Watching TV

So today is the first time since we've moved in that I'm able to sit down, spod online, and watch random Netflix at the same time. It's been a long time coming.

I've had my computer running at the old place so the MCE could continue to record TV shows like Caprica while we were busy moving into the new. Then I had to time switching over my cable service and start new Internet service and transporting my computer back here and reconnecting it. So it took quite some time.

--- begin Comcast rant ---

I really dislike dealing with Comcast. You can't help but feel like you're being tortured in some dark medieval fashion. When I first got my HDTV some time ago they used to have incentives to get people to switch to HD programming. For a mere $5 on top of any service you had, you could receive the HD equivalent of your current channel line-up. That was a really good deal.

Then I moved to Alviso, where cable television did not exist. It took some two years before Comcast began to roll out service there. I immediately asked for the basic cable service (no digital box) with HD programming. I talked to three different reps, and they all said the same thing, "Comcast never had that sort of service ever." Every time I had to deal with Comcast to complain about bad service, I'd ask about the HD content. Even people who said they've worked there for more than three years gave me that same line. One day when I called to complain about the cable service, I got a really nice lady who finally told me that they had discontinued that service. So you cannot get decent digital programming without the evil digital box on Comcast.

So what used to be "basic" cable service, isn't actually referred to by Comcast employees as "basic" cable service. It's a "special" limited service. All "standard" services you must use the evil digital cable box and Comcast employees will fight you tooth and nail in order for you to get at least the "basic" cable service with evil digital cable box. They'll ply you with "special" offers that will eventually go away in a few months.

Why pay for a "special" offer that will last such a short time compared to years of continued service? Who in their right mind wants to go through the pain of having to downgrade their service after the special offer expires?

I prefer the $12/month cable service, with no evil digital cable box. The "basic" standard service with evil digital cable box starts at almost 3x that amount. I do not need movie channels, nor the on demand programming. I can use an Microsoft Media Center to DVR what I want.

Comcast should be in the business of simply providing programming, not providing DVRs. DVRs drive Comcast's business and not programming. So they've limited their programming in order to get a premium on their DVR service. And they can do this because they are a monopoly. There is no one else to compete with them on programming since they are the only game in town. They can do whatever they want.

Actually you do get some extra HD content with their "special" less-than-basic cable service. But you are at the mercy of Comcast which channels they let you see in HD. By law, they have to provide the OTA signal you are generally supposed to receive by antenna. I would like to see History, and Discovery channel in HD but that isn't offered with my service. Comcast recently allowed SyFy HD through so for that I am thankful.

But I would love to have that option to pay for the HD channels of the line-up I currently have, like I once did, despite every Comcast employee telling me that no service ever existed even though it did. I should not have to pay for an evil digital cable box to get those channels.

--- end Comcast rant ---

Anyway, the MCE is sitting on the floor with wires making a nice rats nest surrounding it and the TV. It is not all quite there, but it's passable for a more normal mode of operation for me.

Needless to say, blog postings should become more regular now that I can login to the Internet.

... stay tuned.

Best Pizza in Silicon Valley

This title has to belong to A Slice of New York in San Jose. Looking for a nearby pizza place, I found this one on Yelp.They have the best margherita pizza in California. It isn't on the menu, but sometimes they make it by the slice, which is how I spotted it. They add a light spread of fresh basil and a real flavorful sauce. It doesn't look like much but believe me it's good!

I first heard of margherita pizza in Piazza del Campo in Siena, Italy. I was sitting in the piazza after walking around the city several times doing the tourist thing. I was just enjoying being there like so many others seem to do taking a seat on the plaza floor. I noticed a small line of people grabbing a slice of pizza at a kiosk. It made me hungry for one so I stood in line thinking what a good pepperoni would be like in Italy. But, when I got up there, they only had one pizza, which looked like a cheese pizza. In my tourist Italian I asked what kind of pizza's they had, hoping they had more, and the operator told me, "only one: margherita.". To me it looked like cheese because there was nothing on it. I've never heard of margherita cheese (there is no such thing). So I thought, "I waited this long, whatever. I'll eat it anyway." For a plain looking pizza it was very very good. I'm not sure what is supposed to go in a margherita pizza. It basically is just a cheese pizza. Perhaps the dough? Perhaps the tomato sauce? Or a combination of the both?

A Slice of New York is basically a hole in the wall. It sits next door to a Blues bar and a surplus store in a tiny strip mall down the street from the more trendy Santana Row along Stevens Creek Boulevard. It's almost like walking into Blondie's in Berkeley. New York paraphernalia decorates the walls and ceilings in an authentically devoted way to New York. They even have subway hand rails hanging along one wall. Seating is a premium so plan on ordering out. Staff is friendly, and seems to be directed by one guy who appears to be the owner. He takes time to talk to customers and make sure every pizza is made to spec. While waiting for my pizza they had made the pizza too big, so they cut out a slice down the middle. The manager came over and offered it to me as they prepared the last bit of the pizza which was awfully nice of the guy. Pizza that fresh is a sin. I get the feeling at this place, customer satisfaction is the number one priority. And the best part is, it isn't expensive.

Whatever it is, A Slice of New York (3443 Stevens Creek Blvd, San Jose, CA) does it best. A good second is the one at Tomatino (3127 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara, CA). If you never had margherita pizza, give it a try. Less is more.

We got the power!

Got my first bill from Silicon Valley Power, and they charge about 8 cents per kilo-Watt-hour. That's freakin' amazing given the rise in energy costs. When I was in High School, the average was 10 cents per kilo-Watt-hour. This is the minimum rate PG&E would probably charge me (more likely above that rate) for the same location.

Deathtrap

So the garage door was one of those things that came back in the house inspection that did not work right so I knew something had to be done about it. Looking through Craigslist I found a nice Genie Quietlift belt driven garage door opener selling for only $75 new in the box! It was quite the deal if you ask me. I bought it off some guy who had accidentally bought a model without enough horsepower to lift his oak panel garage door and was just looking to get rid of the item out of his garage. Lucky me I just happened to look at the right time.

So replacing a garage door is not the hardest thing in the world. It just takes some time for the inexperienced do-it-yourselfer. I had actually managed to install the thing to operate backwards. So if you were opening the door, and you tripped off the sensor it'd actually try and close in and crush you (or any other unsuspecting critter). It was my own household deathtrap. Needless to say, this has been fixed. No cats or dogs are in danger of being eaten alive by the garage.

Teapot

This has to be the nicest fixture in the house. Too bad the rest of the bathroom is crummy. I really like the teapot style faucet. It has that old-world look to it. After I replaced the old fixture with this, I just sat there staring at the running water coming out of it. It was pretty mesmerizing. Not bad for $24 from Home Depot. This would go well with that clawfoot bathtub *grin*.

Tighten up a notch

So for the past few days my pants had been falling more than normal. I wasn't sure what was going on, other than perhaps physically moving around so much instead of sitting down behind a computer naturally made pants fall a bit. I don't know, it's been eons since I have done manual labor.

Then I had a realization that perhaps I am losing weight. It all came apparent that this was the case this A.M. after being annoyed that even sitting down driving that my pants seemed to sag a bit, I tightened up my belt a notch and lo and behold, my pants fit once again comfortably and naturally and do not have that annoying sag feeling anymore.

Working on the Money Pit is good for my health I suppose.

Running Water

Running water is important. When I first bought the Money Pit, my inspector had informed me that there were problems with the toilets and problems with some of the faucets leaking. I figured I could take care of the minor plumbing problems on my own.

So when time came to take possession of the house, I went hunting for the main shut-off valve. However, I had trouble trying to figure out where they hid it. I tried following the pipes from the heater. I found the hot water shut-off behind a basement bulkhead that I had to punch a hole through. Some idiot had to place the ceiling there with no access.

I thought I would find the main shut-off behind a basement wall. My general inspector and the termite inspector both warned me there was crawl space inaccessible because the basement was in the way. So I had to punch a hole through a wall in order to get to the hidden crawl space. I didn't find the shut-off there either.

So I ended up going the other way, and found the shut-off was hiding in plain site. It was placed under the garden hose outlet. I don't know how I feel about that. It's a strange place for it I think. Maybe that's just the way old houses were built. Maybe it was also part of some bad renovation (which the Money Pit has a lot of.)

So I switched it off. However, it didn't shut off completely. So I Yelped for a plumber and found Quality Plus Plumbing with a very good rating. He replaced the valve for $215. That's a little more expensive than I'd like but I think that's the fair market value for a good plumber doing an hour or so of work. He did a good job. It wasn't something I could do myself. I didn't have the knowledge nor equipment to solder, or cut pipe. He was prompt, came by when he said he would, provided an estimate and scheduled a time to come back. Again he was prompt and performed the repair without incident. He even gave me a new spout for the hose, and some insulation around the pipe. Although I don't think it ever freezes in Santa Clara but hey, you never know.

So on my way to taking down toilets and sinks in the bathrooms so I could fix all leaks, I made one worse I think. The master bathroom used a Delta fixture. Unfortunately, it was leaking so I attempted to take it apart and replace the seals. The thing about Delta is that they are notorious for breaking apart when amateurs attempt to work with it. The problem is that instead of a good solid block of metal to the valve, they have these two very small wimpy soft copper tubes. I think they do that to piss off people like me. So if you don't know what you're dealing with, you end up twisting the soft copper pipes right off the main pipe located deep into the wall, which is what I did. So with an open pipe that would just spray gallons of water into the walls, (bathtubs do not have local shut-off valves apparently) there was no way I could fix that thing myself. So it was either have no running water, or call Shibli again at Quality Plus Plumbing to fix the thing.

Again he came by to evaluate. He informed me that he sees this mistake often, and that there's a trick to un-seize the valve so it comes off without breaking the soft copper tubes. Just trying to apply pressure like I did, will just break the thing. He provided me a couple ways to save money, like breaking the wall in the closet myself to get to the pipe in the bathroom. Which I was going to, until he realized that the wall was plaster and lath. So he recommended that he just go through the tile surrounding the valve. He recommended that instead of replacing the tile, that he could get this large metallic covering to cover the hole instead of having to re-tile the bathtub. He said he does this for apartments and since I am not so concerned about the bathtub it might be a good option to save money, which I jumped at. The cost for all that work was about $400. I'd recommend Shibli to anyone. I take comfort, when it comes to plumbing in knowing the job was getting done right. Sure you might find cheaper, but those places are a shot in the dark.

Plumbing is something that requires a bit of know-how and experience to do it correctly, otherwise you'll be doing it a second time in the near future. Then you have to couple that with someone who will be polite and respectful about coming into your home. Take a read through all the 1 star reviews on plumbers on Yelp. It isn't pretty.

We need mirrors

So by ripping out the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, we also inadvertently got rid of the mirror. Which is more important than I had imagined for other things besides combing hair, shaving and pulling out nose-hair. This morning I had wore my sweater inside out, and backwards so the tag was showing below my neck like some strange Roman collar sporting an 'Old Navy' advertisement. This is something that would have easily been noticed and corrected, had there been a mirror in the bathroom. So like a complete moron I walked into work looking like a fool until just before lunch when I went to relieve myself. Imagine my astonishment as I walked into the restroom and took a glance at the mirror. Thank goodness my 8AM meeting was done over the phone. I hope too many other people had not noticed. *Sigh*.

There must be some Toros in the atmosphere

"Brrr.. it's getting cold in here.."

So we've moved into the new house and it is cold. It is so cold, I think Alaskans have it good. I grew up in Southern California so I'm probably complaining about that silly thing called weather (a lot of which we do not get a lot of in sunny SoCal).

I hate the cold. Before the skiing season starts, I have to examine every new fangle item of clothing that came out for the new season claiming to provide additional warmth while hitting the slopes. I carry at least four pairs of gloves with me and three different caps at any one time so if one gets wet I have a spare. Did I mention I hate the cold?

A while back when I used to live with Eric and some other friends we rented a house in Rockridge (Oakland, CA). Rockridge was closer to Berkeley, and never got the drawback from people if I said outright that I lived in Oakland. A lot of old well-to-do hippies have taken up residence there. Nice area, but it was cold. There was no central heating there. It was so cold that at times it seemed warmer outside than inside the house. Eric used to run a fan taking the warmer fifty degree weather outside to heat up the cooler less-than fifty degree interior on those special occasions.

That's when I learned the value of down comforters. Until then, I thought a blanket was just a blanket. But down comforters saved my freezing behind back then. The down comforter was the best invention since chicken soup. It was so glorious that you could not help but sacrifice for other amenities that the down comforter wanted: a host of duvet covers, matching down pillows, a nice mattress to be enthroned upon.

The Money Pit has a broken furnace. The ignition light won't fire. I called around, and it uses a part so old that it isn't made anymore. There are replacement parts, but it would cost around $300 just for the part. Then there is labor. I think it might be more economical to just get a new heater. But I don't think I can afford one just now.

The rain started up so it's going to be another freezing cold night at the Money Pit. I think I'd rather sleep at work tonight, where it's warm and I have Internet.

Silicon Valley Power

When I first signed up for utility, I wasn't sure where to go, so I just kinda Google'd it expecting something like PG&E to show up, but all the sites kept pointing me to Silicon Valley Power. I didn't think too much about it, except it was rather strange that we didn't use PG&E like everyone else. I asked about the gas, and they basically said "this is what we provide, go somewhere else for that." Then today, I came across this section on Wikipedia looking up Santa Clara information:

Santa Clara owns and operates an electric utility called Silicon Valley Power. In 2005 Silicon Valley Power brought online the Donald Von Raesfeld (DVR) Power Plant. The new combined-cycle gas turbine plant produces 147 megawatts of electricity for the city and its residents.^[2] As a result, the going rate for electricity in Santa Clara is considerably cheaper than that offered by Northern California's dominant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.

 How about that! Cheap electricity. Yay!

One of their more interesting programs is the Santa Clara Green Power program. This is how their website explains the program:

Santa Clara residents and businesses have the power to choose. Santa Clara Green Power, the voluntary renewable energy program from SVP, offers you the option of one hundred percent renewable energy at some of the lowest rates in the nation. For just a penny and a half extra per kilowatt hour (1.5 cents), you can choose Green-e Energy certified clean energy for one hundred percent of your usage.

That is pretty nifty. Some other interesting tidbits about Silicon Valley Power: According to a 2005 nationwide reliability benchmarking survey, Santa Clara's Silicon Valley Power placed first in several categories and second overall power reliability in the nation.

I hope they continue that trend, seeing as how I live here now. Now got to figure out what sort of rebates I'm qualified to apply for.

Vermiculite? NOT!

 

So this stuff in the attic that I was worried was vermiculite was in fact not. How strange. I wonder what this stuff is and what it's doing in the attic. Maybe it was a scam to sell vermiculite insulation and the previous home owner got gravel instead? I don't know.

The e-mail from Western Analytical Lab reads:

The sample you submitted for analysis contains no asbestos.  Please note your sample is NOT vermiculite insulation.

We'll mail a written report in a couple of days.

So I guess we'll see when they send over their report if more information is revealed as to the identity of this material.

Clean-up!

So every year Santa Clara has it's Clean-up Campaign. Basically everyone in Santa Clara gets to throw pretty much anything out their sidewalk and the city pays various clean-up crews to come pick it up and haul it away.

This comes at a great time since the Money Pit came with a few truckloads of trash that the previous owner did not bother to haul away themselves. Plus the crap and rotted fixtures that I threw out (so far).

It was actually entertaining in a sneaking-cookies-from-the-cookie-jar kind of way. I mean, how often have you just thrown truckloads of stuff into the street and not expect to get into trouble? I was giddy. I saw a house with a mountain a dirt, another with a mountain with rocks, and a house being rebuilt with furniture and construction debris sitting out in the street.

There were a ton of pickers out. There were a few pickers that knew each other from picking trash in other neighborhoods that talked like they did this pretty regularly. Mostly they were after scrap metal. But there were few people that specifically picking for useful things. I saw a truck hauling just kids-toys weaving through the neighborhood. Another truck full of plastic chairs. The kind thing to do apparently is lay out your "pickable" stuff for those guys, and then trash piled on another side.

So I had the roach infested cabinets out there. During the day, people were interested but realized how bad they were and left them. By nightfall someone couldn't see what they were getting into and took the entire set. I kind of felt bad.

 

In the picture above, there was actually a lot more that I put out, than you see. Pickers had picked about a quarter of it by the last day.

On the first day, Saturday, the professional pickers came en masse. By the time Sunday rolled around amateurs were picking for what's left, and a lot of people shopping. I was actually tempted to start looking for stuff but I resisted the urge.

I think I had the second biggest pile that I saw. The first biggest pile was the reconstructed home.

Basic Wiring Techniques

So a couple days ago, I had mentioned earlier that I had bought the book, "Your Old Wiring" by David E. Shapiro. It's a meaty book and I like it very much. It explains theory very well, and brings to bear the author's many years of experience.

But I'd also like to draw attention to another book I wasn't sure about. It came recommended on a web page somewhere lost along my surfing. It is: "Basic Wiring Techniques" by Steve George and John Lowe.

 

This book is the cat's meow. It comes with lots of pictures, and for my particular experience and knowledge of electricity it's the perfect way to help me gain the overall big picture.

Despite reading about how panels work many times and in many places, this book explained to me in two drawings or less. That's impressive.

However, the book is a bit dated (1994). NEC code is updated every 3 years. But this covers the basics and that hasn't changed much. Everyone needs to learn the basics somewhere.

After reading this book, I can go back and refer to something like "Your Old Wiring" and the NEC handbook for details and understand what they're talking about.

So I've been making a list of things I'll need to purchase before I undertake rewiring the Money Pit:

• fish tape
• power drill with 3/4" spade (or bit)
• chisel to chip plaster
• saber saw
• alligator clips for my DMM
• black, white, green electrical tape

And of course, a whole lotta Romex (NM cable).

LED light bulb

When I was at Fry's Electronics the other day, I found these neat LED lightbulbs. They are a bit expensive but they're energy efficient. They are made by Normande Lighting and plug into standard 120VAC light bulb socket. For $7.99 you could get a 30 lumen light bulb that expends 700 milli-watts and should run 30,000 hours, or 3.5 years. So at 10 cents a kilo-watt hour this thing should cost $60/year if you ran the thing continuously. If you ran a 70 watt light bulb like that, you'd be looking at $6,000/year. And I don't think standard light bulbs last 30,000 hours. So I put this as a porch light. It keeps the Money Pit illuminated with a soft eerie glow. Celle calls it moonlight. The street is a bit dark, so this also keeps the Money Pit from looking completely scary at night.

There are more powerful ones that get up to the 7 watt and beyond, but that'll run you upwards of $25 a bulb. So they're not cheap.

CU-Creations

I've been admiring the handy work of hoods at CU-Creations in Santa Monica, California. A nice copper hood would not go well with a stainless steel stove. You would have to go black. Here would be my pick. I love the accents and the hammered unfinished look. I bet it's pricey.

From their website here's what they say about themselves:

Cu-Creations offers Custom and standard Range Hoods at great prices and of highest quality! Hoods can be placed indoor or outdoors and made from copper, stainless steel, aluminum, galvanized, bonderized and kynar!

110V AC

 

One of the main reasons I went up into the attic the other day was to figure out where the doorbell transformer was.

With my DMM (Digital Multi Meter) I tested for the voltage and current at the button. There was nothing on the meter.

Looked for the chimer and found it on a kitchen wall. Took it down and examined it. Played with the chimes and inspected the coil. It looked like it work.

I traced the wire from the doorbell in the attic and followed it to the chimer, and then followed the line to to a wall that looked like it was going down to the basement. I read most places put the doorbell transformer in the basement next to the panel. And that's exactly where it was. In the basement behind the wall where the panel would be outside.

I tested that the voltage going into the transformer was 120VAC and found nothing coming out of the step down side.

This thing must be really old. I've never seen a transformer look like this ever. The connectors are rusting. Notice the insulation is made of thick cloth instead of plastic, and it's that old industrial olive color (think color of WWII armor). The other interesting thing about this is it's rated at 110 volts (maybe the reason it blew). Current U.S. standard is 120 volts AC. 110 volts went away soon after Thomas Edison lost the battle to supply 110 volts DC to the residential sector.

Another reason that it may have blown is that the dielectric may have gone bad. I don't know what they use in transformers, then or now, but looking at the insulation they used for wires back then, I'm almost certain it wasn't anything good either.

So the people who updated the kitchen electricity seemed to just cut the old knob and tube wiring into the kitchen. So from the panel there was a two way split to the doorbell and then to the kitchen. That wouldn't bug me so much, except that the connection was handled with tape, and solder. And of course, everything was just hanging outside the junction box.

So I ripped that sucker out and went searching for a brand new one.

My first stop was Fry's Electronics. I remember walking into Fry's the first time a long time ago and thinking: "Wow! Shelves and shelves of discrete components!" It isn't like that anymore. Nobody knew what a transformer was, nobody knew where their discrete components were located, and there weren't shelves and shelves of the stuff. And the stuff they did have couldn't put Radio Shack to shame.

So I called a real electronics store that I found with the iPhone Maps app. Thank goodness we're in the bay area. Growing up in LA it was almost impossible to find an electronics store that wasn't Radio Shack. (Don't get me wrong. I like Radio Shack. I buy stuff their all the time. In high school, and going to Don Bosco Technical Institute, I easily knew more about electronics than the guys there did, and so I always had problems getting exactly what I needed. So I generally avoid going there if I feel I might need to ask the rep a question, because chances were more than good that if I didn't know, they didn't know either.)

So the local electronics store I called, Anchor Electronics, in Santa Clara, probably sold parts to guys that made battle robots in their spare time. The guy there said he probably had a transformer that'd work, except he wasn't sure if they'd be rated for use as a doorbell. There were no mounts or easy way to connect leads too. He told me to just go to my local OSH (Orchard Supply Hardware.)  He was right. OSH had it. It looked like a normal modern transformer, except it had screw-ins for the doorbell leads, a bracket to mount the thing, and a weird mount that held the 120VAC leads in place.

I got my doorbell working. I did things a little better than the last guy by not much. But at least things are somewhat sitting inside a junction box. I need to read up a little more on typical doorbell transformer installation housings and correct that later.

Asbestos free ceiling!

So a couple days ago I wrote about testing my ceiling with a sample I sent over to Western Analytical Labratory for analysis. I got good news! It turns out the ceiling does not contain asbestos! Celle was happy to hear that because she's been dying to get rid of it.

Here's the e-mail that they sent me:

The acoustic ceiling spray sample you submitted for analysis contains no asbestos. 

We'll mail a written report to you in a couple of days.

Please note: The EPA strongly recommends testing at least three samples of acoustic spray (from different parts of the residence) because asbestos was hand-mixed in this material on job site and its distribution can be uneven across the ceiling.

So we'll probably test out each room as we go.

Popcorn acoustic ceilings helped deaden the noise between floors. It might also help deaden the echo in older homes like the Money Pit. The echo is prominent in plaster and lath and is desirable to a segment of savvy home buyers. By adding the popcorn ceiling, the noise waves wouldn't reflect perfectly off at least one wall and reduce the echo. Add a curtain and you'd certainly reduce the echo some more. Add furniture and you'd reduce echo even more.

The main reason you find it still is because it became popular in the 60s and 70s. However it was too hard to clean, and its downfall came with the banning of asbestos in the 80s. Asbestos was found to be an ingredient in some forms of acoustic ceiling popcorn. Suddenly they no longer were popular in any form and other ceiling products and tiling became en vogue.

To take the stuff out, I'm told the best way is to wet it and scrape off the goopy muck.

I'm praying that my insulation comes in asbestos free as well.