As I mentioned here, I was looking for a new car stereo. I ended up buying a Panasonic CQ-1300U for Mary for her birthday. Yeah, her birthday was a few weeks ago, but we are just now getting to the installation. Well, this morning, I got out the box, read the instructions and had at it. I bought it from Crutchfield, on the recommendation of my friend, Paul, as they have great customer service and they provide you with detailed installation instructions for your specific car. Well, Mary has a 1993 Ford Taurus (given to her by affore mentioned friend and his wife), so we got instructions for it.

The removal of the old receiver went very well, thanks to this great DIN tool, which made the removal simple as anything. When I got everything disconnected, though, I noticed that the plugs were different: the ford had two flat plugs, while the panasonic wanted a single plug. I looked in the boxes, and, sure enough, there was a plug that would fit, but it only had wires on the other end. So, I got out the instructions, found the technical support line and called them.

While I was on hold (not long at all; another kudos to Crutchfield), I noticed that there was another set of wires with plugs that would fit the existing ones. Ta-da! I had an adapter! All that was needed was to solder the two plugs' wires together and I could just plug it in. Well, I figured color-to-color, which looked about right, except there were a few wires that didn't have partners. A guy came on the line and, very politely and helpfully, guided me through the pairing of the wires and told me which ones didn't need to be attached. Mary and I sat down and soldered the wires together, alternating turns, since it was so much fun. Then, I put some electrical tape on them, and we took the newly built adapter to the car.

At this point, it was trivial to put the new radio into the dashboard, and we connected the negative pole to the battery again (did that at the beginning to keep myself from setting the car on fire), and the stereo came on and we listened to Cat Stevens' Teaser and the Firecat.

Now, we are ready to take the car to Annapolis this weekend for my friends, Jeannie and Todd's, 5-year wedding anniversary party!

Well, as I mentioned before, I got a new dishwasher. It is a Whirlpool Gold Tall Tub (GU1500XTL). Well, it took about an hour and a half, with dinner in the middle, but I got it installed. Mary is loading it up for the first run. I've got some paper down to make sure it doesn't leak.

[Doh! Mary just called, there was water flowing everywhere. Turns out that Mary had adjusted some PVC pipes under the sink last week, and, when I attached the hose from the dishwasher to the garbage disposal, I had dislodged one of the couplings, so it was pouring water into the cabinet sink. UGH! Lots of cleaning later, we were back.]

Well, I ran a quick rinse load, but had forgotten to turn the water back on, so nothing happened. We loaded up the washer, turned the water on, pressed the “Normal” load setting and away it went. Almost immediately, I noticed that I had a leak in the copper fittings, so I'm going to have to fix it on Tuesday night (I teach tomorrow night, so no plumbing will be done).

[Later:] After running a normal load, we are noticing that the heat vent is on the front top left of the door, which means that it comes up out and hits the countertop. Not good, since we have a custom, hand-done, cracked-tile mosaic countertop (Mary did it a year ago, single-handedly, it took all winter), and we're not sure if that is going to handle the heat. Might have to figure out some sort of heat exchange mechanism to put under the countertop to take the heat out the side. Mary is having second thoughts about this now, since the countertop represents a hell of a lot of work on her part.

Well, our dishwasher died, so we're getting a new dishwasher. I'm going to be picking it up on Tuesday afternoon and install it that night. I'm pretty excited about it. It has a deep tub, which means more room for stuff, tons of cool little foldable racks and adjustments to better suit you. It has so many options that I'm going to have to read the manual and figure it out.

I know that I haven't yet put up the reluctant handyman article for the new garbage disposal, but I will, then I'll put up an entry for the new dishwasher.

Well, the old garbage disposal died, so I had to run out and get a new one. I installed it this evening, a new Kenmore 3/4 hp disposal. It was an easy task, thanks to another garbage disposal that my friend, Wade Denton, helped me install a couple years ago. I took a bunch of pictures in preparation for a new Reluctant Handyman entry.

The major driving point behind the Great PDA Search of 2003 was to give myself a good way to manage my todo list with regards to my properties, as I tend to lose track of all the tasks I need to do. I've been thinking about how I'm going to do it most efficiently even after I get the PocketPC, and wouldn't you know it, other people have the same problem. :) Dave Thomas (of pragmatic programmer fame) has a great idea!

The only thing about this is how to manage some of the metadata associated with tasks, such as when you completed it, time it took, money spent to complete it and perhaps some other stuff. I suppose that if I wrote this in RSS, then wrote a little app that allows me to add some metadata to the RSS file, it would work. I'm going to have to look into this a bit more.

[Update: Are they even called PDA's anymore? Pocket PC's, or are those just the windows CE ones? I haven't really looked at these in a long time, so I don't know much about them.]

Well, I am finding myself a bit over my head, organizationally, when it comes to the apartments and all the little things that need to be done. There are several small little tasks that I need to do. I keep them written down in a notebook, but, being me, I don't really look at the notebook too often, plus having the tasks scattered around on different pages doesn't work either. I tried using a spreadsheet on my computer, but I then have to remember to print out the list, prioritize it, and, most importantly, type the tasks in when I get home or get a phone call (wherever I may be).

So, I've decided to buckle down and buy myself a pda-type device. My initial thought would be to use this to justify purchasing a tablet pc, but I can't really afford it right now, especially since I just bought this laptop. So, I'm going to get a normal pda-style device. Now, I'm starting to compile the list of requirements I have for it, so I can start to refine my search. My timeframe for purchase is the beginning of January (hopefully I can get some sort of discount at an after-christmas sale).

I'm going to keep a list of requirements in this entry, so that I can keep track of what I want and need. This will make it a lot easier to choose one, as I can make sure that it satisfies all my needs, then get maybe the next higher model. :) I've still got to have a little geek fun.

Well, one of my tenants called and said that her bathroom light fixture had fallen on the sink and broke a big chunk out of the basin. UGH! That's a big chunk.

Seeing as how the chunk wasn't really shattered off, just sort of broke off, it fit nicely back into the sink. Off to Home Depot it was. I'm getting more and more familiar with the people there, so I found one of the guys I've used as a reference before (he helped me figure out the pump contraption for the Great Carrie Pumpkin of 2003), and he directed me right to aisle 2 that has the epoxies. He recommended Super Glue Epoxy Adhesive. (explanation of what makes super glue so “super“)

It needs to be mixed before you use it, but the packaging makes it easy, as you just depress the plunger and it squirts out equal amounts of each part. Then, you mix it for about 30 seconds and apply it to both surfaces, the chunk and the sink. The epoxy package said that you could use the plastic package bubble as a mixing tray, so that is what I did. After pushing out a bunch, I mixed it, then applied it to both surfaces. I fitted the chunk back in, held it for a bit, then let it sit for a couple more minutes. After it was seated, I applied some porc-a-filler porcelain chip filler and am waiting for it to set overnight before I sand it. Yeah, it looks like crap right now, but I think it will clean up nicely with a bit of sanding.

Presto! I'm curious to see how it works.

[Update: Here's the final product after a bit of sanding. Not a masterpiece, by any means, but it holds water, and I think the new enamel will fade over time]

Fixing deadbolts is actually one of the easiest things you can do. The only complicated thing is if you are replacing a really old deadbolt with the smaller diameter with a new deadbolt and a larger diameter. I ran into this with the front door of one of my rental units, and I had to drill the hole out. Luckily, there are templates you can be, attach to the door, then just drill through the template, quick and easy. With my fully-charged 18V RYOBI cordless drill, this took absolutely no time at all (and, I got the added benefit of being called handy, which is something I never thought I'd hear). So, on to fixing a standard deadbolt.

At my other house, there are several storage areas in the basement. I told the tenants that they could use them and lock them, if they want. Well, the tenant on the second floor wanted to use it, but there was no key for the existing deadbolt. Doh! In this case, I had two options, either take the deadbolt off, remove the cylinder and have it rekeyed, or just buy a new deadbolt and install it, keeping the old one for later use (after rekeying). I went with the format option, as that was the quickest (my local locksmith wasn't open at the time). Off to Home Depot to purchase it. These aren't expensive, maybe around $10, or so.

In any case, what makes deadbolts so easy to replace is that it usually consists of just unscrewing all the screws you can find, wait for it to all fall apart, then put the new one in and screw all the screws you can find. :) Let's take this step by step, though. The major screws that you'll need to unscrew are on the inside side of the door and, depending on whether you have a double keyed entry or a latch, the screws are either right on the cylinder or behind the latch. Here's a picture of mine, which was a latch-based lock. If you look closely, you can see the screws underneath the latch.

Well, there are two screws, and, after you unscrew them and take the cylinder off, you can (although not totally necessary) take off the bolt, itself. If you look in the picture above, you can see that the plate on the edge of the door has two screws as well. Unscrew those, take out the bolt and you'll have the following parts.

Putting the new deadbolt in is as easy as doing the above steps in reverse order. Put the bolt and faceplate back on the edge of the door.

Then, put the cylinder back on through the hold in the bolt and screw all the screws back together. Presto!! It should look like this.

Like I said, this is about the easiest task there is. I've done a bunch of them now, and I'm always amazed by the fact that people sometimes pay locksmiths to do this for them. All you need is a screwdriver, and a new lock is yours!

Well, I'm looking to get a Ryobi “The Works” pack (review). I keep seeing it when I go to home depot, and I'm so very tempted. It is two hundred and some dollars, although I think I can find a better price online. I read mostly good reviews about it online; the only odd thing being that the circular saw has a 1-9/16” depth, which means you can't really cut all the way through a 2x4. Hmmm.... So, I'm looking at the black & decker firestorm 18V 5 tool set (review). However, having the Ryobi 8 pack would be nice, as I've used pretty much all of those tools in the past six months.

Plus, my cordless drill is a Ryobi, and I love it! It definitely is my most used tool, as I'm sure will become clear when I write about more projects. I know that I'm pretty green to be choosing a favorite brand, but I can't deny that I like Ryobi. Mary says that I just like saying their name. RYOOOOOBI! Yeah, I guess it does sound cool.

Back to the pack, though, I'll probably buy the Ryobi pack online, see how I like it. I'm hoping to get it for around $150.

This is an older post (done when I was still on blogger). It was rushed together, so the formatting might make it a bit hard to read.

Well, one of my units is totally electrical, no gas at all. This means that there are wall-mounted electric heaters. Nell called and let me know that the heater in the kitchen wasn't working, although it was working in all the other rooms. Hmmmm....

So, I went over to the house and took a look. My fear was that the house circuit to the heater was bad, which meant a lot of work trying to debug it. As I've learned, the first thing to do is check for obvious problems. From the outside, everything looked okay, no visible problems. Doh! If I'm going to go into the unit, itself, then the first step is to turn off power it. Flip the breaker, so I don't get electrocuted and unscrew the only visible screw that was holding it to the wall. I figured that I'd just take it off and look behind it, see if there was anything I could see that might keep it from working.
When the screw came out of the wall (with difficulty, I might add, kudos to my screwdriver!), the heater didn't come off the wall. The screw was on one end of the heater (the end opposite the switch to control the temperature), so I figured there must be another screw holding it onto the wall where the heat switch was. Hmm... No screw immediately obvious. The temperature switch was on the outside of a little compartment that appeared to have the screw in it (from the back that is what it appeared). So, I fiddled around with the little compartment, and, sure enough, it came off, exposing the wires that were connected to the temperature switch. There was definitely a screw inside there holding the heater to the wall. I looked at all the wires, trying to figure out what the path of the circuit was through the heater, and I noticed that, oddly enough, one of the wires was disconnected from the switch. I looked at the wires, diagramming the circuit in my mind, and, sure enough, that wire shouldn't have been disconnected. My theory was that I just needed to reconnect the wire and everything should work. Unfortunately, the wires weren't screwed to the switch, but the connector was broken. Doh! I figured that I could just take the switch to Home Depot and get a new one, reconnect it and be home free. Before I took the switch off, though, I needed to make a note of the circuit, so I could reconnect it in the same way. Naturally, I didn't have a piece of paper with me, so I called Mary and dictated the circuit to her. I disconnected the switch and took it to Home Depot. Sadly, Home Depot did not have this switch, and the place that would have it wouldn't be open until Monday (it was Saturday when I did this). The only other option was to solder the wire back onto the switch. Well, such is life. I bought a soldering iron, took the switch home and reconnected the wire. After calling Mary to get the connections, I reconnected everything, turned the breaker back on, then moved the switch to High! I waited a bit, hoping to get some indication of heat. No change in color in the coil, but I did notice that the metal started to creak. That meant to me that it was heating up. So, I turned it off, put the compartment back on with the switch, reconnected the heater to the wall, and left. I called Nell a bit later, and, sure enough, the heater was working. Job well done!!!!

The idea for the reluctant handyman came from working on my houses, desperately trying to figure out how to do things in order to save some money. Being fairly clueless about handyman-type things, I've got a lot to learn. So, I figured that I would document my learning in the hopes that maybe someone else could benefit. I seem to always have some sort of project going from installing a new deadbolt to cutting a big hole in the side of my furnace as an air intact. I'll post my problems and what I did to solve them, including who I called to get the information. I'll also introduce the people who I rely on for instruction and help. With my new digital camera, I'll be taking pictures, too, so I'll even have photographic evidence that I'm fixing things. :)