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I just wanted to post that the honda accord winshield wiper tubing happens to be the same tubing used in rainbird watering systems. If you need some hose or the Y adapters, just drop by a hardware store and pick some up. I had a spool of tubing plus some extra Y/T connectors and i was able to fit them on the Accord without problem.
Part numbers from honda:
95003-07008-70M BULK HOSE, VINYL 76830-SR0-004 JOINT Y, TUBE

Additionally, if you have a clogged nozzle, try soaking it in water, blowing (both directions), and sticking a pin/needle in the ends to unclog it. It took me a while but i was able to unclog it without having to replace the parts.

Just FYI.

This site appears to successfully describe how to save a password using NTLM, RPC over HTTP to an exchange server. The essential part is describe in the comments. Use Wildcard Domain Names for the network password management domain names. That’s the only way I have gotten it working, but hey, it works!

What the heck is going on? Some of the craziest things I’ve ever seen have occurred this week. In France, a 30 year old at a bank traded over 7 and 1/2 billion dollars in losses. If thats not enough, he was able to hide it from the bank itself. NUTS. Absolute nuts.

I know a lot of people out there have watched their portfolios dwindle this new year. I managed to pull in about a 10% gain. I had been shorting the technology sector using Ultra Index ETFs, specifically REW. I sold on Wednesday, The market appeared to have some short term support. I am very much on the fence as to where we go from here…. Thursday may provide more questions than answers.

Good luck.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
- Baudelaire

I’ve been working a lot lately on customizing our home entertainment center after our old Sony receiver died.   Here’s our setup:

•  Sharp 46″ LCD TV
• Yamaha RX-V661
• DirecTV HR20
• Xbox + XBMC
• Harmony 880 Remote

A few things to note.  First, in Hawaii, DirecTV + HD + Locals requires2 huge satellites.  I believe they are 4 1/2 feet in diameter, each.   The pictures are amazing, I can’t wait for DirecTV to release the 70 other HD channels and the locals in HD (as promised) in the next few weeks.

Secondly, the Yamaha RX-V661 is truly a great receiver.  If you use the auto setup, it will tell you if your wires are incorrect, and auto adjust the sound levels using an omni-mic you place near your seating area.  I had tried manual setup at first and I had some crossed wires that were causing the unit to shut down, live and learn.

If you are looking into the RX-V661 I will wan you, don’t buy it for video upconversion.  It hard a hard time switching between SVIDEO input, Component, and HDMI for output on HDMI/Component to the TV.  The Sharp had 2 HDMI and 4 Component input sources so I was able to work around this.   If video upconversion is turned on, some sound modes are now available as it requires too much processing power.

The Harmony 880 is a very nice remote, but logitech’s interface for programming it is a bit annoying.  This is likely because my day job involves programming and I would rather just map codes, but instead, you have to use wizards.   Also, if you are using XBMC + the DVD Remote, be sure to google FakeChannelUp and FakeChannelDown so you can find codes that will allow page up/page down.   The ones on the XBMC wiki for Fake Up/Down actually send a code that changes my sharp TV to TV antenna mode.   I ended up programming it to the old remote codes from the Scientific Atlanta 8300 box that TWC offered out here.   Those codes were 43 and 44.  A few quick keymap additions to the XBMC xml files and I was back in business.

We have 5.1 right now,the receiver is capable of 7.1 but really, come on.   First, we live in an open air environment with fans, outside noises, and really, space concerns about adding 2 rear speakers.  The 5.1 mode works fine.

Before getting HDTV, I didn’t really think it was worth the money, time, effort, etc to acquire it.   Standard Def TV has worked fine, I saw no need to swap.   Boy was I wrong.  My first real excitement was seeing the Cubs @ Giants game on in HD.  Wow.   The football games too!  Now I find myself watching HD things I’ve seen before over new content on Standard Def channels… God what an HD snob.  I make myself sick.
One last thing, its a rant.  WHY on earth is Taledega Nights the ‘movie’ to test your HDTV setup against?   CNet, Best Buy, and others all show or mention Taledega Nights in discussions of HD quality or Blu-Ray quality.  Seriously…

Seriously, someone is having a good joke at my expense. Let me just run through the things that are broken, attempted fix, fixed, and rebroken, in no real particular order, in the last, oh, lets give it 6 weeks, max:

• (fixed) Screen Door
• Hammock
• (fixed) Screen Door (after 2nd person breaks it)
• Auto dimming rear view mirror for Xterra
• Circuit breakers
• Instant Hot Water Heaters
• My Computer (hard drive)
• My Computer (motherboard)
• My Computer (CPU)
• Wife’s backlight on laptop
• sprinkle hose
• 2 more sprinkle hoses
• pool man disconnecting my solar heat from pool pump
• nut on guitar
• outlets in kitchen
• paper shredder
• deck, yeah, i broke a few old boards carrying tables in for the graduation party
• (not yet) stereo amplifier keeps going in protected mode lately
• (not yet) tivo is having pretty apparent hard disk problems at times
• (still have to fix) fence in front from january wind
• (almost) my HP 7310 all in one printer, it thinks its christmas, its flashing all sorts of cute lights while displaying a hex code hp’s support doesnt understand
• (almost) cable modem, it seems it dies every few hours now

and last but not least, the #1 thing broke on my list:

• my patience

Google, in either humor or… who knows what they are up  to.  Has a very interesting method of getting you from New York, NY to Dublin, Ireland.  Check out step #23 here.