Lyndhurst Garden House

Lyndhurst Garden House
Lyndhurst Garden House

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Breakdowns in 2015

A key part of my bedroom hifi, a Behringer DEQ 2496 failed, and rather than replace with spare unit intended for 3 DEQ living room system, I temporarily reprogrammed the existing DCX crossover to do same job, though not quite as well.  I will need to replace with DEQ or equivalent for long term plan for bedroom system.  $300 not paid yet since I still have spare unit that needs to be programmed and put into service before I buy yet another.  Plan is to have 4 such units in continuous service, currently I only have 1 in continuous service.

Another key part of bedroom hifi, a Sonos ZP80 from 2005 seemed to be failing and was replaced with brand new Sonos Connect.  Later I determined that older ZP80's aren't as good doing simultaneous line input to several zones, so perhaps the ZP80 wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as the new units.  But that was my original ZP80, which has had more hangups and other problems than any other unit, so I'm glad to be rid of it, and the new Connect has revolutionized my Turntable & Tape zone, which now works perfectly in all modes via Sonos.  $325

Car (2006 Prius with 135,000 miles) started showing red warning triangle and other lights.  I was able to drive to dealer, and paid $500 to replace inverter coolant pump.  This is the first repair I have ever had to pay for since previous repairs were covered by 100,000 mile warranty.  I decided if car needs to be replaced before smaller EV's with 200 mile range become available, I'll lease an EV with 100 mile range.  But I would pay a few thousand, if necessary, to keep Prius going until 2017. $500

13 year old Central Air Conditioner stopped working, and was repaired with a recharge and sealant compound said to be good for 18 months.   Very hot summer follows very cold winter this year and replacement may be required soon.  Variable speed compressors are now available from Trane, Lennox, and Carrier.  My existing service company would be happy to install new Trane, but I want BTU's bumped up which it would seem that kind of system allows, but installers aren't comfortable with that yet. $500

Another key part of bedroom hifi, a Classe CP-35 preamp I purchased used in 2004 died, blows fuses.  Was replaced with brand new Emotive XSP-1 preamp.  $700.

Power amp in SVS subwoofer failed and was replaced with new improved unit from factory.  $400.

Worried that Monster Power surge suppressor in bedroom wasn't working (after two failures on bedroom system, and it had been blinking all lights EXCEPT surge for years, and is the last of 3 now failed Monster Power units) I replaced it with a Brickwall surge suppressor with long warranty and series mode system which works without sacrificial elements.  $250.

Sony 34XBR960 TV from 2005 died.  This was the finest CRT TV ever made, not only with high definition but special SuperFine pitch.  Perfect blacks of course and more beautiful color than just about any LCD TV.  Price paid was $2500 brand new from top local dealer.  Natively scans 480i to 1080i.  The best possible display for old Standard Definition material.  I got my 10 years usage out of it but will try to get fixed.  What I'd like to replace this with would be a 40" (limited by space available) OLED, and those are not available yet.

Ceramic Dental Crown started getting sensitive, then had full on pain.  Dentist fixed without exactly explaining how.  This is the 3rd failure on that crown, though previous failures had not involved any pain.  $200 (including dentist visit, doctor visit, and antibiotic, but not future plans for replacement with gold crown).

Sony 400 disc DVD carousel from 2006 failed, was replaced, sort of, with a new Magnavox MDR 557 in addition to unboxing an older Magnavox MDR 537.  Replacement isn't completed yet because MDR is noisy and I need SSD and other tweaks to make it work quietly.  $300.

10 year old Duracraft Humidifier not working after intensive cleaning--perhaps too intensive.


I guess I shouldn't complain, since most of these have lasted longer than most people even keep such things.  I think it shows that when you have lots of stuff which can fail, you have to expect that there will be continuing repair and replacement costs nearly every year just to keep the same circus going.  So it's one more advantage for simplicity, except I'm not going there soon.  Meanwhile what may be more surprising is how long many things have actually lasted so far and may continue doing for awhile.

(Over $3000 in repair/replacement costs for this year, and one big item, TV, hasn't been addressed yet.)

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

October recap

As I first sat down to write this, I didn't feel I continued the rapid achievements of August and September in October.  But some things did get done as well as good times being had.  After thinking about it, maybe a lot did get done after all.

Queen's Bathroom

Biggest change to the appearance and functionality of the bathroom in many years was a small and inexpensive upgrade:

Finally, after 23 years, I replaced the old dingy shower curtain with a new one which is very pretty.  I also repositioned the shower curtain rod, moving it just above the inside of the tub.  Previously it had been 5 inches further out.  This small change means that now no water leaks out onto the bathroom floor.  No water even leaks behind the shower guard now.  I did not imagine it becoming this good from a couple of simple changes.

For years I had struggled with water leakage.  About 3 years ago a virtual pool of water formed outside the bathtub after each shower.   I then bought a shower curtain corner shield at Lowes, but it only lessened the leakage slightly.  It has always been problematical because the corner between bathtub and shower isn't perfectly square (btw: it never is, and the better shower guards you can get online have adjustable angle to fit).  If you press the shower guard against the wall, it pulls up from the bathtub, and vice versa.  I had always figured those inevitable gaps to be the source of the water leakage…but they weren't.  In fact, done rightly as it is now, the shield isn't needed at all.  But when I replaced the shower curtain this month, I kept the shield up and actually secured it to the wall and the tub now using a tiny piece of blue tac adhesive you hardly notice.  Eventually when I'm sure it isn't needed anymore, I'll just remove the thing.

As I had figured earlier this year from the successful new curved rod in the King's bath, the leakage problem arises when the shower curtain is too far out from the bathtub in the corners.  Just get that part right, and you don't need to do anything else: no clips, guards, or other doodads are really needed.

It was also exacerbated in the Queen's bath because the old pink shower curtain had shrunk over the years.  The shrinkage was such that you couldn't pull it fully to both walls at the same time.  Even pulled not quite all the way back, there was some gap in the front.  And even if the front shower curtain hook was secured on the lip of the rod at the front wall, the bottom of the curtain pulled away from the wall by several inches when I brought the back of the curtain toward the back wall.  Sometime earlier this year I clipped the shower curtain to the shower guard.  That kept the shower curtain from pulling away as much from the front of the shower.  But it had the undesired effect of loosening the shower guard itself, leaving it hanging slightly to the side.  So it's hard to explain how weird this all looked.  Dingy shower curtain not fully reaching the front, pulling the shower guard off to one side, the whole thing unstable and wobbling constantly.  My friend called it "ghetto" earlier this month and that was correct and it got me motivated, finally, to fix it right.

For many years I just couldn't get around to replacing the pink curtain because I was so disappointed that you can't find any plain pink shower curtains anymore, and I liked that plain pink color.  It gave the "pinkness" to the room which was otherwise mostly white.  Every time I looked for a new curtain, I didn't find what I wanted and just gave up.

Many years ago I decided to do certain things differently than most people.  About 23 years ago I bought shower curtain advertised as not needing "liners".  These were made of heavy organic cotton.  I hate plastic liners because they look ugly themselves, are impossible to clean, and complicate the shower curtain system.

Sometime years later I replaced the shower curtain in the King's bath, but in the Queen's bath I'm not sure I ever did.  It was the original Organic cotton curtain in pink.  (Or perhaps it was a replacement I got in 2007, I'm not really sure anymore.)

So I never replaced the curtain for two reasons: 1) because I couldn't find a plain pink curtain anymore, and 2) because I figured you needed some special kind of curtain not to need to use a plastic liner.

Well the experience in the King's bath proved that the curtain doesn't need to be super special anyway.  The linerless curtain there was a relatively light and almost transparent curtain now.  Yet it perfectly traps the water.  (Oh, yes, when going without a liner you put the curtain inside the tub.  If you wash the curtain every so often you won't have any trouble with mildew.  I've had very few problems with spotting over the years, and I'd usually go years (!) between washing the shower curtain.  Recently I hadn't been washing the shower curtain at all because I didn't want to put the damn thing in my washing machine, even with the Sanitize cycle, it was so awful.

When looking for shower curtains this month at Bed Bath & Beyond I noticed that only the very heaviest (and most expensive) ones say specifically they can be used without liner.  Most say that a liner is "recommended."  (When something is "recommended" that actually means you can probably get along without it.)  Then the very lightest curtains say that a liner "is required."  I bought a medium weight curtain on sale for which a liner was only "recommended."


Yard

Mowing front and back was done in first two weeks.
Edging front was done (somewhat more completely than in September, but hardly perfect)

The NW Viburnum has been showing fungal disease since July.  Finally a friend trimmed rotting branches and we carefully cleaned up dead leaves.  She also added new pre-fertilized soil around the base, which I moved and aerated slightly.

The tree in SW corner was growing out into Lyndhurst.  We cut it back considerably allowing sufficient room to walk around the corner of the building (but not much more now).

My friend and I picked out flowers for the flower boxes on Oakhurst at a nursery and she planted them.  She waters them mostly, or lets the rain do it, but she called and asked me to water it twice, so far, this month.


King's Bathtub

After a fabulous birthday date with friend (Nursury, Dinner, Swan Lake Ballet, Presents) and on a Sunday night no less, I started cutting with the Exacto knife and removed almost all of the grout/caulk (at least half caulk it seems now) around the tub and in the corners.  I removed about 5 times more stuff than the tile contractor (who barely scratched the surface--though he make have taken out the harder initial grout layer).   Some parts are now picture perfect and ready for caulking, and the progress is hard to believe, but there are still some small hard bits of grout and some trimming around the floor needed which will take another day of work.

Mosquitos

I've been battling mosquitos inside the house.  At first I figured they were coming in because I was leaving the back and/or front doors open too long while letting augie in or out (he sometimes takes almost forever to go through the doorway).  I brought the blue light Mosquito Trap out of storage and set it up in the Gym, which is at the beginning of the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.  When that wasn't dealing with the situation in the King's bathroom well enough, I moved it into the King's bath itself.  Then finally one day the King's bath itself seemed loaded with mosquitos and I figured the trap was attracting them and I moved it back to the Gym (converted part of Garage).

It was about that time I realized they must be coming in through the gaps around the bathtub created by removing all the old grout and caulk.  If they can get inside the wall through gaps outside, they can then escape from the inner wall to the room through gaps around the bathtub.  So one night I used painter's 2 week tape to tape all around the tub where grout is removed.  That seemed to help but not immediately eliminate the mosquitos.

I've been getting better at using my insect paddle.  It fries insects that fly through it.  Last night (Oct 29 am) I killed 4 mosquitos, which is pretty good.  Many nights I've swung and swung and caught nothing.  It often seems that once I bring out the paddle, they hide.  Anyway it has become a very useful tool in eliminating mosquitos.  I'm unsure my Dynatrap does much at all except attract mosquitos.

I've also been running the King's bedroom fan in reverse, blowing air from the bed to the ceiling.  This seems to repel mosquitos.  Running the fan the normal way, blowing air down onto the bed when I am laying on it, seems to immediately attract mosquitos.  I've been keeping the fan running 24 hours now because it seems (very limited data) actually to eliminate mosquitos.  It may be stressing or dehydrating them.  This may be more hope than results, but you get to a point where you want to try everything that might work.  Except I don't want to smear DEET on before going to bed.



New Smartphone and Smartphone service

Somehow I got obsessed this month with updating my 2013 Samsung Galaxy S4 phone.  After talking to people and visiting Apple store where I had originally intended to buy iPhone 5S, I decided to buy iPhone 6S Plus.  It seemed to solve the issue of accidentally pressing the side off button because that button is just slightly out of my reach when I grasp the phone from my pocket.  Plus being great in other ways, and I strongly appreciate the better software ergonomics of iPhone.  I ended up buying this from Sprint just-in-time to get the now expired $60 unlimited rate (which was good because I gave up my grandfathered $30 unlimited data plan from AT&T in the process) which rose to $70 on October 16.  The Sprint store couldn't sell me one on time because they didn't have any in stock, and they couldn't order any either.  So I ended up ordering over the phone from Sprint just hours before the cutoff.  This was one long and difficult phone call, not helped by the 10 minute delay getting emails at work in the late afternoon when they start doing backups.  But in the end it worked out!  I received the phone the next Tuesday while I was still sick at home.  I had it programmed to my phone number at the Sprint store the following Monday.  So far, I love it.  I am actually renting the phone through iPhone Forever which allows me to upgrade as new phones come out at no charge.  The key problem with my earlier iPhone 3G was that I didn't upgrade until 2013 and by that time it hadn't kept up with changes like the new maps applications.  Though it's not clear if regular upgrades are going to be as important in the future as they were in the past.  Before and after I did much online reading ("research") about phones and especially iPhone.  I now think I had been inspired to buy a phone because of all the iPhone buzz coming out with the introduction of the 6S and 6S Plus in September.  Rarely am I so up with things, but now I'm once again (as when I bought my Prius) up with the stars and the gods, it's October and I have the latest iPhone.


Car Service

I did the 140,000 mile service.


Car Repair

A week after 140,000 mile service, warning lights were flashing, and I took my car to the dealer for repair that evening.  They did it while I ate at a nearby mall (and loved the Strawberries Romanov at La Madeleine).  $500 for new inverter water pump.  This, at 140,000 miles, is the first mechanical repair I have had to pay for on my 9 year old Prius.


Sick

I caught cold on Friday, the day after ordering the iPhone, and a couple days after repairing the car.  I was out sick through the following Thurday and still have some slight chest congestion.  I slept and rested well during the peak days I was taking off work, and it has probably been the mildest cold ever, though the runny nose for 3 days was very annoying.  I chose to not take any antihistamines or decongestants, which was easier because I was staying home and mostly resting.


Cat

Continued bonding, we feel safe around each other mostly now, I can pick him up without feral cat gloves, and I now usually feel safe going around the house in my underwear, though cat has tapped me with claws (not hard and no mark was left) once this month, and tapped me with paw several times.  I like it when he rubs and just leans on me.  He also likes to lick me a little, I have mostly pulled back fearing it would lead to a bite (it once did a few months ago), but in last few days have even let him lick (my foot or leg) for more than a couple seconds.  I'm feeding him a bit of canned food 4x daily and my friend also does 1x, and we refill his crunchies 3 times daily.  He never bothers me after bedtime until I'm just getting up (he wants that first spoon of canned food).  He never bothers my friend and me when we are together, though he has a special play relationship with my friend ("his mother").  He often sleeps on couch during the day.  His clawing has always been limited to things of lesser importance and toys, which he now spends most clawing time with.  He came out all by himself near the end of the monthly party.  He can still can be threatening several times daily, and occasionally wails inside.  As I am writing this, he had insisted on going outside after dinner, and was outside, but I just opened the back door and he ran back in.  He's incredibly good in many ways, but still bad sometimes in a few.


Testing, Returning, and Replacing the refurbished Keithley Distortion Analyzer

My refurbished Keithley meter from Parts Connexion in Canada arrived in late September just before a party and I quickly tested the AC and DC voltage parts, but didn't get around to testing the distortion analyzer until the XCSSA meeting for October.  I made measuring distortion my XCSSA presentation for the month.  It only interested a couple of people, and them not much.  Anyway it did force me to print out the relevant part of the manual and actually figure out how to use the distortion analyzer.  And I found that the generator part of the meter was not entirely working correctly.  I emailed Parts Connection and within two days they had sent a replacement meter.  I picked up the new meter then re-used the same box and padding to send the bad meter back.  I tested the new meter and, as they had said, it was working correctly.  I rarely do things like this so efficiently.  Often I end up stuck with broken stuff, like the Technics SL-1000 I bought last year.


KPAC Recordings

I've made several now, and finished a very complex editing job on the broadcast of the Rodrigo concerto.  It's now on my server.


Priscilla Recordings

I finally did critical comparison of the Zoom recordings and the monaural R0DE/Masterlink recordings.  IMO the Masterlink recordings have much more dynamics and passion.  So I decided to go ahead with the editing job I had already done, though I did edit out one track from the Zoom recordings to do the test (and had initially been planning to use that, as it had the unclipped first take).  I made two "master" CD's of the edited Masterlink version on my Mac/Plextor, and diff'd them on my SmartNFriendly duplicator where I will burn all the customer copies.  I needed to get the duplicator connected to the living room conditioned power (it hadn't been used in years).  I was all set to start burning copies for interested people, and then I decided I was coming down with cold and didn't want to get my germs on them.  I had planned to go to the audio society meeting to give them out, but skipped the meeting also because of illness.


Work ($)

Passed annual review.  It's been an interesting and/but very good month and things are looking good.  Learned about matrix multiplication optimization.


Bills

Paid Home Insurance (getting really high, but I'm glad I can still buy it) and County Tax.  Didn't bother to wait till January to pay tax, or installments, just sent a check for the whole thing so as not to forget, etc.  But that was half of what the insurance cost.  Funny I also got an insurance rebate check of $250, which was about how much higher my insurance was this year.  School tax hasn't arrived yet.


The Party

Four Guests, including my friend.  My friend made baked chicken, which was well received, along with some other contributions.  The topic was good and generated good discussion, though curiously the friend I expected to be the most argumentative was pretty much in agreement with me now.  The movie was very well received and perhaps one of the best I've ever shown, dealing with a chapter of history few people learned much about.  Because of the chicken dinner, instead of me having to make sandwiches for 30 min, the majority of the party was over early which was nice given the early darkness.  Very successful!


Credit Union and Work Timecard

In both cases I found my self locked out.  I went to the credit union and they reset something and I could log in again.*  It wasn't just me not remembering my "first employer", their software was screwing up in multiple ways, I'd follow all the steps correctly and then just find myself locked out again and again.)  In both cases I have the passwords written down now, and I hope they've taken "First Employer" off the list.  The "email temporary password" feature doesn't seem to work at all on any Mac I've tried.

WRT timecard database at work, it wasn't sending the password reset emails either, so I could just never reset my password.  Every time you go through this, it won't let you select the same password, or even one with more than a few matching letters.  This makes it extremely difficult to both formulate a new password and remember it, which you inevitably find yourself doing in extreme haste to be sure you get your timecard in on time or check that your bank balance is high enough.


Breakdowns

The car was flashing warning lights, including the "Red Triangle of Death", but seemed to run normally.  Turns out the Yellow triangle may be worse, but the combination of red and yellow triangles would mean to have the car towed, or anything related to brakes (fortunately not).  I brought it to the dealer that same day and got it fixed for $500.

The Classe CP-35 preamp in my Turntable and Tape pod is not showing any LED's.  It does not have an on/off switch anywhere that I can see.  It was running normally the week before.  This looks like power supply failure, though it could just be a blown internal fuse.  I think there was a storm during the interim but I have (1) Whole House Surge Protector and (2) all bedroom audio is plugged into a Monster Power 2000.  Actually the Monster has been clearly defective (flashing lights) for several years now, I'd just been assuming the surge still had something left, but maybe not.  The Classe is a key part of my household system.  I have replacement preamps, but nothing with super-accurate balance and digital volume.  I'll need to see if I can fix it, or get replacement (another Classe, Levinson 380, or Emotiva XSP would do).  This is at least the second audio breakdown this year, the first was the DEQ in the bedroom, which had my long-evolved bass correction.  I've only done a quick correction in the DCX to replace the now-missing DEQ, but it's nothing like the same.  Actually my latest plan was to have two DEQ's in the bedroom because they have digital output.  I have one spare now but I need to get a bunch.  And/or I also need to re-do the bass correction now on the DCX using REW, which I haven't used since the living room audio system tuning in January, which itself was fairly quick and rough.  When you have a system with as many aged and often preowned components as I do, quasi annual breakdowns may be inevitable.  In the pat 10 years, EQ's have failed twice, the Sony PSX-800 has failed once (twice since purchased), the Linn Sondek has failed once (twice since purchased), the Krell FPB 300 failed once, got repaired, and a year later I took it out of service for 3 years thinking it had failed again (but it just normally thermal cycles wildly).  Some things have just had certain functions fail: the Tact RCS 2.0 has a failed optical input.

Lectures

2 lectures this month!  The first was David Eagleman giving a preview of his new PBS series on the Brain.  My friend joined me to see this (she hasn't gotten out to Trinity lectures as much as I have).  The second was about global warming denialism, and I sat next to two friends.

Social Activities Summarized

Eagleman lecture.  XCSSA meeting.  Birthday date with friend.  Swan Lake Ballet.  Missed audio society due to illness.  Second lecture.  Monthly Party.  Halloween at Home (I had just cleaned up front and put out lighted fake pumpkin when the rain started, and it rained heavily 7-9, so I was all ready but no kids showed up).

Services

I subscribed to Tidal uncompressed internet radio, and upgraded my Pandora subscription to paid.  As I am writing this, I am listening to Rhapsody, which has very nice artist Channels and might be worth keeping just for that.

Minor Repairs

First tightened (that worked) then replaced Halogen in front fixture.  I was hoping 150W LED's would come out, as that might be the ideal bulb.  But this is my second cheap Halogen bulb.  The first lasted just over two months.  The "0.9Y" specification on the box is for 3 hours per day.  Well if it's 12 hours per day, that's just over two months.  But the real cost is electricity not bulbs, even with Halogen's slightly increased efficiency.  LED would be ideal, but the largest commonly available are 100W equivalent, which is what I have now, true, but I want more (though it's seeming most recently the front light is sufficient, though barely).

Patched, then put screen door back on track.  This probably needs replacement.

Removed and took cover off Classe CP-35.  It has blown fuse, everything else inside looks OK (though that can be misleading).  I ordered new fuse online.   I'm already thinking that an Emotive XSP might be better anyway, if the CP-35 can't be easily fixed.

Put battery in RF meter so I could do some tests.

Fixed wifi on Halloween night after storms preceding days.  This required not only shutting down Linksys wrt54g router (tried that, didn't work) it required also disconnecting ethernet cable from big Dlink switch while power cycling Linksys.  (I hated the idea of powering down switch, so I tried just disconnecting it and that worked mostly...).  I also had to reboot two Sonos nodes which got confused apparently.  No doubt about it, the Linksys should be on a big UPS.  I have such a thing in Lyndhurst but it may need new batteries.

Adjusted bedroom stereo bass

After adding audio spectrum analyzer to new iPhone, I used it to do some minor fine tuning of bedroom system.  Previously there had only been a 2dB boost at 111Hz.  Now it has 3 PEQ's, a 3dB Q=1.4 boost at 25 Hz,  (Siri told me the Q for a one octave filter, which was apparently what this needed), a 6dB Q=3.5 cut at 50 Hz, and a 3dB Q=3 boost at 111 Hz.  I also made both high and low pass LR48.  The PEQ's are all done on the stereo input channels, so they apply both to subs and to mains.  I listened to Spanish Harlem and some bass enthusiast tracks to ensure it was good, and it is much better (especially without that 45-50 Hz boom).

New Apps for iPhone

I installed Web Albums so I can send photos to Picasa for use in Blogger.
Audio Spectrum Analyzer
NET toolbox, SpeedTest, and Wifi Finder...but none of these do what Wifi Analyzer on Android does (and it was Wifi Analyzer that helped me fix wifi by showing conclusively that it was down, and it's also cool for measuring wifi RF levels).

Of course, Weather Underground, Sonos, and Pandora.


El Capitan

I upgraded kitchen Mac to El Capitan.  Seems fine except I don't like the missing bookmark bar in Safari.  I see I can access my files on the laptop now--which I'm not sure I was able to do before because Laptop has 10.6, and IIRC that didn't like to talk to 10.7-10.9 (or maybe I was confusing when kitchen Mac only ran 10.3, anyway I forgot about being able to do this now).  I tried copying a huge folder from laptop to kitchen mac via wifi.  But I didn't like the idea of 18 hours of high throughput wifi from the laptop right next to where I sleep.  I could in fact measure the RF coming from the laptop during transfer, and see it become unmeasurable when I shut down wifi.  The laptop seem to emit more than other devices, though I didn't test phone on cellular (which I understand emits hugely more RF than wifi).


Next Month:

1) Finish removing caulk and grout around tub.

2) Do caulking around tub.

3) Fix or replace Classe CP-35

4) Edge and mow again.

5) Finish off-loading videos from Sony DVR so as to be replaced with Panasonic.

6) Repair patio door screen (much clawing, even ajar this afternoon).

7) Be sure to get Priscilla CD to friend of Priscilla's father.

8) See about replacing screen door



Monday, September 28, 2015

September Recap

First Weekend (Labor Day Weekend)

- Disassembed video recorder to get info on hard drive at XCSSA meeting
- Re-installed video recorder using HDMI and S-video connections
- Purchased replacement Sonos Connect (replacing flaky ZP80) for tape recording
- Got new suspenders fixed at Joseph's
- Saw Play "Boing, Boing" at the Vexler
- Finished "Invisible" speaker wire in Queen's Room by doing patching, priming, and finish coat of paint, and finally removed ladder from room after 18 months work on this project
- Removed and patched underneath kitchen claw board for cat (now awaiting wire brush treatment)
- ADT removed sensor on to door to Gym and added new sensor for Gym-to-Garage

Second Weekend

- Watched Woody Allen's most serious movie "Interiors"
- Had homebrew with retired friend on west side
- Set up new Sonos Connect and did experiments on how many
  uncompressed line-in streams can now be handled without dropouts (5)
- Mowed down weeds and trimmed small tree on left side of driveway
- Discovered correct way to set Black Level on Pioneer digital video recorder
  (DVR) or best quality copies from Sony DVR
- Noelia fertilized palm trees and pots in front yard
- Downloaded "Amused to Death" in high resolution flac and figured
  out how to play that on my Mac and other systems

Second Week
-Locksmith changed two deadbolts and added a new one:
  Badly tarnished front door Medeco replaced with new silver finish
  Medeco-cylindered lock which turns in correct direction.  Double
  sided deadbolt on gym door replaced with single sided for
  convenience.  New deadbolt added on door between Gym and Garage.
- Researched and purchased new 3Tb backup drive

First 2+ weeks
-Worked on copying old videos from to-be-retired Sony DVR to new
  Magnavox DVR, now about 50%
- In addition to Black Level setting, learned a lot about other editing and
  copying features

Third Weekend
- Grand Symphony Opening Night (Beethoven 9th) date including
  trip to nursery to pick flowers for Oakhurst, dinner at La Madeleine,
  lecture by assistant conductor, Symphony with Mastersingers (including
  a college friend), caught last set (Tower of Power) at Jazz's Alive free
  concert on way back to car.
- Meanwhile, I made first timer recording of KPAC-FM during broadcast
  of San Antonio Symphony playing Rodrigo Conceirto de Aranjuez
 - On Sunday, Noelia planted Oakhurst planter boxes with new flowers.
  I mowed front and edged sidewalk (first time in months) and Noelia raked
  up grass on sidewalk and I swept up afterward.
- Setup LP transcription system with SAE 5000A click remover and started
recording Chick Corea album
- Performed first Time Machine backup of my Mac ever

Third Week
- Tile company removed grout.  I got them to do the best job I could get them to do but will need to do much more grout removal myself before caulking.  This is slated as #1 job for October.
- Removed some grout using Xacto knife.  Was easier than expected.
- Continued working on Chick Corea album, correcting level setting and making versions with and without SAE 5000A
- Monthly housecleaning
- Picked up THD DVM shipped from Canada

Fourth Weekend
- Finished and compared Chick Corea transcriptions
- RCAS Meeting 1-5PM, great recordings played through Klipsch Cornwalls with Berning Amp
2
- Cleaned Living Room
- Discussion and Movie Party 3-10PM Sunday, also saw eclipse
- Cleaned up after party
- Unpacked new THD DVM

Fourth Week
- Cleaned up iTunes metadata for my Beethoven collection so I can now find and play it over Sonos

Throughout
- Learning how to deal with cat Augie inside





Wednesday, September 9, 2015

September Blast Off

August was a very productive month at the estate, or so it seemed when I posted about all the many things that I had done, barely having enough time to fill in the details for just a few of them.

September hasn't started too badly in that regard.  So here's a wrap-up of the first 8 days:

Monitored Security

I asked ADT to send out a technician to remove the sensor to the door to the Gym (what had been the door to the garage from the house--before half of the garage was converted to the room I am now calling Gym) and replace it with a new sensor on the door to the remaining part of the Garage from the Gym.  I was very happy with the technician.  While he gave the usual arguments against what I wanted, he ultimately did exactly what I wanted, and the price for the new sensor was reasonable.

Locksmith

Locksmith came out and we worked out the details and prices but no work has been done yet.  I'm replacing the entry door deadbolt because the old bronze on the outside looks lousy (it started corroding about a year after installation in 1992) and I have never been able to get the inner thumb turn to work the correct way.  I will continue to have a high security Medeco cylinder, which I think is good enough, is about as good as any high security cylinder, and I like the big flat Medeco keys which are like art deco.  Actually if my locksmith carried Assa/Abloy, I might "upgrade" to one of those, but my locksmith doesn't carry them.  I've had Bilock keys and I do not like them: they seem rough on fingers, pockets, and stuff in pockets.  I had been thinking the locksmith could "fix" the old Medeco deadbolt frame but the locksmith didn't think so.

The Gym door and Gym-to-Garage door will both have identically keyed one-sided deadbolts from Kwikset.  The Gym door currently has a two sided deadbolt which is very inconvenient, and the Gym-to-Garage door only has a locking knob.  The locking knob will be disabled when the deadbolt is added.

I would also disable the locking knob on the front door because I think it is good for only one thing: getting locked out.  By my friend still thinks "two locks better than one" so I'm thinking to not make that change this time.

The lock and security changes are both in part ntended to convert the Gym more into a real room in the house, and not part of the garage that is locked out of sight when my friend comes to tend Augie the cat.  The security change means I could start using the At-Home security feature which I have never used before precisely because it wouldn't allow me to use the Gym as a real room in the house.

Tile Company Contacted That Previous Repair Didn't Last

And I now ask that they remove grout around the tub and let me caulk it.  We'll see if they will do that. They might not, which could be a pickle.  Even if they do, it will take me a lot of work to do the caulking, and I've decided I don't trust anyone else.

18 Month Project Completed

It wasn't supposed to be 18 months, it was supposed to be a weekend project.  But it turned out into an 18 month project: connecting the left loudspeaker in the Queen's Room using flat speaker wire that sticks to the wall.  Well it's been 18 months of mistakes, frustration, delay, thinking, and worrying.  Finally it's all done.  I'm washing my hands of it now.  And the ladder has been removed from the Queen's room.  (My friend would ask: do you still need the ladder?  I would say, "Yes, I still have to do the caulking/priming/texturing/priming/finish coat, but I can take the ladder out until I get to that, if you want."  She would say "No, you can leave the ladder in until you are done, and take your time.")  The project started in April 2014 and was just finished on September 7, Labor Day, 2015.

The name brand wire wasn't cheap (something like $100-200 IIRC) so I found what appeared to be identical for $50.  Maybe it wasn't, but I have read of people having difficulties like mine even with the name brand.  First problem is, it doesn't look that great.  Second problem is, it doesn't stick to the wall.  I found it starting to come off within a day, and almost fully fallen off after a week.  (Hint: I should have just tossed it then, maybe.)  I put it back on with more force, then with strips of caulking, and finally with most of the back side of the ribbon wire smeared and covered with caulk.  The full caulk treatment (that was about the second month into this project) worked, but then edges of the wire curled, which I fixed with more caulk.

The way this would go is I would Finally get around to something, like covering the wire entirely with caulk and sticking it to the wall, a month or so after doing the previous failed or incomplete step.  In the meantime I might pick up new supplies such as caulk, painter's tape, paint.  So it wasn't like I spent 400 days working on this project.  Though I may have been thinking about it 400 days.  And that may be where the real cost of this project was.  I may have only spent 100 actual hours of work on it, but there were certainly at least another 200 hours of thinking, worrying, re-examining, thinking again, and now of course blogging about it (but that's a benefit not a cost).

Anyway, after I finally got the wire to stick to the wall, I knew the next steps, but was slow in doing them.  Especially it seemed it took me 9 months or so to get around to doing the texturing.  I had never done anything like that, and I had to do some research online.  I may not have done it the best way, but it seemed like spray can would be the easiest way for a beginner, so that's what I used.  The texturing is probably the worst part of what I did, it doesn't really blend in that well, though it may mask the wire slightly on the vertical.  It may or may not be helping hold the wire to the wall (which was one of my primary justifications for it: a kind of glue effect).  After doing the texturing I was surprised to find out that I had to do more caulking, and even speckling.  In the last few days of work on this project (ironically labor day weekend) I discovered that spackling could help keep the edge of wire solid and not floppy.  Trying to caulk behind the wire in all sorts of ways often ended up with floppy edges.  But stuffing in a bit of spackling I can keep the edges straight and eliminate visibly annoying gaps.  I didn't do much spackling but it was the final touch that cleaned up 3 very visible and ugly gaps.

I did priming before the texturing, as the can said.  And priming afterwards, as it also said to do, and that was just done over this weekend.  I intended to do the priming on Saturday but then I discovered all the remaining problems that needed either caulking or the newly discovered spackling.  Actually the spackling wasn't done on Saturday it was done on Sunday evening, just before doing the post-texturing priming.  So finally the priming was done on Sunday night and the final finish coat was done 9 to 11 PM on Monday night.  I had been napping until 9 and I said to myself, I bet I can actually finish the project in two hours, and be actually done by 11pm.  It isn't actually that much work.  And I did finish by 11pm!  Including preparation (moving cat chair and scratch post), cleanup, and putting all the cat stuff back when I was done.  And taking a 40 minute break to allow the cat back in (he was reluctant to do his business while I was working in the room, and somehow I got the feeling he needed to).

During the actual work, seconds seem like minutes.

Sonos Fixed with New Connect unit, and limits probed

I fixed my now 6 zone system to permit the incoming and outgoing uncompressed (essential for me!) line connections at up to 5 zones simultaneously, and especially for the newest Tape & Turntable zone which permits me to record FM broadcasts from another zone on my Nakamichi, and monitor those recordings while they are being made in another room.  I couldn't do that kind of dual line connection using the old Sonos ZP80 unit.  I've now determined that on a network with 5 active line connections, it is simply not possible to do this with ZP80's.  But it is possible with the newest model successor to the ZP80: the "Sonos Connect."  Actually I simply figured my old ZP80 was bad (I'd had this trouble before…in the living room notably….and possibly around the very time when I may have been incorrectly believing my beloved Kenwood L-1000t tuner was defective) and I was sick of it.  A new Sonos Connect did indeed fix the problem, and I could record a tuner and monitor the tape in 3 other zones while also another zone was listening to the second tuner zone: 5 line connections in all, running perfectly.  Every attempt to reach 6 continuous uncompressed line connection ran into dropouts in less than 5 minutes.

5 zones runs just fine now, and that's all I really need, actually I could maybe live with 4 with some juggling, but 5 works and fine is mostly ok, but sometimes, very randomly it seems, I may still get dropouts.  I had been thinking this was related to having a running Sonos app on my mac.  Have no running app, and 5 zones just keep on trucking?  Sadly I think I may have had one experience otherwise, but it may have been mistaken.  I can in many cases induce dropouts in line connections by doing specific things on the output channel, like changing music service (lots of network activity).  Changing local music files do not cause dropouts.

Sonos says with more than 4 line connections you should use uncompressed.  I will not, never, ever, use lossy compressed.  I will work something else out.  Maybe not Sonos.  Only using the 100 mb ethernet most of my system does (and not the 10G my wires and switch are capable of) I could handle 60 simultaneous line connections.  Sonos could easily handle more than 4 line connections technically, though I think they might have to have more latency.  The low latency is indeed very cool, though I wish I could increase it in order to have more line connections.  I might immediately raise it a hair to have full stability on all my nodes with simultaneous input and output connections.

For some reason, it was especially cool to monitor the FM tuner through the Nakamichi, or so I thought for several days.  It added a cool ambiance.  But on the living room system, the straight up connection to the Kenwood KT-6040 tuner (#2) was much cleaner.

I am grateful to Sonos for even including the line connections, which was at least 50% of my reason for buying Sonos instead of Logitech Squeezebox.  And it accounts for 75% of my actual usage since FM radio is probably the most listened-to source.  But my conspiratorial mind notes that Sonos doesn't get any corporate kickbacks for including this feature, as they might, say, for music services.  Therefore they haven't given the attention that it deserves, and I often fear the feature disappearing.  Additionally the Sonos objectophile standpoint (which meant also they didn't include 24 bit capabilities) means that they seem to think compressed audio streams are adequate for analog sources, which is what you are officially (according to the documentation) supposed to use above 4 line connections.  Compressed line inputs, which I consider useless, would have steered me to the Logitech Squeezebox.

I can sort of imagine an alternative.  You could have small boxes running full 24 bit capability with line-ins translated to at least 96kHz, with auto latency adjustment to match what is needed to eliminate dropouts.  Look carefully at the products out there.  Do any include line inputs?  I could use units with up to 3 line inputs.


Magnavox DVR brought to meeting, disassembled, reassembled, and set up with S-Video connections.








Friday, August 28, 2015

Achievements for August

August has been quite a month.

Concerts: 3

I attended two live Jazz concerts at Wonderland of the Americas with my friend on two successive Fridays.  The first one featured Jessy J who has a fabulous band, and I got her CD.  The next day I visited an audiophile friend and played it for him.  He loved it, as did the members of the River City Audio Society when I played it at the meeting the next week.  The second concert featured two great bands but we were in a hurry and I didn't get the CD's.  At least for the second concert I had obtained folding chairs, which made it much more comfortable.

Getting the folding chairs required several visits to Academy because of the usual price switcheroo.  First the price rang up differently than what the sign had said, so I refused to buy it.  On the second visit, the same thing happened so I went back for a price check with the manager.  It turned out they had zero chairs at the price listed on the sign.  Instead, all the chairs they had were $10 more, and there was no sign for that model.  This kind of thing seems to happen all the time these days.  So I decided to buy a cheaper chair, which actually turned out fine, possibly better than the more expensive one I had originally intended to buy anyway.

And that wasn't the only concert.  My friend and I also attended one of the Olmos Ensemble concerts, something we had never done before (except once where they were playing before a Symphony concert at the Majestic Theater).  This too was fabulous.

Meetings: 2 3 4

I presided over a meeting of the exotic computer systems of san antonio (XCSSA) on the first Saturday, where I disassembled an ABX comparator and removed caps in the power amplifier switching section.  In so doing, I found that my soldering iron really wasn't very good.  So a few days later I researched soldering irons and bought one recommended by knowledgeable people on ebay NOS.  It has now arrived.  But now it seems I may not have demoved all the needed parts.

On the second Saturday I attended the River City Audio Society meeting where as I said I played cuts from the Jessy J CD.  But I also brought my Audio GD Dac 19 which served as the digital converter for all the CD's we played.  The Audio GD was loved just as much as my CD, and one of the members proceeded to buy an Audio GD for himself, but the Master model which costs twice as much.  I stayed pretty late at the meeting because one member had become an employee of the store where it is hosted and he played some music in their best demo room.

On the Third Saturday, one of the best, if not the best, and the sharpest atheist speakers I have ever heard, Seth,  I got his book too, Deconverted.  My friend and I came separately but met to face the parking challenge, then went to buy the Pants I have needed for years, and a failed visit to a closed furniture store, plus the cat.

It was the Fourth Sunday that there was no Saturday Meeting.  But my friend and I went to the Olmos Concert on Sunday, as well as picking up the pants on Saturday, and paying a visit to a unwelcoming furniture store.

The fourth meeting, now scheduled but not experienced, is the Discussion and Movie Party.

So that's at least as much social activity as a person in a traditional society would get from "Church" if not far more.  The last party is 6 hours itself, with possible extensions, ,and preparing, and cleaning up.  I may have alzberger's, and be a Norwegian Bachelor Farmer (™), but at least I have a social life.

Audio Upgrades: 7 ?

Right after the RCAS meeting I had planned to set up the Audio GD in my current living room system and I did.  Previously I had been using the Audio GD only when I ran the Krell power amplifier, and not the cooler running Aragon I use in the summertime.  But thanks to a bunch of very high quality but low capacitance interconnect cables I ordered from Blue Jeans Cable, and some very high quality Y adapters and barrel adapters I ordered from Audio Advisor, I was able to hook both amplifiers to the Audio GD at the same time without any loss in quality.  I readjusted the crossover for the increased output level of the Audio GD compared with the Onkyo RDV-1 I had been using.

Also that day and later, I changed the ethernet cabling so that the two Sonos zone players in the living room have a direct connection back to the main ethernet switch, rather than daisy-chaining one through the other.  I also did the same thing in the King's Bedroom, so now ALL my zone players are directly connected (through installed cabling) to the main ethernet switch.  No more daisy-chaining.  I had ordered the cables to do this a previous month, but not gotten around to making this change until now.

Unfortunately in the bedroom I didn't have any short Cat6a UTP cables to break the ground path as I need to do.  So I temporarily used a Cat5e UTP cable.  I don't know if that was the reason or not, but I was getting constant dropouts even after the direct cabling when I tried to use the Turntable+Tape zone to record FM from the Living Room zone on my Nakamichi cassette player, and at the same time listen to that same tape monitor output by sending it from that zone to the Bedroom zone.  It could either be the old cable, or the old Zoneplayer (and I thought I had been having problems with that 2005 vintage zone player before, it used to be the Living Room zone player until I got a new one for that and moved it to become the new Turntable+Tape zone figuring that wasn't as demanding a position).  To test the cable theory first I bought the cable I needed, which has arrived, but I haven't installed it yet.

Also on the first weekend, I did my first real measurements of the supertweeter level in my living room system.  This was challenging to do and I had been planning to do it for years.  On the basis of these measurements, which mainly confirmed that I was already pretty close by the previous total-system measurements, I made some adjustments to the supertweeter levels (I think I raised them slightly) and adjusted the crossover slope to a less steep one.  A week later I readjusted the crossover slope in between.

I can't remember when I hooked up the Nakamichi for timer recording the broadcasts of the San Antonio Symphony on the radio station KPAC.  It might have been this month, or it might have been last month.  Anyway I first tried to use it this month but ran into the problem with dropouts.  I was also noticing dropouts on the living room system, so I simply pulled the plug on the Turntable+Tape zone.  After that, I didn't hear dropouts on the living room system.  This shows there is a problem there but it still doesn't show whether the problem is in the cable or the zone player, which I should determine next month if not sooner.

Update: I got the cables, and tried a new cable on the Turntable+Tape zone.  Now it seems to handle up to 1 input and 2 output connections; starting or after 3 connections it starts dropping out, then once it starts dropping out it keeps dropping out unless you reset all zones to play a different source.  Or at least that's what seemed to happen.  All I really need, generally is 2 connections, maybe 3.  It may indeed be that everything now sorta works with the oldest node on my system, but that node is looking limited.

Running the app and adjusting preferences seems to elicit dropouts no matter what.

Augie the Cat: 5 weeks inside so far, and it hasn't been bad

It has been a very big month for the cat and for me dealing with and leaning how to deal with the cat.  Augie had been an outdoor cat, mostly for about a year when he got a serious tail injury.  Just exactly how that happened we don't know.  The latest vet analysis is that there were cat bites around the base of his tail, suggesting he was trying to get away but the other cat bit him as he was doing so.  But prior to that word, I had taken the blame for accidentally closing the shed door on his tail.  The vet didn't see any evidence of that kind of damage when examining him 3 weeks later, but it could have been a contributing factor.  It was a week after the door incident that suddenly the base of his tail appeared to be bloody red.  And it was just a few days after that, at the end of July I rushed the cat to the emergency pet clinic after seeing how he couldn't move his tail very well.  This cost a bundle, but the cat did get treatment he needed that day by my extraordinary effort--driving across town in heavy traffic 4 times to and from the emergency pet clinic with less sleep than usual first to drop him off and then to pick him up.  And paying the extraordinary price of $450 for examination, treatment, antibiotic, collar, and sedative.  The treatment was just wound cleaning as it turned out that was all that was necessary.  The emergency pet center told me that if he wasn't picked up within 1 hour, I'd pay an hourly extra fee of $20, but I wasn't wasting any time anyway.  Only it would probably have been smarter if I just stayed at the clinic, but they hadn't suggested that.

Well after that kind of aloof service at high prices, I decided to re-establish my relationship with a local non-corporate vet I had used the previous decades for my previous cat.  Two weeks after the emergency treatment, I did just that because my friend and I decided he needed to be looked at again, and had the pleasure of hearing advice directly from my old trusted vet rather than assistants of unknown qualification who are the only ones you talk to at the emergency pet clinic.  And I got some answers I hadn't gotten before like the info on the cat bites.  And the cost for examining the cat's tail was just the examination fee of $45 and not the $300 charged by the emergency center.  I also gave the cat his full set of annual shots and an antibiotic shot at my local vet so the total came there came to $150.

I hadn't planned on going to the emergency center, just the local corporate vet that my friend had been using for this cat and her others.  But when I went to that vet on a late July morning, the receptionist (the only person visible) told me I'd have to make an appointment 2 weeks in advance to have my cat seen.  Strangely there was nobody in the waiting room (very much unlike my vet) but there were other people going in and out.  When I told them the cat needed to be seen right away they told me to go to the Emergency Center.  So you wonder if they aren't in cahoots.

But my friend strongly dislikes going to my family vet it seems because they charge a few bucks more for vaccinations.  I feel it's most important to establish relationships with the best people, a few bucks here or there means little compared with what you can save in the long run, such as by avoiding unnecessarily expensive trips to the emergency center for example, or getting better advice.  My vet still has a sign explaining the terms for walk-ins and says that walk-ins are allowed.

Anyway, for all the arguments my friend and I had about the vet care--which have all reached satisfactory conclusions now--my friend was really the star in cleaning the cat's wound, cleaning his box, and other things on a daily basis this month.  She cleaned the wound continuously for the first week, then slacked off for a few days, but then it was back on again.  Ultimately this month she has cleaned the would (not easy!) more than 20 days.  I could not have done a single day.  Not even close.  The cat was doomed if this needed to be done and I was the only one who could do it.  And I would not be going back to the vet, even my vet, on a daily basis.

Along with these interventions, I have had to get used to now having an indoor cat, as my friend and I have both decided he should now be an indoor cat except when being watched outside, and yet he is now one that isn't entirely socialized yet.  He spends most of his time in the Queen's room, but my friend lets him out, and so do I.  He seems fine with that, he hasn't been destructive at all, and hardly ever whines through the Queen's door (which can barely be heard thanks to soundproofing).

But there is one big problem for me.  Putting him back into the room after he's been out playing in the rest of the house is often very very hard.  Most people wouldn't have managed this, or perhaps they relate to cats like my friend does, she can handle a few scratches (though she hates how she has been scratched on the leg).  I have taken great care to avoid being scratched or bitten, though he sometimes threaten to do so (mostly playfully), and almost always--sometimes seriously--when I am trying to pick him up and carry him back to the room.  Sometimes he threatens me in a menacing way when or just after I try to pick him up.

Well after the first couple days my friend introduced me to the laser light.  And that was THE solution for the first 12 days or so.  I could laser him around the house a few times…good for exercise and releasing pent-up cat feeling…and then lead him back into the room (where, btw, I have always left a fresh bowl of crunchy food and clean water bowl).  But then, after about 12 days, he refused to follow the laser anywhere near the room, and it has become a problem again.

So I think it was that first day that I figured out I could use my large welding gloves, and then I couldn't possibly be scratched or bitten on the hands or arms.  And that is precisely what I have had to do.  And now he hates the sight of those gloves, and he seems to forget how much I have and continue to care for him, feed him, let him out, visit him, and so on.  I'm just the evil jailer, a lot of the time.  As for me I wish I didn't have to do this and I only do it because I have to--it's not something I do to be mean to him as he seems to think.  If I leave him out long enough, and feed him some of the canned food my friend left, he can also nicely sit near me when I'm at the computer, like a disciple, and be very nice much of the time too.  So it's as if he's bipolar.

Sometimes it's true I haven't held him very well with the gloves.  One time when I was grabbing him he made like to bite my fingers off.  Well he didn't actually, and they they were protected by the very strong gloves, but I squeezed him around the middle more hard than I would have liked to keep him from squirming out of my grasp.  He seemed OK afterwards, but I try to do better.  The next time I pinched him tightly by the scruff of his neck while carrying him from below, after remembering that the scruff of the neck *is* the way to handle a difficult cat, but I had to pinch the scruff of his neck through the stiff gloves harder than I would like to have squeezed it.  Once again he seemed ok afterwards.  On the last time, I squeezed the scruff less hard, but as a result my grip kept slipping slightly.  The hold worked and I got him to the bedroom, but possibly because I wasn't squeezing hard enough he hissed before I could even let him go.

I have ordered a pair of professional cat handling gloves that seem to be among the best, made in the USA by a company that has been making gloves for cat care professionals for over a decade.  I am hoping these will be less stiff, give better feel and equal if not better protection as well.  And with the proper gloves I can hold him more nicely, with just enough pressure and not too much, and he might not get so angry.

Many times, I try to get him at such a point where I would feel safe just picking him up without the gloves.  And there was one time just a few days ago I did that, after he had gotten out in the morning when he is more lethargic and he didn't seem threatening at all.  But mostly that was the exception, mostly when the time comes to go back to the room he starts acting like a feral cat again, looking he is going to resist being picked up by scratching or biting, and I think most people would not feel safe without the gloves.

Though this is still tough, I have survived unscathed, the cat has survived, and I am hopeful this situation will improve over time.  As it is, I have dealt with Augie for over a month and not once gotten scratched or bitten.  I have also suggested just leaving Augie to freely roam the entire house…but my friend thinks he is not ready for that, and it's true the he still rushes the King's Room door if I have been keeping him out of the bedroom.  And that's not good, so she's probably right.  And it's probably not a bad thing to learn how to deal with difficult cats given the friend I have.  My first cat Kitty who I tended for 16 years was initially somewhat feral too, but since she roamed freely through the entire house and even slept with me, and even went outside whenever she wanted too for the first 4 years, she was quickly socialized, and I think female cats are better that way, and tend to be more docile and less menacing, and especially with a male human.  This male cat Augie seemed too dangerous from the start for me to freely sleep with.  I think my friend could though.  Actually during that week a few months ago when I previously decided briefly he should be an indoor cat, he was on the bed with me several times, he had full access during the night for several days, and in addition to ultimately refusing to get out of my place in bed, which led me to start locking him just out of the bedroom, I think he may also have scratched my nose, there is still a tiny mark but it could be a visible vein as I am getting those too.  But in the overall scheme of things, a tiny scratch on the nose, if it even happened, isn't much.

A year after rescuing Augie, my friend rescued another cat in the month of August again this year.  She's asked me at least twice if I would take it or allow it in my back yard.  I said no, I can only deal with one cat.  Count this as another achievement for me, saying no to another cat, and without hesistation.  I invited her to move in with all her animals, though I wonder how that might work, presuming she would be responsible for them.  But I now know from experience that there is no leaving a cat in my back yard without my not assuming considerable responsibility with that.


I could write as much or more about all the rest of my Achievements this month too:

Replacing the DVD Carousel?

My Sony 400 DVD Carousel died last month, and I spent a fair amount of time researching and considering replacements.  New DVD Carousels are not made any more.  Blu Ray Carousels appeared briefly in 2009 at very high prices like $3000 and then disappeared from the market.

After much consideration, and testing a never-removed-from-box Magnavox DVD/HDD recorder I bought a few years back, I decided to go with a DVD/HDD recorder like the Magnavox.  I can easily load all of my home recorded and re-recorded videos onto the Magnavox hard drive, then it's faster and smoother than the carousel and you can see previous of the videos rather than just punching in numbers and trying to remember which disc number had which program.

Setting up the vintage NOS Magnavox video Player

Reading the Magnavox Thread at AVSForum

Obtaining, setting up, and testing a new Magnavox, then back to the old

Clearing out the car (first time in a year or more?)

Fixing the Printer

I was pleasantly surprised to quickly access the Walmart email through my work email tool (which has often become difficult for me to connect to recently) on my Kitchen Mac.  But it was not possible to print it out without replacing the color ink in the printer, as I discovered after more than an hour of frustration.  First of all the printer refused to print it in color because the Yellow cartridge was low.  It would give a warning, then just hang the printer queue.  I would have been happier with "best effort" printing with missing or flaky yellow.  I remember the olden days when you could tell a color printer to print in BW.  I had literally trashed the last printer, an HP, that was otherwise working fine but some printer driver update had removed the "print in B&W" option and I was forced to buy the ridiculously expensive cartridge for nothing, in my mind, as I only really wanted BW documents for pickup, tickets, and the like.

It was not immediately obvious how to print the document in B&W on this printer, and I struggled with internet searching and going through the very complicated Printer preferences, where at first it seemed I couldn't change the things I would have needed to because they wouldn't change or were greyed out or I couldn't find them at all.  After much looking around, I did find an "enable temporary greyscale" switch.  But after many frustrating attempts to get this to work, and I was finally able to check the enable box, it seemed like an obsolete feature.  It seems now that printer companies INSIST that you have full color print cartridges even if you are only printing in B&W.  The purpose of the printer is not, as you might think, to print your documents.  The purpose of the printer is to create a revenue stream for the printer company by forcing you to constantly buy more proprietary ink cartridges.

By now it was getting to 11PM, and Walmart would close at midnight.  I searched online and figured out I needed Epson 200 series cartridges, and Walmart had them in stock!  I would have bought the ink a month ago when I was at Office Depot, but I couldn't remember the printer model let alone the ink cartridge number.  I immediately made a trip to Walmart, leaving Augie to roam the house.  I can exit through the garage conversion room, giving me a cat airlock to keep him from escaping when I drive out.

Once at Walmart I found the ink cartridge for $24.95 and then proceeded to do some other shopping for already needed items such as bananas and yogurt.  I had not had my banana or other fruit yet that day.  Then I ran through the checkout, with about two dozen grocery items first, with the printer cartridge last.  The printer cartridge rang up as $39.

I am not taking this crap anymore.  I told the cashier to cancel that item, and asked if I could leave the rest of my groceries in the front.  She said yes.

So I went back and checked again.  It was clear I had taken my cartridge from the tray marked $24.95, and it seemed to match the others in that tray.  I went to find a salesperson.  He figured out that I had gotten a package with single black and single color.  I just wanted the color.  I asked him to find me the $24.95 color only package, and he did.  It was two items back in the tray where I had gotten mine.

So I checked out and brought the ink back home, feeling like I was getting somewhere now.  I started going through the Epson ink cartridge installation procedure.  After installing a couple of color cartridge, something occurred to me.  I had forgotten the groceries!  It was now 12:10 and Walmart was closed.

At first I was willing to write off the $22 I spent on groceries.  But then I thought of the wasted yogurt. This started to bother me.  So I got back in the car and drove back to Walmart just to see if I could save the yogurt.  Plus I still needed the banana.

There were Walmart employees in front of the store, and the door was still open with a customer coming out.  As I was walking out someone shouted out "We're Closed."  I came up to explain how I had left behind my groceries.  An off duty employee went back into the store to find it.  Finally I was called in, and told them that all the groceries in the cart they had located were the ones I had purchased. I had simply left the cart there.

So I got back home and put the yogurt away.  I finished the printer ink installation and went through the Clean Heads and Align Heads steps.  Twice because it didn't seem to work very well the first time.  A test page was pale.  Finally it worked perfectly, and I printed out a perfect Walmart email around 1 am and put in in the car.

It was late Saturday evening, after I had gotten back home from Josephs with my friend.  The pick up closed at 8 and I got there around 7.  There was nobody at the counter but someone immediately saw me and walked over.  She asked for the pickup number.  I gave her the paperwork, but it was clear then that I could simply have written down the pickup number from the email, and not bothered to print out the email--which required fixing the printer.  But I was glad to have made this a reason to fix the printer, which hadn't worked on a couple of less important previous occasions.

The box looked perfect and I brought it home.  Actually the box of the Magnavox 557 looked exactly like the box of the Magnavox 537 I had finally opened the previous week.

Moving the Sony Player to a new King's Equipment Stack

Obtaining the new Panasonic DVD Player

Obtaining other needed video equipment

Ordering new computer books and DVD's

And it has been a pivotal month at work, handled well

Calibrating the Pioneer DVD recorder

Testing and fixing the irrigation…need to do this more often!

Dealing with ants.  And dealing with ants.

Repairing the Bathroom Tile

Thinking about more Tile Repair

Edging and clearing the grass mound on the side

Surviving the incidents I caused

The New Driveway Light

The New Queen's Room Light Switch

The New King's Bath Outlet

New Tailored Pants from fine clothier, First Real Black in Many Years

Very much needed, years ago, I had one 8yo black pants heavily fraying
and two mismatching Navy pants because that was all I could find recently
until now at department stores in my size, and even they were fraying, and
one had just ripped through the crotch, so I finally got around to going to Josephs,
as my friend had been pleading for years, to get new pants, and they
delivered what I needed, real black in two different thin denim fabrics, thin
denim and thinner, both classy but the thinner one more formal.  Two trips to store
for purchase and then after alteration, which was done perfectly, and buttons, which
seem a bit tight.

New Hook Fastener Shoes

(work better for me than laces, which are always too long
for my short shoes.  So no more trailing laces!  I've been
hop skipping my own laces for a decade.)

(finally New Shoes!)

New Black Dress Shirt

Loosing the home control system, and getting it back

Some Mac auto-update made it impossible for me to use the home
control system which uses Java.  The Mac update even deleted the bookmark I had on my Favorites Bar and I couldn't remember what to set it to.  It took several days to figure this
out.  I emailed Universal Devices and got a helpful reply.  However it took
additional figuring out also.  IMO this is more about corporate warfare than
security.  Specifically Apple and it's endless warfare against anything not invented
and/or licensed from Cupertino, and especially Java and anything Adobe.
Though I am generally thankful Apple has not abandoned users to commercial
anti-virus companies, who exist in an economic partition that includes virus
creators, who may for example obtain employment after proving their ability.
I use Macs nearly exclusively, and may even return to iPhone.  But it has
always been true that Cupertino's heavy handedness has been even greater
than that coming from Redmond, with the latter being more a pushover
for permitting endless adware (and Google, of course, being the adware
giant).  If OSX becomes too fascistic, I may try Gnu/Linux desktops
again, still running on my shiny aluminum hardware I hope.  In an ideal
world, Java/Adobe updates would be integrated with Mac updates.
But the user always takes a low position compared with corporate
warfare or corporate collusion.

Added new external button for Queen's Room Light.

Priming and Texturing the Queen's Room Speaker Wire

Seeing the new Woody Allen movie

Filling in my collection of Woody Allen movies

Got Highway 61 Revisited at local store

Fixing the vacuum

Finally, after 2 1/2 months, I fixed the vacuum cleaner.  When I bought belts last time (about 5 years ago maybe?) I bought one of each kind extra.  It only needed the "commonly replaced" one to be back in working order.






Saturday, August 15, 2015

The righteous location

The most righteous work is done when people reclaim land laid waste by humans into sustainable communities with minimal human footprint.

The least work is done when one simply buys the choicest home in the choicest spot and doesn't even do maintenance well.  And it's nothing more than a free-riding co-conspiracy in the theft from global commons that private property represents.

It's a crime against nature taking land which used to be available to wildlife communities, and turning it into mining wasteland.  It's an even worse crime if instead it is turned into unsustainable luxury homes.



Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Garage Width

I need to redo the half conversion of my garage to make for slightly more garage space, because as it is now, I can't open both car doors inside the garage.  Also, FWIW, it would not be easy to fit a Tesla Model S, one of the cars I'd like to have, in my garage.  I barely fit my Prius into the garage and the Tesla is 10 inches wider.

My garage is 98 inches wide.  It turns out that many Tesla Model S owners have even narrower garages, all the way down to about 90 inches.

A recent standard for single car garage is 12 feet wide (144 inches), however in the past they were smaller.  The 8 foot wide garage was standard in many places with high population density, such as Santa Monica, until recently.  Santa Monica currently has a 10.5 foot minimum garage width (126 inches) but grandfathers older garages at 8 feet.

I think a 120-126 inch width would work up to the rear edge of the Tesla front door, and which point I will make the garage slightly narrower so I can make the room wide enough for my exercise equipment.  Strangely Tesla gives no such comprehensive dimensions, but it looks like the rear edge of the front door is about midway on the length of the nearly 200 inch long car.  So I'll take 100 inches as a first pass guesstimate.

Actually, there needs to be space in front of the car, and space around the back of the rear edge of the front door to actually have a person get in.  These two adjustments put the requirement for extra width out to about 130 inches.  Well that would require eliminated the row of storage boxes behind the exercise equipment.  I think I can actually get by with more like 124 inches, which can be done while keeping the storage boxes.

So the outline of the garage from door to inside is like this, being wider near front:

    ********
    ********
    ********
    ********
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********

From the inside, the garage gets narrower about 124 inches in, which allows opening a Tesla door and getting in/out.

I've decided against angling the garage wall, since I now thing the converted room would look better with rectangular walls and just a jog at the required point shown above.


Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Sofas

My plan for 5 years has been to get two Ekornes sofas, 2 and 3 seat, for back and side walls, when I get around to re-doing living room.  I think I would like the E40 design.

But the longest Ekornes is 84 inches (a very standard sofa width).  There is at least 9 feet available on the side wall for seating.

So I'm looking at sectional sofas like this one.  Looking for longer sofas I mostly find the ones that have added a lounge to the last of the 3 seats.  That's nothing but a huge waste of space for me.  What I'd like is a 4 seat sofa, or very long sectional…the one above sounds about as long as I can handle if not longer though it still doesn't seem to have more than 3 side seats…much of the "length" has been created by depth.

Here's an interesting sofa.  It's just a little wider than standard, at 90 inches, but has 84 inch seating area, which is sufficient for more than three, and the cushions look flat and inviting as if 6 people could sit there in a pinch.  But for 6 or even 5, I think I'd like considerably wider, back to the 108 inches I'm looking for.  They say the width can be customized…THIS SOUNDS PROMISING!  This company makes a nice looking (and pricey) product, but I can't completely get into the aesthetic of their fabric and leather choices, which look too lively to me.  Just a nice soft beige would do nicely, I think.

Well I've narrowed choices at various places to 94 inches wide and above.  Frequently these wider sofas simply waste space with a wide arm…I've seen arms as wide as 12 inches.  Most often the arms are fairly useless anyway…too high to comfortably put your arms on.

Class the specifications should be something like this:  arms should be about 3.5 to 5 inches wide, there is no need for anything wider.  Arms should be about 8 inches above the sofa surface…when you are sitting down.  Assuming about 1.5 inches of seat sink, that means about 6-7 inches above the sofa surface when no one is on it, I'm thinking.  Almost all arms I've seen are too high, pointless for anything except leaning against, which seems to be the point, for example, in a Bonnie and Clyde style sofa.  (BTW, my sofa has arms 8 inches above the surface with no one sitting on it.  That works because I hold my arms out to the side, making them rise.  But this would not be good if I were sitting closer to the arm, as with more people packed onto the sofa.  6-7 inches is about right I think.)

A lot of the wider sofas have no cushions.  They may have, for example, a tufted seat.  Well that looks nice, except if you get it dirty you have a major problem.  A sofa should have a removable cushion I think.  And for a wide sofa, 1-4 cushions will do.  I think the most useful idea is a one cushion sofa.  This appears to be called the Paramount design.  The arm looks slightly high and I think I'd prefer a smooth beige leather to busy fabrics.

Here's a very interesting long sofa, Yates Designer Style Modern Single Seat Sofa, with one cushion in exactly 9 feet.  Also comes in 98 inches and other lengths.  Also "handcrafted" in USA and shipping weight is 220 pounds which makes it sound very substantial despite the trim appearance.  After a whole night of finding sofas just barely over 90 inches, made in China, and weighing about 90 pounds,  I was tempted to click "buy."

However, right about this time I came to a stunning realization.  If I have a long sofa filling up the 9 feet of available space on the side wall, I won't be able to put much seating on the end wall!

My problem is often thinking of things in "stylized" terms rather than full 3D.  It seems you ought to be able to fill two adjacent walls completely.  And you almost can with bookcases, because they are relatively shallow.  But with a 39" deep sofa (like the Ekornes linked at top), that 39" subtracts from the available space along the adjacent wall.  And even more, you need some gap just to put your legs in, so you actually need to subtract 55 inches or more from the available length on the adjacent wall.  So with standard depths you lose about 55 inches from adjacent corners (one partial solution to this being sectionals, about which I'll say more later).

I measured the end wall to the doorway (and I need to sit as close as possible to that for good stereo) and it's about 92 inches.  But after subtracting 55 inches for the sofa along the side wall, I'm left with 37 inches, which is not enough for a loveseat.   Here's a nice "small" 55 inch wide loveseat like one I once bought from a street seller in San Francisco.  I started searching for even smaller love seats and then I discovered Comfy1, who makes loveseats as small as 40 inches wide and 30 inches deep.  Their standard depth is 34 inches, down from the typical 39, explicitly to save space, and they also make sofas with depth as small as 30 inches  (they show two heavy 6 footers sitting comfortably in a 40 inch wide 30 inch deep loveseat…but there's little room to spare).  They also make large single seats with flat cushion, which allows two friendly and not huge people to sit right next to each other, like a small loveseat for actual lovers.  So I could have my 37 inch wide seat!  I find all their ideas and pictures very interesting.  Their prices are high but it looks like the quality is worth it, and I agree completely that most retail furniture is often throwaway garbage, and their stuff looks like heirloom quality with optional finished hardwood sides and backs (just the thing for someone with animals).

To maximize the amount of seating from a pair of adjacent walls, and create a kind of camaraderie as well, the well known solution is to have a sectional sofa.  With a sectional sofa, the loss in seating from the adjacent wall as described above is minimized (but not eliminated!).  Consider the very efficient Comfy1 sectionals.  With standard depth of 34 inches, there is by necessity 34 inches where you can't really "sit" (though if nobody else is on one side of the sofa, you can lay down there).  So is the dead space reduced from 55 inches to 34 inches?

Well, not really, two people still can't sit exactly at the end of each side at the same time, they have to sit back from the corner simply so their legs don't try to occupy the same space.  So how far apart would they have to sit?  It's hard to say, this would be the point where their two legs would just touch at the end.  Assuming legs come out about 8 inches from the sofa, that would mean they'd have to each sit back from the corner about 8 inches.  That means our 20" benefit from having a sectional is reduced to 4" of actual increased seating space.  So you see there's hardly any benefit to this approach at all, except you can potentially lay down or sit cross-legged in the sectional corner, and it looks more "regular" and egalitarian than other solutions.

 There is something especially rational and democratic about sectional sofas.  But a custom section to fit exactly the walls I have is going to be quiet expensive, around $5000 from Comfy1 in the nicer "Florida" style with hardwood sides and front.

And you don't get a fancy recliner or super-comfort seating like the Ekornes.  I'd want that seating for the end of the room because is the nice place to watch TV.

So if I have a two seat Ekornes on the back wall, what kind of side wall sofa can I have?  Well it has to sacrifice at least the last 39 inches for the width of the Ekornes itself.  Starting from 108 inches, that leaves 69 inches.  Which is almost exactly what the existing Loveseat is!  This leaves a "dead space" in the actual corner which could be used for a table and/or an acoustic absorber.

So one option is "full size" specialty loveseat in the back and another loveseat on the side.  Another is long sofa on the side and "large single seat loveseat."  Another is full custom sectional 92x108.

He were face the multipurpose nature of the room head on.  For watching TV at the end of the room, the best solution is a long wall of seating along the end wall, then sacrifice seating on the side wall.  For discussion party, the side wall should have the most seating, with perhaps a large single seat on the side wall.

As of July 11, I'm thinking the combination of a Yates single seat sofa and back room large chair actually provides the most seating space, or as much as any, but the sectional is custom more aesthetically pleasing and actually is only marginally more expensive overall.

While the back room side of the sectional would only nominally provide space for 2, it's much larger than the 37" chair and could actually seat 3 people, with as many as 5 along the side wall.  With the large chair, which seats two close people in a pinch, and the 108" Yates, which looks to seat 6 people in a pinch, you get the same total pinch occupancy.  BTW current pinch occupancy is 6--with two people sitting in small armless chairs.







Tuesday, June 30, 2015

AC Short Life means Equipment Cost is a large part of Total Cost

I bought the brand often called the most reliable (Trane), and I bought a nearly top unit with 10 year warranty (I avoided the most expensive unit because it was twice as complex and had other issues, notably R22, that made me wonder about the long term).  I had it installed by an installer recommended by an engineer friend.  It's been maintained every 6 months by a top rated servicer.  And yet, it looks like I may have to replace my central air conditioning system after only 12 years of service.  It failed for the first time in years in June.  I called out the servicer and they fixed it with a Freon recharge and EZ seal.  There appeared to be a significant leak, probably in the indoor coil which would cost $1000-$3000 to replace.  They predicted 18 months to 2 years more service if the EZ seal worked--at which time I'd have to replace the entire unit.  The only previous failure I've had was when the compressor went out in 2008, just after 5 years of use.  Fortunately that was covered by the 10 year warranty I had, under which I didn't pay anything (I think you need extra contracts to cover labor now, and maybe I had done that in 2003).

I was thinking air conditioning (I mean heat pump) systems, the good ones, should last 20 years.  And I was thinking I was doing more than most people, so I should get at least 20 years.  Now my servicer tells me that 10-15 years is the norm in San Antonio Texas, and that I've done well keeping it to at least 12.  (Of course they would say that, being that they've done all the servicing.)

I don't feel good about this, and I wonder if it isn't a kind of scam.  An air conditioner is just sitting there, doing a job it is engineered to do.  I don't see why it couldn't last forever with only small part changes.  It's a very different situation from, say, an automobile, which faces road hazards, driver hazards, and so on, and yet they're typically doing fine in 10 years now, and still running at 15.  That to me sounds like a much harder job.

One problem is that after 10 years or much less, your replacement options are limited.  You may not be able to get a new outdoor and/or indoor unit unless you get a whole new system.

Another "problem" is that the technology does actually keep improving.  They often say that after awhile you are better off getting a new unit because of energy savings, you might come out ahead (in actual money) in just a few years.  I suspect that's rarely true now if it ever was, because most units have been replaced since at least 10 if not 12 SEER was the norm.  The change from 5 to 10 SEER was far bigger a cost difference than 10 SEER to 20 SEER.  Consider the following napkin example:

5 SEER     energy cost $4000/yr
10 SEER   energy cost $2000/yr.
20 SEER   energy cost $1000/yr

Now 5 to 10 and 10 to 20 are both doublings in efficiency, and energy cost is also halved each time.  But the first halving made a $2000 difference in annual cost, whereas the second halving only made a $1000 difference.  That is half as much savings from the second doubling in efficiency.  For me, since I'm already at 15 SEER, a 20 or 21 SEER replacement won't be that much of a cost reducer.

My own experience with a higher efficiency heat pump (supposedly 15 SEER as compared with the original 5000 or less) was that I saved nothing in energy costs.  Instead, I ran the system for full comfort, not fearing it would fail from running all the time.  Full comfort for me meant cooling to 75-80 and heating to 72-75.  Now this kind of factor is so commonplace economists have a name for it, how often "savings" from efficiency may lead to greater expenses.  But I'm thinking in this case, it wouldn't happen a second time, because I'm already extracting full comfort or nearly so.  And new systems extract humidity more efficiently (without as much extra running) compared with mine.  Still, based on my last experience of saving nothing on energy costs, I have doubts.

And that $1000 difference is about the same as the $10,000 replacement over 10 year use, by which time it's almost worn out and time to buy yet another.  If you include interest and maintenance costs, the total amortized equipment and service costs are likely greater than the energy costs nowadays.  And it seems hardly anyone is talking about things that way…instead I'm still hearing about how efficiency pays for replacements.

The thruway culture aspect bothers me, along with the high cost of buying and servicing central and also "ductless mini split" air conditioning systems.  A friend of mine and others have switched to using room air conditioners because they are so much less expensive to buy, can be user installed and don't require professional periodic maintenance.   In fact my friend was distressed by the idea that I wanted to stick with the exorbitantly costly central air conditioning model when room AC is a less expensive overall system…allowing for and assuming a some loss in comfort as well (you're not trying to keep the whole house comfortable 24/7 like me).  But both she and her mother now get by with room air conditioners in their houses, and it's ok, and she remembers back before the room air conditioners…  And all we need here in central texas is radiant electric heaters for local and temporary heat which doesn't cost much.  I like the fluid filled radiator style, which I used in San Francisco but not anymore here--since my room remodeling my master bedroom doesn't need supplemental heat, I sleep with a sheet or less year round, and nowadays blankets cause cramps, and I maintain a comfortable house getting more comfortable mostly, I hope.

Given how expensive it is central air conditioning and heat pump systems should last much longer when properly maintained.  Given that I have little assurance than any system is going to last much longer, it also seems that it's not worth spending that much more for a super efficient system, which is just going to have to be replaced in 12 years like any other.  I've heard claims that ground sourced heat pumps last longer but I'm doubting it, and wondering how much higher the maintenance costs are, not to mention the much higher initial cost.




Sunday, June 21, 2015

Cat Heaven

Augie on the patio table after eating with food bowl in eyeshot.  June 21 2015 a couple hours after rainstorm.