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Van
Van
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Since the start of fall and cooler temps all three of us have been fighting colds and flu like symptoms and sinus infections. We initially attributed it to our daughter going to school for the first time and bringing home all the new stuff she never had plus living in a military town near DC that had people coming in from all points of the world on a daily basis. At Christmas we were all sick with me having it the worst for a month so we went into a local clinic dealing with a true prick of a doctor and finally getting meds for sinus infections. A month goes by and we all get better and decide to have the duct work cleaned when we find out that there's a dark brown mold throughout the furnace and duct work and we have to reschedule to scrape the money together for the cleaning. Right after the tech opened up the furnace and found the mold some of it got stirred up and again we all get sick with respiratory problems so I start treating myself and family and we get the tech back out to clean the duct work.

So long story short, if you or your family is suffering with repeated respiratory issues and illness and other signs such as lethargy difficulty in concentrating and other issues that you can find online that are direct effects of mold exposure then have your furnace and duct work checked for mold and have the house checked for mold.
8 Replies · 1660 views
lakebum431
I would expect it came from condensation as the temperature changes in the ducts vs the temperature outside the ducts.
Van
Van
Living near the ocean front and having a canal not 35 feet from the house in the back yard and another a block away does help lend to the potential for mold in a house. Another thing that lends to it are previous residents who did a very poor job of caring for the house and had little understanding of many types of hygiene concepts and practices.

Thanks for the information Don, I will have to look further into this than what we have already had done if I don't redo the duct work as I had been considering to improve the airflow through the house and ducts.
navychop
Generally I have a low opinion of duct cleaning. It's been pushed to our company as a high profit, scare the customer scheme. Not always a waste of money, but something to be cautious about.

HOWEVER- mold and mildew is serious. I'd certainly go with an outfit that specializes in this sort of remediation. One that's been in business at least 10 years - you don't want one of the fly by nights that materialized in New Orleans after Katrina, and moved on. I also agree that the usual duct cleaning company is not well equipped for this- and it's likely beyond the ducts, too. There is equipment for sniffing this stuff out.
TheForce
I got caught up in a duct cleaning deal once myself. Here again I did a TV commercial for barter and traded the video work to have my ducts and air handler cleaned. It looked like a quality job but what I discovered later is that no matter how impressive that huge vacuum cleaner was on that truck, it just does not do a thorough job. So, what happened here is for a year after the cleaning job, we had this black stain of dust / film where each vent was that we had to keep cleaning. That was just an indicator of what was being made airborne in our house. Fortunately, we have good tolerance to the mold and dust that got stirred up.

Navychop- you are correct that the name of the game in TV ads for this stuff is scare tactic. I know as we built a whole infomercial on scare tactics. I couldn't tell you how profitable it is because I did see there is a lot of work to the remediation even though lots of it didn't appear very thorough. Bottom line is if you're getting sick it has to be corrected!
Van
Van
I think that it has been a combination of my daughter attending school for the first time in a heavily military / transient area and my burning the candle at both ends has had allot to do with my daughter and I being sick the most out of the four of us.

So far no vent stains though we did have that in our old place back in Georgia and I did develop a persistent need to clear my throat of phlegm for the last 2 years and it has followed me to where we are now.
Scott Greczkowski
Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Cutting Edge
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!

So let the game continue!

The last song was added by Bobby who posted...

One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters

CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!

Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game

Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.

Example:

Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow

Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio

Another example:

Ride the Lightning -- Metallica

Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne


Get it?


An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
68657 Replies · 2680161 views
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sdfntx
I Care About Detroit - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
dishstaller
I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith
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Bobby
98.6 - Keith
harshness
I'm Easy - Keith Carridine
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gms49ers
It's Easy - Boston
R
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
Lately my eight year old Dell laptop has been shutting off even when I have a full battery. I have had to keep it plugged up all the time to keep this from happening. Any idea what is causing this? I replaced the battery about three years ago.
2 Replies · 39 views
arlo
A recalibration might be needed. Even if it shows full, the individual cells may have become unbalaced. And the BMS chip in the battery reports false information to the pc.
Try this. Start it up in the bios/uefi and leave it there until the battery dies and it shuts off.
It might just keep running longer than in Windows. Or run for a short while and shut off.
If it's the first case. Probably just needs a balancing. If the latter, the pack might just be dead.
Not throwing stones but perhaps just a cheaply constructed battery with substandard cells. Could be.

Patience. Keep restarting it in bios/uefi until it won't fire up anymore.
Then plug the charger in and let it complete a full charge. And see what happens. If it's better.
Do the same thing one more time. Run it until it dies dead-dead. Then just let it charge, pc shut off.
When charged, it might be better. It might not be.

There are bench jigs that read the actual BMS and override it to let a tech manually monitor and charge the separate packs. They can also reset any "time bombs" in it that cause an otherwise good pack to show bad.
Maybe Santa will be good to me some year.

You might just need a new battery. Maybe the PC power management chip is going. A Dell common thing.
Leaving a laptop plugged in with a full battery is known to reduce the life. Asus for one recommends that you don't leave the charger plugged in all of the time even when shut down. And setting Windows to charge the battery to 85% instead of 100% increases life.
That's all I got.
dishstaller
That's all I got.
That was quite enough....I definitely learned something from your post. Thanks
TRG
TRG
Pub Member / Supporter
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
5 Replies · 278 views
b4pjoe
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
If you can't get into the router to reserve an IP address just don't use DHCP on the device that needs connected and assign it to a specific IP address in the network settings.
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HipKat
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
They are not. Your best bet is to set up a third-party router, attached to the Starlink for your server, that you can get into, like a Linksys, etc
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Foxbat
…it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
The Starlink V5 Install Kit I just got comes with the Mini Router. It is pretty limited in what it can do. For example, it can provide only one IP subnet at a time, no Guest Network, but it does support the pass-thru to a third-party Router. You can also split the Wi-Fi into separate 5 GHz & 2.4 GHz SSIDs to help some IoT devices that don't support 5 GHz bands to work.

The larger Starlink Router that still comes with the V4 Kit does support a Guest Network with separate IPv4 Subnet, but it's $120 from Starlink. And it still won't do DHCP Reservations.
harshness
If you can restrict the DHCP address space to assign addresses to one end of the subnet (i.e. x.x.x.50+), you can manually assign the IP address on pretty much any operating system. This is a default behavior on several popular routers. As the Router Mini only supports 235 devices, I expect that's already done.

Another option is to use a router that supports PoE to power the antenna. This article discusses that option (under PoE Power heading):

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Foxbat
Now that I've had the v5 kit with the Mini Router, it's not as bad as I first thought. Yes, no DHCP reservations, but you can set up multiple SSIDs that have separate IPv4 subnets, and like the big brother, you can select from 192.168.x.0/24 or 10.x.0.0/16 (where "x" is 1-4).

You can also split a subnet and have different SSIDs for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels to handle some IoT devices. I haven't discovered what subnet the 2nd NIC on the router assigns, I'm guessing it's the first subnet.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
2 Replies · 47 views
dishstaller
Sorry for posting the wrong link. Just corrected it.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

2 Replies · 51 views
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Jimbo
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

They will have to look at the switching sections to determine WHY 2 trains were on the same track ... at the same time.
dishstaller
Thought this article might be of interest to some of you who might travel via train.