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Heated Mattress Pad

Published December 5, 2009

Being a large corner room with two windows, my bedroom tends to be a bit cooler than the rest of the house. Combined with setting the house temperature back at night, this makes for a rather cool sleeping environment. I like it, but it’s a bit cold for Danielle, particularly right when getting into bed so today she picked up a Sunbeam Premium Heated Mattress Pad from Costco for $79 (or so). With controls to turn one side on at a time we hope that it’ll keep her sufficiently warm while not overheating me.

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Good Bye, Afie

Published December 3, 2009

Afie, my parents’ / family’s dog since the mid-90s, is being taken to the vet at 3pm today. As my mom said:

Afie is going to go play in Doggie Heaven with the other happy, fun doggies now.

I’m half glad that I’m at work as it provides a bit of a distraction, but being sad will likely get in the way of thinking clearly. While I understand that Afie has been sick for quite a while and it’s likely time, I can’t help but be sad about it.

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Toilet Gasket Time

Published December 3, 2009

After seeing this leak appear a few days in a row in the toilet off of my bedroom I believe that it is time to replace the toilet tank gasket. Thankfully this is an easy task, requiring nothing more than disconnecting the water supply, drying out the tank, unbolting it from the bowl, reversing all the steps after fitting a new gasket, and having a test flush.

I must remember to pick up two new gaskets tomorrow, as I shall replace both toilets’ gaskets at the same time. They were both installed at the same time (October 2001) and should wear based on age and exposure, but not use. Utilizing, cleaning, nor flushing the toilet should cause little wear on a gasket which normally sits just below the flapper and is dry save for during flushes. Thus as toilet usage patterns can be ignored when considering gasket lifespan, one can presume the other gasket is likely to fail soon as well due to simple effects of aging.

(Note that in presuming even wear between the two toilets I’m ignoring differences in the bathrooms such as airflow patterns, temperature, exposure to light, humidity, and the possibility of someone leaning back while on the toilet introducing stress to the gasket, as all of these have uncertain outcomes and would be much harder to quantify than simple age. And anyway, who really leans back against the bowl while sitting on the toilet? Things won’t come out right if one does that.)

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SyncForegroundPolicy precludes ReportDC and ReportControllerMissing

Published December 2, 2009

In troubleshooting some Group Policy processing issues I attempted to set ReportDC(1) and ReportControllerMissing(2) to notify me, upon login, that a Windows machine was using Cached Credentials(3). After a brief period of confusion I found that turning off (or setting to 0) SyncForegroundPolicy, the registry key which holds the policy setting Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon, will preclude this the aforementioned notification. Thus when receiving the policy-based setting disabling SyncForegroundPolicy to ensure that the machine starts faster by not waiting for the network to come up before beginning policy processing, the diagnostic popup indicating the use of cached credentials does not work.

Note that the steps for setting the ReportDC and ReportControllerMissing values can be found in 242536 – User is not alerted when logging on with domain cached credentials.

(1) HKU\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ReportDC, set to 1 (the default) to display the domain controller message.
(2) HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ReportControllerMissing, set to TRUE to display the message.
(3) HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SyncForegroundPolicy, set to 1 for enabled / wait for network. The opposite setting of 0 is disabled / don’t wait for network.

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Bike Route?!?

Published December 1, 2009

On tonight’s bike ride I noticed new signs in River Bends indicating that a dead-end loop of trail (including all of the the newly paved stuff) is marked as a Bike Route. There is a sign leading into this pavement indicating so, and the sign above is seen on the way out. This strikes me as a bit odd, as there are no Bike Route signs at the entrances to River Bends, and were one to follow those signs expecting a way through, a rider would just find the trail looping back on itself through some rather rough sections.

I suppose I could take this as a good sign (ha ha!), indicating that the trail connecting River Bends and Utica together will be completed soon. Unfortunately, a past conversation that I had with the engineer of the new trail project indicating that the trail is to end there for the time being until funding to complete the trail is found. I suspect that the signs are part of the bigger project and this plan, and were installed simply so one could say that this segment is complete. Now, if only the remaining few-mile segments between Rochester / the Bloomer rail trail, River Bends, and Clinton River Park (behind Dodge Park) would be completed.

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No Studs Lost! (Broken In Nokian WXC300 Tires)

Published November 28, 2009

A quick ride up to River Bends completed the recommended 30 mile break-in period for the Nokian Hakka WXC300 tires that I picked up for winter riding. The relatively-giant knobs and studs make for an uncomfortable, difficult, vibration-y ride and lead to sore sit bones. The metal on pavement contact also makes for a twitchy ride, very similar to what one finds when riding in light snow. At one point I automatically braked hard while turning and my front wheel slipped while making a harsh metal on stone sound.

During this break-in period no studs were lost, likely due to careful braking, acceleration, and turning. As can be seen here (full res) the center studs which had more contact with pavement were pushed further into the tire, which should help keep them from tearing out during normal use this winter. I can’t help but think of a device which would perform this break-in automatically over the course of a few hours using a motor, weights, an old fork, and an old grinding stone, but that’d definitely be overkill for just me and my one set of tires.

Now that this process is complete I can’t wait to get normal tires back on the bike and ride some single track before the weather gets really bad. I may try for this tomorrow, but with the current forecast it looks like it’ll be sometime mid-week before that’s possible.

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Invisible Wires

Published November 27, 2009

Today I spent time rewiring my office to incorporate the new iMac. A few armloads of cables connecting the Mac Pro-bearing rack were removed and things were simplified / organized. I absolutely love having a quiet desk with cables only visible where necessary. I tucked a USB hub out of the way under the desk to the right of my chair for flash drives, and another behind the desk for more permanent connections.

As I’m not sure how it’ll be done the scanner is not yet connected, but I suspect it’ll involve a 10′ USB cable run to the hub on the back side of the desk and a shorter cable to Danielle’s desk for when she wants to use it. My older Dell monitor was moved to Danielle’s desk and fitted with a mini-DVI connector so that she can watch movies on it while using the Macbook screen for normal browsing / work. A new power strip was also added to the rack next to her desk to make plugging in her laptop and charging phones easier. This mostly carpet fisheye shot (full res) shows the two desks as they are with the rack.

Before doing all of this the Mac Pro was also wiped and reinstalled. Hopefully it’ll be photographed tomorrow for listing on eBay come Sunday evening.

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Pie for Breakfast!

Published November 27, 2009

There are worse things for breakfast than (very, very tasty) pumpkin pie the morning after returning from the other side of the country. Thanks to some great friends this was a outstanding trip for both Danielle and I, and there’s still a few days left. Today should mostly consist of running errands, prepping the Mac Pro for sale, collecting queued mail at the post office, and maybe (hopefully) a bike ride.

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