Finally used the compressor

About six months after buying my air compressor and nailer combo kit, I finally installed some trim in the house.  I was impressed that I was able to nail up quite a few boards over several hours with only a single charge of the 6 gallon tank.

Of course I wasn’t going all that fast, but it was still very nice to not have the compressor plugged in and making lots of noise.

Of course, I still have lots of trim to put down.

Icicle, icicle where are you going?

Came home today and found this icicle hanging off the eaves of my house. The icicle is over a foot long.

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) Links

Some links I want to follow up on and read more.

http://www.capdsupport.org/

http://www.webring.org/hub/capd

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/auditory.html#aud_07

http://www.ncapd.org/

http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/living-with-auditory-processing-disorder/

http://www.judithpaton.com/

Android blogging

I am testing out the wordpress app for android. So far so good.

It seems to work quite well.

Fixed the Air Compressor

Some time ago I purchased a refurbished Porter-Cable 6 Gallon air compressor and tool combo (PC3PAK).  I actually only paid about $20 for it, because I got it on sale, refurbished, and used my health plan’s gift certificates (for having a healthy lifestyle).

Then it ended up sitting around for a while because other priorities intervened.  By the time I got around to using it (well past the return period) I discovered it would not hold any pressure.  This greatly disappointed me.  I read through the manual and went online, and even tore most of the compressor apart (shh… don’t tell anyone).  It still wouldn’t work.

Then while reading the manual again – carefully this time – I noticed the information on the check valve, and that the most common reason the compressor would not build pressure was due to a stuck check valve.  So today I finally took the check valve off of the tank.  It was stuck.  About 10 seconds later I had it unstuck.  I put it back on the tank and reattached the hose from the motor.

The tank held pressure.  Everything works now.

I had spent a month and a half agonizing over what to do with this compressor and whether it could be repaired or not.  And if I had just spent a little more time reading the manual the first time, I probably would have checked the check valve on the first day, and have had the use of the compressor since.  Trust me, using a foot pump to inflate tires or the kids toys is no fun.

Now I just need to figure out the correct nails to buy, and I can finally finish installing the trim in the house.  The trim that has been sitting in the garage for over a year.  My wife would really like the trim finished.

Important Info for Wives of Geeks

The following information is of critical importance to wives of geeks everywhere.

Communication Skills and Basic Competencies Courses for Programmmer’s Wives

Upgrade from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 Problems

Going into Dev Mode

I am learning how to create WordPress themes.  Occasionally the website may not look the greatest (or even function) while I play around.

PowerShell and Law 4

On the front page of this site you will find my laws of computing.  Law 4 states “Computers don’t do what you tell them to do.  They do what a programmer told them to do.”  This is demonstrated quite clearly by some of my recent experiences with PowerShell. Read the rest of this entry »

PC-BSD and WEP

So, I’ve been playing with PC-BSD on my Acer Aspire One 532h, and I was having problems with WiFi.  Turns out that my use of WEP with a shared key instead of open causes many problems with the automatic setup of wireless by various operating systems, Windows Vista and 7 included.  Turns out the answer is to manually configure it for all the operating systems

For PC-BSD I had to remove the lagg0 interface and manually configure the wlan0 interface for direct connect rather than using wpa_supplicant.

And yes, I am posting this from PC-BSD.

The magic lines in rc.conf

wlans_ath0=”wlan0″
ifconfig_wlan0=”ssid <yourSSID> wepmode on authmode SHARED deftxkey 1 wepkey 1:0x<yourkey> up DHCP”

Goodbye Quote-of-the-Day

It makes me sad, but it seems my FranklinCovery quote-of-the-day widget is no longer updating.  So, I have removed it from the site.  Maybe I will find another quote-of-the-day widget later, but right now my daughter just told me she needs a diaper change (by grabbing my arm and trying to drag me out of my chair).  Gotta go.