Finally an update on my new home and all it’s
stage like projects. So much done, so much more to do. Little steps...
In the back of a drawer, under a stack of papers, I found the missing
transformer for the kitchen TV!!! Thought I packed it special to find again given it’s importance, but it’s location has eluded me for weeks. I was about ready to install the 15v light board
transformer that’s unnecessary on the TV since all other 12v transformers would not get the TV to run with enough
power. And Radio Shack was absolutely useless in such a
voltage. TV says, it needs 12 to 15VDC, but a normal 12v
transformer jsut makes a almost picture and does not function properly. This is a cool TV, it has
Monitor Mode, very useful to jut leave on and control it’s going on and off with remote off the second VCR. I have that required TV in the kitchen that’s on the same
channel as the main living room TV. Cooking dinner is so much easier.
Ever see those cable company commercials about you needing more than one tuner box for sattalight if you want more than one
channel on at a time? Nothing will piss me off faster than when they post their own false advertising. Here I was happy at my parent’s
house while home from college about 10 years ago, and all I had to do was fish a cable box type cable down the heater vent and tap off the
inlet for cable and I was able to get my own channels of cable different from “Murder She Wrote” the parents watched. X-Files all the way. Anyway, modern TV’s are sufficiently programmed for accepting a direct cable signal, it’s only the cable company that’s making it difficult in their monopolies for service when they don’t lest a TV take it’s own signal without a converter box. Na, you don’t need one converter box per TV as they advertise about sattalight TV, “It’s like a sports bar, Sports in every room of the
house.” About once a year, I get a consumer watch group letter asking for support against the phone, gas and
electric company. I always reply that I will be more than happy to support them once they take on the local cable company in that fighting of un-fair monopoly need for a watch group getting things straightened out and reasonable in price and service. I now on digital cable have about the same amount of channels as I had on normal cable in Chicago, and it was not even the most offered, yet we all pay the same fees.
Sattalight boxes frequently offer dual control from my understanding of it, cable boxes don’t, much less you can’t program them to change the
channel or even use VCR+ that I paid extra for, when you are out. They probably could be programmed, but the cable companies don’t let you use the full capabilities of the boxes. If only I were a lawyer, false advertisement on cable commercials would be easy. So anyway, I got tired of renting two cable boxes to control my
system to it’s fullest extent and now run it off one box. Bedroom TV must be tuned into the proper
channel in the living room as an extra step when I go to bed - no late night movies to fall asleep with. Hate cable - even supposedly digital cable! Back to home improvements, now I only need to create a
road box/rack mount
system for all the components of the sterieo/TV/
Dimmer pack that are tapped off that one cable box. Acquired a few electronics equipment fans over the years to cool it all, such a case should be an interesting rack of sterieo/TV/Dimmers.
On the finally finding the proper TV
transformer, you would think that someone asking for a
transformer for 15v DC TV did not need to know the amperage, It’s 15VDC, the heck about amperage, do you have one in that
voltage? Since it was an easy no, once the counter person walked out to the aisle, why did you ask the amperage? Trust you to special order one for me? Ha. I stopped by to Radio Shack on Friday night for kicks and grins since I fully did not expect them to have what I was looking for. No other place will piss me off sooner.
I can deal with Menards sales associates, or what ever they
call them, saying “did you find everything you need” or “can I help you” mechanically and hoping that you don’t need help, or what ever the
current mandatary quote as if store policy once they make eye contact with you that they have to ask, but Radio Shack gueeks piss me off with their
level of incompetence even more than any home center or place.
That’s with the exception of Home Depot or any home center - especially those helpful folkes at ACE on wiring. (Ever mention that I was turned down for a job at my local Ace Hardware? Even than when I was just learning but knew my basic carpentry, I knew more about stuff than most sales reps, than much less now that, as if I would not lower myself. Don’t trust your local hardware store people for finding more than hopefully a second box of stuff they were too lazy to
stock. They have no idea of what they are doing or talking about. I once worked at both a lumber store proper and Builders Square - long before they went K-Mart in what they stocked and subsequently went out of business. The info about much of what I said while good intentioned, frequently today would have been crap and is the same
level of advice offered today. Yet still, I couldn’t get a job at Ace Hardware. Guess as some young person, I just could not be expected to know what the heck I was doing. I have to bite my tongue every time I’m in a home center and hear a sales person giving their very hack advice or trying to sound like they know what they advise.) By the way, for those of you in college for tech, it’s a really good idea to work at least one summer at such a company as a home center/lumber company, if for nothing else than to learn when they tell you crap or to see how it all works from such a supplier. That way you can tell the BS from the I’m worked too hard lines. Very useful when you find yourself shopping there later - and you frequently will. Consider spending one of your 4 to 7 years in college as part of your apprentiship, in looking forward to getting back to boring lectures and loosing the time clock, corporate BS, and idiots that think they are helping people. Defiantly will focus you on staying awake in class - that real world college
drop out, know it all hack experience. It will also help you later in life when shopping in places like that and needing to get stuff. “Need help?” can defiantly be a “no!” answer.
Reason this argument comes up is that I caught a few moments of some newly wed’s show on MTV today. They stopped at Home Depot on the episode today. It caught my interest. What a spoiled bitch of a newly wed wife! In her little dancing/club dress that was much too sexy to belong doing home repairs, much less shopping at a home center, this guy won’t stay with her long unless he keeps her in a club with similar people of a real life personality. Hmm, shopping for carpet cleaner, she had no idea, and was as if a child. On the show I watched, there was the Home Depot sales person saying to the newly wed and well intentioned college grad but new non-tech home owner person with no real training in electrics that with advice from a sales person said, “No, you don’t need an electrician” you can do this yourself, as he handed some home owner grade white receptacles to the customer and said that you could just tap off the set of six wires in the pull box already, to get
power for your new
receptacle. Wonder what liability Home Depot covers on bad advice for non-skilled customers following it from home improvement experts?
(Back at Radio Shack,) Gimmie a two amp one already, do you have one of any amperage that will do 15VDC??? That and why does nobody produce a
cell phone to normal telephone
jack adaptor? Would be really nice to
power up the internet by my
cell phone that the company pays for in the first 600 hrs per month, than I would not need a phone number at home that I’m yet to know. Granted, now that I’m leashed to the Nextel I am also given churps at all hours of the day and night with wiring questions and problems from all over the country. I’m about one of the few people that does not like the nation wide chirpie phone service. If it were not for the internet, since my crap cable company monopoly has not done high-speed internet yet, the horror of it, I cannot see any reason to pay the phone company any more once I go internet. Sure, that cable company turns off their service just about every morning at 7:45 while I am waking up and getting ready for work, for that promised upgrade, now when is the internet, much less channels I had in Chicago going to get here since I’m paying the same price for them no matter how few channels I actually have. As an electrician, I’m trained to be able to shut off
power to the people effected in a manor as timely as possible. In other words, I don’t shut down
power to them unless absolutely necessary, for any more time than absolutely needed. What’s with the cable company in m area that they have to shut down the
system in doing an upgrade for hours on end when afterwards, nothing has been changed other than I’m paying for a blank cable
screen when I want the weather for the day? Need my Cartoon
Network, World History
Channel and Animal Planet. Not to mention they have decided that on the Silver package I pay for, that it only includes one brand of premium
channel, and only East Coast at that, not even West Coast. Pay the same amount, yet get half the service. I miss Animal Cops and other shows.
Hate moving besides just for cable, 10 weeks later and I’m still looking for things and have stacks of stuff that I’m yet to put away much less rig up. Than of course, if I put away the gear after my last show I provided gear for, “The Bowling Show” - two years ago, I would also be able to find stuff such as 3/8"
unistrut nuts I now need and have to sort
thru misc. parts buckets for. Kitty litter buckets, have cat, use buckets for spare parts, good deal. They are rectangular or square, much more useful than a round joint compound bucket.
However, in other long winded words, success on the original data cable questions.
I can state for sure that even crappy
XLR cable with
RCA jacks on it for video and sound off a VCR hi-fi will work. That in addition to the
BNC jacked cable that “I acquired” with adaptors to normal cable type F plugs on it is also working well. Just need little mirrors like at the last place I lived so I can change the
channel on the cable box. What’s the max range of a TV controller anyway? Both TV signal questionable types of cable in 50 to 100' runs work, so it can be assumed that it’s usable elsewhere - even on
stage without a problem. Excellent - there must be TV in the kitchen and bedroom, considering I’m now on the very fringe of antenna range to the city, had any of my TV’s had them. Need video in a pinch, grab some data cable. I might even hook up some adaptors for
RCA such as I made up this week for 1/4" phone
jack to
XLR adaptors for use on a G-100 fogger remote. Never know when such things will be necessary. What do you think of running both video and sound
RCA jacks off a 5-pin
DMX cable? I think it should work given this household experiment, granted I probably don’t want to connect the
shield. Should it work, it could be a one or two cable
universe given you don’t have
hoist sensor cable, dual
channel clear com or
ETC link cable around. That and the 4-pin
scroller cable in both versions. Than there is the 7-pin
XLR cable, what’s up with that? Hope I never have to repair it.
Did I mention a certain amount of frustration between the two types of 6-pin
XLR cable types? Just had the Simon and Garfunkle tour going out with
hoist sensor cable, and they ruined my little quiet world for me because they needed more cable to make it work. Seems that the
Clear Com 6-pin
Switchcraft standard cable I made and specifically marked as such could not work with a
Switchcraft standard
Hoist system - missing a
conductor. So they went with
ETC link 6-pin cable also, in using the
Neutrik standard plugs that are very different in pin orientation and it would not work. The good tech people on the show loomed it into their
truss looms anyway. Somehow, I just don’t feel sorry for them having to un-loom than re-loom the cable bundles because they learned and important lesson. So I spent a late night last week converting 6-pin Neutric stadard
ETC link cable to Motion Labs Sensor cable using it’s Switchraft standard. Luckily, and by chance there was a mistake in shipping and I had a dozen spare
Switchcraft standard 6-pin plugs in
stock for two weeks ago weekend fix me up, or the show would have been soldering and looming it’s cable on site. As it was, there was another lost weekend that I could have spent un-packing.
Next up, the washroom. Adapting other black data or high end data cable is much better when working at minimum budget, than using that 100' of orange normal cable
jack wiring I acquired but would much rather not be using. I’ll save it for temporary wiring for a TV on the porch for next summer while watching the Cubs kick the sox rear.. There will be no perminatly installed orange cords nor
zip cord in my home, other than in my wall of shame.
Nothing like a free weekend when I don’t have to spend it doing stuff for work I can’t do during the week. Now if only I could get myself to deal with the stacks and stacks of documents and papers that I want to save for now but don’t have space for. Must be something like three stacks at 30" I have to file, log into the computer or get rid of. Somehow that rule of if you have not used it in the last year, you don’t need it never took hold with me.
Hung a 10' x 24' flame proofed
duvetyne drape that I garbage picked (it was an odd size but looks new to the
point it might have had only one use.) It’s on 30' of 1.1/2" RMT and black Sch.40 pipe, cheseborougs, Rota Locks and
Kee Klamp fittings I acquired over the years in booms that now surround two of my walls including the picture window. The other walls will
house lithographs. All left over from my theater days. You can imagine how much hell it was to move me. Nothing like
stage drapes for controlling sound and drafts. Too bad it’s not
velour, but that stuff sold like hot cakes when the theater closed down. Would have been just the right height after some idiot cut down the 24' lengths of it that I owned at one
point, but it’s gone now and would be long past it’s flame proofing. What kind of idiot would hack apart 24'
velour blacks than staple it to a 9'-6" ceiling is a question I still ask. Still pissed about it.
The pipe is also to hold lights. In the living room, it’s all 1.1/2" pipe for lighting instruments TBA for install. Still have not bought the lesser wattage lamps nor brought home my
dimmer pack and light board. But there is going to be something really cool once I program some pre-set scenes into the light board, especially since that NSI board only needs it’s data cable to feed it with
power. A floating light board from living room to dining room/office. Get home and just hit pre-set #2. At the moment, only the antique lights are up - those that won’t be used for light. The only light in the living room at the moment is a
ghost light proper that came from the theater. The antique lights and my pinspot lamp bar that’s over the front door but is not circuited. Gonna be cool to have shafts of light on the entrance. Add to that 7 of each, 6" Fresnels, and 3.5Q5 Lekos, once I have the proper lamps for them and a 20' diagonal pipe running across the center of the room. Need one more swivel cheseborough for this, but I’m sure I know where I can trade a non-swivel for a swivel without spending any money. Than a 20' pipe. (Each time I use one of the properly spelled terms such as cheseborough here, I’m adding it to spell check, so it’s a good thing.) Those lights plus some 10" scoops for general work day type vacuuming lighting now that I have a drape across all the natural lighting and have not installed the pulleys to lift the drape yet will be needed on say
cue 8.
Once I finish the main living areas, I’ll get to the bedroom. For the moment, it has parts, but not much assembled other than self supporting linen shelving in the huge closet for most of the clothes. Last apartment did not have any closets, so I had to be invent, especially since there was not room for much less I did not have any bedroom furniture other than a bed that I did not hack together. My parents even
thru out an antique
desk that had been passed down
thru the generations while I was in college. One of these days, I need real furniture - especially a sofa. L-Stiff legged cabinets don’t do much for my Art Nouveau tastes. I especially like the lighting fixtures, but at least it’s easy enough given lighting grids to install
stage lights. Funny, the 1880's apartment had higher ceilings than the 1970's apartment. Now I have to loose at least a few inches if not a
foot or more off all stuff I have no matter how hack.
In the dining room/office - the room I for the most part live in, it’s all
Unistrut grid above the floor to ceiling and cantilever
book shelves. Yes you can support from above a ½" plywood 3'x4.5' and full
book shelve by two 1.1/2" 16ga box steel bars off another
book shelf. Really cool to have over the drafting table for them pulp fiction novels. Not pretty, wish I took the time to sand,
router and stain all around, but some of them have been with me since college and are still waiting, they un-finished and stacking have their own style. But I have black paint that eventually I’ll get to applying it to the steel or strut. Some day at least. This room is earthquake proof! All the free standing
book shelves are well supported. For the moment, I am using 1 of 4
dimmer channels in the kitchen for two inkies that light my art table/
desk. The rest of the lighting for the drafting table/computer
desk are still packed. I only found two inkies so far and that’s it for a lot of
Unistrut grid. Still have a bunch of low
voltage lighting I bought or got as free samples and
halogen PAR 38 cans to install for the drafting table and other lighting. I know where they are, they are just buried into the back of a closet.
One thing I did find and install besides the second inkie, and is glowing at the Osram vendor rep info I was mailed and need to install in my notes is a 18"
blacklight fixture. On a whim I installed it between the steel struts on my dual
monitor swivel crane assembly. Yea people sell swivel arms for a single
monitor, I have a 52" counter-balanced construction crane based swivel arm assembly for two monitors plus the computer tower
unit that is counterbalanced 14" off center by two lead 5# dive weights, two 27# steel
stage weights and 14 steel plates that measure 1/4"x4"x12". Took my time and effort on this one thing about the home so that it’s all off the drawing table and I can watch the lazy suasion.based TV below the screens while I write. On the black light, final improvement to the
boom arm, it’s very cool looking to see that business card and data, especially the yellow in the HSR and HSD cut sheet glow with the light. I have a black light lit desktop. Now all I need is a
blacklight readable
mouse and keyborad.
Anyway, that’s the status. I have a stack of lamp notes to update, not to mention more vendor links to add to the website, but at least the apartment is getting somewhere. As with work, wonder what the next day will lead me into doing? Hope it’s the bedroom, but I never know or plan.
So after much wordage, the above cables I asked about work well. Really cool! Gotta see my place to understand how hack
unistrut can actually work in an apartment I guess. But would you expect any less from me?