Spray Paint Countertop - Rust-Oleum Hammered Finish Copper

So the internet can be a dangerous place. We had a couple spot on our laminate countertops that had popped up so straight to Google I went in search of a DIY solution. Towel, iron, and weights, easy enough and quite effective.

But of course in my search I began thinking about spots on the countertop, how we don't care for the color, and how we are wanting to build and move soon and need to fix up things in the current house but on a budget. So, I talked to Diana and she agreed and I began the process of creating a faux copper countertop.

Here is the site I referenced.

I've only done one section so far because I want to ensure each spot has plenty of time to cure.

All I needed was a couple sanding sponges, paint and tape.

I had an 80, 180, and 360 grit sponges and Rust-Oleum Hammered Finish Copper and Ultra Cover Clear Gloss

I started by cleaning the surface thoroughly then sanding it with 80 grit to ensure it was both clean and ready to accept paint.

This is after cleaning and sanding. As you can see everything is taped up and covered as there will be over spray and I don't need copper spots on the stove and fridge.

I then put on numerous layers of the copper, giving each one about 20 minutes to set. I'll say at this point I wish I hadn't done this at night because open windows and lights on inside invited in bugs. Those bugs also made the cat curious and while I wasn't watching she added some 'character' to the counter that I had to address.

Various stages of paint

 After that I added numerous layers of clear coat. These layers go on faster, about 3-5 minutes between coats. After about 3 or 4 I let it dry enough to feel it and used the 360 grit with water to smooth it out then add on some more layers. I did this about 4 times total to ensure I had a fairly good protection as I know these counters will continue to get a lot of use.

After adding the first clear coat

Here is the final product. It's not perfect but it cost about $10 for paint and a bit more for some other supplies that are reusable (sand paper sponge, painters tape, brown paper roll). I should get the other counters finished up in the next week or so and will add the finished pictures of them as well.

Final Product - Faux Copper Countertop

ASP.Net Logins

I have some experience using the ASP.net Login feature in VS 2008, but I've never actually created one. So I figured, what the heck, why not make a page and see how it's done.

I'm a bit annoyed at every MS page on this because not a single one mention you have to create the database first. I knew that you did, but they don't explain how, or even how to connect it. So my post is merely to connect those articles together. This is probably more of a reference for me, because it annoys me when something should be really simple, but is complicated only from a lack of good documentation.

A few notes not listed in the documentation are after installing the Database you will need to go into IIS and change the connection string for the ASP.NET of your site to the database that was create, or the one you adjusted if you made one yourself. Also it turns out that the default identity setting for the DefaultAppPool in IIS 7 is set to ApplicationPoolIdentity and not NetworkService.

http://www.codetoday.net/default.aspx?g=posts&t=1595

Then you can go into the Web Site Administration Tool and finish setting things up.

Creating the Application Services Database for SQL Server

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x28wfk74.aspx

Walkthrough: Creating a Web Site with Membership and User Login

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/879kf95c(v=VS.90).aspx

SBU Newsroom: SBU CIS Students Earn Three National Awards

SBU Newsroom: SBU CIS Students Earn Three National Awards: "Southwest Baptist University News ReleaseContact: Sharina Smith, Office of Marketing & Communications417-328-1803 / ssmith@sbuniv.edu O..."

Mustang Gauge Cluster

So I was finally able to get the gauges to fill my new cluster panel. I'm really happy with the way it looks and can't wait to get it in. I have a new dash panel cleaned up and painted, but it will have to be modified for the backs of the gauges. They take up more room than the stock cluster. It will look much different inside once it's all back in.

F100 360 Motor

Missouri Budget Issues

I'm just reposting this here so it's easier to share, the original is from a letter sent out to quite a few school employees.

Summary of Data on Funding Cuts per DESE’s Simulations
Three Options
1. Reduce all state payment to districts by $65 per WADA
2. Reduce all state payment to districts by 2% of formula
3. Reduce phase-in percentages according to appropriation
Summary of how these three options would affect
current hold harmless districts

Current 152 hold harmless districts (removed outliers Special School District of St. Louis and Voluntary Inter-district Choice Corp)

• 09 Avg. Per Pupil Expenditure = $11,969
• 09 Avg. Per Pupil State formula payment = $3,420
• 09 Total Payments to hold harmless districts = $910,059,615
• 09 WADA for hold harmless districts = 266,093

Option 1 = $65 reduction per WADA
Option 2 = Avg. reduction of $68 per WADA
Range from $10 reduction (Clayton) - $145 reduction (Gorin)
Option 3 = $0 reduction per WADA

Summary of how these three options would affect
current non-hold harmless districts

Current 372 non-hold harmless districts

• 09 Avg. Per Pupil Expenditure = $8,364
• 09 Per Pupil State formula payment = $2,964
• 09 Total payments to non-hold harmless districts = $1,926,679,364
• 09 WADA for non-hold harmless districts = 649,830

Option 1 = $65 reduction per WADA
Option 2 = Avg. of $62 per WADA
Range from $20 reduction (Webster Grove) - $106 reduction
(Riverview Gardens)
Option 3 = Avg. $92 per WADA
Range from increase of $41 (Hayti) - $232 reduction (Blair Oaks)

Option 3 Additional Concern – Approximately 407,000 students in 282 districts take a smaller decrease and have an average per pupil expenditure $10,810 while approximately 505,000 students in 242 districts take increased reductions and have an average per pupil expenditure of $8,296.

Scheduled Tasks in a Domain

This was important enough to me to decide to post it. I don't know if the issue is just uncommon, or if most people give up but I get a bit... obsessive sometimes ;-)

Here's the situation:
You have a task, in my case I needed to download files from an FTP server, and you need it to reoccur say on a daily basis. Sure you can do this by hand but that get's tedious, and if you're like me you tend to forget.
Solution, windows scheduled tasks! Seems simple enough, but thankfully(job security I guess) Microsoft has a way of making sure simple things find a way of being more complicated than they are.
So the new problem is in a standalone pc, tasks can be done fairly anonymously. Not in a domain though. Shouldn't be a big deal, just use an administrator account. Well unfortunately that's not enough as you get this wonderful message after trying to create a scheduled task.

The new task could not be created.

The specific error is:

0x80070005: Access is denied.

Try using the Task page Browse button to locate the application.

Seems like there is something wrong with the permissions. Well there is, and it's not just security settings. As it turns out it's the ACL's on the Tasks folder. This seems to be a relatively common problem in a domain, but it depends on the kind of work you are doing.

Here's the fix. From a command prompt, Start>Run>cmd, type

C:

CD Windows

CACLS TASKS /E /G builtin\administrators:F

I just wanted to post this in the hopes that someone else dealing with this won't have to go through all the work I did!

First Assignment in Minix

Today school let out early so I was able to stay after class and talk to Dr. Lu. Fortunately for me he had been working on the virtual machine for minix. Unfortunately when we sat down in the lab it didn't work. After some quick changes to the vm player we had a working setup and ftp access so it was possible to submit our patches.

I'm not sure if this was the same trouble I ran into last night but it's possible. I had the network setup as bridged but couldn't download software so was unable to get ftp setup. Today though we had to switch it from NAT to bridged. Dr. Lu doubled checked and found that it had to be be NAT in the main labs, but bridged in the small test lab we were using down in the CS Dept.

Seems like there is no reason for this but now we know and can keep everyone else from getting frustrated.

Well now that that's done I can focus on writing my first shell for minix.

Spring of 2010

I can't believe it's 2010. I'm excited about this semester so far. It seems like it may be less stressful than last, and my classes are finally getting interesting. I'm going to write about my progress in Operating Systems so that I can have a log to look back on what I've done and how I did it so...

Minix 3! It's an open source stripped down Unix clone we are using to understand more about what an OS is and how it works. First task, edit the main.c of the kernel, and create a patch.

First off I gave up on trying to setup network access with this, floppy is the way to go. More on that later but if you're working on this in a vmware player setup as I was, just forget about it.

Basically that means installing software is more complicated, not impossible but again that's a later thought. For now I'll use what I have and move on.

I will be making a patch so before any editing is done I need to make a backup.

mkdir /usr/src-cpy
cp /usr/src /usr/src-cpy

I edited the main.c using VI, which is setup to run only from the full command name "elvis", that was annoying to discover. And of course I prefer Nano so here is a link to a page with the basic VI editor commands. Useful if you don't use VI daily.

Next of course was the patch file done by using the "diff" command.



diff -Naur /usr/src-cpy /usr/src > 1.patch

So far so good, but now I need to be able to access that file outside of my virtual machine. The solution is fairly simple though, a virtual floppy disk. Shutdown your VM if it's online and edit it's settings. Under Hardware click Add then select floppy drive. Create a blank floppy image, name it and save it. We're not done yet though.

For minix to use that image it must be formatted and mounted. Being it is the only floppy device it is located at /dev/fd0 so:

mkdir /mnt/floppy
this will create a folder to mount the floppy to
mkfs /dev/fd0
this will format the image
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
this will mount the image to the folder we created

Now we can copy the patch file to the floppy folder. Then retrieve it from the image later using another piece of software in our host OS capable of mounting an flp image.