Toby's Log page 114

water heater

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I haven’t posted the news about my water heater. I got it in back in fall or early winter of last year. I was quite excited. It took me a few weeks to do all the installation stuff, partly because I needed my dad’s help for doing things such as installing the gas line. I had to do a good bit of work that I’m happy I got to do. I installed a black iron line running from my tank under the house to the heater. I simply connected the old line that went to the furnace and stove into this line. I installed a wall frame to hold the heater and put an exhaust and air intake system through the exterior wall. That wall still needs siding on the outside and insulation and finishing on the inside. The exhaust was very expensive, requiring special stainless pipe. I did some more plumbing. My dad got a new torch with one of the four way tips and piezo ignition. It’s mighty nice. The four way tips actually heat up the joint quickly and uniformly, with no real need to rotate around the pipe. and an easy to see green color surrounds it when it is up to temperature. It makes the whole job easier.

I also installed a wall outlet and a plug on the heater, which has led to quite a problem. The line going to the ‘utility closet’ there had been for the old electric water heater. I didn’t think of it, but that needed a 240V supply. The new water heater doesn’t. Even when flipping the two-pole breaker, I didn’t think of it. I heard a loud humming noise coming from the unit. I was worried something was wrong, especially since it wasn’t firing. I kept unplugging it. The unit has an error light on the computer board. I took off the front panel and looked around for the error light. It certainly wasn’t blinking. By the time I found it, though, a green flash came from elsewhere and the unit stopped humming. It now did nothing. The GFCI, which had been working before, stopped as well. I soon found that the fuse had blown. I got more fuses, but they blew instantly upon powering the unit. I soon came to the conclusion that the transformer must have burned out. After much email communication with the company that didn’t seem to get me very far, I finally ordered a new transformer over the phone. I worried that I wouldn’t end up getting it, as the guy I ordered it from didn’t speak english especially well, and I had to spell out all of my information. It arrived and I installed it. The fuses no longer blew instantly, and I had power to both the GFCI and the CPU board. In fact, on trying to run it, I found the error light was now working. It told me there is a problem with either the solenoid valve or the computer board. I will likely have to order a new board, which may be costly, but I want to test out all other possibilities first. Unfortunately, it’s hard to test some of these things. That’s where I’m at right now, still with no hot water after nigh on a year.

odd electric blanket occurance

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I use an electric blanket every night during the cold season to keep warm at night. It does an amazingly good job at keeping me warm for the energy it uses: I can be toasty warm, even sweating, in a 45° room.

Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve occassionally had a strange problem while sleeping. The first time I remember was sleeping at my grandma’s house early in the morning, back when me and my brother would go there while my parents were at work. I wake up only part-way. My mind is only part way awake, and things move through it sort of like a dream, but concious of my actual surroundings. I will feel groggily awake, but I can’t move my body, sometimes at all, sometimes limited to extremely slow movement that requires a lot of seeming effort. I also often have trouble breathing. My breathing will often seem to stop working automatically, so I have to force myself to breath, but this too seems to take a lot of effort. It is somewhat scary and I feel like I may suffocate without being able to do anything about it. The way I seem to get out of this is to put a lot of effort into moving my body. After a short bit, I will suddenly wake up and gasp in air. This is not an especially common occurence, and I can go pretty long stretches of time without it happening at all and, consequently, me thinking about it. But sometimes it does happen frequently over a period. It seems to happen more often when I have been oversleeping or am taking a nap.

Yesterday, I was lying in “bed” while reading a book (web development). I kept falling partly asleep, then waking up and continuing reading. That’s a common problem for me. At one point, I fell asleep and then partly-woke up, having the same problem I often do. I dreamt the light bulb of the lamp near my bed went out, and I thought that was quite bad since it’s a fairly new compact flourescent. Then a night-light went out, one that doesn’t actually happen to be in my bedroom, but was in this dream. I wondered what happened, and suddenly thought it had to be a short in my electric blanket. I suddenly felt like a bunch of energy was going through me or something, it was really wierd, and this started giving me lots of trouble breathing and moving. I thought to myself “oh no”, realizing I would be able to do nothing to stop myself from being electrocuted. I tried and really slowly moved my hand toward the switch on the control of the electric blanket. At first it took a lot of effort and I couldn’t seem to move towards it fast enough to make it. I thought “please” and pushed on. I slowly sped up my movement and finally made it to the switch. When I turned off the switch, I suddenly woke up and felt the wierd energy feeling instantly dissappear. I could breath easily and move about just fine. I felt remarkably good, that kind of good you feel when you suddenly find yourself leaving pain, though this wasn’t ever actually painful. My electric blanket was turned off, though it had certainly been on before (I could still feel the heat). The light was definately on though.

I don’t know what happened there, but I’m now scared to use my electric blanket. Looks like I’ll have to heat the room a little better and wear some warm clothes, as I had been before I got the blanket, until I figure out what’s up.

Finally beat Nobunaga’s Ambition

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I do believe this is the first time I ever beat Nobamb. Paul, my brother, and I were playing a game of it and hotseat Civ III at the same time. I actually died after many attacks and being plagued repeatedly. Paul got a territory that was up for auction for 300 gold, giving him a second territory. Jamie got attacked by an ambitious and stupid daimyo who had 4 territories. The guy game himself and didn’t flee even when he was well near defeat, so Jamie got all his territory. Then Jamie had to leave, so I took back over for him. Paul died after leaving too little rice in his home territory and then being attacked. Paul had left very few troops in one of his territories next to me, so I was able to quickly take that one. I then built up my fiefs and armies and attacked whenever a fief was low on troops, after battles with others usually. After a while, I had enough support from my protected fiefs to quickly build up huge armies in the front ones and then attack even well defended fiefs. I left few troops in the rear, and had a rebellion take over one fief, but was able to quickly win it back with a fief where I had left a big enough troop. I bought large amounts of troops and didn’t train or arm them well, so I lost a lot. In one territory, I lost even with a much larger army. In another, I lost so many taking it that it was quickly taken by another daimyo. Luckily, I had troops in another territory that were able to take it back quickly and then take advantage of the reduced troop numbers in the attackers fief. I moved very quickly at the end. The last fief I took I sent in 400k troops against 200k. I ended up with maybe 70k, but I won. This of course was on the small map on easy, so I haven’t mastered the game or anything. I usually never win the game, as it takes a good while and I’m usually slow to develop to a point where I feel comfortable attacking that first fief.

I haven’t played video games much in a good while, but recently I’ve spent many hours with them. A gift to me of Civ III Complete (finally released for Mac) and from me of Escape Velocity Override have brought back some of my interest in gaming, at least with those particular games. I’ve beat Civ III on chieftain, though I usually never do because of the extremely long time it takes to play through a single game. I usually start them but not finish. I also beat the Vellos line in EVN. I had beaten the Polaris line back when the game first came out, and hadn’t played since then. It also takes a long while to play through. Gaming really takes a lot of my useful time, but it can be fun. As long as I make sure to make time for other stuff and get important things done, it can be well worth it.

Christmas (lighting) has ended for the year

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Nearly since I started driving, I’ve been wanting to put chrismtas lights in my car around christmas time. At one point I got some small sets of battery powered lights and taped them to the inside of the rear window. They were not very bright, and burned through batteries pretty quickly. They were also a pain to turn on and off, as I had to climb back in the back seat to reach the switches. I was dissappointed. I had dreams of lights all along the outside of the car, including on the wheels, which I was attempting to devise a way to create, all powered from the cars battery and easily switched on and off.

This year I finally got around to getting a new set of lights for the car. I got a full string of 60 of the LED lights just for it. They were AC, so I bought an inverter, figuring I could use it for my computer and other stuff as well. I routed them along the outside edge of the roof on the inside of the car, using twisty ties slid carefully into the trim. They were very bright and were a much bigger display than the previous set. I felt they weren’t noticable enough on the inside of the car, but I got plenty of compliments.

Christmas has passed, but I figured I put the effort into putting these up and liked them, so I’d keep them going until about the 15th of January, giving them a full month’s employment. I worried a bit when cops drove by that there might be something illegal about the lights in the car, but none seemed to find it a problem. But just two days short of my planned finish date, I finally got pulled over. It was right in Peninsula here, and I knew the cop from when he pulled me over last, while I was taking a late night walk alongside the road. He said that I can’t have the lights on, and added that it was well passed christmas. I am always nervous around cops and had just had one follow me for a while earlier that trip, so I was especially nervous with this guy.

I don’t know what the law says about christmas lights and where they can and can’t be placed on cars. Where I had them, they really weren’t a distraction to myself, save for a bit when backing up. I can hardly see them being a distraction to other drivers, unless their interest got the better of them, as they weren’t nearly bright enough to cause problems. I know others have had lights on their cars. I will have to look into what I can and can’t do, and perhaps figure out a way to move the lights to the exterior of the car.

Lights on the car is my favorite way to decorate for christmas.

scary trip under my house

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During my stove installation assumed gas-out situation, I ventured under my house to see if a gas line running toward the stove was indeed spliced into the one going to the furnace. One was, on a little tee near the tank end. However, I discovered a horrific site (at least to a home-owner/energy conservationalist). The underside of my house in the back area and especially the middle, was filled with holes going straight up to the floor boards. Smaller ones maybe 5″ in diameter were all over the place. Some of these had small bits of black plastic taped over them, most of which were in the process of falling off. There were bigger holes though, including one perhaps 5′ square. In that largest hole, I could see the pipes running to the kitchen, expaining why they constantly freeze. I also could see a bit of the heating duct exposed, and there was a strange vertical duct sticking down into the underneath area with a opening at the end. I’m not sure if it’s there to throw some heat into the under-area there, which would seem terribly inefficient, or if it is not even connected to the heating system.

The ground beneath the house was covered with lots of junk, including a box of siding and a telescope (which I had seen before). There was also a thin layer of grayish insulation looking stuff in certain areas, and a large amount of small particles floating in front of my flashlight. This probably contributed to the irritation of my lungs and eyes and helped speed my exit.

It looks like this is a big portion of the cause of my extremely high heating bills (I heat my small house to 50°, yet pay more than in a normal house heated to 70°), and so I shall have a large project on my hands. I will have to put new sheathing of some sort and insulation down there to slowly replace the holy flooring. This will probably cost a good bit of money and take a lot of cramped work, but should save me a good bit in heating bills and allow me to keep water flowing to the kitchen. I also intend to replace my water pipes with copper and lay some PEX pipes for a radiant heating system, so I could do this at the same time, or more likely, set it up so I can easily remove the panels and do it later. I want to vacuum or sweep out all that insulation junk on the ground before I start though.

thought I was outta gas

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My am I silly. When installing my stove, I had to turn off the gas at the tanks to put in the gas line. When I was finished, I opened the valves again. I went inside to test the new line for leaks using soapy water, I saw bubbles on the first connection I sprayed, so I tightened it a good bit. I soon realized, however, that my soap, probably because it is the “oxy” variety, bubbled no matter what. I then opened the valve to try the stove, but got nothing. We were not completely sure the line ran to it was actually connected to the tanks, as I didn’t recall where it connected into the line going to the furnace, so I figured it must not be hooked up. I went to turn on the furnace. The last time I had done it, I had just left the knob set to ‘on’ and lit it up. I couldn’t seem to get it lit. I knew I had had trouble before, and had needed to let the gas flow out for a bit, so I tried for a while. I tried opening the valves on the tank more outside, closing and opening them again, and even turning the furnace knob to pilot. I glanced at the instructions, but saw mostly jibber-jabber about being careful and what-not.

After reading up in some Amerigas pamphlets, I came to the assumption that I had a ‘gas-out’, as I was slightly low (26%) and the pamphlet mentioned this could happen even without running the tank all the way down. I used my electric space-heater, but it was only 8°F outside, windchill -7°. It got down to perhaps 36° in most of the house and near 50° in my bedroom (where the heater was). I worked that day. When I came home, I had hoped perhaps the heat of the sun would start them flowing again, but my attempts still failed.

I fell asleep, as I was tired, so I didn’t get to call Amerigas till after their hours. I called at 8:30 the next morning, telling them I think I had a gas-out. It was a bit of a confused conversation, and when I said I had 26% left, she said that I wasn’t out of gas, but that I shouldn’t let it run too low or they’d charge $75 for a leak test. I declined the rush delivery, which ran $100. She gave me the charge just for the gas at a special lock-in price. She said she’d send me the forms to get this lock-in, and that I’d have to send them back ASAP. She was waving the $40 application fee normally involved. Sweet. The price quoted at the lock-in was perhaps 50¢ a gallon cheaper.

After work that night, and after doing some shopping, I called my Dad (he had called while I was out to check up on me) and told him that I though I had a gas-out. I told him I couldn’t get the furnace or the stove to light. He rather quickly realized I had not held down the button of the knob while it was at the ‘pilot’ setting, pointing out that the thermocouple closed when it cooled down to prevent gas from leaking out. The instructions reinforced the idea of pushing down the button. Had I but read them a little more thoroughly, I would’ve seen that. How silly of me. Such a simple little thing, and I had been freezing away for a day and a half. The problem with the stove was soon fixed as well. When I had been unable to light it at first, I had hoped there was a valve somewhere below the house just for that line. My dad suggested I check for this, and if that didn’t work, unscrew the flex-line going to the stove to see if gas came out there. There indeed was a valve, an old decrepit one, right near the side of the house, making it easy to access.

My house was warmer very quickly. I lowered the thermostat from the usual 50° to 45° to ensure I wouldn’t really run out of gas. The stove worked as well, and I got to play with it a bit. I didn’t end up cooking anything that night though, as I was a bit lazy and cold (still) and ended up just falling asleep.

got me a stove

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I finally got a real stove. It’s installed and all. My parents last christmas (or perhaps my birthday) offered to give me a stove. I did research looking for the one I wanted before and after that. I wanted a 20″, or at least 24″, but those weren’t offered locally. I also wanted a cooktop, but couldn’t find one of those online in the 20″ width. I was a little leary of getting the stove delivered anyway. I finally realized that to get a good stove with the narrow width, I’d have to get a range. The Sharp microwave/oven I had gotten just didn’t work as well as I’d hoped as a real oven anyway. I found one I liked on some websites, but didn’t order it, just bookmarked it. It was an Avanti. It had the electric ignition (no energy lost to pilot, though I was hoping for piezo) with sealed burners (much easier cleaning). I eventually went with the more expensive one with stainless steel and an oven window, since I found it so close to the price of the cheapest one when shipping was included.

I didn’t do anything about it, partly out of laziness, and partly because of other projects. I finally decided it was time to stop using the electric hot plate and old camp stove. The hot plate was thermostatically controlled, but had a very wide swinging method of getting at the temperature it was set at. On simmer, it would go all the way up to full blast, red hot for a bit, then swing back down to too cold to cook anything, and stay that way for several minutes before going back up again. This made for a very slow process of cooking food that could easily include burning it if I wasn’t there to shut off the heat when it got too hot. The camp stove was rather unstable, and every time I’d touch the pan, I’d have to hold it to prevent it from sliding. The flame would frequently go out if at a simmer setting, so I couldn’t keep it very low. The flame was also very small in comparison to the size of the pot over it, so it would often burn a very small clump of food to the center of the pan.

I had to stay home the whole day they were expected to deliver the stove (a nice 7 hour window). Of course, it didn’t come till near the end of the day. I had borrowed the hand truck my Mom had newly acquired in case the guy’d just leave it in the yard and go, but luckily he helped me carry it inside. My dad helped me saw out the counter area it was to go. I had to switch the thing to LP, which involved putting in different sized gas orifices, flipping over a spacer bolt in the regulator, and tightening some screws for each knob. It was a bit of a pain, and I had to wait to finish because I needed a mini screwdriver for the knob screws. I managed to slice my finger pretty good when pulling off the knob panel for the second time: I pulled on it from the back, and the metal edge went right into my finger. Then I installed the gas line (luckily there was a line there for that purpose). I also set in 2×4 runners to raise it up a bit, to be level with the countertop. It fit in mostly nicely, though there is still a little lip where the counter goes above it near the back. My kitchen looks nicer and more like a real kitchen with it.

I got to finally use it after figuring out that there was a valve underneath the house that was closed. I made spaghetti. It started right up. It is definately easier to use than my old tools, and lowers my cooktimes. I don’t much like the burner setup. It has one powerful burner, two regular, and one simmer. The two regular are in the back, though those would otherwise be the ones I’d use most often. I’ll just have to live with it though. One of the burners’ knobs doesn’t activate the spark ignition, so I may have to take off the panel again to see if I can fix that.

I haven’t tried the oven yet.

Bolt taken care of

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I finally got that messed up exhaust bolt taken care of. I bought some nuts for it, but didn’t end up needing them: for some reason, when I went to replace them, the entire post came out this time, instead of just the nut. I used one of the bolts I had bought before, and it worked perfectly.

Now my exhaust is quieter. I’m not sure why it is still somewhat noisy, but at least it’s better than before. At some point I’ll look at the rest of the boltage there and ensure everything is tight.

The tighter exhaust seems to have improved my performance somewhat as well. Now, when my cylinder misses, the performance impact is not quite as bad, though it definately still is a problem. I’m not sure why fixing the exhaust would have improved the performance like that; perhaps the lack of vibration helps somehow, or just makes me more willing to pump more gas into the engine.

DarwinPorts: RoR, new apache

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I’ve taken an interest in Ruby on Rails because of a recomendation from some folk at Macaddicit forums. I used darwinports to install Ruby and the gems installer. I then used the gems installer to install rails. Darwinports is very nice and easy to use for the installations, as it takes care of all dependcies automatically and has an easy to understand interface. It is extremely slow though, often taking several hours for some packages.

I got rails working quite quickly through the Webrick server. I followed a tutorial that helped me easily create a simple application in rails. So far it seems very nifty and easy to work with, but I still have a lot more to learn before I can really get going with this.

One part of the tutorial introduced me to AJAX, codename for a set of javascript functions that allow loading of content into an already loaded browser page without the use of frames or objects, the only methods I had known of before this. I had been looking for a replacement for frames for a good while. AJAX allows a lot more versatility than the frame method. RoR offers AJAX through some built-in functions, requiring no use of the underlying javascript. I would, however, like to learn the javascript as well.

The Webrick is much slower and less versatile/functional than a regular server, so I wanted to try to get it running through Apache. I tried it with my current apache install, but couldn’t figure out how to get fast-cgi, a seemingly required component, to work with it. So I decided to move over to a darwinports installed apache; it’d be easier to update anyway, than with the WebServerXKit that I had been using, and would also allow me to change my PHP version to use exif tags so that my photo gallery’d work. That was much more of a hastle. I had trouble installing my apache2 with php5, until I realized I needed to remove the startup item created by WebServerXKit to allow darwinports to create its own. I then had trouble getting it running. I thought it replaced the standard apache install from apple, as it seemed to have modified its httpd.conf, but it was really in it’s own directory. It also didn’t create an httpd.conf for me, so I had to create one from its default one, then modify it with my own settings, plus add in loading of both php and fastcgi. I still haven’t gotten RoR working with it yet. I also couldn’t get the darwinports mysql server to work with it, and for some reason had trouble getting the old mysql server to work (I don’t even know what I did to get it working). Darwinports oughta have more documentation on this stuff, as it doesn’t quite work out of the box and has configuration files and what not in its own locations.

Network

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company server central location for all information needed by employers/ees. employees can access schedule info, pay info, etc. on internet accessible site and put in schedule requests. database holds schedule and payroll info.