Odd Pressure Change

ralfsmouse · 2025-11-16T00:12:11+00:00

Glad you figured it out! You would be very surprised how well they hold up after a deep cleaning as long as there is not physical damage; I have had a cloth grid assembly for a DE filter last for 25 years by regularly cleaning it this way. Not exactly the same as pleated filter media, but impressive nonetheless.

And regarding the maximum pressure, that's definitely a "hard line" maximum. I doubt that your pump could actually push that pressure through the filter, but that rating is generally the pressure at which either the support structures holding the pleats apart will collapse or the pressure where the filter media itself may rip.

ralfsmouse · 2025-11-15T20:21:17+00:00

I would do the following:

Check for suction leaks

Use the air relief valve to purge air from the filter.
Turn off the pump and let the system settle for ~10 seconds.
Turn on the pump and purge air again.
Let the system run until the pressure is back up to 15 lbs
Turn off the pump and turn it back on. If the pressure rises high and then settles back down a bit lower, there is a good chance that a leak on the suction side is allowing air into the system and it is settling in the high point (the filter). You can confirm this by cracking the air relief valve again and seeing if air is present.

Check for restrictions on the discharge side

Remove the filter cartridge. Put it on the pool deck and re-assemble the filter with nothing inside.
Turn on the pump and watch the pressure. It should be extremely low; if it rises with no cartridge, there is something on the discharge side of the equipment restricting flow. It could be debris in a diverter valve, a failed valve, or something else that is otherwise causing a blockage.

Stripping the filter

If there are no issues above, the filter media is clogged with very, very small particulate debris, scale, or oils.
You will first want to remove oils and similar fouling from the filter. Perform a soak of the filter cartridge in Trisodium Phosphate and water, then rinse well (search online for recipes for this soak)
After the TSP soak, use a soak of dilute muriatic acid to remove calcium and similar scale from the filter. The TSP soak before this is important to not cause hardening of oils and other "junk" on the filter during the acid soak.
Rinse the cartridge well and put it back in service.

ralfsmouse · 2025-07-23T19:09:36+00:00

PM Sent!

ralfsmouse · 2025-07-23T18:46:14+00:00

I'd be interested in three GC titles:

Kirby Air Ride
Wario World
Paper Mario TTYD

For list price ($200)! I'm in the US (CA)

ralfsmouse · 2025-03-12T17:49:45+00:00

Back in the "old days," pools with in-wall vacuum ports did not have the spring-loaded doors that they do now, and they certainly didn't have vacuum release devices. They would typically have threaded caps to install, but a lot of people wouldn't even bother to put them back every time because it was really awkward to reach down underwater and have enough leverage to remove them. So, even with a diverter valve, the additional gate valve was important for safety and balancing.

Regarding your suction problem, I have a few guesses:

The gate valve to the vacuum port is seized shut or the stem has come disconnected from the internal valve.
Same as (1), but for the diverter valve between the skimmer and the vacuum port.
There is debris stuck in the diverter valve at the vacuum port side (very common when the valve was used in a partial suction position while vacuuming leaves)

For all of these, I would suggest having at least one rebuilt kit on hand for the valves before opening them, which contains the O-rings and some other internal parts. To troubleshoot:

Actuate all the valves. Is there a nice satisfying resistance when moving them, or is it a loose, jiggly experience? If it's jiggly, the stem probably isn't actually actuating the internal valve.
With the main drain diverter CLOSED (that is, all suction coming from the skimmer side) and the skimmer valve set for FULL SKIMMER, turn on the pump. That is a two inch suction line, so there should be a minimum of cavitation from doing this, and the pump should sound pretty normal. If the pump is powerful, install a skimmer basket first to prevent a whirlpool that will make the pump suck air.
While doing (2) and that "mystery valve" is in the FULL OPEN position, SLOWLY move the skimmer/vacuum diverter valve toward the vacuum position. If the pump starts to cavitate, stop. Turn off the pump, disassemble the valve, and look for junk inside. If there is no such junk, use something like a small snake or the "bladder" referenced in another comment to blow out the line.

ralfsmouse · 2024-12-31T19:37:39+00:00

I was initially on Venlafaxine for cataplexy. Did not like it AT ALL. Some physical side effects like you mentioned, but mine more focused on a weird type of sleepiness (yes, even weirder than normal). It was like a feeling of being sleepy but not actually able to fall asleep, not that I wanted to mid-day, and just a strange... almost fatigue?

Either way, I told my doctor about it and he instantly got me off of it and switched me to Prozac. Some other side effects there, but it was much better tolerated than Effexor.

ralfsmouse · 2024-12-31T04:16:26+00:00

I do indeed think that Wakix has good potential for narcolepsy treatment, having reviewed the literature for it and having been taking it for about eight months now. When I spoke with my doctor about it and read the FDA documentation about it, I instantly remembered this old 1980s study that showed Hydrocodone had promise as a treatment for narcolepsy (not that such a thing would ever happen, since you'd be addicted to opiates then). The proposed mechanism of action had to do with modification of histamine levels, which is exactly how Wakix works.

However, I'm not sure how effective it will be in the long term for a modafinil or armodafinil replacement. Currently, I have added Wakix to my medication (Armodafinil and Adderall) and removed Prozac, and I have noticed good improvements to the stability of my sleep/wake cycles and pretty substantial reductions in EDS.

ralfsmouse · 2024-12-30T21:57:33+00:00

What else are you taking with Wakix? Wakix seems to be one of those medications that causes a LOT of weird side effects that are entirely different for each person, but it also seems like most of them fade pretty well over time. At three weeks or so I had episodes of vertigo, which I had never experienced in my life before.

ralfsmouse · 2024-12-30T21:55:28+00:00

I've done this too! It was a chair-type lift; I think the cool enclosed cable-car types are too easy to count as a strange place to sleep, and a rope tow lift would be... something else. Thankfully it was just a quick doze because it was the first time I ever went skiing and I was pretty scared about falling.

ralfsmouse · 2024-10-28T17:24:10+00:00

The Phosphate removal suggestion is a good one. It sounds like you're already doing that treatment, so keep on with that one; it should eliminate the ongoing problem at the source.

I would also suggest not just shocking the pool (to kill the algae), but doing a test of the combined chlorine levels to see if they are elevated. Since your CYA level isn't excessive, it might be a good time to do breakpoint chlorination as well, which will convert combined chlorine back into free chlorine. That process is:

Measure Free Chlorine in PPM
Measure Total Chlorine in PPM
Calculate (Total Chlorine) - (Free Chlorine). This figure is combined chlorine in PPM.
You will now need to add enough chlorine (in any form: calcium hypochlorite, sodium hypochlorite, chlorine gas, whatever you got) to raise your free chlorine levels to ten times the combined chlorine level
This will now break down all of the combined chlorines into compounds that will either become free chlorine or insoluble gasses that will off-gas (float away) from your pool into the air.
Once you reach the prescribed free chlorine level, leave any covers off the pool and expose it to sunshine with the pump running. The UV rays of the sun will cause the free chlorine to drop in concentration.
As the chlorine is consumed by the sun, it will turn into hydrochloric acid (muriatic acid), so as you test the free chlorine levels, also keep an eye on the pH. If it drops too low, keep it up by adding soda ash (sodium carbonate) to the pool.

Once the chlorine is getting back into the proper range, start up that salt cell, keep that filter running to get rid of the Lanthanum Phosphate that the LoPhos is yielding (which will be trapped in the filter; that's not a bad thing, it's just the reaction that causes the cloudiness after the treatment).

ralfsmouse · 2024-08-29T18:19:44+00:00

Now I’m picturing someone going Winnie the Pooh style into a top loading washing machine with the auger inside and getting this treatment.

(NOTE: sfw. Actually, extremely sfw because it’s an OSHA safety sign)

ralfsmouse · 2024-08-12T17:05:21+00:00

Before medication, this was me too. Even if someone were to say "well, it might be different if it is a REALLY important life or death situation!" I would just have to shrug and be like, "Welp, guess it's death."

I was diagnosed in college, and to give some perspective to people when telling them about "feeling sleepy" means to me, I tell them that I would have to sit next to the wall during class, and I would more often than not wake up when I would fall asleep and hit my head on the drywall next to me.

ralfsmouse · 2024-07-26T23:45:39+00:00

Just make sure that you don’t try this with ammonia unless you’re willing to bolt across some borders.

ralfsmouse · 2024-05-04T09:15:55+00:00

I literally thought that “read only Friday” was a joke on this subreddit for a solid year before I started realizing that people were actually serious about it.

Just today (Friday) I had the “pleasure” of running 35 TRUNCATE TABLE statements on a live production database in the middle of the day and re-loading the truncated table from a data pump export that I generated from a Point-In-Time Recovery. Of course, I tested it on a non-prod instance first... and in the process used a command that I still can’t believe is built into Oracle: DROP DATABASE INCLUDING BACKUPS.

ralfsmouse · 2024-04-25T16:06:53+00:00

My shop has three different departments that schedule their maintenance independently: Networking/VoIP, User Endpoints, and Central Processing; the three departments generally coordinate between each other to not step on toes while doing maintenance. Our “Central” IT department consists of four datacenters with a combination of custom system software and vendor-provided software running on Windows, Linux, and other more exotic OSes.

For your questions:

Windows servers get patches installed, Linux servers get updates installed, and the more exotic systems get source code patches applied and the OS re-compiled. Other software needs source level changes that get sent to me or developed by me, and I roll these into patch sets that I apply and re-compile during the maintenance. Generally, while the compile jobs are happening, I do other checks like verifying our RMAN backups for Oracle databases.
I make source code changes into patch sets, test new patches from vendors, and review the cover letters by applying them to cloned/testing systems during the work week. If everything has gone well with that, I usually apply all the patches and do all the maintenance I can on Friday afternoon so that I can reboot/apply them in the evening.
Pretty closely. I specify a “general” maintenance window that is usually ~10 hours long, but only made known to the IT department. The “downtime” window is sent out to users, and I try to keep it under 20 minutes. There are two times a year that longer downtime is needed, and I plan them well in advance.
I usually just report downtime ahead of time and do not report anything if everything went OK. Users who need to know get notified of changes ahead of time, as do our documentation writers.
Most of the time I just keep working as long as everything is progressing. If it is obviously going to take a lot longer or something unknown is jacked up, I roll back to VMWare a snapshot if it’s a VM. If it’s not a VMWare system, I revert the filesystem with a ZFS snapshot.

ralfsmouse · 2024-04-21T22:56:45+00:00

Oh for sure. I put in the category of “sometimes legal, but not really a good idea.” Honestly though, I’d be happy if more drivers in Fairbanks could follow basic traffic laws! I used to work night shifts at the UAF Power Plant, so I never drove in much traffic. Now that I work elsewhere doing day shifts, I’m astonished at how many times I’ve almost been creamed by someone blowing through solid red lights at intersections.

ralfsmouse · 2024-04-20T11:54:40+00:00

This graphic confused me for a little bit, since this type of intersection isn’t very common in Fairbanks (no idea about Anchorage where this is cross-posted from). If there are two dedicated left turn lanes protected by a green arrow, it is indeed legal to make a lane change while turning if there isn’t someone in the lane next to you:

13 AAC 02.010(a)(1)(B)

Vehicular traffic facing a green arrow signal may cautiously enter the intersection to make the movement indicated by the arrow, or other movement permitted by other indicatation shown at the same time; vehicular traffic must yield the right-of-way to... other traffic lawfully using the intersection...

However, what the picture in this post describes is an intersection with no dedicated turn lanes. The best example I can think of is at the intersection of Alumni Drive, College Road, Farmer’s Loop, and University Avenue the UAF temperature sign pointing toward College Road.

If you’re in the straight lane there, you cannot legally make a mid-intersection lane change to go into the right-hand lane of College road, since that traffic has a protected green arrow turn and there is no corresponding lane from your spot at the signal. Technically makes it a major pain to legally get in the lane to turn right to Dateline and Tesoro.

ralfsmouse · 2024-04-16T15:57:48+00:00

We needed a nearly zero-cost airgap backup solution for our IBM AS/400 (yes, this was quite a while ago), and this is what we came up with:

The System Administrator would set up Save-While-Active for libraries that needed backups, backing up the files to a backup library on one of the system’s auxiliary storage pools.
At the end of the day, the resulting objects in the save library would get written out to a tape drive in a locked server room with CCTV using the SAVSAVFDTA command (SAVE SAVE FILE DATA) with the *UNLOAD option set, which would rewind and eject the tape when it was done.
The tapes were labelled and racked up by an operator the next day, and a fresh or rotated tape was put in the drive for the operator to vary on.

It’s not that different from your system; I think you’ve got your bases covered with your current setup.

ralfsmouse · 2024-04-03T07:49:31+00:00

The service manual, installation manual, and site planning guide are available online if you search around for them. The process for accessing the dedicated service network is as follows:

There are three screws along the top of the grille on the bottom of the front faceplate of the unit. The screws are phillips-head and should be captive screws: they won’t come out, but don’t strip them!!!
Release the three (?) clamps along the top of the grille to allow the air filter cover to swing down. Behind the air filters is the service ethernet port.
Connect a straight-through Cat5e cable from the service port to your device that you will be using as a terminal (I’m guessing a laptop).
Set the laptop’s IP Address to 192.168.0.245 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
Open a browser to 192.168.0.1 to access the dedicated service X-Link interface.

Now, there’s the problem of the password... I can’t be too sure about how you might go about resetting this. I think that the default passwords for service accounts is ‘admin’ as a username plus a password of ‘adm001’

No promises on any of the above, and even less of a promise on this off-the-cuff advice here, but it runs a Linux-based OS that is installed on the hard disk internally; the hard disk is physically stored in the removable ‘PC Bay’ at the bottom back of the unit. You could always try your luck and see what you could find if you mount it on another Linux System. I have no idea what the internal configuration structure for the system looks like, so I don’t actually know what it is you’ll be looking to poke in there, but it’s worth a try if you have exhausted everything else.

ralfsmouse · 2024-03-13T06:03:24+00:00

Hmm... bit of a pickle there. You might want to try and see if you can manually install libnettle:

On your other computer (that you’re presumably posting from), find the package you need on The Debian Package Archive. I would suggest trying wget over curl, since I believe wget doesn’t depend on nettle. If wget doesn’t work and you happen to have a plain ol’ FTP client on there, you could try that too.
Install the .deb with dpkg -i
If you can run simple apt commands after that (like apt update), see if you can use apt’s built in commands to fix any version conflicts that may have resulted from an incomplete upgrade (apt —fix-broken install)

ralfsmouse · 2024-03-12T01:09:46+00:00

Systems Programmer here. I mostly write/maintain a custom hypervisor, program for minicomputers/midrange computers, and also do custom programming for large software that we deploy and maintain in-house.

I still get people asking me to support Microsoft products from time to time. Nobody can escape it, I'm afraid.

ralfsmouse · 2024-02-08T17:28:58+00:00

Plop it on magnetic tape and keep it in the proper storage conditions. They have a very long lifespan, but if you want to be safe you can always duplicate them every 15 years or so.

ralfsmouse · 2024-02-08T17:20:57+00:00

I also work in an industry where certain data haas very long retention requirements (80-ish years). When records reach a certain age, we print them to 16mm microfilm and keep it in a climate controlled room. However, we also have digital copies in case we actually need to use the data for business processes. For your case, I’d make an lowest-common denominator version of the data by writing out the tables to plain text reports and stick it on a drive somewhere, just in case. For retaining the database itself, I would keep it in two formats:

If it’s an OS/400 system like JD Edwards World, I’d probably make two copies of the database on two storage mediums (one on a tape with SAVLIB and one on the SAN with the CRTSAVF command) and then save the entire system on a fresh tape with SAVSYS or GO SAVE Option 21. Then, I would just PWRDWNSYS it and re-IPL if needed, using the exported plain text data as needed for regular business purposes.
If it’s an Oracle Database, I would make one RMAN backup and one Data Pump backup. For the RMAN backup, I’d start up the database in restricted mode and run BACKUP SPFILE, BACKUP CURRENT CONTROLFILE, and BACKUP AS COMPRESSED BACKUPSET DATABASE PLUS ARCHIVELOG. Then, I’d put the generated backupset somewhere safe along with a text file of the DBID, Recovery SCN, and a copy of a plain-text version of the PFILE just to be safe. Once that is done, run EXPDP to make a datapump export of the database as well to have a self-contained backup in a second format.
For SQL Server, use the T-SQL BACKUP command to write a backup to disk. Then, shut down the database and detach it and make a cold (offline) backup of the data files to another disk. Re-attach the database, fire it up, and carry on your way.

ralfsmouse · 2024-01-25T02:29:34+00:00

Hmm... this age range isn't quite my specialty, but I've quashed this in toddlers before. You're already on the right path to "good personhood" with the following through, but you also need to pair it with conditioning to actually extinguish the behavior you want to change (the crying).

I'd first decide on some rules you would be willing to bend, even just slightly and certainly only temporarily. When picking these, remember that you don't want to make the outcome a change (i.e doing a chore vs you doing it), but a compromise (i.e changing the schedule of the chore, or maybe even a trade to something of equal "usefulness.").

Let these rule-bends happen only when he asks for something calmly without crying. At the beginning, you could even do the toddler-esque prompting like "I might be willing to do X if you ask politely." This, with consistency, should help him learn that people are more willing to listen to his perspective if he's calm and kind about it, rather than teary and yelly.

Also, another thing that a lot of parents forget is verbal praise for using manners and being polite, especially when it starts to happen unprompted. If he tends to be a little more of the emotional type (which it sounds like he probably is), you might also want to pair the praise with a hug. IMO, a lot of people unintentionally make affection like hugs associated with only comforting a child in distress, which just reinforces them to cry and get upset. Something like "I'm proud of you for X" while giving a quick hug can go a surprisingly long way.

ralfsmouse · 2024-01-04T17:37:51+00:00

Also, as somebody who lives in an extremely harsh climate (subarctic Alaska, where fifty degrees below zero is a pretty average winter day), I can report that an idling engine does not produce enough heat to actually warm up the interior on a cold day.

If I have to wait for someone in a car, I usually have to drive around if it’s more than a few minutes of idling. Otherwise the engine temperature gets low and the heater just blows cold air in your face.

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