Birthday Gaming

Yesterday Treese and I celebrated my 45th birthday by hanging out on the couch watching Ozark and playing videogames. We were playing Borderlands 3 for the PlayStation 4, which is a fun game but extremely buggy even with all the hot-fix patches that have been released. I can't tell you how many times we've seen the dreaded blue screen general error CE-34878-0 or been trapped inside one of the tournament rooms because the doors wouldn't open due to enemies either being trapped off screen or just failing to materialize, in which case the only way out was to commit suicide and loose all progress we had made during the round.

Well, yesterday we had both bugs happen again, first a hard crash and then twice being trapped, so the second time we just gave up and turned it off. We enjoy the frustration of a challenging scenario because it feels so great when we are finally able to pass it, but the frustration of failing because of game glitches is just infuriating. Luckily, I received a new game in the mail that day, a birthday gift from my parents that is from one of our all time favorite 2-player local couch co-op game series: Earth Defense Force 5! Don't let the dated graphics and hilariously bad dialog fool you, these games are a blast! You play as soldiers fighting against waves of giant bugs and alien ships through many different destructible environment, just stage after stage of increasingly difficult mayhem. So we put that on and spent much of the afternoon and evening having a blast shooting up giant ants, spiders, and alien drones.

On another note, our two new rose bushes are still doing well. The one that started blooming has even more roses now and they aren't just yellow, there is red, orange, pink, and peach petals. The other one appears to be a literal late bloomer but it looks healthy so hopefully we'll be getting some blooming rose buds very soon.

Blooming Roses

Happy Star Wars Day everyone! We had some rain over the weekend and when looking out back we noticed one of our new rose bushes started blooming for the first time! The other one looks like it will bloom pretty soon.

2020 So Far...

For this new year I had intended to give a monthly update about what has been going on in my life. Well, we're now almost five months into 2020 and I have yet to give a single solitary update, so we can all see how well that went. Then I thought, should I just wait until the year is half over and to a mid-year update? The problem with that is I know myself, and I know I'd either forget or just not feel like it. So I better just do it now.

Way back in January I planted two new rose bushes in the backyard where two of the three existing bushes had died. The ground cover for these had been river rock but somehow grass and and some kind of apparent succulent ground cover started taking over, which is what we believe killed those bushes. So I had dug all the rock out and onto the patio until I made it to the old weed guard plastic which was all torn up. I thought digging up all that rock would be the hard part, but after planting the bushes I had to clean all the dirt, grass and ground cover off the rocks before I put them back so the same thing wouldn't start happening again right away. After some trial and error, I ended up using my pressure washer and our mesh wrought iron patio table.

Also in January, I went to Las Vegas with my wife and her good friend. The hotel stay was covered just for attending a timeshare presentation which lasted a couple hours. While in Vegas we walked around the different casinos since they're so interesting to look at. They're almost like a theme park with no rides... although there is a roller coaster at one of the casinos. My wife and her friend played the slot machines a couple times and didn't win. I find slots to be the opposite of fun, so I opted not to participate. We also saw a Cirque du Soleil show called Zumanity which was really cool.

In February I won a couple gift cards just from donating platelets. I walked in for my appointment and was handed a little gift bag with balloons attached and was told I won a contest I didn't know was going on. The gift cards were for Fandango and some fancy fine dining restaurant called Clearie's. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to use those cards because the very next day I headed to Vallejo. My grandpa was in the hospital so I went to visit him and to help out my mom with getting him transferred to a care facility. I ended up stay until mid-March so I could help get him moved to a more permanent place after he got released from the care facility and to help get my grandma moved into an assisted living facility. When I finally made it home, we still couldn't use the gift cards as everything had just gone on lockdown due to this COVID-19 cornoavirus.

This month we had our overhead microwave oven replaced. It had been giving us issues off and on for a few months and it was like 20 years old so it was time. I also replaced our tiny low-watt countertop microwave with a bigger more powerful one I picked up at a local auction. I also got a DiskStation NAS (Network Attached Storage) at auction back in January so I could stop using external hard drives attached to our router as a makeshift NAS. I've picked up a lot of cool things at auctions for rock bottom prices. I'd recommend checking to see if there are any local auctions in your area.

Christmas

Hope everyone had a nice holiday and got some good presents if you celebrate a holiday that involves receiving presents. We celebrated Christmas at my parents' house and since nobody else came over we were able to just stay in our pajamas all day. Treese got me some Star Wars Black Series action figures: Lando Calrissian in Skiff Guard Disguise, Bounty Hunter Droid IG-88, Sabine Wren, and a Jawa. Sabine is a relatively new character from the Star Wars Rebels TV series that premiered in 2014 while the other three are from the original trilogy. I had action figures of them back in the 80s. Remember those figures? They had such articulation as their limbs moving up and down... and maybe the head would swivel. Their little guns would either immediately fall out of their hands or would be pointing off to the side. Action figures sure have come a long way since then.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

We saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker last night and absolutely loved it. We both went into it without having seen any trailers, interviews, reviews, or even any of the toys. We purposely avoided any and all potential spoilers so we could go in a fresh as possible without any expectations. From beginning to end we thought it was fantastic. I was surprised to find later that a lot of people liked it less than the previous movie in the saga, The Last Jedi. I thought it was a ton of fun and am excited to check out all the new toys!

1920s Dinner Party

This past weekend we went to a dinner party put on by my wife's work. It was smaller than last year's James Bond themed party, or perhaps it just felt that way since it was a smaller venue. This year the theme was 1920s. Everyone was dressed up and looking good in their costumes. There were a lot of guys dressed in black shirts with white suspenders which is what Treese was originally thinking of putting me in, so she was happy we did something different. We went with a white shirt with black suspenders, bow tie, and then a hat. She wore a short black dress with a pattern of silver sequins, a long pearl necklace, silver and black earrings, and one of those headband things with the feather sticking up.

Heaters are supposed to heat, right?

It was quite cold the day we returned from Thanksgiving break so I cut on the heater as soon as I walked through the door. An hour later we were feeling no warmth so I checked the vents. Cold air. Our nice new efficient heater wasn't heating. We had only used it a couple times prior and only for a couple hours but it had worked then. I contacted Cold Snap, the company that installed it, and one of the installers, Jon, came out the very next morning. After checking things out he determined that he had accidentally put a cap in the wrong place during the install which allowed condensation to build up instead of draining, thus clogging up the system. He spent a while up there getting it fixed. When he was done we had hot air again.

Everything was great until the next evening when the house started getting colder. I checked the vents and felt cold air. We let them know and they said Jon could come by in the morning. It was still happening the next morning but then suddenly it started blowing warm air again. When Jon arrived and did his inspection he found a hose to be the likely culprit. He said he noticed a small slit in it at the end and from what I understood, when he would touch it then it would no longer create a vacuum. So he got a new hose put in and everything seemed to be working... except that he was seeing an airflow error light show up every once in a while during the tests. We eventually found that to be caused by three of our vents being closed. Once we opened them the error went away. I also replaced the air filter for good measure.

We noticed some cold air blowing from the vents again today, but the house didn't get any colder from it. We asked and apparently that is normal. The furnace is designed to continue blowing for a few minutes after the heating stops in order to remove the heat from the unit. Makes sense. I have a heat gun that does the same thing. Now we just have to angle the vents so it doesn't blow the cold air right on top of our heads. I'd also like to say that Jon really seems like a great guy. He's been very polite and professional throughout everything. He was the one that came out after we demanded American Home Shield send someone else out for a second opinion and has been through the install, all the inspections, and now the repairs. He never made us feel like we were inconveniencing him and when he noticed he made a mistake he owned up to it and didn't try to pass it off on someone else. I respect both him and the company and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

Attic Entrance

In order for Cold Snap to get our new heater up through the attic entrance they had to cut off the half inch of drywall on all sides. This was the part that held the attic entrance cover so when they were done they screwed the drywall pieces back in place. But not all of it survived so there were gaps which didn't create a very good seal. Putting my hand up there I could feel cold air coming through so I knew I had to fix it. I got around to doing that the day that we left for Thanksgiving break while Treese was still at work. I started in the morning and was able to finish before we had to leave.

I went to Lowes and got two 1"x3" 6' whitewood boards as their actual dimensions (0.5"x2.5") were approximate the same as the drywall. I measured out the sections I needed and used the Black+Decker Matrix Trim Saw Attachment that mom had gotten me for my birthday to do the cutting. That attachment is so convenient for small jobs! Then I got the pieces lined up, drilled some pilot holes, and attached them using leftover deck screws I had bought to fix our garage ceiling. The attic entrance cover sits nice and level with no wobbling and I can no longer feel any cold air escaping so I'm happy with it. Later on down the line I may paint the wood and pick up some kind of drywall tape to hide the seams, but there's no rush on that.

Thanksgiving Break: Hike and Wall Climb

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We visited my parents for the holiday which was nice. My sister, Julia, flew in as well from Colorado and it was great getting to hang out with her. Thanksgiving dinner was a bit smaller than usual with only my grandmothers and Uncle Billy coming. It was still nice, though, as that made it more intimate. And the food was delicious thanks to Treese and Mom.

On the day after Thanksgiving we did a 2.7 mile hike to work off some of that food. Unfortunately Treese had homework to do so she couldn't come. It was cold out but a clear day. The hiking trail was a bit muddy from the previous day's rain but not bad enough to turn around. I thought the cold air really helped as I think if it had been warm out I probably would have been all hot and sweaty by the end.

Then the next day Julia took me to a indoor climbing gym. She was a regular but this was my first time and it sure was a lot of fun. Definitely showed that I need to work on my upper body strength. I made it to the top on my first couple climbs but after that it became much more difficult. By the end I could only make it half way up an easy climb before my arms refused to pull my body up any further. Dad came along to take pictures. Afterwards the three of us went out to lunch. Mom and Treese came to join us after we texted them our plans. We were trying to go to an Indian restaurant but when we got there we found it was permanently closed so we went to the Mexican place next door. It was a good meal and a great holiday break.

New Shut-Off Valve & TV Wall Mount

A while back I discovered that the hot water shut-off valve under the kitchen sink wouldn't shut off all the way. It was a multi-turn valve which just wore out as they tend to do. It is a dual outlet valve which feeds both the sink and the dishwasher and since the lines coming into it from both are a not-very-flexible metal that I'm sure would have broken if I tried to bend them into a different position I needed the dual-outlets to be positioned at a 90 degree angle to each other just like the original valve. Additionally, I wanted the replacement to be a quarter-turn valve so it would last. I couldn't find what I needed at the local hardware stores but of course Amazon had it. Not only that, but they had one which can shut off the water to the dual outputs independently, so I can just shut off the dishwasher or just the sink if I so desired. I spent a couple hours getting that installed yesterday. It really shouldn't have taken so long but there is just so little room to maneuver under there with the garbage disposal and all the pipes in the way.

The day before that we installed a wall mount for our flat screen TV in the living room. That went surprisingly smooth. We already had the studs marked from when we tried to do it several years ago only to find the wall mount we had bought didn't fit our 24" studs. Stud finders can be such a pain so it was nice not to have to do that again. I didn't install an electrical outlet or low-voltage wire pass-through to hide the wires. That'll have to come later. For right now we just put a plant in front of the wires along with a few action figures.

Mr. Fix-it

Last Sunday when I was over at my grandparents' house to wash their windows my grandma told me that their kitchen faucet was leaking under the counter whenever they turned on the water. I checked it out expecting to find a loose connection or a worn washer but found that the hose in the pull-down faucet had split open. Home Depot didn't have a replacement so I ordered one on Amazon.

The next day my grandpa called saying that his toilet was broken, so I walked over to check it out. Sure enough, both the fill valve and flush valve assemblies were broken. Old plastic that just wore out over time. On top of that, the metal shutoff valve was also broken as it was an old multi-turn valve that wouldn't shut off all the way. I headed to Home Depot and got a quarter turn valve but they didn't have the other parts so I ordered those on Amazon. I installed the shutoff valve that day which didn't take long. I've replaced a couple of these compression fittings at my house so I knew what to do.

The other replacement parts arrived yesterday so I went over and installed them. I had completely replaced both of our toilets not too long ago so I knew how to install these parts. Still, it all went surprisingly smooth. Usually something ends up going wrong. The biggest problem I had was that the chain that attaches from the flush assembly to the flush handle lever was too short. There was an extra link included on the chain to make it longer, the problem was disconnecting the hook from the handle lever. The hook is so small and you have to keep that one part pressed in while trying to maneuver it out of the hole with very little light and very little space to work in. I think it took me like 10 minutes to get that sucker off so I could re-adjust it. At any rate, they were happy to have everything working again and to not have shelled out a fortune for a plumber.

When I came over I had also brought with me a hearing aid that I recently got to give to grandma because even though she knows her hearing has gotten bad she always refused to go to the doctor to get one. This wasn't one of the tiny bluetooth ones my mom has, this was a larger one that fits over the ear which I think would be easier for her to use. She tried it out and said it definitely helped, so we'll see if she'll continue to use it.

Visiting the grandparents

This afternoon walked over my grandparents house for a visit. Grandpa and I watched a movie that was playing on TV called A Face in the Crowd from 1957 starring Andy Griffith. It was quite good and I was surprised by how relevant it still is even today. There is a scene near the end which is very reminiscent of a scene near the end of UHF, which I'm sure was done on purpose seeing as how UHF parodied a ton of different movies. While I was there grandpa gave me a wrist watch of his that he has had for a long, long time, since he was in the service. It's a wind-up watch with no battery that still works. It means a lot to him and therefore it means a lot to me, so I need to find something nice that I can store it in, preferably something that I can hang on my wall as a display. Do they make picture frames for wrist watches?

Freddy vs Jason

We went to a Halloween party yesterday dressed as Freddy Kruger and Jason Vorhees. There were a lot of other great costumes there. My favorite was the Black Widow and Fat Thor couples costume. We all hung out in the back yard snacking and talking until the power went out and the wind got furious, forcing us to move inside the house.

CleanTalk Anti-Spam

I've been using the paid edition of CleanTalk Anti-Spam on the Absolute Anime Community Forums for three weeks now and am still very impressed. Spam posts have been completely eliminated and spam registrations have been reduced to almost nil. There used to be several spam registrations a day which I would have to spend time cleaning up every couple weeks, but now I've only see two that have occurred in the past three weeks. Such a time saver! The three year subscription I got was only $19.44 so totally worth it. I would recommend it to any forum that is besieged by spam.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Double Feature

Thursday night Treese and I went to see the premiere of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot which was a Fathom Events double feature along with the first movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It was a lot of fun. There was an intro by Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, an intermission between the two movies, some interviews and behind the scenes stuff afterwards, and finally an outtro by Kevin and Jason. We thoroughly enjoyed both movies and it was helpful to see the original before seeing the new one. I think I actually liked Reboot better as it had more emotional stakes than the original. As expected there were a ton of cameos and it was fun spotting the usual players found in many Kevin Smith movies. These films definitely aren't for everyone but they were right up our alley and I'm glad we went.

Ceiling Fan & Roof Work

On Monday I installed a ceiling fan in Treese's home office, one of two ceiling fans we scored for free over the weekend thanks to Craigslist. One was white, the other brown, and both were in very good condition. I installed the white one and disassembled the brown one to box up for storage. I figure I'll use it to replace the ceiling fan in the gazebo at some point since the weather has not been kind to that one. It's the first time I've been in the attic since we had the new air conditioner and heater installed, and it was quite a mess up there. They left an empty cardboard box, cut zip ties, old metal bands, a bunch of tape scraps, PVC pipe scraps, and more. They also broke the light bulb and the face plate for the light socket/light switch combo. I understand being exhausted after a hard days work in the attic but they did come back a second time to finish the job, and a third and forth time to run tests so seems like they could have cleaned some of it up. And also let me know that they broke the face plate and light bulb so I could have replaced them.

Yesterday I had a handi-man neighbor, Dave, come by to help me with my roof valleys and gutters. He brought a friend with him who did the gutters while he did one of the valleys and put some tar-like stuff around the seals of the various pipes that come out of the roof. I watched how Dave did the valleys by using a crowbar to push the tiles along the valley back in place before using his air blower to clean them out. It was similar to how I cleaned the valleys except I didn't know about pushing the tiles back up. That only gets the very center of the valley clean, though, so at some point we'll need to have a professional remove the valley tiles to really clean the metal area below.

I also trimmed the branches of the tree that was spanning over the roof, the one that squirrels like to use to jump on the roof. I was able to get most of them thanks to my long branch saw. Then I worked on fixing the storm door. It was slightly slanted and so would scrape against the the edge when closed. Dave helped me re-align it, using the same screw holes in the metal frame but angling them away to create new screw holes in the wood. It worked great but then I noticed the storm door frame was pulling away from the wall at the bottom because the bottom of the metal frame was being pushed out by that lip of the regular door frame on the ground. I either needed to take the whole storm door off and shift it up a smidgen or cut off the little bit of metal pushing against the lip. I chose the latter as it seemed easier and thankfully it worked. The storm door is now flush against the wall and closing properly.

Blast from the past

I have successfully restored most of the forums, topics, posts, and user accounts that were lost in the great server crash of 2013. The restoration was no easy task, and merging into the existing forums was even more difficult but it seems to be working okay. More details can be found in the Blast from the past: pre-crash forums restored... mostly thread.

Speaking of the past, my friend Conor sent me a couple pictures he found of me that he had taken back in the mid-to-late 90s sometime. I was so skinny with huge glasses! I completely forgot that I used to have my desk angled like that instead of flat against the wall. I'm not sure of the exact year the pictures were taken, but it had to be at least 1995 because that looks like Windows 95 or 98 I'm using on my computer and I have a Power Rangers Falconzord on top of my monitor which was released in 1995. It was also before 1999 as that's when I moved to Redding. Can you find any more clues in the pictures to narrow down the year?

Cats vs Solar Torch

When I went outside this morning I noticed one of the solar torch lights we have along our walkway was just laying on the ground without its plastic post. It was right in the spot where we had it posted in the ground but the post that holds it up was nowhere to be found. I was confused, thinking who would want to steal a short plastic pole for a solar torch and not the light itself? So I went back through the security camera footage and at 12:49am two blurs zipped across the screen and plowed right through the torch post. When I ran it back at normal speed I saw it was two cats running full speed, one chasing the other, with the lead cat crashing through the solar torch so hard that the post flew into the nearby bush and the torch top fell right in place: https://youtu.be/z7aWxQ1JHfE

We were finally able to get American Home Shield to send out a different company for a second opinion on our air conditioner. They sent Cold Snap Air Conditioning, who arrived this morning. He found the same valve leak that JR from Service 1 found but after fixing that he did a test with nitrogen and also found a second leak in the condenser coil which Service 1 didn't even bother to check. He also concurred with our assessment that some of the duct work needed to be replaced. He then smelled a gas leak which he was able to confirm and get fixed. So we were very happy with his service.

HP Laptop Keyboard Install

I installed the backlit keyboard in my HP laptop this weekend. What a chore that was! I used my soldering iron to melt all the plastic rivets, carefully prying up the metal back plate as I went along until I could lift it enough to have access to the underside of the keyboard. I then had to melt more rivets so that I could pry up the keyboard. When I put the new backlit keyboard in I found that there were three notches which did not line up with the plastic pegs on the laptop. Argh!

The backside of the keyboard is metal so I couldn't just use scissors or a utility knife to cut out notches, and my tin snips don't offer the level of precision I would need, so the only option I could see was to cut off the plastic pegs that didn't align. There wasn't enough room to get even a small utility knife in there so I cut them with nail clippers and then filed them down the rest of the way with a metal nail file. Once I put the new keyboard in place I made some new notches with hot glue. I also used hot glue to recover all the plastic rivet tops I had melted away. I had tried spreading the plastic out with the soldering iron to make new heads but it just wasn't working.

I spent pretty much the entire day on this keyboard replacement and am happy that I got it done and it worked. This keyboard feels much nicer than the original and has a backlight so I can see what I'm doing even in low light. The whole process soured me on HP, though. They could have used screws or plastic clips but no, they designed it this way on purpose. Not cool, HP! I'll definitely think twice about purchasing an HP laptop in the future.

Laptop Repair Day

Last week I sold my old laptop to someone off of Craigslist, and only a few hours later he contacted me saying there was a spot on the back that was getting really hot, like burn-your-skin hot. He was understandably upset thinking I had pulled one over on him but relaxed when I offered to meet him the next day. When I did, he showed me a mark that had formed on the back cover and also where the plastic had melted a bit up near the top. Very weird. I had never seen anything like it. I returned his money and he still expressed an interest in buying it if I could figure out and fix whatever was causing this bizarre issue.

Later that night took the screen off to see what was happening behind it. As it turns out, it was the webcam wire. For some reason it was getting hot enough to melt plastic, and very quickly too. Only moments after turning on the laptop the wire got hot enough to become uncomfortable to the touch. Had I left it on much longer it surely would have melted more of plastic. There must have been some kind of short in there, though very weird that it only manifested the day I sold it.

I ordered a new cable which arrived today. The webcam wire is part of the display cable so I had to replace the whole thing which runs from the base of the laptop through the hinge and up to the screen. That meant I had to pretty much completely dissemble the entire laptop, carefully run the wire through the nooks and crannies, then put it all back together again. It took awhile but I got it done and now it's working good as new.

My next project will be installing a backlit keyboard into my current laptop. I've done keyboard replacements before and they've always been pretty simple, but this one is going to be a huge pain as it turns out the newer HP laptop designs do not actually provide access to the keyboard. If you want to replace one you're supposed to replace the entire palmrest area which is quite expensive. They trap the keyboard between the top of the palmrest and a metal plate underneath with the two parts being molded together with plastic rivets, so to get access those rivets have to be either cut off or melted with a soldering iron. And there are a lot of rivets! I am really not looking forward to this.