CHIT CHAT in VOLTVILLE

[cindycated]

I know in the past there have been problems with those visa cards for online purchases and using them at gas stations. I'd look into that JoAnn before you go that route. If it works, let us know!

Sandy - beautiful flowers!

I use VISA gift cards for everything, which kinda work the same way. Once you register them, they work just like regular VISA cards. The only problem I've had is that they're limited to US purchases only. I have them in my PayPal for eBay purchases and most of the time international orders go through, but once in awhile you run into an out-of-US vendor that has their account set up funny. It's only happened to me once - a vendor in Canada. For gas, you have to prepay so that you can specify exactly how much you wanna charge. If you do the fill'er up thing and just swipe the card, it will pre-authorize an amount that might be more than your available balance. I do this for the stack of gift cards that get ridiculously low and hard to use - "$4.67 on #4, please."

I go with gift cards instead of refillables because refillables require your Social Security number, and gift cards don't.

 

[SandySu]

Awsum, love productivity and it sounds like you have that.

Lizzie, you and Awsum make quite a team. Our industrious ones.

 

[Konstantine]

ufffffff i did it i did it!!
Converted the transformer from 2x42.5V to 15-0-30V, i can't feel my hand!


Hey Cindy!
Here kity kity Watch Kitty Hates Paparazzi Video | Break.com

 

[awsum140]

Just to blow my own horn, a little, I did a couple of loads of laundry as well, all folded and put away, then set up dinner.

You green folks have got me working too hard. Tomorrow, it's a trip to Home Despot to pick up "a few" plumbing supplies so I can move the water heater to where the solar tank will be going. I've got to drain the water heater to replace the elements which makes that a good time to move it, only have to heat up one tank of water that way. Of course, that means a major re-do of the plumbing that supplies the water heater and the hot water to the house. I'm also going to put it up on eight or twelve inch blocks to make it easier to drain.

Now, I'm in a quandary about whether to buy a tank or build one that will fit a little better. The tank doesn't hold any pressure, other than the water inside it, but I need one in the 200 gallon or larger range. If I build one it'll be square or rectangular while a bought one is round. Every step of this project is turning into a carefully thought through process, and this was supposed to be relatively cheap and quick. Kind of reminds me of the picture of a guy in a tuxedo, standing in a swamp up to his armpits, surrounded by alligators...and he was just there to supervise draining the swamp.

Just to keep thing interesting, I am working on my desktop machine, cleaning up the drive bays, extending some USB wiring for a combo 3.5" floppy/card reader and just generally getting the dust out. I ordered Windows 7 Pro for it, currently XP Pro, and have to make sure I have al my software activation codes handy as well.

 

[SandySu]

Ginkgo leaves.

 

[White Rabbit]

I ordered Windows 7 Pro for it, currently XP Pro, and have to make sure I have al my software activation codes handy as well.

You will like Win 7, I upgraded long ago to Vista and the upgrade to Win 7 went fine, not loosing anything with an upgrade. I configured mine to look just like XP so Mrs. Wabbit would not have difficulty in the transition. I even have some 15 year old software running fine on Win 7 as well as a number of very old games which I love and play sometimes.

 

[awsum140]

I had Windows 7 on this laptop before I made the mistake of wacking it and installing Windows 8. I'm not sure that XP-Pro is upgradable to 7 though, beside, it's a cleaner install to reformat the drive and start with everything fresh. Now I'm looking at NAS to handle backup for all of our machines and want something that runs RAID for redundancy there as well.

 

[Renolizzie]

Wabbit and Awsum - Are you talking with Kon because all that computer stuff sounded like Greek to me.

 

[John Alexander]

I'm gonna have to agree with you on this! I'm in north Jersey and it's the same temp! And how about the Chicago wind we've been getting too? I vote we call Chicago and ask they to take their wind back to the windy city LOL!

North Jersey! I used to work in Hackensack and have friends in Englewood.

 

[awsum140]

I used to work in Lyndhurst and Union City before that.

Hey Konstantine, what the heck are you doing with that transformer?

 

[cindycated]

Just to blow my own horn, a little, I did a couple of loads of laundry as well, all folded and put away, then set up dinner.

You green folks have got me working too hard. Tomorrow, it's a trip to Home Despot to pick up "a few" plumbing supplies so I can move the water heater to where the solar tank will be going. I've got to drain the water heater to replace the elements which makes that a good time to move it, only have to heat up one tank of water that way. Of course, that means a major re-do of the plumbing that supplies the water heater and the hot water to the house. I'm also going to put it up on eight or twelve inch blocks to make it easier to drain.

Now, I'm in a quandary about whether to buy a tank or build one that will fit a little better. The tank doesn't hold any pressure, other than the water inside it, but I need one in the 200 gallon or larger range. If I build one it'll be square or rectangular while a bought one is round. Every step of this project is turning into a carefully thought through process, and this was supposed to be relatively cheap and quick. Kind of reminds me of the picture of a guy in a tuxedo, standing in a swamp up to his armpits, surrounded by alligators...and he was just there to supervise draining the swamp.

Just to keep thing interesting, I am working on my desktop machine, cleaning up the drive bays, extending some USB wiring for a combo 3.5" floppy/card reader and just generally getting the dust out. I ordered Windows 7 Pro for it, currently XP Pro, and have to make sure I have al my software activation codes handy as well.

You wouldn't be working so hard if you didn't take the scenic route all the time.

You're gonna love having the water heater closer to your fixtures. Mine is directly above my bathroom and kitchen (they're back to back) and takes NO TIME to deliver hot water. Wow, 200 gallons? And here I am with my measly little 20 gallon shorty...

Before you go into all that building from scratch, don't forget to look into the rebates and tax credits available if you just went out and bought one...whatever you do, make sure it's well insulated.

 

[awsum140]

The bought tank has six inches of polyiso insulation for an R-30 value. The built one will have 4" of polyiso for about an R-25 plus whatever R value is added by the plywood frame. The advantage of building is that I can set the size bigger if I want it, like 300 or 400 gallons. This is a drainback system that uses the tank as a heat reservoir with a heat exchanger in the tank to get the heat into the water supply. I think it'll have enough capacity to let me heat the basement as well.

While a 30% tax rebate is attractive, the price difference more than makes up for it. A system the size I'm planning would probably cost well over 10K and it should come in around 2K if I build the whole thing, even with a commercial tank.

 

[White Rabbit]

I had Windows 7 on this laptop before I made the mistake of wacking it and installing Windows 8. I'm not sure that XP-Pro is upgradable to 7 though, beside, it's a cleaner install to reformat the drive and start with everything fresh. Now I'm looking at NAS to handle backup for all of our machines and want something that runs RAID for redundancy there as well.

Roland,

I originally looked at a NAS box setup with Raid 1, but the cost of the box and two 1TB Sata Drives was just too expensive. I have dual hard drives in each of my desktops setup with Raid 1, knowing full well that any virus will be duplicated, but I run a full version of Norton's latest software and have had only one virus in many, many years. I purchased a Western Digital USB Drive and clone each of my hard drives to it every 6 months just in case. All of my documents and my wife's documents as well as pictures are duplicated on each computer so far so good.

 

[Tail11]

Welcome to voltville Peanutt!

Awsum, you'll like windows 7. It's kinda like XP, but you will have to get used to some variances. The hot water tank sounds well, awesome!

I recently bought a Samsung Chromebook. It's a nice little machine to have on my lap while I'm watching TV. The touchpad is pretty good. I'm still trying to get the hang of right clicking! What I really like is that I can mouse with either hand and not have to keep resetting the buttons because there are none!

Just got done cutting the front lawn and started to whack away at my fan palm. I didn't plant it, it just started growing and I let it do it's thing. The dang base is over 24" wide and since it's right up against my house with the ability of growing to 50 feet, I've got to take it down. I loaded up my green waste can and my neighbors with just over half of the fans. They are nasty prickly things that hurt if you rub up against them. Hopefully next week I'll have all the fans off and thrown away. I'll have to rent a chainsaw to deal with the base and rest of it. I pray it has an easy root ball to come out.

I just mixed up a batch of Lizzie juice. It doesn't taste quite like my first batch. I haven't a clue what I did on that, as I didn't write the recipe down. I think I goofed and put all the tobacco flavors in it. This batch is VA fire cured with 1% of Cowboy added. It's humming away in the ultrasonic cleaner.

I have a four day weekend starting tonight! Yea me! Going to try to get some stuff done around the house and take Whisper to another mountain top called Mt Diablo. I've never been to the top. It's going to be up in the 70's here this weekend so it'll be nice riding weather!

 

[1st Officer]

The bought tank has six inches of polyiso insulation for an R-30 value. The built one will have 4" of polyiso for about an R-25 plus whatever R value is added by the plywood frame. The advantage of building is that I can set the size bigger if I want it, like 300 or 400 gallons. This is a drainback system that uses the tank as a heat reservoir with a heat exchanger in the tank to get the heat into the water supply. I think it'll have enough capacity to let me heat the basement as well.

While a 30% tax rebate is attractive, the price difference more than makes up for it. A system the size I'm planning would probably cost well over 10K and it should come in around 2K if I build the whole thing, even with a commercial tank.

They didn't kick you out of here yet? I took off before they had the chance...

 

[StrangeShay]

Roland,

I originally looked at a NAS box setup with Raid 1, but the cost of the box and two 1TB Sata Drives was just too expensive. I have dual hard drives in each of my desktops setup with Raid 1, knowing full well that any virus will be duplicated, but I run a full version of Norton's latest software and have had only one virus in many, many years. I purchased a Western Digital USB Drive and clone each of my hard drives to it every 6 months just in case. All of my documents and my wife's documents as well as pictures are duplicated on each computer so far so good.

As someone with 2 NAS boxes and 3 External Raid boxes connected to various computers in my house (it's all work related, not a gadget obsession, really!) you might want to check out a VANTEC NexStar HX4 NST-640SU3-BK, you can get them for around $100 and using some free software you can make it a true Hardware RAID. I have one running via ESATA and it's at least as fast as my NAS boxes.

 

[JoAnnW]

They didn't kick you out of here yet? I took off before they had the chance...

Officer!!! It's soooo good to see you again! Glad you came back because you have been missed.

 

[Uncle]

They didn't kick you out of here yet? I took off before they had the chance...

Officer!!! It's soooo good to see you again! Glad you came back because you have been missed.

DITTO ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ What "JoAnnwW" said . . .

Very NIce - to see "You" post in Voltville again . . .

 

[Renolizzie]

They didn't kick you out of here yet? I took off before they had the chance...

First Officer!!!! Yeah!!!!!! You are back!

 

[CatLady007]

Welcome back, Officer! I wondered how you were doing.