Wave for me.

We have for the longest time had a couple of options in our house when it came to venting our kitchen: we either used a stand fan or a floor fan. As this new house has limited vents. first missing vent: dryer, had to cut a hole in the wall to install that. The next vent, while not technically a vent but just as annoying, the drain for the washing machine was installed but the breakout for the pipe was neither broken nor out. had to use a hammer, a screwdriver and a very sharp knife to unplug it so we could wash our clothes. Finally there is no vent in the kitchen so anytime pasta falls unnoticed under a burner and catches fire or something spills in the oven the smoke detector will ring. my wife teases me that I use the alarm as a timer, which never gets old by the way. :-)

So anyway back to my point.

my wife is an avid Craigslist reader. So one day she sends me a link showing a over stove microwave/light/vent.

Yay! vent.... wait there's no ductwork in the kitchen for that. other than that looks easy enough to install. first we do an in-depth search for just the right installation manual. found it yay! the first couple of pages do not make me happy as it gives the instructions on how to install the duct. I am not going to cut holes all the way to the roof to get this thing installed. reading it again I see one saving grace: ventless. buried in the instructions for wall-vent and roof-vent is the option to vent to the kitchen. seeing this as the best option for the least amount of cutting I follow these directions and flp the fan so it blows out the front.

the laundry list of required equipment was a little scary, framing square? 4 different drill bits, a pencil! like I said scary.

Since this was a Craigslist purchase, we only got about half the required screw, no toggles, though we did get extra lag-bolts for some reason.

Quick trip to Lowe's later and I'm ready to install this puppy.

holding up the mounting bracket I mark the holes so I can drill pilot holes and bore out for the toggles to fit. now I screw the plate securely to the wall.

the next measurements I made were especially painful as I was trying to fit the dimensions of the microwave under a cabinet with 3/4 inch overhang,upside down. after successfully drilling holes in the cupboard above the stove.

By the way did I mention this thing is heavy?

I lift the microwave into place and it is not sitting flush on the left side.

lug the beast back off the wall and notice the mount is bent. okay, plier time.

After straightening out the tab the microwave is now flush, but still being supported by me. As I can't see this as a viable long term solution I guide the 2 inch mounting bolts through the washers into the afore mentioned holes and …..

they don't fit. :-(

Luckily I have extra 3 inch bolts that came with the toggles.

Success.

looks like I knew what I was doing huh?













during clean up I could not get the Dirt-Devil away from my little flower helper. at least she's willing to be a big helper. After all the dust has settled and the insides have been cleaned we test it with microwave popcorn. works perfectly. thankfully I won't have to move this thing anytime soon. :-)

Download NetHack from SourceForge.net

hey there. just found some old-school dungeon crawladge :) Download NetHack from SourceForge.net

Shared via AddThis

Back it on up....

I have nothing better to do on my lunch hour apparently, just saying.

I was at Costco today, i know big surprise i work across the street and have a membership, might as well abuse the free samples ;-)

any way

I saw something that i would like to not live with out.

what is this magical something?

I'll tell you.

i saw a solar power generator.

this would be perfect for my Man Cave. put that puppy on the roof and run my system 24/7 without pulling from the power grid at all. i hope. it would be nice to be able to test this before buying.

i think maybe it would be better to save my pennies for a higher version.

i don't know how much power my system pulls right now so i might need more than one of the lower models.

projects projects.....

I really need to be more diligent with these posts.

i say that a lot don't I?

since really no one reads this i guess it's just for my own personal complainitude (is that a word?)

My wife and i just bought a house. Yay! no more trailer living for us :-)

on this property there are 3 buildings.

1: Main house
2: carport
3: garden shed

my main point of interest is the carport, which also happens to have an enclosed "shop". mostly finished with drywall and such, but a plain concrete floor. we descided early that this would be mine. My "Man Cave". again Yay!

I have my computer set up in there and running adequately on Wi-Fi at about 24kbs which i can live with as it's probably 50 feet to the router through empty air, an exterior wall, a window and an interior wall. it actully looks like it is running better than my all interior run at the trailer.

I am happy with my "Man Cave" as far as it is a location to keep my pc protected from the elements ;-) unfortunately since we are still in the process of moving it also doubles as storage for things that don't belong anyware specific or have yet to be sorted. So i have my corner and eventually i will be able to store my tools in some sort of organized fashion, this would be a first, actaully knowing where the screwdriver i need actaully is.

i am using my wife's old desk right now and a folding chair. i wonder if i could convince someone to donate me a new chair.

I actually am running my computer on an extention cord (yes extention cord, orange.) since there are no plugs on the wall i am using.

project 1: install new powerpoints to eliminate the tripping hazard.

project 2: attach my 5.1 speakers to thge ceiling to get thiose cords off the floor.

my wife is a transcriptionist and does some pretty fast typing i'm thinking about joining her because she set's her own schedule and makes pretty descent money. that being said i will need a new chair, maybe need to set up an ac unit to keep me alive when it gets hot outside :)

Harley Geek.

I am admittedly a geek.
can't you tell?

But my brother-in-law and wife convinced me to buy a motorcycle to save gas. Well , that was a year ago. I have had a bitchin' blue 2004 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 custom for most of that time. My wife bought me a Team Oregon motorcycle class for my birthday, which would have been a great surprise if my mother-in-law's boyfriend hadn't let the cat out of the bag

:-(

oh well.

so any way missed the written part of the class by like 2 points :-(

rescheduled that and decided to just take the test again.


As of Thursday 04/30/09 I am a licenced Motorcycle owner.

yeah me!

I have rode to work every day since so far and it has been threatening to rain, but who cares. I have a Harley and by God I'm gonna use it :)

??

I'm not sure why this post was left blank.

Would this be where you'd see:

THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK?

ah the memories.

well i finally did it. I broke down and bought some new memory.

In my inaugural post i offered some suggestions that i was thinking about, but as it turns out none of these would be used.

My brother got me an amazon gift certificate for my birthday, so of i go a hunting :)

while surfing around i found the perfect solution: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz Corsair memory. after debating for many days i finally decided to bite the bullet and just buy the damn stuff.



i should have ordered sooner since the memory as gone up nearly $4 since i first looked at it. :-(



I had a free trial of Amazon's Amazon Prime shipping (free 2day shipping from Amazon, $3.99 for 1 day) i decided to 2 day it so i can start the craziness early :-) (side note, while this is a cool offering unless you ship A LOT of stuff i think it would be cheaper to pay shipping then the $79 yearly fee)

The day of the delivery finally arrives. I am waiting for my UPS package to show up. Now i don't know if the drivers are trained by mice or they just don't like people but the only reason i know my package arrived was i happened to be:

1) expecting a package

-and -

2) happened to be walking past when there was a tiny almost inaudible knock at the door.

I pull open the door to see a little man dressed in brown wave and tell me my package was by the door.







oh well.







Now i have my item of power and am happy :-)







I look at the box does not appear to be any damage. so far so good. since i know what i am getting i don't really worry about the this side up label and slice the tape on the bottom of the package.







to my horror i see the nice little clam shell packaging sitting pressed up against the side of the box right under (well over i guess since i opened it upside down) about 6 inches of air packaging material. no my question at this point is: why bother? might as well pack it in an envelope since it really wasn't protected against being dropped.

before i bring down my computer i show my lovely wife my new acquisition and you can hear her eyes glaze over as she says "that's nice."





Before i install the memory i had left my system unplugged so i could see the difference in boot times once i installed the new memory. 8 minutes and 3 seconds with 512MB of Hynix 533MHz DDR2 memory. -blech-





after shutting down again, I pulled the side off my Coolermaster Mystique case and yanked the old memory out.





after carefully positioning these armored little guys i replugged every thing in. long beep every 2 seconds



.....??? crap!



Power off.



looking around every thing looks OK, make sure everything is seated correctly, yes. OK let's reset the bios see if that helps.



switch jumper wait requisite 5 seconds switch back.



plug back in, power up.



full screen Biostar logo. step in the right direction.



mash the delete key so i can edit the bios to how i like it.



turning off the stupid full screen logo, remove the floppy controller, remove the network controller, configure the auto-on timer, set high performance settings. reboot.



3072000KB ...???



da hell?



shut down and remove 1 stick

2097152KB well that's right

being lazy at this point i decide to let it run with 1 stick see how long it takes to boot now.

P.O.S.T complete

SCSI BIOS initialized

Vista load screen,

P.O.S.T??

what now? this should at least go through a complete boot before it craps out on me.

email to Biostar.



Explained what happened and they advised to remove the SCSI card and try booting from the on-board port.


well i am using the SCSI as a directory controller and not a boot device so why not remove it for testing purposes?





boot with no SCSI (faster by the way) get a prompt to go to safe mode last known good or boot normal prompt.





i decide to boot normal. excellent get to the desktop.





damn i like my SCSI drive there.





blue screen.

Wow. didn't see that coming.

hey, look disable anti virus and try again.

reboot in safe mode.

wow, huge icons, cool!

now i have to find my Anti-virus software.

control panel,

add-remove programs.

AVG.

remove.

At this time i also remove the control program for my TV tuner as i am not using it right now and hopefully windows media center will work right without it.

reboot.

Look Vista Splash screen. hey a desktop.

and it's still running. extra cool.

install my wife's new favorite anti-virus: Avira.

well now let's see if we have any further problems.

hmmm. well windows seems to be running a whole hell of a lot faster. Yippie!

now i have a spare stick of memory which at this point may or may not be any good. so i stick it in the case and pull the other stick. boot up 2097152KB. ok so both sticks are good. might as well plug both in.

shut down, insert memory. restart.

3072000KB -sigh-

well i might as well live with it since i paid for the memory. reboot and check my boot speed.

5 minutes to a full load including SCSI bios load and all of the vista desktop goodies.(sidebar, anti virus, Gomez, B.O.I.N.C, etc.)

w00t!

and also my system will reboot after a complete shutdown. bonus.

wash away your troubles..

Wow,
it's been a while, this was supposed to be a regular thing. oh well.

My washing machine is broken. well was. it would wash and spin just wouldn't drain. so as a result i have a load of towels soaked in scungy water. fun huh?

after removing said towels and ringing them out i still have a bunch of wet towels.

enter the dryer.

finally dry. after like 6 cycles there is no trace of damp in the towels, though they still smell a little funny. need to rewash once the washer is fixed with vineger.

now to bail out the washer. (bail out heh, sounds like a bank or a morgage broker :-) )

lot's of ewww at this point. any bucket i have is either too big to fit in the washer or to small to make this any faster.



After a mouth full of afore mentioned scunge water trying to use a garden hose to syphon the water out, i have finally had it. i go buy a Drill pump and some fittings for the hose segments and the happiness ensues. Attaching this little marvel to the drill and proceed to suck the sludge laden water into the drain.

mind you this is a couple days worth of fermenting laundry weighing down the machine so i feel around and pull out a stray belt. not a pants belt a pulley belt.

once the water level is down to a level where i can move the washer to a point where i can access the underside.


3 seconds later the belt is re attached to the drive and relay wheels for the drain pump.

now for the test.

extra small load. check.

large splash of bleach. check.

short cycle. check.

sucess. the wasing machine is now in fully functional condition. yeah!

Testing..?

I have had this sitting around for the longest time. every thing appears to be legit but i have been unable to get other people to try this. granted up to this point i have not really tried that hard.

There are a couple of ways to go about this:

Points account - With this method, you do no not obtain referrals. All credits are earned solely by yourself through trying advertiser offers. Once you have earned enough credits (varies by item), you may order your item.

Referral account - With this method you acquire referrals to join using a unique link and try an advertiser offer. You must also try at least one advertiser offer.

why oh why?

Hello out there. This is my second or third attempt to get this thing rolling so hopefully I'll have a little more luck this time. I think my initial problem was trying to figure out what to write. Not being a big communicator and all.

But I've decided to write what interests me and not worry about external forces at this point.

With that being said, I suppose a little about me; where to start?

Where to start?

Let's see.....?

I was born at a very young age, multiple years ago and have lived up until this point. I am married to a beautiful woman also of multiple years and we have 2 rambunctious little rug rats.

I enjoy building and repairing computers, (I also like to tweak my system and play with new hardware if any one out there has any they want me to reviewJ) I enjoy music and watching TV.

I was born in Australia so I have a slightly British twist to my TV tastes. I enjoy Doctor Who and Torchwood along with more mainstream American shows such as CSI: (insert city here)

Since I mentioned it earlier I might as well expand on my PC.

I just upgraded from a gigabyte PCI board to a Biostar p4m900-m4, since the chip I was running on the gigabyte was a 478 and was being woefully underpowered when I put it in the new board I could finally use hyper-threading and the full 3.0 GHz. Of course that makes me very happy. Unfortunately I only have 512MB, which is runnable but with Vista ultimate, sucks. On that I'm kind of surprised I like Vista. I suppose running on reasonably powerful equipment makes the difference. I need to upgrade my memory. Ideally I would like to get 4GB or possibly 4GB. Also my wife could use an upgrade too in the memory department. The only problem is getting windows to recognize the whole thing. I have tried PMA but I guess you actually need the memory before that can be implemented. I also have a ATI Radeon 2400xtwhich I have run dual monitors on but again with a limited amount of memory is very slow and choppy. But with dual link the resolutions for each monitor can be different so my new 19inch (thanks honey) could be at a higher resolution than the 15 inch which maxes out at 1024X768. I also have a TV-tuner card that I bought for the purposes of transferring video tapes to dvd. Still working out the details on that. I guess that will be future blog material.

I'm realizing as I insert the hyperlinks above I buy a lot of stuff from newegg.com. lets see if this will transfer over now.