Last night during our family devotional we calculated that there are only 30 days til Christmas. Two weeks and a little bit over (as they say in Pirates of Penzance).
So it is officially Panic Time.
We haven't written any Christmas cards yet. We haven't done any shopping (and weren't about to join the madding crowd on this Friday last). We've just been trying to get through the days.
Will we ever find the time to do any of those things that need to be done prior to the big holiday?
There are so many things on my at-work list. Tests to write. Procedures to update. Documents to review. Spreadsheets to create. Meetings to attend.
Then there's the at-home list. Preparing for cold weather. Finishing the basement. Fixing the car. Schedules to keep.
At the end of the day, all I want to do is to climb into bed and hide from the world. But the next morning, the world is still there, waiting. And I have to get up and get dressed and get more and more behind on all the things to do.
And now Christmas...
Monday, November 26, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Flickr Fotos
Finally uploaded some Thanksgiving photos to Flickr.
Click here for Meyer Thanksgiving Photos.
Give it a go, eh? And let me know if it doesn't work.
Click here for Meyer Thanksgiving Photos.
Give it a go, eh? And let me know if it doesn't work.
Don't Shop for me, Argentina...
Several of the stores around here opened up at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, and last night we saw some of the carnage ... er, footage ... on the news. It was incredible. All those people crushing one another in an attempt to get the new toys before they run out. Is a Wii really worth your life?
Don't answer that. Some of you are nodding your heads.
I didn't get out til today, but that was merely picking up some humidifier and vaccuum cleaner filters at Sears. That doesn't count as "shopping", does it? Certainly not "Christmas shopping".
And the video game I picked up for James was really birthday shopping, not Christmas shopping. (Thanks to all you who donated to his "Lego Star Wars 3 for the DS" fund; he's been playing it nonstop since it got into his eager little hands.)
Most of the day was spent with silly little projects, like installing the tachometer in the Toyota, making labels for my Ubuntu distro CDs, backing up the XP CD, wiring James' room down in the basement, and playing more Lego Quest with Adam and the neighborhood boys.
And running over to work (twice) to run some quick little tests.
Still need to get some Thanksgiving photos up. Didn't get any good ones. They're all too dark or too fuzzy or badly (i.e. NOT) posed. Perhaps I should just do like everyone else and dump 'em on to Flickr.com. Mary made some more movies with her camera, mostly of her and her sister's Barbie dolls, but she moves the camera around so much that it tends to cause motion sickness. So don't expect to see any of those up real soon.
Next time I'm going to show her how to mount the camera on a tripod, like Craig and Kelly did, so twenty years from now they can show everyone how completely silly they are.
Especially their boyfriends.
Don't answer that. Some of you are nodding your heads.
I didn't get out til today, but that was merely picking up some humidifier and vaccuum cleaner filters at Sears. That doesn't count as "shopping", does it? Certainly not "Christmas shopping".
And the video game I picked up for James was really birthday shopping, not Christmas shopping. (Thanks to all you who donated to his "Lego Star Wars 3 for the DS" fund; he's been playing it nonstop since it got into his eager little hands.)
Most of the day was spent with silly little projects, like installing the tachometer in the Toyota, making labels for my Ubuntu distro CDs, backing up the XP CD, wiring James' room down in the basement, and playing more Lego Quest with Adam and the neighborhood boys.
And running over to work (twice) to run some quick little tests.
Still need to get some Thanksgiving photos up. Didn't get any good ones. They're all too dark or too fuzzy or badly (i.e. NOT) posed. Perhaps I should just do like everyone else and dump 'em on to Flickr.com. Mary made some more movies with her camera, mostly of her and her sister's Barbie dolls, but she moves the camera around so much that it tends to cause motion sickness. So don't expect to see any of those up real soon.
Next time I'm going to show her how to mount the camera on a tripod, like Craig and Kelly did, so twenty years from now they can show everyone how completely silly they are.
Especially their boyfriends.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Happy Post-Thanksgiving
Finally! Took me all day to get this computer booted up and running...
In-between playing a game of Lego Quest with Adam and the neighborhood boys - which lasted four hours - and nibbling on leftovers, and thinking deep thoughts about various things (all the work left to do on the house, mostly), and trying to update Ubuntu from version 5.10 ("Breezy Badger") to 6.0.6 ("Dapper Drake") because a bug in Firefox was making it impossible to do any net surfing. Took me til after dinner to figure out that it was possible to not upgrade all the way to 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon"), because that version requires 384 megabytes of RAM, and this ancient 1.0 gigahertz model only has 256.
I had burned a CD of 7.10, but it refused to install, and didn't bother to tell me why. Did some net checking and discovered that it was due to not-enough-memory. So I went back to the Ubuntu website and downloaded 6.0.6, and that worked fine. Although I must say that running it on a 1.0 gigahertz machine is really pushing the envelope. It's sloooooow.
I would run it on the fast PC (2.6 gigahertz) but the kids are using that one to play their games. And the games require Windows XP. And Windows XP on a 1 gigahertz machine is impossible, as compared to Ubuntu on a 1 gigahertz machine which is merely annoying.
Now that it is working, I can upload some pictures from Thanskgiving. Tomorrow. Right now, I'm heading to bed.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Washday has arrived.
I really hope it doesn't explode again.
The washing machine, I mean.
Took me til nearly eleven o'clock last night to get it all put back together, and it turned out that the most difficult part was not installing the motor, as I had imagined, but putting the spring-loaded cable back onto the rubber seal which keeps the water from leaking through the front-loading door. Remounting the motor took all of two minutes. Remounting the front door seal took three and a half hours, four wasted trips to various hardware stores trying to locate a spring expander (no one had it; when it occurred to me to check an auto parts store, they were closed), and no end of frustration.
But it finally became a washing machine again, and we celebrated by ... doing laundry. At eleven o'clock at night. What fun and interesting people we are!
Then we wrapped James' presents and put them out where he could find them in the morning. And wrote a silly card.
Then, finally, at one o'clock a.m., we went to bed.
It was so hard to get up this morning.
The washing machine, I mean.
Took me til nearly eleven o'clock last night to get it all put back together, and it turned out that the most difficult part was not installing the motor, as I had imagined, but putting the spring-loaded cable back onto the rubber seal which keeps the water from leaking through the front-loading door. Remounting the motor took all of two minutes. Remounting the front door seal took three and a half hours, four wasted trips to various hardware stores trying to locate a spring expander (no one had it; when it occurred to me to check an auto parts store, they were closed), and no end of frustration.
But it finally became a washing machine again, and we celebrated by ... doing laundry. At eleven o'clock at night. What fun and interesting people we are!
Then we wrapped James' presents and put them out where he could find them in the morning. And wrote a silly card.
Then, finally, at one o'clock a.m., we went to bed.
It was so hard to get up this morning.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Platform Shoes
I got bored this weekend, so I slapped together some two-by-fours and built another platform in the garage.
No, actually, there just wasn't room for all my junk on the floor in the garage, so it was necessary to 'elevate' some of it to a 'higher realm' - 80 inches, to be exact - to the point where the Toyota would fit underneath.
That's the problem with having extra two-by-fours hanging about, you know. They're just screaming to be used to build something or other. Platforms, work tables, walls, something.
So the platform got built, long about Sunday evening, but not without an interruption here or there. One particularly bad interruption, actually. You see, on Saturday, the motor in the washing machine took a dive. Literally.
Seems the mounting bolt got shaken to the point where it just snapped, then it fell to the ground with a rather loud 'thud', and for some odd reason having to do with the lack of proximity betwixt motor gearing and drive belt, the wash tub failed to rotate and the clothes failed to become clean.
Pity, that.
Tore the washing machine apart on Sunday afternoon, after being reminded of the fact that it was broken (I'd completely forgotten, having had so much fun building the platform). Got the motor pulled out, found the bolt sheared off right at the base plate. Ran out to the store to get a replacement, and a bolt extraction kit, and a tap-and-die. Just in case.
Managed to drill through the old bolt to get the extractor started, after breaking one drill bit, but the extractor jammed up inside the bolt and broke off. Had to drill that out, then tried to use the tap to set the threads for the new bolt, but apparently I hadn't gotten all the old bolt threads out of the hole, for it jammed up as well and then it broke.
Had to drill out the tap then, and looks like I'll be repeating the process again tomorrow. By the time it was all said and done, it was too late to get to the store.
Oy, but I'm ready for Thanksgiving, just to have a couple days to catch up on all these house projects! Figure I'm going to corner the market on two-by-fours and build some more platforms. Or walls. Or something.
Sure beats software...
No, actually, there just wasn't room for all my junk on the floor in the garage, so it was necessary to 'elevate' some of it to a 'higher realm' - 80 inches, to be exact - to the point where the Toyota would fit underneath.
That's the problem with having extra two-by-fours hanging about, you know. They're just screaming to be used to build something or other. Platforms, work tables, walls, something.
So the platform got built, long about Sunday evening, but not without an interruption here or there. One particularly bad interruption, actually. You see, on Saturday, the motor in the washing machine took a dive. Literally.
Seems the mounting bolt got shaken to the point where it just snapped, then it fell to the ground with a rather loud 'thud', and for some odd reason having to do with the lack of proximity betwixt motor gearing and drive belt, the wash tub failed to rotate and the clothes failed to become clean.
Pity, that.
Tore the washing machine apart on Sunday afternoon, after being reminded of the fact that it was broken (I'd completely forgotten, having had so much fun building the platform). Got the motor pulled out, found the bolt sheared off right at the base plate. Ran out to the store to get a replacement, and a bolt extraction kit, and a tap-and-die. Just in case.
Managed to drill through the old bolt to get the extractor started, after breaking one drill bit, but the extractor jammed up inside the bolt and broke off. Had to drill that out, then tried to use the tap to set the threads for the new bolt, but apparently I hadn't gotten all the old bolt threads out of the hole, for it jammed up as well and then it broke.
Had to drill out the tap then, and looks like I'll be repeating the process again tomorrow. By the time it was all said and done, it was too late to get to the store.
Oy, but I'm ready for Thanksgiving, just to have a couple days to catch up on all these house projects! Figure I'm going to corner the market on two-by-fours and build some more platforms. Or walls. Or something.
Sure beats software...
Friday, November 16, 2007
Rather Disappointed, Actually
The Toyota has a new used engine in it now, but they didn't tune it up right and I'm rather disappointed.
After nearly three weeks in the shop, I was expecting miracles. There were problems getting parts. There were problems with the parts once they'd acquired them. And, strangely enough, they failed to properly align the timing belt the first time and spent a couple days trying to figure out why it wouldn't work. But finally they got it all straightened out, and assured me it was "purring like a kitten".
A kitten with gas, I suppose.
There's something wrong with the exhaust system; it's making the same kind of noise that would occur if there were a hole in the muffler - but the noise is coming from the engine compartment. Perhaps they didn't get the exhaust manifold attached properly, or perhaps it has a hole in it.
The acceleration is sluggish, as though the carburator is flooding - but it's not quite the same because it never feels like it's about to stall. It just doesn't want to go too fast.
And the engine vibrates badly when it idles, as though the timing is still not quite right. It doesn't feel as though one of the cylinders isn't firing - I've felt that before from the original engine, when the cylinder with the bad oil seal would foul the spark plug and it wouldn't fire anymore.
I'm irritated and frustrated by it, because for the amount of money we spent, we should expect a perfectly-working engine.
But instead of taking it back to them and making them do it right, I'm going to do it myself, because even though I'm not all that knowledgeable about tuning up this kind of engine, I've lost any confidence in their ability.
The only person I really trust to do it right, my brother-in-law, is in Iraq. But I don't think I'll bother him with it right now. He's busy.
***
The van has been making odd noises, too, so we took it down to the Dodge dealer to have them perform the 120k-mile service on it. And have them find out where the squeaky noises are coming from.
I probably could've taken it to a regular shop, but the only one I knew about is the one I don't trust anymore, so the next-best thing is the dealer. At least they're supposed to be factory-trained.
They did OK, I suppose. A bit on the pricey side, but they found the source of the squeaking (bad brakes), and took care of all the regular maintenance checks that need to be made, like transmission and suspension.
And it only took a day, which is a far cry from three weeks!
After nearly three weeks in the shop, I was expecting miracles. There were problems getting parts. There were problems with the parts once they'd acquired them. And, strangely enough, they failed to properly align the timing belt the first time and spent a couple days trying to figure out why it wouldn't work. But finally they got it all straightened out, and assured me it was "purring like a kitten".
A kitten with gas, I suppose.
There's something wrong with the exhaust system; it's making the same kind of noise that would occur if there were a hole in the muffler - but the noise is coming from the engine compartment. Perhaps they didn't get the exhaust manifold attached properly, or perhaps it has a hole in it.
The acceleration is sluggish, as though the carburator is flooding - but it's not quite the same because it never feels like it's about to stall. It just doesn't want to go too fast.
And the engine vibrates badly when it idles, as though the timing is still not quite right. It doesn't feel as though one of the cylinders isn't firing - I've felt that before from the original engine, when the cylinder with the bad oil seal would foul the spark plug and it wouldn't fire anymore.
I'm irritated and frustrated by it, because for the amount of money we spent, we should expect a perfectly-working engine.
But instead of taking it back to them and making them do it right, I'm going to do it myself, because even though I'm not all that knowledgeable about tuning up this kind of engine, I've lost any confidence in their ability.
The only person I really trust to do it right, my brother-in-law, is in Iraq. But I don't think I'll bother him with it right now. He's busy.
***
The van has been making odd noises, too, so we took it down to the Dodge dealer to have them perform the 120k-mile service on it. And have them find out where the squeaky noises are coming from.
I probably could've taken it to a regular shop, but the only one I knew about is the one I don't trust anymore, so the next-best thing is the dealer. At least they're supposed to be factory-trained.
They did OK, I suppose. A bit on the pricey side, but they found the source of the squeaking (bad brakes), and took care of all the regular maintenance checks that need to be made, like transmission and suspension.
And it only took a day, which is a far cry from three weeks!
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Weekend Projects
It has been an incredibly busy weekend, and yet nothing was really done. Completed, I mean. Lots of things started.
Like the engine thing.
It is a big deal to me, this engine. I mean, it's our engine, right? And the shop was going to just toss it away, this huge hunk of metal.
Couldn't let that happen now, could we?
Not in this pack-rat of a household. I mean, there's boxes of electronics around here that can be traced back to that mess of a room I kept back in 1977. Can you believe it? Dragging around that old junk for thirty years. But it's my junk, man.
And this engine - well, it's gone three hundred thousand miles! Without a major overhaul! Sure, it was blowing oil and a few things here and there weren't working (like the carburator heat, which made it stall out in cold weather); but she's a sweet little 1.6L engine, steady and dependable. And I figured on keeping her around awhile.
Gonna rebuild it. Gonna give the boys a chance to learn the same things my Dad taught me, how to work on engines. See, my Dad was (and probably still is) able to pull out a Volkswagen engine on a Friday night and have it rebuilt and running again by Sunday afternoon. And he taught me how to do it, too. All except the machine-shop stuff. We had to send out for that work.
The guys at the shop were a bit surprised that I wanted to keep the old engine. Most customers don't care to ever see 'em again (assuming they ever saw 'em in the first place). Sorta like asking to keep your old tires, I suppose. But they didn't argue with me. Just asked me to come by on a Friday to pick it up so they wouldn't have to move things around to clear a path. So I came by with the van on Friday afternoon and picked it up - and the transmission, too - and happily hauled it back home. Naturally, I'd removed the seats from the van and put a tarp down so it wouldn't drip oil or other fluids all over the carpet.
Hmmm. I noticed that it took three guys to lift it into the van.
Got it home and - OK, smart guy, how are you going to get the five hundred pound engine out of the van by yourself and move it around?
I had already figured out where the engine was going to stay once it got in the garage. Went to this 'Harbor Freight' store earlier on Thursday and picked up an engine stand for forty bucks. {Also picked up a cheap radio control airplane for forty bucks, but that's another story.}
Anyway, got the engine home and was preparing to figure out how to get it out of the car and onto the engine stand when it occurred to me that the engine mounting bolts were missing. Well, not really missing; I suppose they needed them to install the new engine. That's the trouble with keeping the old stuff - you can never be sure which parts come with it. So how can I man-handle this engine onto the engine stand without the bolts? I gotta have bolts to secure it to the engine stand, right?
In the meantime, I didn't want to drive around town looking for the bolts with the engine rolling around in the back of the van, so it needed to come out. And the two of us couldn't lift it - and being a guy, there ain't no way I'm going to go knocking on doors asking a neighbor to come help me lift the engine out; that would be admitting that I ain't smart enough to figure a clever way of doing it by myself.
So I got clever. Stacked some two-by-fours on top of a couple car jacks, supporting the other ends on my ladder, and made a ramp that came right up to the tail end of the van, and just slid it right out of the van and onto the ramp. Had to stick a couple two-by-threes underneath one end of it to steady it, but at least now the seats could go back in the van, and it was possible to run out to the store to look for bolts.
Tried to find the bolts at Home Depot and Lowes, but they didn't have 'em. In fact, it seemed they had every size except the ones I needed. Naturally.
So back home I went, empty-handed.
The problem was, see, that the weather is going to turn cold and windy pretty soon, and the van needs to be in the garage. I'm not in the mood to go out every morning and scrape the ice off the van. And the engine on the ramp was in the way of the van. {Yeah, I shoulda thought of that before I made the ramp right up to the van; shoulda backed up the van into the garage at an angle so it would've been out of the way, but that would've just made things too easy.}
OK, there's this perfectly good engine stand here, but it needs a little help. Can't mount the engine onto it without the bolts, so I'll have to come up with something to give it a little help. And since the engine weighs a lot more than I do, it's gotta be something that is stable so the thing don't fall on my foot and send me to the emergency room.
Well, there's a few more two-by-fours sitting around in here; oughta be able to do something with those ...
Took me most of the evening to finish up, but finally put together a little platform for the engine stand, sorta like a little wooden cradle for the engine to sit on so it's still on the stand but not bolted to it. And since the engine stand is on wheels, I can still move it around the garage.
Got the engine put on it, then moved it out of the way so the van could fit into its normal spot in the garage.
Mission accomplished!
See what happens when I have too much time on my hands?
***
My next project was trying out that R/C model airplane. Obviously, it's not one of those high-end deals, not for forty bucks. In fact, it's a cheap piece of foam attached to a plastic body with a multiplexed single-channel radio pretending to be a two-channel. And it has no steering other than speed control over two separate motors.
I don't have a circuit diagram, but I suspect it's merely a pulse-width modulated signal that determines which engine gets the higher cycle time, so you 'steer' it by running either the right or left engine at a higher speed than the other, and since the engines are mounted on the wing pod, it's basically pushing the wing left or right.
Because of this, there's no 'up' or 'down' control, either. That's done by careful control of the engine speed. If you max the throttle, it climbs. If you drop the throttle below a certain level, it dives.
It's an odd way to control an airplane, but it's efficient given the cheapness of the design. And it's going to take a lot longer than the twenty minutes of practice I got today to master it.
At the end of twenty minutes, I'd broken the canopy and the tail skid and shredded the front edge of the wingtips. Other than that, it seemed to be in pretty good shape.
Can't wait to try it again later. But there won't be any time the rest of this week, between work and all the other activities. And it's supposed to snow on Tuesday.
Like the engine thing.
It is a big deal to me, this engine. I mean, it's our engine, right? And the shop was going to just toss it away, this huge hunk of metal.
Couldn't let that happen now, could we?
Not in this pack-rat of a household. I mean, there's boxes of electronics around here that can be traced back to that mess of a room I kept back in 1977. Can you believe it? Dragging around that old junk for thirty years. But it's my junk, man.
And this engine - well, it's gone three hundred thousand miles! Without a major overhaul! Sure, it was blowing oil and a few things here and there weren't working (like the carburator heat, which made it stall out in cold weather); but she's a sweet little 1.6L engine, steady and dependable. And I figured on keeping her around awhile.
Gonna rebuild it. Gonna give the boys a chance to learn the same things my Dad taught me, how to work on engines. See, my Dad was (and probably still is) able to pull out a Volkswagen engine on a Friday night and have it rebuilt and running again by Sunday afternoon. And he taught me how to do it, too. All except the machine-shop stuff. We had to send out for that work.
The guys at the shop were a bit surprised that I wanted to keep the old engine. Most customers don't care to ever see 'em again (assuming they ever saw 'em in the first place). Sorta like asking to keep your old tires, I suppose. But they didn't argue with me. Just asked me to come by on a Friday to pick it up so they wouldn't have to move things around to clear a path. So I came by with the van on Friday afternoon and picked it up - and the transmission, too - and happily hauled it back home. Naturally, I'd removed the seats from the van and put a tarp down so it wouldn't drip oil or other fluids all over the carpet.
Hmmm. I noticed that it took three guys to lift it into the van.
Got it home and - OK, smart guy, how are you going to get the five hundred pound engine out of the van by yourself and move it around?
I had already figured out where the engine was going to stay once it got in the garage. Went to this 'Harbor Freight' store earlier on Thursday and picked up an engine stand for forty bucks. {Also picked up a cheap radio control airplane for forty bucks, but that's another story.}
Anyway, got the engine home and was preparing to figure out how to get it out of the car and onto the engine stand when it occurred to me that the engine mounting bolts were missing. Well, not really missing; I suppose they needed them to install the new engine. That's the trouble with keeping the old stuff - you can never be sure which parts come with it. So how can I man-handle this engine onto the engine stand without the bolts? I gotta have bolts to secure it to the engine stand, right?
In the meantime, I didn't want to drive around town looking for the bolts with the engine rolling around in the back of the van, so it needed to come out. And the two of us couldn't lift it - and being a guy, there ain't no way I'm going to go knocking on doors asking a neighbor to come help me lift the engine out; that would be admitting that I ain't smart enough to figure a clever way of doing it by myself.
So I got clever. Stacked some two-by-fours on top of a couple car jacks, supporting the other ends on my ladder, and made a ramp that came right up to the tail end of the van, and just slid it right out of the van and onto the ramp. Had to stick a couple two-by-threes underneath one end of it to steady it, but at least now the seats could go back in the van, and it was possible to run out to the store to look for bolts.
Tried to find the bolts at Home Depot and Lowes, but they didn't have 'em. In fact, it seemed they had every size except the ones I needed. Naturally.
So back home I went, empty-handed.
The problem was, see, that the weather is going to turn cold and windy pretty soon, and the van needs to be in the garage. I'm not in the mood to go out every morning and scrape the ice off the van. And the engine on the ramp was in the way of the van. {Yeah, I shoulda thought of that before I made the ramp right up to the van; shoulda backed up the van into the garage at an angle so it would've been out of the way, but that would've just made things too easy.}
OK, there's this perfectly good engine stand here, but it needs a little help. Can't mount the engine onto it without the bolts, so I'll have to come up with something to give it a little help. And since the engine weighs a lot more than I do, it's gotta be something that is stable so the thing don't fall on my foot and send me to the emergency room.
Well, there's a few more two-by-fours sitting around in here; oughta be able to do something with those ...
Took me most of the evening to finish up, but finally put together a little platform for the engine stand, sorta like a little wooden cradle for the engine to sit on so it's still on the stand but not bolted to it. And since the engine stand is on wheels, I can still move it around the garage.
Got the engine put on it, then moved it out of the way so the van could fit into its normal spot in the garage.
Mission accomplished!
See what happens when I have too much time on my hands?
***
My next project was trying out that R/C model airplane. Obviously, it's not one of those high-end deals, not for forty bucks. In fact, it's a cheap piece of foam attached to a plastic body with a multiplexed single-channel radio pretending to be a two-channel. And it has no steering other than speed control over two separate motors.
I don't have a circuit diagram, but I suspect it's merely a pulse-width modulated signal that determines which engine gets the higher cycle time, so you 'steer' it by running either the right or left engine at a higher speed than the other, and since the engines are mounted on the wing pod, it's basically pushing the wing left or right.
Because of this, there's no 'up' or 'down' control, either. That's done by careful control of the engine speed. If you max the throttle, it climbs. If you drop the throttle below a certain level, it dives.
It's an odd way to control an airplane, but it's efficient given the cheapness of the design. And it's going to take a lot longer than the twenty minutes of practice I got today to master it.
At the end of twenty minutes, I'd broken the canopy and the tail skid and shredded the front edge of the wingtips. Other than that, it seemed to be in pretty good shape.
 |  |
Can't wait to try it again later. But there won't be any time the rest of this week, between work and all the other activities. And it's supposed to snow on Tuesday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)