The kitchen faucet is the original piece when the house was built, have been fixed a couple of times over the course of its service, and it is getting more frequent, last time was about a year ago, I believe the water corrosion is causing the grommet and ring rubbers to wear faster, it cannot be shut completely and with slow dripping. Moen has life time warranty on its products, I requested parts and got them pretty soon by mail.
First, took off the Moen brand plate covering the handle screw access, unscrew it and take off the handle, thread off the cap, then took off the plastic position lock and assembly lock. Then the lever was exposed.
Unscrew and take out the lever, there is a pin that helps to lock in and center the cartridge, needed to be taken out to unlock the cartridge.
The cartridge was ready to be extracted from the faucet stem, however, it might be stuck, thread the lever screw in to provide a grip to pull the cartridge out. Then push the center piece out from the cartridge, replace all the grommets and rings, put on silicon grease to all those rubber parts.
Reverse the process to put everything back in, don't tighten the last screw to test cold and hot water, found it was switched, hit by 50% chance, back everything out, turned the cartridge 180 degree, and now turn everything back in nice and tight. Dripping stopped. Done.
First, took off the Moen brand plate covering the handle screw access, unscrew it and take off the handle, thread off the cap, then took off the plastic position lock and assembly lock. Then the lever was exposed.
Unscrew and take out the lever, there is a pin that helps to lock in and center the cartridge, needed to be taken out to unlock the cartridge.
The cartridge was ready to be extracted from the faucet stem, however, it might be stuck, thread the lever screw in to provide a grip to pull the cartridge out. Then push the center piece out from the cartridge, replace all the grommets and rings, put on silicon grease to all those rubber parts.
Reverse the process to put everything back in, don't tighten the last screw to test cold and hot water, found it was switched, hit by 50% chance, back everything out, turned the cartridge 180 degree, and now turn everything back in nice and tight. Dripping stopped. Done.
27/07: Tic-Tac-Toe Game 2022
Using node.js/react to develop and deploy this favorite game, it demonstrates how javascript helps to create and handle dynamic and complex contents and interactions, enjoy!
Don't know when those lights started blinking and got very annoying, switch between different light bulbs and types (regular, CFL, LED), no avail. Tried adjusting socket contacts, tightening wire twist caps, still behaved the same. All led to Hunter's wattage regulator, open up the light control housing
Take off screws, inspect PCB, found a blown MUSFET, and a bulged cap.
No readily available components to replace those defeated ones. So go with bypassing it.
Solder off the wires, and re-twist cap them. Put back housing, test lights, one is on while one is off, switch those two LEDs, good one still on, swap out the bad one. All lights are on with no blinking.
Take off screws, inspect PCB, found a blown MUSFET, and a bulged cap.
No readily available components to replace those defeated ones. So go with bypassing it.
Solder off the wires, and re-twist cap them. Put back housing, test lights, one is on while one is off, switch those two LEDs, good one still on, swap out the bad one. All lights are on with no blinking.
This rice cooker stopped working quite some time ago. No display after plug-in, not able to operate. Open up body to reach control board.
Use utility knife to separate old battery from control board:
Fix new battery on contacts with electric tape.
Display came on, signaling battery replacement was successful.
Press off/reset to clear CMOS. It is good to go.
Use utility knife to separate old battery from control board:
Fix new battery on contacts with electric tape.
Display came on, signaling battery replacement was successful.
Press off/reset to clear CMOS. It is good to go.
Noticed underneath leaking for a while, finally bought this O-Ring part from Honda dealer for $2.52 while doing something else.
Remove the spark plugs from the tubes instead of the distributor cap, this way, I won't be confused about which cable going where.
Then removed 3 bolts holding the distributor, the inner bottom one fell off, need some long needle pliers to pick up, so be very careful. Put a paper towel under the distributor to absorb any spill. Loosened up the distributor by twisting it and pulled it out.
Marked the tip of the crescent shape with a Sharpie to preserve timing, this is very critical in order not to mess up the engine. Cleaned up the leak and surrounding area with paper towels. Used a small flat screw driver to get the old O-Ring out, it is very fragile already, so it was broken when pried on. Put on the new one with ease while there was still engine oil around the axle and itself being flexible.
Made sure the marks lined up, then put it back in, and twist a little bit until it is full engaged. Should had put the inner bottom bolt in first, because it slipped again and needed to unscrew and pull the distributor back out to pick that bolt. Otherwise, it is an fairly easy job and saves you quite some sweet bucks.
Remove the spark plugs from the tubes instead of the distributor cap, this way, I won't be confused about which cable going where.
Then removed 3 bolts holding the distributor, the inner bottom one fell off, need some long needle pliers to pick up, so be very careful. Put a paper towel under the distributor to absorb any spill. Loosened up the distributor by twisting it and pulled it out.
Marked the tip of the crescent shape with a Sharpie to preserve timing, this is very critical in order not to mess up the engine. Cleaned up the leak and surrounding area with paper towels. Used a small flat screw driver to get the old O-Ring out, it is very fragile already, so it was broken when pried on. Put on the new one with ease while there was still engine oil around the axle and itself being flexible.
Made sure the marks lined up, then put it back in, and twist a little bit until it is full engaged. Should had put the inner bottom bolt in first, because it slipped again and needed to unscrew and pull the distributor back out to pick that bolt. Otherwise, it is an fairly easy job and saves you quite some sweet bucks.
07/02: Power supply
Back in November, 2016, PC died unexpectedly with just some noise from a fan inside. It could be a combination of CPU, mobo, and PSU went wrong, to be on the safe side and get the work horse back in short time, I replaced all 3 of them, along the way, 4GB memory upgrade to bring total to 8GB and a brand new 1T hard drive, so I can reuse the old hard drive someday. But the new mobo is bleeding edge, requires USB3.0 preloaded from OS DVD, so my 2009 Vista Ultimate was obviously out of date, not even windows 7 can do the job, therefore, more money for a new OS - Windows 10 pro, since already spent money on OS, would not mind a couple dozens more for a decent pro version. After all this new PC is up and running happily, I have time to look into the old stuff, first took the PSU apart, found some bulged caps.
Also noticed a black line was severely burnt due to current overload. Took out the bulged caps.
Replaced those 470uf/16v caps with not exact caps 1000uf/16v, problem persisted, found primary caps leaked.
Took out those two primary caps in a bank.
Not even Radio Shack has matching caps. So project put on hold.
Needed to check CPU and mobo, bought an EVGA 600W on sale from BestBuy for $34.99 which is very good for a major brand with quality, hooked up the new PSU with the old CPU/mobo, shorted the power pins for a second, the CPU fan ran right away, that gave some hope of just the old PSU being the culprit.
The law put simply says that life of a capacitor doubles for every 10 degree Celsius decrease in temperature.
The old PSU's fan was stuck due to lack of oil/lube at the bearing, after adding some w40, it could turn much easier.
This broken fan might well fry the caps.
Never, ever save on a power supply again!
Also noticed a black line was severely burnt due to current overload. Took out the bulged caps.
Replaced those 470uf/16v caps with not exact caps 1000uf/16v, problem persisted, found primary caps leaked.
Took out those two primary caps in a bank.
Not even Radio Shack has matching caps. So project put on hold.
Needed to check CPU and mobo, bought an EVGA 600W on sale from BestBuy for $34.99 which is very good for a major brand with quality, hooked up the new PSU with the old CPU/mobo, shorted the power pins for a second, the CPU fan ran right away, that gave some hope of just the old PSU being the culprit.
The law put simply says that life of a capacitor doubles for every 10 degree Celsius decrease in temperature.
The old PSU's fan was stuck due to lack of oil/lube at the bearing, after adding some w40, it could turn much easier.
This broken fan might well fry the caps.
Never, ever save on a power supply again!
This was an old project done a couple of years ago, but still worth demonstrating it to show how hardware and software can work in a nice fashion, cars these days use a lot of technologies, a controller is the heart of it. The Arduino UNO board is about 11 bucks now, and the LCD is about $14. They can build some nice project around the house, like a water leak detector. Back in the old days, we would be thrilled to make an AM/FM Radio, that might well pave the path for today. Hope kids these days would have the same heart and soul.
This car had some 156000 miles on it, could see some oil stain around valve cover and engine block area.
Removed the spark plugs, the connected rubber tube, and the PCV valve, unscrewed 5 bolts which hold down the cover, since it had never been opened, so it was hard to come off, used a flat screw driver to carefully pry along the seam until it loosened up, took it off. Then used the tabs to pull out the gasket
Used a very thin and small flat screw driver to shim in tube seal and the valve cover, pried it off the tube, then used a pair of pliers to pull it out, repeated for all four seals. Wiped clean the walls of tubes for new ones to be put in.
Used a big enough socket to hammer new seals into places, then replaced items back in order, when tightening up those 5 bolts, it took a little time to fit, just be patient.
Always get parts from dealer, this way you save a lot of trouble down the road.
Removed the spark plugs, the connected rubber tube, and the PCV valve, unscrewed 5 bolts which hold down the cover, since it had never been opened, so it was hard to come off, used a flat screw driver to carefully pry along the seam until it loosened up, took it off. Then used the tabs to pull out the gasket
Used a very thin and small flat screw driver to shim in tube seal and the valve cover, pried it off the tube, then used a pair of pliers to pull it out, repeated for all four seals. Wiped clean the walls of tubes for new ones to be put in.
Used a big enough socket to hammer new seals into places, then replaced items back in order, when tightening up those 5 bolts, it took a little time to fit, just be patient.
Always get parts from dealer, this way you save a lot of trouble down the road.
I have been thinking of this for a long time since day one I bought this for my wife as a birthday present, it had a timid 8Gb hard drive, always broke down because of the full disk and extremely slow.
I finally shelled out $72.91 for a 128Gb KingSpec SSD, be careful that it would fit into the mini and have the right type of connector (ZIF in this case), Amazon shipped this item to me during the snow storm, so it arrived just one day late.
I made a bootable Clonezilla flash, used it to clone the hard disk to another flash.
I finally had sometime to work on it, first got all the necessary tools ready, took out the battery, remove the 2 screws under that battery which held the keyboard, then push the center top part of the keyboard up, put in a small wedge to hold bend, carefully ply the Tab and Backspace of the keyboard to release it from the tabs, that would expose the keyboard ribbon cable, flipped up the black tab and took off the cable. Did the same for the white small cable and the SSD ZIF cable, remove the 2 SSD holder screws, took out the 8Gb Sandisk SSD and set it aside.
The 1.8" KingSpec SSD is big enough for the entire bay, so needed to remove the internal USB, unplugged the USB connector, used a plastic pryer to carefully ply off the glued down internal USB. The KingSpec SSD did not come with a ZIF ribbon cable, so needed to reuse the old one, it was hard to fit the cable in the new SSD, tried both ends of the cable, the end marked as "mb" was easier to insert, but still tight, in this process, be very careful that the bare contacts face the contacts in the connector.
The new SSD did not have any mounts, so made some washers to tighten down the new SSD, then use electric tape to further tie down.
I booted up the mini with Clonezilla flash, restored the image to the new SSD.
now, the partition was still 8 Gb. So, I made another bootable flash with GParted, first attempt to resize it failed with chkdsk, indicated file system was corrupted, booted into windows XP to run chkdsk /f, then rebooted into XP to finish off disk check. Reran GParted, this time it passed resizing successfully, and SSD got to its full potential.
At this point, job done.
I finally shelled out $72.91 for a 128Gb KingSpec SSD, be careful that it would fit into the mini and have the right type of connector (ZIF in this case), Amazon shipped this item to me during the snow storm, so it arrived just one day late.
I made a bootable Clonezilla flash, used it to clone the hard disk to another flash.
I finally had sometime to work on it, first got all the necessary tools ready, took out the battery, remove the 2 screws under that battery which held the keyboard, then push the center top part of the keyboard up, put in a small wedge to hold bend, carefully ply the Tab and Backspace of the keyboard to release it from the tabs, that would expose the keyboard ribbon cable, flipped up the black tab and took off the cable. Did the same for the white small cable and the SSD ZIF cable, remove the 2 SSD holder screws, took out the 8Gb Sandisk SSD and set it aside.
The 1.8" KingSpec SSD is big enough for the entire bay, so needed to remove the internal USB, unplugged the USB connector, used a plastic pryer to carefully ply off the glued down internal USB. The KingSpec SSD did not come with a ZIF ribbon cable, so needed to reuse the old one, it was hard to fit the cable in the new SSD, tried both ends of the cable, the end marked as "mb" was easier to insert, but still tight, in this process, be very careful that the bare contacts face the contacts in the connector.
The new SSD did not have any mounts, so made some washers to tighten down the new SSD, then use electric tape to further tie down.
I booted up the mini with Clonezilla flash, restored the image to the new SSD.
now, the partition was still 8 Gb. So, I made another bootable flash with GParted, first attempt to resize it failed with chkdsk, indicated file system was corrupted, booted into windows XP to run chkdsk /f, then rebooted into XP to finish off disk check. Reran GParted, this time it passed resizing successfully, and SSD got to its full potential.
At this point, job done.
16/01: House hunting for JD
It has been a while to look for a house for JD, we look at a slab year 2000 built single family home, as expected, some small cracks around outside perimeter and inside the garage.
The house overall is kept in good shape, in excellent school district, and priced at high end according RealList.
JD liked the pink room :)
The house overall is kept in good shape, in excellent school district, and priced at high end according RealList.
JD liked the pink room :)
