Passion for Learning

14 inches of concrete versus 1 man and a big drill

December 3rd, 2010

I have never worked with PEX pipe before but it’s the standard found in most new homes. What also is not found is a good old fashioned sill cock. Or for those who think I just said a dirty word it’s the tap you connect your garden hose to!

An outside tap in Ontario is exposed to temps WELL below freezing. To counteract this most building codes insist on a “frost proof” sillcock. The thing is cool, it turns the water off from inside the house, leaving nothing outside to freeze. To install one requires some special tools.

Here is the drill I had to rent. Yup that’s a size 11 shoe beside it!

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Tight Clearances, and I win!

November 30th, 2010

That is the garage door opener that I recently installed at the in-law’s. It’s a Genie model from Canadian Tire. An “excelerator” screw drive model that is top of the line was on sale for $100 off. I picked up the unit last month during their move in and took the documentation home to peruse while they emptied the garage of moving boxes.

I assumed I would have 6 months or so to learn about what to do and was surprised when they called last week to say the garage was empty! Although I had never installed one of these before I’m pretty handy so . . . Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Do It Yourself | No Comments »

Just Perfect

November 25th, 2010

One thing I love about flying a Piper Cherokee is that it is a very stable and gentle plane. It is a joy to fly in almost all regimes. Today I was called in to work and when finished for the day I debated going flying in my mind. The debate went like this “I want to fly but it’s been almost 45 days since my last. Should I go for a quick dual? I’m really supposed to pack on some night hours, maybe ask an instructor?” then “What do you mean, you are a fully qualified pilot and you can easily go and fly this mission. If you don’t fly today you won’t for over a week due to freezing rain”. What to do. I know I can do it, I’m legal to do it and IM SAFE. What I was missing were victims, ah er passengers!
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Clean air without all the fuss

November 19th, 2010

I was shopping around the air cleaner section of the local Canadian Tire store and discovered that CTC offers an UVC based air cleaner that bolts directly to your furnace. I had read about the power of UV light to kill mold, bacteria and virii but assumed that UV cleaning was out of reach of the average homeowner. I was wrong. The unit I bought is made by Swordfish in Canada!

Installation was a breeze with the most obscure tool provided in the package. (a 2″ metal holesaw)

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Posted in Do It Yourself | 1 Comment »

Build your own PCLink9 cable using stuff you had laying around

November 10th, 2010

If anyone has an alarm system at their home in Canada chances are that it’s a “DSC” type unit. These units are programmable by way of a series of keypad presses (like a million beep, beep beep beep beep) or using their proprietary PCLINK9 cable and software. I’m so cheap that the $23 price tag (was closer to $100 when I built this cable) prevented me from buying one when all the parts were right in front of me. Ok geek alert, you can skip the rest of this blog entry if you’re inclined. I won’t be hurt. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 12 Volt Tech | No Comments »

Flying with Mentors

November 10th, 2010

Mentors are important in our lives. With most knowledge you can buy the basics but to gain true wisdom is priceless. This applies to business and certainly applies to flying. You get to a point where you know all you can “buy” but still don’t know a whole lot. Then you go and gain experience, with experience comes wisdom. Mentors just make the process faster and a lot more interesting.

One of my flying mentors is a gentleman named David who has stuck with me through apprehensive early PPL time, offered me frozen fingers while we did a “pre-buy” inspection on the ramp of a Piper Cherokee at 0 degrees! Most recently allowed me to fly his aircraft from the left seat. David has an IFR certification and is able to fly in clouds. Here is a video clip that shows the kind of experience I can get flying with him.

Thank you David. I know I owe you for one broken vent window, don’t let that keep us from flying together soon!

(Jeanne, the link to the video is here, in case it doesn’t open in your browser.)

Posted in Flying, General | 1 Comment »

Bell Canada is still taking my money . . .

November 5th, 2010

I went to the mailbox last week to find an envelope that had “Bell” in the return address. What could this be? They surely couldn’t be sending me an apology letter could they? Nope! It was a bill, for $1.86 which is apparently their “late payment fee”. I have never seen this before as my payments are always on time. Imagine my surprise! I had paid the full and final bill almost 2 months ago, I guess they just needed to milk another dollar out of this tired Canadian. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Pursuit of Happiness

November 5th, 2010

I used to think that life was about being successful, but then I became quite successful and realized I was wrong. I thought life was about money, until I made a ton of money and realized I was wrong about that too.

I might be wrong again but it’s my blog so……

Life, it seems is made up of moments and how we feel about them or react to them is what determines how our life actually IS. Think about that for a moment. If someone told me that their puppy died, in that moment I would feel sad for that person’s grave loss yet happy that the loss was not my own. I have started to unravel this a bit and realized that the puppy analogy applies to all sorts of things in life.

For any given situation there are generally two ways you can feel about things, happy or sad. Since happy is always better than sad, why not choose that route the most often? I’m not advocating that we all stop caring about our friends pets but that we just make a conscious decision to CHOOSE be HAPPY more often. That’s what life is really about. Those moments that made us feel the best. It’s not really the moment, but what we decided to feel at that time that defines it.

Look at that folks, a scientist talking about the spirit here! I better get back to flying…

Was there a time in your life that you chose to be happy? What about times you chose to be sad, if you had to do it over again would you make the SAME choice? Post a comment and share.

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Here fishy, fishy, fishy!

November 2nd, 2010

I know I have been away for a long time. (Sorry Jeanne!) but I’m back with a great new toy. It’s an online webcam and I have it pointed at my 55 gallon aquarium.

You can check it out here.

The camera is on anytime the lights are on (pretty much noon till 11 pm daily)

Sorry but it only works in Internet Explorer due to its activeX implementation. I’m not a programmer so there is little I can do about that. If you need help getting the activeX to work, post in the comments.

Posted in Woof! | No Comments »

She passed her G2!

August 4th, 2010

When I learned how to drive, the procedure was a lot different than it is today. Back then you only had to do one road test and it was THE TEST as far as getting your license was concerned. On my first attempt, I failed.

It was one of the most epic sad days a 17 year old boy could endure. I actually remember crying in the car when the examiner told me the result. He failed me because I drove too often in the left lane. I had known it to only be a courtesy to remain in the right lane but not a law until that moment! I retook the test 2 weeks later, had a female examiner and passed. The MTO office is a sea of high or low emotion. There is no in between.
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