Dysmey Blog Archives  >  memorial day weekend

memorial day weekend

I just thought of this: This is the first anniversary of my purchase of this house. It is amazing that I have been in here that long.

lawn

The weed and feed that I spread on parts of my lawn two Saturdays ago worked. Too well, I have found when I tried to mow my grass last Tuesday. The grass along the street was so thick my mower kept getting caught on the grass and even jammed as if catching a stick. I managed to mow within six feet of the street before giving up in exhausion and calling the folks to ask for Padre to mow the lawn with his tractor mower.

I am told that Padre found that the grass was so thick that the blades on his mower kept getting caught. But the lawn was mowed enough for me to rake up two lawn bags full of clippings.

I had to clean and lubricate my main mower before I put it to further use on Memorial Day. The mower was a little easier to push, but it still required some effort and it makes a loud squeak when not cutting grass.

chimney

I had planned to repair the top of the chimney and get rid of the radial and disk antennae since I bought the house. I decided a couple of Saturdays ago to call a bricklayer to have the antennae removed and the chimney top repaired and capped off.

The bricklayer came and deposited some of his scaffolding next to the chimney on Thursday morning before Padre came to mow the yard. I had to move the stuff over to cut the grass he missed. The bricklayer then came on Friday to do his work. I came back from work to find the antennae on the ground and the chimney capped in new brick. There was a mound of mortar on top of the chimney. It was covered with a plastic bag to protect it from the rain while it was hardening; the wind blew it off, but the cap was hard enough by then.

I got up on the roof for the first time since I got the house in order to check the work. It looks really good. Of course, it will take a few rains before the work matches the rest of the chimney.

Oddly enough, nobody seems to have noticed the antennae were up there when they walk past the house. That was what the folks and the neighbors tell me. But the important point is that I noticed them; and the top was busted up in any case; so the work had to be done.

As for the antennae themselves, I cut up the radial antenna and bagged it for trash pickup. It was suggested that I leave it next to the street for someone to pick up. That is a bad idea. I already had someone(s) steal the gutter I laid alongside the fence; and this sort of thing encourages such theft. Then there is the likelihood that nobody wants a rusted, busted radial antenna, esp. with the digital switchover coming next year.

serener fails again

The new power supply for the Serener (the original Janovac) came Friday afternoon. I installed it and found that it works as well as the original Serener power supply did: It doesn't.

I do not know how to interpret the LED on the power supply. It glows blue when the plug is in the wrong orientation. It glows red when the plugs are in the right orientation. See the problem? And, in either orientation, there is no power going to the motherboard.

And it is not the motherboard's fault. I have plugged in the pico power supply that I bought separately, and the motherboard works fine. If you remember from a previous article, I used that separate power supply on the Serener, but the power supply had to hang out of the case because it was too big to fit inside. Now the Serener is self-contained again, but does nothing at all.

I had to let Logic Supply, the company that sold me the new power supply, know what was going on. I do not know whether I will get a response.

Have you had any reports about the Serener 120W DC-DC Power Converter?

I have installed mine which came from your company yesterday (23 May 2008, order #75700) in a Serener GS-L08 case with a pico-ITX board and a PATA hard drive. I plugged in the cables in the right orientation (a somewhat difficult task to determine how to orient the plugs). When I plugged in the power supply the little LED on the supply glowed red. As assume it means something is wrong. When I first oriented the board plug the wrong way, the supply LED glowed blue. That does not make sense at all. And it matters little either way, because the supply is not supplying power to the computer.

I plan to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 on the Serener if it ever works.


Posted on the Dysmey Blog on 25 May 2008.