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Massive Fallout Marking, Racing, etc.

Published October 15, 2010

This has been a busy week or so. How, you ask?

Saturday was the 6 and 12 Hour race at Addison Oaks, where our team (Nick, Marty, Erik, and I as the East Side Stepchildren) took second place out of third in the 4 Person Open Sport category, winning nice fleece vests. We rotated through taking turns doing one lap each, until the end when Erik set out to do Marty’s final lap. (Photos of the start: 1 · 2)

Sunday I did a bunch of work out at River Bends and managed to poke myself in the eye with a stick. The white of my eye is a bit bruised on one side, but otherwise fine and getting better.

Work has been busy (yet satisfying) this week, which makes the day go by quickly. Monday I fixed a GPS (yes, another Garmin Edge 305) and got some things done around the house. Last night (Wednesday) was time spent at Sherwood with friends to enjoy half-off hamburger night.

Tonight Bob and I went up to Bald Mountain to mark the trail for Massive Fallout, a huge group ride taking place this Saturday. We went through 2.5 cans of spray paint marking the route in and out of the park, and all potentially confusing corners along the trail. Unfortunately we got caught in the rain and cut out early, leaving one intersection still to be marked. In retrospect it only would have been another 15 minutes in the rain to mark this corner, saving Bob another trip tomorrow, so now I feel bad about making haste back to the parking lot in reaction to the storm clouds dripping on us.

At least the weather should be good for the ride itself on Saturday and the weekend’s plans.

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Relay Failure Means Fridge Failure

Published October 12, 2010

Three days after defrosting my freezer to get the whole refrigerator working Danielle noticed that the fridge was no longer cold. The evening after Danielle rushed most of the food stores over to my parents house I set out to try and diagnose the fridge. After I’d spent a few hours fruitlessly looking it over without any documentation I decided that the best thing to do would be to call a repair person. I normally don’t like doing this, but not having a fridge makes things somewhat difficult, and it likely would have taken a few more days for me to figure out what was wrong.

Doc’s Appliance Service (warning: auto-playing video) came out to do the repair and $210.21† later the relay on the compressor was replaced with a new, compatible (but non drop-in) replacement that required cutting the wiring harness to install. As this was the only part the repair person had readily available it was the only choice to get the repair done at that time. While talking to the repair guy (who was quite friendly) afterward and detailing everything I’d looked into, he showed me that Maytag actually ships block diagrams and technical troubleshooting guides with each fridge, sticking them to the bottom of the fridge in a small plastic bag, folded up to about the same size as a deck of playing cards.

I wish that I’d known about this diagram before calling, because that would have allowed me to do all the troubleshooting myself, including finding the failed relay. It also would have saved me the time spent looking at the fridge’s main control board for issues, as the automatic diagnostics would have eliminated the control board and other items that I fiddled with. I would also have then been able to order part 67005560 from Sears for $27.33 and do the replacement myself for 13% of the cost.

In the end I suspect that the relay was failing, keeping the compressor on long after it should have, resulting in the coil freezing up. It’s even possible that the fridge had been running near non-stop for the last few weeks. Turning the fridge off for a while and then putting it back in normal duty cycle then likely caused the relay to fail completely, after which it no would cool. If you’d like to see more photos of the failed relay, part 3ARR65P4E3A6, they can be found here: Failed Fridge Relay (3ARR65P4E3A6).

†$69.95 diagnostics charge, $80 labor, $56.85 in parts, and $3.41 in sales tax.

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HSBC’s Fraud Accounting is Silly

Published October 12, 2010

Despite getting a new HSBC credit card after some fraudulent activity HSBC still has my old account listed and accessible on their website with a $0.01 balance. When I called a few minutes ago to inquire about this I was told to ignore this info as “some people can still see it” and the lingering $0.01 is “for accounting purposes” and “won’t affect my credit report”.

This seems very strange to me. I hope it doesn’t result in HSBC attempting to improperly collect on this Purchase Debit Adjustment. Then again, perhaps them doing so would be a good exercise in small claims court.

UPDATE: A second call to HSBC, this time answered by a more friendly man with an Indian accent (as opposed to a Southern-sounding woman the first time) resulted in him looking into the case, and saying that the account is closed, and despite the reflected amount owed of $0.01 that I should just ignore the account, as from HSBC’s perspective it is completely closed.

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River Bends Park Trail in the News

Published October 7, 2010

When checking the mail today I was somewhat surprised to see this on the front page of the Shelby-Utica News. Last week I was interviewed by Kristyne Demske who wrote the article and this past Saturday while doing trail work a photographer was out with us taking some photos, and this article is the result. While a few quotes seem out of context, I feel that the overall article is good and reflects what we hope to accomplish with the trails. I could probably do with learning to talk to reporters a bit better, too; more concise, better quotable bites, and a bit less wordy.

You can read the complete article online by clicking here, or see scans of the two pages of the article here: Page 1 · Page 2

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River Bends Park Trail Map

Published October 5, 2010

After getting the second phase of trails at River Bends open this weekend I set to work creating a map of the trails in the park. Well, here it is. This map lists all of the two track, official single track, and asphalt along with showing the parking lot and the nearest intersection for reference.

To download a PDF of the map, click the image above or here: River_Bends_03-Oct-2010.pdf

UPDATE: The 17-Nov-2010 update of the map can be found here: River_Bends_17-Nov-2010.pdf

UPDATE 2: The 13-Mar-2011 version of the map can be found here: River_Bends_13-Mar-2011.pdf

UPDATE 3: The latest version of all maps of the trails at River Bends can be found at: http://mmba.org/library/maps/riverbends/latest.pdf

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VBScript Function to Check Active Directory Domain Access

Published October 4, 2010

The following VBScript function can be used to check if a given username and password has access to the specified domain. It will return true or false depending on whether or not access was granted.

function fnCheckAccess(strDomain, strUserID, strUserPWD)
 
    const ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION = &H01
    const ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS = &H60
 
    dim objDSO
    dim objUser
    dim strPath
 
    strPath = "LDAP://" & strDomain
 
    On Error Resume Next
    set objDSO = GetObject("LDAP:")
    set objUser = objDSO.OpenDSObject(strPath, strUserID, strUserPWD, ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION OR ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS)
    if Err.Number <> 0 then
        fnCheckAccess = False
    else
        fnCheckAccess = True
    end if
    Err.Clear
    On Error Goto 0
 
    set objDSO = Nothing
    set objUser = Nothing
 
end function

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Phase II of River Bends is Open!

Published October 3, 2010

With a total of 39.5 volunteer hours spent during a rainy trail day of bench cutting, installing a new bridge, (which Pete designed specifically for the space), raking, trimming, and generally finishing off the trail, Phase II of the single track trails at River Bends are now open. While the trails are still a bit slippery from the last couple days of rain, they should be quite nice to ride.

Once I was done taking a break after the trail day I then headed back to River Bends and walked the new part of the trail with My Tracks recording the route. This data, combined with stuff gathered on previous mapping trips, allowed me to make this map showing all the park-recognized paths within the park. While just the first revision, I’m still quite happy with how it’s all coming along. There’s now a ridable, cohesive loop of multiple miles of single track.

Now to get to finishing the other loops that hang off of it. They already exist, but need both some cleanup and trimming before they’ll be properly ridable. Right now getting through some parts of them is akin to riding down a corn row.

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Surprise Freezer Defrosting

Published October 1, 2010

When Danielle and I returned from the grocery store this evening we found that the fridge (a Maytag PBF2253HEB) was much warmer than it should be; somewhere around 60°F. When it was still this temperature after eating dinner it was time to try and figure out what’s going on. As the compressor was running and the freezer was still perfectly cold I figured that the duct between the freezer (where the cooling coils are) and the fridge must be misbehaving.

Investigating the fridge portion of things showed that the servo which opens a damper in the fridge (allowing in cold air) was operating, so I started to look at the freezer. Just when I noticed some unexpected frost through the slats at the rear Danielle found this article explaining how the freezer can frost up, leading to no airflow to the fridge and thus no cooling up there.

It suggests replacing the control board to resolve a problem with Adaptive Defrost Control. Before that I decided to do a manual defrost and see if that resolves things. I’ve had the fridge for just under five years with it running non-stop the whole time with a fair bit of ice sublimating in the freezer, so I figure that maybe enough frost could have built up in that time that the automatic defrost couldn’t overcome it.

If the frost issue comes back quickly I’ll look into actually repairing it. I found a copy of the service manual here (mirror) and will just run through the diagnostics and replace the needed bits.

The photo above is the evaporator coils inside of the fridge completely packed with frost. The part that appears to be a frost bottom shelf was a solid block of ice. Here’s a handful of photos taken while defrosting things, including what Danielle feels is an extremely dorky photo of me:

· Wearing a head lamp and defrosting the evaporator coils in my fridge after the fridge stopped cooling.
· Inside of my Maytag PBF2253HEB after the evaporator coil frosted over.
· Partially defrosted evaporator coil in a Maytag PBF2253HEB.
· Defrosting the evaporator coil in the Maytag PBF2253HEB with a hair dryer.
· Shiny, dry, defrosted evaporator coil in a Maytag PBF2253HEB.

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Red Bat

Published September 26, 2010

Here, have a photo of a furry bat that Mark found while we were doing trail work at River Bends on Phase II of the new single track. Since it was clinging to something that we wanted to cut I carefully removed the branch then re-hung it from another tree a ways off the trail all while the bat kept still.

Here is a photo of its back showing how furry it is. I originally thought that this was a Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifigus), but I’ve since been corrected. It is actually a Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis).

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Big, Heavy Rock

Published September 26, 2010

In the grass at the end of the driveway leading to my condo is a rock. It sits on the dirt and grass along side the pavement as a negative deterrence designed to keep people from cutting the corner and driving on the lawn. Whenever this rock isn’t moved back people will cut the corner, driving on the grass and killing it.

Some time between noon and 5pm today someone didn’t pay enough attention to where they were putting their car, cut the corner, and dragged the rock to the next driveway before pushing it out of the road. Due to the intensity of the scratches on the road surface I suspect it was stuck under the car, likely somewhere along the rear end as people tend to cut the corner sharply and hit the grass with their rear right side tire.

Hopefully next time they’ll pay more attention to where they are putting their car when leaving the driveway. I’ll put it back in place later this evening when I take out the trash.

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