Crap I Built – blog.AjCrAzYo.com http://blog.ajcrazyo.com/ Wed, 04 Nov 2020 19:20:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.4 Beach https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/126 Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:00:04 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=126 It’s the fourth of July today and we decided to celebrate by going to the beach. I only had about an hour to work so instead of a sand castle, I was only able to build a kind of sand fort.

I had Jen destroy it before we left so no one else would have to look at it.

]]> New(ish) Computer https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/114 Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:42:51 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=114 My old server, and I use the word server loosely here, was a 2.8Ghz P4, 2GB RAM with a 1.5TB RAID5 array. The last time it saw an upgrade was about two years ago and it’s work load has tripled since then so I finally broke down and rebuilt it.

These are the parts, I bought and sold them all on eBay.

Parts bought for new machine Qty Price Total
Biostar I945G-M7 MoBo 1 $47 $47
2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU 1 $148 $148
1GB Kingston DDR2 RAM 4 $10 $40
1TB Western Digital HDD 4 $149 $596
Dell (LSI) PERC5 RAID controller 1 $39 $39
Total $870

Parts sold from old machine Qty Price Total
Biostar P4M80-M4 MoBo 1 $20 $20
2.8Ghz Pentium 4 CPU 1 $26 $26
1GB Kingston DDR RAM 2 $8 $16
500GB Western Digital HDD 4 $80 $320
Pacific Digital ZL150 RAID controller 1 $15 $15
Total $397

In the end it only cost $473 and now I’ve got 3TB of space which should last a couple years.

The old machine was running Windows 2000 Server which as the name implies, is a little out of date. So I went ahead and put Windows Server 2008 (64bit) on the new one.

Pretty happy with it all so far.

]]> Dog Stairs 2.0 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/112 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/112#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 16:58:22 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=112 Ever since we moved out of Rice I’ve missed having dog stairs. After a good amount of work I rebuilt the stairs for this apartment and we put them out this weekend.

They are awesome. Since the new stairs are so much smaller I was left with a good amount of leftover wood so I built some stairs for inside and he seems to like them too.

Bottom Line: I like building stairs for the dog.

]]> https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/112/feed 2 Tripping the TripSense https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/99 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/99#comments Sun, 19 Aug 2007 03:53:39 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=99 I have Progressive auto insurance and I’m signing up for the TripSense program. The TripSense is a device that plugs into your car’s ODB-II port and gathers data about your driving habits. After six months you attach the device to your computer and let it upload its findings to Progressive who supposedly gives a discount based on good habits like not speeding.

It has to be plugged in at all times or they won’t give you any discount. Here’s the catch; I would have to stop driving like a maniac! This is unacceptable. To solve this I built a bypass module so the TripSense thinks it’s plugged in but never gets any data, which will make it think the truck is off allowing me to drive recklessly and still get a discount. We’ll see if it works in about 6 months.

UPDATE: I got the full 15% discount, it works like a charm.

]]> https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/99/feed 1 How to Lock a Door https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/96 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/96#comments Sat, 09 Jun 2007 17:00:05 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=96 I was trying to watch TV today when Jenn came home and started talking on the phone with her sister. Typically a conversation between the two of them is nothing more than a competition to see who can talk the loudest. So before it got any worse I asked her to go in the other room, which she did. About three minutes later she was back in the living room yelling at her sister, disturbing my solitude. As the chatter continued I came up with a plan and executed it immediately.
Step 1) Pause the TV.
Step 2) Gather supplies: a Quick Clamp and two leashes.
Step 3) Relocate the noise back into the other room.
Step 4) Apply the supplies to contain the noise.

About an hour and a half later (once the call was over I assume) I got a call from Jenn. She explained to me that she was in the other room, the door was stuck, and she couldn’t get out. =D

]]> https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/96/feed 1 Igloo https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/89 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/89#comments Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:00:26 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=89 I went to Deer River this weekend to visit the family and while I was there it snowed. All the snow prevented me from going to the cabin. so instead of driving around, my brother and I built an igloo.

That was my weekend. Now I have to go do my taxes.

]]> https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/89/feed 2 Pimped https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/88 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:00:50 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=88 There’s this guy at work with an ultra runny nose, he’s always getting boogers on everything so the company had to give him is own personal Kleenex box. Well, I was bored the other day and his Kleenex box was looking particularly lame, so I tricked it out .

Thats right, you can make just about anything with two hours and a roll of masking tape.

]]> Dog Fortress https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/87 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/87#comments Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:00:15 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=87 It was the company Christmas party last weekend, the guy who was going to watch our dog bailed so I had to come up with a way to contain the dog for 24 hours. I happened to have a ton of cardboard so I built a hallway from the kitchen to the chair in the living room (so he could look out the window).

Here is part of the cardboard hallway that leads to the chair jail

The party was pretty cool, there was an open bar until midnight and they took everyone’s picture, here’s mine.

Actually its a bobble head.

]]> https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/87/feed 2 Dog Stairs https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/85 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/85#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:00:35 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=85 Imagine you’re me. You have a dog, you live on the second floor of an apartment, you have to put on all kinds of clothes on every time the dog needs to go out, and you have a ton of scrap lumber. What would you do? you would build dog stairs. and after three weeks of construction, its complete.

Shazam!
When Spackle needs to go out at 3am its out the window with him. When I first set up the stairs he went down but he wouldn’t come up them, so I ordered a roll of that anti-slip stuff for stairs and now he goes up like its nothing. I got a sixteen foot retractable leash and tied a rope between it and the eve of the roof so when Spackle gets to the ground he has an effective twelve foot wandering radius.

]]> https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/85/feed 2 New Grill https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/posts/79 Sat, 06 May 2006 18:00:19 +0000 https://blog.ajcrazyo.com/?p=79 A while ago Jenn was saying that we should get a grill. I thought it would be a good idea but I didn’t want to pay money for a stupid grill so I just kind of forgot about it. A while later I was parting out some old computers and when I was done I had a few empty metal cases. They were to big to jam into the trash cans at Wal-Mart and there was no way I was going to pay money to get rid of them so I just kind of forgot about them. Then recently I noticed that all my used motor oil was starting to pile up, so I took it over to Valvoline to get rid of it only to find out that they don’t accept used oil and I would have to drive across town to get rid of it. Well, I wasn’t about to pay money (for gas) to drive to the other side of town just to get rid of some stupid motor oil so I brought it home and just kind of forgot about it. Then just yesterday I had a rapid fire series of awesome Ideas.
Idea #1: Burn the oil.
Idea #2: Burn the oil in a metal coffee can outside so the house doesn’t burn down.
Idea #3: Grab an old computer case and set the can of burning oil on it so it is easier to watch.
Idea #4: Set another old computer case over the burning can of oil and cook on it

The result is brilliant. Now I have a grill so I don’t have to buy one, I don’t have to pay to get rid of my old computer cases, I don’t have to waste gas driving across town to get rid of old oil, and I’m saving money on my natural gas bill every time I cook with this thing instead of the stove. This is the ultimate cheap mans solution!

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