Home Stretch
Alexis and I are reaching the end of our 6-7 month old home improvement project. There’s no picture this time since there’s not much more to see. It’s doubtful you would be able to see the grout and caulk very well and it’s not all that interesting to boot. All we have left is to seal the grout, install the shower head and shower handle, then buy and install the shower door. It will be a huge relief to be completely finished.
No transition here, but how about a picture instead.
Things I learned this month:
- You can access an array in C++ like this, “4[array]“, instead of the typical way, “array[4]“. I haven’t found a reason yet as to why it’s allowed, probably some historical reason.
- The AMC remake of “The Prisoner” is a waste of time to watch. The ending is poorly written and disappointing.
- It would have been easier to put up the X-mas lights if I had tucked the plastic doo-hickies under siding instead of under the roof shingles.
- Management is always right.
- The Star Trek movie that came out this year is great on DVD.
- Never leave home on Black Friday and the subsequent weekend.
- I’m addicted to Facebook games.
Flu
I managed to catch the flu, most probably from a co-worker, last week which put me out of commission for four days. On the second day of misery I went to the doctor’s office. I have very mild asthma and started wheezing a bit so I felt it was necessary. What I really should have done was go in the first day I was sick. To test if I had the flu the doctor took a long thin q-tip and stuck it way up my nose, which was not a pleasant experience to say the least. A few minutes later the results showed that it was indeed the flu. The doctor also explained that in order to find out if it was H1N1, the swine flu, they would have to send it to the CDC, which they don’t do because it would flood them with tests. Long story short, the medication he prescribed seemed to do the trick and I’m feeling much better today.
After returning to work I couldn’t help but feel like I should quarantine myself to avoid sharing the days of misery I experienced. The stories of kids and pregnant women dying from the flu were in the back of my mind. During my absence at work, instructions were posted in the bathrooms on what one should do to prevent catching the flu and how not to spread it.
Before I got sick, we had our retaining wall on the edge of our property replaced. Our house sits higher up than our neighbor’s and the railroad ties that held the soil on our property were rotten to the core.
This is what the old retaining wall looked like.
This is what the new retaining wall looks like.
We also installed the shower pan, put up the concrete backer board and coated it with the incredibly red water resistant stuff.
New shower pan, concrete backer board with Redgard
Tough Build
A while back, I decided to try my hand at building a HTPC. I’ve built two other computers before, one of which I posted about in January ‘06. Last weekend I ordered all of the parts from newegg.com which is where I buy most, if not all, of my computer supplies. The case that I chose is a much smaller case then usual. It needed to fit in the entertainment center. Inside the case, there is very little room between the components. The DVD-ROM drive’s cables almost touch the CPU fan and the gap between the memory and the DVD-ROM drive can be measured in a few centimeters. Cables also run in front of the chassis fan, which probably restricts airflow a bit.
Limited space wasn’t the only problem I encountered during the build. Once everything was in place and I turned the power on, I could hear that the CPU fan was spinning awfully fast which meant things were not cooling as they should. I touched the case and noticed the power supply was hot. I had three options; try returning for a replacement, buy a second one, or risk fixing it myself. The fan came with the case and I didn’t want to ship something so large, so I decided to try fixing it myself. Before I opened it up, I noticed that the sheet metal was in contact with the fan enough that it prevented the fan from spinning. I corrected the problem by simply prying the metal away from making contact.
I started the computer back up and monitored the temperature of the motherboard and processor from the BIOS screen. The processor heated up to about 55C/133F, which is much too hot. After trying several configurations in an attempt to get more air flow, my solution was to replace the processor’s heat sink, which was leftover from a previous build.
I’m still worried about the temperature of the processor. It’s possible that it will need to be replaced.
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- The BIOS showing the temp
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- Boxes from the HTPC build
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- The HTPC case
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- HTPC next to the Xbox 360
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- HTPC with cover removed
