Side Effects Worse than the Symptoms - #1

VERAMYST helps reduce the nasal symptoms of allergic rhinitis, such as stuffy nose, runny nose, itching, and sneezing. VERAMYST may also help red, itchy, and watery eyes in adults and teenagers with seasonal allergic rhinitis.
Important Information about VERAMYST: Side effects include nose bleed or nasal sores. Nasal fungal infection, glaucoma, or cataracts may occur. Have regular eye exams. Do not spray in eyes.
My take: Relieve your allergies and maybe go blind.

Curing Concrete - Part 3

DONE! The driveway is done! I still have a little landscaping and reseeding to do, but it should be easy. It took three separate pours from three concrete trucks. The first was it arrive at 7:30am but did not get here until 9am. That made things a little hectic to get everything ready for the second pour at noon - which was on time.

The third and file pour was at 3:30 (the truck was half an hour late) and then it was done. They also sprayed an acrylic sealer to protect it from salt and to keep it from drying out too fast. It is recommended that I do that every year - especially before winter to protect against all the junk the city dumps on the roads.
Now all we have to do is wait 7 days before we can drive on it, but we can walk on it now. Woohoo!!!
And finally, for your viewing enjoyment, and in case you missed the live action, here is the whole two days of work condensed down into a 10 minute time-lapse video. Enjoy!

Curing Concrete - Part 2

Well, its the end of the first day, and boy did they do some serious work! Practically non-stop from 9am to 6pm, two to three guys jackhammered out the old concrete, hauled it away, dug out the new section for the parking pad and laid in new gravel.


Finally, the compacted the gravel and laid rebar on the first third. I was amazed how much three guys could do in a day. Their bobcat had a jackhammer attachment and a scoop. It really made the work go quick.


Over lunch, my brother dropped by and let me ride his Harley 'rat-bike' he'd been working on over the summer. Loud, hard to steer, no gauges, dials or blinkers, a really tough clutch and together with the gear shift on the wrong side - what fun! And I didn't even kill myself!
Tomorrow, they will start again. This time at 7am with the first pour. While that sets, they are to compact and lay rebar on the second section for the second pour. And then, if everything goes well, they will finish compacting and laying rebar on the last section for the final pour. A whole new driveway in just 2 days!
Then I have to put all the dirt back. Bummer.

Curing Concrete - Part 1

It's Monday afternoon and our contractor has already dropped off the lumber for the forms and the rebar. Work on our new driveway will begin on Wednesday with the tear-out of the 20 year old crumbled, cracked mess we have now. We will also be getting a side lot so our son can park his car there out of the way of the garage.
In preparation for all this, I've set up a PC and two web cameras to record all the glorious action. One such camera is a Linksys Wireless Web Camera with built-in web server. It serves up live continues images of the action as it unfolds. You can view it at http://24.163.201.242/img/main_fs.htm or by clicking on the Driveway Web Cam link under "Interests" at the top of this blog site. Note that you must have Internet Explorer to view and that only 4 people can be watching at the same time. So if you can't get in, its probably because too many people are watching already. Sorry, its the limits of the Linksys Web Cam.

Here is a shot of the setup. I 'borrowed' my 3Ghz Pentium Seti@Home system for this so that I could hook up a second camera, a Creative WebCam NX Pro, to do image captures every 10 seconds. In this way, I can build a time-lapse video of the work one its all completed.
This whole setup it in the attic over the garage and looks directly down onto the driveway. Because both web cameras were not meant for outdoor shots, I had to tape gray sunglass lenses over each one and also place tinted film on the window. I did not have any power in this space, so I installed an outlet by taping into an existing line running through the attic. And finally, because this is 'so important', I have a 750watt UPS on the whole setup so nothing is missed even if the power goes out! Yup, I'm a geek.