Hard drive died!

So the hard drive in our family computer stopped working, bios screen stuck.  :(

I ordered a replacement SSD from best buy and picked it up on my way home.  It is twice the size of the old one.

I wanted to try a cloning tool I got, so I put in the HD from our other computer and cloned it to the new drive.  It was done in about 15 minutes.

Once I installed the new SSD, the computer came right up.  Awesome.

I was able to go into drive manager and extend the drive so it used the full size.  Looks like I could provide another service to my neighbors :)

Leaking Humidifier

My wife asked me to turn on the humidifier a couple weeks ago because it was getting dry in the house.  When I turned it on though, I noticed it was leaking water.  So I turned it back off and just got around to it yesterday.

After checking that the drain line and the pad looked fine, I noticed that the rubber tube that carries the water from the solenoid to the top of the filter pad wasn't quite seated to the bottom of the nipple.

I turned it back on and noticed that when it first starts, the rubber tube slips up a bit.  I figure that the calcium in our water is probably building up in the tube causing a little more pressure when it starts up.  So I just put a zip tie on it and will monitor it going forward.  At some point I will need to soak it in CLR :)

VHS to Digital

I posted in Next Door that I was willing to convert VHS tapes into digital.  It kind of blew up and now I am in contact with quite a few people who might be willing to hire me for that :)

I am just using a $10 usb adapter to do the conversion, which is pretty simple.  But people are busy I suppose.  Also the library will help people out with doing it as well.

CLR to the rescue

The faucets in the kids bathroom were/are looking pretty dingy.  We have hard water and the calcium builds up on things.  We try to clean then off, but over time it takes it toll.

We bought some new faucets today, to motivate me to see if I could clean the old ones off by removing them and soaking them in CLR.  The results are pretty good.  I think we can get another 10 years out of them :)

They are leaking a little they are turned on, so I contacted Delta to see if they will send me some springs and seats to redo them.  Otherwise I will order some.

Before, this is the other sink which wasn't quite as bad.  I will get to this one sometime in the future.  We could probably do the faucets in our bathroom as well, so I will get a bigger bucket.

Here is the faucet after soaking and some elbow grease.  It isn't perfect, but like I said it passed the bosses test.

Reload the garage

We have been burning quite a bit this winter so far, and our wood pile in the garage was depleted.  We had bad weather today so I worked from home and I was able to reload.

There is nothing quite like a wood fire.  It is a lot of work to cut and split the wood, then move it around.  But it has definitely resulted in smaller heating bills and the ambiance can't be beaten.

Easy Kitchen Composting

We have been composting in our kitchen for probably 3 years now.  It is really amazing to see how all the stuff that would normally go in the trash, just kind of disappears and turns into amazing compost!  In the summer it is crazy how fast the pile goes down.

We just keep a Rubbermaid container next to the sink and throw anything compostable into it, then I get the honor of taking it out to the compost bin in the back yard.  Super easy and I get to feel a bit better about our waste!

Winter Prep

Winter is coming fast, so one has to get water out of systems.  This is the place in our basement where we turn off the water to the garage faucet.  I have to turn them off then unscrew a screw to have them drain out.  You also have to open the values in the garage otherwise a vacuum forms and water doesn't come out.

I also like to drain some water out of the water heater at this time of year to clean out any mineral build up.  I generally don't get much, which surprises me since we have hard water.  I can only imagine what the inside of the tank looks like...

This time though I loosened the nut and the faucet started dripping.  Luckily it was a simple matter to tighten it up again.

I also ran anti-freeze through the yard sprayer tonight, because it would be a bummer to lose that.