David Trebacz Blog

I decided to replace the failing chrome grill on my 2007 Dodge Durango. For whatever reason the chrome bubbled on the grill. You can see how wrinkled the chrome is in a couple of the pictures. It go so bad my wife noticed people looking at the car when it was parked -think the front end had gotten hit. The are many rumors on the internet why the chrome lifts off the plastic on the grille (cold temperature, rock pinholes, etc). My estimation is that the chrome expands and the plastic shrinks over time. Either way I decided to replace it and document it in this blog post. 2007 Dodge Durango Grill Chrome Bubbled Up   Right Side Showing Grill Chrome Wrinkling Left Side of Grill Showing Durango Chrome Bubbles I didn't expect the process of replacing the Durango grill to be tough, but there are a few covers covering up the bolts to replace the grill. First I pried up the black plastic cover in the picture below. There were 4 plastic plugs holding the front of it down. A...

I'm always looking for way to save money and decided to focus on a big energy abuser in our household - for this blog post - our dehumidifier during the summer time. My problem is an old inefficient dehumidifier combined with summertime energy price spikes from the real time pricing program (RRTP) with ComEd. Background: 20 Year Old Dehumidifier We had a dehumidifier that was almost 20 years old. It still "worked", but was really bad at reliably removing moisture from our basement. It had gotten to the point where it would run 24/7 constantly, freeze up from time to time, and remove moisture at a slow rate. I had to empty the bucket about every 4 days. My target moisture level in our dry basement was 45%, but that unit would only keep it about 55%. We recently joined ComEd's real time electricity pricing program and have saved a lot of money ( http://blog.trebacz.com/2013/03/comed-electrical-rrtp-savings-program-6.html ). I knew that a 24/7 dehumidifier (esse...

I had the main system drive on my 5 year old Kubuntu machine start having read errors in the syslog reported by logcheck. I had the system up and running straight for those 5 years and it was likely nearing the drives lifetime. I didn't want to have to rebuild the system from scratch, since it had served me well -just wanted to get a little more reliable disk drive in place (with a minimal amount of hassle). The drive I was replacing was a  250GB 7200 rpm SATA drive. I had an extra 500GB 7200 rpm Western Digital Black drive that had been a warranty repair. It had been gently used in a machine that needed more space. It was a perfect donor for the Kubuntu machine. It was currently mounted in a Rosewill USB external hard drive enclosure ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KGNXTE/ ) . Here's an example of the errors in the syslog: ata5: EH in SWNCQ mode,QC:qc_active 0x1000 sactive 0x1000 ata5: SWNCQ:qc_active 0x1000 defer_bi...

I've been on the Chicago area Commonwealth Edison RRTP (Residential Real Time Pricing Program) for about 6 months. I've been extremely happy with the savings that we have seen on the program. I blogged about the setup and equipment a couple months ago in this blog post ( http://blog.trebacz.com/2012/10/comed-residentipricing-rrtp-program.html ). That blog post show what the equipment, installation time, and billing cycle look like. Now I wanted to share what the savings look like to my house in just 6 months with the program. Conveniently ComEd has a referral program. They sent me an email with my savings and encouraging me to tell my friends (in turn I get a $20 credit for each person who mentions my name when they sign up). So here it is (in ComEd's words). Hi,  I’ve been taking control of my electricity bills with an innovative program called ComEd Residential Real-Time Pricing ( ComEd.com/RRTP ).  This program is special...

Wview running on my station in Fountain Hills, AZ I recently installed wview (version 5.20.2) to monitor my Davis Vantage VUE weather station ( weather station unboxing and hardware review ). This station runs on a 24/7 headless 10.04 Ubuntu LTS server in my basement. I've finished getting it set up and running. I really like the software. The only thing I haven't seen addressed is the verbosity of the logging. Wview has great capabilities to enable a disable logging from the GUI (see online manual http://www.wviewweather.com/release-notes/wview-User-Manual.html#Configuration-wviewmgmt-services ). I found this invaluable when originally setting up my Ubuntu system, but have turned all the configurable logging off. I'm currently getting a few to many logcheck alerts each day from the server. I run logcheck at the "server" level (sudo nano /etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf configuration line set to REPORTLEVEL="server") to keep track of anything out of t...

This is the second part of the article about selecting, unboxing, and reviewing a Davis USB data logger (6510USB) and Vantage Pro2 Weather Envoy (6316) ( Part one of the review is here ). Vantage Vue Wireless ISS (Integrated Sensor Suite)  - 6357 Vantage Pro2 Weather Envoy - 6316  USB data logger with WeatherLink software - 6510USB In this part of the review we look at items 2 and 3 of the  system   Both of these units can work with other sensors, but the ISS  wireless  sensors met my needs. It also allows me to move the sensor  assembly  around as I find the perfect location for it. USB 2.0 datalogger and WeatherLink software box - front USB 2.0 datalogger and WeatherLink software box - back     Software manual, DVD, USB data logger, and 8 foot USB extension cable Very happy with the design of the USB logger and the USB extension cable qualit...

I decided to take the plunge and buy a Davis Vantage VUE weather station for my house. I wanted a quality unit that I wouldn't have to mess around with that reported reliable results. I also didn't want to pay a fortune for what is really a hobby. I planned this to be the perfect compliment to the McHenry Illinois radar weather that shows on my family website. ISS Sensors (big brown box - back), Weather Envoy (white box - left), and USB datalogger and software After talking with application specialist at Davis Instruments  I came to the conclusion that to meet my needs I needed: Vantage Vue Wireless ISS (Integrated Sensor Suite)  -6357 Vantage Pro2 Weather Envoy    - 6316  USB data logger with WeatherLink software  - 6510USB For me this made sense, since I wanted: To measure a variety of  outside  parameters Publish frequent measurements to the web (always available anywher...