause a lot of basement water (at least out here)/

It's a special kind of paint?

*snicker*

Never heard that particular eupemism, but that was damned funny.

Mon Feb 07 2011 01:30:35 PM EST from triLcat @ Uncensored

fell off the roof used to be a euphemism for getting one's period.

Sorry to hear your gutter is menstruating.

 

hm...

interesting.. the idioms in AE rather go into obfuscating stuff, while german idoms rather go into the direction to make fun out of something... like...

calling a Lawyer "Miet-Maul" aka rent a jaw [replace by some apropriate vulgar word for mouth]

or...

having a big beer apetite  "unterhopft" under -hop-ed (hop - the plant you make beer of)

and, IG... as long as theres snow around, you don't need to replace that ;-)

fell off the roof used to be a euphemism for getting one's period.

Sorry to hear your gutter is menstruating.

Ford, gutters are also intended to help by redirecting the water flow to an area that is (supposed to be) sloped away from the house so that the water flows away from the foundation instead of falling directly next to it (and thus often causing leakage into the foundation and/or basement).

That's some heavy ice, IG.  Mine are just...encased in the ice like that 5,000 yr old mammoth they dug up a few years back.

I have no problem with religious humor -at least not at that level.

I won't be coming over for ham or cham though... If you drop by here, I wouldn't mind making a batch of latkes with you.

Shiny is good.  Easy cleanup is better!  Pop the grates, wipe down, and shine on you crazy oven! :)

French toast for the whole family this morning.  The big burner kept my oval-shaped griddle evenly heated.

cool! have fun with this.

and... sorry for no xmas-cookies :-( that most probably sucket a lot?

After enduring "the Christmas with no cookies" we finally got our new oven today.

Converting it from natural gas to propane was pretty easy.  Climbing out from behind it after making the final connections ... that wasn't so easy.

Finally I can cook again.  I've wanted a new range (or "cooker" to you weirdos on the other side of the pond) for a long time, but I've kept the old one on life support for many years now.  Finally it was time.  Note the continuous grates.  No more burner covers sliding all over the place when I'm trying to move pots and pans around.  That drove me crazy.

Do Dez 30 2010 00:43:53 EST von IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Heh. :)

Now I'm hearing that there is such a thing as HPS and/or HID bulbs with built-in ballasts that screw into ordinary Edison screw sockets. Does that really exist?

even the first ones with leds start to show up.

I guess the EU is a little more forward on this issue.

Have any local auction houses around?  Here the Sherriff's department regularly auctions off that sort of thing for real cheap...along with hydroponics gear and various gardening tools.

unless you live on the san andreas thing the possibility of earth quakes and ground lifting/sinking is not as high..

(unless you live in cologne and they build a subway next to your house :-[ )

well, desulphurisation of the smoke from coal powerplants gives you more gypsum than you can handle, no need to dig it out..

I guess american wood based houses would do better there, but its either stone or carcass...

now thats fancy.

a city in middle germany had some deep drilling to use ground heat for radiation.

the drilling hit a gypsum layer...

and made the way free for whater to enter that layer.

if gypsum mixes with whater it swells.

result: the city is lifting up to 30 cm (~ one foot) -> Houses all over the place have cracks of up to 1 cm diameter...

and now... if one has a little knowledge about the ground, an knows what happenes if that gypsum finds a way to drain off...

my hot guess is that within the next thirty years 'stauffen' will become a ghost town.

usualy air conditioners should have a pump transporting the water outside, maybe its pipe is clogged up?

fridges have tiny cups sitting on the engine to evaporate the water...

boo-boo isn't stranger. at least not stranger than IG

Fun way to meet folks, I suppose.

That presumes you still have a job that pays enough so you can keep making house payments with inflated money.

Depends largely upon when you want to have more of your money available to you.  All those years you could be having a few hundred extra in your pocket every month.  And by paying it off quickly, you're paying in uninflated dollars.  If you take out a 30-year fixed now, the final $1000 (or whatever) in 2040 is going to be a lot less money than the first $1000 this year.

And of course, mortgage interest is tax deductible.

I've often wondered, if I ever suddenly found myself in possession of enough money to pay off my mortgage, if it would be a good idea to do so.

Now thats a cool way to get rid of those:

http://hackaday.com/2010/07/01/wasp-sucker-clears-the-air/

(the nest in the garage roof of my parents wasn't that much smaller...)

The bank agreed, BUT crossed out the line that says that in case of conflict the rider will be the final word on it, as opposed to the original contract. That, of course, defeats the whole purpose of the rider and my lawyer concluded that the bank is just stupid. Their lawyer did verbally agree that it makes no sense to take out that line. We wrote back that they crossed it out in error and are proceeding based on the assumption that the rider is controlling. They they not deny or confirm that.

We ARE getting a very good deal on the house because it was foreclosed. The prior owner had a variable rate mortgage and when his monthly payments went suddenly from something like $4,000/month to $7,000/month he just stopped paying the mortgage. It took 2 years to foreclose. We sort of know the guy, he has a business in Monsey we go to occasionally and his daughter was in Adina's school (not the same grade).

It said in large font bold letters that we are not authorized to make changes to the contract. I took a business law class once, I know that's now how it works. The bank is in fact not trying to be fair. However, they did finally come to realize what we're talking about and said that they have to have an unchanged copy of their contract signed BUT they will add an addendum that overrides the contract and will concede the point to us. Their addendum did not actually say that it superscedes the original contract, did say we don't have to provide the C or O until a "reasonable time after closing", but failed to say that in doing so we would not be in material breach of contract. So our lawyer rewrote the addendum, which does not say that we have to provide the C of O at all, and I signed that and we'll know tomorrow if they take it.

Our laywer says the bank, as the soon-to-be former owners of the property, have to right to demand a C of O at all, because why should they care at all if property that we own is in livable condition or not? Maybe we want to buy it and never live there? Of course, when we apply for a mortgage, the bank we borrow from will need that certificate, but we're not doing that until after closing. I'll find out tomorrow.