Amy went to the hardware store as my assistant.
Me: "Let’s get back home and do some plumbing!"
Amy, 7 year old wise beyond her years: "It’d be easier to hire a plumber."
Month: August 2009
Today is drippy faucet day
There are so many leaks in this house that if it were a boat it would be sunk. Today I am replacing washers and spigots and fixing all leaks. Here’s hoping our $90 water bill cuts in half next month.
Goals
- Replace spigot in front of house.
- Replace spigot in back of house.
- Evaluate leak in kitchen faucet.
- Fix leak in kitchen faucet.
- Evaluate leak in upstairs bathtub faucet and determine whether or not to replace the entire mechanism or just the washers.
- Fix leak in upstairs bathtub by replacing entire mechanism or just the washers.
- Attach water supply to downstairs sink.
First trip to Home Depot
I’m off to get supplies: 2 outdoor spigots, 1 box of assorted washers(oops forgot), and one 30 meter outdoor hose(didn’t like their hoses).
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Unnecessary Trip #1 – Rocky Hill Hardware
It appears my spigots are sweated on instead of threaded. I am afraid I’m going to break the pipe. If I do that, I’ll have to tear out wall and perhaps brick to make the repair. Instead of using force, I’ll try heating the pipe first and see if it comes off. I can’t find my torch end for my propane bottles so I’m off to the local hardware store. I’ll have to resist the urge to buy the new fangled hotter torches on the market today.
Home Depot Trip #2
Rocky Hill Hardwared morphed into a trip to Home Depot. I hate paying $13 for a tool I own but since I cannot find it that’s what I have to do. I’m also wondering if just trying to replace the washers might now be the route to go.
Trip #2 to Rocky Hill Hardware
Turns out it looks like this repair has been done before. I heated the pipe and removed the sweated copper. Turns out a threaded adapter has been sweated onto the pipe before but its so bonded to the old spigot that I think I would have broken the pipe trying to remove it. This was the correct approach. Now I need to buy a threaded adapter.
Completion Status
After 2 trips to Home Depot and 2 trips to Rocky Hill Hardware, the faucet/spigot on the front of the house has been upgraded and no longer leaks. The weed eater which hasn’t worked for 5 years is functioning and cleared a path to the back of the house to discover a steady stream of water from the back faucet/spigot. That one may have to wait until tomorrow. It looks like a previous DIY’er got creative with concrete. Time to cook dinner.
Hey Alan,Alan,Alan,Alan,Alan,Alan…
Holy Bat Batman!
I just stepped outside to enjoy the sounds of nature and got dive bombed by a bat. Very cool!
Dear SEC – you aren’t making me a fan!
So how is the SEC supposed to run a touchdown after shooting holes in both their feet?
To the quick thinkers making these decisions for the SEC, try standing in the ocean and push the tide back; you can’t. You cannot fight it. Instead embrace it and make it work for you. Encourage the fans to contribute videos, and commentary, and stories, and pictures and let your website be the portal for that flood of information! Twitter is poised to dominate in the real time search market because the wealth of information comes through their gates. Imagine if you, the SEC, did that for college football! Oh, but you made your play. Some inexperienced sideline coach gave you bad advice and you’ve fumbled this ball. From my view up in the bleachers, I’m just not sure you can recover it. Good luck.
It’s really interesting watching dinosaurs die.
Happy Birthday Tommy!
My son turns 19 today! I’m getting him a t-shirt that says, "I turned 19 and all I got was this stupid blog post." I am proud of Tommy’s accomplishments. He has grown up to exceed everyone’s expectations. Happy Birthday Tommy!
Exposing the PR Firms Behind the Fake “Grass Roots” Anti-Healthcare Movement
My new favorite store
Non working demo
Every man who walks past this tries to make it launch.
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. Replies.
Student dropped at orientation
This is what I see when dropping Tommy of at college.
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. Replies.
From the mouths of babes
One of neighbors is named Betty. The children address her as Mrs. Betty. Recently Evan started calling her Mrs. Betsy. I would correct him placing emphasis on the second T.
Evan, 4 years old: "Mrs. Bet see."
Me: "Say Bet-T"
This Betsy-Betty back and forth has gone on for weeks. So Evan has taken to really adding pause and emphasis to the second part of her name "Mrs. Bet TEA." Today I understand why.
Evan: "Noah won’t take me to Mrs. Bet Tea’s house."
Noah, 13 years old: "Evan, it’s Bet SEE."
Me: "No Noah. It’s Betty. Bet TEA."
Noah: "Oh."
The boys leave to visit with our neighbor and I chuckle having one more mystery in my life solved. They promptly return.
Evan: "Noah still won’t take me to Mrs. Bet TEA’s house."
Noah: "Mrs. Bet SEE isn’t home."
Of Grasshoppers
Student: I’m doing a lot wrong.
Master: Better than doing nothing, right.
Becoming a Google Adwords Professional
In 2000 or 2001, I was working with a company that needed an advertisement campaign manager. I stayed awake for fours days straight drinking gallons of coffee and taking only power naps to write an ad campaign manager from scratch using ColdFusion and MS SQL. This was before the days of keywords so instead ads were organized by categories. Each ad could be categorized and subcategorized. Campaigns could be scheduled for date ranges with multiple ads meeting IAB industry standards and the particular place on the page could be dynamically specified. Personally, I was pretty proud of the end product and impressed with how it turned out for being built so rapidly.
The experience of writing an ad campaign manager helped me appreciate the complexity of such an endeavor but nothing prepared me for the awe inspiring product that is Google Adwords! Prior to yesterday, I thought Google Adwords was just the name Google used for selling ads that appeared on sites of publishers using Google’s Adsense and in search results. Google’s Adwords is such a complex product that they offer a certification exam for people wanting to become Google Advertising Professionals. I spent yesterday reading, reading, and reading, and watching video after video after video to learn as much about running efficient campaigns as possible. There is definitely an art to writing an effective Adwords campaign and not wasting money.
I was going to give an overview of what I learned yesterday but I have so much more to learn and Les Jones has does an excellent job already. Read Les Jones’ post My quick advice on getting the most from Google Adwords.
Summer is officially over
I had my first carpool to school today. School officially starts on Monday with a half day. But today the high schooler had class pictures. She and her best friend are on the outs because of a boy. Isn’t that always the reason? So it appears that I’ll be driving to the high school everyday. (Actually a friend of ours works at the school and has offered to do some carpooling.) Today was a dry run.
WordPress 2.8.3 broken! Upgrade to 2.8.4 immediately!
In case you missed it, WordPress 2.8.3 has a programming error which allows anyone to reset your administrative password and takeover your WordPress blog. With administrative access, the hacker could destroy your content, lock you out, and repurpose your website for wrong doing, spamming, pornography, slander, or whatever they want. Upgrade to WordPress 2.8.4 immediately! Learn more at darknet.org.uk.
This vulnerability could be prevented by securing the /wp-admin directory.
BlogSecurity has recommended before that the /wp-admin/* directory should be password protected or restricted to IP address. This would mitigate this problem. See our advisory here for details. [Source, BlogSecurity, WordPress <= 2.8.3 Reset Admin Password Vulnerability]
See details of the exploit at milw0rm.
