The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Author: eajhnsn1

  • Electricity, part II

    As mentioned earlier, I had purchased the wrong type of circuit breaker. Today we went back to the store and got the right one. An hour later, all the computers downstairs were plugged into their very own 20 amp circuit!

    Within the next few weeks I hope to get to wiring the two remaining circuits.

    In other news, we picked up a cheapo 20″ tv for our bedroom, I got tired of trying to see our small 13″ one from across the room without my glasses. We found the name, Konka, to be pretty funny so we’ve voked to never call it a TV… it’s Konka.

  • Electricity

    We went to Lowes today and bought everything needed for me to add the new circuits in the basement. I decided I would just work on the circuits one at a time so I could find out if I’m doing something wrong early on. I’m not a fast worker, so after a few hours I had 5 outlets wired (one is a GFCI) and was ready to open up the breaker box and add the new breaker. That was the first time I’ve ever been working 3″ from the main power lines coming into the house – more than just a little unnerving! Anyway, as I was ready to pop in the newly wired circuit breaker…. it’s just barely the wrong physical size! So I had to unwire the ground and neutral and pull the wire out of the breaker box until I can get to Lowes tomorrow. Testing my new outlets will have to wait until tomorrow.

  • A couple of pictures


    The first one is of Ana’s new sewing cabinet, and the second one is of her most recent sewing creation – a pair of cat beds that Dozer and Neo just love.

  • Where’d the day go?

    Today was an unexpectedly busy day. It started off with me making a computer repait visit (someone I’ve helped out for years now..) at 8:30am. His computer was in pretty bad shape and resulted in me bringing it back to the house for disinfection and general cleansing. Windows ME is such a horrible thing.

    The remainder of the day involved cleaning, buying storage and shelving, and more cleaning. The first cleaning was our general all-over-the-house kind which takes a couple hours. We then went on a shopping spree at Lowes, resulting in a Muscle Rack for the basement, a cabinet with baskets and doors for Ana’s sewing room (pics soon), and an organizer cabinet for the office closet.

    After putting everything together I decided to start cleaning up the office and made very good progress. I finally got around to finding out what was on a bunch of used and unlabeled CDRs as well as pitching a TON of old software (CD and floppy) I haven’t touched in at least 4 years. It feels good to get it out of the way once and for all.

  • Scott’s Turf Builder Plus SummerGuard


    I put Scott’s Turf Builder Plus SummerGuard on our yard about a month ago, and it has done its job very well. That picture is from Sunday.

    I’m following their recommended product cycle which has me applying a different fertilizer every 6-8 weeks, so some of the credit goes to the preceeding product applications too. Our new strips of sod (from the sump line work) in the back yard are even growing and blending into the yard quite nicely.

  • PostgreSQL 8 Beta

    This evening I went and downloaded the new PostgreSQL 8.0 Beta which now runs natively on Windows. I’ve installed it but haven’t setup the Chef database yet because of my reliance on the fulltext module for text indexing – I’m not yet sure what fulltext searching options are available in 8. Anyway, it’s on my machine, with the intention of getting the Chef db running like it does on linux so a few people I know only running Windows can also run my software. I’ll provide more info as it comes.

    Shortly I’ll be ordering a processor, memory, and hard drive for my new barebones PC. I think the plan is to make it my desktop, turn Windev into my web server, and maybe retire the current webserver. The only thing that is going to be hard about that plan is turning Windev, my longtime Windows DEVelopment machine, into a Linux server. Oh the humanity!

  • New Computers

    I just finished up building a pair of computers for Ana’s sister and cousin. Her sister’s computer was fried by lightning about a month ago and she was cut an insurance check last week. Ana’s cousin is headed to college for her freshman year and needs a computer. Both machines have this Shuttle board and have turned out to be pretty speedy machines. End price was $350 and $450, respectively. Not too shabby.

    Thanks to David bringing this deal to my attention, I now have a barebones kit sitting in my living room for $20. I’ve got a few parts to buy still, but that’s a pretty tought decision to make since I don’t have a clue what I am going to have the machine doing. Ana says I’m a real nerd since I bought a computer just because of the price and I don’t know what I’m doing with it. Oh well, nice problem to have I suppose.

  • Travel Products

    Here are a few items we found indispensible on our road trip. Highly recommended for those travelling in a car for any considerable amount of time.

    Igloo KoolMate 40 This is a thermoelectric cooler/heater which plugs into the cigarette lighter in the car. It cools to something like 45 degrees below outside temperature or heats to 155 degrees. It was the perfect size for keeping all of our lunch foods cold on the drive.

    Earthmate GPS Receiver in combination with the Delorme Street Atlas allowed us to trapse all over the place without the worry of getting lost. The trip planning portion of the software makes some questionable decisions, but the capability of knowing exactly where you are at all times is priceless. We borrowed this from a friend of my dad’s but are planning on buying it for ourselves since it was so useful.

    We also borrowed my dad’s XM Radio so we didn’t have to deal with searching for radio stations every 15 minutes. I don’t have a need for one all the time, but it’s great on trips.

    I used my Treo 600 with PDANet to have an internet connection on my laptop in the car and anywhere else we went with cellular service. This is GREAT for passing time in traffic jams.

  • Home Sweet Home

    Home! We arrived around 7:15 tonight, after a very smooth drive from Sevierville, TN. We went through Champaign around 5pm and stopped in for some BW3 which tasted great.

    Many thanks to David and Libby for being such great hosts while we were in Durham, we had a great time and hope to visit again sometime.

    Some Traval Statistics:

    Total Miles: 2,800
    Average Miles/Gallon: 24.62 (damn mountains)
    Average Price/Gallon: $1.85

    Continue reading “Home Sweet Home”

  • Durham, part 2

    Today is our last full day in Durham with David and Libby, which really sucks because I’d rather not go back to all the crap waiting for me at work. Anyway, we are heading to Wilmington, NC to go to the beach.

    On Tuesday, due to the less than desirable weather forecast, we went to a mall and roamed around a bit. I had a beer in the food court, just because they offered it. (It’s very strange to be sitting in the middle of a food court and drinking a Budweiser…) After leaving the mall we drove over to Jordan Lake to view the large population of bald eagles before heading back for the day. We all went and saw The Village that night. Overall we thought it to be a crappy movie. Maybe I need to watch it again, this time forgetting about how the trailers portrayed it. I dunno.

    Yesterday involved a little canoeing, my first time. It turned out to be a lot of fun and I expect we’ll do it again in the future. The portion of the river we went on was supposed to take 4 hours – Ana and I were done and out of the water in well under 2. Ooops. After that short boat trip we tried to find a place to picnic but ended up just eating in the car as we drove around. We wanted to go into one of the parks around the lake to eat, but they charge $5 – measley I know, but when you’re someone who rarely carries cash around, that $5 is hard to come by. We drove around for quite a while looking for an ATM, and finally found one at an IGA grocery store. Not turned on. No money for me. Eat in car. The evening brought a nice dinner in, followed by a showing of Gattaca.

    So today we are going to the beach. I’m probably going to be taking quite a few pictures because we have a few rooms at home with bare walls. Anyone that’s seen our house knows that the majority of pictures we have hanging are products of my digital camera, so I have some work to do.

    Tomorrow we are headed to the Smokey Mountains (Tennessee side) where we have rented a cabin for the night. Should be a lot of fun, and I’ll probably pull out the telescope I’ve brought along.