Tag Archives: home

Insurance and Purchases

Posted by xaminmo

First insurance check arrived. Can’t print lender forms to get it endorsed because printer died the rest of the way today.

Ordered a new printer, but their “get it today” on the order page turned into “get it tomorrow” in email. *sigh*. This is not covered by insurance nor warranty, sadly.

Ordered new grill, just a propane cart with 4 burners, and submitted cost to insurance for replacement cost supplement. Downgrade from our cabinet style, but I’m not going to complain. The old one was getting near end of life anyway. This one is the same size/guts, though I’m sure there will be some fastener and wheel issues eventually.

Ordered seat planks for my bench, and submitted the replacement costs to insurance. Picked Cherry, which may seem weird for outdoor, but Cherry, Walnut, and Cedar are the only USFS highly resistant boards available from Home Depot. Walnut was too expensive, and cedar is a little soft for a 4-foot span and my heavy butt. Pine is not resistant, thermo-poplar is brittle, composite decking is too flexy, and pressure treated would need rip sawn as well as painting vs sealing.

Ordered a gas powered pressure washer, because my electric one died 10 days ago. I’ll use this to finish stripping the back porch, though I want to have the open deck area sanded before repainting. This is not covered by insurance at all, but kind of needed.

Tomorrow, I’ll pick up some spar urethane and a couple cedar planks to use on the other bench which was not covered by insurance (old, no hail damage). Well, maybe tomorrow. I’m running behind on all the work things, and tomorrow is gym day.

Also, tomorrow, check 2 shows up. If the printer shows up in the morning, I can send both off to the insurance company for endorsement and return. Once back, I can deposit, and then re-issue to my roofer to begin work.

SO MUCH MONEY SPENT TODAY! That’s all of my fallback spare cash. My emergency buffer is really not that big, only about a month before I have to pull from uncomfortable places. (Not my butt!)


Patching Drywall

Posted by xaminmo

I’ve got reasonable experience with it, but nowhere near pro level. I’ll fix things in my house, though I don’t like the painting part. It’s just… it takes longer than I want it to, so small jobs suck. Big jobs are fine, because you do all the first-pass things, then come back for second pass without having to wait too much.

Anyway, here are some things that come to mind when I think about doing this.

0. Preparation! Scrape, clean, and mask the area with twice as much effort as you think it deserves. Also, um, those clothes that “you probably won’t get anything on” will totally have splatters.

1. Don’t be afraid to peel back some of the paper backing to keep it from being humped too high.

2. Finding a way to do the inside of the wall when it’s a big patch is really helpful for stability. Strings tied around things can help press from the inside, and hang a weight on the outside. You can also mount a support (paper tape, mesh tape, wood strips, whatever as appropriate. Don’t just mount tree branches in there though) inside of a large hole (can you fit your hand and a putty knife through the hole?), and let it dry, then use that as backing when you come back to put in the plug.

3. Fiberglass mesh tape is sometimes so much better than paper tape. It’s strings! It takes several coats to cover up though.

4. Once it looks dry-ish, stop messing with it. Once it starts peeling up or crumbling, you really just have to scrape it all out and start over. You can spritz it with water before and during to keep it from drying too fast if needed.

5. Sometimes you have to do a little, let it dry for half a day, then come back for the next part. There are limits to how much can be done at once and not have it crack.

6. Use as wide of a putty knife as you can. If you have a 3mm hump spread over 2″, you will notice it. If it’s spread over 6″, maybe not. I have a 12″ mud knife, and have actually used it before.

7. Texture often needs to be thinned. Paint works better than pure water for this, because it’s sticky, and not as thin. 50% paint+texture is a good starting point for a crow’s foot brush.

8. Overlapping is your friend. When spraying orange peel texture, I start small, and adjust until the blob sizes look just a little smaller than I want. Then, I go back and forth, overlapping the edges, until I cannot see the true edge anymore.


HTPC

Posted by xaminmo

Ooof. Our little media computer in the living room was 10 years old. I swapped it out with a NUC5. Technically, the CPU is the same performance, but it’s 6 watts instead of 75, and it’s spread over 4 cores instead of 2.

In reality, the integrated graphics is double the perf, plus there’s 12x hardware acceleration for video and encryption. It should be WAY faster. Also, it’s tiny, the size of a box of 250 business cards. It’ll pay for itself in 2 years, just on electricity alone, though the decreased frustration from LAG will help too.

There’s no DVD/CD/BD drive on it, though I have a USB DVD drive I rarely use. If I really needed to, I could swap the guts for my BD drive I never use.

Our HTPC has been moved from a 225W small PC to a 25W mini-PC. This is equal CPU, slower single thread, double graphics, and 10x video/encryption processing power, for about the cost of a mid-level video card.

Our HTPC was a 2006 Thinkcenter M55, and has been chuggy for some video for years. The real reason for swap out is because it finally lost the CMOS battery. This is annoying, because Windows 10 updates ALL THE TIME, and reboots ALL THE TIME. So, it would always hang at full CPU, full fan, waiting for a keypress.

When I replaced the battery, I found 2 FETs have been cooking a little bit of the motherboard. Searched around, and 3 K-stamp capacitors (they look Panasonicky) are bulged.

I thought I’d inventory it and see if it’s worth fixing, or whether it is worth even parting out. Radeon 6570, Core 2 Extreme X6800, 2x 2GB DDR2 DIMMs, LG Blu-Ray Rewriter, and a 128GB M.2 SSD in an adapter. PSU is 255 Watts, and the CPU is rated at 75 Watts. CPU passmark is just over 1800, and video passmark is around 768.

The cheapest quad-core mini-PC i could find was a battle between Gigabyte GB-BXBT-1900 (J1900), and an Intel NUC5PPYH. The N3700 Braswell supports AES acceleration, and overall is just a better tech. Not new and shiny, but really at the sweet spot. The unit has built in IR, USB3, and SD slot vs the BRIX. There’s actually a wifi card in there too, but I don’t need that. I could pull it and put the SSD there I suppose, but whatever. The Gigabyte was 25% less, but the J1900 BayTrail CPU still has power-state issues in some versions of Linux, and I like USB3.

So, the NUC Gen5 won out. The CPU passmark is just under 1900, and the integrated video passmark is around 1430. Half the perf for a single thread, but equal overall, plus hardware decoding for video is a huge help.

Instead of being an SFF desktop (4″ x 12″ x 14″) with a 75 watt CPU, and a 225W power supply, the NUC is a 3″x5″x5″ block with a 6-watt CPU and a 25W power supply.

Amazing what 10 years will do for technology. Also, I just moved the boot drive over, and Windows spent 20 mins applying drivers. All’s well I think.


Home Made Phở

Posted by xaminmo

We had home-made Pho and it was great. Next time will be better. Here’s the modified recipe.

SUPPLIES:
8-quart crock pot or heavy-bottom soup pot.
Cheese cloth or spice ball for the bones & spices unless you want to strain it all after.
2.5 pounds of bone-in chicken breasts
8 cups of chicken stock (low sodium if you like).
2 tablespoons of light brown sugar,
2 tablespoons of fish sauce,
a big stick of cinnamon,
10 whole Star Anise,
6 whole cloves,
a 2″ chunk of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
6 cups of chopped bok choy.
6 ounces of rice noodles. We chose rice vermicelli, but it wasn’t right. I think glass noodles would have been better.
2 cups mung bean sprouts (we skipped)
2 cups fresh basil leaves (roughly chopped)
1 cup fresh mint leaves (roughly chopped)
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1 fresh Thai or serrano chili, thinly sliced
1 lime, cut into 6 wedges.

SET-UP
Get out your crock pot, or 8-quart soup pot.

The recipe said 2.5 pounds of chicken, skin removed, fat trimmed, bone in. Use whatever you like though. Bone-in added to the flavor a bunch, but was sort of a mess to clean up after cooking. Maybe debone it first, and put the bones in cheese cloth for the cooking. Beef would also be great. Traditional Pho seems to have thin slices of beef, a variety of cuts, from expensive to cheap. It all tastes good.

The original recipe said 8 cups of low-sodium broth, but it needed salt. Also, stock vs broth… We used stock (more protein, less fat).

Spices to add now:
2 tablespoons of light brown sugar,
2 tablespoons of fish sauce,
a big stick of cinnamon,
10 whole Star Anise,
6 whole cloves,
a 2″ chunk of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

They said throw the spices in, and fish them out later. I recommend putting them all in cheese cloth or a spice ball.

COOKING
Crock-pot on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours.
(That’s medium + lid or simmer + lid for a soup pot).

If your bones and spices are in a bag, pull it out now.
If not, then pull out the meat and strain the broth.
Add the broth back to the pot.

Add the following to the broth:
6 cups of chopped bok choy.
6 ounces of rice noodles. We chose rice vermicelli, but it wasn’t right. I think glass noodles would have been better.

Cook on high (crock) or medium (soup pot) for 30 mins.
While that’s going, debone and shred the meat.

OPTIONAL: add 8 cups of water unless you didn’t cook the bones in the pot.
The bone-broth will be strong and flavorful, and you’ll want more liquid with your noodles.

Have these on the side for people to add on their own (or add to the pot with the bok-choy):
2 cups mung bean sprouts (we skipped)
2 cups fresh basil leaves (roughly chopped)
1 cup fresh mint leaves (roughly chopped)
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1 fresh Thai or serrano chili, thinly sliced
1 lime, cut into 6 wedges.

After 30 mins, or when the noodles and bok-choy are cooked to your liking, serve.