Tag Archives: AT&T HSI-DSL

2015/05/27 (W) The Root of all Things

Yesterday I used up the last of the coffee beans that Jeff at Teeko’s shipped to us in Quartzsite in late February so this morning I transferred the beans we had roasted last week into our airtight containers and started using them.  Grinding our own custom roasted coffee beans is how my mornings usually start and is just another small thing I like about being retired.

We rarely made coffee at home in the morning when we were employed outside the house.  It took too much time and made a mess that had to be cleaned up later, including the travel mug that we had to remember to rinse out at work and then bring home.  Besides, Linda got free unlimited coffee and tea at the office and I found it easier to stop at Panera and get a large coffee to go; half hazelnut and half decaf.  It was part of my morning routine that I found comforting and the cup was disposable when I was done.

I had a follow-up appointment and evaluation at the endodontist today, so I did not work in the bus this morning other than to take a few pictures of the old dinette corner, where I removed the mirrors yesterday, and the area under the bed, which I also worked on yesterday.

After morning coffee and breakfast I went to my office to work at my computer.  I off-loaded the pictures I just took, selected a few, processed them, and copied them to the folder for this blog.  I then downloaded and installed Adobe FlashPlayer in order to view the Gilbreath Upholstery Service website.  The download also installed a McAfee virus checker that I did not ask for or want and I don’t recall being given an option to opt-out.  I really dislike it when programs do things like that.  In fact, I think it should be illegal and companies who do it should be subject to heavy fines.  I tried to download the PDF catalog but Adobe Reader said it had an unrecoverable error.  Arrrgh!  I e-mailed them to request one that worked.  We will see if that results in anything.

I was responding to a few e-mails when Butch called.  He was trying to figure out the best way to connect up the eight L-16 6 VDC batteries he bought in Quartzsite to make a 24 VDC battery bank with a 12 VDC center tap.  Working only from verbal descriptions we finally ended up with the same diagram of a series-parallel interconnection scheme with equal electrical path lengths through all of the batteries.  The difference between series-parallel and parallel-series is not important when the batteries are operating correctly but each connection scheme is vulnerable to a different battery failure mode.  I happen to prefer the series-parallel scheme as I think it results in better battery charging, but that’s an often debated subject.  The equal path lengths through the batteries, however, is something that is worth accomplishing if at all possible.

By the time we were done talking I needed to leave for my endodontist appointment.  Dr. McWatters said the root canal they did on my upper right rear (tooth #4) last September looked good.  They tested the upper rear teeth on my left side but did not find any indication of a problem.  That would normally be good news, except that I had an intermittent problem in that area all winter so I know something is wrong and will eventually require attention, most likely when it is least convenient for me (middle of the night on a weekend).  But for now there is nothing more to do.

hen I got home I had a few pretzels and hummus and some red grapes and then got back to work at my desk.  I copied my blog post drafts for the 17th through the 26th from e-mails to Word and started editing them.  I took a break to have some tea and write while Linda cooked dinner.  She grilled two veggie burgers along with the rest of the asparagus we bought on Sunday and served the potato salad she made earlier in the day.  Most of the asparagus was mushy except for the tips which I attributed to the plants not the cook.  These were very large purple stalks, not the usual somewhat thinner green ones so maybe that had something to do with it.

After dinner I returned to my desk and finished editing all of my blog posts for May 10 through 26.  Somewhere in the middle of that work Phil Jarrell returned my phone call from yesterday.  We agreed that I will call him back after the GLAMARAMA Rally and he will bring his laser level and we will shoot some elevations.  With a little luck and a bit of perseverance we may get a gravel driveway connecting the 3rd (westernmost) culvert to our concrete driveway with a level spot for one or two guest RVs to boondock. We will also get a dozen tree stumps removed, get a French drain installed to remove water from the western end of the property, and get a hole dug for a ham radio tower foundation.  That last bit of digging will also require a rebar cage, hinged tower base, and coordination with a supplier that can pump concrete immediately after the hole is dug.

When I was done editing my blog posts I logged into our WordPress site, deleted 181 spam comments, and installed an update for our Fast Secure Contact Form plugin.  I started creating the post for May 10 but half way through the Chrome browser became non-responsive indicating that it might be out of memory.  That seemed unlikely, but I closed all of the program’s I had open, shut down my computer, and restarted it.  When I logged back in nothing was responding so I sat and waited until I was eventually able to do things.  The first thing I did was uninstall the McAfee Security Scan app that got installed along with the Adobe FlashPlayer earlier today.  I then proceeded to download three updates for Windows and MS Office, or tried to.

The three updates were only 27 MB total, but after 35 minutes they were only 53% done.  My guess was that the data rate on our AT&T “High Speed Internet” (DSL) connection had slowed to a barely usable trickle, perhaps because of all the rain we had the last few days, but whatever the cause it was almost midnight so I left it to finish at its own pace and went to bed.  I worked on this post and played a few games by which time it 12:45 AM so I got up, put on my robe, and went back to my office.  The download had finished and two of the three updates had installed.  The third one reported an error but Windows Update needed the computer to be restarted to finish the installation so that’s what I did.

Windows updates normally install during shutdown and finish installing on startup and that is precisely what happened this time as well.  I let the system startup completely (until the hard drive light was not on) and then downloaded, installed, and ran the latest version of CCleaner.  It downloaded much faster so maybe it was the Microsoft update server that was slow, or perhaps the McAfee app was causing the problem.

We had rain yesterday and more rain today, including some thunder.  The lights flickered a few times both days but the generator never came on.  If out Internet performance is still sluggish in the morning I will reset the AT&T gateway and see if that helps.  I also noticed that our home refrigerator was suddenly showing 45 degrees F instead of 40.  Linda had loaded it up with food yesterday, and added the potato salad today, but the temperature should not have changed by that much and should have returned to the 40 degree set point within a few hours.  Even adjusting the thermostat down did not rectify the problem over the course of the day so perhaps something else has changed, such as a blocked vent.  I will have to check for that tomorrow.  Hopefully the power blips did not blip some control circuit.  I think I will pull the fridge away from the wall and cycle the power.  We can vacuum off the back while it is out.  If it still won’t hold the temperature we want Linda might get a new refrigerator for the house sooner than expected, although a call to AAA Appliance Service Network in Howell might a more prudent first response.

2014/09/22 (M) Hot Water

Linda was up early to beat the morning traffic heading into Detroit from our part of S. E. Michigan.  On days when she has to go to the bakery she likes to get up and go and does not have breakfast at home.  Not that she doesn’t get something to eat; she’s spending the day working at a bakery after all.

I tend to stay up later at night than she does, so I also tend not to spring out of bed at oh-dark-thirty unless I have someplace I have to be at daybreak.  My job is to hear the alarms (we set several) and make sure Linda wakes up.  I am then free to pursue the rest of my day on my own timeline.  Today, however, I wanted to make sure I was up and dressed not later than 8 AM as there was a possibility that TOMTEK would be here to convert the hot-water base-board heating system boiler from propane to natural gas and/or that D. R. Electric Appliance would deliver and install our new natural gas kitchen range.  I did not, however, know if/when either of those things would happen so I was “stuck” at the house all day either waiting for phone calls.

I was dealing with e-mail when Tom called at 9:15 AM to let me know they had the part for our boiler and that he could be at our house around 10 AM if that was OK.   “Absolutely!”  I decided to bleed out whatever propane might be left in the 1/2″ line that feeds the kitchen and outdoor grill connector.  The pipe into the house was open to the outside for a while so I did not know how much propane, if any, even remained in the line.  I opened the shutoff valve in the laundry room for that line and then opened the outside valve for the gas grill.  Nothing.

It turns out that the quick-disconnect is a self-sealing device.  When the mating part is not plugged in, no gas can get out.  I should have known that, and it’s obvious that it should work that way, but I hadn’t really thought about it until that moment.  I closed the outside valve and then closed the shutoff valve in the basement and figured I (or the installer) would deal with that branch of the piping when the new range shows up.  I did not concern myself with the pipe to the furnace, which has its own shutoff valve, as I figured Tom would bleed the line before he started the unit.

Tom arrived about 10:20 AM.  He had the right part and he knew how to replace it.  The part (an orifice plate) was just a thin piece of metal, probably aluminum, with a hole about the size of a quarter in the center of it (the orifice) and several other holes for screws to pass through or other purposes.  I’m always trying to understand our technology and he let me observe and ask questions while he worked.  Tom disconnected a small vacuum hose, removed three or four screws, lowered the blower housing, slid the old propane orifice plate out, slid the new natural gas orifice plate in, reattached the blower housing, and our boiler was converted to natural gas.  Just like that.

Once he had the new natural gas orifice plate installed and everything reassembled he put gas to the furnace and turned on the electrical power.  It took a few seconds to purge the air and residual propane from the gas pipe but the burner lit and stayed lit on the first try.  He checked for gas leaks as it warmed up.  (He used an electronic sniffer rather than soapy water.)  He did not find any gas leaks but I noticed some condensation dripping from the flue pipe onto the top of the unit.  He shut the furnace off and let it cool down enough to handle the flue pipe and found that a joint between two sections was leaking.  He pulled it apart, applied a sealant, and put it back together nice and tight.  He turned the furnace on again and the leak did not reappear.  We did notice, however, that there was a similar leak at the next joint downstream.  I moved a spare macerator pump from under that joint and put a bucket there to catch any drips, although stains on the underside of the flue pipe indicated that this leak had existed for a while and that condensation leaking at that point had run back downhill towards the boiler along the underside of the pipe.  We may need to eventually have all of the joints resealed all the way to the outside.

I turned all of the thermostats on and set the temperatures a few degrees above ambient so they would call for heat and Tom monitored the temperature and pressure of the coolant as the unit heated up.  At 140 degrees F the pressure was between 35 and 40 PSI.  Tom said it should be closer to 20 PSI at that temperature, so he drained some of the coolant out of the system into a bucket.  As water trickled into the bucket the pressure dropped accordingly. The system eventually heated up to just under 180 degrees F, which is where it normally operates, and the pressure stayed below 25 PSI.  He put the covers back on the unit and gathered up his tools while I wrote a check and paid him for the service call. After he left I took a nice hot shower, the first one since last Wednesday morning.  ;-0

While I was doing chores around the house I got a call from Marilyn in the AT&T billing department.  She called to let me know that they were crediting our bill to compensate for the lack of usable service in August.  I got a call later from Shelley from the Office of the President (of AT&T) following up on our MPSC complaint.  I told her that the POTS and DSL had been working just fine since Bill was here to repair our service.  She had requested the billing credit and said she would report back to the commission that everything was repaired to our satisfaction.  I told her I would confirm that if contacted by the MPSC.

Today was shaping up to be a very good day.  It was sunny outside with light winds, puffy clouds, and afternoon high temperatures in the low 60’s; a little brisk, perhaps, but cheerful and very refreshing.  Earlier in the day I noticed the road grader going up and down our street smoothing out the bumps and filling in the holes.  With a forecast of no rain and high temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70’s for the next week the road should be decent to drive on for a while.

Some of the difficulty we have had this summer getting contractors to show up reminded me of a joke that Steven Wright told years ago on an HBO comedy show.  It went something like this:  “I walked up to the deli entrance and the sign said ‘Open 24 Hours’ so I tried the door but it was locked.  While I was standing there the owner walked up and unlocked the door.  I said to him ‘Your sign says ‘Open 24 Hours’.’  He just looked at me and said ‘We are, but not in a row’.”

I’m starting to wonder if the kitchen range is going to turn out to be another example of “tell the customer whatever you think they need to hear to get them to make the purchase.”  The difference in this case is that we have not given D. R. Electric Appliance a deposit or a credit card number, so if delivery is delayed much longer we can walk away from the deal with nothing to lose except time.  We probably won’t, as that would just further delay getting a new NG range, but it’s nice to know that we at least have that option if this drags on any longer.  We were told “three days” and based our decision to order from them in part on that information.

With respect to the conversion or our generator from propane to natural gas, our new NG fireplace logs, and our new NG outdoor grill, our hands are basically tied.  We either have parts on order, for which we have already paid, don’t have a choice of contractor, or have made the choice not to look for another contractor as that would simply involve more delay and the uncertainty of working with someone we have not worked with before.  Still, it’s a little frustrating that we can’t get this stuff taken care of.  The real issue for me is that I need to take our bus to Butch and Fonda’s place to work on it, and I cannot do that until all of the natural gas related work is done.  The other issue is that we do not want to contact Consumer’s Energy (natural gas) and AmeriGas (propane) until all of our gas appliances are switched over.  Consumer’s Energy “requires” us to accomplish this within 30 days of hanging the meter, which occurred one week ago today, so we do not have an unlimited amount of time to get this stuff taken care of.

Interestingly, I learned at breakfast on Saturday that two of our ham radio club members had contacted Bratcher Electric based on my recommendation.  Mike had already been to one of their houses, quoted them a whole house generator installation, gotten a signed contract and a deposit, and given them an installation date.  The other guy had a scheduled appointment for Mike to come out and give him a quote.  Mike looked at our job five weeks ago and I don’t have a price or a service date scheduled yet.  What’s up with that?!  I did not want to spoil today’s winning streak, however, so I chose not to make follow up phone calls today.  Tomorrow morning, however…

We were both tired and turned in early to watch episode 2 of Ken Burns “The Roosevelts: An Intimate Portrait.”  I was putting the finishing touches on this post afterwards and noted the occurrence of the autumnal equinox at 10:39 PM EDT.

 

2014/07/05 (S) Re-Search

Contractors who do outside work, such as excavators, builders, and landscapers are at the mercy of the weather, so they work when they can, and when they can work, they often put in long hours.  For those of us who made our living doing “white collar” work for companies with paid holidays, the 4th of July often meant a 3- or 4-day weekend.  For other kinds of workers, the 4th of July is a day off; one day, and for yet others (think retail) it is just another workday.  It doesn’t matter that it fell on a Friday this year.  The landscapers couldn’t work on Thursday because of the overnight rain.  No work means no pay.  Saturday July 5th, however, was forecast to be great weather for working outside, and with sunny skies and no rain since Thursday, our job site had dried out sufficiently to allow people and machines to work.  Alas, the holiday spirit was with them and they did not show up first thing this morning like I thought they might.

Since grand-daughter Madeline spent her second night in a row with us last night she was still here this morning.  Consequently we did not go to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon like we usually do on Saturday morning.  Madeline woke up hungry and Grandma Linda had her bottle warmed up and ready to go.  She had also prepped all of the ingredients for her yummy vegan blueberry pancakes.  Madeline had a little banana and some fresh blueberries while grandma cooked the pancakes and I made the coffee.  We all enjoyed our breakfast.

Madeline Eloise sitting on our fake rock in our front yard (it's the cover for our well).

Madeline Eloise sitting on our fake rock in our front yard (it’s the cover for our well).

After breakfast we played and read and went outside to walk around in the driveway.  Our son called and we figured out who was going to travel where and when to get Madeline back home.  He was working on a project to rebuild their front porch/steps and was involved in painting wood pieces prior to assembling them, so we agreed to drive Madeline to their house in Ann Arbor in time for a light lunch before her usual nap time.  That also allowed us to stop at the Whole Foods market near their house on our way out of town.  A Whole Foods market is the only thing we do not have in the Brighton/Howell/Hartland area that we truly miss.  We would shop there several times a week if we had one nearby.

I managed to sneak away to the basement occasionally to do a load of laundry and install 126 updates on our Linux computer.  The updates involved file downloads totaling just over of 310+ MB so I started the process and let it run.  We get an effective download speed from our AT&T High Speed Internet (HSI) DSL connection of just over 1 Mb/sec or 64 Mb/min.  That is roughly 8 MB/min.  At that speed, 320 MB takes about 40 minutes to transfer, assuming AT&T doesn’t detect the amount of data being transferred and “throttle” (slow down) the speed.  Cell phone companies are known to do this but it is less clear whether AT&T does that sort of thing with their landline services.

We got back to the house at 2:15 PM.  Linda developed a headache while we were out, so she took some meds, put the groceries away, and laid down to rest.  There was no sign of the landscapers and no phone call, so there was no chance at that point that they would show up today.  That was OK with us; it is a holiday weekend and it was their idea to come work today, not ours; I just said it was OK if that’s what they wanted to do.  Apparently they didn’t.  The one thing I was looking forward to was having Steve show me how to operate the Kobelco sk35sr-3 excavator and then practicing operating it by removing concrete blocks, bricks, downed trees, and other detritus from the woods by the road southwest of our house.  Just behind these woods is where they are piling all of the construction debris anyway, so I would be able to position the excavator to allow me to grab most of the trash out of the woods and then swing it over and deposit it on the pile.  Maybe Monday?

Yesterday I posted a question to the WordPress.org support forum for the Jetpack plug-in and I got a reply a couple of hours later that directly answered my question.  I wanted to install/activate the Jetpack on more than one self-hosted website and needed to know if I could use a single WordPress.com account or if I needed a separate account for each site?  I was glad to find out that I only needed the one account that I already have.  The Jetpack plug-in is massive overkill for what I need to accomplish immediately, but some of the reviews suggested that it is so comprehensive it may be the last plug-in I ever have to install.  That is unlikely for a number of reasons, and a bit contrary to the open source nature of WordPress and the international community of developers that support it, but the plug-in does have 33 different “components.”  For most of those features there are other plug-ins available–in some cases lots of them—but this provides everything in a neat package with its own special place on the admin panel menu.

Linda was feeling better after a long, much-needed nap but did not feel like cooking.  She picked up ingredients at Whole Foods today to make mock beef stroganoff but decided to make it tomorrow.  Our go-to for no-prep meals are the various frozen products from Amy’s.  We try to always have a few in the freezer for occasions when Linda does not have the time or interest to prepare a meal from scratch.  Tonight we had the lasagna.  Linda wanted some fresh greens with dinner but did not feel like making a salad so she used a bed of mixed greens as a base for the lasagna.  If that sounds a bit strange, all I can say is that it was very nice for both taste and texture.

I spent more time this evening investigating the WordPress Jetpack plug-in, the result of which was that I deferred installing and activating it.  The attraction of this plug-in is that the Carousel feature works with the existing WP Gallery shortcode(s).  That means it works retroactively with every page and post containing a WP Gallery and that I would continue to create galleries they way I always have using the native WP Gallery functionality.  That sounds like exactly what I need, except that on further investigation I started seeing comments about banner ads, and a feature that allows website/blog visitors to comment on individual images with no easy way to disable it.  The workaround involves custom CSS code.  Ugh.

I kept looking and found a plug-in where the “author” had simply “forked” (extracted) the code for the Carousel function from the Jetpack plug-in and offered it as a separate plug-in.  Ignoring whether that was even ethical, some of the reviews suggested that it did not work correctly and that support issues were not being resolved.  I need something more reliable and better supported so I kept looking and found a very extensive plug-in that was free and had been downloaded over 1,000,000 times!  Now that has to be a great plug-in, right?  Maybe; maybe not.  The reviews were very mixed and many seemed to complain about the constant “tinkering” the author does with the plug-in, issuing updates every 3 – 4 days.

If I was willing to spend money for a plug-in my options would be greatly expanded, but I have looked at those as well and they all have mixed reviews.  The leading contender is the NextGEN Gallery plug-in, but the biggest downside with all of these gallery plug-ins is that they do not work with the native WP Gallery shortcodes which, in turn, would require me to rebuild existing galleries from within the plug-in. The ones that I find the most annoying are the ones with a free version that turns out to just be a teaser; the features I need are always in the “pro” or “premium” version.  An episode of Doc Martin gave me a needed and entertaining break from my research, which is appropriate in this situation as I have searched for a good image display plug-in before and now I am searching for one again.

 

2013_09_14 (Sat) Ready, Set, No Go

We were up early Saturday morning to attend the standing breakfast gathering of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club at the Senate Coney Island in South Lyon.  I was discussing our cell phone signal situation with Scott, AC8IL, and he suggested I try a passive booster system before putting money into an active repeater.  The idea behind the passive booster system is to connect two antennas (of the same characteristic impedance) together with a co-axial cable (of the same characteristic impedance).  One antenna goes outside and the other goes inside.  The inside antenna will generally be omnidirectional, since you could be anywhere in the house/building with your phone, but the outside antenna will likely be directional since it can be pointed at the most favorable cell tower.  Highly directional antennas have “gain” compared to omnidirectional antennas, which is to say, they provide a strong signal at their co-ax connector than an omnidirectional antenna placed in the same location.  This signal will be transmitted down the matched co-ax cable to the other antenna where it will tend to radiate back into space.  It works in the other direction as well.  The nice thing about this potential solution is that if I purchase antennas and coax cables that will also work with an active booster (repeater) then I only have to buy the active booster if the antennas alone are not adequate.

When we got home we continued working on preparations for our trip and the open house by hanging the last piece of wall art, at least for now.  When going to rallies Linda often prepares dinner meals ahead of time and freezes them.  This simplifies our evening meals and leaves open the possibility of going out to dinner, which RVers do a lot (at least at rallies).  Between food, clothes, toiletries, and miscellaneous other things there was a lot of “stuff” to put on board even for a short outing.  I helped pull stuff together and get it on board while attending to the updating of our Rand McNally RVND7710 GPS unit.  The map update said it would take 14+ hours to download.  It ran for about 8 hours and was indicating that it had 1 hour and 29 minutes left to go when it hung up and quit downloading.  🙁

Our AT&T High Speed Internet / Digital Subscriber Line (HSI/DSL) service is a bad joke when it comes to speed and may be at the point where I need to file a service request/complaint.  It’s only real benefit is the 150 Gb monthly data allowance.  But the service seems to be so slow that I’m not sure I could transfer 150 Gb of data in a month if uploaded and downloaded 24/7.

[A note about RV “stuff”:  The truth is that full-time RVers also have “stuff”, but it is limited by their available space and does get loaded and unloaded before and after each “trip”.  (Full-timers don’t go on trips; they just move they home around the country.)  They also have “spring cleaning”, although it can occur at any time of the year.  For many this is an annual ritual of completely emptying the RV, examining all of the “stuff”, deciding what not to put back, and re-configuring the storage of the rest.]