Episode: 3703
Title: HPR3703: McCurdy House Tour
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3703/hpr3703.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:19:51

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3703 for Wednesday the 12th of October 2022.
Today's show is entitled McCurdy House Tour.
It is the 90th show of operator and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is operator brings us on a house tour.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host operator.
Going to do something a little weird.
Today I'm going to do a kind of house tour.
Most of the will be technology based.
I'm not going to do show notes.
There are some things that are specific to certain things that I'll have to provide to you.
But in general I'm not doing show notes and I know everyone hates that.
But you can pretty much google everything except for what I'm going to put in the show notes.
So I'm also off in the garage here.
I have a ESB32 Arduino board powering a bunch of lights.
Like 1,400 Christmas tree lights year round.
And there's a thing called J-channel that you can put in.
If you all want more episodes to expand just let me know.
But this is J-channel that you can drill holes in every three inches.
And you got your fancy year round Christmas tree lights.
So far so good.
I've had to repair it once.
It should last longer than that but whatever.
Automatic garage door with code.
That's what everybody has nowadays.
Let's see.
I go into those beach things.
It's a folding beach wheel cart.
I opted on the one without the giant plastic wheels because it's kind of a pain
about to put in and out of cars.
The slimmer wheels are better because you can fit more stuff in.
Folding chairs.
Everybody has those.
Pressure washer.
The pressure washer I have is used.
I do not recommend building or rebuilding pressure washers because it's basically two engines.
You've got one engine.
This is the engine and the other engine is the pump system.
And you know, you get leaks and whatever.
But when you're doing pumps,
anything with water or metal and water.
You can use a radiator anti-rest with water pump loop by Prestone.
It's a yellow bottle.
And it's this blue liquid that's essentially, I don't even know what's in it.
But it helps keep protect winter eyes, metal, and stuff like that.
So I let it run through, pull the crank a couple of times and blue and that blue.
But the white stuff comes out and that's how you let it sit.
You drain the water out as best you can.
And then you let it sit with that that radiator goo in.
Anyway, it's moving on.
I got a big one of those big plastic coil pans.
Screws, boxes, used cat litter boxes.
Nothing's nothing interesting or useful there.
I got a nice chainsaw.
It's still a real nice, still chainsaw.
And try to learn not to how to chop my head off.
But if you do have a chainsaw, I'll get invest in a good one and take care of it and sharpen it
and know how to use it and know how not to use it.
If you spit on it and the spit and the spit steams up or whatever and sizzles,
you're something is wrong.
Your chainsaw is too hot.
Stop figuring out what's going on.
You need more oil.
You need to sharpen it, whatever.
Make your own mixes.
Don't buy the 50-50 stuff from the store.
It's stupid expensive.
Various yard ornaments for Halloween.
Mr. Foggers or the fog machines, you want to clean them out with, they say vinegar.
I just clean them out with water and let them run through steam comes out.
And then I pull out the water out and then I let it run until it's dry for a very short time.
If you don't want to run anything that's supposed to take a load that's without a load on it.
So dry pumps, dry firing, dry anything.
You don't want to do that.
Water irrigation system I have in the front that's a
a little pop-up thing you can build your own, but somebody did half of ours.
And that's a whole completely different story.
But a timer-based little drip irrigation system that I set up.
The threads on the irrigation stuff is different than the threads on your traditional hose.
So in America we have like two different kinds and they feel like they're the same,
but they are not.
So you will destroy threads on stuff.
If you try to use the traditional hose or some of these other attachments, they're
different, slightly different, what do they call it?
Links or whatever for the for the threads on things.
I've ruined a timer just because I thought the hose attachment was supposed to sit on there, right?
And then you have to get a converter.
Let's see, boxes and stuff various organizing of things.
Took an old flood light and made a spotlight out of it.
So I just took apart the LED worked fine, but the switching part of the motion light didn't work.
So I just bypassed all that and now I have this stupid 900-lumen workbench light that I can put really anywhere.
By a nice bike pump and a nice bike so you can do good stuff.
Oh, chainsaw rope on a chain.
Chain saw blade essentially or a chainsaw chain on a rope.
And you throw it up there and you try not to get the chain stuck.
But I've pulled down three branches so far.
It is an effort to get all that figured out, but you can cut down branches that are touching
your house or whatever.
You don't want branches touching your house because gooders can easily get in and out
of the top level.
They can just crawl up the tree and go straight into your house, had ants doing that with us.
We save, just a starter foam, what not.
We're only five minutes in, so I'm kind of moving that decent speed.
Kind of make sure I don't take forever on this one.
Various boots and bobs.
Oh, we use bins 100 max formula for insecticide.
It's like 97% deep and it doesn't smell like nasty like the deep woods off.
So if you have to use deep woods off, I would switch to the bins.
It's very oily and you have to kind of rub it in your skin and I use a piece of,
actually a piece of plastic tubing to like apply it.
So I'll spray a little bit on and I apply it with a plastic tube and smear it around.
It's, it gets to be a mess.
You can't really spray it on.
You have to spray it on and kind of wipe it in with something.
And then you get that oily stuff all over yourself and you know, you kind of stink,
but it's not nearly as bad as whatever.
Giant box of 32 DB in our ear protection.
You need ear protection a lot more than you think.
So put them in your car.
We're going to a concert.
Put them in your purse.
Put them in your book bag.
Put them in your backup.
You know, it's just like Nino's porn.
I have Nino's porn everywhere.
I have ear plugs everywhere.
And don't wear them too much because you'll end up with ear problems because
ear plugs and ear buds shouldn't be worn all the time.
Bug stuff.
I do, I did an episode on the bug stuff.
So dealt the dust for getting behind walls and whatnot.
So I did an episode on bugs.
If you want to listen to that one, pretty much it.
Oh, I mean, got to the inside, but there is all the blaster stuff is great.
The blaster has a penetrating catalyst.
It doesn't work really.
What you want to do is a hot cold, hot cold method.
So if it's metal and you're having problems with whatever that is,
hit it with a torch, if you can't.
And then cool it down with like some ice or an upside down can of air.
And you trust your position back and forth between that ending on cold.
And banging it with a hammer or something like that.
And sometimes you won't have to get out the angle grinder and cut something off.
Just that cold, hot transition is enough to break everything free.
Along with the blaster, then you might get lucky and get what you want.
Um, uh, those ladder things that go on the top of a ladder to like,
to be more secure, I've only used it a handful of times.
But you see people on ladders walk around like they own the place and scared to
wrap out of me, um, a cutoff valve for your water meter.
If you do not have one, get one, show your spouse how to use it.
Make sure everyone knows how to use it.
Make sure that your water, uh, meter is clear.
I'm here in the US at least, um, and you can get to it and you can easily pull it off.
Maintenance that thing at least once every two years.
Make sure that it's not gross down there.
Then you can get to the shutoff valve and it's nice and clean.
I had to spend probably an hour to just clean up originally.
That shutoff valve around our house because if something happens and you call,
you have to call the county or city, whatever to cut something off or the plumber to cut
something off. You don't want to be doing that because it's in the policy like 300 dollars just
to have somebody shut off of their valve for you.
Um, air, air, air, uh, air compressor.
A lot of people don't know what you're supposed to bleed it out when you're done using it.
Um, same thing maintenance maintenance maintenance.
If you have a motor or something with a motor in it or it's a tool that's mechanical in nature,
just do the due diligence of like whatever the product is.
Maintenance and figure out, okay, what do I have to do for my angle grinder maintenance?
Oh, cool. I'm not supposed to use the blades all the way down to the stub because it might
shatter in my face. I don't know if they do like those anymore, but uh, you know, see this awful
angle grinder videos of people like over not misusing the angle grinder blades and chunks of
hot slag in their face or something. Um, anyways, that's most of the garage.
Tools, tools, tools, strategy, tag tools everywhere. I can't have too many screwdrivers.
I've got a decent grill. Costco had a ceramic grill because I'm so tired of buying crappy aluminum
or whatever. Crabby girls. See them down the street. There's one in the street right now down
the street. See them all the time, vacuum cleaners. People don't know how to fix stuff. People
don't want to pay to fix stuff. Everything is garbage. So I bought a ceramic kaboakimoto,
basically like a green egg knockoff. Um, and they have deals on them at Costco. Everyone's
someone else. Look deals will have a nice deal on it. You get the cover, which is like, you know,
$100 for, you know, however, for free, basically. And then, you know, that's the whole thing.
So I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm not going to do an episode on that because people
people would beat that dead horse. Um, so yeah, um, I think the garage is pretty much done.
There's nothing super cool in there. Uh, my bike, um, maintenance, figure that out. I still haven't
figured out my bike, but uh, kitchen's pretty basic. Um, I would say, um, we got some
knife block for Christopher, for our anniversary or whatever wedding gift. And I've been slowly
swapping out. The knives was like super fancy, um, one of these, um, shun, fancy shun nice.
So our knife block is like getting completed. One of these days will have a complete set of
shun knives, but apparently the, the whole thing with, um, knives is that you've got like soft
steel. And then you've got like your German steel that's harder steel. And these,
these shun knives are kind of overkill. Like they're for like making sushi and stuff because
you use them and you gotta sharpen them in home like every time you use them. But it's, it's, it's, it's a thing.
Um, um, pretty much down here. Kathy loves this bizzle thing, the little bizzle floor cleaner.
It's blue, I don't know the model number of it. Bizzle Crosswebe, whatever their nearest
crossway of this is so far so good. Um, they're all garbage, but she likes it.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work. Today's show was
contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording podcasts,
you click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hosting for HBR has been
kindly provided by an onsthost.com, the internet archive and our sings.net. On the Sadois
status, today's show is released on their creative commons, attribution, 4.0 International