locked out

Just more things to break down and troubleshoot. KISS, eh?

People can put a fleecy on if too cool or shirtsleeves if warm...

Been outdoors lately? The weather isn't very well regulated or consistent in either the short or long term. (ducking) The point being that we evolved in changing weather/climate and it is better for us to be exposed to changes rather than treating humans like rare documents that need a fixed environment.

John :-#)#

No it doesn't.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope. If Google knows all that about you, and you haven't given them express permission, you're doing something very wrong indeed. Extreme carelessness I would guess.

I'd like a system that does a better job with lowering humidity. We installed a new system about 6 to 9 years ago, it did a better job than our old system, but I feel much more comfortable if I run a dehumidifier getting the humidity below 40%. I did that for a while, and I could raise the thermostat 4* and still feel comfortable. The problem was the dehumidifier created heat and that raised the temp wherever it sat, so I stopped, and the Kennmore dehumidifier was recalled because of a fire hazard. The kids have left so we have both of their bedrooms vents shut and doors closed. I need a dehumidifier that vents the heat and condensation to the outside.

I'd like a system that does a better job with lowering humidity. We installed a new system about 6 to 9 years ago, it did a better job than our old system, but I feel much more comfortable if I run a dehumidifier getting the humidity below 40%. I did that for a while, and I could raise the thermostat 4* and still feel comfortable. The problem was the dehumidifier created heat and that raised the temp wherever it sat, so I stopped, and the Kennmore dehumidifier was recalled because of a fire hazard. The kids have left so we have both of their bedrooms vents shut and doors closed. I need a dehumidifier that vents the heat and condensation to the outside. Mikek

Thermostats measure a single point in the room because the actual number is not important. What is important is maintaining a given setting. If diff erent parts of the room are hotter or colder, they are likely consistently hotter or colder so the average would be some relatively fixed offset from most points in the room. Better would be to measure different rooms and co ntrol dampers to allow more or less air to different rooms.

The only significant temperature difference in my house is the specific spo ts the sun shines on at a given time of day or between rooms. I have one c orner room with two windows which means it has to vents. Since the room is small the two vents are a bit more than is required. So it is hotter than the rest of the house when heating and cooler than the rest of the house w hen cooling. I take advantage of that by spending most of my time in that room and keeping the thermostat set to use less heating or cooling than oth erwise.

Isn't that called an air conditioner?

Well sure, but I would like it to do a better job of reducing humidity. I made sure I didn't over size the air conditioner, so it would run more to remove more water, but I want MORE!

Mikek

I like the idea of the variable refrigerant flow mini-splits. This builder in the Austin area is a sticker for energy efficient tight houses. But he's also building mega-buck houses.

Has some good videos though. The mini-splits have really come down in price.

One of my daughters is living with a roommate, and she bought a Samsung washing machine. It worked fine for a year, then started getting out of balance faults. They got me to buy a MEMS accelerometer for it, but that didn't fix the problem. I'm not sure what is wrong with it.

I know our Kenmore washer has a balance ring that is partly filled with water, and the water somehow sloshes to the right spot to achieve partial balance of unbalanced loads. It also appear to have some really tricky software that finds out where the first critical speed is and then uses a lot of motor current to punch through that critical speed (where the imbalance causes the maximum deflection). Once above the critical speed, the vibration is not too bad.

It seems the Samsung may not have this software, or maybe the water leaked out of a balance ring (or no dynamic balancing feature), or there is some kind of friction damper that has worn out. Anyway, what look to be mildly off-balance loads cause the basket to wham against the side of the machine. I did all I could figure out on it, they are going to try to wrap an old blanket around the basket and see if that will damp the vibration. It appears from internet searches that this is a guaranteed development on these washers! Also, there's nobody within 80 miles that is even willing to come work on it. Apparently, they all know the Samsung will just be huge trouble and they won't be able to fix it.

Wow, and I thought the Whirlpool (name your brand here) stuff had mediocre engineering!

Jon

Except of course that those "thermostats" usually had an "accelerator" heater element that made them function more like those "simmerstats" that used to be used to control the duty cycle of cooker hob elements. Otherwise the hysteresis is too large to be a useful control element...

Mike.

The whole concept of the Cloud is fundamentally flawed. I am totally stunned that anyone can trust *their* data with someone's *else* system. Just can't get to grips as to how anyone, especially businesses, get sucked into such a ludicrous system.

I never, and never will, use any cloud service. Indeed, a new iPhone does its best to automatically send your $hit to its Cloud. You have to work to disable it.

My offsite backup is my brothers house and hard drives...

-- Kevin Aylward

Dropbox is part of my life now. I can work anywhere without carrying memory sticks around. My cabin camera and remote heating controls work by shared Dropbox files. And I post Dropbox file links for other people to see.

Worth a small risk.

But for company backup, I take a terabyte USB hard drive home every couple of months, and stash them in various places. We never write to the backup drives after they are burned, and very rarely have to read them.

Our local backups are rolling, which means that they eventually get written over.

Make sure you read one regularly, and ensure it has all you think it does, or you can be sure they will fail when you actually need them.

I have two 4TB drives, one at work and one at home - my laptop is dual backed up depending on where I am using it. I HATE to lose data!

I do like OSX's Time Machine, and I'd be looking for something similar in Linux as I will be migrating there sooner or later... Perhaps Cronopete ? an Apple Time Machine Clone For Linux?

John :-#)#

I have so many that some have to work!

When I do occasionally read a few to look for a file (because someone has lunched something) they have always worked.

I store them in ziplox bags in various cool, quiet places.

I have implemented TM-style backups for Linux using rsync with the

--link-dest option. Here:

#!/bin/sh # # Time-Machine style backups for Linux #

date=`date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H_%M_%S"` HOME=/home/user/

rsync -azP \ --delete \ --delete-excluded \ --exclude-from=$HOME/.rsync/exclude \ --link-dest=../current \ $HOME user@backupserver:Backups/incomplete_back-$date \ && ssh user@backupserver \ "mv Backups/incomplete_back-$date Backups/back-$date \ && rm -f Backups/current \ && ln -s back-$date Backups/current"

For MySQL database backups (even though I would never choose MySQL) it's is extremely effective to commit a mysqldump to git, and rsync the repository somewhere.

Clifford Heath.

Not if the process for writing or reading them has the same error. Trust, but verify.

Excellent. Good to be systematic though.

This is so depressing. I've got 20+ year old Kenmore washer /dryers. I've replaced some bits, but if one fails in the future... someone should start making quality homewares... with parts/ service that lasts for more than 10 years*. I'd pay twice as much for that.

George H.

Cronopete: I haven't tried it yet,

Instead of file by file backups, I prefer the much faster image backup. Besides speed, an image backup doesn't care about open files, hidden files, invalid filenames, trashed filenames, bad clusters, file locks, deleted files, and even read errors. You get an exact duplicate of the drive, including all the errors. When backing up the raw filesystem, an image backup can run on a live system without requiring exclusive file access.

"Best Open Source Disk Cloning/Backup Software for Linux Servers"

Incidentally, for Windoze desktops, I'm partial to Macrium Reflect (free): On recent i7 machines with an SSD I can usually backup at about 7 gigabytes/minute. That's about 9 minutes to backup a typical Windoze