Ness' Outpost

I got out the tools to do an oil change on the Vibe tonight before it rains. 14mm box wrench, oil filter and filter wrench, 3/8″ ratchet and extension. The brand spanking new rino ramps were cut free from their packaging and I was all set to go.

The Vibe is a standard and I drive an automatic every day. I can drive standard — it just isn’t pretty. The rino ramps aren’t that high, only about 8 inches or so but became obstacle number one. I couldn’t get the vehicle up on them since our driveway is sloped too that extra slope made it really hard to get her up on the ramps. Lauren put the car up on them no problem for me.
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Lauren’s 2006 Pontiac Vibe (aka Matrix in sheeps clothing) has a pretty standard breaking system. The front are discs and the rears are drums.

Today Kevin and I did a front break job. New pads, rotors and fluids. It was a pretty standard job and is really well explained over at Generation Vibe in this post. They don’t talk about bleeding the brakes — and you probably don’t have to do this if your fluid is regularly changed anyway. We did bleed the brakes when we were done, but that isn’t included in the post above.

The only thing to add is that I used a 19mm socket to push the slide pin rubber boots back into place after removing them to clean and grease them.

Parts came from Napa and cost about $175 for rotors, ceramic pads and some brake grease. Be sure to have lots of brake cleaner on hand since the rotors were oiled and bagged. They need to be cleaned off before they can be installed – I do this anyway even for dry rotors. I tend to get greasy fingers all over them.

Bought a 8.7 cubic feet Danby Chest Freezer for the house today. Finally the DQ Dilly Bars will be frozen and we can buy BBQ meat on sale and consume it later!

More importantly we can now defrost our fridge freezer to try and stop the unit from peeing all over the floor.

This long weekend between a Birthday, family visits, Valentines day and Chinese New Year we were able to do some work updating the guest bedroom.

First I ripped off all the old trim and mouldings in the guest room. Ended up having to chisel off the old door mouldings as they were stapled onto the finished frame pretty tightly (with glue).
Then we did a lot of sanding of the ceiling and walls.
A fresh new coat of ceiling paint went up.
Then a coat of prime went on the walls followed by two coats of paint.
A new dome light was installed to replace the 1970′s style builders light.
Lastly I got to test out the new 18 guage brad nailer and drag out the old mitre saw by installing the new mouldings – which we painted on saw horses in the basement.

Still need to caulk the space between my poorly mitred joints – it probably doesn’t help that the walls aren’t square. Next time I’m going to try to “cope” the inside corners of the baseboards. Then install some doorstop to connect the baseboards to the floor. Fill all the nail holes and call it done.

Then I can set my sights on the master bedroom for more of the same.
I’ll see about getting some before and after pictures up. I think we have some old ones from when we ripped out the carpet.

My back definitely hurts but it is amazing the difference some paint and sweat can make.

I did some work on Lo’s Vibe this weekend. Kevin kindly invited me over to his dads to enjoy the comfort of a two car garage even though it was pretty warm around here for January.

We did an oil change and replaced the spark plugs. She had 120k km on the vehicle and it was a little early for the plugs but it made sense to do since Lo was concerned about a drop in fuel mileage.

I should also replace her air filter and clean the MAF sensor but I’ll leave those jobs for warmer days it’s now dipped back down into the negatives.
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Tonight I was picking up some groceries on the way home from work at the Superstore on Dundas and Trafalger. On my way in with my green bins a guy was standing with a shopping cart that had a computer with a touch screen mounted on the handle. He showed me how to flip through the current flyer and how to search for products in the store and off I went.
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Lo and I loaded up for a winter walk through the Short Hills provincial park. We had a full trunk of snow shoes, poles, coats and all sorts of fun clothing layers, cooking gear and a single burner stove (for hot chocolate after of course!). Our TomTom GPS had the main parking lot off of Pelham Road as a POI (update form the Internet) near Pelham.

When we got to the parking lot a few couples were making their way out. We said hello and I asked how the trails were and if we’d need our snow shoes. We were informed the trails were pretty well packed and easily passable so we left the shoes in the trunk. There were only a few spots where I wished I had put on my gators as the snow hugged my upper ankles but other than that hiking boots were fine. We came across a few people using snow shoes – either for fun or for the metal treads to help with some of the climbs and descents.

I chose to do hike Number 6: Terrace Creek Trail. There are blue 6′s painted on trees through out the hike and while it is mostly well marked there were a few spots where I wished I had a compass to go with our little map. The hike loop is just under 5k but it felt like 10. Lots of hills and it did actually take us 2 hours as advertised. I don’t think the distance included getting to the loop from the parking lot. The final hill to get up to the parking lot feels a lot steeper than it looks going down.

After hiking we had some hot chocolate and then went to my Parents for dinner. Niagara has easily 8-12 inches of snow where South of St. Catharines – where we were – is only 4-6 inches I’d say. Mississauga is of course barely trace amounts maybe 1-2 inches.

We have some pictures but I need to find the cable for my new camera. My laptop doesn’t have an XD card reader.
Edit: Photos are posted here.

I purchased a Canon PIXMA MX860 printer after the holidays during the boxing week sale. I have been looking for a printer/scanner/fax for the house for a while. We’ve lived without one for 3 years but every now and then I want to print or copy a document and it has become annoying enough that I’ve decided to do something about it. A co-worker made fun of me for wanting a fax in this day and age. While I agree with him, every now and then a fax comes in handy – like dealing with realtors.

I was looking for a laser all in one, but the cost of those with wireless network and a fax is north of $400 CAD. Way more than I was comfortable paying for a home office machine.

This device has great reviews – there were a few negatives concerning the print quality but for $100 CAD on sale from Best Buy I can’t see how it gets much better than that.

The big issue I found after unpacking it and loading in the print head and inks is that there is no way to configure the networking of the device from Linux. I had to use the packaged window application to get the device set up on my LAN since I have secured my wireless network. But once the device joined the network I haven’t had any problems printing. I haven’t tried scanning with the Canon drivers (europe location) yet but will up date when I have to figure that out. Sane might already have the drivers set up to go.

For those looking for something to do, you could probably try to sniff the communication of the printer on the USB port. Another thing that would be great is to sniff out the communication of ink levels and other admin tasks between a windows machine and the printer. My install of cups doesn’t seem to handle the feedback.

I haven’t tried the fax, scanner, or media readers yet but the copier and printer work as expected.
I modified our PPD file to do grey scaling by default to save on colour ink. If you want a colour copy you have to change the advanced setting. I can post the change to the PPD file if anyone needs it but you can find them online.

• Canon PIXMA MX860 Print and Scanner Drivers – choose linux and then your language
• OpenPrinting.org Canon PIXMA MX860 Info
• I found this discussion on OpenPrinting.org to be very helpful

We had in a contractor to install the outdoor BBQ natural gas lines needed to fire up the new BBQ. I had assembled the BBQ two weeks ago — yes, I got excited. Lauren tells everyone I’ve been sneaking out of bed at night to give it hugs and kisses. I cannot confirm or deny that accusation.

When we first tried to start the new BBQ I had some problems getting the BBQ to ignite with the electric starter so I used a match and she gave a big poof and we were cooking in no time. A quick half hour on high to burn in the new burners and grill was all she got last night. It’s also a good idea to heat everything up to sterilize the firebox and to allow the oil I put on the cast iron grills and smoker box to impregnate the metals and burn off the excess.

Tonight after refereeing the first meat hits the grill. I’m thinking something with lots of grease like hot Italian sausages is a good “seasoning” meat to get the flavorizers and grills up to speed quickly. The smoker box needs another coating in oil as it is raw cast iron unlike the grills which are porcelain coated.

I’m excited. This weekend I’m going to try out the rotisserie.

Yesterday I got an email from HR here at GE about the employee benefit of bringing in nurses to administer on site flu shots. I have to admit that I have yet to get a flu shot when they have been available ever since University.

Today I read this CBC article titled Canadians urged to get flu shots despite problems.

I think I’ll continue the trend and not get a flu shot again this year. If I was interacting with older people or newborns more often then I might. But I’m not convinced it does more good than bad. I’ll just let nature take it’s course and roll the dice.

This from a complete health care idiot.