Black Rainbow

So I went to help fix a clogged bathtub... and failed.

But there's a fire in the foothills to the West, and the smoke from the fire runs to the Eastern horizon.  I had to stop and take a picture (or a set of pictures) on the way home.  Photoshop, this isn't;  cell phone camera and paint.  NOTE: This is not a "cloud". It is smoke that runs from the the west to the far east. The left (bottom) end is facing west; the right (top) end if facing east.  If you're farther north, the smoke makes an arc from east to west; this collage is taken from south of the smoke plume.

Water Log: How Dry I Am: A/C Condensate Line

So after coming to the conclusion that the condensate line was clogged, I took a lesson from "There I Fixed It" and took matters into my own hands:

P-Trap before:

I should have taken this picture before I cut the pipe (and without the Walmart bag used to funnel condensate into a bucket) but cutting it gave me the access I needed to flush out the condensate line - and proved by leaking all over the place when I cut it that the drain line was plugged.  I couldn't get access from the far end - it's bolted to the floor with the tube going down the drain as part of another "fix" where the condensate was draining on the floor instead of down the drain.   I couldn't get access from the top end / inside, as one of the screws to open the access panel is inaccessible - hidden behind the ventilation pipe for the furnace.

P-Trap after:

The problem in just gluing the old cut line together was that I was going to have to likely blow out the line again.  So we now have a condensate drain line with features - not as fancy as the solution I found on the web, but close to it, considering that the solution found on the web was not available at the local big box store.  Note the options:
1)An access port, currently with a cap on it, but with a separate attachment (out in the garage) so that I can hook up a hose and clear out the line.
2)A valve at the top, so that I can block the clearing out of the line from backing up into the A/C coils and flooding.
3)The p-trap is lower.  If you want to know whether the P-Trap is blocked (I wish someone would make some clear PVC pipe...) open the access port.  If water runs out, the P-Trap is blocked and water is backing up.  If water doesn't run out, but is found on the floor, then I've wasted a perfectly good Saturday playing with the plumbing.

Good news is, when the A/C is running, you can hear the sound of water running down the drain.  So, it looks like I've "done good".

And here's the complement to the June 8th post showing the after of draining into the drain and not on the floor:

I had to bend the drain pan a bit to get access to the drain (the new water heater was bigger than the old.  The water heater drains into the condensate line, but just a little bit off the floor so that the condensate line drains into the drain.  I used a T rather than an elbow 1)because I had a T, and 2)so that if I ever want to drain the water heater, I can run the output right into the drain.

Help... We're taking on water!!!

This one has me stumped:

T

1. There is no water in the drip pan under the water heater.
2. The pipe draining the air conditioner condensate and the water heater drip pan is dry.
3. There was a half inch of standing water in the bottom of the furnace (about 2 gallons)
4. Water had seeped out from the furnace and was under the furnace, under the drain pan, and had dripped down into the crawl space, running down a drain pipe to the right of the water heater (not shown in this picture).
5. There was an additional 2 1/2 gallons puddled in the crawl space (fortunately none of the boxes in the crawl space got wet.
6. None of the pipes from the bathroom above the furnace room were wet; there are no signs of
So... where does 5 gallons of water come from that it ends up in the bottom of the furnace?

Anyone for a game of go-phish?

So after having my email account hijacked, and in the process of preparing a lesson on internet safety for church on Sunday, one of my coworkers came up to me today to ask about an email she'd received, with an executable attachment and the instructions that the IT department was updating some software and needed her to run the attachment.  (My first thoughts were "yeah, right... what's the scam?")

Looking at it, the message appeared to be from "someone" in the IT department, granted someone that I've never heard of, and considering that we have a standing policy that only IT is allowed to install software on anyone's computer, I didn't have any reason to be concerned.

Here's where it gets stoopid: it was not a phishing expedition, no email was being spoofed.  It was a legitimate request from the IT department!!!  Needless to say, I called the help desk to see what they could tell me; I then sent back a few comments about how inappropriate the email was, and received a response DEFENDING the practice! 

Fortunately, our CIO backed me up.

And to get really stooopid: our office manager clicked on the emailed application without even considering that the message should be investigated.

Sciatica

That's what the doctor calls it.  I think it's a royal pain in the butt... or maybe lower back & left leg.

I'm told that time, stretching, and nyproxen will solve my woes.

CHOCOLATE

We received a package from our German exchange student:

The best was either the strawberry filled chocolate or the marsipan filled chocolate.

One more reason not to clean...

A coworker's son had a computer that died.  He was hoping that maybe I could salvage the data for him.  I determined that the power supply was most likely bad.

Plan "A": It's a power supply with a few cables that and that it was of a newer variety that I don't have a spare for.

Plan "B": Swap the hard drive into another machine.  Turns out the hard drive has a cable that I don't recognize.  A little research and I am now introduced to SATA hard drives, but none of the spare part machines are new enough to accept a SATA drive.

Plan "C": Swap the hard drive into the family machine; after all we can always use an extra 250 GB.  So, it's time to open up the family computer and see if there's a SATA port on that mother board... and here's where I make the mistake... as long as I've got the case open (and yes the power's off), I decide I ought to clean out the dust bunnies.

There IS a SATA port, so before installing the new drive, I power back on the computer, and it doesn't boot.  Evidently dust bunnies are critical equipment.

We did have a system crash a couple of months ago, and I had to reinstall Windows, however this time the HDD that Windows was installed on is not being found by BIOS.

Bet I know what I'm doing this weekend...