Author Archives: srhuston

by srhuston

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

I’ve got a wash tub. Last night I finished up the plumbing for it, and this morning I picked up some brackets (actually the clamps you use to secure BX cable to a stud) to hook it onto the standoff I built behind it. So only a year after we moved in, I finally got a utility sink in the basement for washing up after working on the trucks – which I also did today. Oil change, air filter and new serpentine belt went quite well, but the planned changing of plugs and wires was canceled on account of my arms not bending that way. Decided I’d rather pay someone else to do it once every 100k miles than deal with the aggravation and frustration of trying to reach in there myself (especially when two of them appear to be behind the evaporator coil). At least I checked the brakes, and they’re fine – and just in case I needed to loosen the back to get the drums off, I picked up the tools I’d need to do a brake job anyway, so I’m prepared when they finally need replacing.

As Keith would say, “This thread is useless without pictures,” so have a look at the utility sink. The truck looks the same, no photos of that 😛

by srhuston

Wife’s Website Workover

Hey, you think of a word that starts with ‘W’ and is a synonym for redesign or revamp…  Anyway, Stephanie decided she wanted to have a WordPress site of her own, so now she does.  stephaniehuston.net has been changed over, and once she finds some of that copious free time we all look for (or a couple tuits, preferably round ones) there will be more content there too :>  She also uploaded some new stuff to the gallery, so check that out too.

by srhuston

No More Drips

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, about an hour or so after I put it up I got a call back from the plumber.  They came out in the afternoon, and the three guys had a look at what I had done so far, and what wasn’t working.  Right on the truck they had the right part to fit where the one I had bought didn’t quite make it, and installed that with this tar-like sealant around the outside and inside.  Small piece of 2″ PVC into that, reducer down to 1-1/2″, then compression fit adapter for the trap.  All told, $140 later (which worked out to around $10/min for how little time it took them) I had the right parts and the job done properly without having to get my hands dirty again.  If anything, I’ve learned two lessons from this: 1) Don’t mess with the cast iron piping if I can avoid it, and 2) If the job requires messing with the cast iron piping, call Lou Gottel Plumbing instead of dealing with it myself 😛

by srhuston

$h!tty Weekend

This weekend saw a lot of things done, but not much of it was pleasant. Saturday my father came down and we cut up the old oil tank and got the pieces bagged and outside so they can be disposed (and one and a half 5-gallon buckets of slop that was in the bottom of the tank). Lots of arm shaking with the reciprocating saws, and I went through 6 of my 5 batteries (one had recharged during the time we were working). Also replaced the kitchen faucet since we bought a utility tub for the basement, and I wanted a faucet for the new tub that has a sprayer on it instead of the standard two valve things that come with the kits – you never realize how handy it is to have a sprayer on those things until you don’t have one. So the kitchen faucet now is one of the models where the end of the faucet comes out and turns into a sprayer, and Stephanie is quite happy with it. On Sunday, we went back to Lowes and picked up the parts I’d need to install the tub in the basement, including some things to go into the 2″ hub in the cast iron pipe that is where the old tub was located. That’s when the fun began.

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by srhuston

Oh Well

Then I go and post nothing in May either.  Oh well, been busy lately.  Still haven’t had time to get the APRS antenna mounted, but now I’ve got a ladder sitting in the garage (on loan from my father) which I can use to get high enough on the house to mount it.  Think I’m just a 3/8″ hole saw away from finishing that project up, and having full use of the charcoal grill again without first having to turn off the APRS radio and move the magmount.  Speaking of the garage, I picked up some shelves on Friday evening and put them together in there, and got all the stuff that was littering the floor onto them.  Between that and some organization kits from there, all the yard tools are hung up nicely on the walls now, and I even made a spot for the lawn chairs so I’m not tripping over them either (nor are they falling over if I bump into them slightly).  Finally, for the first time in.. 5 years?.. I got all my tools organized and put away into the toolbox.  When we moved from Mays Landing to West Deptford, I never bothered to do it since they hadn’t moved around too much.  But when we moved to Ewing, they definitely got jostled and I just didn’t bother at all since I rarely used any of them.  Kinda hard to work on a car in a parking lot when your tools are on the second floor, and I didn’t have stuff around the house to fix either.  Now there’s a place for just about everything, and the shelves that were already in the garage are almost cleaned off.  Maybe tonight or one other night this week I’ll vacuum the junk off of them, and then I can start pulling them out to put down the second shelving unit we purchased as a workbench (instead of stacking the two halves on top of each other, they also suggest putting the units side by side as a workbench).  I’ll have to measure things out, the wood currently used as a top for the old shelves might make a good workbench top for the new ones so it’s sturdy and consistent across the two units.  After that, the pegboard on the back wall will probably come down, and either go back up with spacers or get replaced, as well as expanded.  Then a lot of the hand-type tools that are in the toolbox currently will go on there, and I’ll have more room without needing another toolbox yet.

The basement hasn’t had much done lately, though the oil tank is on end and ready to be cut up into pieces – both to get it up out of the basement and for easy disposal.  Quite a bit of stuff has collected down near the work bench though, and I really need to get down there soon and clean things up so there’s room to work again.  Stephanie wants me to make some benches to go in the dormers upstairs – one cedar lined, and one regular – and I’ve also got to fix up a couple of the dining room chairs.  Need to grab a couple large clamps for those, and though people have offered to loan them to me, I’ll want them around anyway, so I might as well buy them :>

Finally, in one of our last trips to Lowes, I realized that copper has come down in price considerably.  I think I paid around $79 for 250′ of 14/2 wire, and $119 for 12/2.  Now 14/2 was around $49, and 12/2 was $79.  A 10′ length of 1/2″ pipe was $10 and change, and the best part was a 1000′ spool of CAT5 cable for $80.  The last of that list came home with me, so once the NJ tax return comes through I’m going to pick up the patch panel, switch and the last of the stuff needed to do the home network and new phone wiring so I can get started on that.  Since the office (2 drops) and shack are the most “important” ones, followed by the living room, I can probably do all of that in one weekend, maybe even one day.  The two upstairs drops will likely be the hardest, but they’re also the least important, so whenever they eventually happen is good enough.  Probably not until we rip the rooms apart to insulate them.

by srhuston

It’s Ice!

Saw this outside this morning and had to take a photo of it. Would’ve come out better if I’d used the Minolta, but since it’s still sleeting I didn’t want to drag it out 😛

Edit @11:20 – Took a better photo, you can see all of them in the scenery album.

by srhuston

Raccoons Is Cute

We took a trip to my parents’ house yesterday, to spend the afternoon and evening and have dinner.  Since I brought the little camera, I took some photos on the way up and while there – nothing too fancy, but I did snag some shots of a couple raccoons that came by, best of all being the ones when one sucker climbed the tree to “run away” from me.

I did not, unfortunately, have the camera in hand when Marshmallow came by later that evening.  She’s just too cute.

by srhuston

Damn You, Keith

My friend Keith has this bad habit.  He finds these interesting “browser distractions” (or maybe he doesn’t find them himself, but gets them sent to him too).  Then the bad part – he shares them with me.  I have no idea how many hours of lost productivity I can blame on these things, but I do know it’s greater than zero.  So now it’s my turn.

If you remember the game Lemmings, you’ll like this one I’m sure.  DHTML Lemmings plays right in your browser.  If you don’t remember the original, there’s some documentation on the page too, which should get you started.

As I played this game last night, I remembered thinking, “This is kinda like that one hidden level in Warcraft III.”  In the level, there’s a large “maze” leading up to your position, and some tower defense structures built along the path.  You have to build more towers, and upgrade them, to keep the bad guys who are coming out of a portal from making it all the way to the bottom of the level.  It doesn’t really count for anything, and has nothing to do with the storyline, but it’s a lot of fun to play.  That’s one of the levels I’d reload and play quite often.  Now, I can have similar fun right in Firefox with Desktop Tower Defense (which interestingly, the author mentions the level in Warcraft III which inspired him).  Place your tower defenses to kill the bad guys before they make it to the other side of the maze (which you get to create).  Soaked up an hour or so last night when I was thinking I’d be going to bed.

by srhuston

Shiny & New

Now that I’ve tested WordPress 2.1 and found that the themes and plugins I use work fine (there was a slight problem with PHPEnkoder, but it turns out that problem existed before and I just hadn’t noticed it; the author has since squashed the bug), I upgraded all the sites to run the new version.

Of course, they also released another new version in the last couple days, which Dreamhost will soon have available for updating.  Oh well, at least that one will be slightly less worrysome since it’s a minor upgrade.