the internets helped me fix my lawnmower

My lawnmower took a crap a few weeks ago and I couldn't get it to start. I'm no engine mechanic, but I know a few things about combustion, and I used to fix my lawnmower when I was a kid- how much could have changed?

Well, the first thing was that the model number has rubbed off of the mower over the years, and I have no idea where the manuals are. So I went on the internets and used that google thingie to find the Murray website. Here's where it gets fun. Briggs& Stratton (who makes the engine) bought the brand, and you can't look up parts breakdowns or manuals without having the MODEL NUMBER!

So I had to get creative with the searches, and fiddle with the mower a bit.
A secret about internal combustion engines (or a log campfire for that matter) need three things to work right. They need air, fuel, and a source of ignition. There are other things that can go wrong, but chances are if your lawnmower isn't working, starting here is a big thing.
I changed the spark plug because the one in there looked pretty foul, I checked the air filter and replaced it, and tried to fire it up. Nothing. So I did a trick I learned somewhere and I soaked the air filter in gas, pulled the rope and WHA! I got it to start, so i had a diagnosis. No fuel. (I also managed to half-ass cutting the grass this way as well)

It turns out that a 4.5 hp Briggs and Stratton from 2004 is a pretty common motor and it also turns out that a clogged carb is a common problem as well for this motor. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_a_Briggs_and_Stratton_4.5_HP_lawn_mower_engine_stop_one_minute_after_it_starts

So I went to the Ebay, and bought a new carb.

I got the carb in the mail yesterday, put it in, and after a little priming, the mower fired right up! So i just want to say, thank you Wiki Answers, Thank you to the Google, and to the Ebay, and to the internets for helping me fix my lawnmower!

Townhouse for sale in Columbia, Maryland!

We have a lovely townhouse for sale in Columbia, Maryland. This is a great starter home in a convenient location.

Here's the listing information:

Adorable end unit set in established neighborhood located in a quiet, no-outlet street that backs up to woods.Three finished levels. Freshly painted and some new carpet. New stainless steel appliances and tile Kitchen floor.Lower Level with large Family Rm.leading to Privacy fencd back yard including storage shed.Fiber Optic Verizon Fios. No CPRA $5,000 closing help to buyer WFPO!

If you have any questions, or are interested in seeing the house, contact me and I'll be happy to accomodate you!

twits, blogs, plurks, and 2.0

I have been playing in the web 2.0 world- plurking, twitting, posting, etc. Joining various social networks, trying to stay up with the times. The funny thing I realized after spending a bunch of time on plurk last night- that web 2.0 reminded me of something, and it took me a while to come to it.

Web 2.0 reminds me of AOL 2.0. Sitting there waiting for the chats to update. talking to people, joining the new exciting online community! Yes, there were corporate sites, and yes web pages were static- but if you wanted to be where the action was, you stayed up on all the latest "keywords."

I was a johntindale come lately to AOL. My friends all got part-time jobs as telemarketers for AOL when it first started, and they all got free lifetime AOL accounts with 800# dial-up access. I got a regular package, upgraded it to unlimited for $19.95/ mo, http://web.archive.org/web/19961220154856/http://www.aol.com/and signed up for DSL years later when it became available.

I don't want to be a pundit or a curmudgeon, but it seems that we are getting pretty excited about intefaces and communities that have already been done? Oh well, what goes around comes around. Pardon me, I can feel my karma dropping even as I finish typing this sentence.

Wanna join my buddy list? Now If we could only get our computers to say "you've got plurks/twits" when we sign in.

nah nah nah nah hey hey goodbye

I bet she finds a way to keep her joker face on TV for another few months. I remember the days years ago when I was working on a major remodel of a residence on capital hill. In 1991-92, many republicans were moving out of town after llving there over 10 years. They were moving out with their blue blazers and red ties, and the brown blazers and jeans were moving in. The striking thing I remember was that they were moving out gracefully. They were admitting defeat, packing up their personal belongings, and going home to their home states.
The thing that really bothers me is that these people just won't go away. They won't move on. They are still wearing their hippy beads, their clogs, and the flowers in their hair, and they WON'T go away! Despite the fact that Hillary looks like she's been an unfortunate victim of this guy...






















just go away. admit defeat. buy a nioe home in Arkansas and leave us all alone. buh-bye, hasta la vista, adios, have a nice life. We don't care what you want. Just GO AWAY! We broke up with you. Its over. We've moved on...

futurist

When I close my eyes and picture the future, this is what I see.

JPL/ Nasa Mars Lander

NASA with the assistance of JPL has landed another lander on Mars. The main mission is to look for frozen water over the next three months.

here's the main page: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Townhome for sale in Columbia, Maryland!

John and Melanie are growing out of their house! Check out this great townhome in an established neighborhood in Columbia, Maryland. Townhome for Sale in Columbia, Maryland. MLS#: HW6770203 Or stop by and check it out for yourself at 9529 Quarry Bridge Court, Columbia, MD 21046.

Maintenance Mastery

I'm creating a new site called Maintenance Mastery, http://maintenancemastery.wordpress.com Where I'll be sharing tips, tricks, and tools for maintenance technicians.

I'm hoping that I've done it right this time, and I've put down a bunch of stuff down in a moleskine so that I have material in advance. I'll get a few posts up, and then I'll start promoting the heck out of it.

I've started out in wordpress- and if it takes off, I'll dot-com it.

technorati

I have joined the ranks of the technorati. Now I can check to see just how irrelevant my rants are, and how many people aren't reading me!!

release the spiders...
Technorati Profile

Seeing the future

I want to be an engineerpoetphilosopherfuturist. I know how to do the first three things, but what does it take to become a futurist? Can you be optimistic about the advance of tech, but pessimistic about what we'll do with it?

futurist dot com has a list of core beliefs that I find fascinating. I agree with most of it, so does that make me a futurist? Maybe I have to join first.

I saw Iron man this past weekend, and it got me thinking (again). Why we don't have hovercars and jet packs yet? We have all this amazing communications crapola- but what I consider the REAL future- the cool applicable stuff hasn't really arrived yet.

We still get in our "cars" powered by 100 year old technology, and drive them on our "roads" paved with a sumbstance we started using over 10k years ago to our post WW2 era inspired "jobs" where we all pretty much do normal run-of-the-mill outmoded outdated kinds of stuff.

I realize that progress is measured in micro-improvements most of the time, but sometimes I'd really like to just jump on my skybike and go take a ride an orbit tether to a space station and go for a two week vacation on the moon like they promised me I would be doing by the year 2000 when I was in elementary school.

If thinking that modern engineering and tech isn't moving fast enough makes me a futurist, then count me in.

Technology

I still wonder sometimes if technology is really making our lives better, or if it is just more clutter to keep us from doing REAL things? I mean as long as we are answering emails, checking messages, reading web articles, etc. we're FEELING productive...
I just want to know when the tech is going to catch up. I mean when is it going to become an enhancement of the quality of life, and not a supplement?
For instance I have discovered that I really like listening to podcasts in the car on the way to work- because I get to tune in during a time when I am normally tuned out. This is one rare instance of the tech being an enhancement.
However, this morning i am going to open outlook, see a bunch of emails to which I need to respond, and I'll look up and discover that my morning is shot. Even after reading GTD and reorganizing my office- I just get the feeling that there's got to be a better way.
Anyone? Any one? Bueller?

I'm sorry, but its hot sauce

Can we all stop saying (or stop trying to say) chipotle? I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but we have been eating chipotle chilis for years. We as Americans are being duped into believing that we are consuming an ancient Aztec recipe.

Its nothing new. Its chile peppers. I have some in my kitchen. If you want to get technical, a chipotle is a smoked chile pepper. I have some of these in my kitchen as well- and I have news for you. They are not chipotle. They are friggin smoked chile peppers. We already have a mediocre restaurant named after chile peppers, its called friggin "Chilis."

Do not be duped. Do not be drawn in by the hard to pronounce name, whether you say "chee-PO- tull, or chuh-pot-LAY, or chee-PO-tuh-lay, or even chu-PO-tull, cha-pole-TEE, all of these are inaccurate. They are smoked chile peppers. If it is "chipotle sauce" it is smoked chili pepper sauce. This is just another advertising gimmick to get you to buy crummy food made to taste better with HOT SAUCE.

try it- google "dried chile" http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=dried+chile&btnG=Search+Images

and then google "chipotle"
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=chipotle&btnG=Search+Images

after you scroll down past the corporate logos of the evil restaurateur, you will see the same thing from the first search. That's right...wait for it...DRIED CHILES.

So here's what I propose. We form the ANTI-CHIPOTLE league,that commits to one of the following.

1. Boycott any restaurant that uses the name, sells any sauce called "chipotle" or makes any representation whatsoever that "chipotle" is sold anywhere in the establishment.
2. Go to the restaurants, but do not purchase any of the products that supposedly use any form of chipotle or any form of chipotle sauce.
3. Go on buying your crummy "mild mayo infused semi-hot sauce" but refuse to call it "chipotle" you may call it hot sauce, or smoked pepper sauce- but REFUSE TO SAY "CHIPOTLE."

Join me people. Join the anti-chipotle league.

My network at home

I should probably explain a few things about the systems that we run at our house before I start keeping score between ubuntu and windows.

We have:

Verizon Fios
1 Dell Dimension E510 running Vista Ultimate SP1- recently set up to be print/ backup/ media server.
2. A HP Pavilion 514n running xp sp2, that I think I'm going to erase and laod Ubuntu when gutsy gibbon releases.
3. A Dell laptop running Vista Home upstairs that my wife uses-
4. My favorite~ An old beater Dell laptop running Xubuntu which I use for email, browsing, etc
5. My work Dell laptop that I need to be able to print from, etc. when I bring it home~ I should also mention that I don't have admin rights on this one.

So, anyway- just keep all that in mind when you hear me keeping score between Ubuntu and Vista. One of the big factors for me is cost, and since I got all this eval software from Heroes Happen Here, I was able to briefly eliminate cost as a factor for my most recent problems.

Score one for Microsoft

Just to update, in my last blog I complained about windows home server, and I mentioned that I loaded xubuntu in an effort to create a file/backup/print server on my network at home.

Well, it turns out that Samba wasn't happy with my peer network either, and when we tried to print an xl spreadsheet from my wife's Vista machine through the linux hp drivers, it printed it ok- except it was printing a 3x5" copy when it was supposed to be printing on 8 1/2" by 11 paper.

I like playing with new tech, and I have spent my share of nights and weekends "effing" with something trying to make it work, when I could have just done something easier- so I took the copy of Vista SP1 i got at Heroes Happen Here, and loaded it on the machine.

I hate to admit it, but it was all pretty seamless. It found my wife's vista machine, it found the xbox, and right now it is happily sharing all my media files across the network. I can even browse the whole peer network thru Samba from my xubuntu laptop.

in addition, I signed up for a year of Windows Live Services for $50, and its good for 3 machines, which is perfect because that just happens to be the number of Windows machines I have in the house.

As i said before, I like to play with tech, and try very hard sometimes to make things work. Although its not "technically" a server at this point- its doing the three things I set out to have it do, and as a bonus i get virus and firewall protection at a very reasonable price.

I like to stay up on the latest and greatest, but sometimes my wife just needs to be able to print out a legible spreadsheet. Thanks, Microsoft- you really did make me a hero.

(I did have the forethought to partition the drive, Hardy heron IS in beta...)

Xubuntu Linux 2- Microsoft 0

Ok, so my relationship with Xubuntu started when I took an old beater laptop (that wouldn't run Win2k any more) and loaded xubuntu on it. Needless to say, that even though it was a little slow, it ran beautifully. Email, web, blogging and twittering (you know the important stuff)

So fast forward to this past weekend when I tried to load up my "free evaluation" of windows home server on my 2 yr old Dell E510. I loaded up the software, and the first problem was that it didn't have the drivers for my internal network card, so I had to burn the drivers on a disk on another computer and load them on the machine (no big deal- it happens)

So then I was dissapointed with the user interface that pops up when you run home server. You would think that since its for home use, all of the good stuff would be simplified. sharing, backup, etc. you know- the good stuff.

Not so, the biggest feature that it offered was a backup utility, which would have been cool- but here's the kicker. WHS has a little interface that you use to set up your network. You plug in a little info, sign in (or sign up) to a .net passport account, and its supposed to set up a domain server for you automatically.

The problem I had was that Verizon Fios blocks port 80- which I openly admit isn't Microsoft's fault. However, the part that sucked, rather than skip that step, and move on and set up everything else, WHS quits and tells you that it can't configure your router, and that you need to do everything manually, and it turns out that the manual setup console is basically the server console that started with NT.

So, I'm going through all the iterations of setting up the DNS, the IP address, and all the other crap thinking "What about all the poor saps that are going to buy WHS thiking its going to be a beefed up version of Vista?"

So anyway, I finally get the thing to connect to my network, and start setting up files, backups, etc. and find out that its conflicting with my peer network, and its messing up- get this, because this is the best part, its messing up the open ports on my XBOX. It sees the open connection that the XBOX has and sees it as a threat, even though the router is handling the firewall, and starts hosing the connection.

It was at this point, I turned the machine off, and installed Xubuntu. It found and loaded the drivers for the network card automatically without any help from me. I next loaded SMBK and proceeded to share the printers, the backup drive, and the video and music folders on my external hard drive.

The only two things I had to load were the drivers for my video card (it worked without them) and flash for the browser. It is "serving" two printers (which it found and loaded without my help by the way) music, and videos, and runs the backup for the 5 machines I have on the network.

So, I screwed with WHS all weekend, and couldnt get it to work, and got everything set with Xubuntu last night in about 2 hours.

Religion

I have a weakness for religious topics. I can't help it. I grew up in church, I spent 7 years in a private Christian School, and I spent the 90's volunteering for a national youth ministry while working for a church. I like to talk about church. How to do church; contemporary, orthodox, post-denominational, post-Christian.
I like to talk about theology, and find commonality with the bizarre, and find differences with the familiar. I have been around Muslims with whom I agree, and Baptists who make me want to go run and hide.
I have arrived at a brand of theology that leaves me with a feeling that I can fit in anywhere, while at the same time belonging nowhere. I believe in the idea of speaking in tongues, laying hands on the sick, and casting out demons, but I have a hard time finding anyone who has a legitimate need to do such things.
My problem lately since my foray back into church membership, is finding anyone with whom I can have these types of theological discussions. I had friends at my local pub who had no problem discussing these things- but somehow within the walls of the church, I find myself in the difficult position of having to restrain the things I say.
I wonder why that is?

Get a real human

Have you ever been frustrated with the automated phone systems at large companies? This person has posted a list of the numbers to call and extensions to call when you are trying to get a real human.

http://gethuman.com/

Let me know how it works out for ya.

Transparent and Available

I am conducting an experiment to see if I can become accessible without going crazy or getting abused. I have added Twitter to my list of websites where I can communicate with my adoring public. So here's the list.

http://www.johntindale.com/
from this site, you can email me, see what I'm up to- overall its pretty generic and I have all these grandiose schemes to one day actually make it functional.

www.myspace.com/johntindale
I'm pretty sure you know about this one

http://johntindale.spaces.live.com/
On this site its convenient for me to uplad photos because it works directly with my winmo phone. I'm having trouble getting the calendar to sync with any of my other calendars

www.facebook.com/johntindale
yet another social network

www.getamtek.com/jt
This is my profile on my company's website

www.twitter.com/johntindale
I added text messaging to the updates on twitter, and I'm going to see how often I can keep it updated

http://live.xbox.com/member/johntindale
This is my xbox gamer site. I'm not a huge gamer, but I haven't added any friends on there either yet.

My goal is to get my "web presence" as integrated as possible, so I'm going to see what gadgets and feeds that I can use as plug-ins on different sites, to make it as seamless as possible.

New Year's Declarations

Everyone hates making new year's resolutions, and it's a quick way to set yourself up for failure. So I have decided I am going to make a few non-specific, non-committal declarations about how I feel at this particular moment- so that way if I feel different tomorrow, you won't have anything to hold against me.

1. I need to sharpen my image. Although I'd much rather roll out in the morning in a pair of jeans, a flannel and a comfortable pair of boots, the truth is I am in management, and I need to start looking the way I act.

2. I need to get those last couple licenses straight. Dealing with the District of Columbia is a bit like listening to Vogon poetry, and getting something through the DC Bureaucracy is every bit as excruciating as Vogon infrastructure, I need to go ahead and bite the bullet and get that master HVAC in the district.

3. I need to "network" better. We live and die through word-of-mouth advertising, so I need to be able to get out there where the customers are. I have spent a lifetime building up a database of people I know, and it turns out that most of those people are either competitors or suppliers. Which is great if i am either
a. looking for a job or
b. buying something.
Since I am doing very liitle of either one right now, its high time I get out in the world and start being "nice" to people.

I guess that's enough stuff for now...

9-11

I know there will probably be alot of bulletins, emails, and other stuff about 9-11, but there's two things I wanted to communicate.

First, we could all use a good helping of "pissed off" about what happened six years ago. Osama Video Where among other things he says- "And before concluding, I tell you: there has been an increase in the thinkers who study events and happenings, and on the basis of their study, they have declared the approach of the collapse of the American Empire."

The other thing is, whatever your political views there are things you can do to help the soldiers who are in harms way and their families.America Supports you

No animated flags, no burning building pics, no Lee Greenwood- just watch Osama, or read the transcript- and then donate before you forget, and if you feel so moved- go ahead and forward.