(For my Texas friends:) Support Texas parks and nature: Vote Yes on Prop. 5 on Nov 5th! From 1993 to 2017, the state has collected nearly $2.5 billion in revenues from the Sporting Goods Sales Tax that was supposed to go to parks, yet only 40 percent has been spent on state and local parks.…
Build a Network PoE Speaker System
I recently built a networked PoE (Power over Ethernet) speaker system and installed it in the wall at the top of the stairs. By using PoE, I only had to run one cable to the device – a Cat6A ethernet cable that provided data and power. I used the following components: Raspberry Pi 3 B+…
Home Automation Improvements!
I went on a home automation improvement kick recently! The changes include: OpenHAB – I switched from Misterhouse to OpenHAB for home automation. Why? OpenHAB has a cleaner codebase, more active development community, more efficient event-driven model, increasing device support, a better UI, charting, and a functional mobile client. I completed most of the conversion in…
How to Quiet a Garage Door and Opener
One of our garage door openers died of old age recently – it was an old builder-model (in other words, as cheap as the builder can get) chain drive opener that was incredibly noisy. I took advantage of the opportunity to reduce the noise made by the garage door opener and the door itself especially…
Fedora 16 Upgrade
I upgraded our server to Fedora 16 from Fedora 14 recently, so I thought I’d continue my tradition of posting the solutions to the problems I encountered to help others. Two major changes in Fedora recently increased the difficulty of this upgrade: the switch to grub2 from the grub legacy bootloader, and the switch to…
Styrofoam recycling in Austin
Melissa from Hunters Chase pointed out that Cycled Plastics in Austin recycles foam products, which are not taken and recycled as part of the single stream recycling from the City of Austin and Texas Disposal Services. From their website at http://www.cycledplastics.com/Services.html : Public Drop Off Site: Cycled Plastics maintains a public drop point at it’s…
Chevy Volt test drive
At the Chevy Volt test drive, waiting in line…
John Avlon – Voters should fire hyper-partisans
Another good opinion article on CNN, this one by John Avlon advocating voters rejecting hyper-partisan candidates. via Voters should fire Bachmann, Grayson – CNN.com. A great quote: “We need to stand up to the extremes on both sides to stop the cycle of incitement before it gets even uglier.”
David Frum – We’re not on a ‘road to serfdom’
I try not to define myself as liberal or conservative – but some of the fear-mongering and end-of-the-world fatalism being used in this election cycle is inappropriate and ultimately destructive, rather than constructive and adding value to the debate. David Frum has a good opinion article on CNN about it – We’re not on a…
Our Home Efficiency Improvements
Lisa and I recently went on the Austin Cool House Tour co-sponsored by the Texas Solar Energy Society and Austin Energy Green Building. We realized the efficiency retrofits to our home were pretty similar to what we saw on the tour, so for fun I thought I’d write up the green feature list of our…