The Brain Dump

Most iPhone users will most likely tell me that the answer to my search is to bite the bullet and find an iPhone but life would be too easy if I jumped on that particular band wagon. Trying to conform to my life's goal of spending as little money as possible without feeling that I'm missing out on what the latest technology has to offer, my journey started out with a Samsung Galaxy S1 purchased used when the Galaxy S4 was the hot selling phone. I kept it going with new operating systems and finally retired it when it could no longer run the latest operating system out of cyanogenmod. I found a prepaid phone plan called Puretalkusa which allowed me to keep 4 smartphones with voice only for only $35 per month total (ie for all the phones) at a time when people were paying upwards of $100 per month for just one phone for voice + data. In attempting to stay low cost, I went through a Blu Studio and a Blu Studio Mini C in the span of approximately 1 year before settling into a...

Last year I mistakenly recommended to my daughter to buy an inexpensive HP Stream 11 notebook for her first year of college.  With all due respect, it has been a great machine but the insufficient storage is a negative.  I was not aware that it did not have expandable storage (the eMMC hard drive is embedded on the motherboard and a technology I haven't seen before). When I tried to upgrade her machine from windows 8.1 to windows 10 I had to jump through multiple hoops in order to get the upgrade to happen due to insufficient storage (ie: removing the 8.1 preventing downgrade, removing unused applications and using an external hard drive). Flash forward a few months and there was an update to version 1511 but nothing I tried allowed the update to progress due to a bug with the update not handling external drives properly. No matter how large the drive I had attached was, I got an insufficient disk space message. I discovered a few KB articles that addresses that particular i...

At the end of last winter, I found a red seedless grape vine (and a pear tree) for sale at the local tractor & farm feed store and decided that I would purchase them before they died under the fluorescent lighting.  I knew enough to buy the ones that were still dormant or just showing signs of breaking dormancy to ensure they don't waste any energy to begin blooming too early. Just before a snow storm was due to hit our area, we had a warm spell that lasted long enough for me to get both items in the ground and get a jump start on the spring growing season. Although the pear tree bloomed just as expected, the grape vine stayed dormant for another month and a half before showing any sign of life (grapes tend to do better when it's warm).  I left the grape to grow wild so that the root system could establish itself and this season will build a trellis so that I can start to train the vine. My first plan of action was to purchase 2 heavy duty "T po...

There are several great reasons everyone should be using drip irrigation compared with simply using a hose or a watering can. Water conservation : by delivering water directly to the roots of the plant there is less water lost from evaporation and less water lost to run-off since the soil has a chance to soak up the water before it can drain away.  We can also use recycled water or captured rain water to further save precious water resources (OK, you can do this in a watering can too). Lower risk of disease : wet leaves can lead to fungus when they can't dry off quickly enough and plants almost always do better when the leaves are dry. Effective Nutrient management : Decreasing run-off also helps to keep the nitrogen in the soil from being diluted or washed away.  Fertilizer can be added to the bucket and distributed easily with less waste. Weed management : Delivering water directly to the plant means less water for weed germination Effective labor utilization : Fil...

There are several key components when it comes to paying for someone to do work for you. education/experience/skill time/labor materials The cost of any job will factor those components in proportionately to arrive at a dollar value for which you will pay to have the work completed. So if you have no idea how to change the timing belt in your car, you are basically either paying for your ignorance or for the convenience to have someone else do the work When I moved into my new house, the Bermuda sod was put down during a dry and hot late August. Seeing how the other houses were built, I know that our lawn started as a weed infested lot which was cleared and leveled with a bulldozer.  A thin layer of topsoil was spread before a mostly dead sod (due to sitting outside for a few days in the sun) was laid down and a hose dragged around to get some water sprinkled. We moved in late September and I couldn't find my hoses while I unpacked.  I was lucky to only have ...

My development has a community garden that has been unused for the last 2 or 3 years.  Without a water source there wasn't a lot of interest to garden down there because it was too much effort for most residents to carry water to maintain their garden.  There is a rain barrel station setup but without a large surface area to catch the water and channel it to the rain barrels, there was never enough water captured for more than 1 bed. This year I out grew my home garden because I wanted to grow pumpkins and watermelons and lots of tomatoes and peppers.  Luckily, the POA decided to run a water line down there and do some rudimentary trimming of the weeds. I'll be using the rain water until that supply runs out because the untreated water provides more nourishment and less shock to the plants With several years worth of weeds, there was a fair amount of work to clear the beds before anything could be planted. A few ambitious gardeners  tilled their bed and pulled ...

There is some concern about using rain water to water vegetables due to potential chemical leaching from asphalt roof tiles (the most popular roofing material in the US). Most people seem afraid of any lawsuits if they state that water collected from an asphalt roof is safe to use on edible fruits and vegetables and it turns out it's not safe at some point down the road. Until someone can step forward and take that responsibility of declaring the water safe, it makes sense to try and take some precautions even though there are plenty of people who have been doing it for years without any adverse effects. A first flush contraption is supposed to divert the first bit of water that washes off your roof (presumably containing organic contaminants and non-organic contaminants such as melted/leached asphalt based chemicals) and capture it. DIY First flush holds about 1 quart of water parts list: 3/4" slip X 3/4" slip X 3/4" FPT 3/4" galvanized nipple ...