A few weeks ago, the right rear window of our '95 Nissan Maxima has been broken.  Normally, on a Nissan, power window problems are the notorious regulators.  In my case, the motor and the electronics were all working, it was a mechanical problem.  The cable had damaged a plastic pulley and had come off the track.  The damage wasn't easily fixable, and I didn't really want to mess with repairing it, so I thought I'd just keep it from falling down anymore.

You can see my solution, along with some instructions for removing the door trim to get at everything in this photoset.

This weekend was a momentous occasion for my bathroom project.  I got the tub into place in the bathroom!  With the help of my brother, dad, and friend Dave (Thanks a million!), we successfully navigated the maze of narrow doors and hallways from the garage to the master bathroom. (I'm still not quite sure how) Anyway, the tub is in place, ready for levelling and hooking up.  After that, it's time to prepare the walls and get ready for tiling and installing the new pedestal sink.  I've been stalled for a while waiting for the right opportunity to get everyone together to help carry it in there, but now the project can continue forward.  The photoset of this project is getting too big and confusing to just link to the whole thing, so here's a link to the start of this weekend's pictures within the set.

As usual, I was busy, so my Dad got more action shots than me.  I'll link to his pictures when he gets them up.

Despite being pretty old, Becky's 95 Nissan Maxima still runs great.  The alternator recently went out, so I replaced it.  Being more of a geek than a gearhead, I wouldn't have attempted this a few years ago. But, after some help from my buddy Mark Leech and the internet, I had it running again.  The Maxima does not appear to be designed for replacing the alternator without several extra double-jointed limbs and a device that allows matter to pass through other matter.  I had to remove or loosen quite a few items including the A/C compressor and radiator fans to get it out.  I also had trouble with the belt tensioner being frozen in place.  A new pair of sweet vise grips and a hammer alleviated that problem.

Here's a link to the related photoset.  My hands were pretty dirty during most of the ordeal, so I was reluctant to pick up my camera. As a result, there are not that many pictures.  Enjoy them anyway.

Things are coming along very nicely in my bathroom remodeling project.  The whole thing started out with me re-caulking the tub and has resulted in me replacing the outside of my house and completely remodeling the bathroom. Long story.  Anyway, I picked up the last of the hardware this weekend and we've picked tile and paint colors.  Here's a rundown of what's occurred in the bathroom:

• Pretty much everything has been removed from the bathroom, aside from the toilet (so far. It may eventually get replaced as well). This includes:
  • Old tub
  • wall tile in the shower area
  • sheet rock on strategic walls
  • old double-sink counter-top and cabinets
  • carpet and linoleum
  • wallpaper
• We removed the wall that separated the main bathroom area from what I refer to as the "toilet nook".
• We capped off a set of sink supply lines and drains.
• We moved another set of sink supply lines and drains over about 2 feet to accommodate a new pedestal sink.

I'm currently in the process of running new plumbing from the old tub/shower supply lines to the new shower hardware and a separate Roman tub faucet. I've decided I like plumbing quite a bit.  I've always wanted an excuse to play with a blowtorch.

After the plumbing is complete, I've got to run two new circuits to run the pump and heater on the tub.  That should be fun as well.  The easiest way would probably be to run conduit from the outside breaker box along the outside of the house since it's only about 20 feet.  I'd prefer coming off of the inside box, but that will be considerably harder.  I'm still evaluating the pros and cons of each approach.

Anyway, this is what has been consuming my free time lately.

My dad came down today to help me with a bathroom remodelling project.  We were basically removing a wall in the bathroom, but it was a little more complicated.  The wall goes all the way to the roof, and takes a couple of corners.  Luckily, the upper portion was structurally sound enough to support itself without the lower wall. Click through the picture on the left to see the stuff we did.  You can also check out the bathroom remodelling photoset for some more context.

A big thanks to my mom and dad for coming down to help.  I'm sure he'll have his pictures up soon.

[Update] Dad's got his entry up with links to pictures.

My dad got the pictures up of our water heater fiasco from yesterday.  He's got just about the whole process documented in pictures.  I had actually forgotten about using the chainsaw.  Check out the photoset!

Evidently, this is the weekend for floods.  Jeff (Flint) evidently had a flooded basement, and Becky and I discovered our guest bedroom was full of water.  We thought it was our washing machine, but it turned out that our hot water heater had developed a leak and had been dripping for some time.  So, I ripped it out of there and, with the help of my dad, put in a new one.  It was pretty easy.  I bought a torch because I had to sweat on a threaded adapter to make any future work easier.  That was pretty fun.  Thank goodness Lowe's was open on Easter.  Otherwise, it would have been a cold shower for me tomorrow.  Thanks, Dad!

With my mom's help, Becky was able to pull up the carpet and dry things out in the guest bathroom.  Thanks, Mom! (and Becky)

My dad got some pictures.  I would have taken some, but I was pretty busy and ticked off that I was having to spend my Easter replacing my water heater.  When he gets them up on Flickr, I'll link to them.

Clemens has a security patch for dasBlog.

I mostly finished up the work I started last week on the back wall of the house.  Thanks a bazillion to Mom and Dad for helping out.  A few things I did smarter this week were to use a heavy duty car jack to lift the heavy hardi-panel panels into place.  They are really heavy, and since they are about .5“ thick, they really cut into your hands.  The jack worked amazingly well.  Thanks to my co-worker Mark Leech for such an ingenious, yet somehow common sense idea.

I'll see about getting some pictures up later when I'm not so sweaty and tired.

This week has been pretty crazy. While doing some routine caulk replacement in the master bathroom, I discovered some water damage behind the tiles.  After removing some tiles and discovering some nastyness, I decided I could get into the wall from the outside more easily to clean it out and repair damage.

That wall of the house is obscured by some thick bushes.  I pulled an old picture of the house so you could see. I cut the bushes back so I could get to it.  I then discovered that the panelling was pretty nasty near the bottom that was being obscured and I had some ant problems.

To make a long story short, I spent the weekend ripping off the outside wall and replacing it.  Andrew came down Saturday and helped me put the new panelling up.  It was that Hardi-Plank stuff that's more like concrete than wood, and was MUCH heavier than wood.  It was also difficult to cut.  It pretty much destroyed a saw blade with one cut.  But it's supposed to not ever rot or mildew or anything, so it should be worth it.

Andrew and I replaced the panels I had removed, and as you can see we actually removed the window.  It was in the shower and I was tired of people being able to see me take a shower.  Also, it was the source of the tiling problem in the shower that lead to the water damage and an ant infestation.  We'll be redoing the shower/bath over the next few weeks, and Becky is looking forward to that.

Thank goodness I hadn't removed more panels, or we would have died.  It's pretty hot outside.  The heat index is well over 100 degrees.  I also hit my thumb with the hammer way too many times. I just finished caulking the wall and thought I share what's going on.  There's still quite a bit of work to do.  I need to replace the remaing 2 panels, but I'll need some cooperation from the utilities to remove all the crap they've screwed into the wall on the outside.

Peter's been keeping us up to date on California diesel prices (supposedly), and they're high.  I've found a solution for his Jetta.  It's a conversion kit for a diesel-powered car that allows it to run on vegetable oil.  I had seen this concept before, but it was experimental.  These folks sell the conversion kit.

Oddly enough, vegetable oil prices are much lower than diesel prices, especially if you parter with a local fast-food restaurant that would have to pay to get rid of it anyway.

Looks like GreaseCar.com sells the kits for around $800, which would more than pay for itself in a short period, especially if you're getting the oil for free.  Evidently it burns more cleanly as well, a boon for any environmentalists out there.

I may have to find me an old diesel-powered car and do this as a project!

Again I say, “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”  I sat down this evening to catch the new episode of Smallville, only to discover my Tivo was acting weird.  I rebooted it, and it all went down hill from there.

Now, it does nothing but get to the “Almost there.  A few more seconds please...” and hang.  After several minutes, it will reboot itself again.

This will accelerate my home theater pc project.  I'm not going to pay for another dead-end box, but I'm not ready to plunge into my HTPC yet.  I suppose my options are:

• Get the Time Warner DVR.  That could be nice since they have an HD model now.  I'm also toying with getting their Voice over IP solution for unlimited calling for $40 a month.  That may become a good solution.
• Get another Tivo.  Series 2 has some nice options, but a few years down the road, I'd be in the same boat.
• Build my Home Theater PC.  I'm not entirely ready for this.

I suppose, I'll check out the Time Warner route.  If we'd save enough money on the VoIP for phone, and not paying Tivo fee, I might come out even.  I'll have to check it out.

No, I'm not gaining weight back.  Becky called me this afternoon and said her Explorer was hard to turn, the A/C stopped working, and the battery light was on.  Pretty simple diagnosis; either the car had exploded, or the serpentine belt was slipping or had fallen off.

When I got home, I popped the hood, and, sure enough, the belt was quite loose.  It had slipped off of the belt tensioner.  As I pushed the belt back onto the tensioner, the tensioner pulley broke off into my hand.  The bearing had frozen, and the plastic pulley had melted from the inside out.  Whoa.

I went to the AutoZone and picked up a new tensioner and belt.  They were incredibly busy, but I was happy to be able to get the parts I needed.  Removing the old tensioner proved to be difficult, as the fan blocked all but the tiniest access to the bolt.  After noticing I had better access to both the belt and the tensioner from the bottom, I got it off and the new one on.

I'm really glad the explosion diagnosis was incorrect.

Several of you know that for the last year or so, I've been toying with building a camera crane, or 'jib'.  I've been putting it off for technical reasons until recently.

The main thing that was deterring me was building a pan/tilt head.  I have one pretty much designed, but I really don't have the equipment to be able to do a proper job of testing it as I go.  I even have a microcontroller programmed with my assembly program for controlling the stepper motors with a standard computer joystick.  Anyway, it was too big a job for a simple hobby.

I went as far as designing a crane with no pan/tilt head, attempting to acheive it all through pulleys and cables.  It wasn't capable or portable enough to be much use for my projects.

So, I'm going back to my original design, but I'm purchasing an off-the-shelf solution for a pan/tilt head.  I managed to find a full solution for around $100, and it's simple enough to be easily stuck on the end of a very long jib arm.

Hopefully by Friday I'll have a crane to use at the CD release party for Three Nails Short, a band that one of my former Sunday School students is in. I've talked about them before.

No one but Webdell seems interested in my Wiki.  I've got a few projects up there.  I'll give it a few more weeks to catch on.  I really find it useful for quickly cross-referencing my thoughts on stuff.

Well, I got ambitious and decided to replace a few of the more non-functioning of my sprinkler heads the other day. I identified a few, and began to dig the first one up. The western side of my house doesn't drain very well, and as a result the dirt stays rather moist after a rain. Over the years, the roots have permeated (Jeff, usage?) the ground and made it almost like peat (not Pete). This made it very difficult to dig through. So, I pulled out the ole pick-axe. My system is about 20 years old, and is constructed rather bizarrely. They use what I would call a "curly-que" of elbow joints to couple the head to the pipe, presumably to reduce the torque on the main PVC pipe delivering the water. This particular head had a much more elaborate structure coupling it to the pipe in such a way that the "curly-que" reached much higher toward the surface. Not realizing this, I hacked it with the pick-axe, and now have a neat little fountain.

So, today I went to the brand new Lowe's down the street (across 35 from the soon to be opened Ultimate Electronics, Toys 'R Us, Ross, Chili's, Johnny Carino's, etc...Take that B-Dub!) and picked up some PVC weld. This stuff is pretty cool. You fill the crack, than "activate" it with heat. You're supposed to use a blow torch, but I don't have one, so I used a lighter...It took a while.

While I was heating it, the ground caught on fire (remember the peat-like roots). This was really a bizarre sight. It finally went out when it got to the place where the roots went under the dirt, because most dirt isn't flammable...thank goodness. Anyway, I let it cure for a while and then fired up the sprinkler. I hadn't sealed it all.

So now I have to wait until it dries out before I can do anything else.

Well, that one's somewhat anti-climactic, but I'll submit it anyway...for the sake of community!

Hey hey! remember me? The last few weeks have been some of the busiest of my life. Sorry for the prolonged absence. I've got to fill you in on several things, so to be efficient in helping you through them, I'll start with a list:

• I've been working on a skit/video for out church's youth-led worhsip
• Becky got her french horn "renovated" for lack of a better term.
• Becky is in Germany for three weeks
• My sprinkler system broke.

Josh (our interim youth guy, who is younger than Andrew) asked me to get some volunteers and come up with a skit for the youth led service that was this Sunday. So, it put together a sign-up sheet. I added an extra category for favorite Brady Bunch episode like Peter and I did in Cal II, which just confused people. They thought I wanted to do a Brady Bunch skit. Peter's probably the only one who understands that so I'll move on. So, as usual, I procrastinated until I thought we had just enough time to put it together and do it, at which point I found out I'd lose an entire week to the youth mission trip. Josh gave me a skit book, which should have been titled "Worst Skits Ever" and written by Webdell. (just kidding)

Anyway, it came down to last Wednesday, when we were going to finish filming our outdoor scenes. Why didn't I guess that that's when the hurricane would blow through. So, we went down to Wal-Mart and bought 12 sheets of that bright green posterboard and did all the scenes in front of a green screen. Needless to say, this added quite a bit of editing time. To make a long story short, I was up until 6am Sunday morning working on it. What I came up with was very similar to Blue's Clues, so I wished I had B-Dub to play the main part. I'll try to make some screen shots later if you're interested.

Ok, that was way too much, I'll try to keep my other points shorter. In fact, I'll combine the next two.

Becky is in Germany right now doing something called "EuroBrass". It's a christian group that tours the Germany area doing concerts and stuff and encouraging the German-based churches in their work. Since Becky is starting grad school in the fall doing horn performance, she's been wanting to get a new horn. (Don't worry the stories will converge). She did alot of research and tried out several horns. Her friend Janet (who is also in the EuroBrass thing) has a friend in Dallas who does custom horn stuff. He looked at her horn and gave her an estimate of the work that needed to be done and what he'd charge for it. We'd essentially get a new horn worth much more than we'd pay to have the work done, and we could sell it in the future to get a brand new one. Anyway, we wanted to get it taken care of before she left for Germany so she'd be used to it when she came back and had to do auditions for ensembles at UT. The guy did awesome work and the horn turned out very nice. So now she's in Germany with her "new" horn.

She has a horrible fear of flying, so she got some medication to take on the plane to help with anxiety. It must have worked really well because she said the flight was good.

I'm starting to think I should have broken this up into multiple entries. Oh well.

I had noticed that zone 1 of my sprinkler system wasn't spraying with quite the pressure it used to , so I turned it on this evening to have a look. When I did, up from the ground came a-bubblin' crude...water that is...clear gold...Texas tea...ingredient. One of the heads had broken off the main pipe and the water had created a tunnel to the surface. I dug it up and found that a large root had been pushing on the head and had finally forced it to pull away from the pipe. I got in there with my axe and chopped out a section of the root, which turned out to be about 6" in diameter. When I pulled the root out, the head came with it. The root has grown around the head so I couldn't even pry it out. The threads on the pipe seem intact, so hopefully I can buy a new head tomorrow and fill the hole back up. If there's more damage, there'll be more work for me.

Well, hopefully that brings everyone back up to speed. Our anniversary is this Thursday, so we'll miss it once again due to Becky being on a mission trip. Man, her priorities are screwed up.

Well, we made it home, after two multi-delayed flights, we made it home at 10:45pm last night. I just mowed the jungle in the backyard. I've been wanting to get an edging device, that will give you that well-groomed mini-trench along the edges of the yard. The best thing I saw was the Black and Decker Edge Hog. I've been very pleased with my Leaf Hog, but the Edge Hog didn't seem near as versatile as it should be. Brandon Welch and I had a really simple but cool edger the summer we mowed lawns. It swiveled to provide both vertical and horizontal edging as was about half the size of the Edge Hog. The Edge Hog does have the ability to edge AND trench, although I'm not sure what I would do with a 1/4" wide trench.

My solution was to get some new trimmer string to use on my existing weed-eater. It has a square cross-section and worked 50 times better than the string that came with the eater. If anyone has any comments on edgers, feel free to leave them and we'll all benefit from your no-doubt marvelous knowledge.

Well, I didn't intend to get into lawn care quite that much. We're glad to be home.

Oooh, while I was out, I discovered the new Lowe's is open, and they're building a Chili's and Johnny Carino's right down the street! Two of my favorite restaurants! whoo hoo.