The "Blog"

Prior Journals

Thursday, December 21, 2006

• The Nuvo central audio speakers and control was installed in the bar just in time for a holiday gathering.  Maybe I should now rename the location the "NPR Bar."

• With me on a ladder perched atop the sink in the greenhouse, I've finally figured out what is preventing the sash vent from fully closing on the mauka (west) end. The end of the moveable frame for the vent is just a bit long. Repair will involve some grinding and cutting of an aluminum bar--atop the ladder and working in a very tight space.
  

Monday, December 4, 2006

• Long time, no update. On many fronts, not much has happened. The village idiot is still missing from Crawford, although a few more people seem have to noticed; my speaker installs aren't pau, etc...

• For the past month, I've been vigilant in my efforts to keep the humidity up in the greenhouse and it would seem the added attention is paying off. An old, bloomless, marginally lifeless orchid is sprouting new leafs and the anthirium that scorched by the summer sun has a ton of new growth. Next up for the GH is hydroponics!

• We had a rather exciting start to our Thanksgiving Day. At 3:00am a scorpion joined us in bed. The little bugger stung Laurel three times and me once. For his efforts, our nocturnal arachnid buddy received a whack with a zorrie and free E-ticket ride on the central vac. My only lasting effect was a patch of tingling-numbness above my knee, but Laurel experienced numbness in her throat and face (she had two stings on one leg and one on the other). Symptoms went away in about 12 hours.
  

Aloha Friday, September 29, 2006

• My President's raping the Constitution, my sheriff's an idiot (the petulant, portly, king of the comb-over has vowed to "drive my tank" onto the course of an upcoming motor sport event), but for now my roof doesn't leak. All grouted and everything. There's still a hole in the ceiling, but six or seven months and hopefully that should be fixed.

• Being so near the mountains, we get a lot of reflected radio signals here and even though I can see all of the antennas at South Mountain, FM reception for the local public radio station is less than outstanding. This is particularly true when Laurel's home--her magnetic personality sucks all the electrons out of the air. In an attempt to remedy the shoddy reception I've added a 3-element FM antenna to the roof deck. Six coax runs pulled to that location, three now in use. See! All that cable pulling really was for something.

• Having the "Twinkies" in the playoffs will be a bit of an impediment to getting much done around the ol' hale. Taking the World Series in 4 would be a benefit to my task list.
  

Saturday, September 23, 2006

• The roof deck leak is theoretically repaired, although the drywall hole remains in the foyer ceiling. The replacement tile still needs grout and I'm going to run a few hours of water on the suspect area just to make sure we're all sealed up.

• I doubt anyone has noticed, but the "days since groundbreaking" counter continues to run. While there is a reason for this, I've been unwilling to document it here. The good news is that this may be changing. More to follow.

• While having nothing to do with Hale Nani, an overloaded cement truck delivering grout to our neighbors construction project left this monster cow pie trail in the street that fronts our house. All projects have their little oopsies.

• Early in the summer I took the pole camera down to repair what turned out to be a power supply problem (not in the camera). It was dirty, it'd been very hot, but the little bugger just keeps on running (pictures).

• Installing central audio speakers in the garage today. Have to get the important areas done first.
  

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

• Just got back from a little R&R at Hale Kihei and in Honolulu. Ono grinds, great tunes and maybe one too many trips to Henry's. This was a most unusual trip for me, in that I always wind up doing one project or another. This time, however, I did not set foot in either Lowes or Ace. Somehow, I felt a bit cheated.

• Audio from one of the tuners on our Dish Network DBS box is now available on the Concerto. I'm pretty pleased with that box.

• Finally got accent lights wired in the upper built-in cabinets in the master bedroom.

• Thursday last brought us a pretty good round of monsoon storms and with that the return of a roof deck leak that I thought we had repaired. The source of the drips has been found and the tile guys coming sometime this week to make repairs.

• Listening to Rummy babble to the VFW today I was reminded of something Lucy van Pelt once said. "If you can't be right, be wrong at the top your voice."
  

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

• Pole camera is back up. One of these days, when the budget's a little better, I'll replace it with a device that has tilt-pan-zoom.

• I'm configuring a new HP iPAQ to act a wireless remote controller for a media player (Winamp) running on a PC in the MDF. This will become one of the audio sources for the Concerto whole-house audio system. I may also add an infrared controller for the same PC so I can operate it directly from the Concerto control pads.

• What does it mean when you wake up with music of the Brothers Gibb playing over and over in your head??? Love you inside and out...
  

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

• Additional sun shading is up in the greenhouse. Mounting involved fabric, PVC, the glue gun and even some fishing line. Looks OK.

• Nuvo Concerto central audio is now running in the master bath. I've been thinking about adding another pair of speakers to the shower (better to sing along with the tunes), but Laurel thinks I'm nuts.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

• Learned a funny thing about water softener loops. Plumbers typically don't include the cold water in the kitchen in the soft loop. Something about concerns over salt intake. One of the primary reasons I put the thing in was to keep the kitchen sink fixtures, including that HI $$$ Grohe valve from getting all limed up.

• Central audio install continues. The office, MDF and kitchen are now online. There have been a few little bumps along the install way including having to try three times to find a location in the office wall that would accommodate the speakers (lots of drywall dust) and a little problem with some errant drilling that took out a 150 amp fuse. That little oops required the emergency acquisition of a replacement fuse on a Sunday (Thanks Summit Electric) and a few more drywall holes. I won't spend a lot of time on the details--I can be such a dumb shit. Master bath speakers are next on the list. Dixie Chicks are sounding might fine on the office zone.

• Even though the outside shades are down, we're getting way too much direct sunlight in the greenhouse. To help keep the plants from getting fried, I'm adding Velcro-attached internal sunscreen fabric panels.

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

• Patched together a connection between the Lanai speakers and the Concerto amp to provide a little background music for our July 4 party attendees. The central audio project has been a little slow in evolving, but I've got it back on the front burner now and should have most of the "do list" items cleaned up in the next week.

• Rope light wiring in the greenhouse is complete and I installed the permanent plumbing for the vacation watering system. We also got rid of our ant infestation out there and I did a little much needed cleaning. These were all projects I had scheduled for January when it was nice and cool out there, but it was a lot more challenging in late June when it pushing 100° out there.

• Just for fun, I'm looking at playing with a little hydroponic system in the GH. Ixnay on the akalolopay.

• Finally had a water softener system installed. Many of the plumbing fixtures we shelled out a lot of bucks for were liming up. We decided to go with a Kinetico system, sans RO. They wanted $1,300 bucks for the filter. I think I can put in Watts from Costco for about $200.

• Maybe I'll get the camera back up on the pole this weekend.
  

Aloha Friday, June 16, 2006

• Camera problem turned out to be an funky power supply. Tested OK without a load, but when operating through the 50' camera cable, it didn't work. That little Star-dot box is really amazing. It's operated, without fail, from it's very inhospitable perch atop the steel mast for over 3 years and it just keeps going. I've got to clean bird poop and dirt off the enclosure and then it'll be back in operation at the normal spot.

• Found a door intercom phone for my OnQ (TropTel) 2x10 KSU. Now when people come to the front enterance, they can ring all the phones in the house instead of that dippy little wireless chime. I can also tell them "No hablo inglés" without going to the door.
  

Aloha Friday, June 2, 2006

• Sad day! After 1200 days at the top of the pole, I think the main camera gave up the ghost. At about 11:30 today, I got a few pictures with a pinkish tint, and then it died. We're heading for 110° today, so I guess I'm not surprised. It gets really toasty in the camera enclosure. There's a thermistor in the camera that's suppose to report the internal temperature, but for most of it's life it's reported "125.5." Trying to decide if I'm going to replace the camera--Laurel and I have grown accustom to our occasional remote peeks at Hale Nani.
  UPDATE - The camera's coming down and going back to StarDot for a little board-level repair. The take-down/re-install process is a real bear. I've got totilt the 50+ pound mast, through a bunch of oleander, to a horizontal position to get at the camera. Of course, the pole has to go back to vertical while we wait for the repair and then I have to repeat the process for the re-install.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

• A couple of long-running tasks are finally completed. These include certification of the 2nd floor structured wiring and the installation of the upper lanai speakers.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

• Are journal updates occurring much less frequently? Did Preston Epps do Bongo Rock? Is Jeff Sessions a cracker? Does a bear...?

• The northwest wall of the great room includes a 7'x7' window which provides great views of North Mountain, NW quadrant of the valley and summer sunsets. Unfortunately, our new neighbors decided to locate their little castle on the southwest corner of the lot, so in a few months we'll be looking at a bunch of stucco and windows.  Laurel and I've been assessing options that range from doing nothing (usually one of my favorites) to replacing the entire window (complex and expensive). What we've settled on is to cover the lower 5 feet of the existing window. The inside sill provides enough room to build a 2x3 nominal frame. We'll put a panel on the glass side of the wall painted to match the house, drywall the other side and the remaining window opening will match the window on the NE wall. The result of all of this, aside from the view issue, should be a room that's much  more media center-friendly. Back in design days, we'd planned on putting a big TV in the "media room" on the lower level, but that doesn't seem to mesh with the actual living pattern at Hale Nani.

• Summer arrived before I had a chance to clean and re-pad the evaporative coolers. I finished the lanai unit on Monday, but still  have the greenhouse unit to do. Once the sun comes over Squaw Peak it gets toasty up there.

• Replaced the landscape lighting on the creosote bushes. The new lights are brighter, more reliable and cast marvelous shadows on the  front of the hale.
  

Saturday, April 15, 2006

• We had a huge windstorm yesterday. Along with stirring up a bunch of dust and pollen, and relocating a bunch of the lanai furniture, one particularly strong gust got a hold of the west greenhouse shade and flipped it up on top of the GH. This shade is in two sections and composed of heavy aluminum slats bound together with  short aluminum straps. The shade became impaled on one of the mounting brackets of the west shade segment and came to rest on the sash vents. Fortunately, it didn't break any glass and it wasn't bent. This morning I got out a rope, some long poles and hooks and Laurel and I got up on the roof. Not only were we able to get it restored to its proper location, we also repaired an alignment problem that's been there since it was installed. Result is that it now rolls/unrolls properly. It also looks much neater on the web cam.

• Acquired a new chop saw to be used to install quarter round at the kitchen cabinet bases and baseboard around the Brazilian cherry flooring. Any worthy project dictates the need for new power tools.

• Bar-front wallpaper looks fantastic.
  

Aloha Friday, March 24, 2006

• I was in Hawai`i for a couple of weeks, so house projects have been on hold.

• While I was gone, we had a couple of inches or rain (first in over 130 days). Bad news is that we found one more leak, albeit a seemingly small one, in the roof deck area. Obviously, I have no idea how long it had been raining when the leak appeared.
  

Monday, February 27, 2006

• I've been out of town, so not much has been happening at Hale Nani.

• I'm wall papering the front of the bar. A lot of our drunks seem to be kickers as well. Since I'm probably the main "belly-upper" to our watering hole, I guess that would make me a good candidate for prime kicker.
  

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

• It took sooo long, but the coax termination is finally finished. To date, only one anomaly--the drop to the #2 bath seems to be open (it doesn't connect to the rack end). Investigation is in work.

• Next MDF challenge is the installation of the central audio. I've some real cool distribution components built by a company in beautiful downtown Burnsville, MN. They use CAT-5 for everything from composite video to Cable-TV signals. If we can afford it, I'll use it for a good chunk of the video/audio distribution.

• Hale Nani is now operating completely without POTS (plain ol' telephone system). Right now everything is VOIP with SunRocket. I may add Cox Cable phone service for a second line.

• Roof deck pictures have been added to the All Pau section
  

Lucky Aloha Friday, January 13, 2006

• I guess it doesn't apply, but the big construction news has not to do with us, but with the lot north of us. Dirt (and I mean dirt) work began today. A track hoe and Bobcat repeating all that stuff we did many, many moths ago. I'm having a hard time suppressing the urge to go take pictures and put up a web cam.

• Landscape guys are doing a little cleanup work on the west slope.

• Finally back to terminating coax runs. Plan is complete this project on Sunday.
  

Aloha Friday, January 6, 2006

• Structured wiring work has been mostly on hold while we did holiday stuff and even a little "work" work.

• All CAT5 patch panel jacks are labeled!

• I did find the last of the buried LV outlet boxes in the office. The drywallers must have been getting tired by the time they did that room because they buried to LV junction boxes and one of four can lights in the ceiling.

• An un-named family member lodged a complaint about the lack of content on the "Fished product" page in the picture section. Here are a few pictures of the bar and upper lanai.
  

Prior Journals