Mornin, DIY~ :D

Buenos Dias!

Como estas? :D

Bien, y tu?

Bien. Un poco cansada, pero necesito el cafe o el te

¿Por qué estamos hablando español hoy en día?

No idea. Also, nice orthography.

Google Translate lets me speak any language ;)

Huzzah! :D Hooray for GTrans

Café Café Café Café Café!

I only use spanish at restaurants now, I thought cansada was sad until I saw cafe o te.

Nope: tired!

Sad is triste

@Aarthi Yes I now remember this from the classic Argentinian ballad.

LOL VeggieTales!

Anyone want to take on creating an ad for the blog for this meta question?

Gaming has one on their site

ohmigah! It's PUT TIME :D

@VebjornLjosa have you been around for Project Update Thursday before?

We hung a flat screen TV on Sunday

@TheEvilGreebo hang on! it's not time yet! :D

:P

I WILL TALK WHEN I DAMN WELL WANNA TALK, WOMAN!

I thought about documenting it for the blog but... geez it was like an hour project...

by the time I thought of it we were done...

Visit our Project Update Thursday chat, going on right now. - looks like it IS time, too! :)

:P 12 minutes!

@Aarthi, no, I'm a Project Update Thursday virgin

@VebjornLjosa Its where @Aarthi gets us all to be excited about talking about our projects then yells at us for doing so.

@VebjornLjosa :D This will be fun! Have you seen the meta posts and stuff? Basically, Project Update Thursday is our regular chat event. Usually @BMitch and @Tester101 and @SteveJackson are around, too.

Here!

@VebjornLjosa Ignore Greebo; he's being difficult. :P He wrote that amazing Romancing the Floor blog post.

One of ye diamonds should superping Shirlock. He got his days mixed up last week.

Eek. @shirlockhomes It's Project Update Thursday! :D

@Aarthi Correction. I'm ALWAYS difficult. There's no "being about it".

hahaha okaaay

whoa

i have too many windows open!

Let's do this!

Welcome to Project Update Thursday!

What did I do....

I stacked some boxes. :D

@Aarthi Pictures?

What type of boxes?

Ahahaha I shoulda taken some, ne? D:

@Tester101 Cardboard!

Actually, I do need to purchase a replacement lampshade. my cool wall lamp crashed to the ground a couple months back

Did you use proper OSHA approved lifting techniques?

Lifted the empty boxes from the legs, not with my back! :D

Did you team lift where appropriate?

@Aarthi they work better when you don't wear them on your head

I woulda, had it been!

You should see how I have stacked boxes in my 12-foot-plus tall basement.

@BMitch ahahaha. this was a nice glass one. I was picking up glass shards at 5:30 in the morning. quite a scare.

@VebjornLjosa pics! :D

well, next time.

Oh hey a new face -- hi @Steven :D

howdy

How you doing?

slacking off at work :)

Hahaha, same with the rest of us. Well, then again, this is my job :P

(They did crash down once, a few months ago, but I didn't learn from it.) You know you have too much stuff when your basement has 12-foot ceilings and you still have to worry about things getting too close to the steam mains.

Uh yes, I agree. I say that sounds like a Spring Cleaning blog post

the big banner on the diy site was calling me to check out this chat! is this jsut a discussion of projects people completed?

They need to make it hide the @ when people are pinged. I'm tired of thinking of everybody as "at" so-and-so. It should just italicize their name or something.

@Steven and just general gabbery. we've had a Tool Time session before, when no one had projects.

This is mostly a regular event we have that's just handy to have. I like it; I get to chatter with all of y'all :D

Oooh, and @ChrisCudmore should show up later too! I almost forgot.

Though, y'all, I miss KarlKatze.

@Aarthi you didn't find him while you were on holiday?

@Tester101 Alas I did not! :(

We might need to send @SteveJackson after him :P

Community building, project sharing, giving @Aarthi a hard time - all valid and laudable goals of PUT

@TheEvilGreebo did you work on any projects lately? maybe hang a TV or anything?

@Steven to clue you in -- Karl was really involved in PUT early on, and helped us get the site blog off the ground. Unfortunately, then his job got really intense, and he hasn't been around since.

Who me? maybe but @Aarthi yells at me for talking about it!

:X

I had a good project last week.. after months of the wifey bugging me, finally finished the potlights in the kitchen

@TheEvilGreebo you can't talk until she says it's OK.

@Steven, what kind of ceiling?

@Steven A finished kitchen = a Happy Wife = a happy you!

@Tester101 @TheEvilGreebo all green! :D

smooth drywall ceiling. installed 9 juno 4" pots (TC44R)

are those low voltage?

brings the number ive installed in my house up to 29. one lesson learned: more pots = easier to install (shorter runs inbetween them = easier fishing of wires)

yes 12V

@Steven, any drywall disasters, or did the drilling go smoothly?

I had to pull out a ceiling box in 2 locations and 1 of them took a bit of a chunk out, but other then that I did not have to drill or cut at all in the ceiling. before I started I brought in a new circuit to feed the lights so only the lights + range hood are on the circuit now, as opposed to like half of my main floor!

flexible drill bits are a lot of fun!

afk - gotta chat w the boss - then i'll talk about my tv hanging, but I wanna hear about flexible drill bits. sounds naughty :)

I think 2005 NEC requires a separate circuit for a range hood.

good thing i dont live int he USA then :). and before the hood was on the same circuit as like half my main floor, so this can't be any worse!

ah :)

house was built in 74, so standards were a tad looser back then.. you would not believe some of the stuff I've found as i've been updating things

where'd you put the transformer?

transformer is part of the fixture

we are contemplating (and saving for) a kitchen remodel, and the required new circuits (two small-appliance circuits and range hood) would bring my panel from almost full to completely packed.

oh so straight romex run to each pot huh? neat

yea exactly... relatively simple to install,, put them up in the hole, push metal clips outwards, install bulb and trim

I saved 4 breaker slots by going from the electric to gas dryer as well as getting rid of a wall baseboard heater

only annoying this is having to spend $50 on magnetic dimmers

can you swap out some single breakers with doubles? (is that the right term?)

Should not put motor loads on light circuits.

but overall I really like the low voltage pots. I used a black baffel (opposed to the gimble rings which seem to be all the rage these days)

@tester101 - I looked into changing it but i'd have to rip up my wall to get to it i think...

@Steven, if we do the kitchen thing it will have doubles in every permissible position.

Welcome @yoda

sub panel

hello @Tester101 :)

Hey everyone! @yoda is a mod on Gardening, as well as DSP :)

I finally figured out why my chandelier would flicker while my home office server was plugged in

so we did hang a tv over the weekend

lol @SteveJackson

@SteveJackson lol

@bmitch what was the cause?

we got one of those low profile tilting wall brackets - remarkably easy to install. Got very lucky - caught the stud on teh first test drill (my old walls don't like stud finders)

@Steven power supply died on the PC, suddenly the lights stopped flickering

@TheEvilGreebo plaster?

moral of the story, electronic interference can do bad things to dimmer switches

may as well be, they're hte old style wallboards

with about 12 layers of paint on em

@TheEvilGreebo what did you do with the cables?

but like i said, we got lucky. the whole project took about an hour

@TheEvilGreebo I use a hard drive magnet now - though I haven't tried on anything but drywall.

@Tester101 they just hang down to the dresser underneath - it's in the bedroom

we'll eventually mount a shelf under the TV for the Tivo and dvd

@TheEvilGreebo How much space did you end up with in the end between the TV and the wall?

@TheEvilGreebo Heh, I have the same problem. It's a 3/8" drywall like stuff with 1/2" plaster on top. The "deep" finders work though.

@VebjornLjosa 3" at top with the tilt maybe, the bottom of the TV touches the walll

or close enough not to matter

@TheEvilGreebo No under bed motorized TV lift?

@yoda I was prepared to just drill 1/32" holes in a line across the wall till I found one. The TV was gonna hide them in the end anyway :)

@Tester101 hard to watch a tv under the bed

its only a $500 TV (50" plasma 720P) but holy cow the difference over our old 30" CRT

@Tester101 Yeah, I dont see the wife going for that :)

problem solved!

@Steven ROFL

I just linked that vid to my wife, awaiting her response

until your kids jump on your bed!

I think the idea has been vetoed

@TheEvilGreebo Hahahaha!

thats why I always do first, ask later.

steven: people who sleep on glass beds... o wait that was houses, n/m

=P

People who sleep on glass beds....vacuum under the bed more often.

@SteveJackson I am NEVER getting a glass bed then.

Roomba takes care of that for ya. (seriously, best invention ever.)

Roomba is great if you don't have long haired pets

We're mourning the loss of our well-lover Roomba.

Steven: if all your floors are the exact same level :(

s/lover/loved/

it took longer to clean the pet hair from the bristles than it did to let it run over the floor

^^ which my wife did, not me

^^ er the bristle cleaning. I was all about the toy robot ;)

Vebjorn: just cannibalize it... lotsa useful stuff in there no doubt

heh ya I have a golden retreiver, so I undestand.. the new models have updated cleaning heads which deal with it better

The newer ones are supposedly easier to remove hair from.

Oh hey, @jamesson!

you can get updated cleaning head modules for the 5xx series if you'd like

And @auujay! Long time no see :)

@jamesson I already have LEGO Mindstorms to play with. Birthday present from my daughter. :)

Awwww <3

do they have a LEGO roomba?

Can't talk about robotic vacuums without a cat video.

omgawww

This reminds me of my forgotten project from two PUTs ago - A skunk sprayed my dog. We spent the two days before Christmas scrubbing everything. Then my cats have decided they would like to puke on the nice clean stairs, so I've been steam cleaning my steps 3 times a week. I'm getting close to ripping the carpet up.

@Steven Sharing that w/ the wife, maybe we'll get one on woot someday

@yoda Shouldn't be too hard to interface them, as the mindstorms have I2C and the Roomba has a serial port.

@VebjornLjosa can the roomba drive a lego car? :)

@TheEvilGreebo OOH roomba train!

another use for roomba: youtube.com/watch?v=pXhsUPtsiLU

on a more serious note, I did author a blog post on how to fix a common issue with roomba, if anyone is interested: mbccs.blogspot.com/2009/04/roomba-surgery-replace-bumper.html

hey @Aarthi

@VebjornLjosa: kits are rather... limiting

@Steven If you like to blog, we could use a new contributor to the community blog!

@jamesson Pleasure to meet you :)

ok guys gg for a bit..

@Aarthi: likewise

Thanks for stopping by! See you later :)

@tester101 i'd be interested in getting involved.. how does it work? do i just pick something to write about, or does the community come up with a topic?

@Steven you can write about anything you want.

Well anything home improvement related.

ill give it some thought!

We definitely need more writers. I'm tapped out cause my personal DIY projects are all on hold

we're having a 2nd hvac unit put in (dividing the house into 2 zones) and all our project money is going to that

speaking of - that starts this weekend, but no DIY to it

@Steven just leave a message here or in the blogger chat and we'll get you set up with a wordpress account

ok will do.. i will figure out what to write about first! is there a length or project complexity requirement, or anything on-topic goes?

@TheEvilGreebo you could talk about hvac systems, how to choose them, when to replace, what maint any normal person should do

link to questions, etc.

I want to find out if the humidifer on the system is working

@Steven nope, it's anything you think the community will find interesting really. We have a team of editors as well if you want to run it by somebody first. You can see what sort of things we already have up and we're open to all sorts of new things.

@Aarthi I call my HVAC guy and take his recommendation? :)

@Aarthi Seriously though - that's not the kind of blogging I do

Hey that's fair.

unrelated note, there seems to be a ton of software devs on this site.. funny how the two seem to overlap

well

StackOverflow/ServerFault is the usual gateway drug.

I think a fair percentage of this site is people whose 'day job' is programming or administration manage to float over here

I started on SF

ya that's where I started. I was at MS Mix when Joel was talking about how they built the site.. way before it was big!

@Steven sysadmins, too.

We have a LOT of sysadmins, actually! I remember noticing that when I did my original site audit.

I asked our sysadmins why that is.

Something about fixing and tinkering. It's a compulsion.

sysadmins are experts at breaking stuff and putting it back together?

So it would seem.

definitely experts at breaking stuff.. only some are good at fixing :P

though I seem to deal with a lot of "I broke it, can you fix it?!" type issues (both home and work related)

It's a biased sample. Most folks got lured in from SO, SF, and SU.

And it seems they are all cheap, and don't ever want to call professionals in.

since we have so many sys admins...

@TheEvilGreebo Needs more duct tape?

thedailywtf.com/Articles/…

I love the daily wtf

I think all of the SE sites have a lot of sysadmins/programmers so the "other" sites just get seeded with them first

@TheEvilGreebo I also suggest "oldnewthing"

This one really relates to DIY too

eek.. all of my server rooms are DRY!

actually had a fire in datacenter a couple years ago.. thankfuly no water was involved in putting it out!

alrightey, i should get back to work! nice chatting with everyone - will let you guys know about blog posts. cheers!

Bye @Steven it was nice to meet you :)

I actually have a meeting to attend right now. I'll see y'all at the next PUT :)

/waves

@SteveJackson Folks who want to contribute to the blog can just send an email to the blog gmail account, then one of us can set up a trello and wordpress account for them, right?

@Tester101 Oh yeah! That's probably easiest. I forgot we improved the process.

Bye @Aarthi enjoy the mega-skype

@SteveJackson Ha, thanks. :D /waves~!

@Steven just send an email to blog.diy.se [at] gmail.com and we can get you set up with blog accounts. You don't have to contribute right away.

@TheEvilGreebo I had a client with the tarp setup. It wasn't deployed, but they had the buckets, tarp, and hose in the data center because the hot water heaters were installed directly above the data center.

So... I ran a new gas line over the weekend for a future dryer.

Had some trouble with 1" tees I bought at HD.

What kind of trouble?

The side hole was not tapped right, anything screwed into it would go in crooked. I had to crank it down to the point where I was afraid the tee was going to split to stop it from leaking.

Lesson learned. Don't buy black pipe fittings from HD.

Stupid Chinese parts.

eeek

I did get to see that the soap test does actually work though.

I think it's all part of the Chinese takeover procedure, send us cheap gas connections and hope we blow ourselves up.

@BMitch I had the same thought.

I also finally got some push connect electrical connectors. I'm planning to write a review for the blog about them.

I always am a little paranoid with the soap test - "Is that itty bitty bubble from the gas or from the spray?"

@Tester101 Awesome I saw you updated your question. Looking forward to it.

@SteveJackson I didn't spray it on. I mixed soap and water up in a cup and drizzled/rubbed it on.

It blew some good sized bubbles.

Product reviews seem to be very popular for bringing in google hits. The tape measure post is the second most popular though - got almost 300 unique hits.

it's always important to have clean hands for your funeral

@Tester101 Every plumber I've seen do it seemed pretty nonchalant, so I figured they had to be very noticeable bubbles.

They're all pretending. If they were the slightest bit paranoid of a bad connection, you would look over their work with a fine tooth comb.

@BMitch I had the furnace and hot water tank off, and I even put out my cigar when I turned the gas back on to check for leaks. So there wasn't much chance of death.

@Tester101 What's a matter Col. Sanders, chicken?

@BMitch better than being fried chicken.

Ludicrous speed go!

She's gone from suck to blow!

We started this morning speaking Spanish, now we're quoting Spaceballs!?

Good day, good day.

@Tester101 You got a problem with that?

Nope, just saying.

Ella se ha ido de aspirar a soplar!

Solo hay un hombre que se atreva a darme la frambuesa!

¡Hola @JoeFish

¿Cómo estás hoy?

Hola! Muy bien, gracias. Y tu?

no está mal

Damn...we're all spanish speaking, spaceball quoting, DIY programmer/sysadmin nerds. It's an epidemic!

I think at this point my Russian is better than my Spanish. But that's not saying a whole lot.

I am certainly a programmer nerd though :)

I was just wading through someone else's Python code. So much fun.

/sarcasm.

Could be perl :)

It could indeed. I've got nothing against Python, it just wasn't designed for what we're doing with it.

You missed the chat rush earlier, we had em packed in here for a few minutes. Do you have any projects going on?

That was totally the wrong button.

?

heh a list as long as your arm ;)

I accidentally closed this window.

So let's see. I just had a new propane tank installed because my old company was completely populated with idiots.

I have to bleed the hot water runs down again.

I've got to install a new exhaust fan in the bathroom, but I've been avoiding crawling around in the attic.

I have to insulate a new exterior wall in my basement, where I took out a 12' glass door and put in a normal, 6' French unit.

I have to put a new exhaust on my Triumph Spitfire :)

Attics are fun, unless you have squirrels up there!

I have plenty of mice. No squirrels.

Mice are OK.

I've tried traps and various poisons, but I live in the woods, so it's like trying to keep the tide back with a teaspoon.

Have to watch out for those beady-eyed, nut munching terrors though.

I actually had a bat come out of the drop ceiling in my basement.

That was some creepy stuff.

I got a bat specialist in, but he didn't find any evidence of bats and figured it was just a freak occurrance.

Ocurrance?

Occurrence. Hell I was surprised recently by a dead mouse, I think I'd fall through the ceiling if a live one ran by me.

adiós a todo el mundo

Hasta la pasta.

Pasta la vista?

I'm mixing Italian with my Spanglish.

Mmm....that's a great restaurant. See you later @Tester101.

My cat likes to chase the mice at 4am.

Hasta la Pasta catered my wedding. I'm told it was very good.

The other night she tore right across the bed - right over me and the wife.

Heh cool :)

I was wondering if cat would be a good solution for mice (not mine, they're worthless), but I guess there's only so many one can catch.

Yeah. Mostly they just play with them.

I'm a little concerned about the poison - my cat can't get to the poison, butI was concerned about it in the mice.

But an exterminator told me it's not an issue, especially after the mice are dead.

And my cat doesn't eat them, anyway.

Usually she's too lazy to catch them. She just wakes me up, then sits and watches me try to catch them.

LOL. Now that sounds like my cats.

I have to admit, it is pretty satisfying to catch the bugger, then pitch it off the deck at high velocity in the middle of the night :)

My dad's cat goes hunting in the woods and brings them back to the house. Not quite as useful.

Yeah, that seems counter productive.

All right time for me to head home. Have a good one.

Later @Joe, thanks for dropping by. Enjoy your Spitfire chores :)

Thanks!

Good looking out @BMitch - I completely forgot.