Where does this wire go?

I’m running Ubuntu 11.10 and this adapter worked right out of the box on an older laptop I had handed down to my son. I picked it up at radio shack for $26.00. I was expecting to have to download drivers to get it worked, but when I plugged it in it connected within a few seconds.

I do believe the 150 model has a limited range as they mention on the box to connect to wireless devices in big houses or multiple floors you should upgrade to one of its bigger brothers.

What this does is allow me to have the option of “half flushes” when I don’t need all the power of a full flush. This is supposed to cut down water usage significantly.

It took me about 2 hours to install it. A good chunk of that time was to remove the old system. The installation was pretty straight forward. The kit looks like it is pretty well made. So far it seems pretty rock solid. There is no flapper or chain to worry about getting jammed open or allowing water to seep past.

It is pretty well built and really easy to fix.

I’ve had two things fail on me so far. 1) the screws that hold the plate with the rod to control the direction of the snow fell out. I replaced with cotter pins.

Last week my blower blade snapped (my fault. I ran over some asphault rocks that the snow pushed up out of my driveway.) The part to fix the snowblower only cost about $25.00. Plus $12 for an allen wrench type adapter for my socket set. (well, I got 8 sockets for the $12.) I don’t know if I’ll ever use these allen sockets so I’m counting it as the cost of repair. There were 3 philips head screws holding on a plate. Once that was removed I used the allen socket to remove the bar that runs through the blade. pulled out the bar, put in the new blade, tightened the bolt back up put on the plate with 3 screws and I’m now up and running again.

A friend of mine is putting some extra juice into his Honda Insight hybrid. It allows him to recharge his hybrid battery with a pack that he can charge from his house outlets.

It is a really cool set up that he is documenting at insight central. Information on the product he is using can be found at www.enginer.us

I highly encourage anyone that likes playing with electronics to read about what he is doing.

I had a problem setting the variables to point to the jython path. I thought the jython path was the same as where jython.jar was. I was wrong it was the /usr/share/jython and not /usr/shar/java where jython.jar is.

speechlion is having problems understanding my commands. I’m going to see if I can train sphinx to understand me better.

One of my amps in my car literally went up in smoke. I’m not sure what caused it, it could just be overheating or something, but it was pouring out smoke. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to replace it. I don’t have that kind of money anymore.

It had a small crack in it which allowed watter to drip down the handle and follow the cord under the sink. It wasn’t a lot of water at once, and leaked so slowly that you couldn’t even see it. The watter ran down the hose and dropped off the hose where it bent and on to the cabinet floor under the sink. This caused the floor to sag with the weight of cleaning products and a constantly damp floor.

The fix was to get a new handle from homedepot which cost about $8.00.

Even after a year of living in our new home we are still finding stuff to fix. I guess it is like children. You never stop having to care for them.

Today I’m trying to figure out how to make one of my systems drain properly. It is filled with sand (and it is supposed to be.) I have a hose going out the bottom. I put a sponge covering the opening of the hose to act as a filter.. I’m not sure if this is going to work out or not yet.

Anyone have any ideas how to allow drainage from a bucket full of sand?

*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* Before reading this post see the link at the bottom of this post and watch some videos of the dangers of Lithium Polymer batteries when warnings aren’t followed.*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING*

Okay. I’m a VERY STUPID. It says on the battery “Do not disassemble or mistreat battery.” Well, I’ve never mistreated the battery, in fact I’ve never forgot its birthday and never raised my voice to it once since I’ve owned it. All kidding aside though, I should have listened to the do not disassemble part. The battery apparently overheated and bulged out popping the cover off my wireless broadband card.

So, what do I stupidly do? I take the battery out and remove the protective wrapping. Maybe they should use titanium wrapping to prevent stupid people like myself from tampering with the battery and ignoring their clearly marked warnings. Next I took a small flat bladed screwdriver and poked a hole in the inner wrapper. Then POP a cloud of white powder erupted from from the small package and I got a lung full.

I’m hoping I’m not going to suffer any major damage. I don’t know the real complications of inhaling this stuff but I’m sure it isn’t something beneficial to my health.

Well, anyway. DON’T MESS WITH BATTERIES OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT SAYS DON’T OPEN. You never know what surprise you will get.

Edit: After watching some videos and reading more about li-polymer batteries I will be disposing of the battery as soon as possible.

Kids, do not try this at home. Here is what can happen. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=lipo+explosions&aq=f

I have a homelite cordless electric lawn mower similar to the Earthwise 60120 20-Inch 24-Volt Cordless Electric Bag/Mulch/Side Discharge Lawn Mower
I don’t know if it is true with the earthwise, but my lawnmower deck is a tad to thin. Last year I ruined a chassis because a bolt holding down the motor tore out a chunk (about an inch square) of the deck. It wasn’t dangerous but required that I buy a new deck. Well, this summer the chassis cracked. Fortunately it was a crack and no missing pieces.

What I did was to go to home depot and buy a few washers to kind of reinforce the chassis at the cracks. I tried out the mower and it seems to be holding so far. But I’m sure over time the nuts are going to loosen up (I replaced the screws and nuts with new ones since the old ones were stripped) The bolts if anyone else is having this problem and is interested are 6mm.

One thing to know is that I am merciless with this homelite mower. I think I posted about it earlier, but as a reminder, I use it to cut down small saplings to size (trunk size of the saplings are about 2″.)

There are only 2 things that are not great about the mower, one is the thin metal of the chassis, If you abuse your mower like I do, then I highly recommend putting washers behind the nuts on the undercarriage that connected the motor to the chassis. Note, I don’t know how safe this is, so do this at your own risk.

The other is that the other is the fact mine doesn’t have a removable battery. The irony is that the charger isn’t made for outdoor use!?! Since it is recommended that you charge the mower once a month when not in use (i.e. over the winter) you either have to park it somewhere sheltered outside with a 110 outlet, or bring it inside to charge it. I put mine in my basement for the winter and charged it as recommended. The battery seems to have made it through winter fine.

So, despite my minor surgery on the Homelite, I’m very happy with the mower. I hope I can find a permanent solution to the cracking chassis.

If anyone has any ideas I’d appreciate hearing them.