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Invisible Fence Battery Hack

Administrator — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 23:07:05 +0000

Well my Invisible Fence Battery Subscription has run out, and I am going to need new batteries soon. While I can say that I am very happy with the Invisible Fence and the installation, however the batteries cost a fortune. For 1 year renewal battery plan, where Invisible fence ships you their batteries, the cost is $49 for 4 batteries. You do the math, you can go about 4 months before having to replace the batteries but they do last about 3 months. I found some instructions on taking the battery apart since the only thing unique about the battery is the housing. About the only thing you have to do is remove the black ring that is at the two prong (contact) end. You can use a small jewelers screwdriver or use a xacto knife. I used a stanley knife and stuck the tip of the blade in between the black ring and the grey housing. Be careful because the ring can fall off and is fragile. The battery is a Duracell 3V DL1/3N, which you can probably get at radio shack. Be sure to place the + end on the inside of the housing and the—(negative) end on the end where the two prongs are. I will post price and pics later.

Life is Good

Administrator — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 04:40:30 +0000

First I would like to say that life is good, and I am happy with everything in my life right now. Today nothing extremely special happened. Just an ordinary day working at Market Motors. Detail some cars here, pick up some cars there, and talk to some customers everywhere. Devin came and visited us at the lot on his fancy new motorcycle that Katy and I sold him. He bought Katy’s old motorcycle and is pretty excited about it. I got home and Katy was taking a nap with Mozart. I took a ride on my bike down “River Road” ( CR 8 ) a couple times since I had time before Mike was going to show up. I kinda wished Brian was with me to enjoy the ride. I took it pretty quick feeling considering I’ve only had this bike for a couple weeks. I felt pretty confident in the speed that I took the corners. The suspension felt incredible compared to my SV. The suspension on my RC is fully adjustable Showa which came stock with the bike. I got home and Mike showed up to help me on my drywall. He’s awesome at cutting out the receps and cutting pieces to fit. He has helped me on a lot of the drywall and I feel like I owe him more than I could ever repay him. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have any of this done except for the part Brian helped me on. Katy cooked us some Pizza which Mike turned down because he already ate, and after he left Katy and I cleaned up. I think Sunday I am going to go to his house and help him out. I feel like I’m really indebted to him. Thank you again MIKE!!

Renovation

Administrator — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 04:21:49 +0000

So tonight is our third night we have worked on our kitchen and dining room. This little project of tearing up our carpet and laying down new flooring has turned into a huge renovation project. Pretty much Katy and I were sick of the half assed work that the previous owners did to the house and decided we were going to do it right. For example, when the previous owners were sick of the flooring, they just put down new flooring on top of the old. WTF!! Are you freaking retarded! Another thing they did that pisses us off is when they got sick of the drywall, they nailed wood paneling over top of the drywall. We also experienced this with the roof last summer. But that is another story altogether. It seems as if the previous owners chose the cheap way out whenever they decided to do something. This is something that I frown upon. I figure if you are going to do something, you might as well do it right. Especially if it’s with your own home that you will live in for a while.

Today Brian, David, Katy and I went to the dump and unloaded the two S-10s at the dump which put us back about $20 for both of them. Brian, and Craig worked on the kitchen tearing the wall coverings out. Last night we all tore the wall covers from the dining room area as well as the blow-in insulation that were on the outside walls. Blow-in insulation is about the dirtiest thing you can inhale, and it seems to not take much agitation to send it airborne. Again, thank you for everything guys.

Good Friends

Administrator — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 04:29:20 +0000

Today I made the decision that I was going to tear up the carpet in my kitchen/dining room area. Well, after dropping Katy off at work I decided to stop by David’s house and see what he was up to. He wanted to help and so we went to Brian’s house and got him to help us. We started ripping up the floor which was carpet that had been glued to tile and just ended up ripping up the tile which was on top of 2 other floors that had been put down. The previous owners of the house had done things the cheap and lazy way and now Katy and I were paying for it. After an hour or so we decided to call up Craig and he showed up to help pretty quickly. We ended up getting all of the flooring ripped up in the kitchen and dining room. The only thing left to do is too pull up all the nails and do some clean up. Katy and I will then lay down some wood laminate flooring and new trim. Katy and I are really lucky to have good friends around that are willing to help. We would like to say thank you to Brian, David, and Craig. We are very lucky to have kind and loving friends around. We love you guys.

Bumping Locks

Administrator — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 16:49:18 +0000

This is a relatively new way to bypass a lock which involves using a key that has been cut to it’s deepest setting and has a modified tip and shoulder so that the key can be inserted deeper into the lock with a little whack which drives the pines vertically. The crazy thing is it only takes seconds to open the lock if you have a bump key. And obtaining a bump key is easy, just obtain a blank key that fits the lock and get a locksmith to cut the key or cut the key yourself with a file. Supposedly this works on 90% of locks and will not leave a trace of evidence. This poses a huge risk for homeowners since homeowners and renters insurance will not cover losses if there is no evidence of a break in. The insurance companies will assume you left your door unlocked. For more information check out these videos and PDFs.

Bumping Explained AVI 50.11Mb

Bumping Shown AVI 13.48Mb

Bumping PDF 544kb

More Bumping PDF 3.14Mb

Bump Key Presentation PDF 607kb

Relocation of Washer and Dryer

Administrator — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 06:40:11 +0000

As many of you already know, I purchased a home back in June of this year. The person that lived here was old and had the washer and dryer on the first floor because walking up and down the stairs to the basement was not feasable for her age. The washer and dryer was installed in the kitchen/dining room and was very awkward. So about a month ago I called up my dad and he came over to help me move the two appliances to the basement. He then helped me run the 220 that was needed to power the dryer and the 110 to power the washer. I then ran the water to the washer with copper pipes. This is where I taught myself how to solder copper pipes. The first try turned out to be my practice session. I then had to heat the pipes back up to pull them apart and I ran new ones which turned out to not leak and was much easier to do given the practice that I already had. Lets just say the two tips I learned were: Use lots of flux and Clean the pipe ends thoroughly.

I bought a kit from Lowes which had the propane torch, solder, and flux. Make sure you don’t rely on the flux and solder given in a kit. This was my first mistake and I had to make another trip to buy more solder and flux. Also, the flux that came in the kit was not very good and well, it was pretty much worthless. After running the pipes I had to figure out how to drain the washer. It turned out the drain that was in the floor did not actually drain anywhere. The pipe just ran straight into the ground and I could not just run the drain from the washer into the floor drain. The next step was to figure out how to pump the water up and into a drain. This has proven to be a challenge and once again I had to call my dad up to help me put a sump pump in. I smashed out the existing drain and made a hole large enough to place a sump pump tub in the floor of my basement. I then cemented the tub into the floor and put the lip of the tub lower than the floor so that I could taper the cement around the tub which will help any water that may be on the floor to drain in to the tub. Next I have to run the pipes up to the drain from the pedestal sump pump.
Thank You For the help Dad!

Aqua’ Lectric Heat

Administrator — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 07:51:14 +0000

As many of you already know, I purchased a home at the end of June this year. I’m not sure if this is a good thing yet or not, but the home has aqua electric baseboard heat. Not only is it electric heat, but it’s Aqua Electric Heat. With the rise of gas prices this past year I am almost glad it’s electric heat. And it’s also nice to just pay one electric bill rather than pay an electric and gas bill.
Anyway I just received a $140 electric bill this month and I was used to having $50 bills. This is due to a fault in the thermostat not kicking off the heat in the living room. Instead the thermostat will be off but the heat will stay on for 3 days straight and then finally kick off. Well I felt that I should take a look at it tonight unless I want a 2 or 3 hundred dollar bill next month. I opened up the cover on the baseboard in the living room and started prodding around with my voltage meter. Unfortunately the device that powers both of the 220 volt baseboards in the living room is in the basement somewhere in the ceiling. So that means I get to fix something else this weekend along with trying to finish three school projects I have to get done by the end of next week. On top of that I’m not even sure what I’m looking for to fix the problem. I thought about hooking a switch up to power the baseboards on and off, but after pondering that I felt I should fix right the first time. I have tried to look up some information on this brand of baseboard heat and found listing for a business called Aqua’ Lectric in Florida on a Tax Collector list for last year.

AQUA’LECTRIC INC
NOSKA GLENN A
1972 BONNEVILLE DR
ORLANDO FL 32826

Who knows if it’s the same company or not. The address does not match the label that is inside the cover on the baseboards, so I highly doubt it’s the same company.

Our Nifty Home

Administrator — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:36:30 +0000

Here are some pictures of the ongoing process of remodeling our home.

Here is a picture of of the front of our house shortly after we had decided to Reface it. In the picture we have already removed the ugly front porch and green fiber glass awning that went with it. Yes the awning was GREEN. The front porch was concrete which we used a sledge hammer to smash up and take to the dump. We also removed the ugly bushes that were in front as well.

Here is the back of the house. This was taken the same day as the photo of us in front of the house. We have already had the stump removed and milled down which was in front of the garage door on the left in the photo. The brown spots in the grass are where we have removed bushes that were overgrown and no longer attractive.

This photo was taken the weekend that most of the work was done. I cant thank my friends enough for the help they gave Katy and I on our house this weekend. We started on Saturday after Katy and I got of work. We began on the front of the house since the wrap around porch was to be started Monday. Our contractor/friend of the family did not think we could rip all the siding off of the house before Monday.We were about to prove him wrong.

Here is Matt working on the West Side of the house, showing three different sidings. The dull white is the original siding put on when the house was built in 1940. After this they put on this wierd fiber stuff representing shingles which you cant see because its in between the house and the chimney. The removed the fiber siding before the put on the green cedar shakes and afterwards put on the aluminum siding. If you look at the window between the chimney and the electric meter you can see how sunk in the windows were due to the amount of siding they had on this house.

Here Gavin is whacking our porch with the same sledge we used on my front porch. Above the door you can see the same ugly GREEN awning that I mentioned in the top picture.

We finally get bored of smacking the porch with a sledge and decide we need more excitement. So we get a chain and convince Gavin that we need to use his Jeep. We convince him by giving him a beer and saying Come on Gavin, it will be fun!

Craig is smiling from the destruction of our back porch. Looks like we only got half of it. We get to do it again!!

This is the East side of the house. If you notice the roofline you can see how small the house was at one time. In the large yellow thirty yard dumpster you can see the rear porch stuffed in the back corner. The rear porch was built by the previous owner to aid in his elderly mother in getting in the back door with her walker. You can see in the corner of the house there was a bush. Now all that is left is dirt.

This is Craig and I on the roof on Day Two.