All you need is:
-A magic eraser (mr clean, or generic brand will do…I used the target magic eraser)
-Liquid dishsoap (any cheap dishsoap will work, joy, dawn, etc.)

Magic eraser and mild dishsoap together removes soap scum from the tub, tiles, and shower doors

Just take a dry magic eraser and put a dab of dishsoap in the middle of it, rinse the shower door with water and scrub away! It doesnt take much effort, and within a few scrubs the scum will be completely removed! I did this today with my shower door that had over 2 years worth of scum on it and it removed it completely…really. No joke. I was pretty impressed as nothing I tried before worked so easily and so quickly. The shower doors look brand new, tiles look smooth and reflective, and the tub looks great!

The real motivation for me to use asterisk and ooma was to save moolah. With ooma, albeit with the up-front cost of $200, one can cancel their phone line and stop paying those pesky monthly bills. Our monthly bills were not as absorbitant as others, yet the reasoning behind me getting it was to get more for the same. I canceled my ATT $10 internet (768k down) and $10 phone with only local calling…(total monthly charge of $32-$37 with taxes and long distance charges that we didnt make), and opted for a 12mb down 512k up cable internet connection for $37.99. I would then still have a home phone number which I could take with me if I moved, and have super fast internet (in my standards). With asterisk in the mix, I could then share out my ooma with my family and allow them to make calls to the US for free as well (my sister lives in australia). Also, if I am overseas, I can make free calls to the US. I also have gizmo5 and google voice working together to provide my individual extensions in asterisk with DID numbers, but thats for another post.     

For those of you who do not know what ooma is, its a VOIP hardware solution which gives you a dedicated phone line and “unlimited” calling to the US, all you need is an internet connection. I got my ooma core from radio shack for $199 and will never have to pay phone bills again (ooma core does not have an annual regulatory fee, while the ooma telo, and ooma hub only, does). Ooma makes its money off the upfront cost of hardware, and also by selling its ooma premier service. This service gives you cool features, but features that asterisk allows you to do and with more customization (and maybe for a little more effort). The Linksys SPA-3102 is an ethernet voice gateway with FXO port that has the added functionality of routing, and it also acts as an ATA to allow your regular analog phone to connect with a VOIP provider using the FXS port.

Ooma hub wiring setup

The Ooma hub can be hooked up to your existing phone lines in several ways. Currently, I have my ooma phone port plugged directly into my existing home wiring jack with a splitter which also has my fax/answering machine plugged into it. This configuration allows all the phone jacks in my home to access the ooma hub without the use of the ooma scout. This is essentially the same wiring configuration as one receiving phone service from the telco. However, you lose the instant second line feature you would otherwise be provided when using the ooma scout adapter. To connect the SPA-3102, just plug a phone cord from the Line port on the adapter to a jack in the wall, or if it is near the ooma hub, into a splitter which shares a line plugged into the Phone port on the Ooma hub (or directly into the hubs phone port without a splitter). If you are on a call using a phone plugged into my wiring configuration and dial out using asterisk through the Line port on the SPA, the adapter will report a 503 message to asterisk and stop the call from taking place and interrupting.

If one wants to make sure the line is not busy when receiving/making a call when using the ooma as a regular analog telephone line as well, another configuration one can use, is to hook up the ooma scout and connect it directly to the ooma hubs ’wall’ port via phone line. One would then connect a phone line from the SPA-3102 Line port to the scouts ’wall’ port. This enables the scout to communicate with the ooma hub and enables the instant second line feature should the first line be active when a call out from the asterisk box takes place.

Linksys SPA-3102 Configuration

SPA-3102 Remote Management for LAN Setup       

The SPA-3102 has four interface ports in the rear, Internet, Ethernet, Phone, and Line. If you plug in a computer to the ethernet port via cable, it will provide your computer with an ip address with which you can then enter in the gateway address from an ipconfig and hit the spa3102 web gui. With this web gui, youll be able to configure the device. We dont want to have to plug in a cable each time to configure the device, so we will enable the web interface on the spa3102 when it is connected to the Internet port (with which it will receive a dhcp address handed out to it from your router currently on your network).       

-Log into the webgui for the spa-3102 when you are connected to the ethernet port
-Click on the admin and advanced links at the top right to get the elevated setup access
-Goto ‘WAN Setup’ Tab
-Change ‘remote management’ option to ‘yes’
-Click the ‘submit all changes’ button at the bottom.       

-Connect your spa-3102 to your network via the internet port.
-Log into your spa-3102 and look at the status screen with the computer still plugged into the ethernet port on spa3102. You will find the dhcp address the spa-3102 received from your router which is connected to the Internet port.
-Disconnect your computer from the ethernet port on the spa-3102
-Log into your 3102 via the dhcp address that it received from the internet port.       

SPA-3102 PSTN Line Setup:       

Now we begin the configuration of the SPA to be used with asterisk. In this setup, I will not enable Line1 which makes the SPA-3102 an ATA adapter as well (allowing calls made to your voip provider to ring the analog phone connected to the PHONE port). In this setup, I just use the SPA as a gateway which allows me to make and receive calls (using the LINE port on the SPA) from any extension that is connected to my asterisk pbx. Under the LINE 1 tab in the SPA, ive set ”Line enable” to no.        

NOTE: When things are configured properly, and the PSTN Line is registering with asterisk, the LINE LED on the SPA will light up and remain lit (same with the Phone port if Line 1 is enabled). If things arent communicating correctly, the LED will not be lit (I have the spa registering to asterisk).       

-Log into the SPA web gui
-Click on the admin and advanced links at the top right to get the elevated setup access
-Click the ‘PSTN Line’ tab       

Where you enter in your asterisk server IP info and whether or not it will register to asterisk.

Proxy and Registration      

-Proxy – Change 192.168.1.77 to the ip address asterisk is on your network. I put the ip in the outbound proxy, its not necessary as ‘Use Outbound Proxy’ is set to ‘no.’
-Register – ‘yes’
-Make call without reg and Ans call without reg – Change options to ‘no’      

Subscriber Information      

-Display name – can be anything
-User Id – can be anything but for simplicity sakes when configuring asterisk, use a name without spaces
-Password - can be anything      

This is where you enter dialplan information, and options to configure sending calls from asterisk to the pstn port.

 Dial Plans      

This section of dial plans are accessed by the entire page of the SPA PSTN Line tab. There are eight DP fields because it allows you to create different dial plan options to be used throughout this tab. Voip-to-PSTN, and PSTN-to-VOIP sections both reference these dialplan fields as ‘DP.’ As you can see in my screenshot, Dial Plan 2: is filled out. In my setup, this command tells the SPA that any calls answered after the PSTN-to-VOIP gateway option answer delay is reached, to be sent to the S extension in asterisk. You may enter any extension such as (S0<:102@asteriskIP>).      

VOIP-to-PSTN Gateway Setup      

-VOIP-to-PSTN gateway enable - ‘yes’
-Line caller DP – set to ’1′ (this option references Dial Plan 1:  and the default (xx.). This just passes anything sent from asterisk to the SPA without any change)
-One Stage Dialing – set to ‘yes.’ If set to no, then the SPA uses 2 stage dialing, and it screws up asterisks calling out to the Line port.      

The PSTN-to-VOIP configuration, where you configure how to send calls from the Line port (pstn) to asterisk

 PSTN-to-VOIP Gateway Setup      

-PSTN-to-VOIP Gateway enable - ’yes’ (in the screenshot above, i have it set to ‘no’ as I do not want the spa to pick up the line and forward to my extension s@192.168.1.77 as defined in Dial Plan 2:. This essentially turns off any calls going to my asterisk system. I have my asterisk system setup to forward the call from the pstn to my cell phone when this is turned on, and only used while traveling far away from home. When I am not traveling I have a fax/answering machine on my ooma and want it to pick up instead, so it is disabled.      

 If you are in an asterisk/voip only configuration and want all calls to be routed straight to your asterisk system without worrying about any analog answering machines or fax picking up/ringing, then set to ‘yes’      

-PSTN CID For VoIP CID – set to ‘yes’ if you want callerid to be passed onto your asterisk system
-PSTN Caller Default DP – set to ’2′ as in my Dial Plan 2: it allows calls to be routed from Line port (pstn), to extension S on my asterisk pbx      

FXO timer values (sec)      

-PSTN answer delay - this option is to change the length of time the SPA-3102 picks up the call coming in from the PSTN and forwards it to your asterisk system. The default is 16 which allows the line to ring for a little too long before sending it off to Asterisk. A number of 3-5 should be good for callerid to be gathered and sent along with the call to asterisk.
-PSTN Dial Digit Len – set to .1/.1 otherwise calls may take longer to start connecting. This essentially shortens the speed at which digits are dialed at. You dont want digits to take forever to be entered do you?      

Awesome. You are now finished configuring your SPA-3102 to act as a SIP trunk on the SPA-3102 side. All you need from here to configure asterisk is the username and password you specified in the Proxy and Registration section. Now on to the Asterisk side of things…      

Asterisk Configuration      

This setup is for asterisk 1.4. I found that many guides found on the internet do not seem to work for my setup. I was not able to set my SPA as a peer, but had to configure my 3102 to register to asterisk as an extension in order for everything to work correctly. I also found many internet guides had sip trunk settings which were no longer used for version 1.4. Now lets tell asterisk theres a device to communicate with in the Users.conf (for you it might be Sip.conf) file in the asterisk directory. 

Users.conf or Sip.conf     

Users.conf or sip.conf configuration in asterisk. this command sets up the SPA to be used as an extension from which calls can be made and received.

 -[pstn] – Put the username you specified on the SPA-3102 in between brackets. In my example above, replace [pstn] with your username. The tricky part here is that the name between brackets is your username, even if you specify username = as something else, asterisk will not allow your 3102 to register with it.
-type = friend - Sets as an extension which can be dialed out from (see here for more info)
-port – I saw several guides saying to put in port = 5061, this is unecessary as this configuration automatically connects to this port. You may need this if it was set to type=peer, but I was never able to get it to work as one.
-disallow – This configuration also disallows any voice codec other than ulaw, alaw, and gsm as the NSLU2 does not have enough horsepower to transcode the higher compression the other codecs use.
-context = pstn-in – this is the label for where incoming calls are sent to in my extensions.conf file.
-host = dynamic – as the spa is registering to asterisk, the ip address of the 3102 does not need to be specified here and will be obtained during the spa-3102 device registration. I could change the ip address of the spa-3102 on the unit and it would still register with asterisk.     
-secret = passwd - replace ‘passwd’ with the password you entered in the spa-3102

Other than that, this is all thats needed for the PSTN Line to register to asterisk and send and receive calls.     

Extensions.conf     

Extensions.conf is the the file which tells asterisk how to handle incoming/outgoing phone calls.

Lets configure outgoing calls first, as it requires very little configuration. Below is all i need to put into my default context in order to make outgoing calls out of the Line port (we previously specified ‘pstn’ as a trunk/user in users.conf/sip.conf) on my SPA-3102. Below, the _XXXX. tells asterisk that any number dialed with more than 4 digits should go out through the SPA (I have 4 digit extension numbers configured). Without this configuration, asterisk would try to place a call to an internal extension number, only to find that the extension (the phone number dialed) did not exist.

Simple outgoing dialplan used in the default context in my extensions.conf

In my users.conf (maybe your sip.conf) file, I had the pstn user (pstn is the username specified in the spa3102) use context pstn-in as the label to goto which contains the code for how to handle the calls coming in from the Line port or PSTN.     

Extensions.conf tells asterisk how to handle a call. pstn-in is the context defined in my users.conf/sip.conf

In my spa-3102, my Dial Plan 2: had code (S0<:s@192.168.1.77>). This essentially sent the incoming call from the PSTN Line to the S extension in asterisk. Asterisk knows that the call is coming from the pstn user defined in the users.conf/sip.conf file, and found that context pstn-in was specified. It then initiated the commands under the pstn-in section. The commands listed above, answers the call, plays a sound file that nobody is available to take the call, then says “call-forwarding” and proceeds to ring my cell phone number (8001112222 is the cell number, change it as desired. proxy01.sipphone.com is my gizmo account which forwards it out through a google voice DID number).     

Alternatively, if you just want to have the incoming pstn call sent to several or all extensions on your asterisk system, you can substitute my ‘Dial’ line with the one below and change my extension numbers to match yours (where 6000, 6100, 6200 are my extensions/phones registered with asterisk):     

exten = s,n,Dial(SIP/6000&SIP/6100&SIP/6200,20)     

Thats all there is to it, good luck!

1. First item on the list was to cut the four legs of the shelf to six feet tall.

Rack legs

2. Next I cut the shelf supports (the crossbeams) for which I needed six. These needed to be 66.5″ as the legs of the shelf would add 2.5″ to the width.

Cross Beams to support the shelving

3. After, I cut the short links which would connect the front and rear portions of the rack. I wanted my shelf depth to be 19″ so I cut these to 16.5″.

Links for front and back of rack

4. After all the cutting was done, I needed to drill the holes to where I wanted my shelving located. I drilled 4 holes, with two holes alloted for the crossbeam, and two for the links. I made three sets of the four holes on each of the legs of the rack. One set for the top, middle, and bottom shelf.

Pilot holes for screws which would hold the crossbeam and links

5. Now for the assembly. I assmbled both the front and rear of the racks first, by laying them on the floor and screwing in the crossbeams. I then attached on the front of the rack the links so I could attach the rear portion of the rack to the front portion after. I installed the casters after this was all done.

Front and rear rack faces attached with links

6. The joints of the rack look like this:

7. Next comes the shelving platform. I didnt buy any plywood or material to use for the shelving. Instead I scrounged around my wood shed and found some 1/4″ board of sorts, and some old pieces of 5/8″ plywood. I had to cut pretty creatively to utilize all the board and cover the shelf platforms.

1/4" board for the upper shelves (where lighter things will be placed)

5/8" plywood (where heavy things will be placed)

8. After finishing my rack, I noticed that I had enough space to add another shelf. I added this one above the middle shelf, and found some messed up 2 x 4′s in the wood shed. They were not in the best shape, but would work for this application. I installed these sideways as the shelf was not going to hold a lot of weight, and would allow more clearance for putting things on the middle shelf.

With extra shelf added.

The shelf took a few hours to build, but the satisfaction of making something and saving money (although with the time trade-off) is to me, definitely worth it. an added bonus are the casters which make my shelf mobile. After piling on the clutter in the garage, it was really convenient to be able to roll the shelf around and into different positions. I also realized that the casters have the extra benefit of keeping the wood off the garage floor where it might someday come into contact with water (washing the garage floor, flooding washing machines, etc.).

I did add one final touch to the shelving, in that I added an eye hook to tie some rope through which connected to the wall. Living right next to the San Andreas faultline, I wouldnt want to find my shelf and all its contents laying on my car after an earthquake. Now for the best part…when my wife pulled into the garage and saw all the clutter neatly organized onto the shelf, she was delighted…and finally realized I could build something that I always say I could for less. Score!

Solar panel from nice VW dealership

I work at a computer liquidation company, so finding LEDs was no problem as many computer peripherals, server cases, and the like have these things mounted in/on them. I found three bright white LEDs (I figure they pull about 3.4volts drawing 20 milliamps each after googling), and found an appropriate resistor for use with the system (I used the LED resistance calculator at http://ledcalc.com/), by taking it from an old cisco router powersupply (its actually a 240 ohm resistor and the calculator called for a 100 ohm one, but it doesnt seem to affect it much).  I also upgraded my battery to use my old car battery that died from my car…I just charged it for several days with my solar panel till it was 12.7v.

The LED diagram that the LED resistance calculator gave me

As illustrated in the diagram, I wired my LEDs in series, attached the resistor to the positive lead on the LED chain and tested it with my battery. It worked!

Wired up LEDs in series and soldered the resistor to the positive lead

I then unmounted my address number sign and had to pop out the female plug which the bulb would screw into. That gave me a nice sized hole to thread the LED string through.

LED string threaded and secured with some tape and a pluggy thing big enough to cram in the hole where the original plug used to be. In this picture, im using one of the UPS batteries to test it with. Now, I needed to unhook the original wiring which went from the address number sign to the transformer and reroute that with some wire to my car battery/solar panel setup. I went into the garage, and unscrewed the two wires from the transformer.

Transformer with the two wires still connected

I then ran some speaker wire that I had laying around to those two wires to act as an extention, and connected it to my car battery.

Car Battery. You can see the gold speaker wire (connected to existing address sign wiring), and the black wires (connected to solar panel).

Address number sign remounted with hood.

I was pleased that it was still working, and waited till dark. I did have to adjust the direction of the LEDs, as they were extremely bright and would streak a beam of light over only certain parts of the sign making it difficult to read. I ended up taking off the hood, lining the inside with tin foil, and oriented the LEDs towards the center of the sign and pointing towards the hood. The tin foil reflected and diffused the light so it was more evenly dispersed.

Address sign at night time.

Im happy with the results, and the idea that I wont be spending any electricity on powering up a stupid address sign at night. It also makes my house easier to spot as the light from the LED is sort of bluish white, and looks completely different from the other houses in my neighborhood.

Anyways, we opted to get a rather light uniform carpet color (Color is almost white – which may have been a bad choice considering were thinking about having kids sometime soon) and within the first year of having it, weve stained it several times. I then decided it was time to invest in a carpet stain remover and went to Target to do some shopping. I brought home a product called “Spot Shot” and decided to give it a try (I got mine for $3.29 for a 14 oz can). Out of all the other options for carpet stain removal, I opted for this one because of two main selling points:

• The ability to remove OLD STAINS from pets, greasy foods, motor oil, red wine, blood, grape juice, show polish, cola, mud, coffee, and lipstick (I liked this one because the stains have been sitting in the carpet for a while now).
• The ability to do so without scrubbing and rubbing. You just have to blot the area after use.

I did pick up another product called Oxi Clean, but it comes in a powder form and you have to mix it with water and rub and scrub…Im too lazy for that (its a sunday!), so I went with Spot Shot as you just shake the can and shoot it (there might have been a subconscious pull for me to select this one, me being a man and all).

Here is a picture of the spots I was trying to remove. The spots dont really show in the pictures, but they were noticeable and would not come off with just plain water and a paper towel.

Before Spot Shot

After Spot Shot

The directions tell you to just spray the stuff on the stain and to not oversaturate it. I covered it pretty well with the liquid and let it sit for a few seconds. Then I used a clean LAP pad (clothlike thing they use to wipe up blood in the hospitals…my wifes sister is a nurse in the OR) to blot out the stain. To be honest, I did scrub and rub a bit to see if i could get it to work faster, but I dont think I needed to. The directions mentioned that I might need to repeat until the stain is removed, it was just barely noticeable after the first application, so I did it twice. After the second application, the stain was gone.

Overall, the product reminds me a lot of brake cleaner, just spray it on and wipe it off (it actually evaporates fast though). I even used it on one of my kitchen table chairs and it removed an old oily stain. Im pretty impressed with the way this product worked, and no longer stress too much about when we have kids, as this stain remover should do the trick with anything they get on the carpet. I guess this post turned into a Spot Shot review…

So with this done, when my wife comes back, ill show her how awesome I am and get more love points!

Having them professionally refinished was not an option for me as im terribly cheap and did not want to concede to being defeated by lowly floor tile, so I embarked on what ended up to be one of the coolest lessons learned since starting work on the house…How to refinish marble floors for less than $100 and make them look as good as new.

So heres how you do it:

What youll need

1. Get a liter of Dia-Glo Diamond Buffing Compound for Marble (available online or any professional flooring shop). I used the “M” variant for marble ($30). I got mine from keystone tools in San Francisco (http://keystonetools.com/)

2. Get a variable speed angle grinder which uses 5/8 attachments (or if you want to do this all within 2 hours, rent a floor buffing machine from home depot pro). I had one laying around in my garage, but you can always buy one at Home Depot or Lowes and then return it after. A word of caution – you do not want to get your rpms up too fast. I had a variable speed angle grinder and kept my rpms around 5,000.

3. Get a 4″ velcro loop attachment (which uses the 5/8 fitting) to use with the angle grinder ($10). Its a little disc attachment which has little hooks on it (like velcro) to grab onto velcro disc pad attachments (also bought from keystone tools)

4. Go to Home Depot Pro and go to their tool rental section. Look for a white polyester buffing pad. It will be a big circular disc. (Costs about $6). Cut a piece of the white polyester buffing pad in a circle shape to fit the angle grinder velcro loop attachment. Stick it onto the attachment and make sure it stays put (the hooks will grab onto the polyester fibers).

5. Get a shop vacuum to suck up all the water and compound mixture.

6. Tile/Stone Sealant to finish the job and keep your tiles from getting stained and prematurely dirty.

Preparation

1. Section your floor into smaller work areas. I did small 5 x 5 ft sections to make work cleaner. I used rolled up towels around the 5′ x 5′ perimeter to limit the amount of kickback spray from the spinning motion that the angle grinder generates. If you dont do this, the milky colored spray will get everywhere.

2. Wet the section of the floor with water and cover the tiles with a nice layer of water (I found more was better as it provided lubrication for the pad). Add a small handful of buffing compound and mix thoroughly (just spread it around with your hand). Make sure the water/compound mixture is milky and pretty dissolved before buffing. USE GLOVES when doing this as the buffing compound is acidic and will dry up and irritate your skin.  I didnt and it dried my hands for 3 days. Also made everything I wore smell sour even after several washes (do not wash your work clothes with your other laundry, they will end up smelling sour too).

Refinishing

3. Use the angle grinder with the nylon pad to go over your tiles one by one. Let the angle grinder do the work and just hold the sucker steady. It will take a bit of getting used to at first, but youll get the hang of it. I spent at least 30 seconds on each tile to make sure the scrapes, scuffs, scratches were buffed down and smoothed as much as possible. Keep the grinder moving in small circles to polish the tiles evenly.

4. After you have finished the sectioned area, pour clean water over the area and mix it around making it wet again. Use a shop vac and suck it all up. Then if necessary, rinse with clean water and suck that up too.

5. Move onto the next section until every tile is done.

Cleanup

6. Use a clean wet towel and wipe your floors so you can get as much of the leftover splash and residue from the buffing compound off the floors and fixtures. Then go over your tiles once again with a dry towel.

Finishing

7. Finally, after your tiles and grout lines are dry, use a stone/marble sealer (I got a jug at home depot…$30) and seal your tiles. Two coats are sufficient and your floors will look as good as new.

1. Be prepared to not get anything done that you want done for the day.

2. Be prepared to find nasty crap in the walls, floors, ceilings, and plot of land your home sits on.

3. Be prepared to take 4 hours on a project that should only take about 1 hour.

4. Be prepared to buy lots of things you think you need to get such as doors, and tools, only to return them to the store later.

5. Rushing to complete a project is like dooming yourself to torture in the near future.

6. Things will never look the same once youve done the work yourself. You notice the smallest imperfection in the same work all around you in restaurants, homes, and hotels (ig, tiling).

7. DO your homework before believing what others say you should do.

8. Eat at regularly scheduled times during the project.

9. A truck is very useful. So is a shop vac.

10. Dont be cheap (ironic…), itll end up costing you more in the long run. This is especially true for tools.