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Category: around the house

Wide Open West Physical Installation

Published January 4, 2009

New junction box installed on the outside of my condo when Wide Open West service was installed. I think the installer did a good job.

Last Monday I had Wide Open West CATV and internet service installed. The installer was a nice guy, did just what I wanted, and did a good job putting the new junction box on the outside of the house. As requested he left the Comcast line going into the house, replaced the old splitter, and let me take care of the data side of things (very basic to set up; no Comcastic walled garden crap), and had an MCard for the TiVo.

The only problem I had is that he wasn’t familiar with setting up TiVos and forgot to check for reception of HD channels. A phone call to WOW! service after he left got those turned on and everything was set.

Thus far I’ve been mostly happy with the data service. Tests at DSLReports.com have shown that I can achieve the claimed 15Mbps downstream and 2Mbps upstream quite regularly. Everything has been much faster in real use as well, and uploads to my photo gallery are far, far faster now.

I intend to write up a more technical description of how I like the service, including how I intend to use the three IPs (DHCP assigned) that I’m allocated as part of the service, but that will have to come later. For now I’ve got some other projects to wrap up.

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Roxie Go Home

Published January 4, 2009

Roxie standing in the back of Danielle's dad's car as Danielle was about to drive her back home.

After a bit over a week here it’s time for Roxie to go back home. Danielle arrived here last night right as I returned from Brian’s birthday party, and after some gift returning / shopping stuff she left today with Roxie in the back of the car.

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Thirsty Puppy

Published January 2, 2009

Given the option, Roxie will drink out of bathroom sinks.

Normally Roxie drinks out of her water bowl, but given the option she’ll also gladly drink out of bathroom sink faucets. When doing so she doesn’t lick the tap, she just laps heartily at the stream of water.

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Roxie Is Needy!

Published December 28, 2008

Roxie likes it when I lift the blinds up so that she can look outside.

Having Roxie around my house requires that I make some special accommodations for her. Along with keeping food out, making time to play with and walk her, and carrying plastic bags for the collection of poop I also have to lift the blinds enough so that she may look outside.

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Dog Walking

Published December 26, 2008

Taking Roxie, Danielle's dog, for a walk while I watch her.

Danielle is heading down to Florida for a vacation with some friends, so I’m watching her dog Roxie. She’s a really great dog, but being big and yellow I have to take her outside for regular long walks. Running around indoors is not a sufficient amount of play for an animal of her size.

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Danielle’s Bath Bombs

Published December 24, 2008

One of the first bath bombs Danielle made, a citrus scent.

After the x0xb0x failed to produce audio and my giving up on it for tonight (admittedly without much troubleshooting) I decided to take a bath and read more of In Defense Of Food while taking a bath. During the time I spent nearing the end of the book I was soaking in hot water scented and softened by a bath bomb made by Danielle, just like the one above.

It had a moderate citrus scent, which went surprisingly well with the Founders’ Red’s Rye I was drinking while soaking in the tub. The water was made almost an opaque off-white (2″ or so visibility) and somewhat oily, but not overly so. I felt no need to shower afterwards, and now my (at least where it was in the water) skin feels comfortably soft. I’m really looking forward to trying out the other version here, which is modeled after Lush‘s Black Pearl.

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Sunny Snow in the Microwave

Published December 20, 2008

The day after a foot of snow fell everything was nice and sunny. This photo taken via a reflection in the front of the microwave in the kitchen.

The morning after the giant storm which dropped almost a foot of snow here it’s nice and bright and sunny. Hopefully the roads are becoming clear and it’ll stay cold enough that this turns into a nice blanket of winter sitting over everything for the rest of the holidays.

Of course, then right after that it’ll turn into typically Michigan piles of gray and brown dirty snow piled at the sides of parking lots, mixed with shopping carts, Burger King bags, and broken pieces of parking blocks.

(This photo was taken in the reflection from the microwave in the kitchen.)

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Locking Pliers, Furnace Issues

Published December 11, 2008

A pair of Craftsman pliers with locking jaws found in the road around my condo complex as I was leaving for work this morning.

This morning I found this pair of Craftsman locking pliers in the road as I was leaving my condo. I’ve been wanting some of these but haven’t purchased them, so this is a nice find.

Before that, I found that my house was 58°F (14.4°C) when I woke up this morning. The thermostat was calling for heat, but the furnace wasn’t igniting. This has happened in the past, requiring a quick reset of either the thermostat (Heat -> Off -> Heat) or the furnace (power cycle) to make it work again, but in the past couple of weeks it’s been happening with alarming frequency. I’m afraid that an electrical component of my furnace is starting to go wonky. I may end up just calling Mike’s Heating & Cooling who did a nice job installing a new air conditioner in 2006. While I normally wouldn’t mind fixing such electronics myself, reproducing the issue is difficult I can’t exactly wait for parts when it’s regularly below freezing outside.

Oh, and welcome to my first post from WordPress 2.7. Hopefully it’ll continue working nicely. As long as it goes well I’ll probably be upgrading the rest of the blogs I host sometime this evening.

UPDATE: Some things are a bit weird, and plugins like StatPress Reloaded and AdSense Manager need their management / control portions tweaked so that they show up under the right part of the Dashboard, but they still seem to work.

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Oil Slick and Other Images

Published December 2, 2008

I do not like seeing oil slicks like this in a parking lot. This is from the snow plow / salt spreading people.

Here, have some moblog images:

· I do not like seeing oil slicks like this in a parking lot. This is from the snow plow / salt spreading people.
· Car with YOU SUCK @ PARKING written in paint marker on the side window.
· Engrish on a model helicopter box at Microcenter. (Click to read more.)
· Deatheater standing near the console at IPM.
· It’s December 1st, time to start on the advent calendar my mom gave me.
· DBAN having just finished running on my old D610.
· Bye bye, D610. Time for me to begin using another laptop at work.
· The bathroom at work has a shiny new air freshener installed.

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