fixed it!

Some Handy Hooks

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The sun room does not have any power to it, other than the light.  Even the switch for that is in the old kitchen.  When my dad used it, he had a radio and a clock going, powered by a household extension cord going through the window to the old kitchen.  The cord was long enough to go up and over the door, then down to where my dad could reach it from his seat, kept in place behind nails hammered into the door frame.

That cord is still here.

With getting an electric weed trimmer, I needed something other than a household extension cord.  So I added my own heavier duty cord through the window, which you can see in this picture, here.

20180618.sunroom.westside2

I found those flowers while cleaning the room out and stuck them on the household extension cord as it leads up to the top of the door, but the orange cord has been kind of in the way.  Putting it into that shelf works for now but, in time, the shelf will be used for other things.

Today, I came up with a solution.

While emptying the drawer in the table we took out of the sun room, I found two coat hooks.  Perfect!

Here they are, now.

20180620.sunroom.extension.cord.holder

I just screwed them into the wall, facing away from each other, and now they keep my extension cord neat and tidy, while still being convenient.

Putting the prie dieu back in front of it, and it’s hidden away, too.

Easy peasy! :-D

The Re-Farmer

 

Data Vampire Slain?

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So about a month and a half ago, I discovered the reason we were screaming through our internet’s data plan so quickly.

I had a Data Vampire in my own desktop.

useage.details

For some reason, my desktop’s system was using over 80 GIGS of data, and I had no way to find out what, specifically, was causing it.  With only 100 gigs on our plan, it’s no wonder we were going over so quickly!

So I went through everything I could think of to try and shut things off.  Then, at the end of the month, I reset the usage stats.

useage.details.before.Jan.reset

Even by then, I could see a difference, as total usage within the past 30 days had already gone down.

Here is my currant usage.

useage.details.end.Feb

Well, there we have it.  In the space of about 4 weeks, my system used less than 3 gigs of data.  A difference of close to 80 gigs!

My browsers used more data – I use one for this blog, so there are a lot of photos uploaded, while with the other, I had uploaded some videos this month, so I used it more than usual, even taking into account that I gave up Facebook for Lent.

My total usage for the past 4 weeks was just over 13 gigs.  Slightly more than what I use on WiFi with my phone which, after I no longer visited Facebook, dropped from about 11 gigs in 30 days, to less than 10.

Our original internet account reached about 88% before we switched over to the new satellite (a matter of switching cables on the router).  With the new account, we haven’t even hit 45% yet.  Which means that, in total, we used more than 100 gigs, so having two accounts is still saving us money.

I still have no way of knowing what exactly on my computer was sucking our data plan dry, but whatever it was, I seemed to have stopped it.

So we’ll only be paying about $200 a month total for internet, instead of closer to $400.

Still more expensive than if we had been able to install a tower and get non-satellite internet, but at least we’ve GOT internet.

Unless something weird happens, it appears our Data Vampire has been slain!

The Re-Farmer