The snow bulldozer

Heard some noises outside. It was a guy clearing the snow from the driveway with a bulldozer. No shoveling for me.

Fixed LCD TV

My 17-inch's backlight inverter went out. So instead of buying a new $500 tv, I bought a new inverter for $80. I was able to take the monitor apart and replace the broken board. First time I've ever fixed a TV. Parts and info here.

Thanksgiving dinner (Wednesday)

Some of the folks at the Yale School of Drama came over for Thanksgiving dinner. All of the food was great. One person called the food "varsity."

Kitchen vent covered.

In the house, there is a kitchen vent at the top of the stove. I didn't realize how big a hole this was to the outside until one day i could feel the cold air near the vent. All this warm air in the house is going right out this hole. I gotta figure a way to cover it up. So i wonder what Macgyver would do.

I went to home depot, bought some insulation, foam seal and self adhesive magnets. Took about 10 minutes to put together. Works like a charm. Easy to put up and remove, while blocking the cold air from coming in.

New thermostat

Since the gas bills are gonna be really high... we gotta find every way to save money. One way is to have a programmable thermostat. We can set the night time temperature 65 degrees when we're sleeping in and have electric heaters in the room. The whole house doesn't need to be heated. Then at 6:45am, the temperature is set to be at 72 so we can wake up to a warm house. There are 4 different settings per day.

Installing it was not very hard overall. The hardest part was to try to figure out what wires go where. The wires weren't color coded or labeled. I looked up some info online and found a website that described which wires went where. I had to look this info up on my iPhone since I turned off the power to the house, which turned off my cable modem. The iPhone to the rescue again.

Door sweep

Installed a door sweep on the back door today. I didn't realize how big a hole it was until i stood by it on a cold day and could feel the draft come in.

Thermals pants and shirts

Got my thermal pants and shirts from target.com. They really keep me warm!

Halloween

Thought this was a funny sight. A black cat under a ladder.

Satellite dish mounted

Yes. Finally got the satellite dish mounted. It's almost perfect. I got 3 of 5 signals to be 90% or higher. The other two the best I can get is 75%. That's because there are some pine trees blocking it. When the wind blows the tree, the signals goes up and down.