David Trebacz Blog

Just bought my wife a new thermostat for our house. We missed the HAI home automation thermostats in our previous house and their ability to display outdoor temperature. The NEST removed too much of our ability to control our thermostat and didn't show outdoor weather conditions. We choose the Honeywell RTH9580WF  (from Amazon) for a few reasons: RTH9580WF Outdoor Temperature - shows waiting for update Pros: Ability to control from a remotely Easy WiFi connectivity Reliable thermostat company Good 4 star plus reviews from Amazon Ability to show outdoor temperature and humidity Easy to use touchscreen and nice design Cons: C wire required No external temperature sensor Replacing  our existing heat pump thermostat was uneventful. I just carefully followed the instructions from Honeywell on how to install it. Our system was new enough to have a C-wire run but not connected to the existing thermostat. Honeywell's online tools and video helped me through this ...

After many years as a loyal #Comcast customer I needed to cancel my account. Last 10 years have been fine. Took three calls to cancel. I was on the line with Brianna for 39 minutes. Brianna told me they could only cancel service 7 days out and that I could call back later in the week if I wanted. No way I was going through this again, so I had them cancel it on the November 17th. What kinda crap is that. I was placed on silent hold. She came back and thought I was a new caller. I gave her all my information a second time. This time she actually took all my disconnect information and gave me a credit value based on my connection date. I was also told that I was paying full rate and they could have given me a discount. I'm amazed at the horrible customer service that the cable monopolies can give and still stay in business. I did give Comcast my new address, so it will be interesting if the actually send my over $100 credit to my new address. Perhaps I should just stop the ne...

I decided to upgrade my XT912 to Kit Kat. My earlier rooting and upgrade to CM10.2 provided a much better experience on the aging hardware ( http://blog.trebacz.com/2014/05/eliminate-lockups-and-freezes-Motorola-XT912.html ). This was my first time upgrading major versions of Cyanaogenmod (10.2 to 11) on my phone, so I was prepared for some unplanned issues. The upgrade went flawlessly and I lost noting in the process. The procedure I followed was: 1. Download current cyanogenmod snapshot from here: http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=spyder&type=snapshot 2. Download Gapps for CM11 http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Google_Apps I used the upgrade steps from Jack Stromberg's post here: http://jackstromberg.com/2013/12/tutorial-rooting-and-installing-cyanogenmod-11-android-4-4-kitkat-w-google-apps-on-the-droid-razr-maxx/ I found I needed to modify the steps slightly for doing and upgrade from 10.2 using safestrap. It was all in the instructions, but you do have to r...

I try and clean my dryer vent at the house once a year in the springtime. Our gas dryer vent is over 24 feet long and has several elbows in it. I have always been concerned about it's long length potentially creating a fire hazard, if the metal duct ever became clogged with lint from our gas clothes dryer. A few years ago I invested in a Linteater from Amazon  and a 12 foot extension to clean out the dryer vent. It works well. This year I shot a video of the cleaning process. It only took about fifteen minutes to clean the whole run of aluminum rigid duct. Just make sure you always keep the drill spinning in the same direction, so you don't unscrew the brush in the middle of the run. I hope the video helps you understand how you can easily clean your dryer duct with a shop-vac, cordless drill, and the Linteater kit. UPDATE 2016-04-09: Several people have asked about the Shop Vac that I used. It was a 5 HP 16 gallon model by craftsman. Here is a link to a similar Wet/D...

My Motorola XT912 after Cyanogen 10.2 Upgrade I loved my Motorola Droid Razr Maxx XT912. I bought it almost two years ago. The phone featured good performance, ability to use as a internet hotspot, and was part of my unlimited wireless plan with Verizon. I really wanted to keep those features, but performance and reliability started to suffer. Performance Was Horrible After a few recent updates in the fall the phone started to become unreliable and would freeze up when doing the most mundane tasks. It would sometimes take my favorite navigation app Waze (http://blog.trebacz.com/2012/08/android-apps-for-your-road-trip.html) 15 minutes to acquire a GPS lock. Foursquare checkins would also take 5 minutes.The battery would drain in a couple hours when traveling -or just out of the blue on some days at work. I tried rooting the phone. Eliminating Verizon bloat apps that I really didn't use and shutting off some location services. All of this would work for a week, but come ba...

Is your your Moen single handle kitchen faucet hard to use or leaking around the handle? If it is you can easily lubricate or replace the 1225 cartridge in the faucet. If you're the original owner owner of the faucet Moen warrants them to be leak-free for lifetime. I called the 800 number at 1-800-289-6636 and requested a replacement cartridge kit for the faucet (think ours is model 7730). They sent it out no charge in about 10 days. If your in a hurry you can also buy it from Amazon ( Moen 1225 One-Handle Replacement Cartridge ). Our Moen 7730 Single Handle Kitchen Faucet I shot a video of the dis-assembly and re-assembly of the kitchen faucet: The kit contained everything you need to replace the cartridge and get the faucet working like new again 1225 Cartridge Repair Kit 1225 Cartridge Kit Contents Here is a link to a pdf with the Moen 1225 cartridge installation instructions that came in the kit: Here are the components in the kit: Moen 122...