Morning all. Fun night last night. The alarm system lost its connection to the cell system so of course at 11:30 it went nuts. The phone tech keeps insisting I need to find the plug-in transformer and unplug it. I kept telling her they took that out when they installed the non-land line system. Now I have a virtual tech call on Saturday to help find said transformer. I think they need to start at the dump.

Our last alarm system fault actually happened during normal working hours. The sensor for one of the garage doors failed.

If we have a power outage of more than 15 minutes, the battery backup for the alarm gets low, and it starts beeping an alert. I do now where the panel is, in the front hall closet. Inside that panel is the battery, and a transformer plugged into the wall. I have to pull the connector for the battery to get the system to shut down. There is another smaller battery in the main control panel by the door in from the garage. I have to take that apart and pull that battery if the system's cell phone connection fails. That has happened only once, when the cell phone technology changed, and the the system could not call home. They had to send a tech out to change the cell phone board.

For the most part, it is a reliable system. When there is an issue, I get a text message, a email, and the system on the wall beeps. It is rather annoying to get it to shut the F up!

I know here the box with the battery is and I know where the plug in transformer used to be but two years ago the guy who came in and wired up the new system removed it so this is on them to figure out.

Wow.

My motherboard is an ASUS made board. I like to check the site for BIOS upgrades and driver updates. I checked today and there is a new driver for the network card. The motherboard has both an Intel and some Marvell 5Gb network card and a WI-FI that I don't even use.

I download the latest network driver and it was a large download, but with a fast internet connection, only took a few seconds to download a 72 MB zip file. It unzipped to a 213 MB folder. For a network driver?

I looked and it has 9 different languages, and versions for 32 bit, and 64 bit Windows versions from Win 8 to Win 11, and one that I have to assume is for Win 7 or XP.

No information as to what it does for me if I install it. Since I have no problems now, I think I will just skip updating right now.

We are supposed to get into the 70s today and for the next three days. I may have to break out shorts!

Morning all. The alarm got fixed Saturday and seems to be working as it should. Now today my hot mail has gone nuts and everything is in the inbox. I have to report crap as junk and then go to the junk folder and delete it. I used to just flush the junk after reviewing it.

They want you to read all your spam!

I started getting a lot of spam all wanting to loan my business money. Yea, sure, I will give some internet spammer my bank details and financial details to a them. Right, and then I expect a nice Nigerian prince to give me a few million dollars at random.

Golly what fun. I went to open the trunk on the 911, and the light did not come on. Not good. I had not driven it for a couple of weeks so I put it on the trickle charger. All was fine for the breakfast on Saturday, but I was not happy about the battery. It has been in the there for 6 years. It was a 30 month AGM battery. So today I pulled it out, and replaced it with a new one, and now they are 36 months. With the upcoming HEAT of Palm Springs, I did not want a wimpy battery.

It was a royal pain to get in and out. The battery huge, and there is just enough room to put it in place. I have to remove the front condenser blower to have enough room to maneuver it in or out. It is back in place, and I went on a short test drive and all is fine.

Now I 'get" to do the battery on my wife's Macan. It is over 6 years old, and at about time to proactively replace it. Then we do the tires with only 22,000 miles but getting old.

Cars are fun till they are not.

Just routine maintenance.

How do you manage to get 6 years out of a battery? I can only get 2-3 years out of mine.

Morning all. We have wind and rain a typical Tuesday. Temp is supposed to drop to below freezing at night. CA kid is due home for for spring break this Friday.

We bought the Mach in March of 2017. It has 22,000 miles and the battery is still fine, but getting old enough to just replace it before it craps out in a bad place.

The 911 uses the exact same battery, and it was something I might get more use out of, but I want a top condition battery for the heat of Palm Springs in June. That old battery was a 30 month battery, so 2.5 year warranty. The new one is 36 months. so a full three years. It was put in May of 2016. So it was almost 7 years old.

The 911 battery is the Interstate, MTX-49/H8 that replaced the old MT5-49/H8. Same battery, just a new longer warranty.

I was "busy" in my office perusing Facebook and looking at some funny videos one cousin had posted when my wife appeared in my office. She said put your shoes on, I need you outside for a few minutes. Yea right. First we played Joe Walsh and played Ordinary Average Man and picked up dog doo, hoping it was hard. Then I was allowed to replace some edging around the flower bed along the front of the house. It runs from the edge of the house all the way to the front porch. Of course it is not just a straight shot, the windows are offset in the guests room to make an attractive feature from the street. There is a sidewalk that runs next to the house all the way way around the house. We can literally walk around the house and never get off of concrete.

Anyway the sidewalk has three 90 degree corners and so does the flower bed. That means the new metal edging has to have some bends. Golly what fun. And they have to be precise, or the bends don't fit the concrete. So a Sharpie, and a 90 degree square ruler and a hunk of a 2x4 to bend the metal around. The hardest one was a Z like shape with two 90 degree angles of opposite directions bends. Only 40 feet more to go!

Morning all. Its about 36 out and I'd swear I saw some white fluffy crap here and there. Going to be a fun day.

We did get to 70 yesterday. We got a whopping .22 inches of rain overnight. 73 degrees is forecast for today.

6.6M views on this thread and I'm still not sure what its about. :D

I have no idea, and I have been posting on it from the beginning.

Phew, another "fun" chore done. The battery in the Macan is changed out and it is the exact same battery as my 911.

It is pretty straightforward getting the old one out, and loaded in the back of the El Camino. Tied down to keep it sliding around and drive the 5 miles to the Interstate battery center. I loaded it onto the tailgate, and slid it forward to the tied down. Some kid in his 20s just hoisted it out and put it in the dead pile. The old gray that loaded it was happy to use the tailgate, and slide it forward method.

Got the new one in, and hooked up, and turned on my Autel OBD2 reader and it had told me the old battery was at 57% and 11.4 volts. The new one is 12.1 volts, and all happy. The hardest part is typing in the 15 digit serial number, and it HAS to use capitol letters, and numbers. So constant back and forth between the digits, and then letters, and hit the upper case arrow then the letter, and back and forth.

The part number from the old battery part number was too short so I added a 1 and it was happy. Mrs. Carrera is happy as everything works as before, the windows know the spots, her key put her in position 1. The trunk lid opened and closed as it should. It even remember the time.

I had to change one digit on the old serial number and that made it happy.

The Porsche dealership wanted $750 for the battery, and I know they would have charged 200 bucks or more to plug in the computer and reset everything. The Interstate batter is 95 Amp hours and the old one was only 92. Both are AGM batteries.

Winter temps are back. It hit 78 degrees yesterday, but it got cold overnight. It is just 29 degrees now at 11:00 AM with clear skies. I prefer 78!

I had a easy job, a client called and wanted more copies of prints we did last year. I just upload the same files to the print provider we use. Picked up the prints and dropped them off at the clients place. Phew, work work work work work.