How Not To Kill A Mouse

This morning I expected to come downstairs to a nice surprise. Well, I guess if it were what I wanted to see, it wouldn't be a surprise now, would it? No, what I wanted and what I got were two very different things. What did I get??? Nothin' McMuffin! Bupkis.

So the other night, I went down into the kitchen to get an apple and I had a surprise visitor there. Growing up, these surprise visitors took the form of ants and palmetto bugs. They were everywhere and the little ant and roach traps were also everywhere. You had to set them up in places where the ants would go, but the dog would not. It was always quite a challenge. The traps would fill up, but there were always plenty more to cover any food that wasn't protected.

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The Shelving Project

Ahhh, finally a weekend with nothing that needs to get done. Nothing I am doing or putting off doing. Just a weekend to do whatever I feel like. It hasn't been this way for quite a while, and thats mostly because the big projects are mostly done. 

I bought this apartment a little over two years ago and storage was always an issue. I really should have had closets built into the place, but I didn't. With nearly 1400 square feet or about 130 square meters, I have plenty of room for storage, especially since I live alone. And yet most of my stuff has been in the boxes I used when moving. My first storage space project is mostly done: a wall of shelves and cabinets. And what a project that turned into. 

I started planning it almost as soon as I moved in. I have one long wall that goes from the from to the back of the apartment. Towards the front there was the chimney, a fake fireplace (it had been blocked up years ago), and a mantel. I really didnt like it and wanted shelves to go in its place. When I described this to others, most thought that would be a bad idea, but I couldn't get it out of my head. So I started pulling it out. I thought it would be an easy project, maybe taking a weekend. But the mantel was very well built...too well built. Removing it all ended up taking a good 4 or 5 weekends.

Then I was able to start building shelves. I had looked at Ikea for shelves, but nothing seemed right. I talked to neighbors who had shelves made for them, but the prices were high. It seemed that for what I wanted I would be paying 4000-6000 Euros. But they would be done in a month or two. I figured I could do it myself instead. Before I could start building, I needed to buy tools and then wood. Oh, and review all of my recordings of the New Yankee Workshop. Along with the books on cabinet and furniture making I had, Norm was able to give me ideas on how to do all that I needed. I ended up with a nice collection of tools including and circular saw, jigsaw, router, sander, drill, shopvac, and table which could mount the circular saw and jigsaw upside down giving me a table saw and other configuration. 

Now I had to come up with a design. One of the main inspirations was the Greek Revival Bookcase episode. I liked the thick shelves but the prices of wood here in the Netherlands made it a bit scary. I ended up making each shelf, and in fact most of the bookcases, from two 1.7cm thick pieces of plywood sandwiched together. A rough design was drawn up in Google SketchUp over a few weeks and eventually I went over to Praxis (the closest thing to a Home Depot here in Europe...Just try to imagine a Home Depot with a quarter of the selection and understaffed, mostly with people who don't want to be there). 

One of the challenges I faced was building shelves that would eventually be nearly 3 meters tall using wood that I would be bringing back from Praxis on my own in my Volkswagen Golf. Oh, and then I would have to carry all of that wood by myself up 4 flights of very narrow stairs. 

The whole project would involve using about 8-10 sheets of 1.2 meter by 2.4 meter (which is the same size in the US as a 4ft by 8ft sheet), by 1.7cm plywood. By the fourth flight of stairs, these are very heavy. I actually had them cut down to size at Praxis but the wood is still heavy. 

At this point I have to remind you that I don't have a normal 9-5 office desk job. I spend a lot of time out on the road. Between the first cut and the last, I ended up seeing Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Uruguay, USA, France, UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Dubai, Hong Kong, Macau, and more. This was over a time period of about 18 months. Looking back, 5000 Euros and two months seems like a pretty good deal.

But the shelves are mine. I made them. They aren't perfect, and actually they aren't quite done, but I have a very strong connection to them and I love them. My estimates for the project were blown by orders of magnitude, but I learned a lot and now have plans for a few other projects around the apartment. Coming up are a few extensions to the shelves, a linen closet upstairs, a more appropriate desk area in my home office, and more. 

Getting Started with Home Automation

Back when I first bought this apartment, I knew I wanted to get into Home Automation. I wanted to be able to understand how I was using power, I wanted to turn the lights on and off from far away, I wanted my apartment to be intelligent and responsive to my needs. But there were a lot of other priorities that had to come first...like renovation, and recovering from paying for the renovation. But recently I actually got started with all of this.

The first step was research. I wasn't really sure what was possible. Looking around the net, I found some great sites that gave me ideas. Unfortunately many of them were in the US and much of what goes on in the US isn't directly applicable to the rest of the planet. As usual, there are standards, then there are the US versions of those standards: power, radio frequencies, etc. Thankfully there are many example sites here in Europe too so I had to really get started there. One of the really great ones in bwired.nl, an automated and online home in the same country I am. Check that page out, he is displaying everything about his place. Now, I don't plan to make this kind of data available for my apartment, but its very interesting to see what can be done.

I decided the first project I wanted to tackle was monitoring my gas and electricity usage. Bwired shows what equipment he uses to read the gas and electric meters in his house and it looked pretty similar to what I needed to do. The first purchase was going to be from RFXCom, but trying to figure out what I wanted proved to be a bit difficult. I contacted the guys at RFXCom and got a quick response showing exactly what I should get to start out. A few weeks later I finally shelled out the money for everything. I ended up getting an RFXMeter with pulse counter, plus an additional pulse module, and one Reflective-Optical sensor and one Photo Sensor. These can be found at http://www.rfxcom.com/sensors.htm. I also got the USB 433.92 MHz Receiver with 1 COM Port. The RFXMeter goes in my electric closet with the Photo sensor stuck to the electric meter and the reflective-optical sensor on the gas meter. The Receiver is then plugged into my PC upstairs. As an extra bonus, the Receiver also picks up the Oregon Scientific and Radio Shack temperature meters I got a few years ago in the US.

Getting started ended up being a bit frustrating because while I was hoping to be able to start working on it the following weekend, shipping took about 1.5 weeks. And then when I opened the box, the extra module was missing. I emailed the company and was amazed when the replacement showed up in my mailbox the next day. The 1.5 week delay is pretty typical for Dutch customer service, but the next day replacement is pretty much unheard of.

The first step was to modify the RFXMeter box to accept the additional Pulse module. Some time with a power drill with a far too small bit shaved off enough plastic to make it work (had it not been late at night, a quick trip to a hardware store could have produced a more appropriate tool). Then I plugged in the module and the two sensors and tried to attach them to the Gas and Electric Meters. Easier said than done. The sensor for the electric meter seemed to be poorly set into its plastic housing, but with a paper clip and some duct tape I managed to get it into place. The reflective-optical sensor for the gas meter was far more difficult to place. In fact it took about two weeks of sticking, resticking, and finally discovering the adjustment screws inside the RFXMeter just today.

The modules have two tiny screws on their circuit boards. Each one is to adjust how the sensors work. One is for the LED, and the other is for the optical sensor. Since the Photo sensor cable has no LED, you don't have to adjust that one. OK, so to make the LED brighter, turn that screw clockwise, and to make the optical sensor more sensitive turn it's screw clockwise. The protective plastic on my electric meter bows out an inch or two, so I had to make that more sensitive, while the plastic on the gas meter is flat so I had to make that much less sensitive. The sensors have double-sided tape on them which seemed a bit too permanent, hence the duct tape.

But I didn't spend the last two weeks just trying to place the sensors. I was also trying to figure out how to read the data collected into a database. I'll go into detail on that project in a future post, but here are the basics. Since I am ex-Microsoft, I feel more comfortable with C# than anything else. The RFXMeter transmits data every 30 seconds, which is roughly the same frequency as the Oregon Scientific temperature sensors. I built a small Windows Service that watches the COM port on the receiver, parses the 6 or 10 bytes generated per transmission, and stores the data in a SQL Server database. Then I have a Web application that reads the database every 30 seconds and produces charts for gas and electric meter usage, and inside and outside temperatures. The gas and electric meter charts show me usage data for each hour, plus the average for that hour over the last 3 days. And rather than showing me meaningless numbers like cubic meters and kilowatt hours, I actually show how much that hour is costing me in Euros. I have been watching these charts all day and they are fascinating. And the project has given me a great excuse to spend more time with .Net 3.5, Linq to SQL and Linq to Objects, the new Microsoft ASP.NET Chart Control, basic bit arithmetic, and more.

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Unexpected visitor...

Tonight I had a bit of a shock. I was downstairs and I kept thinking I was hearing something upstairs. The washer was going, so I just assumed it was that. But every now and then I would hear something else. I wasn't really sure what it was, just, well...something else.

In the 4 months I have been living in this apartment, I have been getting used to the sounds that it makes. There is the massive skylight that groans as it stretches and contracts with the warming and cooling of the day. There are the kids running up and down the stairs next door. There is the music that rarely comes through the floorboards. But it was a different sound tonight.

I decided to climb up the stairs to investigate, not exactly sure what I would find. The door to my home office was closed, though I always leave it open. The wind must have closed it. And then I thought I saw a shadow move. That gave me a fright. So I inched quietly back down the stairs so that I could clearly see through the crack at the base of the door. The setting sun allowed for a bit of light to come through. I then saw the shadow move the other way. I was pretty sure that wasn't my imagination.

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Back online again...

Although it wasn't supposed to be hooked up until next week, I tried my internet connection today...woohoo...it worked!!! Its lower than the advertised speed, but I am still getting 10 Mb/s....awesome.

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Amsterdam Renovation nearly complete

Ahhh, its nearly finally done. The floors are in, the painting in done, and the kitchen comes today. I can't wait for it to all be done, but looking at this video, you can see its getting VERY close.

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Getting my priorities straight

I am down to the last two weeks before I can move in to my new place. When I first move in, I will have minimal furniture. By that I mean really minimal. In fact I can count all bits of furniture on one hand....one ugly hand. I have some IKEA Billy shelves, and IKEA Ivar shelves that are actually my current computer desk, and an IKEA mattress I lie on the floor when visitors come. That's it!!! Which means I have a hell of a lot of stuff I need to buy.

To help me figure out what gets the priority, I have been using some of the cool features of Excel 2007. Actually, the features could have been there before, but I just noticed them now. First, I listed the item, a rough cost, a location and a priority. I set Conditional Formatting for the Priority to show ratings. Then I set Conditional Formatting for Cost to show Green to Red for value of the item. Then I sorted by Priority then Cost. As you can see, the XBox and LCD TV come way before a real bed. Over on the right, I have sums of items based on priority. Using the function SUMIF, I can sum up all priority 4 items easily: =SUMIF(C2:C26,"=4",B2:B26). I thought that was pretty cool.

Prices on most things are fairly low because at first lots of things are expected to come from Ikea. Some of that is because I want to get the basics, and then there are some things that IKEA does better than anyone else. An example is a good desk. My last desk was an Ikea Effectiv. The thing cost me 900 USD and was rock solid. It held 2 19" Viewsonic CRTs, plus me standing on them and they wouldn't budge. I sold it for 500 just before I left San Francisco so it retained value well too.

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Another video on YouTube: End of Week 5 of the Amsterdam Renovation

For some reason, I have been sitting on this for a week without posting...well here it is now.

I am heading over to the place to do week 6 in an hour or so.

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Do you know of a parking garage in OudWest Amsterdam?

OK, this is not likely to get results, but I have to try. I live in Amsterdam and I just bought a place in Oud West. I signed up for street parking 2 months ago and have only another 22 months to wait. Until then I need a place to park. I know I can do Europark or whatever that is called on Marnixstraat, but I was hoping for something closer. I currently park in a garage on Govert Flinkstraat that you would never find normally because it is unmarked. I am hoping one of you know of something like that in my area. So if you know of a garage in Oud West, preferably in the red zone below, but also in the blue zone, please let me know. If you know how to get a monthly pass at Staringplein, I would be interested in that too.

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Four weeks down....a few more to go

Here is the video for week four. The big changes are the electrics, and the walls are mostly plastered. Enjoy!

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