Things, Stuff & Such

I did not even touch the digital picture frame this weekend.  I didn’t want to deal with it at the moment.  It spent half the weekend in the back seat of my car anyway.  Instead, I decided to clean the barbecue grill Saturday morning.  Man did it need it.  Not only were the grates nasty with grease but the bottom had over an inch of ash built up.  I rolled the grill outside and went to work.  The oven cleaner I used made quick work of the grates but the rest required more of a manual cleaning.  With a wire brush, soap and elbow grease I got everything as clean as I could.  By this time it was almost noon and the sun was pretty hot.  My hands started to shake and I felt weak.  It must have been a combination of not eating anything that day and working out in the sun.  I have had this happen before and knew I needed to cool down and get some food inside me.  After that all was well.

I decided to take my carputer set up for a test spin yesterday.  I got tired of seeing it sitting on the dinning room table.  I have been ‘working’ on this project for quite a while now.  The major impass has been powering the system in my car.  Initially, I was going to use a SFF Dell I bought from a guy on one of the forums I frequent.  There are special power supply’s built specifically for the purpose of running on a DC circuit.  The first problem I encountered was that Dell’s are not built using standard power wiring setup.  Which means that I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) use one of the DC power supplies.  This means I would need an inverter to turn the car’s DC power to the standard AC power used in homes.  In order to pull the required amps I would have to run a dedicated 4 or 8 gage wire directly from the battery.  The wires used inside the car are too small to carry the current safely (read Electrical Fire).  I took a look under my hood for an existing hole to pass a large wire from the engine area in to the interior.  I could not find one, nor could I easily reach any of the existing passthrus.  What ever happend to cars with tons of room in the engine compartment?

The more I thought about running wires thru my car the more I got worried about screwing up my electrical system or causing a fire.  This gave me a fair amount of pause.  I considered paying a stereo installer to professionally run the wire to my trunk.  Many people do this to install huge amps for outragous sound systems.  That would at least double the cost of the cabling.  Plus, I still have to buy the rest of the components. 

Partially for this reason I have dragged my butt on this project.  Also, I am not entirely sure what I want to get from the setup.  So, I figured I’d take what I had set up already and throw it in my car and see what I thought of it.  Well, I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty cool with a very high g33k factor.

Im still a little uncomfortable with runnin wires and making sure I don’t blow up my car or even just kill the battery - but I do want to move forward with the project.  I will read up some more on forums to see what other people have done and make sure my car insurance is current.

I got a ‘new’ computer desk yesterday as well.  My neighbor asked me if I wanted it – otherwise he was going to take it apart and throw it away.  It is a nice small desk and there was nothing wrong with it.  One feature I liked about it was that it had a shelf to put the pc under the desk without it being on the floor.  My current desk, which I made from scrap wood from my MAME cabinet, required that I keep the pc on top (I don’t like putting the pc on the floor).  Once I got everything off the old desk I saw just how dusty it was behind the desk.  Plus all the wires were a rat’s nest so I decided to take the opportunity to dust, vaccume and rerun wires.  But I didn’t stop there.  Once I get started cleaning one area of a room I don’t stop until I’ve cleaned the entire room, which produced a full trash bag of crap that is no loner cluttering my room.

I like the new set up – it’s a cleaner look than before.  The mess of wires you see on the right of the picture are not associated with the pc setup – I will clean them up next.  My new pc case is sitting on a shelf under the desk on the left.  It fits perfectly out of the way there but you don’t get to see the windowed side panel.  Not a big deal – I know what’s in there anyway.

I just got word today that now Aaron had a ‘D’ in his art class.  His mother forwarded an email from Aaron’s teacher to me saying

…I just need him to turn things in and on time.

Sounds familiar.  This is becoming chronic.  I hate having to get on them about doing their school work.  If they would just do it it would be done and then they can play.  Oh, God.  Was that me or my father speaking?  I remember how much homework sucks.  There are millions of things more fun to do than homework (including sitting at your desk with a blank look on your face) – I remember.

I remember having what I thought was a ton of work sitting in front of me.  More work than one human child could possibly do before all the days fun was run empty.  Probably half of my total homework time was spent lamenting the task ahead.  I would sit at my desk or the kitchen table with my homework thinking “this sucks that I have to sit here and do my homework.”  Meanwhile, the homework sits there, not doing itself, and I am thinking of how long it is going to take to finish – completely unmoved to action though.

There was a point, eventually, where I got it.  I realized that the sooner I do it the sooner it will be done.  This didn’t always light the fire for me, but it did help.  Fortunately, I do my best work under extreme time pressure.

‘ahem’

But, how do you get them to accept this advice that you learned thru years of sitting in front of your homework?  How do you save them the time you spent coming to the inevitable conclusion?  You can’t.  You want to grab them make it sink in, “Hey, this is sage advice.  Take it and save yourself the trouble.”  This, as with most things, they have to come to on their own. And I feel bad that I can’t save them the effort.  I try to explain, as best I can, what I know they will come too eventually but it comes out as harping and lecturing.

I remember thinking that my father thought I must have been stupid the way he talked to me when I was being punished.  I think, now, that it may have been the way his passionate desire for me to know what he knew manifested itself.  Oh, and a bit of frustration for having to repeat the lesson over and over thru the years.

Tonight I will try again. 

“Now, for G33k N3ws…”

I decided to try to return my ‘faulty’ helicopter to thinkgeek.com for a replacement.  I think the initial problem was with the top rotor.  It always ended up smashing into the bottom one and I don’t think it is all attributable to my less than novice skills.  Anyway - the website has a cool online RMA process.  No phone calls to a CS rep who doesn’t like his job or thinks your are stupid.  I filled out all the information and should get an email Monday with either an RMA number or a big ‘FU’.  I doubt the ‘FU’ is coming as this company seems pretty cool and I have had great experiences with previous orders.

I was supposed to do some minor computer work for one of the maintainance guys this weekend.  We were going to trade services but he didn’t get with me today to give me his address or a phone number.  I guess that’ll free up my weekend for other geek-tronic persuits.  I have a digital picture frame that doesn’t display digital pictures, I have a carputer project that has stalled, and I have almost half a terabite of disk space that needs to be cleaned up.  Not to mention a website that is about as current as an acoustic coupler. 

Fortunately, I have all that extra time from not practicing my flying. 

Aaron is doing very well in school so far this year.  His grades have improved so much since his mother moved them to Missouri.  As a parent, you can’t argue with good grades.  Scott had a little problem with turning in assignments and it is affecting his grades but I think we came up with a solution that will get him back on track.  They are both intelligent enough to be A/B students and usually, that’s what they get.  I am so proud of them both.  It’s a wonderful thing to see them grow and develop and nothing has ever made me happier.  Next month Scott will be thirteen!  Man, that means I must be… well, never mind.

So my fun new R/C Helicopter that I’ve had for less than 48 hours has broken.  At first just a rod came out of the propeller hub which I fixed with a drop of glue.  It seemed to be holding just fine in the short test flight I did to make sure all was well.  Next step was to set the trim on the copter by turning a pot on the remote while the copter is hovering.  Pot is short for potentiometer, which is a variable resistor that, I assume, varies the radio signal to the copter that controls spin.  I’m doing good.  I have it hovering between a foot and two feet while I’m adjusting the pot to control the spin.  I got it almost perfect, too.  Then I land it, put down the screwdriver I used for the pot and lift it off again to fine tune the setting with a slider switch on the remote.  Not three seconds into the flight I hear the sound I’ve come to know as the top and bottom blades smacking into each.  Crap.  Upon inspection I see that three of the four blades of the top rotor have broken from the outer ring.  Why does it have an outer ring?  To keep it from bursting apart when it runs into something I guess.  Do I need it?  Probably.  So instead of breaking it off from the last blade I glue the other three back on.  It is drying at this very moment.  The outlook is bleak.

In other news of failure and ineptness I got to stare at my non-working digital picture frame on my desk all day.  I dred having to cut out all of that hot glue to get to the circuit boards.  I problem is either simple (read loose connection) or the entire LCD is bad.

The good news is that I had a very busy day at work today – so I didn’t have to sit at my desk much.  I like busy days.  Not only because they tend to fly by but, because I have a real feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. 

Last month I found a tiny indoor R/C helicopter on Thinkgeek.com.  I was thinking it would be something cool for me and the boys – but they sold out quickly (before I made the decision to actually buy one). I put my email on a list to be notified when they were back in stock and waited patiently (sort of).  Last friday I was notified they were back and I placed my order.  Yesterday I got my new toy in the mail at the office.  I immediately opened the box up to take a good look at it.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t play with it until I had all my work done (note to Scott & Aaron: even adults have to finish their work before they can play ).

When the time came I quickly read thru the directions (printed in Chineese and Engrish) to look for anything no obviouse that I needed to do before take off (by ‘take off’ I mean throttling up and hitting the wall).  I have to say right off the bat that I knew there would be a learning curve I would have to overcome.  My R/C experience is limited to traveling on two axes, and I still hit walls sometimes.  I load up the remote with batteries and set the copter on the floor in my office.  I feel the excitement swelling as I push up on the throttle ever so gently and the machine comes to life.  The little electric motor sounded cool whipping the rotors round (the helicopter has two sets of counter rotating rotors to make flying easier).  A little more throttle and it’s in the air.  It hovers for two seconds about two inches off the ground.  So far, so good.  A little more throttle and it climes slowly for a second and then…

BAM!  Right into my desk.

The helicopter is unharmed.  It seems to be built to take a few crashes.  I reset the helicopter in the middle of my office floor – noting the location of drawers and wires and trying to allow enough room for reaction time.  Again I launch it and again it finds my desk.  The next try I get a little more height and air time before it bankes towards the ground and flippes over.  I hope this thing is sturdy.  My friend at the office has a lot of experience with R/C aircraft so I ask him to take the controlls while I get a video of it in action.  He had only a little better flight than I did.

I took this with my cell phone: RC Copter

My DIY Digital Photo Frame, which I have been so proud of, has stopped working.  For some reason the LCD is not getting power.  I can see that the card reader is powered up but, there is no indication of juice getting to the screen.  This is very dissapointing.  Also, it will be a pain to get the components out to check solder connections as I have used copious amounts of hot glue to get everything to stay.  I don’t want to break out my second set of components just yet though.  I will try to bust everything out of the frame first and see if it’s a problem with the LCD just going bad or if it’s my workmanship.

My money is on my workmanship… well half is on my workmanship and the other half is on the LCD being bad.

While I was walking the dogs last night I got a call on my cell.  I did not recognize the number so I let it go to voice mail. Half a minute later I had a voicemail waiting for me.  Curious, I checked it out.  The first thing that came to my attention was that the caller was in a very noisy place – a bar perhaps.  The noise was overwhelming the caller’s voice so that I could only pick out a few of the words.  I hear him say:

“Hi, John. Give me a call… … you watching ultimate fighting?   Chuck Liddell… how good is he,huh?  Give ma a call.”

I did not recognize the voice.  I’ve had people leave me messages for the wrong number before but they never got the name right.  This was curious.  I racked my brain (not hard – my brain goes from zero to racked pretty quickly) thinking thru the voices of anyone I had ever given my cell number to.  Nothing.  Then it happened again, a call from the same number.  I let it go to voice mail again while I took the dogs back in the house.
Once in the house I reviewed the new voice mail.  This one still had some noise in the background but it wasn’t as over powering.  I could make out the entire brief message:

“Hey idioit, give me a call.  Bye.”

The caller’s phone stayed on for several seconds after he finished speaking.  The background noise sounded more like the televison than the din of a public place.  One thing I did figure out is that this isn’t a friend of mine.  My battery was running low so I connected it to the charger and let the whole thing slip from my mind.
Until…
The phone rang again with the same number.  This dude really wants to talk to someone!  Well, after the last message I decided this wasn’t anyone I wanted to talk to so I let voice mail pick it up.
Again, he left a message.  This was the strangest yet:

“Oh, hey john.  Hope to god I’m calling the right john… Heaven forbid… Give me a call back.  You watching , uh, SpikeTV?  Ultimate Fighting?  Cunt whore slut … bitch, .  Let me reiterate… bitch cunt whore slut.  That’s how it goes… Bitch cunt whore slut says what… ”

WTF?!
I’m trying hard to figure out who this is.  I listen to all three messages again trying to guess this asshole’s identity.  I can’t place him at all.
The phone goes off again.  That’s the fourth call from him in twenty minutes. I’m pissed now.  I answer this time.

“Hello?”

The caller paused for a second, perhaps surprised to get me.  Or maybe he is not recognizing my voice either.

“Hey”, is all he offers.

“Who is this?” I ask.

“You should be asking yourself that question” he says.

I think that’s what he said.  His speech is a bit slurred and there is still the noise of the tv behind him.

“What?  Do I know you?  Who is this?”

He mumbles something I can’t make out at all but I can tell he’s fucking with me.  Whether or not he knows me, he has made a decision to fuck with me.

“Are you fucking nuts?” I asked – my anger seeping into my tone.

Nothing from the mystery man.

“I don’t recognize your voice, who are you?”

He hangs up.
That was it.  No more calls.  I thought about calling his number today and trying to find out what the deal was.  I even looked up his number on http://www.whitepages.com’s/ reverse lookup.  It came up as a local cell phone but with no more information.  I was hopping for a name.  At least I would know who.
In the end it’s more funny than anything else.  Let’s see if my buddy calls again. 

This morning on my way to work, as I neared the High School there was another accident.  Just as last time, it was just after a traffic light before you hit the turn lane for the high school.  It was a three car rear ender just past the light.  It seems this is a tricky area for high school drivers.  I’m not sure if the idiots are trying to speed thru the light before it goes red or what but so far this year it’s been three accidents with three cars taking it in the rear.  Maybe next time I’ll snap a pic with my camera phone.

I just finished moving my current computer hardware to my new PC case.  Things didn’t go as smoothly as I assumed they would.  The first issue was my power supply.  I got this cool clear, blue LED power supply from one of the forums I’m on.  It was a sweet deal and one of the things I really liked about it was that the power cords were modular and wrapped in a blue sheath.  That made the whole case look cleaner because each cable was tightly wrapped and I only had to attach as many cables as I needed – this gave the case a clean, professional look.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit.

The good news is that the new set up is much quieter than my liquid cooled system.  So, the liquid cooler is going in the trash.

I finished my digital picture frame over the weekend.  It didn’t turn out the way it was originally envisioned but I dig it.  I did buy two LCD’s and two SanDisk photo viewers thinking I may totally screw up the first time so, the fact that it works is pretty good.  In my first post I had decided to follow these plans I found on the web, purchased the electronics and had soldered most of it together.  By the second post, I was building a box to attach to the frame and house the electronics.

Then something went wrong…

While trying to remove the IR reciever from the board to extend it I broke the contacts.  It was a big pain in the butt to reattach wires because there was virtually nothing left of the contacts on the reciever for me to attach wires to.  It took several tries just to get them to stay on.  Then I noticed that of the three wires the reciever uses I had reversed the outside two!  Damn.  Back at it.  Fortunately, it went a little quicker this time.

I cut a window in the back of the frame for the lcd to show thru.  I was still planning on buying a custom mat from a craft store but I wanted the sturdy wood back to attach the lcd’s controller board to.  I measured once…

twice…

thrice…

… and cut.  The hole was centered almost perfectly in the frame.  Though the cutout was not very smooth I knew a mat would hide this imperfection.  What it wouldn’t hide was the 1/16th inch thick particle board around the inner edge that the black backing was actually made of.  I thought about taking a black magic marker to color the wood but then it would look like black particle board – not very smooth.  What could I use to cover this?

Duct Tape!

What?

Yes, duct tape.  It is strong and easy to cut.  Besides, I will be covering it with a mat anyway.  I carefully layed the strips parallel and used an exacto knife to cut the inside edges and fold them back.  Once I was finished I kinda liked the look.  I stuck it behind the frame to get the over all effect.  Now I really dug it.  I’ve found my mat.  I won’t need to make a trip to a store and pay for a mat now.  That saves me time AND money.

Here is the finished frame sitting on my desk at the office.

I got this email from someone I trust, so I know it’s true. It is from another woman who is part of a group of women who exercise together daily. This happened near on of our ‘upscale’ neighborhoods – which just shows that you can’t let your guard down anywhere!

This happened at our Vineyards park!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to share with the team an incident that happened to a group of us ladies last night as a reminder to always be alert and aware and stay in a group.
A couple of us meet up at the Vineyards in the evening to train. Deb arrived early and some guy was talking to her and told her he did window tinting out of his home. He wanted her to get in his car so she could see how clear it was to see out when police or others would not be able to see in. She told him she was not interested and he eventually pulled into the gas station next to where we were parked. We decided to call the cops because we were afraid to leave our cars there in case he was scamming to break into our cars while we were running.
A cop took the tag number from us, he drove away and we started off on our walk.
About 10 minutes later the cop called us to come back as he had pulled him over.
This fellow had 3 loaded guns in his car, 2 knives and a cane that became a dagger when you took the end off. He also had his pant undone, coloring books in the back seat and a fake police badge and information about Deb’s car was written on a notepad on the front seat. Needless to say he was arrested but I just wanted to tell this story because many of us are out running and walking in the early morning or evening and even though you are in a “nice neighborhood”
there are weirdo’s out there. I advise to always stay with a group of people and like our mom’s told us when we were little, keep your eyes open for strangers.
(and for God’s sake don’t get in the car with them)
Be Safe Out there!

It makes me sick to think there are crazy people out to harm others.

Last night I made a little more progress on my digital picture frame.  I got the easyer stuff out of the way like cutting the wood I bought yesterday and making a box frame to house the electronics behind the picture frame.  To make the box I fit the pieces together, added some wood glue and clamped them down for about an hour.  Once the glue dried I added some hot glue to the inside corners to make sure it held. 

I wanted to relocate the IR reciever so it could still be used.  This meant it needed to desolder the three connections on the board and add a lenght of wire.  Not usually a big deal but, it didn’t go well at all.  I think a big part of my problem was that it was late in the evening and I was tired.  I tried several times to get all the solder out of the holes so I could pull the IR reciever off the board to no avail.  The thing wouldn’t budge and the board around the little solder points was starting to look like it was taking to much heat from my iron.  I tried to wiggle the IR component to see if it was loose at all and ended up breaking it off the board.  It was a stupid move that left me with maybe no way to solder the reciever to the wires.  There is only a very small bit of metal still on the reciever that I may be able to connect to.  I may need to buy a finer point for my iron to get it to work.  I am going to give it a try after work.  Other than that bit of stupidity I only have to get a mat made for the frame and I can put everything together.  I’m glad I got two sets of the electronics… the next one will go smoother .

The boys are doing well.  I talked to them last night for a few minutes.  It is still hard to get much of a dialog about how their day went.  I always ask how their day was and they always reply “Fine.”  I’m told that’s usually the way it goes with children at that age.  If I can get them laughing or joking then I know I can get a longer conversation.  I got the days in October off so I can fly up to see them.  I’m looking forward to that.

I’ve been having fun playing around with the format of this blog.  After taking the time to find a plugin that allowed me to switch my header images without changing my theme, I decided to change my theme.  I’ll probably monkey around with it for a little while then settle on something.  What I really need to do is finish the redesign of my website!  I now have a couple more projects I can add to it plus tons of photos of the boys (from this last visit and many that I have found again). 

Good thing there is always tomorrow

I noticed reciently that Duf’s blog added a new feature to his blog that randomly changes the header image each time a page is loaded.  Pretty cool, I thought, so I searched for the plugin.  The first one I found didn’t work for me and I did not immediately see where the error was.  Instead of trying to troubleshoot it I asked Shawn which plugin he was using (there are a few that do this).  He told me it was actually a theme that looks like the WordPress default theme (the one I am currently using) with the random image feature added.  He gave me the files and I uploaded them to my site.  After reading the readme file I decided to try to find another plugin to use instead.  If I were to go with the new theme I would have to re-add the custome features I am currently using (weather, post views, etc.). I came across this simple random header plugin created by Kamiel Martinet and decided to try it out.  It works great! I’ll be adding different header images as the mood strikes me.  One fun idea I had is to create some holiday specific header images so watch for those.  If you feel like it, let me know which images you like or don’t like.  Don’t worry, I can take it (and it doesn’t mean I’m going to change anything anyway )

Last night I came home to find two deliveries waiting for me.  One was the 256MB RAM I had ordered  for the Dell notebook.  That will max out the memory at 512 MB, which should be enough for the CarPuter project.  The other was the CPU fan retainer clip I ordered from CyberGuys.com – so I can move my current system to the new pc case and dump my liquid cooling setup.  This is my first time using this company and the have done a fine job – the item arrived safely and on time.

Before I got into any of that I wanted to hit Lowes to buy some small screws and nuts so I could lock down the 5″ LCD to it’s controller board.  I worry everytime I pick up the screen that the small, fragile ribbon cable that sends the signal from the controler board to the LCD will tear.  I wanted to mount is securely before I moved on with the project.  I also need to to find some material to construct the back part of the picture frame that will house the components.  Wondering around Lowes, I decided on using wood.  I purchased two pieces of .25″X2″X12″ wood.  Wood is the easiest for me to work with.  I figure I can cut this to make the sides of the box and hot glue the crap out of it to hold it together.  I also picked up a small piece of plexi to cover the back.  I hope to get some more work done on this project tonight.  I still need to cut the wood and get a mat for the frame to mount the 5″ LCD on to.  For that I may have to take it to a craft store.

Back at the house, I tried out the screws I just bought and they are a hair to big.  Almost close enough to try and force it but, I didn’t want to try.  I ended up just using electrical tape and hot glue to keep the screen tight.  It works and won’t be seen in the final product.

It was to late to get my tool out and cut and shape the wood, so I decided to drop the new memory stick in the Dell and make sure it was right.  I’m getting excited about the CarPuter project again.  I had all but given up on it until I came across this Dell laptop.