The Lance J. Technoweb

My concrete basement floor is very uneven, and so my laundry washer and dryer were bouncing all over the place. I solved this problem by making an inexpensive pedestal for my laundry machines. This post is about how I designed and made my laundry pedestal. It cost me less than $25 to make, and took about 30 minutes to build. A pedestal has numerous benefits:  It gives the equipment a perfectly level surface to sit on. It raises the machines so that they are easier to access. If there is a basement flood, a pedestal raises the machines out of harm's way It is very inexpensive. I made mine for about $25 in materials. Laundry Pedestal Design My pedestal is basically a piece of 3/4 inch plywood with an underlying frame made of 2x4 lumber around it to give it some structure. Then I mounted robust adjustable feet on each corner. In order to easily adjust the feet while the platform was sitting on the floor, I drilled four holes in each of the corners, directly above the adjusters. These ...

Ouch, a watered-damaged MacBook!  Maybe someone spilled some water or other liquid onto the keyboard.  This is bad!  Immediate action is in order, with seconds to spare. This is how I address a water-damaged device.    TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! If it still works, turn it off immediately! Make sure it is unplugged.  Don't plug it back in. Do NOT try to plug it in or turn it on again.  Really. Open it up.  This requires the appropriate precision screwdriver kit.  Don't have one?  Take it to a shop!  Do NOT use the wrong tools. Disconnect the battery Mop up any water with paper towels. Is there water everywhere?  Pull out the board and other components to do some further mopping up in the tight spaces. Put the parts, except the display and battery, in a slightly warm oven (maybe 90 °C, or 190 °F) for 4 hours to help encourage the drying of parts.  Water can get under components, we want to encourage that water to evaporat...

My Honeywell Vista 20p alarm system is fairly comprehensive, but I want one more feature: an alarm that lets me know when my sump pump isn't working properly. Here is how I added one for about $8 in special parts.   I'm afraid of a flood in my finished basement. I'm fortunate - my basement sump pump system is already redundant, with two independent pumps and two outflow pipes. The primary pump kicks in when the water level reaches 6 inches, and if that doesn't work, then the backup pump kicks in when the water level reaches 7 inches.  The backup pump should never kick in unless the primary pump is having a problem pumping.   But there is a problem with this setup: I might never know if my primary pump has failed, leaving me with no redundancy.  I want to be informed when I have one (or god forbid, two) pump failures. My goal is to have my Vista 20p alert me when the sump's water level is ever beyond the point where my primary pump should have kicked in, alertin...

Here is my strategy to stop your Facebook crapfest addiction! Enable Facebook's 2-factor authentication . Delete the Facebook App from your phone. Delete other Facebook properties, such as Instagram and FB Mesenger. Change your Facebook password to something long and complicated.  Write it down.  Clear your browser cookies on both your phone and any other computing devices. And that's it! Now it's a pain in the rear to log into Facebook.  If you find yourself trying to log into Facebook, just say "WTF am I doing" and stop.

 Today I read this on the Motley Fool in relation to Starlink: With Comcast offering 200 mbps for under $50 in metro locales in the U.S. you might not think [Starlink will be successful]. Why is the Motley Fool telling us this fabrication about Comcast pricing?  Motley seem to be merely repeating the words of a Comcast marketing strategy, not the pre-tax price customers actually pay.  Clearly no writer or editor for the MF is actually a Comcast ISP customer.  The sloppy editor will exclaim that the MF article is, on the surface, correct - in my "Metro Area", Comcast's claim is that they charge for 200 Mbps service at $49.99.  $49.99 is under $50.  But that number is incorrect, as Comcast fully states that the $49.99 is the price for a subset of a multi-year contract. The overall monthly cost is far, far higher. Comcast fully admits in their fine print that the fee for 200 mbps service is actually $92.95... not including other profits that show up ever...

I'm a Computer guy at the end of the day.  I started writing assembler code many years ago, and so I'm always interested in what is happening in the CPU industry. This year, Apple decided to quit Intel and move to its own microprocessors, the processors it has been using for the iPhone and iPad. Many thought this was a ridiculous idea.  Losing the ability of Intel x86 virtualization and competing against the most famous microprocessor company ever seems nuts. I was wrong. Apple knocked it out of the park with their new M1 SoC.  The M1 is Apple's low-end processor, but it literally leaves Intel's high end CPUs in the dust.  And I imagine that the power and capability of Apple's desktop/workstation CPUs will be even more capable. If this is just the beginning, then we have a whole new "performance war" in the microprocessor industry.  Intel and AMD will need to amp it up, because suddenly they look far behind in performance, price, and efficiency.  The only ...

I run my Roomba 500 just about every day, so you can say that I'm a heavy user.  I like the Roomba series because it works well, it's reliable, and it is easily repairable if it breaks down.  My Roomba 500 has been in operation for 8+ years and is still running strong. My Early Robot Years: I have owned four Roomba vacuums over the years.  My first robot was a 2nd generation "Sage 4110" that I bought in 2007 for $160.  It was great, but I ran it hard.  One day I foolishly ran it through mud and water and it broke down. I tried to repair it, but I was an idiot and botched the repair. I'm not sure what happened to it, but I moved in 2008 and I don't have it any more. My second Roomba was a 2nd generation "Red" model, likely a 4100, that I bought around 2010 for about $100.  I ended up leaving it to my roommate when I moved to another state. Roomba 500 series Repairs and Upgrades I bought my Roomba 500 in 2012, and it has been running strong since then....