2009 December » dennisjudd.com

BTTF Delorean for sale

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Dec 312009

If I had the money I think this would make me the best husband ever!
http://www.geekologie.com/2009/12/amazingly_accurate_bbtf_delore.php

Honeywell is soooo frustrating

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Dec 302009

Why do I seem to be the only one that can see how obvious it is that the black pit marks shouldn’t be there in the original solenoid??

Must have something to do with our “magic brass eating” water here. I can’t believe that Honeywell is fighting me so hard on this….there’s no way a product like this should only last 4 years….and it was probably broken the whole time!

Christmas 2009

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Dec 302009

We had a great Xmas this year. Connor decided that he was in charge of unwrapping all of the gifts, while Amelia just had fun playing with the new toys, especially her doll stroller. Dennis & I received Ninja masks, aka fleece hoods, which are surprisingly warm and have been already worn by both of us numerous times when taking Bailey out for a walk or to play fetch in the back yard.
First, our tree:

This first set of pictures are from Terri’s house where we celebrated on Xmas Eve:

Now, for Xmas at home:
First, they got the blankets I made them:

Then they checked out the tree after Santa came to visit:

The obligatory picture in front of the tree:

And opening gifts:

We hope everyone had a wonderful day, as we had lots of fun watching Xmas through our children’s eyes!

E tu Microsoft???

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Dec 282009

A while back Jen picked up an Xbox 360 arcade for us to keep on hand as a backup console incase our main box ever RRoD’s again.
Anyways I’ve been trying to get this thing hooked up to a computer monitor that had a spare DVI input on it but the XBOX only has a HDMI output on it. No big deal really since monoprice sells cables/adaptors for only like 5 bucks….but there is one small snag. No audio.
See the A/V cable the xbox comes with is huge…like swing around above your head to fend of wild animals huge. And when it’s plugged in (for example to get audio) it blocks the HDMI port so you can’t have both plugged in. Turns out I’m not the first one to run into this problem and the solution is pretty simple. The AV connector is chock full of emptieness…nothing, nada, zip, zilch…it was just built like this on purpose to eat up space for no reason.
See what I mean:

You could smuggle drugs in that much space
So solution is to pop the case, leave it off and you can have HDMI to your DVI and then use the audio off the composite AV connector it comes with. Works like a charm. Whoever designed this was an evil evil little man.

Connor: Enemy of all things bubble wrap

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Dec 272009

Electrical tape...great for plumbing?

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Dec 252009

With all the freezing snow/rain we’ve had up here in Chicago I guess the sump outlet froze shut and the back pressure caused a leak. At least I had plenty of electrical tape to seal it up so I didn’t have to find a home repair store open on Christmas.
that’s about the same amount I use per wirenut…j/k

Crab walking

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Dec 192009

Honeywell HE260 bad solenoid

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Dec 102009

So lately the water seems to be running 24×7 on the furnace humidifier (Honeywell HE 260) and today I finally made the time to take a look at it.
After I go the solenoid off the humidifier and took it apart I didn’t find what I expected. I had assumed that after 4 to 5 years of use hard water had built up and clogged the plunger in the open position. Instead what I found was a perfectly clean inside.

What I did notice however is where the rubber plunger seals against the main body (basically the center hole) the thing looked like a moon crater. What ever process they used to cast this thing was either flawed or they didn’t hone out the inside well enough to get a flush fit. I scratched at it at first thinking maybe it was just build up but all I found was shiny brass underneath. So my assumption at this point is that while the solenoid was nice and new the spring was able to apply enough pressure to compensate for a bad casting. Not to mention the rubber seal on the end of it probably was still flexible (ie hadn’t yet lost it’s oils) and also helped.
I took my dremel and did the best job I could considering I didn’t have a flat head attachment.

Of course it’s not like I had a chance to buy a new one from Honeywell cause when I called them this morning the lady on the phone recommended Amazon as a part source. Still even so looking on google it seems I’d have to spend at least . Although at this point I’d be hesitant to invest more money into a system that only cost $140 to begin with just to get another poorly build solenoid.