Mowing, mowing, mowing

In the 6 weeks since I returned from vacation on May 12, I've mowed the front lawn completely three times, and the back yard once.  It took two weekends to mow the back yard.  So that's 5 days including mowing.  Four of those were weekend days, and one was squeezed in on Tuesday May 14 while I was still on vacation.  While the actual work of mowing only takes an hour or two, it's still a big deal to me, I might well think about it all weekend, checking the weather and so on.  In the past 6 weeks, only two weekends have not included mowing, and one of those was filled with heavy raining.

I can't complain, really, because it's nice to have nicely manicured grounds.  Latest idea on what to call the home is Cool Pad and it does seem pretty cool with the nice yard.  I could imagine the bikini clad women coming to my pool parties.  I have never had a front yard that looks as nice as the one I have right now (thanks to good rainfall, irrigation system, and almost regular mowing) and the new back yard, if a little rough in patches, is a miracle, it seems to have dropped in from another world, like Alamo Heights, or the grounds of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California which I remember visiting as a kid.  It takes some imagination to see it that way, but the grounds of my house have certainly improved immeasurably in the past few years, and still more improvement is hoped for as the trees mature, the patio is expanded, etc.

On the weekend of Jun 22-23, I mowed the entire front lawn, including the north and south sides, from about 8PM to 9:45PM on Saturday.  I devised a new pattern for mowing the lawn in which the entire lawn was covered with the same home-to-street diagonal pattern.  That had several advantages, including not having to stand nearly in the street (mowing inward as I have often done), and not dividing the yard into ad hoc sections.  Plus, I was constantly moving away from the electrical cord connection, which made the cord handling easier.  I think the diagonal pattern yielded a nicer looking cut also, but the main part of the nice appearance is the now thick mostly St Augustine grass.  Funny that this spring we've had something like St Augustine weather to go with it.

I could continue mowing in the darkness because of the lighting in front and the south side.  The motion detector light on the north side wasn't much help, and I inadvertently ran the mower over the cord once.  The cord was unharmed, almost sticking to the grass.

On Sunday I checked out my second string trimmer which a friend asked me to do when she was over last Monday.  She had done nice weeding around some of the trees in back last Monday, but wanted to use my electric trimmer for the rest.  She was doing this work in explicit compensation for my gift to her of an old animal carrier I was storing in Lyndhurst.  That is a 5 foot long and 4 foot high carrier, suitable for the largest dogs.  I had originally purchased it in 1996 when going to San Francisco, I wanted to have the nicest possible carrier for my cat in the back of my minivan.  I think it cost almost $200 but that didn't bother me because I always wanted my cat to have only the best.  Anyway, I told my friend she could just have the old carrier, which needed cleaning, but she insisted on doing some work in return for it.  Since I was still considering the animal carrier a gift, I also credited $50 for the work to my friends virtual account, which she has only drawn from once and currently has a $415 virtual balance for doing some housework and yard work which she volunteered to do when unemployed earlier earlier this year.  I warned her that I can only honor about $2000 in withdrawals on any particular month, but she wasn't worried about that.

I wasn't asking my friend to do any of this work, though I certainly appreciate it.  So when I mentioned to her on Sunday that I had checked out the trimmer and put it by the Oakhurst door, she seemed weirdly offended.  I was just thinking that I was reporting having done what she asked, like a good dog.  Anyway, her work has added significantly to making Cool Pad even cooler.

Checking out the trimmer (and I also trashed one old trimmer that hasn't worked in awhile) was on the checklist, and it got done, and that was about the first thing I did for the yard on Sunday.  I did a tiny bit of edging around the patio to check it out.  I also used the grass cutter around the patio.  Then I did some hand trimming using a tiny yard scissors around Lyndhurst itself, then, after a big break, the big job was that I did some trimming across the front of the house with the grass shears.  I pulled out the weeds in the crack between the house and the walkway to the front door. And I watered the potted plants, which I do far too infrequently.  And when my friend did the weeding last Monday she left the huge pile of weeds on the grass in back so it could dry out a little before being put into the trash.  She said I could put it in the next week's trash.  So I did.  I scooped all of that up, and combined with the trashed old string trimmer filled up most of my City trash can.

Lower cost home network

Only one 12 port panel in kitchen.  All other rooms have 6 port panel.  This is the constraint.  This is what I talked about with electrician.  Otherwise I suspect cost goes way up.

From kitchen, 2 great rooms (kings and living) get 3 CAT6's and one RG6.  Then queen's room gets 2 CAT6's and one RG6.  Then computer room inputs to one CAT6.

From computer room, there are 4 outgoing CAT6's.  The two extra ports are RG6 to kings and living.

Obviously I need to make diagram, the reduction has made it slightly less intuitive perhaps.

Here I can make tables, 5 room letters: M Q K L C, I'll have to use convention M for Master Bedroom so as to use a different letter than kitchen K.

RG6's

K-M
K-L
K-C K-Q (see update below)
C-M
L-Q

RG6's have to work around constraints of 2 max in most rooms, except 3 max in kitchen.  Would be nice to have had kitchen as single (or double!) hub as originally envisioned, but there aren't enough slots in the kitchen.  The missing hub position K-Q is replaced by a splitter in the living room and a L-Q connection.  Plus there's a nice connection from C-M, currently served by a hole in the wall (which may be replaced by a small panel--or not replaced, during king's room remodel.  I am using 5 RG6's, but ordered 8 because I envisioned double hub from kitchen to each room, but that would require 5 more slots.  Anyway double hub would not have provided the nice C-M.  The original intent was open, and could have included temporary stereo audio patches, or bi-directional video, but the current intent is to provide security video, with the C-M providing computer video.  Could be used as RF or FM in the future.

CAT6A's

K-M(3)
K-L(3)
K-Q(2)
C-K(1)
C-L(1)
C-Q(1)
C-M(1)
new C-G(1)

That shows 12  13 CAT6A's, down from 16 expected.

*** Change July 24 ***

I have decided to run one CAT6A from computer room to garage.  That means that there is no space for RG6 from computer room to kitchen, so back goes the RG6 connection from kitchen to queen's room, likely permitting security channel.  Only other panels with space would be the Living Room (only if the connection to Queen's is removed though) or garage.  There would be little point in running two RG6's from kitchen to living room, especially when the security channel could be split inside queen's room and then sent back to living room, thereby allowing an alternate RF or video signal from kitchen to living room already.  The opposite approach wouldn't work, because sending RF and security to living room would fill the living room panel and require the connection to queens room be dropped.

Network Wiring

The network wiring project got a kick in the pants recently.  The fiber optic link between the master bedroom and the kitchen failed.  That happened similarly a few years ago, after a maid had done some cleaning.  I fixed it that time by swapping one of the parts from the living room fiber optic link, then I replaced the living room link with a new link based on dual CAT6's.

Well I think it's likely to be the same part which failed again (though I can't remember whether it was receiver or transmitter, and there was even some doubt that part of the problem might have been one of the power supplies).  So it's possible that I can't have the kitchen video sources, including the Dish network, in the bedroom until I get the new wiring installed.  It's also possible I won't bother to test spare parts on the fiber optic link beforehand.

Last week I went ahead and order the RG6 wires that would complete the picture (though I'm not really sure how I'm going to use them).  But now I'm realizing that maybe I didn't quite have this all worked out completely in my mind.

The CAT6A wiring is fairly simple.  Three sets of three wires originate in the kitchen and terminate in the three 'client' rooms: king's room, queen's room, and living room.  Single wires originate in the computer room, where the cable modem is, and connect to all other rooms (including the kitchen).  That takes up 4 slots in each client room, 10 slots in the kitchen, and 4 in the computer room.  If this were all there is, it would be obvious to add two more wires between kitchen and computer room, so it can be a digital video sender or receiver as well.

But what happens when I add 2 RG6's originating from the kitchen?  Well first there's the question of whether the RG6's will go to all other rooms, or skip the computer room.  If I do send the RG6 to every room, the computer room will need a second panel, or I'd have to drop the two extra CAT6 wires to the computer room.

Well then if I do go for two panels in the computer room, they might as well both be relatively full.  So then just make the first panel in the computer room the same as for every client room, 4 CAT6A's and 2 RG6's, minus one CAT6A which would just be a looparound from the computer room itself (so 3, actually).  Then the second panel of 6 with only 4 slots filled for the CAT6A's to each room.  That does leave 3 extra slots, but I can't use any of them without adding another panel somewhere else.

I think I was planning on enough cables for all this, but I'll have to check.  We can see here:

4x2 RG6 from kitchen to all other rooms (yes, 8 cables ordered)
4x3 (videos) + 4x1 (lan) 16 cables

But how many 6 hole plates? 3 for the client rooms, 2 for the laboratory, and... lets look at the holes needed for the kitchen:

4x4 outgoing CAT6A
4x2 outgoing RG6
1 incoming CAT6A

That's 19, which is just one more than three panels can handle.  Which makes me think...let's drop that incoming CAT6A.  There are already 4 CAT6A's between the computer room and the kitchen.  Even considering that one of those lines is already taken for the LAN, that's the same as in all the client rooms.  It's just that in this case, hub to hub, the wires in the panel aren't merged from two sources. They just go straight from kitchen to lab.

So, OK, we can do with 3 planes in the kitchen, two in the lab, and one in each of the client rooms, 8 plates in all.  32 CAT6A inserts, 16 RG6 inserts.

There has been some misson creep here, for sure.  In particular, I'm worried about the difficulty of 3 plates.  It is possible to get dual plates, permitting single boxes.  But I don't think you can get triple plates.

Third Weekend in June

June started on a Saturday and is whizzing by.  The first weekend in June was incredible.  On Saturday I went to the XCSSA computer club meeting for the first time in years and demonstrated my Kurzweil K2661 synthesizer.  That evening I saw the last performance of the San Antonio Symphony for season 2012-2013, Mahler's 4th Symphony.  I took a walk on the Riverwalk to be disappointed by the new Landing venue but finding a different and very nice place to eat.  On Sunday I took the neighbor to Home Depot and purchased a replacement garage door for him.  Then, I mowed the entire front yard, with the exception of the north side around the A/C compressor.  All the while, however, it was very disappointing that my friend couldn't go to the Symphony with me or call because of her new weekend job.  She promised to call each night but didn't actually manage to call until Wednesday the following week.  I was feeling slightly heartbroken, but carrying on pretty well anyway.

The second weekend in June I started on the back yard.  I basically hadn't touched the back yard since before my vacation in early May, and it was out of control, with weeds up to 7 feet high and grass and weeds typically 3 feet high.  With 3 hours of work, which would have been more than enough to do the front yard as on the previous weekend, I only got about half the job done.  I also mowed the area to the north of the house around the A/C compressor, and noticed wearily that the front grass was already getting long enough to be mowed again.  We've been getting lots of rain recently.  Worried about the stability of my Pomegranate tree, which was nearly falling over again (after having been staked a few months ago by the sprinkler company) because of heavy but small fruits.  I removed many of the fruits and also cut back several branches that would never grow usefully upward but only hang down in front.  I thought the tree was looking much better afterwards, starting to stand up straight for the first time since being staked.  I did get scolded by my friend the next day about not letting the fruits ripen to maturity.  I figured they wouldn't be good from such a young plant anyway.

On Sunday I had another date, then it started raining, then I worked on re-installing the one main CAT-5 link inside my home.  I had taken that down just before the hallway remodel.  Without it, my kitchen Mac Mini was working fine on wifi, but apparently pounding the wifi so hard that my Sonos system couldn't handle sending any signal to the master bedroom much of the time.  I was beginning to miss whole house FM through Sonos.  So I re-installed the wire, doing some of the best interior telecom wire installation I've ever done.  Which was no small feat, for me, and for the fact that CAT5 is fairly stiff wire, and can't be bent sharply, not at all like the POTS wire that phone installers used in the 1960's which was almost like putty.  I still remember how neatly telephone installers wired inside our 1960's house.  They ran the wire so neatly along the top of baseboards and through doorways would hardly know it was there.  Well I did almost that good with stiff CAT5, which is pretty incredible, I think.  There is one somewhat less perfect stretch of the new wiring--by the side of the Queen's Room door and just inside the Soundproof Wall.  What I did there seemed to be the best I could do.  But I was feeling much better as I had a date on all three weekend nights, picking my friend up from work on two of them.

Then on the third weekend in June, I finished the job of mowing the back yard, especially around Lyndhurst, but avoiding the area where the power company has a temporary above ground line.  I even re-mowed some of the bits I had mowed the week before.  Then, on Sunday, after my 3rd date this weekend (exactly like last weekend) I did the edging around the front.  It needed edging badly, I can't remember if I had even done that since November (you can check back through the blog as to how long ago it was).  It needed mowing also, but I decided to concentrate on the edging, even sweeping up the debris all around afterwards (sometimes I skip that, letting the rain do my work).

After the edging was done, I was again enjoying how nice my front yard is these days, with a postcard friendly lawn, and the back is great also.  I can't remember living in a house where the front yard was actually socially acceptable before.  I also cleaned the patio table and chairs, changed the bedsheets (first time since first weekend in June).  On Monday I fixed the video connection in the master bedroom that had gotten a bad ground loop after the new dedicated A/V powerline was installed.  And I paid the fine I had gotten on the Southbay Expressway in California during my vacation.  I hadn't even realized I was traveling on a toll road, but the cameras caught me.

My Home, what is it worth?

1430 sq ft total living space, including 170 sqft workshop building in back yard

3 bedrooms, 2 baths, square combined kitchen and dining room, laundry room,
half-garage sized bonus room., 16x14 living room.

Tiled entry and fireplace mantle.

All living space insulated, heated, and air conditioned.

220 sq ft car garage space with workbench, 70 sqft garden tool shed

8x10 covered patio

Standard 7200 sq ft residential lot on slight <5% grade.

Lot fully landscaped with grass and 15 trees.

Back yard fenced with Fencecrete lifetime fencing system in wood look design.

4 foot wrought iron back yard gate.

Full lot RainBird automatic irrigation system with 5 zones.

16 SEER high efficiency heat pump with variable speed air handler and IAQ thermostat.

ADT monitored security system with switches on all doors and windows including garage door, glassbreak detectors on all windows, and 5 motion detectors.

3 exterior security cameras with 24 hour recording system

Front door bell and electronic peep hole.

Two smoke detectors, one connected to monitored security

Dishwasher, front loading washer on pedestal, high capacity electric dryer.

40 gallon electric water heater.

2 dedicated 20 amp isolated ground A/V circuits for living room and bedroom

Dish satellite network, AT&T telephone

Full house surge suppressor.  Additional protector on A/C compressor.

Reverse Osmosis water to special faucet, refrigerator, and ice maker.

Medeco lock on front door, pin lock on sliding glass back door.

Champion 4 tall and elongated toilet in hall bathroom.  Bathroom faucets all 1/4 turn.

NE San Antonio, 1.5 miles to High School and Walmart.  2 miles to HEB, Walgreens, etc.  3 miles to Target.  2 miles to Kirby Pool and Senior Center.  0.5 miles to Kirby Friendship Park.  15 miles to Alamo Heights and Downtown San Antonio.  Close to I-10, I-410 and I-35.

Last time I checked, Zillow priced this at $66,000.

Update: I'm not asking this question seriously.  I don't want to sell, and I hope I never have to, because I could never recover what my home is worth to me.  To me, it's worth a million bucks.

Ferengi Rules of Contracting

Ferengi Rules of Business: 1.  Once you have their money ... never give it back.

When he finally returned the 100 pound floor roller on Wednesday May 29, 13 days after originally promising to bring it right back to Home Depot on the afternoon of May 16, Darren called me and offered to cover all the excess rental charges.  Since I had originally rented the roller for $22, and $78.59 was being charged to my card, he would owe the difference.  I quickly but slightly erroneously calculated this as $55 over the phone.  I should have calculated $56.59.  Darren said he couldn't pay the money right away as he was calling me on Wednesday May 29.  But he said he would come over on Friday to make the payment.  He sounded eager to make this settlement.

Of course, he didn't show up on Friday.  I got no calls, no unwarned visits (thank goodness), and no money appeared under the mat.  I was home until about 4pm, the time he would know I needed to go to work.  Somehow I thought he said he was coming in the morning but I couldn't remember for sure.  I should have figured based on previous experience it would go this way, as when all the 3 previous promises to return the roller right away were similarly unkept.

After being texted about this on Friday afternoon, a friend suggested I call Tom.  After I got to work on Friday afternoon, I decided to wait until Monday before calling Tom.  There was still a chance that Darren would come by on Friday evening and leave a note or leave money under the mat.  I should give him that chance, I thought.

I decided I wouldn't bother to call Darren in any case, so as not to hear more of his disgusting fake apologies and promises for a 4th time.  But I would call Tom.  But then when Monday rolled around, after having thought about it for 3 more days, and that endless worrying and future interaction rehearsal which is the most stressful part of dealing with a bad contractor, I simply called Home Depot and verified that the tool had been returned.  That call took about 15 minutes, most of which time I was listening to a very loud and obnoxious Home Depot sales pitch on the phone.  But the staffer was kind enough to verify the charge on my card as $78.59. Somehow I thought Darren had said "about $77" probably because that fit with the $55 refund we agreed to.

I was going to call Tom mainly for social welfare purposes.  I would rather not wait yet another day for Darren to show up, or not, and deliver the money, or not.  It isn't worth all the worry and stress and loss of morning sleep.  I was worried what I'd say when Darren would ask if I still felt like hiring him for future projects.  I was thinking about how I would respond to that question from the moment he called me on Wednesday onwards.  And how would I respond to other questions he might ask.  I was thinking of saying things like "Probably Not", or maybe just "No, but I want to remain on good terms."  Nothing seemed quite right.

So by Friday night the worrying shifted from what I would say or not say to Darren on Friday when he came by to deliver the money to what I would say to Tom when I explained the whole affair to him on Monday.  Would I tell Tom I didn't want Darren on any future projects?  Would I tell him I wouldn't want Darren unless he was being supervised, and not left on the premises alone.  The latter didn't sound nice, but given the experience that I've had, a sensible person might want that.

Would I tell Tom I no longer wanted the money delivered, since I didn't want to loose any more sleep, but that Darren could send it to me as a postal money order?  Would I then agree to cover the money order fee, the postage, and the delivery confirmation fee?  I could not imagine that someone like Darren would get this right, no matter what I said.  He might go for Express Mail, since it does include envelope and delivery confirmation, adding something like $15 when it could cost as little as $1 for first class mail with delivery confirmation.   It seems to me that going to his local post office and buying and sending the money order would take far less time and gas than driving all the way to my house with the cash.  But somehow, in my mental model of contractor thinking, they would not ever do this.  They could not pay the post office $1 for the money order, because that's a cost, and contractors find every possible way to reduce or eliminate costs--money going to other people--if possible.  Driving to my house--that's business, even if the gas cost is far greater than $1, let alone the value of the time.  On the other hand, it's also business to stiff the customer and not make the drive, and that's another way to save time as well.

I was thinking I might tell Tom I wasn't in the business of being a day care center for kids who haven't learned the value of keeping their word.  I was thinking the matter should be brought to Tom's attention.  He should know what his nephew was failing to do.

But by Monday, my desire to do the right thing and call Tom simply to let him know about Darren, but not actually caring anymore to collect the money, especially if that would involve another visit or call from Darren, had simply vanished.  I didn't care anymore and I just didn't want to think about it anymore.  I was thinking that in addition to my not being a day care center, I'm not a corrections officer or a bill collection agency either.  So if I don't care about the money anymore, why bother?  I was thinking I had a social responsibility opportunity here in helping to shape Darren into an honest person. But I'm now feeling that I've already done my bit.  Anything more I do might even invite some form of retaliation.

So I'm just writing it off.  I'm adding another F or two to the mental score I'm giving Darren.  But whatever.  I'll mention the $55 to Tom if I call him again about the door installation.  I'm thinking I might not even bother to call Tom anymore either, then I wouldn't even have to talk about Darren, and I have some feeling that Tom should have known Darren might cause me some trouble and should have warned me about that, so Tom has some residual culpability in this story.  And Tom isn't necessarily an angel either, I just don't think he'd rip me off in such a childish way.  It was curious about the way Tom complained when I asked him to pick up the furring strips he suggested I purchase at Lynwood.  He told me I could get them there, I somehow expected he could pick them up after I payed for them.  OK, that was really just a misunderstanding on my part, but he seemed to react pretty negatively to my first suggestion of his having to pick up those parts himself, though it only took him a minute of sighs on the phone to agree to pick them up, and he actually did so without any problems or additional complaints.

So while there is some grounds to be wary of Tom as well, he should probably not get a black mark from this episode.  It seems he was just trying to do right by his nephew, and his nephew can do reasonably good work in most cases.  It might have all turned out OK, if I had not trusted Darren with the roller.  I might not have been happy with Darren's job of installing thresholds, but that could have been fixed on the next visit, and it was really a small part of the hallway remodel which I consider a great success.