Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

by Warren Trent

Video report by Gary Harper

Posted on June 10, 2014 at 10:12 PM

Updated Tuesday, Jun 10 at 10:12 PM

GILBERT, Ariz -- A Gilbert woman says she and her husband were talked into a home alarm when they already had a home security system. 3 On Your Side has talked about this problem before and just recently, the Arizona alarm association issued a warning, telling consumers to use caution when a salesperson knocks on your door.

"Im thinking his life was cut just way too short." Janice Sederholm has a heavy heart. "He just died two weeks ago."

She's talking about her husband Jim, to whom she was married for 24 years. But as Janice struggles with her husband's death she's also struggling with another issue. "The bill I recently got from them the other day was $4,400,"she says.

Janice says that bill is from a collection agency, an agency that claims she owes all that money to a home security company called Vision Security. Why? Well, she says it all stems back to a salesperson who knocked on their door back in October. Janice says she remembers asking her husband about the sales pitch.

"I asked him when this person came to the door, did they say what company they were representing or anything? He said no. He just looked at me and said they could upgrade our security system for free," she recalls.

Janice says her husband was led to believe that the salesperson was from their current security provider, and was there to simply upgrade the equipment. But instead, the salesperson was with a competing company called Vision Security. And according to Janice, he tricked them into a five-year contract, even though they were still contractually obligated to their current security company. As a result Janice says; "We have a contract with two companies."

Here is the original post:
3OYS: Gilbert woman upset with home security company

Toronto, Canada (PRWEB) June 23, 2014

City Air Conditioning and Heating (http://www.CityHeatAir.com), Toronto and Mississaugas premier provider of HVAC maintenance, installation and repair services, is announcing its top reasons to schedule routine air conditioning maintenance or repairs before the hot Toronto summer rolls in.

Household hydro bills in the Greater Toronto Area are soaring, says Sunny Dwarika, owner and operator of City Air Conditioning and Heating. According to the provincial government, electricity bills are forecast to increase 33% over the next three years, 42% within five years, and a staggering 54% over the next decade.

Dwarika explains that most people usually only consider how much it costs to heat their homes during the cold winter months, but the fact of the matter is that as much as 60% of annual electricity costs go toward both heating and cooling a home. Being proactive and scheduling regular maintenance and repairs can have a big impact on hydro bills.

While the Greater Toronto Area is supposed to experience normal summer weather in 2014, its important to remember that we continue to get hit with a large number of unbearable extreme weather alerts, he adds. In 2013, Torontos Medical Officer of Health issued seven heat alerts and six heat extreme alerts, while in 2012, they issued 12 heat alerts and nine heat extreme alerts. With the hot Toronto summer weather just around the corner, now is the perfect time to schedule routine maintenance or repairs on air conditioners. (Source: Heat Alerts and Extreme Heat Alerts, City of Toronto web site; http://app.toronto.ca/tpha/heatStats.html, last accessed June 16, 2014.)

Dwarika notes that there are a number of telltale signs that indicate whether its time to repair or replace an air conditioning unit . For example, if an air conditioner is more than 10 years old and isnt keeping a room or home cool, it might be time to have it evaluated by a professional air conditioning contractor. And if the unit does need to be replaced, he says to look for one that has the Energy Star rating; Energy Stars certified residential and condominium ductless air conditioners use about 15% less energy than conventional ones.

Another sign an air conditioner needs to be looked at by a professional, according to Dwarika, is if the indoor air is too humid in the summer: this can mean the air conditioner isnt working optimally, is inadequate for the space requirement, or even suffers from leaky ductwork. Further, if the air conditioner is noisy, it could be a result of an issue with the indoor coil of the cooling equipment.

Our technicians understand that maintaining your air conditioner is essential to keeping a home comfortable during the hot, humid Toronto summers, Dwarika concludes. Thats why we advise our customers to set up a regular maintenance plan to ensure that their unit lasts and saves them money by avoiding costly repairs and service calls.

Toronto and Mississauga area homeowners and businesses have trusted City Air Conditioning and Heating with all their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) needs since 1989. Offering reliable 24-hour emergency response, City Air Conditioning and Heating has the expertise to help clients find the solution that fits their needs and budget, whether its for routine service and maintenance or complex repairs and installations. City Air Conditioning and Heating is a member of the Technical Safety and Standards Authority (TSSA) and the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada (HRAI). To learn more about City Air Conditioning and Heating, visit the web site at http://www.CityHeatAir.com / http://www.cityairtoronto.com or contact the company at info(at)cityheatair(dot)com or 416-531-5585. You can also follow City Air Conditioning and Heating on Twitter at @cityairtoronto or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-Air-Conditioning-Heating/591853854246421.

See more here:
City Air Conditioning and Heating Provides Top Reasons to Schedule Routine Air Conditioning Maintenance or Repairs ...

Microsofts Surface Pro 3 is thinner and lighter than its predecessors, but its also harder than ever to repair.

While performing a teardown of the new Windows tablet , iFixit was unable to remove the screen without cracking it. The Surface Pro 3 has thinner glass than previous models, and as iFixit tried to remove the screen by heating the adhesive underneath, the resultant cooling process was enough to crack the display.

Microsoft went to great lengths to make the Surface Pro 3 super portable, thinning it down from the Pro 2s 0.53 to a mere 0.36 thickbut it seems the thinner glass does not bode well for ruggedness, or repair, iFixit wrote.

The Surface Pro 3 also uses much more adhesive inside compared to the Surface Pro 2, which instead used over 90 Torx screws to hold the innards in place. Even if you can pry the display open, the use of more adhesive makes the components even harder to swap out. According to iFixit, its nearly impossible to remove the Surface Pro 3s battery without severely warping it.

Microsoft tried to address concerns about the Surface Pro 3s non-removable battery in a question-and-answer session on Reddit last month. The battery can be charged five days per week for more than 4.5 years and still maintain more than 80 percent of its capacity, Microsoft said, and can be replaced for free if it fails during the warranty period. Outside the warranty period, Microsoft said it will replace a failed battery for $200.

In other words, dont bother trying to replace the batteryor any other componentson your own, and dont underestimate how much storage youll need in hopes of upgrading later. Like so manyother devices with ultra-thin designs, the Surface Pro 3s sleekness comes at a cost.

For comprehensive coverage of the Android ecosystem, visit Greenbot.com.

Read this article:
Surface Pro 3 teardown shows the perils of sleek design: Thinner glass, harder repairs

BY MATT MENCARINI mmencarini@saukvalley.com 800-798-4085, ext. 5529

DIXON Work on the downtown streetscape project has entered its sixth week.

Peoria Avenue, between First and Third streets, will be closed as construction crews work on finishing curb and gutter work, sidewalks, driveways, light pole bases and water service installations, among other elements, according to the engineering firms.

Click here to see a map of the streetscape work and closed roads.

According to the firms,Wendler Engineering Services Inc. andWillett Hofmann & Associates:

First Street, from Hennepin to Galena avenues, will remain closed. Crews are expected to do sidewalk and brick work, with pavement installation beginning mid-week.

The south side eastbound lanes ofFirst Street, between Ottawa and Crawford avenues, will be closed for water main installation. The construction company will work with KSB Hospital to have access to the Commerce Towers parking lot at all times.

Ottawa Avenue, from Second to First streets, will be closed for continued work on a retaining wall.

Additional temporary road closure may be needed, according to the engineering firms.

See the original post:
Downtown streetscape project enters Week 6 in Dixon

British video artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen is best known of late for the movie "12 Years a Slave," which won the Academy Award for best picture this year and earned him an Oscar nomination for directing. A much earlier and more experimental work by McQueen, however the video installation "Drumroll" stars in a new exhibit opening at MOCA Pacific Design Center on Saturday.

"Drumroll," which McQueen shot in 1998, is a triptych of video images depicting an oil drum rolling down a midtown Manhattan sidewalk, seen from cameras positioned inside the drum. As it bounces along 56th, 57th and 58th streets, the drum captures snippets of sidewalk, cars, foot traffic and bits of McQueen himself. Some of the individual shots are beautifully abstract, a whirl of muted color and geometric patterns. Together, the images covey an urban journey that is both intimate and disconnected at once.

The Museum of Contemporary Art's Bennett Simpson curated the exhibit. He called "Drumroll," which earned McQueen the 1999 Turner Prize for contemporary art, "a portrait of an experience of the city, and its questions go to how and who we are."

The exhibition also includes excerpts from McQueen's 1998 photography series, "Barrage," depicting portraits of 56 Parisian gutter barriers.

"Steve McQueen: Drumroll" runs through Sept. 21 at MOCA Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (213) 626-6222, http://www.moca.org

Read more from the original source:
'Steve McQueen: Drumroll' will be at MOCA Pacific Design Center

What do you get if you cross a cat with a theremin? Probably something a little bit like Mew. Mew is a furry interactive sound installation that purrs and responds to strokes with meow sounds that distort according to where your hands are. Press too hard and Mew will start to squeal and hiss.

Mew was developed as part of a collaborative project between students on different courses -- Design Products, Information Experience Design and Visual Communication -- at the Royal Collage of Art in London. The brief? To create a digital and physical object that responds sonically to people and its surroundings.

Emily Groves, Jackie Ford, Jakub Pollag and Paula Arntzen teamed up to create Mew, which is about the size of a window box (for plants) on stilts. The top of the box is covered with a furry material. As you approach the box, it starts to emit a purring sound in order to encourage passersby to draw near. If you stroke the fur, it will emit distorted meow sounds that are manipulated by the direction and sequence of your hand movements. There are four sound zones on the surface and the sound effect applied to the meow is dependent on how you move between them. So if, for example, you move your hand from one end in a straight line to the other, it will distort the sound in one way, but if you rub your hand back and forth over one half it will distort the sound in another way. These are played through speakers inside the box. Although the sound starts quite cat-like, as you can hear in the video it quickly starts morphing into more of a dinosaur-from-Jurassic-Park-esque squeal when you apply more pressure. Groves told Wired.co.uk that the sounds in the video are quite "violent" and that they've "tamed it down a bit to make it sound more like a cat".

Conductive thread sewn through the fur and connected to capacity sensors dictate the distortion of the meow sounds, while pressure sensors embedded in foam below the fur indicate when Mew has been stroked too forcefully. The components are run through an Arduino and controlled via a Mac Mini running a program called Max which takes care of the sound.

The idea came about when the aforementioned team was playing around with a gutter cleaner -- like a large pipe cleaner. "It was like a cat, but not a cat," explains Groves to Wired.co.uk. "We wanted to recreate that -- making an object that has lots of qualities of something but also having completely opposite qualities. It doesn't look anything like a cat, but it sounds like one."

Groves explains that they chose a grey fur for Mew because it most closely matched the colour of the conductive thread that they were using. "The thread looks awful in other types of fur," she says. As for the form factor: "We wanted it to be hand height but also look a bit awkward. At one point we wanted to give it a curved back but we thought it would influence the way you stroke it too much."

Mew has been shown a few times in public already and Groves said that the reaction has been very positive. "Overall it just makes people laugh."

"Some people have been a bit shocked or scared, but others have been putting their face on it! People generally warm to it and treat it a bit like a pet."

Read the rest here:
Mew is part cat, part theremin

Rain gutter cleaning and gutter gaurds

By: dietzconstruct

Link:
Rain gutter cleaning and gutter gaurds - Video

In a recent tweet, MP Anil Shirole asked Punekars what changes they wanted in their city and got over a dozen replies

Last evening, Anil Shirole member of Parliment of the Pune Lok Sabha Constituency with the help of Twitter asked Punekars to contribute via suggestions on how to make the city a better place that will translate into the Pune Vision Document. In his tweet he said that the said document is in its early stages and would benefit greatly with peoples honest inputs.

His tweet got a lot of replies related to civic issues and general concerns such as that of traffic rules and environment. Out of the 15 plus replies that he got, majority of them inclined towards better roads and transport facilities and cleaning up of rivers along with planting more trees. There was also a call to make the city a safer place for women. Below are some of the suggestions that the Punekars gave

Here is the original post:
Punekars contribute to the Pune Vision Document via MP Anil Shirole's tweet

Rusty Caldwell, parks foreman for the city of Westminster, bleeding air out of irrigation lines in Kensington Park on June 19. Kensington is one of three city parks in a pilot program replacing Kentucky bluegrass with a water saving native blend. (Austin Briggs, Your Hub)

WESTMINSTER The new grass coming up on the west side of Kensington Park isn't replacing a die-off it's replacing grass that was killed off.

Parks officials this year used an herbicide to kill the Kentucky bluegrass that had been there prior to planting native seeds including fescue, rye and Canadian bluegrass.

The new ground cover will conserve water and save the city money, said Jessica Stauffer, the community outreach coordinator for the city's Parks, Recreation and Library department.

"We went $200,000 over budget last year in watering costs for our parks," Stauffer said. "The native grass being seeded stays greener longer and means fewer taxpayer dollars used for maintenance."

In addition to Kensington, England and Oakhurst Park II are also being re-seeded in select spots totaling 8.4 acres away from playgrounds and high-traffic areas.

The new blend, which will grow between eight to 10 inches tall, won't need to be mowed because it will follow a natural cycle of dormancy and growth, said parks supervisor Jerry Magnetti.

"We'll do a second seeding this fall," Magnetti said. "It's a low-grow, low-maintenance seed mix that will fill in and look beautiful, especially in the fall and cooler months."

While it'll take another year or two for the grasses to establish, the goal is to see how this experiment works and perhaps apply it to a citywide program amid a long-term drought and rising water costs.

In 2005 the Department of Parks, Recreation and Libraries used 216 million gallons of water at a cost of $863,675 and in 2012 this grew to 319 million gallons and $1,362,975.

More:
Westminster parks eliminating Kentucky bluegrass in favor of native seeds

Tea and Charity...

1:26pm Tuesday 24th June 2014 in News

Guests Ron and Vera Smallwood enjoy a refreshing cup of tea

MORE than one hundred people attended the Blooming Great Tea Party, held at Heath House in Bromsberrow Heath.

The event took place last Sunday, June 22, at the home of Jan Long, to raise funds for Marie Curie Care.

Mrs Long said:" The day was brilliantly sunny and had people wearing sun hats or seeking a shady spot under the trees or gazebos, where they enjoyed cakes, cream teas and other refreshments.

"Sales of ice cream and chilled fizzy drinks were in great demand and younger guests played football, and an impromptu games of cricket. There was face painting, chess, draughts and even ludo!"

She added: "The music was a huge success with sounds to suit everyone, classical, jazz and pop, which had feet tapping and hands clapping. An afternoon of fun, music dancing and games raised the magnificent sum of nearly 1,400 with further pledges to be collected and all this will go towards the costs involved in caring for the terminally ill with round the clock nursing care."

Chairman of the local branch of Marie Curie, Bruce Foster, said that he had been delighted by the success of the event at which his team had worked so hard and "the results were reflected this magnificent achievement."

More here:
Tea and Charity...