Author Archives: David

HVAC

Ginny and I decided to get a new furnace & air conditioner this year … with the price of natural gas going up, we figured it would probably make sense to get a more efficient furnace … and our A/C has always been kind of wimpy.

As I always try to do, I got at least 3 quotes … in this case, four.

Three were for independent HVAC contractors … the remaining one was from Sears Home ImProvement (SHIP).

Three of the quotes were pretty close … one of the independent quotes was about half what the others quoted.

We decided to get a 80% efficient, two stage, variable speed, system by Carrier. We could have gone with the +90% efficient system, but I think the time to recoup the extra cost would take too long. The variable speed aspect was the only iffy bit … we were told by all the contractors that, because our house lacked adequate air returns, the variable speed fan would not be as efficient as it could be (it will still save us money, just not as much).

We ended up going with Sears … mainly because they were also willing to run the duct work necessary to add returns in the three upstairs bedrooms. None of the other contractors offered that. Well, there was a good reason they didn’t offer that.   The estimator from Sears (Ron) said it would cost an additional $2000 for the duct work.

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I’ve got it…

I like this …
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BncNpB6IZ9I” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

It’s a fun political ad … I really like the ending.

iPhone for WordPress

This post is being written with the WordPress app for iPhone.

As expected, it’s pretty awkward to use, but functional.

  • Documentation is non-existent … but that’s coming, according to the announcement post.
  • Decent integration with the camera & photo roll, although there doesn’t appear to be a way to position the pictures.
  • Can’t see a way to do trackbacks or even enter URL’s.
  • It’s not clear if the text is entered in HTML or just plain text.

It’s going to take some getting used to … but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the next ‘killer app’.

photo

FWIW: This post was originally entered on the iPhone, but edited in regular WordPress.

New Credit Card Number

What a pain … Discover card has issued Ginny and I new cards with new account numbers.

A few weeks ago I got an email from Discover indicating that we were getting a new account number …

As part of a recent systems upgrade, you will be issued a new Discover Card with a new account number.

At first I thought it was just another phishing scam … but they had all the relevant information correct (last 4 digits of the card number and my full name).

For the past two weeks my daily Quicken download was failing on the Discover account … so I guess it’s legit.

Well, today the new cards came and, as promised, a new account number.   Now I get to go through the hassles of changing credit card number with those vendors I have recurring charges with.   What a pain.

This begs the question … why would they need to issue a new account number?   According to another website I found Discover is doing this to “millions” of their customers.   This smells very very fishy.   Another site I found mentioned a “security update”.   Bill Roper ran into the same thing … except he found someone doing fraudulent charges on his old account.

Methinks that Discover had a security breach recently … and aren’t owning up to it.

2.0 iPhones Upgraded to 2.0

Ok, I got both iPhones upgraded to the 2.0 version of the iPhone OS.

Initially, I had some trepidation about upgrading a day early … and my feeling seemed to be valid when a co-worker tried to upgrade his phone and had a bunch of problems.   He kept getting an “Unknown error (6)” message.   I don’t know if he actually got his upgraded.

Regardless, I decided to throw caution to the wind and upgrade my phone anyways.   Luckily, it worked without a single hitch.

When I got home from work, I proceeded to upgrade Ginny’s phone.   This, of course, is where I ran into problems.

I started the upgrade process by first upgrading her iTunes to 7.7.   That worked without any problems.   Then I proceeded to upgrade her phone.

Initially it was going OK … then I got an “Unknown error (10)” message.   Figuring that I would just restore the phone to it’s previous OS version, I tried the restore option … but when I did this   I got an “Unknow error (20)” message.   Tried a few more times and got the same message.   This is not good.

I Googled around a bit and found a thread in the Apple support forum that said that, if I pressed Option (shift in Windows context) and clicked the restore button, I could ‘Recover’ to the 2.0 firmware.   Luckily this worked.

About 20 minutes later I had Ginny’s iPhone working fine.

Five minutes after that, I we were both playing with the “Phone Saber” application.

iPhone 2.0

Well, I jumped the gun a bit and installed the iPhone 2.0 update.

Overall, I’m not super impressed … the incremental functionality improvements are rather limited.

Some of the applications look cool, but I’ve only played with a few of them.

What I’m really disappointed in is the lack of base functionality enhancements … things like ..

  • No voice dial
  • No stereo bluetooth
  • No Google Calendar integration
  • No Jabber / XMPP chat application (there were rumors about this)
  • No cut & paste in the editor

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It sucks to be sick

It really sucks to be suck … especially on a holiday.

Yesterday I stayed home from work because I wasn’t feeling good. At one point during the day I had a fever of 100.1.

Today I’m feeling better, but not 100%.

Originally, Ginny and I were planning on going to my folks house for the 4th of July, but I don’t want to risk getting anyone else sick.

So today I’m just going to relax and take it easy. Maybe try to get together with my folks on Sunday.

Gas Milage

I was kind of amazed at my gas milage this last weekend … Ginny and I went down state to visit my niece Melissa and we took our bikes (didn’t end up riding, unforunately).

These days I average about 32.5 mpg.   With the bikes on the rack in the back of the Escape, we got 27 mpg.

I’m not sure if the reduction in performance was due to the extra weight, the shift in balance, or just extra drag created by the bikes.