I once read that some solar storms are powerful enough to introduce errors into computers’ CPUs, usually small enough to avoid detecting but sometimes causing incredibly weird errors. The article failed to mention them being strong enough to corrupt hard drives and fry electronics, or else I’d have a good explanation for the last three weeks. Excerpts from my Sent Mail folder:

7/13: Hyde’s [that’s the name of a server] dropped off the radar tonight – I can ping it, but can’t connect via ssh or to the real server or anything else. [ . . . ]

7/17: So our AC went out Saturday evening (of course) and I spent most of yesterday sweating, reading up on things, and debugging parts of the compressor.

7/18: [Lobby Kiosks] Got a call from VS saying they tried to reboot them and they’re coming up with a grey screen with a question mark folder flashing… That doesn’t sound good.

7/19: [Hyde] Both install CDs I’ve been trying to use had errors. One burned badly and would fail in a different place every time (so I suspected the hard drive), and the second had a corrupt ISO image to begin with.

7/19: [Hyde] Ok, so that wasn’t it. I think now there’s something bad with the motherboard, hopefully just an IDE controller or something I can work around.

7/20: [Hyde] I came in to pick up what I need for an attempt to rebuild the existing server on site at Onvoy, so I’m heading out there. [ see above: I cut a huge chunk of my finger on the stamped metal in the server while swapping drives]

7/21: [Hyde] I finished restoring the streaming media server yesterday and uploaded the archived version of Tuesday’s webcast.

8/1: [Dialog Table] Peter called me this morning after Dialog 2 started acting funny – it shut itself down and seemed to be having power-supply issues . . . I suspect the motherboard and power supply, and am currently trying to locate a replacement that will allow us to reuse as many components as possible.

8/3, 6:05 pm: The hard drive on mnartists has just failed. I was able to log on just long enough to see that it was showing uncorrected read error, now the machine appears offline.

8/4, 3:37 am: [mnartists] … and we’re back. That was probably a lot more difficult than it had to be, but on the other hand I learned a lot and will hopefully have fewer problems next time.

8/4, 2:01 pm: [Dialog Table] … and we’re back. Ended up having to replace the memory as well, it was causing the random hard crashes.

Luckily, I’m about to cook some corn for dinner, relax on the deck, call Karen, and drink a big bottle of Chimay Red. Looks like life evens out… :)

The rain garden proved its worth today… (to me, anyway — I think Karen’s requirements have been met already) We’re in the middle of a moderate / severe drought, and it’s been super hot with alternating levels of humidity. Apparently today the jetstream is moving somewhere and it’s causing some ridiculous storms, like the one we had this afternoon. The rain garden, at left, was literally full to the brim with water!! And it looks like we guessed just right with the area and depth because it wasn’t overflowing that I could see, and I really can’t imagine ever getting any more rain over such a short period of time. If it can handle that, it can handle anything.

Why does that make me so happy? Because a few short months ago that water would have been lapping at our foundation and starting to work its way into the basement. As you can see at left – taken at the same time as the above shot – it’s wet but not even halfway up the sidewalk!! I can’t even begin to tell you what a big deal this is.

See, Karen’s all about filtering the runoff and getting it back into the groundwater system cleanly, etc, etc, and I’m very much in support of that, too. But it’s such a cost / benefit winner when it also happens to save so much potential water damage to your house. Sweet.

I should have bought stock in Ikea and Home Depot. Years ago.

Instead I just get to increase the wealth of their existing stockholders, but it still seems like a good deal when the results turn out this nice: (ignore Karen showing you how well she brushed her teeth)

Two smaller things of note in the bigger picture: in the very back is a new steel wire shelf with a wood top, a perfect space for our toaster, coffee maker, and various stuff underneath. This lets us clean up our main counter space for day-to-day use. Also, left of the sink (detail at left) is a new separate filtered water faucet! It’s so great to have a built-in faucet finally instead of the stupid ones that attach to the end of the existing faucet and always have a bad seal anyway. Total. Crap. This one feels nice and looks nice – it even matches the faucet I put in a while back!

So… I think that about wraps up the kitchen! (for now)

New motor: $85

Run capacitor and mounting hardware: $65

Learning enough about air conditioners that you can fix your own (up to a point): Priceless. Or, as the nice guy at Dey Appliance put it, "a new fan will get you through the heat, since nobody’s going to be able to come install a new unit until after you don’t need it." True that. And on the other hand, a new fan plus rock solid 1976 parts could last another 5 years easy. I do wonder about getting the system charged up and making a few other efficiency updates, but we’ll see…

Whew. Currently 90 degrees outside, 64% humidity, and it’s 8:30 – when you get up at 5:30, that’s almost bedtime. And it’s way too hot to sleep like that, at least without fans. Or, better yet, air conditioning. Yeah, that would be nice. I can hear our neighbor’s unit kicking on as I write this, pumping delicious cool air into his house…

Not in the cards for us, it seems. Last night, Sierra and Karen and I were sitting on the new deck bench enjoying the breeze when there was a squealing sound from the external AC unit as it tried to turn on. That can’t be good, I said, rising to check on it – yeah, agreed Karen, I heard that before but I thought it was our neighbor’s. Uh oh…

Sure enough the fan wasn’t running. I put my hand on the frame over the fan and it was hot, way too hot to be good. Crap. Went inside and shut the thing down. It was approaching 90 in the house last night as we went to bed but some well placed fans (ceiling fans are amazing, too) and everyone made it through the night.

This morning we woke up to rain – a saving grace, I suppose, since it kept our garden and lawn alive, and probably lowered the temperature for the rest of the day, but we’re currently paying the price in terms of humidity. (Yesterday never got too bad since it was only 30-40% humidity.) The rain also kept me from exploring the AC unit (after of course flipping the breakers both to the unit and the internal blower)… Which in turn kept me from discovering the delightful picture to the left: a blown capacitor. Damn.

The downside to finding the capacitor was now I wanted to replace it – while shut in by the rain I’d been searching for the manual for the unit, no go, and finally spending all my time on this incredibly useful site. I’m fairly confident (barring the actual motor being blown by the strain of trying to run last night) that replacing this capacitor will restore the unit to its cooling glory. But what the hell was the rating on that capacitor?? The oil and gunk inside had fused to the paint on the side when it blew, and unfortunately even carefully cleaning it removed the all-important stamp like you can see on it’s pair above left.

Still, by comparing stamps between the two I’m confident it’s a 3mfd 370 VAC capacitor, probably readily available from a local motor repair shop – I’ll call around tomorrow and see. I also found the schematic at left on the inside of the unit – we are dealing with a 100% rock steady 1976 air conditioner. Whoa. (check the bottom right of the drawing).

Anyway, I figure since the cap is probably only 8 or 9 bucks it’s worth a go. The motor at left is probably a bit under $100, so hopefully that’s not blown too. Once again, having a bit of trouble reading the vital stats, but I guess that’s what you get from an AC unit older than me…

The last bit of bad news is the motor "suspension". It sits upside down, hauling air in through the sides of the box, through the heat exchanger, and blasting it up and out, so it needs to hang level and be supported from above. For whatever reason it’s not bolted to the top of the unit, but instead attached with twisted steel cable – and two of the four are rusted through. My theory / hope is that the motor is ok, the sound we heard was the blades scraping on the housing after the support cable broke, and the resulting current draw blew the capacitor after which everything fell back into place but stopped working. Replacing the cap will cure everything.

At least that’s the hope. For now I’m only investing in a capacitor and some hardware to re-secure the motor… If that fails and it looks like the motor itself is bad, well, maybe time to shop around for a new unit. But in the meantime, if we can get a few more years out of this one, why not? I’ll probably get someone in to test the pressure on the system, make sure it’s as efficient as it can be on that end, but really if an $8 part, some research, and sweat can fix this I’m not going to replace the whole unit yet.

(plus, if you haven’t figured it out, every time something breaks it’s not only a hassle, it’s a freaking personal challenge. :)

Day two of the bench construction, first thing was to cut the angles for the corner and finish driving the 8 million screws attaching the seat boards. Power screw gun essential. The screws that came with the brackets are all galvanized for use in pressure-treated wood, overkill for me, but at least they’ll hold up outdoors. I ended up buying some new deck screws while getting the lumber so I could match the color of the wood a little better.

Done! Next on the list is to get something to treat the lumber – I’m not going to seal it yet, but there are a few different products intended for new lumber like this, just to help get it "off on the right foot". Not sure what exactly that means but it sounds important from the reviews I’ve read… Also might replace the two seat boards on the smaller side – one of them is "cupping" a bit (curling up at the edges) and the other has two badly placed knots. I think I have enough left over lumber for those two short pieces, we’ll see.

…and here it is in action! I think they’re both making the sign for "delicious", since they’re eating Princess Torte from Wuollette Bakery. Whoa. Good times. I’m actually writing this on Karen’s laptop while sitting on the bench right now. It’s sweet, but it’s getting dark enough to make me realize we’ll need another lighting solution out here since it’s so darn appealing to hang out on during these hot summer nights… Yay.