Archives for March 2009

Additions…

2009/03/31 By staze

Okay people, as you can now see, there are some additions on the side bar, and a new theme. The theme, well, it’s okay. It’s better than the default. I’m not a HUGE fan, but at least it’s not 3 column, and it isn’t like reading a newspaper sidebar (like the default).

The additions are fairly self explanatory.

The one marked “Weather” is actually a webcam image taken from my house with the current weather info superimposed over the top of it. Clicking on it will give you my weather data.

The one marked “Current Power usage” is also, just that. My power meter is being polled for info every minute, and it’s appending it to a file. This is just the latest record in that file. It’s resolution for power is 10watts, and for time is 1 minute. If I were ajax-y, I could make it auto update. Maybe when I have some time. The “cost” in parenthesis is based on the SUB power rate of $0.0463/KWH. So, assuming I continued to use that same amount of power for an hour, that’s what it would cost.

In other news, I took the day off today to go to the dentist (perfect exam/teeth, as always), run a few errands, and makes some calls to places that are only open during business hours (TED (to unlock the usb port)). Also called Apple and got my battery replaced on my MacBook Pro since it was faulty (covered under the battery exchange they did a few years back). Gotta give the MacStore credit on this one. Called Apple, they opened a case, I went to the MacStore, they ran Apple Hardware Test (which I have never seen work, except this one time when it told the guy my battery was “BAD”), and they replaced my battery right then and there. Cool.

Tara and I bought the tile and thinset today. Go 300lbs of tile and thinset. Getting that in and out of the car was “fun”. Also set up the tile saw that we borrowed from Tara’s uncle months ago. So, hopefully, we’ll have the tile down by the end of the week, and grouted by the end of the weekend. Here’s hopin’.

Talk to you all later!

Geeking out…

2009/03/29 By staze

So, I got a weather station last year, and have been using it since then, but it’s always been wireless, and not great. It’s a Lacrosse WS-2316. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been improving the setup. Mounting the rain gauge on a post 3′ high (as per weather collection standards), mounting the anemometer on a mast mounted to the chimney. Then I hardwired the sensor to the base station the other week. So, instead of 120second updates, it’s now 7 second. So, useful!

Used wview for a while, but it doesn’t really do anything about random errors with the sensor (like the occasional time the sensor says the wind is 125MPH. Umm, no). It’s a known issue, and can be fixed by replacing the anemometer cable with STP. But, until I do that, I decided to go back to a program I used when it was in beta: LWC (Lightsoft Weather Center). It’s pretty nice. Uploads to wunderground, cwop, makes webpages, etc. Sure, wview does all that, but LWC seems to do it better (and has error correction for the anemometer error). I was getting weird dips in the dew point (therefore humidity) that only lasted for a few seconds (one data point on wunderground or cwop), which screwed up my data. So far, they seem better since I replaced the batteries in the base station, and put some clip on ferrites on the uplink cable. Don’t know why the batteries would matter, since it’s hardwired, but… The ferrites might help with interference since the base station is in the office above the garage, and therefore opener, which uses the same 433mhz frequency as the weather station if it were wireless. God knows if Lacrosse was smart enough to disable wireless reception if it detects a hardwire connection. =/

Yesterday, I hooked a webcam up to the system, and it’s now uploading a picture to wunderground, as well as posting it to the weather page hosted here.

The other geekout I’ve been having is energy usage. I’m a closet stats nerd. I’ve tracked every tank of gas my Prius has gotten, and I’ve been keeping track of my utility usage based on bills since we bought the house (I actually just got the utility company to get me all my usage from the appartments we lived in, so now I have 7 years of that too!).

I’ve had a kill-a-watt for a while now, and while it’s great, it’s limited by what it can do (you have to plug something into it, it can’t monitor 220v loads, etc). Heck, I even bought a kill-a-watt for my step-father-in-law for christmas year before last since he thought it was so cool when I showed him. But, as I said, it’s limited. So, when I saw my new toy on thinkgeek, I immediately wanted one. It’s called a “TED” or “The Energy Detective”. It “hooks up” to your central power panel, and gives you whole house numbers, second by second. Turn on a lamp, you see the meter increase. Turn on the stove, or heat, you see that too. Woohoo! I can see how much everything in the house uses, as well as see how much I use a day, etc. You put in the power rates, and it’ll tell you how much you’re spending per hour, per day, estimate on your utility bill, etc. It’s awesome. This coming week I’m going to pay the ransom money needed to unlock the USB port so I can start actually logging the data. I have faith that google will support the TED with google powermeter, but, we’ll have to see.

But, all of this has caused me to make some changes. Previously, I had my main TV set to “soft” standby. So, it powered up nearly instantly. It’s been like this for years. Little did I know it uses about 40W in this state. DOH! So, I put it into “hard” off, and it uses 1W or less. I also have paired down my always on computers. I now have one server, which used to be a dual G4 800mhz quicksilver. It’s now a 15″ G4 Powerbook. ’bout 80-100W savings. Then, geeking out, I bought a brand new 2009 Airport Extreme to replace my old UFO extreme. 802.11n is sweet… about 6x as fast as my old 802.11g connection. I since buying that have replaced my 8 port gig-e switch, router, and former base station with JUST the airport extreme. Since it’s got 3 gig-e LAN ports, and acts as a router and base station… bingo! So, theres another 20-30W of power saved (the former router was a soekris, and switch was a linksys SD2008). Both energy efficient, but total less so than 1 device.

Anyone need a decent linksys 8 port gig-e switch, or an old Airport Extreme?

So, more later…

Links of interest:
My Wunderground page: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KORSPRIN10
My CWOP page: http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=cw9669
TED on thinkgeek: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/b772/
TED website (it’s pretty bad): http://www.theenergydetective.com/
Google Powermeter: http://www.google.org/powermeter/

Once I have the data available, I’ll post a link to show my power usage at home, etc.

Home goings on…

2009/03/29 By staze

First, let me be clear. Tara’s been unemployed for a while now, and because of that, she’s been doing a lot of the work on her own while I’ve been at work. A HUGE thank you to her.

Well, since my last post about the house, we’ve done a lot. Hardwood is installed and looks great! Took us 3 weeks to install. Before that we had to pull out the carpet, then found out there was particle board below the carpet. DOH! Had to pull all that up (can’t install nail down hardwood on top of particle board because it isn’t sturdy enough for the nails, and it swells), and more importantly, had to pull up thousands of staples that held the Particle board down. So, that took about a week of Tara working pretty much non-stop on it. So, all told, the hardwood probably took us about 5-6 weeks from start to finish. We lived with just the floorboards for a bit too.

Replaced the carpet in the guest room with some castoff from Tara’s mom. It’s wool, really f-ing nice carpet ($17/sq ft.). We also painted a bunch of the house… looks much better!

Replaced the lav and faucet in the master bath, SO MUCH better.

Then, this last week, we started the process to tile the laundry room. Pulled out the W/D, pulled the baseboard. Found some of the drywall was rotted out below the laundry drain. Probably baked up at some point and got the wall wet. So, replaced that (Thank you Tara!). Pulled the linoleum, and sealed the floor. Today we poured SLU (Self Leveling Underlayment). Thought one bag would do, actually took 2. The floor still isn’t perfectly flat, but hopefully it’s close enough. Don’t really want to spend another $30 on a bag of SLU. Tiling will start next week.

After that is done, our list turns to putting in new light fixtures in the master, guest, and office. Replacing the light fixtures in the master and guest bathroom. Also need to put in base boards throughout the house. Replace the carpet in the Master and Office.

Big ticket items are replacing the windows (currently double glazed aluminum frame windows (yay sweat and mold)), and I hope replacing the garage doors (there are huge gaps between them and the frame).

Oh, and this summer we get to replace at least one of the fences in our yard (a “fence” being the section of the continuous fence that separates us from one specific neighbor).

And yard work is starting to pick up… but, we’re hoping to put in a new raised bed soon. So, here’s hoping.