FusionMods

well this took much much longer than I had expected. It started with bad parts arriving, continued through setting up a bachelor party and a wedding, but last night, my computer finally got back up and running, and almost all without hitting any snags.

So I think I’ll start off by just posing all the pics in a gallery

[View with PicLens]

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So this build was because of some failed components, but it also presented an excellent opportunity to upgrade at the same time. A lot of this is in my previous post, but I did opt to go for the quad core CPU, which after just a few hours of use, I’m extremly happy with so far.

Out of the box, the motherboard looks great. The size of the onboard coolers is always a small concern since these keep getting larger and larger, but these ones were an average size, and positioned nicely enough that I didn’t feel all that worried.

The first step is installing the CPU, this should be pretty straight forward. The CPU will have two notches in it, allowing it to rest in the cpu socket in only one position. Once in place, simply lock down the cpu.

Now depending on your CPU cooler, it might be easier to install this before mounting the motherboard. My CPU cooler has a back plate that comes with it, so I have to install it first. Most cpu coolers just have push pins, which depending on the placement of the fan(s), can be easy to install after the motherboard is mounted. Here’s a few shots comparing the CPU cooler I’m using and the stock cooler the CPU came with…. there’s no way you’d ever talk me into running a stock cooler, especially after comparing these pics.

Aside from the size of the stock cooler, I’ve also heard that the amount of thermal paste isn’t always enough either, and not having enough thermal paste is like running your car without enough oil.

So installing the CPU cooler, you first need to apply a coating of thermal compound to the CPU. you just need a thin layer. Luckily I had a tube of Arctic silver 5 laying around still. To spread it, I simply just cut a piece of plastic from the container that came with the CPU. Anything will do really as long as it is flat. I’ve used cardboard in the past, extra thick paper, but plastic is probably the best.

Once this is done, all that is left is to mount your motherboard. This is just typically 6 to 9 screws depending on the size of your board. Make sure to connect the power and all the other cables, as well as the graphics card. (I’m not spending too much time on these details because odds are, to install a new motherboard, you took your old one out). The only thing you’ll want to make a note of is that you have all of the case connectors plugged in properly. There’s nothing like turning on your computer for the first time, to realize it wont… because you forgot to plug in that connector.

Once everything is all plugged in you should have a real mess of cables similiar to this…

hopefully yours will look a little bit cleaner, lol.

Here’s a shot of the computer up and running… It’s a pretty great day foro it so far

And now that I think of it, as soon as I get home today, I’ll publish some shots of my full system, hopefully my office can stay this clean for a while.

It’s been a few weeks since my last update and I wanted to make a post on it…

My computer has just recently been re-assembled. The biggest reason this has taken so was is because once I got the parts, either the motherboard (or CPU) were faulty and needed to be sent back

On top of that, just after sending them back, I was in a car accident. I’m actually completly fine, but my truck has been declared wrecked, and without the money, to go to a dealer for a brand new 2009 or 2010 ranger, I’m scavenging the used car market, and all I can say is, cash for clunkers took all the good ones, lol

In addition to that I’m in a wedding this weekend, and while it hasn’t directly taken up too much time, it has kept me pretty occupied with coming up with a speech and what not

Tomorrow I’ll have a nice write up on my new computer build. I’ll also have tons of pics, and instructions for anyone else wanting to upgrade their own PC!! haha so hopefully this longly awaited post will be worth the wait!

If you guys have any requests for things I should cover, let me know, and I’ll be sure to include it in my next post

Well in a very random twist, a week after I did my post on building a computer, mine happened to die, lol.

So this really presents me with the perfect opportunity to show you guys how to assemble a PC. The parts all arrive tomorrow (hopefully), and then I’ll be rebuilding everything!

But today, I’ll run down the components I went with.

For the CPU, Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 Yorkfield 2.66GHz
This isn’t the most powerful CPU out there, but he’s still a really nice model. I opted for the quad core because I really wanted to see the difference in performance. My last CPU was a Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, so it’s a pretty good level for comparison.

For the motherboard, GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R
This was actually really close between an ASUS board. I’ve used both manufacturers in the past though and I’ve been very happy with each. Both boards have a large number of positive reviews as well. In the end, they were so close in their builds that the deciding factor turned out to be the number of USB ports, lol

Some faster Ram, OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB)
I currently have two slower sticks of 1GB each DDR2 that I might add as well. It’s true that it’ll lower the speeds all around on the ram, but I’m thinking the simple capacity will make up for it comfortably.

I’m also debating on doing some water cooling. I do have a pretty nice CPU cooler, but I’m really wondering how big of a temperature difference I’ll see on a quad core vs my old dual core CPU.

But like I said, the parts arrive tomorrow, then I’ll do a full write up on everything! lots of pictures

I thought this would be something great to talk about after reading an article on the MEN, No Internet No Interest

I’ll avoid digging deep into different stats, and just stick to the stats from the story. The article mentions that 25% of Americans don’t have the internet, and 17% don’t even want to go on the internet. Now I’m a full time web developer, I’ll admit, my life kind of hinges around the internet. But honestly, I do feel I really bennefit from it.

Probably the best use of the internet I have is for information. I just bought a house earlier this year that needed some work. haha and as a web developer, I’m just not as handy as I wish I was, but you can find out how to do anything online, and a lot of the time you can even find videos on how to do anything as well.

The other great thing is online shopping. I’m really as far as you can get fomr a shop-aholic, but I do appreciate the ease here, as well as the option to compare prices and read product reviews. Saving the time and money has been a huge help.

One recent example was, my house needed all new cupboard doors. After checking with Lowes and Home Depot, and hearing them reccomend I just purchase new cabinets since the price of doors will be sooo high, I found a place online that sold cupboard doors at any size, with many styles, for about half the price.

I can understand the point of, “I’ve never had the internet, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything”. I can say that about a lot of things. As a child I didn’t see what people liked cable TV for, but now I enjoy the larger program line up and always great signal. I used to not see the point to cell phones, but now I have mine with me just about 24/7.

So while life will still keep moving without the internet I think it’ll move a little smoother with the internet.

Do I know how to call them or what? In the Microsoft vs Google game I made mention to the fact that it’s likely we’ll be seeing google netbooks powered by ARM processors. And today I see this article popping out, “ARM Cortex + Google Chrome = Your Next Netbook?“. Looks like I was right

So whats this all mean?

Well google will be starting a big larger of a battle than against just microsoft. It’ll be waging ware on software developers and a few hardware developers. All home and work computers run off the same CPU Model as Intel. They may not have an Intel processor, but odds are, they do.

Now the software developers won’t be too big of an issue since ARM has been around for a while, but they’re still pretty late to hit the mainstream game, and all that software you love for your desktop/laptop will need to be redeveloper to run with an ARM processor.

Whats the difference between ARM and Intel? Well ARM has never had the power to process things like windows. Intel has never had the battery life that ARM has. It’s sort of like comparing a ranger to an F-350 (King Ranch Edition of Course). For a netbook, ARM might be an ideal choice, but I think there is still a lot to come from all of this.

This is one area I should probably touch on a lot more. There are many people who are avid computer users, who want more bang for their buck, but don’t know where to start. The lucky part is, it is suprisingly easy. I built my first computer as a 9th grade research project. At the time I have no prior knowledge, but still managed to throw something completly new together.

The first step is setting your price range. from there you can start choosing your components and features. I do want to say, that you’ll have a hard time building your own computer for $300 or whatever walmarts selling them for these days, but honestly, if you’re going to build your own PC, you probably want something a bit better than the bare minimum. After all, how many people take the time to restore something like a Geo Metro?

Ok so a fair price for an intro PC is $800. It’s true, you can get these in stores comfortably, but we’re looking for more bang at a comparable price.

Step 1 – Choose a motherboard and processor. If the processor (CPU) was the brain, the motherboard would be the spine. These two components pretty much make the computer. If you change these, you pretty much have a whole new computer. These are one of the few items that you need to check for compatability.

The easiest way to purchase these is as a combo item. If you can’t find them that way, all you want to check is first, is your motherboard intel or amd, second, you want to get the pin number. For example, my home computer is an Intel Core 2 Duo, LGA 775. This is a few years old, but still runs great.

What to look for in a CPU? Speed. The larger the numbers the better (except for price). I almost never go for the newest model because of price. When I got my Core 2 Dou, it was one model below the Core 2 Dou Extreme. Mine cost about $200, the Extreme cost a lovely $800 total, and I don’t think it would have been justified.

The motherboard is something that is really up to you. Remember this is the nervous system of your computer, so it’s not something you’ll just upgrade every couple months. Features to look for…

• How many USB Ports (internal and external) – Honestly, in the many years I’ve been building computers, I still feel the same, you can never have too many USB ports.
• Types of ports available – This is something to look at now as every manufacturer tries to put his favorite specs into the motherboard. some might have fiber optic  audio ports, some might have HDMI, there are really a lot of options, so make sure you consider some of the different things you might use your computer for so you can make sure you won’t be missing out on some key functionality.
• Number of expansion slots – These just aren’t nearly as used as they used to be with so many things coming integrated now, but it’s still something to pay attention to. If you have a TV Tuner, SCSI card, and three other random cards, your modern computer might be pushing the limits.
• Number of memory slots – Odds are you’ll have 4 slots, but it’s always good to make sure. Unless you’re building something that intentionally won’t take up much space, don’t settle for anything that doesn’t have 4 slots available.
• Maximum Memory – In windows XP 32 bit this didn’t matter much since the limit was 4 GBs, and you never saw the full 4 GB since some of it was reserved for the system. Now with 64 bit operating systems really taking over, i believe the limit starts at 32 GB and just goes up from there. It’s always good to know what your hardware can handle in upgrades, even if you know you’ll never be hitting that.
• Compatible CPUs – This is something I took note of in my last build. Swapping a CPU isn’t as difficult as it sounds, but it is still a big purchase. Knowing I might build on the cheap for my next computer, I selected on that would handle compadible quad core CPUs as a potential upgrade. But keep in mind, this is still iffy. In 2-5 years when you upgrade, if you had planned to do this, they might have just junked that socket type all together, lol.
• Sli/Crossfire support – This is for the gamer in all of us. If you wanna go all out, Go SLi or Crossfire (depending on your preference or budget).

And I won’t go into this too much in this post, but I’d really reccomend getting a seperate CPU cooler. The stock coolers are never very good, and the life that it’ll add to your computer is easily worth the extra $30 or so you’ll spend on it.

Step 2 – Now that we’ve covered the CPU and Motherboard, the next best thing would probably be the graphics card.

This is where you start to really look at the type of computer you want. If you plan to only check email and browse the web, you might as well get a motherboard that handles your graphics. But if you’re looking for some gaming power, I’d reccomend getting a seperate graphics card. Finally, if you want a real lot of graphics power, get two graphics cards and chain them together with SLi or Crossfire, just make sure they support it first

Costs here depend greatly on the route you plan to go. Integrated graphics won’t cost you anything. A single graphics card can cost from $150 to $500, and sdual graphics cards can cost double that!

Step 3 – Now I think it’s time we talked about memory. Ram is probably the cheapest component you can spend on. It’s also the easiest to upgrade in the future, so don’t worry about buying the best, because honestly, prices on ram are getting better every day. I’d reccomend getting about 4gb of ram. You’ll be very well off for just about any PC use you plan to tackle. This will probably cost you around or just over $100 unless you’re deal shopping. If you’re getting a computer just for web browsing, you’d be fine with just 2gb.

Keeping with comparing to parts of the human body, Ram would be like another chunk of the brain. Nothing is stored here, but it helps process your thoughts. There are different types of ram, that do have some speed differences, but for the most part you just have to look at it as, “This is where all my thoughts are kept, while I focus on individual ones, and can’t get to the rest at this moment. In all honesty, these “moments” are only microseconds. But the easiest way to get ram is, start with 2gb, if you feel like you’re computer is sluggish, get another 2.

Additionally, you’ll want to check compatability with your motherboard, don’t worry all these specs will be listed. It will say something like DDR2 or 3.

Step 4 – The hard drive. This is where you get a lot of fun. With the new flow of technology going into hard drives you can land some great deals. Honestly, 500gb is likely more than enough for anyone, but without searching too hard you can commonly find deals for 1TB hard drives around $100.

Odds are you will go with a SATA drive as IDE drives are slowly being phased out. Additionally if you want a bit of a speed boost or added personal security, I’d say go with a RAID setup. This is easy to do, takes nothing to maintain, and and widely supported on almost all motherboards these days. Also, I’ll always reccomend Hardware Raid controllers, software might offer a few extra options, but you’ll lose any speed benefits you might have gained.

Step 5 – The power supply…. This is the most insignifigant component that plays the largest role in a computer. With a proper power supply you’ll never know it even exists, and thats the way you want it. With a poor power supply, you’ll run into all kinds of problems, that could easily cost you your entire setup. The main thing to look at is wattage. You want to supply enough power to everything. The rule of thumb is add up all the wattage and add 10-15% for startup bursts. A safe number in general is, shoot for 400w. You can easily find these things under $50, but I wouldn’t reccomend going much under $50. The reason for that is, you really do get what you pay for when it comes to Power Supplies. This is the sort of thing that if theres a thunder storm, and have a good power supply, you might just lowe your power supply, if you have a poor power supply, you might lose your entire system. I might do a seperate write up on power supplies in general to stress this, but like I said, 400w is a good number to shoot for. I have a 600w, and I paid $75 for it. The best thing you can do, is find a model with a lot of reviews, and a lot of positive marks.

Step – 6 The Case – This is something that I could have brought up any time. All common setups fit an ATX case. Unless you’re building something like an HTPC, you’ll end up with an ATX everything. Whats ATX? it’s just the name of the form factor, or size of the motherboard, expansion cards, ect. Before ATX it was just AT, there’s also things like micro ATX and baby ATX, and all sorts of off shoots that are used with specific purposes, but that would be getting too off track.

Choosing a case really just comes down to what you think looks good. You can spend anything from $10 to $300 on these. The best advice I can give is first, keep in mind, you’ll want some space to work in there. Second, make sure it’ll be ventilated. I run the XClio Wind Tunnel, and I love that case, ThermalTake makes excellent cases, so does AeroCool, but it all comes down to whatever your preference is.

The Final Step – The peripherals. This includes things like your DVD Roms, card readers, temp monitors, I could w4rite many pages on all the options here. but again, this all comes down to preference. One thing to keep in mind, these are all extremly universal. The only thing you’ll want to keep a bit of an eye on is, if you have enough drive bays to fit everything, and if you’ll have enough power connectors to fit everything. and you’ll rarly run out of either.

I think this concludes the components. Over the next couple days I’ll cover in some detail the specifics on a few components, like CPUs, Power Supples, and even the variety of the Peripherials. I’ll also be doing one on cooling. Next week some time I’ll do the write up on assembly and turning it on for the first time

If anyone has anything specific to ask, feel free. If i can’t answer it, I’ll direct you to the people who can.

I just read this article from one of my favorite sites.

To sum it all up, even the educational sources are starting to jump ship from printed media. The costs are high and the circulation numbers are low. Now since this is coming from a science journal you’d probably ask yourself, why’d it take these guys so long to adapt? Well there’s still a number of reasons to keep printing. Honestly, people enjoy having a physical object in their hands to read. Personally I’m against eBooks, I can’t even take them seriously, but for some types of media, i love nothing more than to have it at my finger tips.

I think this article really brings some of the finer points to the table though, and while it’s hard for any industry to adapt, this does offer some great incentives. The first part is news should be free, and never subscription based when it’s online. The simple reason is, no matter what it is you’re publishing it’ll take about 30 seconds for google to grab it and give it to the entire web. So just open your content because people will just get it somewhere else if they can’t get it from your source.

Second, this covers what the web is based on. Expand your content from just a simple string of text. Include related documents, discussions, and topics. Give the option to send it to your friends. Expand upon it by keeping all of your media related.

Finally enhance it. Now that we’re not going to be based 100% on paper, start using that infinite space you’re given… Include images, galleries, discussion, and especially videos. I do understand that this seems huge to businesses based in print, but really the options here are infinite.

The biggest hesitation is it’s a lot of work to get converted. First you need to create an online presence. That is a lot of work. But the biggest part is redeveloping your entire business to run off a whole new business model. And beyond that it’s changing the mind sets of everyone involved. Writers no longer write to fill a block of text, they write till they’re happy they conveyed their message. News papers no longer rely on selling their content to readers, they sell to advertisers (and please don’t have a 5 column site with one column dedicated to a story and the other 4 dedicated to ads, everyone hates that).

Now I want to stop before I get into a rant, but I think this article really gives the pro’s of transitioning to an electronic edition. I don’t think print media will ever go out of style, but I think theres a shift in demand thats already changed the game.

And I’ll close it with just a few last words. It’s really important to do this right. like I was saying in this post, it’s the internet… Don’t confine yourself to just reproduce printed media straight to the web, make it enhanced, include all those features I mentioned above. I mean if you’re producing media of any kind it’s for the reader right? Well thats all you ever have to keep in mind. Make the experience for the reader exactly what you feel it should be, because with the internet, the only limitation is yourself.

I’ve been programming a while and I stumbled accross some much older code of mine and thought of some of the changes I’ve made to my work over the last couple years. After looking at it I wanted to post a like 10 tips I’d like to give to other beginners.

Tip 1: Always think about your code.
Now this really applies to a lot of things, but the main focus here is, make sure everything makes sense. Just because something works, doesn’t mean it’s done right. It’s really important to look at something and say to yourself, “but how can this go wrong?”

Tip 2: Plan like theres no tomorrow
Hopefully everyone does this already, but I have what I’ve come to call my programming notebook. In this book you’ll see page flow charts, psuedo coded blocks of code, and tons of database layouts. It’s good to have a solid idea of how everything will work before you start typing. After all, you don’t want to be half way through your project and realize you programmed a bug in it that’ll require you to spend hours longer to fix what you should have noticed in the begining.

Tip 3: Don’t always assume…
This is one of my favorites, because I still see this being done in a lot of common 3rd party apps. The most common place I see it iwith the $_GET and $_POST. First, don’t just assume they made the page load, especially the $_GET. always check with an if isset(). Secondly, check they have a value, check it’s the right type of value. Hackers love that people don’t check these. Lastly, plan for errors to happen. If you get a value that isn’t there, even though it’s susposed to be, redirect the page to an error instead of showing that fun php error message.

Tip 4: Injection what?
SQL injection is a huge thing to look out for. Since this is aimed at new developers, this is when someone injects a text field with something that’ll break out of the current sql request, and do something more maliscious like drop a table. Again, this comes back to Tip 1, the best way to keep things safe is to do an htmlspecialchars($val,ENT_QUOTES); on all your fetched vars. This also keeps the output safe too since it can’t alter your site layout code.

Tip 5: Think Modular
Now as a beginner this isn’t much more than good habbit, but it’s something that you really should start with from the beginning. PHP is an object oriented language so treat it like one. When you code in a modular fashion, updates are 100 times easier. Building new sites based on previous chunks of code can be done 100 times easier.

Tip 6: Develope shortcuts
This is more or less an extension of Tip 5, but I keep a php file called functions.php which has some of the most common used functions i find myself going for. functions like getVar(’name’,'method’). I also have a users.php, mysql.php, and many others.

Tip 7: Plan for tomorrow
This one has saved me tons of time in the past. This is something i can’t usually stress enough… Make sure you fully understand the project you’re working on. To that end, once you understand it you can get a feel for future functionality you might need to put into the code. Say someone wants a feed that’ll autogenerate download links for an eZine, well even though they don’t want it now, they might want some tracking in there in the future. So place some comments here and there with that stuff in mind. Make sure you’re code will support that in an easy to do way. It’s really amazing how an extra 10-15 minutes can save a huge amount of time in the future.

Tip 8: Document!!!
Now I’m not telling you guys to document things to the degree that php.net or even like the javadoc uses (though that would be pretty nice, lol). But in your code it’s ultra handy to make a one or two sentence description of your functions, even if it’s just something like, “helper function for ‘that’ function”. Also document big steps in your code. If you pick up a site after leaving it along for a year, or you have to work on someone elses code, you’ll really appreciate large amount of documentation. And have fun with it. I leave fun comments like, “Time for the SQL magic” all the time.

Tip 9: keep it clean
This is perfect for following the documentation. As part of your organization, you’ll want to keep code organized. Create difference php files for different sections of code. Make

Tip 10: Always bite off more than you can chew.
Now this one sounds a little more dangerous, but what i’m saying is always keep pushing yourself forward. Your a programmer, if you can understand the concepts of how things work, you can make them happen, even if you’ve never done them before. I’m bringing new ajax functionality to my sites all the time. This is just the way our field works, and we will always need to be picking up new skills.

I read this article today and thought I’d share some thoughts on it…

http://ecogeek.org/efficiency/2839-yahoo-data-center-will-be-powered-by-niagara-falls

It’s actually really suprising when you start looking into it, but tech companies are doing some big stuff to go green. Google I’ve read has spent more on going green than the  US governemnt (sorry, couldn’t find  a more recent article).

But whats so interesting about this latest article about Yahoo is the fact that it is Yahoo making this move. Yahoo got into the search game way back in the day. I’d say they’re one of the originals, or atleast close to it. The thing that seperated them from google, was when Yahoo (much like many other search engines of the time) started to transition from being a search engine to a search portal. It crowded it’s site with junk all over the place. Obviously people didn’t love this, and google became a top level search player.

Over the years Yahoo has made a slow decline and has even talked about allowing google and microsoft to buy them out (which would have been interesting since microsoft and google have somehow become bitter rivals). But the deal with google fell through over anti-trust talks, and when microsoft stepped up to the plate, Yahoo wanted too much money, and even after offering to lower the price, microsoft had already moved on.

So now we’re left with a company that just doesn’t have the market share that anyone would want. Now I mean they are still a top level site, but by no means are they the premiere search engine they used to be. Even with microsoft looking to get into the online search business, yahoo will likely continue to see even more improvements.

But this talk of going green, which would unquestionably be a big investment, it makes me think Yahoo must still have a few tricks up their sleeve. I know I’ll be keeping my eye on them to see what they announce next.

I’d love to hear what you guys think on this one.

Well to start this off, I will state, that for DSL internet the service is a lot better than I’d expected. The TV isn’t as clear as Cable, but when you don’t have any other options, there just isn’t much that you can really do about it.

But to my Greivences… I feel I want to share this with the world, even though I’m sure I’m not the first. As a business, I’m really just let down with this company.

To start things off, whenever I have to call the company, I feel like I want to punch a hole in the wall, and i’m a pretty calm person, I’ve had a number of people tell me they’re suprised with how cool headed i can stay, but after going through 10-15 minutes of automated phone stuff to talk to a live person, i’d be shocked to find anyone else saying, “it’s no big deal”. This is an incredibly annoying process. They do this through voice recognition, so it’s never “press 1 for…” it’s “tell me your problem” and, “Did you mean to say…?”. This is particularly annoying because when you’re getting angry, you can’t just start cursing to yourself, because it’ll mess up the phone call, lol. Now I wish that was the most annoying part, but honestly it isn’t. The most annoying part of the call comes after the 10-15 minutes after you get through the automated stuff to a live person, just for them to ask for all that information again… But atleast at this point, you’re only 30 minutes into the call, they haven’t even helped you dianose any cable or tv issue like you’re only 3 yrs old

The last time I called in, I needed to correct the name on my bill since it was recorded wrong, it took 45 minutes. I mean my last name is only 3 letters long, so it can happen to anyone, but that averages out to 15 minutes a letter, whats up with that?

So my next issue is with the fact that one of the two companies (since they come as a pair) have given out my contact information to every junk mail dealer in the country.. I know what you’re all thinking, “How do you know it was them?” Well I know it was them from the mis-spelled last name I just mentioned. I mena I’m in a slightly unique scenario where I just moved into my new house and still haven’t even transfered most my accounts for everything to this new address yet so there really aren’t too many services that even could contact me there yet, but like I said, I have been flooded with junk mail already, which i find extremly unnecessary.

Now like I said, the service itself hasn’t been all that bad, all my problems lay with the company itself. The thing that I do find most disapointing through all of this is it’s only come about through a complete lack of options. In all honesty, I didn’t plan to have DSL internet and satellite TV. Speed and quality is pretty important to me. DSL just doesn’t have the throughput that cable internet provides, and Satellite TV just doesn’t have the clarity of anything with a hard line coming in.

Ok guys, I know this turned out to be a bit of a rant post, but seriously, who wouldn’t rant about 45 minutes just to change your billing name?

Next week I’ll have a more upbeat posting. I’m starting to network my house (i know, I expected to be at this stage a couple months ago), so I’ll be posting a nice article on home networking, including tools, how-to’s, and a lot of pictures, because we both know, pictures are what bring it all together, haha. I’ve already just lightly started the project, and it’s going pretty smoothly. The only downside is crawling through the 100 degree attic here and there, lol