JayMan's Realm

Snow Fun!

jayman8081 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:01:46 +0000

Yesterday it snowed about 3 or 4 inches here in Dayton so we all got bundled up and went outside to play! We took video of getting ready to go outside, getting the ski sleds put on Gabriel’s wagon, and mommy and Gabe all bundled up. Then we got video of Gabriel cruising through the snow in his wagon. After that I shoveled the driveway and Devon cleaned off the van while Gabriel and Zoe played in the front yard. He had a blast and wouldn’t ride around the front without Zoe in the wagon with him! It made the cold and wet non-existent to be outside with him and see his chapped little smile. Below are the two videos. I may post some still pictures later this weekend. Enjoy!

Snow Play Preparation:

Snow Play:

New Reebok Hockey Commercial

jayman8081 — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:08:16 +0000

Reebok shot a great commercial with Sidney Crosby and Max Talbot of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The two travel to Sid’s hometown of Cole Harbor and venture to his childhood home to shoot some pucks in his basement. It shows Crosby’s parents talking about what it was like with Sid growing up while Max and Sid take turns shooting pucks into the dryer in the basement. The challenge was to be the first one to 9. I won’t spoil the outcome but will say that I love Talbot’s sense of humor.

Link to the Commercial

New Home

jayman8081 — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:30:23 +0000

This is going to become the new permanent home for my blog for a while. My internet troubles have not been resolved and may not be for a long time so it’s best if I host everything here for now. I will work on getting the pictures back up online and the header image changed to the one I used to have. I will still be blogging and posting pictures so that won’t change. I won’t be able to change the color scheme here though so this standard one will have to do. Later!

Our Water History

jayman8081 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:10:58 +0000

Over the past 18 months we have had some “fun” experiences with water and our house. It all started in August 2008 when our water heater burst out the bottom of its tank and plugged the emergency drain with sediment. So it was running and leaking water into our basement, which couldn’t drain, for approximately 4 or 5 hours before we knew it. That took lots of cleanup, an insurance claim, and rebuilding most of our basement from the floor to 2 feet up the wall! Then recently we saved up and re-did the kitchen in our house to make better use of space. Well we replaced the sink so this involved turning off the main shut-off line to the house. When we did that the shutoff valve started leaking! We called a plumber to come look at that and in the mean time turned the water back on since the valve leaked the same amount regardless of if the water was on or off. A couple of days later, again during the early morning hours, a pressure spike went thru our system and blew the line off our osmosis water filter! This flooded the kitchen since it blew the end off the faucet tap for the filter.

Sooo the plumber came a day after the faucet water trouble to look at the shutoff valve. The valve was so old that he didn’t think he could replace it without damaging the entire system. He then proceeded to explain that the city of Kettering is on an open water system which means that there is no pressure regulation so that the house furthest from the water main can still get water. Each house is supposed to have its own pressure regulator at the beginning of the system inside the house. Guess what? Our house didn’t have a regulator! That’s why the filter line was blown off when a spike in pressure hit the city system. We still had galvanized piping throughout our house and the cost of upgrading the entire plumbing system wasn’t substantially more than the cost of replacing the entire shutoff valve, the main line in indoor plumbing system, and adding a pressure regulator so we went ahead and had the entire plumbing re-done in copper and pvc. Several of our drains were extremely slow anyway and we knew the bathroom was improperly plumbed from the previous owners. The entire re-plumb was done in three days and the plumber was great about always stopping for the day at a point where the water to the house could be restored. (Benjamin Franklin Plumbing)

That was all wrapped up about 3 weeks ago. Since the main shutoff valve and line in the house needed replaced the plumber had to use the shutoff valve at the street to turn all water off to the house. Fast-forward to today when the water main in front of our house burst!! Devon called to tell me that she was going to a friend’s house for the day since we didn’t have water and that the equipment was directly in front of our house effectively blocking it. She’s pretty sure the main broke right around the shutoff to our house. We are cursed when it comes to water it appears (at least for 18 months).

New Home … for now

jayman8081 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:20:52 +0000

This is the new home for my blog for right now. I want to do some tests on my old network that was hosting my site to see if the webserver is what is causing me some issues. If it is indeed the issue then I will be moving to something more like this setup and using Google Picasa for images. We shall see!