Heat Pump Reloaded... or Revolutions

12.04.2003

Today was finally the day! Roy came back to fix the heating unit. He brought the $30 controller board. I don't know why it took 2 hours, but he got it installed and I once again have normal heat pump heat like real people, although I still liveout in the boonies.

The timing for this is good, because the weather conglomerate is predicting coldness for the weekend. Damp, dank, dreary coldness, perfect for Christmas shopping.

The upside of this (hey, I'm trying here)is that I haven't paid for the heat Pump Repair of '03 yet. Roy said they would send me a bill later, but to wait a week or so to make sure everything's working ok and I don't have to call them back out on another repair call.

That Roy. He's a sharp one. I'll have to learn his real name one day.

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Heat Pump Redux

12.03.2003

Today, a second guy from the Heating Unit Repair Place came by to check on the heating unit. I'll call him Roy, not because that was his name, but he looked like a Roy. Roy climbed up in the attic and fiddled with the unit up there. I fiddled with the thermostat. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't.

After an hour and a half, Roy said he would be back tomorrow with a control panel for the unit to see if that would fix it. Oddly enough, I thought that's what Roy had been doing since Guy #1 from yesterday suggested that a new controller might fix it, and that the controllers were in stock both in Athens and Decatur.

So I think Roy did exactly what Guy #1 did the day before. It took about the same amount of time, so it's a pretty good guess. Although I like the xcuse to do some work from home, I think I would much more enjoy to have a properly functioning @#%%ing heating (and come March, cooling) unit!

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Heat Pump Fever

12.02.2003

I managed to get the heating unit looked at today. It seems there's a problem somewhere between the thermostat, unit controller, and heat pump. When the heat pump comes on, a fuse in the heating unit goes poof. As it is, I can use the "emergency" setting for heat which bypasses the heat pump for now.

With luck, it will only take replacing a controller board in the heating unit to fix things (which will be tried tomorrow after getting said part). I'm just glad this is all happening now instead of when it's 90 degrees outside. Cold I can handle, thanks to my naturally exothermic state. I'm the guy that starts to sweat once it hits 75.

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Holidays BAD!

12.01.2003

I have a history of things going wrong during a holiday. The Flat Tire of July 4th. The Memorial Day Lightning Strike. This year: The Thanksgiving Heater Crash.

I finally turned the heat on last week, and everything seemed to be working fine, but sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, the heating unit stopped working. No fan. No lights on the thermostat (although the temperature still showed up), nothing. I changed the batteries in the thermostat. I tripped thecircuit breaker. I checked on the heating unit outside, still nothing. It being a holiday weekend, it was hard to get hold of anyone to come look at it, but hopefully somebody will come by tomorrow (I've still got calls to make). Will I end up getting a new 96 cent part? Will I have to get a completely new heating and air unit? Is there anything in between? Maybe I'll find out tomorrow.

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Russellmania Wrestling Simulator

11.25.2003

Close to 20 years ago I had an idea for a wrestling video game. The games of the day featured 1 on 1 matches against sometimes known (Hulk Hogan) sometimes unknown (Bop N Wrestle) characters. At best you would have to beat 5 guys and then win thechampionship - at which point the game was over.

I've always wanted something more. Something that would act like what's played out on tv. Story lines. Title defenses. Feuds. My wish came close to being fulfilled when the Smackdown series of games for the PS2 came out. The only drawback to these games is the finite amount of storylines.

The best solution to this would be to make mods for Smackdown to include new storylines. If it was a game available for the PC,I think it would be plausible, but for a console title I'm not so sure how to do it. So, I'm back to an idea I had 20 years ago.

What if I made a video game?

That's part of the reason I went to school and got my CS degree. Theoretically, I have the knowledge, or at the very least I should have learned how to get the knowledge. So 2 years ago I decided that's what I would do. I would make my wrestling video game. On Thanksgiving of 2001, I started to make notes of what I wanted, and didn't want, in my video game. I decided I would think about these things for a year, and then start making the game. The problem was, after a year I still didn't know how to start. So from there, I continued making notes and started looking around at how to make a video game. And now, after 2 years of notes and a year of wondering how to make it, it's time to start.

Unfortunately, I can't start out making the grandiose game I've always dreamed of, I'mgoing to have to take baby steps. But come Thursday, I take the next step and actually write the code for that first baby step.

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