Greg In The Desert

I’m still not done renovating the interface from the evaporative cooler to the underground duct work. I’m getting close but I need to get it sealed up for winter before I finish it this year.

The typical set up for cooling and heating in New Mexico involves separate evaporative cooling units from heating units. Dampers are installed that block air from entering one unit when the other is running. The damper is almost always a flimsy piece of metal that slides into the duct without any kind of insulation or air barrier around it.

This is fine when blocking the cooler air from entering the heater in the summer but it’s not fine when blocking the heated air from entering the cooler in the winter. I’ve been looking at automatic barometric dampers, they open and close based on which way the air is moving. Some automatic dampers look like they might seal the air penetrations when closed but they are not insulated. I’m thinking of designing my own insulated automatic barometric dampener but for now I’m going to have to seal the duct manually.

I started by cutting a piece of polyethylene foam I had from some shipping materials slight larger than the 18 x 18 inch opening. I placed it over the flimsy metal dampener. I sealed it up with some self adhesive foil covered foam pipe wrap.

I covered the lower portion of the duct that is under the dampener with more polyethylene foam and covered it with the foil pipe wrap.

It should be well sealed and airtight for this winter and easy to remove the foam when I finish it up next summer. I still have a number of issues to deal with.

I had Steamatic come out and clean the duct work. They tried cleaning the main duct from the cooler to the manifold the distributes the air to the rest of the house. The dirt was too caked on to get it all. The Steamatic guys suggested I pull a flexible duct through to seal it up.

It’s a great idea and something I will try next year. I also need to finish sealing the main interface with cement and sealing it with a moisture barrier.

It’s still hard to believe that the previous residence of my house was a HVAC contractor considering all the problems I have had with the evaporative cooler. I haven’t started writing about the super crappy heating system.

I don’t buy this iPod nano leak. Yes, i think the device is real but I don’t think the leak was an accident. This is all part of Steve Job’s reality distortion field and Apple’s ploy to build hype before the September 9th event and still maintain the perception of their no-preannounce secrecy scheme.

There are two dangers in leaking products early. If it’s leaked too far in advanced competitors get an idea what your up to and can make adjustments to their products. The iPod nano doesn’t count here because it was only leaked a few weeks before it’s official release.

The other danger is the leak could kill sales of the older model leaving an unwanted inventory. Several days before Kevin Rose posted about the new model, Appleinsider reported that the older model of nanos were discontinued and inventory was running out.

Besides, the nano isn’t the most exciting of Apple’s devices or a new device so leaking it only helps drive speculation about what else Apple could announce. Apple told a east cost journalist that they should be at the event on September 9th because it will be a big deal. I wouldn’t want a Apple event to be anything but a big deal..

The RDF is building and the internets are caught in it. Good job Apple.

OK, technically it’s a Trojan but I think the term “virus” is better to get attention. The Unofficial Apple Weblog states:

In the wake of the ARDAgent vulnerability discovered yesterday, we all have something new to look out for: OSX.Trojan.PokerStealer is the official name of a trojan horse masquerading as a poker game. The trojan is distributed in a 65K .zip archive.

According to security company Intego, running the trojan activates SSH, and transmits the username, password hash, and IP address of the computer to a server. It asks for an administrator’s password after displaying a message about a corrupt preference file that needs to be repaired.

The “PokerGame” application is 159,843 bytes, and includes the text “Copyright 2008 Andrew” in the version information (visible in Get Info).

Don’t be a fool. Don’t download stuff from non-reputable sites and don’t open attachments you don’t know what they are.

Last fall, I threatened that I would have the master bathroom completed by the end of the winter. Here it is spring and I did almost nothing to the bathroom. I have a variety of excuses that I wont go into now, however I did finally make some actual progress on it this weekend.

Before I can do anything I need to install the pocket door. Before I install the pocket door I need to relocate the wiring that exists on the wall where the door goes.

The wiring consists of power in, a wire to the lights controlled by a switch and a power out to a outlet. The good news is the wiring was easy to move to the next wall, it was loose in the attic and there was plenty of room to move it. I thought I would leave the outlet unpowered for now, until I figured out how I was going to rewire everything, apparently the wire to the outlet is also hooked up to the living room.

Now I have a problem that I need to wire that outlet back up, so i have Romex running along the other side of the bathroom along up to the switch. It looks pretty messy and dangerous in the pictures, I know. Trust me it’s safe and temporary.

I need to decide how to wire up a exhaust fan, will it go near the light switch or near the toilet? I also need to figure out if I’m going to use a fancy digital shower control. If so It will use the power from the outlet then I can wire it up properly.

Finally I can install the pocket door. I have the studs marked to cut down, but I’m waiting for some friends to come by and verify my measurements before I screw it all up. I will save the pocket door install for another post.

I actually saw snow this evening at my house, though it could barely be called snow. None the less I am calling it snow. It was very very light, but they were flakes. It just left the cement a little wet. It was pretty darned cold out, about 20 degrees less than the normals for this time of year. So much for global warming.

I chose to contribute to the green house effect by running a fire in the fireplace for most of the evening.

I previously wrote about the Algae bloom in my 80 gallon aquarium. On Thursday I received the 18 Watt Turbo-Twist 6X UV Sterilizer and installed it that day. My impression from reading various aquarium forums is the sterilizer would show an immediate result, even clean up the algae in a matter of hours.

I saw no changes in a few hours as I was led to believe. It did do it’s job, but it took about four days. I saw the best results after leaving the lights off at night. I suspect it’s taken so long becasue flow rate of my canister filter is less than what most people have for a tank my size. Most people seem to run their filters at least 2x the capacity of the tank. Since I have a 80 gallon tank, most people would run a filter capable of at least 160 gallons per hour. I am not most people.

My flow meter read about 100 gph before putting in the sterilizer, it now reads about 90 gph. The low flow is actually good for the sterilizer, the longer the water is exposed to the UV light, the more effective it is at killing the bugs (this sterilizer is rated for 200 – 400 gph). it might also mean that the flow rate is not fast enough to keep up with the algae growth in the light. Not sure on that however, but seems reasonable.

Now that the algae is under control I am only running the sterilizer part of the night and I will slowly ramp down the it’s use to maybe once a week or less

Finally the plants had a immediate reaction to the reduction in algae. I could clearly see a increase in growth. The hope is they will start to grow vigorously enough that they are absorbing enough of the nutrients to starve out any algae that might try to take hold.

What is up with these spiders? I found this guy running across the floor tonight, scared the crap out of me. I proceeded to vacuum him up with my shopvac only to have him escape and run across the floor again! (or it was another, identical spider?)

I it is pretty menacing looking and I have no idea what it is. Kind of looks like a Wold Spider but I’ve never seen a completely black one. This one kind of looks like one of those fake plastic ring spiders.

I swear once get a house and a place to actually build it, project Maverick will be powered by MacOS X. Unfortunately it looks like these guys beat me to it.

The team has developed it’s Tiger-powered customized Touareg car (dubbed “Dora”) using Mac OS X technologies for the entire development and race management for the attempt. Power Mac G5’s running OS X inside the car control electronic pistons and belts to control the steering wheel, brake and gas pedals, and gear shifter.

I’ve pretty much got my desgin concepts down, I’ve even put together some prototype software. Including the light in the hood that moves back and forth, it will be a CPU activity monitor.

Unfortunately, I have some pigeons living on my patio. That’s unfortunate because 1) They crap all over the place, 2) They have a nest with a egg in it. I cannot bring myself to get rid of them with the egg there, actually it’s their second one. Had I know about it before they laid it I would have done something about it.

To get something useful out of of the situation I have set up the pigeon cam. Running off my 500mhz first gen iBook, a iSight and EvoCam you can watch as the butt ugly baby is born (and believe me, they are ugly). Click on the image to see a 640×480 image. I will be adding it to the side bar as well. I’m also working on a time-lapse.

I’ve seem the mom and dad birds do some weird things so I will try to point them out when I see them. Also check out this MetaFilter post, who knew people ate them?

Update 06/01/05 3:44 PM: I wanted to mention that the picture updates only when there is movement, But EvoCam still seems to struggle to upload to my iDisk. I’ve also put in the link to the timelapse movie but doesn’t seem to be accepted by QuickTime in the browser, it works fine when I view it from the finder.

More on the potential housing bubble.

Many home purchases are speculative; the National Association of Realtors estimates that 23 percent of the homes sold last year were bought for investment, not to live in. According to Business Week, 31 percent of new mortgages are interest only, a sign that people are stretching to their financial limits. The important point to remember is that the bursting of the stock market bubble hurt lots of people – not just those who bought stocks near their peak. By the summer of 2003, private-sector employment was three million below its 2001 peak. And the job losses would have been much worse if the stock bubble hadn’t been quickly replaced with a housing bubble.