June 26th, 2010
Yesterday, I decided to pull out my old scanner — that I had not used for 10 years or so probably – to scan a few pages that I had printed out log ago. I found those pages inside my desk drawer when I cleaned it out recently. The goal was to get rid of as much paper as possible and have only digital documents instead, especially if they were originally text files to begin with that I had printed.
But it didn’t go so smoothly. When I plugged in the scanner, I noticed that it wasn’t working. The scanning head would light up, but it wasn’t moving at all. Thinking that it was locked, I checked the bottom lock, but it was open, so I figured that it must have been jammed on the inside. I thought opening it would be simple enough, maybe I could unscrew a few screws at the bottom, but there were none at all. 
This is an old Canon LIDE scanner, that uses LEDs instead of a regular light bulb to make its scans, and it wasn’t made to be easily opened… I ended up having to pry off the frame that covers the glass, then slide the glass out, and that wasn’t easy because it was glued onto the glass. I checked the lock, and it was fine. So I found my way to the motor, after hearing the “boing!” sounds of the springs that press the scanning head up to the glass and unexpectedly popped out, causing the head to fall off the tray that holds it. I removed the gears that turn the drive belt and found that the motor was completely seized up. I managed to open it, and with some work, it started to turn again. Then I had to reassemble it all, and I wasn’t sure it would even work, but it did. It seems to work pretty well now, so I better not let it sit for 10 years again.
Posted in Lair, Technology
June 23rd, 2010
There was an Earthquake here in Ottawa this afternoon. It happened just before 2 PM, and it was stronger than the last one from a few years ago for sure. I sat here and watched my monitors dance on my desk, while my chair gave me a little ride.
Here’s the report from the USGS site. They say it was a magnitude 5 earthquake, but they had it listed as 5.5 at first, while I heard some sources said it was 5.7. I don’t know, but it seemed a bit stronger than just 5 to me, maybe even as much as 6 at one point. There was no damage in my lair, though. Some of the picture frames in the house are a bit crooked now, but that’s about all it did that I can see.
CBC article.
CNN article.
I would post a link to the Earthquake Report from the government of Canada as well, but their website can’t handle the load. It was down since the earthquake hit, which is strange because I don’t think that many people would know about it. They need more server capacity. Cellular phone service is also down, according to reports. Not enough capacity there either. This makes me wonder. What if this had been a more serious earthquake?
Posted in Life
June 22nd, 2010
I bought some more wall hangers for my guitars the other day, to add two more guitars to my “Wall of Guitars”. It seems that 6 guitars is all I’ll be able to fit on this wall, so I put one up next to my amplifiers on the opposite wall. I still have one guitar that has nowhere to go, maybe I can hang it in the other room…
I have enough guitars.
Posted in Guitar, Lair
June 17th, 2010
I just upgraded the site to WordPress to 3.0. This normally would have gone smoothly, but the automatic updater had an error which rendered WordPress completely unusable. So I had to upload all the files manually to get it working again. It seems that I’m not the only one who had this problem, so keep this in mind if you’re going to upgrade.
Posted in Railwolf.com, Technology
June 14th, 2010
I worked in the yard again. One of the bigger projects was that I cut down an old Juniper which was half-dead. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been because the wood was really difficult to cut, especially when getting the stump out. I used a few different hand saws, an axe (actually 2, I broke the first on it!), and even a drill, but it took a couple of weeks in all to get rid of it. That’s documented in my Flickr gallery. I had cut down the other Juniper we had about 10 years ago, and it wasn’t so difficult, maybe because it was still alive.
After that was done, I worked on my model train layout. I had never really wired it properly, so I decided to finally do that and give the trains adequate power. I used 14 gauge stranded copper for that. It seems like overkill, but the run gets pretty long and I calculated that 14 gauge wire would be needed to prevent power sag. These then connect to smaller feeders to the rails with terminal blocks. Lots of cutting, stripping, and crimping had to be done, but this also allows me to separate the tables if necessary. After I got rid of many empty boxes that I kept there, it made accessing the underside of the tables much easier.
I replaced some of the lights in the kitchen. The old under-cabinet halogen lights were not working too well. When I removed them, it became pretty obvious as to why that was, they were not wired very well by the installer, which probably ended up damaging them in the end. It was almost surprising that they even worked at all. I replaced them with new LED lights, which were more expensive, but they are almost as bright as the halogen lights were, just not as warm in color… and they don’t get hot while lit, unlike the halogens.
I’ve also been thinking about replacing the fluorescent light fixtures in the basement with some new ones. The new ones have a built-in door that opens up to change the tubes, as opposed to the old style — a sheet of clear plastic crammed between the ceiling tile rails — which always seemed to crack the plastic before it was in place. Also, with a digital ballast, they save more energy than the old ones… about 40% from what I read. So I could have more light for the same cost; 4 tubes instead of 2 for example.
Posted in Lair
May 29th, 2010
I went out to the model train shop yesterday. I bought some stuff for my model train layout, and then went to see the real thing. It was a bit cloudy, but the weather was perfect otherwise. Things were not quite as busy as they have been in the past, but you never know how it will be. I saw a couple of trains, plus a little switching in the yard.
It takes about an hour to get there, and then an hour to return, so my muscles didn’t feel so good. I also had a bit of a sore throat, which turns out to be caused by a cold. I’m not feeling so well today, unfortunately, so my model trains will have to wait. But I’m still happy that I managed to go watch trains. I didn’t go at all last year. The weather was so bad, and I was not well enough to go on the only day when the weather was good enough. So I’ll try to make up for it this year by going another couple of times maybe.
Posted in Hobbies, Life, Photography, Trains
May 27th, 2010
It was pretty hot here this week. The temperature got up to 35.8°C / 96.4°F yesterday, which was probably a record. And to make it even worse, it was extremely humid. There were no thunderstorms, though, which was a bit surprising, as this kind of weather would usually be perfect for them. Now the temperature is back to normal.
As part of my plans to improve the yard this year, I worked outside this week. One of my projects was to install a new cover for the electrical outlet in the back wall of the house. It didn’t go quite as smoothly as I had planned, since the builders just crammed an outlet in a hole in the siding and then covered it up. I wanted to install a cover that allows you to keep some cords plugged in, while shielding them from rain, but it wouldn’t fit. Not without cutting up the wall and putting a new outlet box in the wall, which I could have done, but it wasn’t worth it. An electrical outlet costs about a dollar, so it’s not such a big deal to replace it occasionally. So, in the end, I installed a new cover that is similar to the old one after I replaced the old rusted outlet. And then my father finished it with a lot of caulking around it to keep moisture out. He hates doing that, so it was fun…
Posted in Life
May 27th, 2010
On Tuesday, I received a package from Amazon.ca. It contained a 320GB WD Elements portable external hard drive. Amazon.ca has been selling electronics for a little while now, but I had not really thought about getting anything like that from them, because I feared shipping damage. Sometimes my DVDs arrived with cracked cases, and once with damage to the disc itself. The CDs and DVDs that I bought from Amazon.com were always packaged better. I don’t know why Amazon.ca don’t package things as well as they do in the USA, but in this case, it was acceptable for a retail boxed drive. For an OEM drive, on the other hand… the little bags of air would not help it so much.
Anyway, the drive itself is nice. It’s small, light, quiet, and stays cool. It probably has a notebook drive inside its case, so it allows it to be powered by the USB cable that connects it to the computer. That’s convenient. What is not convenient is that the cable that comes with it works fine for plugging it into a notebook, but it’s a bit short for a desktop. Using a longer cable will work, but you need to use a USB cable that has an adequate wire gauge or else there will be power sag and the drive won’t spin up. Other than that, the drive performs quite well. It’s not quite as fast as a desktop hard drive, but it beats my NAS by about 3x when copying files over a network. So in all, I’m pretty happy with it. I would buy it again.
WD Elements
Posted in Loot, Technology
May 12th, 2010
Today, I received the latest Danko Jones album; Below the Belt. It’s great, as usual. They seem to have gone back a little with a more aggressive sound more like some earlier albums, like We Sweat Blood, and added more guitar. 
I also went downtown to the music shop this afternoon, and despite seeing lots of tempting Gibson SGs, I kept my hands away from them… but looked at them for a while in admiration. So, keeping my promise I made to someone, I ended up just buying some guitar strings and a Hohner Blues Harp. I was always fascinated by the harmonica, but never dared get one until today. They’re not expensive at all, so I decided to give it a try. So it gives me something new and interesting, and at the same time my new savings account will be safe. 
Posted in Loot, Music
May 10th, 2010
Today, I decided to open a new bank account. My father wanted to update his statements, so I went with him to his bank this afternoon. While it should have been a simple process, they couldn’t open a new account at the first branch we went to. You need an appointment, apparently, and they had very few openings for appointments this week. I didn’t really like their attitude, so I decided to forget about that. I felt discouraged, but we decided to give it another try elsewhere. We went to another bank, and although it was another branch of the same bank, it was completely different there. It was so much better. I didn’t have to wait very long to make arrangements to open the account, the employees were great, and everything went smoothly there. I finally found a bank that I’m happy with, so now I can try to have some savings.
Posted in Life
