These are pictures for my dad to look at. I am trying to figure out if the pictures show a grounding wire or what it is exactly? I thought it might we water at first but it seems to small and is crimped at the end. It isn't a solid wire for sure. Also the power coming from the pole has a grounding wire on it.
Kelly found this amphibian while walking Narnia. Anyone want to take a guess as to what it is?
With the increased abilities of home theater receivers (AVR) comes increased complexity and the possibility of bugs. Most current mid-range to high end receivers have HDMI 1.3a and can internally decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA. What this means is they have very advanced DSPs (limited purpose computer chip) in them. The DSPs run software just like a computer and that software had a few bugs, one of which could in theory destroy speakers under very specific conditions. As a result just like most other modern consumer electronics it can be upgraded. The cool thing in this story is how. There are actually two pieces of software that run my AVR, the main firmware (operating system) and DSP firmware (drivers). The main firmware is updated in a fairly standard way via an attached RS232 (serial) cable from a computer. The DSP firmware however is updated through the optical digital in port from a CD player. Yes you play a music CD (well it is made like a music CD, you wouldn't want to listen to it) and the DSP goes hey that is an update and starts loading the "music" as an upgrade. It was quite a painless process and was quite impressive. The bad thing about modern consumer electronics is they are so complex they have bugs. The good thing (at least with some) is that those bugs can be fixed after you buy them for free usually. One might say why didn't they prevent these bugs, well the main reason is there was nothing to test the DSPs with until recently since nothing fully used them. Many companies developed toward a specification that detailed how to encode, decode and transport data. Somewhere along they way it didn't work 100%, which is somewhat to be expected when you have nothing to test against before selling the product. Hopefully the problems are fixed and I can enjoy my AVR without worry now.
One of the biggest problems with this house that existed when I moved in was the deck. I knew this going in so it wasn't a surprise. That being said I think anyone that stood on the old one would agree it was pretty scary. It was a small deck of about 4'x10' and had a floor made of plywood and held together with some sort of carpet or astro-turf like stuff. It took a long while but about 18 months after moving in I finally tore down the old one last fall. It was almost too easy to pull down. When we took the carpet of the stairs they literally disintegrated. We threw out the deck in a dumpster I had at the time. Since the old one was torn down it was about a 10' drop out the back door of the kitchen down to the back door of the basement. Not really useful as an exit.
On Easter weekend my parents came down to help build a new deck. My dad didn't have any direct experience building a deck and nor did I, but I that didn't stop us in the basement. Kelly got several books from the library on deck building, I would recommend the Home Depot one as it was most up to date and very helpful. My parents arrived Thursday afternoon. My dad and I spent several hours going over my plans and doing some measuring. The plan was to build a small exit deck of 4'x6' and stairs to get down. We went out that night and bought all the supplies we would need to build everything except the stairs. This included boards of such sizes as 4"x4"x10', 2"x6"x8', 5/4"x6"x8', some pre-built railing and lots of bolts.
Friday morning we got up and first attached some boards to the house to fill the gap left by the old deck in the siding. Then we built the frame of the deck. We put the frame in place with the posts. After we had things in place for the most part we went back and used the bolts and some deck screws to firmly hold the frame in place. The next step was to put the decking in place. It was interesting doing while standing on un-secured boards. We got them in place with a few screws and then went back and put in lots more. The last step for the day was attaching the railings to the posts. That night we went to get the pieces for the stairs. This was some pre-made treads, stringers and the outer frame for the stairs.
Saturday morning we started on the stairs. This was lots of measuring, little wood trimming, more measuring, angle checking and hoping it fits right. One of the complications with the stairs was that the ground at the bottom of stairs is not what you would call level. We ended up getting it almost perfect though with each stair fitting and being level. After getting the stairs in place we added a railing for the steps and toped the railing around the rest of the deck. The new deck while smaller is much sturdier than the old one. I am sure it can hold the 3-4 people that could potentially fit on the deck. Also now Narnia can go out the back door to the back yard with less concern of being distracted instead of the front yard.
Lots of pictures of the process and the finished project are available at this link.
Here is a picture of my dad and I on the finished product Saturday afternoon.
Oh and as an added bonus this is a picture of Kelly showing her amazement at the speed and skill of my dad and I as we build the deck. Just bask in the joy she is exuding.
This is really only directed toward companies and schools that are using Microsoft Exchange (2003 SP2 or 2007) but others may find it interesting. Most people have heard of RIM's Blackberry devices and services. It was originally introduced as a server based option that required the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) which has either a 5 or 10 seat minimum license and isn't cheap. It is now available for single users using phone company provided email addresses as well. When most people talk about real time cell phone based email (and possibly contacts and calendar) this is what they are talking about.
With the release of Exchange Server 2003 SP2 (and 2007) Microsoft added Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) as a free service in the product. This service does the exact same thing as BES only for free and for a wider range of devices. EAS works with most Windows Mobile 5 devices and all Windows Mobile 6 and higher devices. It also works with most Palm Treo and Centro devices, I say most because it is sometimes carrier dependent. Lastly, Apple has announced that this service is coming to the iPhone with the 2.0 update this summer.
Once enabled on the server all that is needed to configure a cell device is to type in the sever URL, username and password. After that it is automatically configured and begins to do real time two way synchronization. There are two potential gotchas that I must warn about as well. First, you will need SSL on your Exchange Server (or firewall depending on setup) and I recommend an official cert rather than in house created for ease of device configuration. Second, make sure you have an unlimited data plan on whatever cell device you do this on or you will get a big surprise when you get your first bill.
The last part of this is that Blackberry itself now has a way for its phones to connect to exchange without needing BES. It is called Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) and is also free. What BIS does is it allows the phone to use Outlook Web Access (OWA) to simulate the same two way synch without the need of additional software. I don't know the full feature set of BIS since I don't have a device to test with but I have seen it used for email with our server. Again with this there was nothing done on the server and on the phone it was only URL, username and password and it is was working in minutes.
I tried to be high level on this post but if you want more details look at the following links, also feel free to ask me any questions and I will do my best to answer them. Hopefully this saves you some time and money when you have someone that wants real time email on a cell phone device.
On August 21, 2005 I wrote about getting Zeus from my my friend Heather as she was going to give him away. Zeus and I had a little bit of a rocky start as I noted in that post but he has been a great cat ever since. He was always a lap cat to the extreme, always wanting to sit in your lap even if there was a laptop or something else already there. When he couldn't sit on your lap because you were in bed he would lay on your head or next to you on the pillow. I admit that at times I pushed him off, but he was always there to give you affection. A few months ago we found out that he had feline AIDS or FIV. Because of this we had to take away on of his favorite things which was going outside. He had become even more creative in sneaking out whenever the door was opened since then. He put up the arrival of Kelly's cats almost a year ago and then Narnia last fall. He often would remind Narnia whose house it was by giving Narnia a whack as he walked by. Tonight at about 8:30 PM he died of what was apparently a blood clot / stroke. He was sleeping on the couch and then coughed strangely almost as if he was choking. Kelly and I were sitting on the couch and I looked at him and his eyes just seemed dead. I tried to nudge him and got no reaction. Kelly then jumped up and grabbed him and we raced to the Pet ER. We got there in minutes but they could do nothing for him. They said he did not react at all to CPR or drugs. After about 20 minutes from the point he coughed we told them to stop trying to recover him. The picture below was taken only a few hours before he died. He died sleeping almost exactly as pictured. He will be missed.
This morning I managed to break the dome on the existing light in our dining room. I bumped the light with my head and the dome fell off. It bounced off something on the table, rolled across the table, fell onto a chair and then bounced finally to the floor and broke. This gave Kelly the excuse she had wanted to buy a new light. She mounted the new one this afternoon.
I also took another picture showing the shelf we put up a few months ago to hold Kelly's cook books and cooking magazines. Below it are some prints as well.
Kelly has nicely put up with me having the new server sitting on dining room table. Today she seemed to be leaning toward me not having it there anymore. I moved it to its almost permanent installation in basement. The below picture shows it sitting next to its older much larger and louder soon to be retired brother. This goes well with the last post to give you scale of this new tiny server. Also you can see the amazing wiring mess that lives in the same area.
My friend Chris claimed that he couldn't get an accurate feel for the scale of my new server. His suggestion was comparing it to the size of my head. This morning before moving the server to more final placement I took the pictures. First is front shot, one just server (on dinning room table) and next with me.
Next is a side view of the server and me.
I would say that in volume my head and the server are pretty close. Which is pretty small for a server I would say. In the front view you can see the add-on lunchbox external drives for my 1 TB mirror array.
Last November I upgraded my Sanyo PLV-Z4 720p projector to a Sanyo PLV-Z2000 1080p projector. I thought it was an amazing deal at the time. It was $2495 as a base price with a $300 mail in rebate for a net of $2195. Just recently I was reading some comments on the projector and realized the price has fallen through the floor. The projector now has a base price of $2195 with a $600 mail in rebate for a final cost of $1595. That is just crazy, trimming 37% off the cost in 3-4 months. If you want a 1080p projector I definitely recommend this one, especially at the new lower price. I am not sure how long the mail in rebates last however.
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