Bytes, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!

jeff_duntemann and I set out for Fry's this morning, where the RAID appliance that I wanted was on sale for $119. While I was there, I decided that I should get some SATA hard drives to put in it (rather than just swap drives from the identical appliance that I already had). I thought about the 300 GB Maxtor drives that were on sale for $59, but decided to splurge on the 750 GB Seagate Barracuda drives for $189, since my understanding is that the Seagate drives are a bit better and I'm going to be storing Dodeka audio on these.

So I left the store with one and a half terabytes of storage in a bag. Of course, since I'm going to mirror them, it's still only three quarters of a terabyte available, but it's the thought that counts.

Bytes, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!

jeff_duntemann and I set out for Fry's this morning, where the RAID appliance that I wanted was on sale for $119. While I was there, I decided that I should get some SATA hard drives to put in it (rather than just swap drives from the identical appliance that I already had). I thought about the 300 GB Maxtor drives that were on sale for $59, but decided to splurge on the 750 GB Seagate Barracuda drives for $189, since my understanding is that the Seagate drives are a bit better and I'm going to be storing Dodeka audio on these.

So I left the store with one and a half terabytes of storage in a bag. Of course, since I'm going to mirror them, it's still only three quarters of a terabyte available, but it's the thought that counts.

Air Repair

Many years ago, I was in a Moebius Theatre sketch called Air Repair. There I played air system maintenance technician Hubert Grimsley, a rather down home fellow who made sure that the air recycling systems in people's homes on Venus actually worked and who was quite willing to abuse his clients. This led to our occasionally using the phrase, "You've got to clean the gawdammed filters."

I was doing some cleaning in the basement this afternoon and noticed I was getting pretty warm. Much later, during dinner, I checked the thermostat. It was set for 72 degrees (which is what we have to keep it at for the upstairs to be habitable), but the actual temperature was 78 degrees. I checked and made sure the fan was running, then asked jeff_duntemann to take a look at the compressor. He reported that it was blowing out lukewarm air and that there was ice. Ice is bad.

I called the business number for daisy_knotwise's former co-worker's husband, Lenny, who has a heating / cooling repair business and does our maintenance. After a few questions, he suggested that the filters in the air cleaner might be clogged. I'd looked at it, but Gretchen usually handles the filter cleaning -- and always has since the new air cleaner was installed -- so I'd not actually managed to pull the prefilters to look at them.

They were, in a word, grotty. Lenny suggested that we clean out the filters and the prefilters with a garden hose and put them back in the system to dry. In the meantime, we should crank up the heat for 10-15 minutes to thaw out the air conditioning system. And have towels ready in the basement for the water that was about to show up.

Fortunately, the water flowed toward the drain instead of the new carpet.

The air conditioning is back on now. I think it's working ok, but we'll know more in a couple of hours.

And I'm just happy I was dealing with Lenny, not Hubert Grimsley.

Air Repair

Many years ago, I was in a Moebius Theatre sketch called Air Repair. There I played air system maintenance technician Hubert Grimsley, a rather down home fellow who made sure that the air recycling systems in people's homes on Venus actually worked and who was quite willing to abuse his clients. This led to our occasionally using the phrase, "You've got to clean the gawdammed filters."

I was doing some cleaning in the basement this afternoon and noticed I was getting pretty warm. Much later, during dinner, I checked the thermostat. It was set for 72 degrees (which is what we have to keep it at for the upstairs to be habitable), but the actual temperature was 78 degrees. I checked and made sure the fan was running, then asked jeff_duntemann to take a look at the compressor. He reported that it was blowing out lukewarm air and that there was ice. Ice is bad.

I called the business number for daisy_knotwise's former co-worker's husband, Lenny, who has a heating / cooling repair business and does our maintenance. After a few questions, he suggested that the filters in the air cleaner might be clogged. I'd looked at it, but Gretchen usually handles the filter cleaning -- and always has since the new air cleaner was installed -- so I'd not actually managed to pull the prefilters to look at them.

They were, in a word, grotty. Lenny suggested that we clean out the filters and the prefilters with a garden hose and put them back in the system to dry. In the meantime, we should crank up the heat for 10-15 minutes to thaw out the air conditioning system. And have towels ready in the basement for the water that was about to show up.

Fortunately, the water flowed toward the drain instead of the new carpet.

The air conditioning is back on now. I think it's working ok, but we'll know more in a couple of hours.

And I'm just happy I was dealing with Lenny, not Hubert Grimsley.