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Bosch 10.8v Pocket Driver (PS20-2)

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This review will be fairly short, as I purchased my PS20 a couple years ago now.

Having had several “electric screwdrivers” in my life, I’d never been all that happy with them. Usually their battery only lasted for a couple tasks, they didn’t have much torque, they were uncomfortable to use, etc.

I’ve always been forced to turn to my power drill when it came to a real task, but it’s heavy, and often seems TOO powerful, as I’ve broken many a screw with it.

However, when I first saw ads a few years ago for the Skil iXO2, I started looking again, as it seemed some energy was flowing from manufacturers other than Black & Decker, and other cheap tool makers. Researching the Ixo2 revealed that Skil was the “consumer” brand of Bosch, and that I should look at the PS20-2 that had just come out. The big advantage over the iXO2 was the torque settings, replaceable Li-Ion battery, and overall robustness (really, the iXO2 would be fine for odds and ends around the house, or even for me at work when doing rack mount installs). So, I “ran” over to my local hardware “big box” store (Jerry’s Home Improvement), and found it for $90, which was $30 off at the time. After feeling the weight, and looking at the features, I picked it up, and honestly, it’s been one of the few “impulse buys” I’ve never regretted in the least.

I initially used it for odds and ends tasks, and it always worked great. But it REALLY came into it’s own when my wife and I installed hardwood flooring. When we installed hardwood, we had to rip up the particle board that was under the carpet, and replace it with 3/4″ plywood. While the PS20 didn’t help with ripping up the particle board (a horrible task given the thousands of staples Tara largely removed on her own during the day), it helped a great deal when we installed the plywood. Installing it required screwing it down around the perimeter every 6″, and 12″ in the field. So, all told, a 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood took about 44 screws around the perimeter, and 24 in the field, so about 68 1.5″ screws each. The PS20 basically would do 1.5-2 sheets per battery, and the other battery would charge in about the time it took to cut, and install the sheet(s) with the other battery. All and all, she probably used it for about 50 hours over about 10 days.

While they have replaced the 10.8v PS20-2 with the new 12v PS20-2A, I can say the 10.8v is extremely serviceable, and works great for any project I’ve worked on that requires a lot of “driving”. I used it quite a bit yesterday when I did the headlight replacement on my car.

[xrr rating=5/5] It’s really, a perfect tool. I have no complaints at all.

Link to Product information: Bosch 10.8v Pocket Driver (PS20-2)

Toyota Prius 2007 HID Bulb replacement

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UPDATE: Shortly after the below, I undid the replacement. The 3rd party bulbs were much whiter, and seemed to aim higher as I got several “flashers” from oncoming traffic thinking I was using high beams. Dealing with the bulb outages may be dangerous to me, but blinding oncoming traffic is dangerous to others. So, YMMV.

Forgive me, the first part of this post covers some back story. If you just want to see the process, feel free to skip ahead to paragraph 4. Thanks! Please pay special attention to the bolded text, as it’s the main tips I have to offer that weren’t directly covered in other documentation I found.

I own a 2007 Prius Touring Edition, that came with HID headlights. Which, is nice, since they provide a lot of visibility at night. But, around the time I had the car serviced for a CHS (Coolant Heat Storage) water pump service bulletin (TSB-0087-08) my driver’s side light began flickering. Then, it just went out one time. But, upon turning the lights off, then back on, it came back, and didn’t go out again for about a year (odd). Then, it started to do it in ernest, and it’s “friend” joined in (the passenger side started to go out). But, all along, turning off the headlights, then back on, they would both come back on. So, I was a slacker, and waited to call Toyota about it (one time it did it, I stopped by a dealer, and they quoted me $450/bulb!).

Finally, about 3 months ago, it started getting bad. On a given nighttime drive, one or both of the lights would go out at least once (they never went out together at the same time). So, I brought the car into the dealer, and they quoted me $150/bulb, plus $100 in labor. Better, but still $400! So, I called up Toyota Customer Care, and spoke to them. First person said there was nothing they could do, so I asked to be escalated. They took my name and number, and said they’d call back. Which, they did in a couple hours. After some discussion, and another call back, they said they would cover the cost of one of the bulbs (they couldn’t get both to go out at the dealer), but not the labor… so, $100 to do one bulb. I said I could do both myself for $60 ($50 for a pair of bulbs online, and about $10 shipping). They were flabbergasted that it was that cheap. I said “Thanks, but no thanks” and left it at that (with a few choice words about how horrible it was that Toyota was not addressing this issue).

So, I went online, and as per numerous reviews, I ordered some D4R 4300k (4300k is the stock color temperature for the Prius, although I find these 4300k bulbs to be “whiter” than the OEM ones were) bulbs at High Performance Bulbs for $49.99 and less than $10 shipping, and had them here in 5 days (from NJ to OR!). I first tried the “lazy” method (please note, changing the Driver’s side this way is not too difficult. However, the passenger side is extremely tight, and unless you’re rail thin, you will not be able to replace that bulb) of not removing the bumper… it proved fruitless as it’s difficult to know which way to turn the bulb enclosure back, and the space is quite limited. So, I put the new bulbs on the bench and said I’d come back to it in a couple weeks.

So, this last week, while driving for no more than 20 minutes at night, the drivers side bulb went out 5 times. So, I decided to go ahead and do it this weekend. So, yesterday, I did.

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AD/OD Golden Triangle, Part 1

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This entry is going to be one I come back to, or at least post multiple parts for, because AD/OD integration, while easy, can’t be considered trivial. This first part will just cover what the scope is, and how we can get to where we want.

At this point, all I have tried is basic integration and testing with PHDs (Portable Home Directories).

Basically, campus just brought up a new AD forest that is well designed, and centrally managed from the top, and rights given to each organization to manage their OU’s. Students exist at the top of the directory, and are not assigned to any lower level OU (because they can (and do) take classes from different units). Employees all exist within specific OUs (who employs them).

Initial testing was done when the AD was being designed on whether or not to extend the schema to include the Apple attributes. Turned out, it wasn’t going to work, because rights cannot be given to OU admins to assign schema attributes for accounts not in their OU (e.g. students).

So, currently, every term, we take a dump of the campus student “database” and find all the students that are taking classes within our unit. We then limit it down to just the uniques, run that through a program called Passenger and then take that output, and import it into WGM.

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