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Drywall is down in the basement

Well it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We brought the rest of the drywall down last night and also the 5 sheets of oak plywood. Was not that bad. Just one break to catch our breath. Now I need to finish up the few things I have talked about previously and then I will be ready to hang some drywall. Jenny is on call tomorrow night so I am thinking I will try to get the heating duct finished up and try to at least run the 2 coax and 2 cat 6e cables from the utility room to the area I want them to be. Then depending on time I might pull them up through the floor into the jacks I want them at. Plan to pull one or two cat 5e or cat 6e cables and 1 more coax to the bedroom and to the living room. They are actually on the same wall, just opposite sides. So for the most part I will be pulling 2 coax and 4 network cables to thee same spot. Then I can pull the old cables out. Will probably just put another connector on the other end of the cable and just use them as patch cables.

Posted in Basement.


Last of the drywall

Well tonight I plan to take the last of the 5/8ths drywall down to the basement with a friend. Hopefully it won’t be to bad. After that is down in the basement I will be very happy. That stuff is pretty heavy. To carry one to 2 sheets is not a big deal. But 13 trips starts to tire you real quick. I think on sunday I will try to get the office area all drywalled. That should be me this week to get the network and coax run like I would like to and also finish up the heating duct.

Posted in Basement.


Well I had a big weekend with the basement

Shawn and I went to Menards right after work on friday and bought all the drywall we thought we would need for some time. Went to rent the truck (had to wait for them to put gas in it, took like 30 mins to go get gas for some reason) and we were on our way. Took 32 sheets of half inch to shawns first. Then we went back and loaded up the truck with almost all the 5/8ths I needed and a few sheets of plywood for shawn. Took that load to my place. Headed back to Menards and got the rest of the 5/8ths I needed and then loaded up as much 1/2 inch as we could get. By the time we finished that load it was about 9pm. So we turned the truck in and had dinner. Called it a night. Took sat off to spend time with jenny and rest a bit. Sunday at about 9:30 we were back at it. Took a load of 20 sheets of 5/8ths to shawns again. Went back to menards and loaded up 10 sheets of green board (water resistant drywall) and another 20 sheets of 1/2 inch. Took that to my house and then turned the truck back in. This time it was only an hour for the rental. Headed to shawns to have some lunch and then started taking the drywall down to the basement from the garage. That took us up till about 2pm or so. Man that stuff gets heavy after a while. Was so nice to get all the 5/8ths down first. You carry two sheets at a time, each trip we carried on set of two sheets that weight about 70 pounds for the 5/8th stuff. Was glad when we had the 10 sheets down in the basement. The 1/2 inch stuff was only about 45 or 50 pounds, man was that so much easier. After we finished at his place we headed to my place. Took down the green board and all of the half inch stuff. Was roughly 54 sheets altogether, so about 27 trips. We were dead so the 26 sheets, 13 trips for the 5/8th and the 5 sheets of plywood will have to wait. I am so sore today. We will probably get the rest some evening this week or sunday we plan to cut most of shawns plywood so at worst case we will get the rest at that point. Now to get some help to start putting up the drywall.

Posted in Basement.


Hope weather gets better today or tomorrow

I would like to go pickup the drywall, plywood, partical board and shower from Menards tonight or tomorrow. But I do not want to do this unless the roads are dry. So I am hoping it stops raining and drys off.

Posted in Basement.


Went to sears last night

Just bought that table saw awhile back. Well now it is 50 dollars cheaper in the new craftsman club sale. Well they have a 30 day price match policy and guess what. They only do craftsman club sales every 30 or more days. So I am out the 50, oh well. But I did come home with a brand new jig saw. Took the one in I bought a while back to put my cabinets up. It had a little problem. When I was cutting some metal it vibrated a little to much. The little light went out. Think it is just a loose connection. Well I wanted it fixed, so after about an hour with this lady trying to order me the part and have me put it in, she finally caved and just gave me a new saw. 🙂

Posted in General.


Playing with network monitor system

System is called nagios. Pretty cool so far. Still playing with it, but when I get it working good and understand it I probably will put this sytem up on a server at work. I am sick of the monitoring system we currently have. I do not want to be paged during the night. Our current system pages me no matter what time it is. In Nagios I can setup business hours and paging groups and email groups. This should be pretty slick. You can see my system HERE. Login as guest with no password. You have read only access. I only have a few devices at home but might try a few more eventually.

Posted in New toys.


Went up stairs tonight

Seems that the leak is fixed. There was no sign of water at all. Hope the leak does not come back.

Posted in Home Stuff.


Ups works great

Moved the firewall and cable modem down tonight and it only put a very small load on the ups. I plan to see how long the thing keeps up the unit soon. All seems to be great. Plan to leave good feedback for the seller on ebay and call it a great deal for under 100 dollars.

Posted in New toys.


New ups is here and seems to be fine

I just unpacked the new Ups last night and plugged it in immediate. Powered up and seemed to be fully charged already. So I lugged it downstairs and plugged it in. Plugged the monitor I have in the rack and the switch I have setup. Both were fine. So I then unplugged the ups. Both stayed powered and the unit started to beep. I will have to move my network equipment (Cable modem and maybe a wireless router) and the firewall and ipbx. That will put a little more load on the ups. Then I will try the unplug thing and see how long it stays up. Or I could just plugin the freezer that is next to it. See how long that stays cold.

Posted in New toys.


Taylor sure did want attention last night

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon in the basement putting up insullation and hooking up the sat. I changed a few switches and was making the bathroom and office area ready to get drywalled. Well that whole time taylor was up on the bed with jenny. I think they were both taking a nap. Anyway, when I finished and got cleaned up, taylor had plenty of energy. So I played with her for a bit in the backyard. Well at about 7 I sat down and watched some TV. Taylor did not want that at all. She kept trying to get my attention. Then she started in on the things she knew would get my attention. Kept getting a towel that we use to wipe her paws off when she is muddy. She would go get it and drag it into the living room right in front of me and start playing with it. Then she would go get that hand towel from the stove. Finally I had enough and put her in her cage. After about 30 mins I went and got her and she was fine. But man did she know how to push my buttons. It was kind of funny.

Posted in Taylor the dog.