After moving I was left with just one gas BBQ, and finally got setup with a new Oklahoma Joe’s offset smoker. I knew there were a lot of suggested improvements for these lower-end models (ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CstFU78PgY&t=292s) and after watching several Read More
Costco Yardistry Gazebo Assembly
This spring we saw the Costco Yardistry Gazebo for a great deal in the store, and a good challenge to assemble in 3 days while visiting extended family. This isn’t a full assembly guide but a highlight of helpful steps Read More
DIY Propane Fire Pit for Under $300
We didn’t want just any firepit, we wanted one that looked great. The nice ones are very expensive, the cheap ones would do but look cheap, and the project ones I saw also used expensive custom parts. My goal was Read More
DIY Dutch Door
One of many “my wife saw it on Pinterest” projects – next was a Dutch door project at the bottom of our stairs at the entry to the basement. Having the dutch door here will act as a baby/dog gate, Read More
Configure Honeywell Wifi Thermostat Binding for OpenHab2
I started working on setting up OpenHab as a home automation hub using an old laptop and a Z-Stick. My main requirement is to be able to hook up my thermostat, as everything Z-Wave looks pretty straightforward. My thermostat is Read More
Tunneling Slack traffic through ssh tunnels
After using Slack for about a week or so, I was suddenly greeted by a corporate IT policy that blocked the domain… Bored of not having it I found a way this morning to selectively send my slack.com traffic through an Read More
Dark Social: What it isn't.
I’d heard the term “Dark Social” on a client call about two months ago, I googled it and balked at the definition. “Dark social describes any web traffic that’s not attributed to a known source” Allegedly coined by this article http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/dark-social-we-have-the-whole-history-of-the-web-wrong/263523/, which Read More
The Problem with CORS
Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is intended to be revolutionary, empowering the web to push and pull data from everywhere. In reality I see this causing more problems than helping anyone. Note: I’ll use XMLHTTP instead of AJAX since the Read More
Check/Read Messages Exchange/Office365 Inbox with Powershell
We have a process by which notifications of new users in another system, that need to get created in ours are sent via Email to a standalone inbox. The new user emails have to be read and entered into the Read More
Parsing Querystring Values in Fiddler Custom Rules
I’ve been hot-rodding Fiddler for some time now to make my life a lot easier when debugging my site tagging and analytics tracking requests. You can customize just about anything within the sessions window from the color, background, custom Read More