April 18th, 2010 by Walt
Things have been rather hectic since last September, and I haven’t had much to post; at least nothing you would want to read.
We’ve had to downsize things a lot, having lost our house to foreclosure (I don’t feel too alone about it as several friends in the tech related industries have lost theirs, but I do not feel joy being in “good company” either as it has affected their families as well). Getting things back in line is taking a lot of time, and we are far from feeling like things are stabilizing – if that makes sense. I am thankful to have a job, and a hands-on tech related one at that!
I should say that I was laid off my previous job, and nobody in that industry was hiring due to the financial meltdown. I feel lucky to have fallen into the one I currently have, so I certainly am not complaining a bit. It is something I used to do about 18 years ago before changing career fields for a while, so I felt at home right away.
On a better note, it is sure nice watching Spring arrive with bursts of late summer thrown in. Surprisingly enough, even after the Winter we just had, bugs are out in force just like past years with warm Winters.
I must whine and say I miss having cable broadband for Internet access. Cellular broadband is nothing like cable! It seems only a bit faster than dialup at times. Also, the software to get online with the cellphone is not Linux friendly, so running Linux online is out of the question. Internet Connection Sharing is disabled by the software to use the phone as a modem. 
I still need to get some antennas up for my ham radio hobby, but things like that will have to wait for finances to settle down.
I hope to have more interesting posts later.
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November 29th, 2008 by Walt
First, I hope everybody had a super Thanksgiving!!
Friday, I had the nice experience of discovering that the hot water heater ran out of hot water when it shouldn’t have. Stepping out of the bathroom’s hallway door I discover that the hallway was full of water, or rather, the carpet was full of water. Opening the closet where the hot water heater is located, I found that it was gushing water from the top access door!
After an emergency shopping trip after letting work know that I had a bit of a problem the real fun began. (BTW: I found out that Lowes isn’t responsible for tying cargo down if you rent their trucks, but they didn’t say so until the new hot water heater blew over…they made good, thankfully.) I couldn’t get a replacement unit that was anywhere near the same size or shape as the old one. If I had bought a “normal”, non energy efficient one things might have been different, but the estimated operational costs vs. purchase price lead me to get the efficient model.
So, after a ton of carpentry tearing out floor trimwork and part of the door frame, I finally got it in place. I used this as an opportunity to put in an expansion tank as at some time after the original heater was installed, the county put check valves in at the water meter, which meant that any pressure buildup had nowhere to go (remember that water expands when it is heated, so when you cool the water in the heater by taking a bath, shower, doing laundry, etc, it expands as it is heated back up) unless you have an expansion tank to allow the water to compress the air in the bladder as it expands.
Amazingly enough all my pipe sweat work was leak free right from the start! I did find that the valve to cut off the water supply to the heater now leaks. I had thought about replacing it at the same time I replaced the heater, but didn’t want to tear out the wall to do so as ithe valve is right at the wall…guess what?? I get to do this fun chore anyway – with the heater in place!!! But all isn’t lost as I am going to replace that potential problem child of a saddle valve that feeds the icemaker with a real valve and install a master valve for the house inside the house instead of 40 feet away from the access hatch in the crawlspace.
OK, enough whining…that clears the space between my ears for more stuff.
Tags: General whining
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March 27th, 2008 by Walt
I’m waiting for my host to improve access to the database server before I get back anywhere close to heavy in blogging (not that I was a prolific blogger, anyway!).
They promise that they are adding resources for accessing the database server, and I am hoping to surf in one day very soon and see the site running as fast as it once did. HTML loads OK, it is just whatever uses teh database runs slow to seemingly not at all.
In the immortal words, “I’ll be Bach, Brahms, Beethoven…(or some other deceased composer)”!!
Tags: General whining, random rants
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