Recent occurences and car stuff
Jun. 13th, 2009 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tnrkitectFeeling good right now, thanks to a lemon-lime-green apple daquiri I concocted. A little bit of sour mix, some green apple mix, and a dash (ok, two dashes of rum) blended together with ice makes for a nice refreshing drink on a hot (almost) summer afternoon.
However, the day has not been unproductive.
This morning, I ran to the local Weigels to get more milk (we were almost out) and while there, I succumbed to the lure of krispy kreme donuts, so I pick some up for our breakfast. Then, we headed down to the local habitat thrift store and picked up a chest of drawers for the hall that Jessica had seen last week and wished she had bought then.
When we arrived, she thought it had been sold as they had moved it to another room, but we found it and picked it up. It is a basic low dresser, 3 drawers, solid maple with dovetail joinery. But, the top drawer is missing, and in its place a previous owner had built a sort of cubby-hole insert. From what we can tell, there used to be a door that folded down in the front of it as well. It was in the process of being refinished, as the drawers had been sanded down and were missing the knobs, but it was worth the $25 we paid.
After we brought it home, I sorted through some papers and put the ones needing to be saved away so that Jessica could finish cleaning the house.
I also set up the Canon S9000 13" x 19" printer that I had in storage from way back. The 3rd year of school it had stopped feeding paper, and I just boxed it up and kept it, planning on getting it fixed. Well, I never got it fixed, and it has just been junk that had never been cleared out. I even tried to sell it at the yard sale for $1.00, but no one bought it.
Good thing too! I was messing with it last night, and actually planned to send it back to Canon for recycling. They have a program where you pay $12 for postage and they send you a link to print out a UPS label. After I had purchased the recycling label, I poked at a bit, figuring that if I broke it more, it wouldn't matter.
Low and behold, I managed to get the paper feed mechanism working again! It needs ink, but it feeds paper and prints with the ink colors I do have, and now I have a large format photo printer at home again. :-)
After discussing it with Jessica, we figured out where I could set it up with it attached to the desktop computer, and it is now ready to go.
THEN, I came out and installed the JVC CS-BB2 amplified 6" self-powered subwoofer system (This one: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_105CSBB2/JVC-CS-BB2.html ) in the LeBaron. I had replaced the stereo and speakers in it a few weeks back with a Clarion Head unit (This one: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_020D285USB/Clarion-DB285USB.html ) for an amazing price as they were discontinuing it, along with Kicker brand 3.5" and 5.25" 3 way speakers to repalce the blown ones in the car. The car has 6 speaker locations, two 3.5" in the dash, two 5.25" in the doors, and two 5.25" in the rear side panels (your elbows hit the speaker grills).
I installed it myself on a Saturday a little over a month ago and have been loving it ever since. It is a standard AM/FM stereo receiver with CD player and a removable face plate. The neat feature on the CD player is that it will play burned CDs (including Re-writable CDs) with MP3s or WMAs on them. Not only that, but it has a USB port on the front face to plug in a jump drive loaded up with more music. Well, I tried it out, and it recognizes my external hard drive, so I now have access to 100 GB worth of continuous music while rocking down the highway! :-)
The only problem I had with the stereo system was not a fault of the equipment but rather a shortcoming of convertibles and Jeeps in general. When you drive down the road, the mids and highs are clear, but the bass disappears in the road and wind noise. Thus my decision to get the sub.
Well, the reviews on this particular sub are uniformly great or terrible. If you are looking for something to put in your vehicle to go BOOM-BOOM-BOOM down the street rattling windows in the houses you pass, this is not for you. Those that like that sound hated this sub. If you are looking for something to give you that little extra boost to the lows to restore the sound, then this is your ticket. Those who wanted that sort of sound LOVE it. I fall into the second category of people, so I picked one up cheap on EBay.
It has a very thin profile, only 2 1/2" tall, is 11 5/8" long, and 7 7/8" wide. It is designed to fit in tight spaces such as under a seat. It includes a wiring harness and the ability to either send the signal to the sub via RCA patch cables or via tapping onto the existing speaker wires. It also has a wired remote that has an on/off button and a volume knob so you can adjust the bass to fit the music as it plays.
Well, I knew that I needed it out of sight since in a convertible anything visible is easy pickings. I wasn't able to put it under the drivers seat as that seat has the electric adjustments and the mechanisms take up ALL of the room under there.
I didn't want to put it under the passenger seat, as that space is currently where my AC power converter resides to power the lap-top or external hard drive, or what ever needs 110v AC. There is enough room beside the converter to place my external drive as well, but that is about it.
I got to looking at the options, and realized that there was a space under the dash over the center hump, behind the radio and cubbies that was a perfect fit. There are two trim pieces of carpet on hardboard on each side that cover this space, held on by clips and velcro. I removed one of those, and slid everything into place. This puts it about 6 inches from the back of the stereo in the dash, so after I hooked everything up I had to bundle all the excess wires with a twist tie. The bundle actually sits in front of the sub enclosure and helps steady it. I bolted the thing to the floor, put the trim peices back on, and ran the remote's wire under the trim piece to beside the center console, where I gave it enough slack to hide inside the console.
Then I tested everything. Success!
I adjusted the bass on the head unit down, since when you crank it up loud the door and dash speakers start to bottom out. The sub is using the pre-amp RCA jack outputs, so this doesn't affect it, and it fills in the lows that the dor and dash speakers can't handle.
I plugged in a thumb drive loaded with a sampling of songs that have a good range of sound. Nickle Creek, Bob Seger, Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Billy Joel, all sounded amazing at higher levels. Depending on the song, the base needs to be dialed up or back, but that is wasy to accomplish with the sub's remote.
So, success!
My next post will explain why I wanted to get this done post haste. Stay tuned!
However, the day has not been unproductive.
This morning, I ran to the local Weigels to get more milk (we were almost out) and while there, I succumbed to the lure of krispy kreme donuts, so I pick some up for our breakfast. Then, we headed down to the local habitat thrift store and picked up a chest of drawers for the hall that Jessica had seen last week and wished she had bought then.
When we arrived, she thought it had been sold as they had moved it to another room, but we found it and picked it up. It is a basic low dresser, 3 drawers, solid maple with dovetail joinery. But, the top drawer is missing, and in its place a previous owner had built a sort of cubby-hole insert. From what we can tell, there used to be a door that folded down in the front of it as well. It was in the process of being refinished, as the drawers had been sanded down and were missing the knobs, but it was worth the $25 we paid.
After we brought it home, I sorted through some papers and put the ones needing to be saved away so that Jessica could finish cleaning the house.
I also set up the Canon S9000 13" x 19" printer that I had in storage from way back. The 3rd year of school it had stopped feeding paper, and I just boxed it up and kept it, planning on getting it fixed. Well, I never got it fixed, and it has just been junk that had never been cleared out. I even tried to sell it at the yard sale for $1.00, but no one bought it.
Good thing too! I was messing with it last night, and actually planned to send it back to Canon for recycling. They have a program where you pay $12 for postage and they send you a link to print out a UPS label. After I had purchased the recycling label, I poked at a bit, figuring that if I broke it more, it wouldn't matter.
Low and behold, I managed to get the paper feed mechanism working again! It needs ink, but it feeds paper and prints with the ink colors I do have, and now I have a large format photo printer at home again. :-)
After discussing it with Jessica, we figured out where I could set it up with it attached to the desktop computer, and it is now ready to go.
THEN, I came out and installed the JVC CS-BB2 amplified 6" self-powered subwoofer system (This one: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_105CSBB2/JVC-CS-BB2.html ) in the LeBaron. I had replaced the stereo and speakers in it a few weeks back with a Clarion Head unit (This one: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_020D285USB/Clarion-DB285USB.html ) for an amazing price as they were discontinuing it, along with Kicker brand 3.5" and 5.25" 3 way speakers to repalce the blown ones in the car. The car has 6 speaker locations, two 3.5" in the dash, two 5.25" in the doors, and two 5.25" in the rear side panels (your elbows hit the speaker grills).
I installed it myself on a Saturday a little over a month ago and have been loving it ever since. It is a standard AM/FM stereo receiver with CD player and a removable face plate. The neat feature on the CD player is that it will play burned CDs (including Re-writable CDs) with MP3s or WMAs on them. Not only that, but it has a USB port on the front face to plug in a jump drive loaded up with more music. Well, I tried it out, and it recognizes my external hard drive, so I now have access to 100 GB worth of continuous music while rocking down the highway! :-)
The only problem I had with the stereo system was not a fault of the equipment but rather a shortcoming of convertibles and Jeeps in general. When you drive down the road, the mids and highs are clear, but the bass disappears in the road and wind noise. Thus my decision to get the sub.
Well, the reviews on this particular sub are uniformly great or terrible. If you are looking for something to put in your vehicle to go BOOM-BOOM-BOOM down the street rattling windows in the houses you pass, this is not for you. Those that like that sound hated this sub. If you are looking for something to give you that little extra boost to the lows to restore the sound, then this is your ticket. Those who wanted that sort of sound LOVE it. I fall into the second category of people, so I picked one up cheap on EBay.
It has a very thin profile, only 2 1/2" tall, is 11 5/8" long, and 7 7/8" wide. It is designed to fit in tight spaces such as under a seat. It includes a wiring harness and the ability to either send the signal to the sub via RCA patch cables or via tapping onto the existing speaker wires. It also has a wired remote that has an on/off button and a volume knob so you can adjust the bass to fit the music as it plays.
Well, I knew that I needed it out of sight since in a convertible anything visible is easy pickings. I wasn't able to put it under the drivers seat as that seat has the electric adjustments and the mechanisms take up ALL of the room under there.
I didn't want to put it under the passenger seat, as that space is currently where my AC power converter resides to power the lap-top or external hard drive, or what ever needs 110v AC. There is enough room beside the converter to place my external drive as well, but that is about it.
I got to looking at the options, and realized that there was a space under the dash over the center hump, behind the radio and cubbies that was a perfect fit. There are two trim pieces of carpet on hardboard on each side that cover this space, held on by clips and velcro. I removed one of those, and slid everything into place. This puts it about 6 inches from the back of the stereo in the dash, so after I hooked everything up I had to bundle all the excess wires with a twist tie. The bundle actually sits in front of the sub enclosure and helps steady it. I bolted the thing to the floor, put the trim peices back on, and ran the remote's wire under the trim piece to beside the center console, where I gave it enough slack to hide inside the console.
Then I tested everything. Success!
I adjusted the bass on the head unit down, since when you crank it up loud the door and dash speakers start to bottom out. The sub is using the pre-amp RCA jack outputs, so this doesn't affect it, and it fills in the lows that the dor and dash speakers can't handle.
I plugged in a thumb drive loaded with a sampling of songs that have a good range of sound. Nickle Creek, Bob Seger, Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Billy Joel, all sounded amazing at higher levels. Depending on the song, the base needs to be dialed up or back, but that is wasy to accomplish with the sub's remote.
So, success!
My next post will explain why I wanted to get this done post haste. Stay tuned!
