Creuzer – Page 103 – Random things Creuzer

Snow, snow, everywhere snow

So, on Saturday, we got a bit of snow. 10 inches it sounds like.
Here is my truck, on Saturday. I drove in this crap! Oh, the things one will do for the perfect wedding invitations!
Here is my handywork today. I dug my way back home for lunch. I cut a channel through this snowbank so I can walk to work without fear of being ran over by a car.

PHP Meetup & Digital Camera Hacking

Tonight I gave a presentation for the local PHP meetup. My presentation was on creating an address hunt order for geolocation using google maps. Basically, the idea is to try different combinations of an address that comes back with a geolocation failure until you get a set of coordinates. I hope that the presentation was interesting enough to be worth the other peoples time.

One of the other members in the group had mentioned the other month about hacking a digital camera. He couldn’t solder well enough to do it though. Last month, he brought some in for me to give a try at. I have had them sitting, waiting for me to work on them. Well, last night I gave it a go. Like most things where I wait to the last minute, it’s a no-go. I can’t find my de-soldering stuff. [As I wrote that last line, I remembered exactly where it is, in my RC car tool kit]
Anyway, here is the camera, it’s one of those disposable digital cameras. What does that say about our society, disposable digital cameras? Talk about a waste of resources!
The idea for this hack, is to unsolder the flash chip daughter card, and to solder on a standard flash socket. Now you can use the camera like any other digital camera.

Being that this hack is several years old – like 5 or so, I can probably buy a better camera for less than the parts cost this guy. But, that’s not the point. The point is to hack something cool from something cheap. I also can’t find instructions online anymore of exactly how to mod this thing. All the specific pages seem to have died. I am going to give it a go anyhow. There are only so many ways I can mess it up, I am bound to get it right at some point.

Now that I remember where my tools are, I can probably give one of these cameras a go this weekend.
This kinda reminds me of a MAKE Magizine motto: If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.

Indoor Planter Stand

I have had this indoor planting stand for a while now. I have been trying my hand at growing things. I have been failing miserably. If I was to follow that old addage where you need to keep a houseplant for a year before you can consider keeping a person for a year, I can marry just the good, strong bits of Katie. The rest will suffer for lack of attention.

indoor container garden plant stand

Here is the lighting as I have had it. I have been using those cheap, $10 strip growlights from Walmart. I am having a terrible time with them, the bulbs only seem to last 2-3 months. They just keep burning out. I have ran 4-5 bulbs through this planter now since I set it up. It’s in a north window, so I am just augmenting the light, not really planning on providing all the needed light.

I am not sure if that is working. the plants don’t seem to be growing all that fast.

So, this weekend, I bit the bullet, and bought me a decent light fixture. Two 17 watt T8 bulbs in a 2 foot fixture. It’s $20 for the fixture, and $7 something x 2 for the bullbs. Not cheap, but I am looking at it for the long term investment. It’s designed to be hard-wired as a under-counter light or something.

Yeah, I want it on an extension cord. It says right on the inside of the light to wire the fixture OUTSIDE of the fixture. UH HUH, sorry, can’t do that. I gotta wire it up inside the fixture if I am to put a cord on it.

Hanging it was a bit of a challenge. The other lights are just zip-tied to the shelf. This light is too big and heavy. I dug around and found these nuts that I had picked up for my PakYak. They have a little hook on them to dig into wood. Well, this hook fits over the metal shelf quite well. Add a few washers underneith, and I can snug the light up almost tight to the shelf without having anything prodruding far into the shelf above.

I am thinking of putting a plexi cover over the fixture to keep any leaking water from watering the plants out of the top of the light fixture. So when I add that element, I will need to re-think the hanging of the light fixture.

Here is the finished light. The new light is the 2nd one down. You can see how much brighter the two 17 watt T8 bulbs are in relation to the single 20 watt T12 bulb. I am hoping that the bulbs last longer too. Part of the reason I am posting this, so I can look back at when I installed the lights.

I have noticed that my Stevia plant has grown more in the last couple of days since I added the light then it has in the month or so prior. I guess they just needed a bit more light, even it is a soft white light and not a growlight.

Cutting out Wedding Invatations

So, this week I have been working on the wedding invitations.
Katie and I are arguing over who gets to make the invitations. We both love doing this craft type stuff. Being taht I have posssions of the printed peices, and posession is 9/10ths of the law, I get to do more then she does. I do have to send half to her for her to finish though.
Here is my stack of printed invites prior to being cut. I am cutting them on my Fiskers rotary cutter with the deckle blade.

I have a few of them cut here. I did mess up on one, you can see it on the side there. 10 1/4, 5 5/8, 5 3/8, rotate paper, 4 1/2. Those are my cuts. That just trims the long sides.

Here is my completed stack of invites. Now I just need to to trim the top and bottoms. Katie did let me do this job all by myself. It isn’t so much fun.

I am having trouble finding the black cardstock that we want for the background sheet. I am going to go check out a scrapbooking store this weekend.

If I can’t find what I am looking for, I am going to try to dye some of the cardstock I have black. I am thinking that letting it dry on crumpled up seran wrap will give me some neat textures. I will play with it.

Spending money shouldn’t be this !@#$%^ hard

So, tonight. I am working on my wedding invitations. Cutting the printed paper with my paper cutter.

The pot roast got done, so I put the crock into the sink and tapped my favorite glass, blowing a chip off the top and breaking it in half.

This put me off the invitations. I mean, damn, my favorite glass. Right? Who wants to do fiddly stuff when they are distraught over the loss of a favorite piece of kitchenware? (it’s really not a big deal, but I am trying to set up the rest of the story)

So, I start working on wireing up a lamp for my greenhouse shelf. I find nothing more soothing than practicing my marksmanship by shooting a gun… A lot… I can’t do that here, so I decided to play with electricity instead.

So, trying to electricute myself by wiring a light fixture that is designed to be hard wired into a house to a extension cord. Katie calls. She is ordering something from JCPenny. A bra for the wedding that will work with her wedding dress.

I happen to have a gift card that mom mom gave me YEARS ago for $25. I NEVER make it to jcpenny. This is a good use for the card. I don’t think mamma will mind me spending my christmas or birthday present (it’s so long ago I don’t remember which) on an over-the-shoulder boulder holder for my bride to be. I mean, I will be getting what every male geek wants – that’s right, huge tracts of land.

So, I give Katie the digits for the gift card.

I go back to playing with electricity.

Katie gives me a call back. The gift card doesn’t work. She can look up the balance, and see that there is a balance, but it doesn’t work. She called in the number that the website gave her for order troubles. The gal on the phone tells Katie that the card number is invalid. katie called me to fix it for her.

So I try to fix it.

I try to look up the balance online. This is not as easy as it sounds. As the balance doesn’t look up. It says that the card is invalid. OK, fine. Katie had seen the balance online somehow. Must be at a different spot on the site. So I try to order something. Create an account. Blah Blah Blah. Go to put in the gift card. Invalid card. OK, so I can reproduce that.

I call the number on the back of the card. The auto-attendant can look up the card balance just fine. Press 0 for a customer support representative.

BEEP

I get Joe. Joe can’t help me. He transfers me to Customer service. (didn’t I already have customer service???) I get Tara. Tara, tries helping me. She pokes at her computer a little bit, and I can tell that something doesn’t make sense to her. She says she has gotta ask her supervisor. OK. I get put on hold while she asks her supervisor. Click. Probably my cell phone. I will give Tara the benifit of the doubt.

OK, call back. I try the number that the website gave Katie. I get Donna. Donna tries, and she gets stumped too. So, Donna escalates me to her supervisor Shiree(sp?). Shiree clickety clacks on her computer. Asks the questions again, I repeat my story. Tells me to go to a store to get the card exchanged, I tell her that isn’t an option for me as it will be a while before I can get to a store. So, Shiree calls another department, her supervisor, somebody. Comes back with the above answer. Then she gives me a phone number.

Anybody want the JCPenny INTERNAL tech support number? I can get a copy machine fixed, a computer repaired, get the phone system reprogrammed in any store in the country. She gave me THAT number, probably not realizing what the number was.

So I call it. I get Steve. Steve, now he is a good guy. Quite confused, as is demonstrated by his 2nd question: ‘Are you a customer?’. Steve asks me a few questions, determines that he can’t help me at all. I can hear him hollering to other guys in the office with questions, firing questions and answers back and forth. I mean, this dude tried. So, HE calls the debit card number for me. Gets me in touch with somebody else, and warm transfers me to the other department.

Nice, eh? A+ for Steve.

JCPenny employee #6 Marco, or Marcello, or something like that. He gets my whole story too. I can just about recite that gift card number – I don’t know my PHONE number, but this 19 digit gift card…

Anyway. Mr. M, as I never quite caught his name, can see the card just fine. He sees the 25 bucks on it. We come to the conclusion that the card is pretty old. We talk about processing the card as a lost card so a new one can be issued (which takes a long time), etc.. The website just doesn’t see the card. His best suggestion is to call in the order to the catalog number, and have THEM call his department if they can’t get the card to look up.

So, an hour on the phone, and I am told that I should call the number I called again and ask that other department to help me (???), bring the card into a store to get exchanged as a faulty card, or try calling in the order.

Wanna here the shocker. Steve calls me back to make sure I got a resolution. Now isn’t that cool? The only dude that isn’t suppose to help me with my problem is the one who tries the hardest. Pretty cool, eh? A+ and extra credit for Steve-o.

So, what I have I learned about JCPenny gift cards?

My card sucks. It only works on odd seconds, and the website processes on only the even seconds. Some tech support’s computers process on even seconds, and some on odd seconds. — No seriously now, I have a bum card, probably due to it’s age of 2-3 years.
JCPenny has nice people. They try to help. They are quick to escalate to their supervisor, or call other departments directly.
All of their computer and support systems run on eastern time. One supervisor I talked to works out of the midwest, but reports the time as eastern time.
The phone number for their store support. So, if you got a store with a debit card reader touch pad that needs to be re-calibrated because the numbers you push and the numbers it lights up are different, I know who to call.
Steve is a good guy.
It takes 6 people to fail to solve a problem. They did try, and they did give me some possible solitions, and I am sure all of them may work. But they all put a burden of some sort on me – either the need to go to a physical store location, or wait ‘a long time’, or call some other department. None of them where capable of fixing the problem themselves with me on the phone.

So, the moral of the story is, it’s really late yet again, and don’t get Katie excited at the wedding or she might pop out of her dress.