There is unrest in the forest, There is trouble with the trees September 28, 2008 10:30 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , 3commentsEek! I was just out speaking with a neighbor and we look up to see that the trees have started turning! The Battle of the Leaves is upon us. Fall is here!
3commentsInspired to do home improvement September 22, 2008 12:23 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Health, House, Juggling, Of Interest, Publishing, Video , add a commentCathy wants me to work on the house more. I want to juggle more.
add a commentWeekend in Review September 21, 2008 9:53 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , 1 comment so farThis was a working weekend. My current project needed to see some drastic visual improvements that have to look good in Internet Explorer 6. (I’m a semantic programmer that advocates CSS over tables for design.) This weekend was dedicated to those visual improvements. My reward as I made progress was to do some wiring and drywalling in the downstairs bedroom. The light switch used to hang, in an uncovered gangbox, dangling from the 12-2 wiring in the hallway. I was always afraid one of the kids was going to get a terrible shock from turning on the lights. Evan loved to get a step stool and turn on the lights himself. Now the switch is installed in the wall just inside the bedroom as it should and is covered with a face plate. It is also reachable by Evan without a step stool. I’ve had fun watching the children try to figure out how to turn on the lights. Evan is having a blast dimming the lights and turning them on and off.
If I continue to use fixing that bedroom as my milestone reward, we’ll have paint on the walls by the week’s end!
1 comment so farLessons of the night September 5, 2008 7:46 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Family, House, Of Being Dad , 2commentsIn my plumbing exploits, which really should be documented on video, I’ve learned the following:
- Brass fittings strip easily.
- No matter how sure footed you think you are, when doing the splits between the top of a bar stool and a two by four bracing the hallway drywall suspended over a stack of paint cans and a mop bucket, applying torque to a monkey wrench that is above your head will cause you to fall down.
- Swinging a two foot steel bar with your left hand against a drop forged pipe wrench (often mistaken for a monkey wrench) being held with your right hand is a mistake if you are not left handed.
Last time I did this, this plug came out much easier. Surely I’m doing something wrong.
2commentsPlumbing Update September 5, 2008 1:31 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House, Of Being Dad , add a commentScrew it. My family can hike through the prairie and bathe in the stream.
add a commentMilestone Rewards September 5, 2008 12:32 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Family, House, Of Being Dad , add a commentHow do you encourage yourself to reach a milestone? I know smoking programmers who give themselves a smoke break (7-15 minutes) when they accomplish a task. I don’t smoke, so I do a chore that doesn’t involve the computer. Today’s milestone breaks are brought to you by "Crack Plumbers, we’re just cheeky!" After Sarah did an art project involving rocks and the bathtub, our drain slower terribly. Now its stopped completely. This could be a coincidence. We have enough longhairs in this household to clog the public waste system so periodically I have to open the drain and pull out the alien creature that grows in there. It will be about 4 feet long, black, sluggy, and psuedo-intelligent. The most frightful thing I ever saw as a child was a Twilight Zone episode that involved a housewife vacuuming a dust ball out of her air ducts that turned out to be an alien creature that ate her. Since then I have never been fond of dust bunnies, air ducts, or alien looking snake-like gooey lengths of beyond description filth. However, I do want to bathe today…
So I just accomplished a very big deal on my current project involving combining functionality of two different parts of the application into a single page. It also involved altering the roles based security. Implementing roles based security on custom apps can be a time consuming pain in the neck. But fun! Time for my 7-15 minute break. Here creature creature!
Update: Pipes-1; Doug-0. Expect @cathymccaughan to report on my highly anticipated trip the emergency room during my next milestone break.
Update: Pipes-2; Doug-0. Done until Saturday.
add a commentWhat’s today? September 5, 2008 9:19 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House, Programming , 1 comment so farToday is about coding! I’m sick as a dog and the tub won’t drain and it has to work before this afternoon and all my buckets are at the in-laws house. None of that matters. Today is about showing results to my client!
1 comment so farIt’s not a yard; it’s a prairie. August 31, 2008 3:12 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , add a comment
Why should we cut grass anyway? It’s grows naturally! I say let it go through its full life cycle. After much sweat and many words not appropriate for a Sunday, the nut holding the seat to the frame gave way. Most of it was cut away then after a thorough soaking of WD-40 (as I was too lazy to get my Liquid Wrench), a screw driver and hammer were violently applied until what little piece of aluminum was left began to turn. After that a wrench did quit work of removing the remainder of the nut leaving the bolt in good shape for the replacement nut. The fiberglass body lifted off after unplugging some wires and the fuel line (the tank is attached to the body being removed) but only after puzzling through the proper bizarre twists and turns required to life it off the varies levers. I only almost cracked it once. I am sore, sweaty, and blistered. 
The starter motor remains attached to the engine and the rusted terminals under the key switch make me think it could be the switch (or the rusted terminals and not the starter itself. However I am done for the day.
As I was inspecting the mower, I thought about putting the belt back on. See, last trip out I was in an area that I had not thoroughly policed and I heard this god awful kerthunking noise and the blades quit spinning. I thought I hit a log and threw the belt. I no longer think I hit a log since I was being pretty careful. The mower had a catastrophic failure. The pulley that drives the blades which is turned by the belt connected in a serpentine fashion to the engine broke. I mean the metal of the pulley ripped from the shaft that spins the blades. I suppose I should still check on the starter. This could make a pretty cool go cart…
Update: Looks like I have a melted fuse or other electrical component. So one mechanical and one electrical repair plus maybe the starter motor before I can get my lawn cut again. Ugh.
Lawnmower man update August 31, 2008 12:41 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , add a comment
The computer tries to suck me in but I AM the Lawnmower Man! I have the body ready to be removed but the seat is in the way. The one bolt holding the seat on is so rusted that I think I need to cut it free.
Update: I opened my cordless Dremel and the battery and charger are missing! As a guy who used to have a very specific spot for everything I owned, you know, periodically I’d reorganize my CD collection either alphabetically or by genre and screwdrivers were sorted by type and size, missing tools and a parts drive me up a wall.
add a commentTime out on politics August 31, 2008 11:49 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , add a comment
There will be plenty of more opportunity for politics. If you haven’t had your fill, head over to Knoxviews.com. In the meantime, I am going to turn to describing how to get a riding lawn mower working again…the wrong way. The right ways is to roll it up onto a trailer and take it to the shop. But to do that I’d have to either get the Jeep running or install a hitch on the van. Both of those are just as much work as simply fixing the lawn mower myself. After searching the whole house, I found the key was left on the seat of the mower in the shed. So its now been rolled into the yard. To get to the starter, I have to take the entire body off the mower. That involves tools. So the next bit of searching is for the tools. Have I mentioned I really need a workshop/tool shed?
Squirrels in the Attic - update February 1, 2008 11:19 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House, Of Being Dad, Pets , 4commentsI put a live trap in the attic to catch the squirrels and move them to another part of town. After I feel sure that I have them out, I’m going to seal up the hole they are using to get into the attic. I have been warned that someone who sealed his attic prematurely ended up with $2000 in damages in one day. That person removed the adults but was unaware of the babies in the nest. Now I am a bit concerned about the same situation. When do squirrels make babies?
During LOST last night we heard rustling in the vicinity of the live trap. Bingo! I was certain we’d captured our first squirrel. Cathy, concerned for its well-being, encouraged me to go check on it (immediately after I had made a bowl of ice cream). I climb into the attic. You cannot stand in our attic. Every 16 inches, maybe 22 inches, there is another truss so you are hunched over awkwardly squeezing through these triangles while inhaling the asbestos fibers floating in the air from disturbing the insulation put up there decades ago. I usually go up with a breathing mask but its buried in the mess in the garage. I work my way down 9.144 meters* to where I have the trap. As I approach the thumbing of an irritated squirrel gets louder and louder as if to say, "My territory and your slow dumb indefensible butt came up here with nothing but flashlight!" I get about 3.6 meters* from the nest when I see th trap is empty and unsprung. And when I say empty, I mean no squirrel and no bait! All I did was feed it! I’m thinking it is time to install a squirrel cam in the attic and stream it over the Internet.
*Conversion courtesy of Onlineconversion.com.
4commentsI want a boyfriend! December 7, 2007 9:39 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , 3commentsYes, I’ve decided I want a boyfriend. Man seeks man. That’s right. I want someone to spend long hours with me as my close companion. I want to get greasy with my boyfriend. I want to be rough. I want to share manly experiences! I think our first date should be spending a long day together outside. Specifically I think we should focus our time around the parked Jeep in the driveway. Wouldn’t it be exciting to take the engine off the motor mounts and ever so gingerly drop it down at a sexy angle which would allow us to bang the freeze plug back into the head? After we remount the engine and charge up the battery, we could re-lube the hubs on the trailer, pump the tires with air, then take a leisurely drive to Home Depot and purchase supplies to build a carport and shed which we would use to organize the driveway, arrange our tools, and clean out the garage in only a way that men know how. With the garage and driveway clean, and knowing our tools are properly hung, we could then proceed with getting muddy with the drywall. I can think of so many ways we could spend quality time together! Yes, I need a boyfriend!
3commentsI want to work for iRobot! September 28, 2007 8:02 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House, Of Interest, Robotics, Technology , 2commentsSince a child, I’ve had a fascination with lasers and robots. My path steered away from those. iRobot rocks! iRobot will bring us closer to the Jetsons much sooner than I could have hoped. They have now introduced the Looj gutter-cleaning robot! What a great reason to put guttering on the house!
Makezine explains that iRobot is also accepting applications to beta test their next robot which will have a web camera built into it allowing people on the Internet to control your robot and speak to you. It’s iRobot meets Nabaztag meets Childrenview meets Camstreams.
2commentsDrying Clothes 24/7 is hard on these machines! September 16, 2007 9:01 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House , 2commentsHere we go again!
Update: Main vent clear. Now checking innards for clogs.
2commentsNo A/C Stinks August 7, 2007 3:03 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, House, Murph, Philosophy , add a commentI’ve been sweating so badly in this shirt that it has started to smell like a moldy tent.
The repair man’s supplier finally came through. We will be upgraded from a 10 SEER unit to a 13 SEER.
Today, it is rare to see systems rated below SEER 9 in the United States because aging, existing units are being replaced with new, higher efficiency units. The United States now requires that residential systems manufactured after 2005 have a minimum SEER rating of 13… [Source]
I rush the estimate to our very kind insurance agent who ala Brazil cannot find my record at first then finds it offering me a Coke and, along with his Oscar winning smile, utters, "uh oh. Bad news." Hold it! When a guy has been in deadly heat for over two weeks and you have just exclaimed, "you’ve been without air for two weeks!" do not follow it with "bad news." Turns out he wrote his last check yesterday. He thought he had another checkbook but said the local claims office will have to get in touch with me and that I should hear from them within the next 24 hours. Yes, story of my life! None-the-less, I am thrilled!
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