What home improvement work did you do today?

sounds like you know the drill!!

 

Verizon is finally bringing in the Super Fast internet/cable to our area.
I gotta say I'm very happy with the results!!!
Used to have outages constantly!!!
And of course they seemed to happen the most right before the Texans Game!!!
Talk about Getting Pissed!!!!

 

Hahahaha, the previous owner of our place had "dish network" AND "Hughes" in the back yard. I pulled them out, and just yesterday found the best use for the Hughes dish, like it was made for it.
StarLink FTW if you are rural

 

That's the most useful it's ever been

I am glad to hear most of us rural folk are finding updated solutions!

 

Taking a break from replacing my furnace and central air.
That's $10,000.00 I would have liked to spend on my truck....

 

I can only imagine how you felt! I've had my share of mess ups as well. Now, at the age of almost 75, I am a big believer in the directions on a product that say "try in an inconspicuous place first".

 

Went out to my buddies lake house over the weekend. They just purchased like a 1/2 - 3/4 acre lot behind their cabin. We started clearing the floor and small trees that we could handle and burned most of it.

Then came home and one of my friends had an over delivery of pulverized dirt that she wanted gone, so I loaded most of it in the back of the truck to top dress a few spots in my yard. Then threw down some seed. Hopefully the dog doesn't rip it up too much before it starts to sprout.

 

Yup, you've got ~ +50% years on me at this point, I'm only at a half-century.

I think the most annoying part about it is the number of times I've told my kids things they should watch out for, mistakes I've made, only to sit and watch them ignore it and fall on their face just the same. Even if you could magically zip yourself back in time I'd probably tell you, "I know what I'm doing, dammit!" and proceed to do it anyway.

Humans are inherently stupid/stubborn. It only took me the first 40 years worth of being on this planet to realize the scope of that stupidity/stubborness.

 

Dude, you're a Unifi guy! Unifi Talk is insanely good and cheaaaaap! If you ever did want a line, even a landline, Unifi is $9/month for their basic plan with up to 3000 minutes. You can port numbers from all over the place. If you need a landline for fax or oldschool phones, buy their ATA, it's $99. Or get one of the new UTP-series Touch phones. When I setup the business (which 50% of it is installing/configuring Unifi hardware right now), I broke down and got one of their G3 Touch handsets and an ATA to play with. The service is flawless, and the built-in options for autoattendant, call forwarding, call redirection to other #s when cell service is down, call-to-text, etc... it's such an insanely good value. And if you need unlimited-everything, $24.99 a month. It beats every other major VOIP provider's dick in the dit on bang vs. buck.

Sounds like you got it covered but ...

Oh, and if you need to have a POE source and don't want to run a new drop, the UDB is a killer option. It's also what I'm using for my phone to get "wireless POE", because my desk is, sadly, against an exterior wall.

 

It is, but not getting more Unifi stuff is even cheaper

Oh yeah, this would be one of my first resorts if we actually needed a land line, but honestly, we don't really need one. We lived @ our old location (Ozarks in MO) for 15 years, and even though our cell phone service was absolute crap...we maybe got like 1 or 2 calls a month, with 50% of those being telemarketing. LOL So eliminating that was an easy to save a few bux. LITERALLY the only reason we 'had' to have phone service is because Windstream wouldn't or couldn't do just DSL and nothing else...we had to bundle it or no DSL.

If I'm understanding you correctly, the UDB isn't needed in my case, as I opted for the UDM SE, which has POE built in. If I ran a line to every room I want a hard line in, and did want a 'wired' phone, I'd still have like 3 ports left, so I'd have a line left for the bedroom and living room. So I'm good.

 

Right, so the UDB ... I have a UDM as well, but my work desk is in a remote location where (1) I need POE from a Unifi network port and (2) I have wifi signal, and a 120v power source.

What the UDB does for $99, which is cheaper than most contractors would charge for a single network drop, is basically grabs your wifi signal, adds itself to your Unifi network, and gives you a wall port to plug any POE-demanding device into.

Say you needed to wire up a POE security camera in a remote spot with a power plug ... you could plug the UDB in, let it be discovered over wifi by your UDM (or other Unifi gateway), and adopt the UDB. From there, plug in your security camera to the UDB's POE port, BING!, Unifi Protect will see the camera boot up and let you adopt it.

I believe you can also use the UDB as a meshing device (I'd need to check specs again) so if you have meshing turned ON in your UDM (or other gateway) in the Settings>Wifi area, it will actually extend your broadcast range.

I dunno. I guess it could be seen as more of a novelty to some. Me, personally, I wanted a POE phone on my desk, and there's no way in hell I'm going to wire up a new drop on an exterior wall, it's way too much of a PITA to fish cables up exterior walls of a multi-story home. So this gave me a way to create a POE wallport over wifi.

 

Started painting my front porch today. What a PITA, why did I build a wrap around porch in the first place?

 

because they are beautiful to look at, relaxing to be on and a prime place to watch the storm roll in.

I'm looking to add one in a couple years to our place

 

That sod should be super easy to take out. 1-2 hours tops. Just get a a hoe and go to town on it.

 

It took me nearly an hour to remove a 2ft diameter circle for our fire pit. Our dirt is very hard packed with lots of clay. If stomping on a shovel will only sink in about 2".

 

I don't have clay, just more rocks than anyone could ever want, literally a gravel pit down the road.

I see people dig through grass and nice soil with no rocks and I just shake my head. Half amazement, half frustration with my own dirt. In heaven, If I make it, it will just be shovels full of loam coming up

 

We're all clay here too. Once you get below the root zone, a few forward kicks with a flathead shovel with some thick-soled boots and it'll clear it out. If you're not accustomed to that kinda thing, expect your ankles and sole to be sore the next day.

 

Maybe not "home improvement" but the kids were having issues with their Xbox One running hot, mostly because they weren't listening to me when I told them to keep the doors open.

So I added a pair of 120mm fans (AC Infinity MULTIFAN S7, I use AC Infinity stuff for my data closet and audio cabinets, great brand, good products) on either side of the IKEA cabinet I built for them, where the consoles typically run/live, so it doesn't matter if they keep the doors closed or not. Temps are markedly reduced, probably 20° cooler than they were with the doors open. I used a 120mm fan template from here, their Radiator template, cut it the same height on an industrial papercutter, taped them where I wanted each fan, spring-release center punch on each of the 5 holes, drilled the outers and a guide for the large center hole, then 4½" or 5" hole saw to cut the center. Used misc hardware I had in my hardare bins to bolt them on, with AC Infinity's rubber isolaters and finger-saver grilles between the fan and wood to kill any noise. Used a random 5v-output USB charger I had leftober from some Motorola tablet to power the fans. Probably could've spaced them a little more evenly on either side, but the kids aren't paying me, so they get what they get, and they don't get upset

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Yeah, it's more than a few kicks to dig into our ground. I literally used a pickaxe to dig a hole for planting a shrub. I got one of these stuck for 2.5 hours just trying to auger holes for piles when I built my deck. The Ditch Witch I eventually hired to do screw piles instead struggled to run them in.




Not worth the effort. I'll be renting one of them fancy pants sod cutter kajiggers.

 

Good call. When it comes to back breaking work, let a machine do the labor for you.

 

Ah, understood. In my case, wiring up a new drop on an exterior wall is pretty damn easy since I have a completely unfinished basement, and it's a one-level house....but I'll keep that in mind (not necessarily for a phone, but possibly for other stuff). Appreciate the recommendation

 

Would be same for me, basement garage below, but drywall in place. Two stories above, and it's either a double or triple header/footer between the basement and middle floor, hell of a lot to drill thru. Then you get to fight with in-wall insulation. I have 16" augers and could totally do it, the process just sucks all-around. I have a power outlet right there on the wall, so ... taking advantage.

 

It’s because what you call “sod”, the rest of the world calls “permafrost”.

 

I finished the floor Monday, you guys were right, it was relatively straight forward.
I finally made some concrete progress today on getting the tent/hangout deck started 25 minutes for each one basically, have 7 more tomorrow. Mostly because I was in low gear from the "river" on and it was steep enough where I felt that "slow and steady", was the right choice. I love this tractor, it's never let me down, despite me doing dumb things like this with it!

 

Dammit!!!
You're Really making me miss my Tractor!!!
Had a mid size John Deere.
Loved that thing!!
Front end loader,box blade and rear mower deck.
We sold it along with one of our weekend places on the South Llano River.
Told the Wife I wanted to keep it but She talked me down off that cliff.
She asked me what I was going to do with it living in the Burbs?
On the plus side that means I get a newer model when we both retire.

 

I can't wait to see the finished tent deck. How many acres is your property? At one point we thought about building a deck and permanently installing a teepee on it. Just shy of 2 acres here...

 

used it to flex on the neighbor

We are about 72. That said, I'd guess about 15 of it is too steep to do anything on besides hike and 4wheel. Not that that isn't fun in its own right.

 

Oh...and it was the four wheel drive version!!!