Aaaaahhhhhhhh-chooooooooo

08.30.2004

I hate summer colds.

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Electricity Used To Be A Friend Of Mine

08.27.2004

Yesterday as I arrived home, I pressed the remote garage door opener like I always do. Unlike most times, the garage door did not open. As I got closer and closer, I tried repeatedly to open the door. I parked in the driveway, got out with the remote, walked up to the garage door and tried again. Nothing.

A storm had come through earlier, maybe the power was out? I peeked through the front door and saw the living room ceiling fan whirring about. Well, there was power. I checked the remote and tried again. The green light was coming on when I pressed the button, so the batteries were good - after all I had just replaced them last month.

At this point I dug out my seldom used front door key. It unlocked the doorknob just fine, but the key didn't slide into the deadbolt lock with ease. After a couple minutes of coaxing, it finally slid in to where I could unlock the door and get in the house. I then went to check the garage, with my remote still in hand. I looked up to the motor mounted to the ceiling and noticed the little green power light was not on. The switch wired to open the door didn't seem to work either.

It finally hit me that it was also too quiet. The fan that I leave on to circulate the air in the garage wasn't circulating. Thinking it was a breaker, I went to the breaker box and flipped everything off and then back on. Still nothing. Remembering the ground fault outlet in the garage, I looked closer and noticed it was tripped. I tried to reset it, but it would automatically trip each time. I unplugged things, reset breakers again, everything I could think of, but I could not get the outlet to reset.

The only other thing connected to the circuit is the recently (March) installed bathroom light, which also doesn't work. The circuit went bad when I plugged in the power washer and something went kaput. I called in the electrician that installed the light and he managed to fix everything in about 10 minutes. It looks like I'm going to have to give him another call, even though I don't remember using the power washer this time.

The house is quickly becoming my never ending project.

Permalink renovation/remodelling

Cars

08.25.2004

My goal is to buy myself a car for my birthday. I've been pining for a convertible, and through sheer randomness I decided that my birthday (a good 6 months off) is a good time to follow through. I have no idea what kind of car I want, just that it's a convertible, and I have to fit in it.

A couple of weeks ago I made my way to Sunvertibles in Nashville and "tried on" a couple of cars to see if they fit. Promptly excluded from my list:

• BMW Z-3: Although I could actually fit in it, my entire left side and top of my head were in contact with the car at all times.
• Honda S-2000: I've never seen a bucket seat with so much bucketness.
• Mercedes-Benz SLK230: The top of the windshield hits me perfectly at eye level, and I could steer with my massive, manly thighs.

On my list, but probably needing to be taken off:

• Porsche Boxster: I fit in it, but like the SLK the top of the windshield was about at eye level. When I put down the visor, I couldn't see anything in front of the car.
• Saab 900 SE Turbo: Although I fit ok, I didn't like the way it felt.

And making the list for what I fit in just fine:

• Chrysler Sebring JXi

There's still a few more cars I want to try, but I'm not in any hurry - I've got 6 months, after all.

While looking at all these cars, it hit me that one of the hidden costs I needed to look at was to try and see what maintenance costs would be. After all, upkeep on a Porsche is probably more than a Mustang (I know, Mustangs weren't on my list, but after having 2 I think it's time to move on). Talking to my friend the internet, I was lead to the Edmunds Car Maintenance Calculator. This is a cool little tool because it not only shows the car care costs, but also any recalls or other bad news about the car. I found out there was a recall on my truck for the gas tank cap I never heard about. When looking at maintenance, it breaks things up pretty well (parts and their prices, individual labor broken up), so I think it gives a good idea of what the car care can cost.

Well, assuming you actually take care of the car.

Permalink conveyances

Spam Reloaded

08.24.2004

It's been a month since I restarted my spam count after finding that Yahoo mail spams get deleted after a month. In the past month I've gone from 0 to 6867 pieces of spam. That's actually a little lower than the max from last time, where it topped out at 6946.

So, what has all of this shown? I'm on a lot of mailing lists? I've got too much time on my hands if I'm counting spam? All ofthe above?

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Music To My Wireless Ears

08.23.2004

Last week I got my latest gadget, the Linksys Wireless Music System. I had been investigating (ok, so I had made Jerry investigate) the available wireless music solutions available for my home, and this one seemed to be the prime candidate for me. It was by the same manufacturer as my wireless router. It had a display that pleased me. It used Musicmatch for it's mp3 server, which I don't normally use but I could live with it.

Unfortunately, this thing sucks.

Installation did not go well. You pop the install cd into your pc, connect the player via an ethernet cable to set everything up, and if you're me, you get a "device not found" error and can install nothing further. I'm evidently the only person to get this message, because a quick scour of the internet, normally my friend, revealed nothing. There's not an option to skip this step, or to continue installing the software, instead just a big old middle finger from the computer to mock me.

My internet scouring did reveal a review were someone said they set up everything through the player and I found that I could do that. But if there was any software the computer needed, I was still hosed. But eventually everything was running. Sort of.

I set the player in my bedroom, maybe 60 feet and 3 walls from the router. The player found the computer it was to connect to and I could browse through my available songs. I pressed play and the buffer would start to fill and the song would play. For about 20 seconds. Then the buffer would freak out and might start playing again, or it might not. The first song tried and tried and could only play the first minute before it got lost searching for the rest. After half an hour, I finally turned it off. I tested again yesterday and actually got it to play a whole song, after which it sat there silently until I remembered it was one. I then got the remote and tried to turn it off. After 5 attempts I finally just walked over and pushed the power button.

Now I've got to decide if it's time to go to plan B, and if plan B will really be worth it.

Permalink random