Oh the joys of plumbing problems

Friday night as we were about to goto dinner, my wife tells me that she sees some water running down the driveway. I took a look, saw a pool of water near the water shut off, shut off the water to the house and asked her to call a plumber. After I turned the water off, I could still hear the water running, so I knew there was an issue between the house and the street. I shut the water off at the street and the fun began!

The plumber took a look and gave me an estimate; as he would have to chop out concrete on our front patio, it wasn't going to be cheap. The next morning, the plumber, Brandon, arrived, and started jack hammering the concrete. After a little while, he knocked on the door because he had to show me the problem.

It looked like a rubber hose was connected to our main water line. This, obviously, wasn't up to code. After a lot more jack hammering and digging, Brandon couldn't find the other end, so he gave me an estimate on running a new main water line. Brandon asked if we had Quest piping in the house; this type of pipe is polybutylene, it was only used between 1978 and 1995. Our house was built in 1973, so it wasn't used originally when the house was built.

While Brandon was digging and jack hammering, I did more research on polybutylene pipe and became convinced that what we saw was polybutylene and at some point, a repair had been done and instead of putting back copper, a cheaper alternative was selected.

Around 3 pm, I saw that it was going to take Brandon awhile to dig the trench to the straight and I wanted our water turned back on, so I offered to help. Well, we didn't finish the trench, but Brandon duct taped the broken pipe and put a rubber coupling on top of it in hopes that it would last enough for a few showers (you really didn't want to smell me after digging for 3 hours). I went instead to say goodnight to my son, turned the water on and quickly realized that the temporary fix wasn't going to work; water pressure dropped almost immediately.

I ran outside to find water shooting in the air. I went into the garage, looked around to see what I had and found some PVC. I cut the PVC lengthwise and grabbed some zip ties. I put one side of the PVC on the top of the pipe and the other on the bottom and zip tied it altogether. That managed to hold for 2 showers and then I shut it off.

Sunday came around and we managed to lay the pipe and Brandon got a chance to do some plumbing! Who knew that plumbers had to be ditch diggers, tree trimmers (Brandon had to cut a tree root), and concrete destroyers.

So while we now have water restored, I have to get concrete poured to patch the front patio; at this point. I'm not sure that I want to undertake this as we'll have to get some tiles replaced and who knows if it will match and if the concrete pour will be level with what we have.

The amount that this cost me reminds me of a Fraiser episode where Niles Crane is talking to the plumber about cars and the plumber said that he was getting rid of his BMW, the same model that Niles has. Niles asks why and the plumber said that he upgraded to the next bigger model of BMW which makes Niles mad because he can't imagine a plumber making more money than he. I know how much work went into this and with any plumbing problem, you really don't have much of a choice.

Another MacHeist Bundle and More Tempers

I've waffled on what I think about bundled software like that being offered at MacHeist at a steep discount. My latest ramblings have been supportive of it. As a consumer, it's great to get lots of stuff for just a little amount of money. Will I use everything in the bundle? Unlikely. However, I've used some of the programs I've bought here and there. For the most part, I might use 1 or 2 programs, but just in case I have a use for something else, I know I have it. For instance, today I used GraphicConverter to convert some graphics; I would not have bought GraphicConverter at full price (the awful UI really puts me off).

One person has been ranting about it and basically saying people are cheap for buying it. Well, I bought it (still waiting for them to fix their system as they took my money, but didn't deliver me anything; they underestimated demand which is surprising considering how well the last 2 have done) and I don't feel cheap. I see some of the developers gaining a customer that they would never have had. The developers have a chance to sell me an upgrade later and that may just happen.

Fighting SSL and winning

I'm in the process of setting up a Zimbra server for work and as part of it, I'm documenting configuration for all types of machines and devices we use. One of the devices is a Palm OS Treo (755p in particular). I've done a bit of research and found that the Palm OS Treos don't work properly with wildcard SSL certificates. So, I got my boss to approve a GoDaddy single domain certificate for $30; I assured him that this was needed for the Treos and he didn't have a problem with that.

What I failed to read was that they also don't work properly with GoDaddy certificates. These devices only recognize an old standard while GoDaddy is issuing certificates that adhere to a new RFC.

After much trial and error along with research, I almost gave up and admitted defeat. Everything I read today indicated that RapidSSL certificates worked. So, I was going to have to go back to my boss to approve the $69 for a new certificate; that wouldn't be a hard sell, but telling him that I made a mistake would be harder. I started complaining to a friend that works at Palm and he pointed me to the same threads I was reading that recommended RapidSSL. I went over to RapidSSL to look at certificates. I happened to click on the Buy link (I'm not sure why as I wasn't about to buy it), clicked the "Continue without support" link, then was pleasantly surprised to see the following:

I selected a 1 year certificate, filled out all the information, confirmed the certificate and waited. Without entering a credit card or anything else, my certificate arrived! Not only did it arrive, it was for 2 years! The certificate we purchased just 2 days ago from GoDaddy for $30 was a 1 year certificate.

I fired up the Treo 755p, setup ActiveSync and presto, it worked over SSL.

Wow, not only was I able to solve my SSL issue with the Treo, I got an extra year on the certificate.

So what did I learn? Hmmm, I'm not sure. I made a mistake, but I was able to correct it with a bunch of research and some luck.

Oh and using a Treo 755p brings back memories of developing Palm OS software. The UI seems a bit outdated and I'm glad that Palm is moving on and not resting on its laurels.

Documentation made easy

About a month ago, I wrote about a program called ScreenSteps for creating documentation for work. I bought the program because nothing else was out there that I could find (I'm not ready to do video documentation), but had major reservations in that the app was created using a cross platform tool. I've been using ScreenSteps to create lots of documentation, but have grown increasingly frustrated at it as it is quirky. For instance, it doesn't do auto spell checking since it doesn't use standard Mac based text editing, re-ordering steps don't always work, and the dialogs look like crap.

A few days ago, a product called MacSnapper was released. It had many similarities to ScreenSteps, but one huge difference; it is a Mac app through and through. I converted some documentation to it and quickly purchased it. I made a few suggestions to the developer and quickly got a response. I just have to convert the rest of my documentation to MacSnapper and then I can get rid of ScreenSteps; I kind of feel dirty using a cross platform application as applications like this just don't act like Mac apps (I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but I haven't seen them, yet).