Lewies Blog

It’s that time of season again. The furnace ran out of oil and I’m a little cold. I’m not good at keeping track of oil. I’d prefer to have electricity to heat the home as you always pay that monthly. It doesn’t run out. The price doesn’t fluctuate daily, and you don’t have to be home when someone delivers the goods. Purchasing heating oil socks a very large bill on me instantly. Electric can be paid monthly and budgeted easier. In fact, I pay my electric bill (and most other bills) every 2 weeks on payday.

I want a heating pump. These units suck the heat out of the air outside and pump it inside your home. Even in freezing temperatures, there is still heat outside. A heat pump is just like my air conditioner, except that you can choose if you want the heat to move outside, or inside. It serves as both a heating and cooling unit for your house.

Heat pumps are very energy efficient. They have a problem though where ice collects on the coils outside. The heat pump has to heat those coils up by running as an air conditioner. You don’t need to worry about cold air being pumped in your house when it is deicing itself because it also has burners or electric strip heaters to heat the cold air coming back into your house. There are also Geothermal heat pumps. These pumps use the natural heat from the earth rather then the air.

So how much does a heat pump cost? Early estimates look like the price ranges from $1,000 to $5,000 US depending on how much heat you need. Our tax return from this year could probably pay for the most of that. I’m still researching, so this may not even be close to the actual cost. I have to determine how much area my house occupies. I think there is something here that has to do with BTU’s, but I’m not sure how to measure. After finding the price, I’ll need to look into contractors to install the thing. Maybe I’ll talk to my dad about that.

I found a Kit Builder to help me figure out what all I would need to setup everything. Now the question is how many tons do I need? It is too dark to see the model number on my air conditioner, and my air flow system says that it can handle 131,000 BTU/hour. Possible Ton values are 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, and 5. These values are way below 131,000 BTU as 1 Ton is equal to 18,000 BTU and 5 Tons are equal to 60,000 BTU. Getting too many tons would setup the pump to turn on and off frequently and dehumidify the house in a bad way. Not enough tons would keep the unit running too often.

After that, I need to determine what SEER rating I prefer (10, 12, 13). Seer is pretty much how economical the unit is with energy efficiency (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio). A higher rating helps you save more during cooling. A higher SEER rating increases the initial cost of the unit, but makes up in the long run by lowering the operating cost.

It would seem that I need to first determine what I have.

My wife likes to use big words. I don’t know if they are all big, but most have a meaning that is unknown to me. Every time she says one, I have to ask or look it up. Half the time, I can get an idea from the context in which she uses them. Some sound familiar, but the meaning still escapes me.

So now a friend of mine online also uses big words too. Every time I come back from looking up the words, I make a grunting sound as if I’m a primate. I jokingly make an excuse of only having an American High School Education.

Why do people use big words? Is it because they want to sound important? They want to say that they are better? Are they just showing off there knowledge? Perhaps it is innocent and there is nothing behind it. I just wish that people would speak in plain English sometimes. The good news is that my knowledge of rarely used words is increasing.

I ate Totino’s Original Crisp Crust pizza for lunch today. It was the kind that you get from the store in a small box about a foot in diameter. When ever my wife and I go shopping together, she points it out to me and tells me to pick up a few. Shoppers Food Warehouse is expensive. They sell the pizza boxes for $1.59 each. The same brand is sold at Wal-Mart for only $0.95 each.

How is it that the price range is so different? I can understand pennies, but 33% cheaper? I thought it was a deal too good to be true for a long time. I would stock up my freezer with these pizza boxes. A few times I had bought too many. I would spend a good amount of time rearranging things and and ended up having to eat a thing or two to make room.

There are a good variety of pizzas to choose from. Cheese, Pepperoni, and Supreme to name a few. I’ll get tired of the flavors sometimes, but the cheese ones always taste great regardless. They are easy to make. You are supposed to cook them in the oven. I just nuke them. It took a while to figure out the best way. I nuke it for 5 minutes on 50 percent power if they are frozen at home. At work, the pizza is usually thawed by lunch time so I just nuke it for 2 minutes on high.

This past weekend I fixed the gaps on my spark plugs. I changed them from .040 inches to .035. The car seemed to be doing well, but I couldn’t be certain until I went in for the long drive to work and back. I went into work this morning and was pleased that the engine light finally went off. I got to work without any problems.

On the way home, I seemed to be having more difficulty the closer I got home. Each new mile had piston misfires. I dreaded any type of incline. The engine light would come on and then begin to flash after a moment. It would also go back off after a while.

I’m almost at my wits end here. I’ll keep trying different things. At least what I am doing is having some kind of positive effect on the car. I still have a few ideas, but that will have to wait until payday this Friday.

So yesterday, I went out looking for some trees. I own a small chunk of the world in Second Life and I didn’t like many of the trees that are provided to me. Lynuor and I headed out and found a place called Fate Gardens. We grabbed a few trees for the lot. I saw a boat while we were there and we both tried to ride it. It complained that we were not the owner. Lynour said she knew of a place where we could go.

We ended up at RiverWalk and CliffHouse. Rite away I was in love with a few wind chimes blowing in the wind. I couldn’t find them until the end. I tried to buy some birdseed to feed to a few birds, but my money was thrown back at me. We guessed that you could only do it during the day time. Lyn walked around the docks and led me down to the swans. You could rent either a black or white swan at 5 L$ for thirty minutes.

I purchased the boat and sat down to drive. She came next to me and we went around the river ever so slowly. The night was so quiet except for a few birds and some classical music. There was no one there but us.

We got off at another dock and causally played with the water. I would swing my feet back and forth while she swayed her hand and felt the water flow past it. She then sat curled up against a wall and started to cry. I offered her my hand and we went to the higher decks for a dance.

There was plenty of impressive artwork to look at. I was admiring some stained glass pieces regarding the knights virtues of honor. We walked through a forest nearby and saw some leaves falling down. Lyn commented how a friend of ours promised her falling leaves, but all he ever ended up doing was working on an artificial life project. It seemed pretty simple and I told her that I would take care of it.

Today we went out and looked around at Serenite Gardens. I showed her the different colors of butterfly bowls that were similar to one that I had bought from there in the past. I picked up a Luminaria bag to light up the place back at home. I started to play with a few animations for spell weaving. I saw my hand was making a sign in the air when invoking, but I couldn’t make it out. I had an idea what it was. To be sure, I started making a particle emitter rite there to see. I attached it to my finger and sure enough saw the sign. It was a pentagram.

Throughout the day I started to work on a small project. I created a mushroom and then I built a frog on top of it. It was a bit hard and I looked at many different pictures on Google to get an idea of what a frog looks like. My favorite picture was of a blue frog with black spots on its back. I left out the spots, but I think he looks pretty good.

At the end of tonight I worked on creating a leaf. It took a good while but I eventually came up with something. After uploading it to Second Life, I was able to put a particle emitter together pretty quick. At first, the leaves were bouncing. It was a funny sight, but I got that fixed. When I put it together over our stone circle, the place started to really come to life.

I feel like I have no clue when it comes to cars. Angel invited one of her friends over to help me out. I already got the tools that I was missing the other night, but it was still good that he came over. I chatted with him back and forth and he seemed to be just where I was with how we approached car maintenance.

He enlightened me that the problem could be with the air intake. I opened up a plastic cover and sure enough my air filter was pretty dirty. I’m estimating that it will be about four dollars to get that replaced.

He sprayed something down the manifest intake (or was it the throttle body?). I turned the engine on and kept pressing the gas a bit to keep it around 2000 rpms while he sprayed down the chute. It would sometimes have a hard time. It was to help clear up anything down there. A branch came down and almost hit our friend.

While we were looking at the engine, he found a sticker that showed me the proper gap for my spark plugs. It said .035 inches. I’ll need to readjust each plug that I put in the other night. We also were able to remove the spark plug wires from the distributor cap. It was mostly to go through the process so I wouldn’t be confused later on.

I woke up on the floor in the hallway. Apparently I woke up earlier, but what I was doing, I have no idea. I remember having dreams about trying to fix my Dodge Neon 2000. I figured it was as good of time as any to take a look at the engine of my car. I surfed the net to see if there was any help on how to replace spark plugs. There were a few places, but then I found one tutorial showing how to replace spark plugs with lots of step-by-step pictures similar to what my engine looked like.

It appears that I was heading in the rite direction earlier. It is just that I wasn’t looking deep enough. Down in each hole where the tubes (spark plug wires) came out of are the spark plugs. The wires from the tubes attach to something called the distributor cap. I started to get ready and went through my tools. I soon found out that I lacked an extension to reach down far enough.

I took the trip over to wal-mart and made sure I parked in an area with plenty of light. I picked up an extension set for ten dollars and also a gap measure. The book next to the spark plugs had two different gap measurements for my car. .35 and .40. I’m not sure what measurement to go with.

The short drive to the store left my engine very hot. I had to go through with it anyway. I replaced each spark plug one at a time. Once I got the first spark plug loose, I was confused as to how to get it out. I then figured that the tube might have some kind of clamping on it and pushed it down on the loose plug. Sure enough I felt the snap and was able to pull it out. The plug was hot and I had to grab it quick and throw it on the ground.

One of the middle plugs had a lot of oil on it. A seal somewhere down there must not be set rite. Another plug came loose, but I couldn’t get the tube to snap into it. I looked down and found that the top was setting against the wall of the shaft. I was able to put the socket back down there and line it up.

The last two plugs were very tight when trying to unscrew them. After I got them unscrewed, the socket came off of my extension. I continued to try and connect it back and pull it out, but it just kept coming off. I ended up tightening the plug ever so slightly and was able to pull the socket out with the extension.

So everything is replaced and I get in my car. I turn the key and the car isn’t shaking. I don’t hear any pops either. Oddly enough, the engine light is still on. I drive away listening carefully. I was excited that I could accelerate again. I could stop at a traffic light or stop sign and not have to worry about anything. That excitement was short-lived.

Half way home, I started hearing popping sounds (cylinder misfires) again. As I got closer to home, I heard them more often. Since the engine improved after I replaced the spark plugs, I’m thinking that I’m on the rite track. It could be a number of things now. I may need to set the gaps to .35 rather then .40. It could be that the spark plug wires themselves also need to be replaced. The seals might need to be replaced as well.

As long as the car keeps running, I can still make it into work. I don’t know if I’m damaging the car or not and I’m running out of cash. This adventure tonight came to about $40.

• Socket Set $20
• Socket Extension $10
• Gap Measurement $2
• Four Spark Plugs $8

The good news is that $32 of that is tools that I don’t need to purchase again.

I don’t know how accurate those engine-light scanner tools are. My guess is that it would just tell me that something is wrong with the ignition system, and it would be up to me to look over everything to find the problem. Of course, that is what I’m trying to do rite now. I’m clueless about cars, but at least I have the benefit of information and technology to help me along the way. I might be wrong about my current diagnosis of the problem, so the tool may be useful after all in finding a different problem.

I found some codes that would be helpful in determining what cylinder is causing problems if I had the tool and the problem is a cylinder misfire. Then I would just look at a specific spark plug, wire, and rubber seal rather then all of them.

P0300 Random/Multiple Cylinder Misfire Detected
P0301 Cylinder 1 Misfire Detected
P0302 Cylinder 2 Misfire Detected
P0303 Cylinder 3 Misfire Detected
P0304 Cylinder 4 Misfire Detected
P0305 Cylinder 5 Misfire Detected
P0306 Cylinder 6 Misfire Detected
P0307 Cylinder 7 Misfire Detected
P0308 Cylinder 8 Misfire Detected
P0309 Cylinder 9 Misfire Detected
P0311 Cylinder 11 Misfire Detected
P0312 Cylinder 12 Misfire Detected

Related items to the engine light:
ECM - Electronic Control Module
MIL - Malfunction Indication Light
DTC - Diagnostic Trouble Code
OBD II - On Board Diagnostics system version 2
Repair Information & OBDII Trouble Codes

The stored trouble code can be retrieved with the special scan tool by the technician. The code itself does not tell exactly what part to replace, it only gives a direction where to look for - the technician has to perform certain tests specific for each code to find the exact cause of the problem.

Went to store after work and picked up spark plugs. Found that I needed AP3923 and 392C. Didn’t know how many I needed so I picked up 4 for abut eight dollars. I also picked up a small socket set with a deep socket for spark plugs.

I turned on my engine and as I drove out of my parking spot the car cut out. I pushed it back while in neutral and started looking at the engine. I found 4 tubes that came out the top of the engine but couldn’t figure out how I would access a spark plug if they were inside. I came to the conclusion that the plugs were under a metal cap that a hose between the two came from. I decided to try again with the engine and was able to drive home OK.

I’m pretty tired and it’s dark. I’ll take a look at the engine early in the morning. While I was at wal-mart, I saw a small gadget that would hook up to the car and tell you what is wrong when the engine light is on. I may go and get it or something similar later on. I’m still not quite certain that my problem is with the spark plugs. It would be nice to know before taking it to a mechanic when I run into problems.

I found out that the wires on the tubes are actually the spark plug wires, so it seems that I’m close. The wires themselves can also be the problem, so I may need to get them replaced too.

Dodge Ignition wire sets should always be inspected and tested whenever a rough or erratic idle is present, poor acceleration is noticed, a decrease in fuel mileage is experienced or a vehicle fails an emissions test due to high hydrocarbon emissions or cylinder misfire fault code.

I got up bright an early today. I got up a few times, but I eventually left at 7:30. It took about 3 hours to get to the city, get lost, get lost more, hunt for a parking lot, and arrive at the Washington Convention Center. I totally missed the keynote speaker.

I got a bag of goodies and started going around and meeting with different vendors of software. I had a lot of interesting conversations and was able to broaden my knowledge of what was out there exactly. I also got toys.

I met up with a co-worker and after the morning session, we took a cab over to her place for lunch and to figure out how to configure her laptop. After getting back to the convention center, we split up and attended different tracks. I was going for databases and the like, and she was going into development.

I was simply amazed that T-SQL now has try/catch blocks. Can you believe it? I used to write a lot of code to handle transactions and checking to see if a number of SQL statements had failed. There was much more in the stability of the databases and the ability to read tables when a transaction had not yet been committed. They went into the CLR integration too. It seems that you only use that if you are doing some heavy logic that SQL wasn’t really meant for, such as using arrays.

I looked at the last two events on the schedule and wasn’t all that amused about the database track. I switched over to the development and joined my coworker. We sat through a web application development. I had already known about most of the stuff coming down the road. I found that other things you could now do, were already being used in a similar fashion in past projects I worked on. It’s nice to see that I was headed toward the rite direction.

I stopped by the place where I registered and dropped off my survey. In return they punched a badge that had my managers name on it (since I took his place), and handed me a shirt and a copy of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and the MSDN Library.

On the way home, traffic was slow. I looked over to see if I could change lanes and I ended up rear-ending the car in front of me. No one was hurt and the woman saw that there was no damage. I wrote down my information anyway and handed it to her with my Insurance carrier, license plate, name and phone number.

Continuing home, my engine kept feeling like it was going to stall any minute. The engine light was solid on most of the way, but would sometimes blink. It felt like it had most problems when I was stopped at lights, or accelerating - especially up hills. I’ll have to get that looked into soon.

I got all my toys out and offered a few to my wife. She liked the flashing HP necklace. I tried on one of the shirts. Another shirt that I got came wrapped up as a brick. When I unfolded it, it was a mess of wrinkles.

So what can I say? I’m a bit addicted to this game. I went downstairs to give a good night kiss to my wife and I find that she is having a tough time trying to make horns for a friend of hers. I helped her get a bit closer to what she was trying to accomplish, but we couldn’t do it. We used a torus, increased its revolutions, and tapered one of the ends. It looked great, but the real problem was getting it to mirror itself. I went back to my computer and fired up the game.

I logged in at my workshop and tried all kinds of silly things. As I mutilated my primitives, I kept running into the same problems. Eventually I headed on over to the Ivory tower to see if they had any example of rams horns. I made it half way up and started to play with prims before I found anything. I found the answer.

I sent a copy to my wife and headed on over. I found her with her friend who had some horns made of a ton of spheres. Well, I guess it works. From there I started playing with the horns on my head until I got something that looked much better.

I looked at my clock and saw how late it was. So now, I’m going to sleep.