Haphazard Musings

Finally, They Check for Themselves!

2011-10-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

Happy 28th!

2010-09-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

So, this morning, I went out to fly my model airplane to commemorate it's 26th "birthday". I estimated its maiden flight to have taken place around Labor Day weekend in 1984 after recalling a journal entry I made back in 1984 (I believe). This evening, I just by chance came across a notebook with a journal entry from August 9, 1982, indicating that my new airplane was "basically completed." This is a different journal entry than the one I knew of, but this establishes the age of my airplane to be, not 26, but 28 years old, and likely first flew in August of 1982!

I flew a 28-year-old model airplane this morning! A model airplane that I built 28 years ago. How cool is that?

This must mean the other journal entry was referring to my second model airplane (which I also still have - another Balsa USA Swizzle Stick - it just needs a tail wheel, some wing foam tape and an engine and it's back in the air!). My third airplane no longer exists (rest in pieces), but I still have the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh planes I built: the Force One delta, the pink & blue & white Stick 40, the Eagle II (retired), and the Hobby Hut Stick 40 (grounded due to internal structural failure in the wing).

I had some problems with getting the engine dialed in this morning, due to some factors, including bubbles forming in the fuel tank from vibration. But I got a couple of good flights in. Then the air got tricky, and I packed it in and went home, picked up my wife, and we spent the rest of the day soaking in the Yuba River.

Another successful weekend under my belt.

The Power of Belief

2010-08-21T00:55:00.000-07:00

Religion is driving me up the wall!

I can remember a time when it was considered traitorous to talk shit about the president of the United States - especially "during time of war." Oh, wait - that was the right wing conservatives during the Bush administration.

I guess it's standard practice today - war or no war. Maybe this time it's a war between Islam and Christianity. Or maybe it's just because this country still has a few bigoted, racist people who will dig for any excuse to bury someone who they don't agree with.

A John Lennon song keeps coming to mind. "Imagine no religion..." "Imagine no countries..." Problem is, just like God, Allah, Zeus, Thor and thousands of other gods, you can imagine it all you want, but in the end, it's just wishful thinking.

I sure wish there was another planet I could move to. Hurry up and get to Mars, already!

Gifts from Planet Earth

2010-08-20T20:34:00.000-07:00

Voyager 2 was launched 33 years ago, today. It's out there, it's still functioning, and it's still sending back data. Search for Voyager and check out NASA's page on it if you think that's just the coolest thing.

Down here on Earth, I've been eating things that just mysteriously grow out of the ground, like magic. Things like cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, snap peas, more tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, squash, watermelon and even some more tomatoes!

I didn't like tomatoes before my wife planted a garden. They were OK on sandwiches, but then I never had a tomato that I picked myself. I've been eating a lot of them lately.

But first, there were cucumbers.

Lots and lots of cucumbers. We have had so many cucumbers, we've been giving them away, and some have ended up in the new composter we just got. These are pretty good cucumbers, and are perfect for making pickles, although we haven't made any pickles out of them. Maybe next time.

This picture is of one of the early cucumbers - beautiful and perfect. They're getting kind of odd now (oddly shaped, often bloated), but there's still an occasional nice one, like the one below.

I haven't picked it, yet. Probably tomorrow. We've still got so many in the house. Usually, there's always one on the counter, and my wife and I just cut pieces off of it throughout the day and eat it. But I had been picking and eating these for quite some time until I discovered there were TWO kinds of cucumbers growing!

These have pretty much run their course, it seems, but there's still some stubby ones popping up. I haven't eaten much of these, as I don't like them as well.

I didn't get any pictures worth showing of the lettuce, broccoli, green beans, grapes, onions, squash, jalapenos or watermelon (the grapes are not well, and the lettuce and broccoli are rather unrecognizable - I think they're really winter crops - and we finished off the snow peas - or were they snap peas? - early in the season, as those were among my favorite - RIGHT OFF THE VINE!).

But the one crop that surprised me the most were the tomatoes. OMG, the tomatoes!

It is difficult to get perspective here, but the tomatoes are growing wild, and there are way more tomatoes hidden in here than you can see (the cherry ones are hiding in the back). Well, kind of everything is growing wild in this garden, as we don't know the first thing about pruning...yet. There are other things in this shot - the tomatoes have overgrown the green beans on the left, and the jalapenos standing up in the back, and are encroaching on the squash on the right. I have been eating tomatoes (the small cherry ones) fresh off the plant every day now for a month. And there's a whole lot more to come than I have eaten thus far! The big ones are starting to ripen.

I don't like the big ones as much as the little ones, but the little ones are just ... candy. They're candy. I swear, some of them taste like grapes. I started eating salads rather frequently (almost daily) JUST as an excuse to eat the tomatoes. And if you know anything about me, your jaw would drop to the floor in disbelief. Why?

Because I don't like to eat.

Amazing, but true. But I'm finding it is so much fun to go out and check the garden every day. There's a huge family of quail that I find in there every so often - they dig around in the dirt, and probably eat bugs. There's also a lot of tiny little frogs that live in the garden, which is probably why nothing has been decimated by aphids or tomato worms this year (today was the first time I saw any bad bugs, and they're attacking a single green bean plant). And I've even named some of the lizards I see frequently running around (Norna, Gureld, Dinka and Slunk).

Just kidding. I've only named one. That way, whenever I see a lizard I can say, "there's Norna!"

Fortunately, the deer have not gotten in, although they have eaten some things that have managed to grow out through the fence. And it appears that the rabbits found a way in just yesterday for the first time, as is evident in this picture:

How dare they eat our tomatoes!!! But then, just look at them. How could they resist?

The gate into the garden is the vulnerable point. We have to add some screen or chicken wire or something to keep out the smaller animals. Including our cat, who likes to do its business in there sometimes.

Anyway, it's quite an experience to see things just grow out of the ground, and then to pick them off and eat them. Just like that! It kind of brings you back to nature. I never thought I would enjoy a garden. Well, it's a whole lot more enjoyable this year now that everything is on an automatic drip irrigation system!

Tomatoes anyone?

I Got Nothing

2010-08-16T21:58:00.001-07:00

I know it has been a while. Not much to blog about. I've been working. I'd show you the garden, but I have no pictures. I've been eating tomatoes from it every day for a month now, and the squash and cucumbers just keep coming. The grapes are sad, but the melons are happier now that they have some shade. The broccoli and lettuce are just weird, and I'm not sure what's going on with the asparagus, and only my wife eats onions - and she's got a LOT of them.

But at least there is a Questor Project update or two.

For the Love of Flying

2010-07-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

If you are on YouTube, you may be aware of the global film making project that producer Kevin Macdonald is working on, to document a day in the life on Earth on July 24. Well, I took my video camera out, along with my usual RC model airplane, and shot the following short video:

That's what I did yesterday. I'm now officially a member of the flying club out there.

Hot Flying Day

2010-07-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

I went flying again today. But this time was a little different. This time I strapped a tiny video camera to my airplane:

No comments on the mounting hardware - I used what I had on hand. :)

It was a great day, as most flying days are. It was quite warm (dare I say hot?) and with a light (well, a little bit gusty) breeze, but all in all a good day. Any day is a good day when the plane comes home in one piece.

Here's a sample of the flying that I did. I don't have video editing software, currently, so you may want to skip ahead about 2:00. You can see other videos on my YouTube channel.

The video is actually pretty crappy, due to vibration issues and conversion to Flash video, so you won't hurt my feelings if you don't watch it. It's a bit over eight minutes long!

Enjoy!(?)

Oh! And don't forget to check out the updates on the Questor Project!

Questor in Living Color

2010-07-07T19:41:00.001-07:00

FYI -
The Questor project log is now being documented in video format.

Beautiful Days

2010-07-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

July 4 was an absolutely beautiful day. Warm, but not hot (at least in the shade), and a perfect day to spend at the lake.

So that's exactly what I did.

My wife and I rented a 17 foot utility boat for the day and just hung out at the lake. We spent most of the time in the boat, parked in one little shady cove or another, just hanging out and enjoying the day away from the daily grind. We had a nice picnic style lunch. She took a lot of pictures - which I haven't seen, yet - and also mysteriously spent quite some time taking close-up pictures of her own eyes. I guess she was trying to get a certain look. I'm not sure what it was all about, but it was good for some laughs.

I spent some time laying flat on the bottom of the boat (fortunately, my wife brought some nice cushions to lay on), as my back is still recovering. But the day on the lake was actually good for it, despite having to raise and lower the motor and moor the boat to shore, etc. The exercise - and the rest! - felt good, and I slept better that night than I have slept in a very long time.

It was a day to reflect on all that has come before me to make it possible to have the freedom to enjoy such a beautiful day. It was truly a memorable Independence Day - one I won't soon forget.

Oh, and before I forget, there's an update to the Questor project.

Happy days!

Some Like it Hot

2010-06-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Air Conditioning in my home has not been working all season. Until today. It was hot today. I moved my office down to the basement for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it is cooler down here. But it's really not very much underground, so it doesn't stay all that cool all summer long. And as of today, it has been starting to feel a tad warm down here.

But after running around in circles, trying to get the A/C company to respond, I finally got hold of someone who talked me through a couple of things, and we narrowed down what the problem was, and I fixed it myself. The house is now cooling off, the cats will be happier, and I can move out of the basement...if I want to. I like it down here - this is where all my stuff is, and the cats can't bother me. But my wife misses me (when she's home), and it is kind of lonely down here.

Apparently, bugs are attracted to the ozone, or something about high voltage contacts that spark when they snap open and close, because they like to hang out on the open contacts when the relay is open. Talk about debugging. I just had to clean the ants or spiders or earwigs or whatever was camping out in there, and now the compressor is running, and the house is cooling off. Yippie!

Oh, and I did a tiny bit of work on Questor yesterday. Mostly updating the checklist (which still has a long way to go), but progress nonetheless. I was also happy to open up an old box and discover my (wife's) long lost tee square ruler that I like so much - the 24-inch long one. They're not cheap. And I was also taken on a trip down memory lane when I opened a box of old model airplane plans - plans for planes I have, as well as for planes I've had (one, anyway).

I also have a HUGE amount of balsa wood in another box that I apparently consolidated from a number of other boxes at some point in the past. Looks like I better get busy building stuff!

Questor Revival

2010-06-27T01:44:00.001-07:00

Questor returns!

A Real Floater

2010-06-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest video sent to me by a friend of mine who designed and built this little beauty.

Enjoy!

I Have No Ailerons!

2010-06-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

I forgot I had this blog, too, so I'm firing it up again:

Bill's Flight Log

All my R/C flying updates will go there.

Also, for those of you who were following the Questor project a few years ago, I am thinking about reviving it. I will post alerts here and on my flight log blog about any Questor project activity so you'll know when to check out the progress. :)

Hello Blue Skies

2010-06-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I actually got to fly sooner than expected. I went to check out another flying club yesterday evening, and I got in three short, but well appreciated, flights. It has been too long, and I was quite rusty, but I'll have my thumbs back in no time.

I brought my cameras, but didn't get any pictures, except for just a few that I shot just before going home. Here's the field where I flew:

I didn't like taking off or landing on a grass runway. Yeah, it's a bit more forgiving if you have an incident, but I had a few incidents just because it was grass! It offers no ground control, and I can't do touch-and-go's (my favorite maneuver). I'm not sure I'll join the club or not, but I don't have a lot of options out here.

Here's a shot of my plane after a successful day of flying. A successful day of flying is always one in which I bring home my airplane in one piece.

I need to get some fuel. I'm going to another flying club tomorrow to check them out, and I was hoping to get some fuel today, but I completely forgot, and now it's probably too late to get to the hobby shop in Marysville in time. Besides, I don't think my back would survive the trip today.

I really hurt my back a couple days ago, and I thought it was going to literally end me yesterday, but I wasn't about to let anything to stop me from flying after all I had done in the past week or two to prepare for it. It actually turned out to be good therapy for my back to go flying!

My first stop on my way out to the field was the chiropracter at 4:30 pm. He straightened me out, which helped a LOT, and I walked around the parking lot afterward, then headed out to the field. I drove for about 15 minutes and stopped at K-Mart to pick up some printer paper, so got to stretch my back there - that car seat is the worst. Then drove for another 15 minutes to the field and got the chance to walk a LOT out there, which was good. But then there was also considerable stooping and bending, but I kept it to a minimum. It was the drive back home that killed my back again, especially after waiting an additional 10 minutes in the car for road construction. Argh!

I spent a couple hours with an ice pack on my back after I got home, and today my back still hurts, but is feeling on the mend. I hope it won't give me any trouble tomorrow. I just can't sit for more than about 30 minutes at a time (if that!). But at least it feels like it's getting better. Now if I can just fix the mattress I'm sleeping on...

Tomorrow is another (flying) day!

Wish me fun. :)

Flying Again

2010-06-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is...

This is the first airplane I ever built. I built it back around 1983 or 1984. The engine that is on it is also one of the original engines that I flew it with. I actually sold this engine at one point, and I was so nostalgic about it, that I bought it back. The guy was very understanding about it, and he had a rather large engine collection, so he was happy to oblige.

And I'm happy to have it back. I fired up the engine over the weekend, and it ran beautifully! If I had a place to fly at the time, I would have flown that day. Although, my batteries are very old, and they're not looking too good on the conditioner, so it looks like I have to buy some new ones.

But other than that, this airplane is ready to fly again. I'm ready to fire this baby up! (That comment goes out to the Hobby Hut crew)

Hopefully, I'll even get some video of the flight(s) this weekend. I'm also happy because I found out about another flying club that allows night flying. Woo hoo! AND...they also do float flying...AND I have a float kit that I never opened (until last night) that has been sitting on my shelf for probably ten years. SO...one of these days, I'm going to do some night flying off the lake!

I can't wait!

In the meantime, enjoy this video shot recently by a friend of mine:

Life on the Horizon

2010-06-12T22:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a grueling year of heads-down software development, and I've paid the price. I have been away from my hobbies for far too long. But that is changing. I renewed my American Modeler's Association insurance, so now I can fly my model airplanes at any AMA sanctioned field, and anywhere else that I need protection. I dug out the Questor project again and realized just how many design detail questions remain unanswered - plus, it is hard to know where to pick up on the project. I'm also missing a small but critical piece, which I will have to re-create when I get back to it. However, that is such a daunting project that I decided I simply want to keep that one on the shelf while I get back to the basics.

I dug out boxes of engines and parts and my flight boxes and looked at a couple of my airplanes. Everything is getting invaded by dust and spiders - and I've seen a mouse in the basement, plus quite a few mouse trailings, so I have placed a live catch trap down there hoping to relocate the little critters. I used to have mice as pets when I was a kid, so I can't kill them. I zapped a couple already with this horrible trap that electrocutes them, but I just can't turn that switch back on again. I'm just a softy, what can I say?

I've got pretty much everything I need to fly again - I just need to get batteries in order. They've been sitting around getting old, so I have to see about getting new ones or getting the ones I've got into shape.

I have five airplanes in near flight-ready condition, and I just need some fuel and a place to fly. I am on the hunt for a flying site, which is not easy to find at the base of the Sierra Nevadas. But I am determined. One thing I would love to do is open my box of floats that I have had on my shelf for probably ten years or more, and build them and put them on a plane. I live five minutes from a lake, and there's plenty of room to fly there. I'd love to get a little boat and take a plane out and fly around the lake at night. I can't wait to make my first water landing at night.

I'm headed down to the basement now to see if I've got what I need to test run some engines tomorrow. I'm also going to try my hand at mixing my own diesel fuel for my diesel engines. But that will come in time. First things first - I've got to get back to the basics.

Rube Goldberg's Psychic Machine

2010-05-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

I got my wife good a few weeks ago. It's too bad it wasn't on April 1, though, or that would have been just too perfect.

But I got her good.

She was down in Sacramento, visiting a friend, and she called me on her cell phone just as she was getting to her friend's place. But she didn't know she called me. As often happens, her phone bounces around in her purse - and she never locks the keypad, despite my insistence - so, occasionally, I get a muffled phone call from her, from the inside of her purse.

I could hear her talking with her friend, but could not make out any actual words, and I tried my best to make a noise loud enough for her to hear me, but to no avail. Then the acoustics changed, as if she walked into a corridor or a hallway, and I could make out a few words in her conversation. All I heard was her friend say that there was this Rube Goldberg machine that she should see.

I decided to hang up and call her back, to tell her that her phone had dialed me up...again...but when I called back, there was no answer, and I hung up without leaving a voice message. Then I thought I should call back and leave a voice message so she would know that she had inadvertently called me again.

Then it hit me. I realized she had no idea that she had called me, and I was about 99% certain that she had never heard of a Rube Goldberg machine before, so as her phone was ringing, the nature of the voice message I was about to leave was taking on a very different form.

When the device beeped, my unrehearsed message was totally spontaneous and in the moment, so came off very genuine. I said, "hey! It's me. I just had a major breakthrough in psychic phenomena and I'm doing an experiment and I wanted to check with you. I know this can't possibly be right, but are you by any chance looking at a Rube Goldberg machine right now? Call me back. Bye."

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. When she finally got her message, some minutes later, she was actually watching this Rube Goldberg machine on a YouTube video with her friend. She had never even heard of Rube Goldberg, so imagine her utter and total shock when she got my message!

She called me back and was so excited that she put me on speakerphone so she and her friend could hear all about my breakthrough in psychic phenomena. In a moment of anti-climactic disappointment after disclosing my secret, however, the discussion suddenly turned into her wanting me dead.

Although I can never raise the subject with her again, it was so worth it. Whenever I need a good laugh, I can just think about Rube Goldberg.

April Fool!

2010-04-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry if I gave you a scare, but I couldn't resist.

I'm alive and well and fully functional. Well, I don't know about fully, but I'm intact. At least until you get hold of me, that is. LOL

That's Life

2010-04-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly six months now since I lost my legs. It has been a difficult adjustment. Besides the fact that I may never regain full use of my left hand, which has slowed down my typing speed considerably. How ironic that we built a ramp to the entrance of my new home, and included wide doorways, thinking we might one day have to accommodate an elderly parent in a wheelchair.

Now I just need a ramp down to the basement so I can wheel myself down there to work on my hobbies. I'm thinking of getting back into flying my airplanes. I am determined to get my hand working well enough to be able to build things again, but at least I am able to manage with most things.

It's nice to be home again, anyway. I've got a couple more surgeries to go, and hopefully that will be the last I'll have to see of the hospital for a long time. But I will be seeing a lot of the physical therapists, for sure. I always wanted an excuse for getting more exercise and to get out of the job that was driving me into the ground - I guess I should be more careful about what I ask for.

But I'm not complaining - I'm thankful to be alive, as is my wife and my kitties. Got lots of time now to reflect on things and make new plans for the future. Looking forward to getting back to my hobbies. And I'm thinking of learning to juggle - it might take me forever, but the more I give my left hand to do, the more incentive it will have to improve.

Well, that's enough typing for today. I just got back from physical therapy and need to rest now.

I Hate Internet Explorer

2009-10-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

Web Developers:

View the source of this blog entry and feel free to add the following code to the end of your pages. Let's deter people from using Internet Explorer until Microsoft simply gives up on it like they should have done so many years ago! And please encourage other web developers to follow suit.

P.S. If you are not using Internet Explorer, you won't see anything below this line.

When a Tree Falls, and You're There!

2009-10-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken just a few days before the incident I am about to describe. It is significant in that it is, as you might say, a "before" picture. You may not see much in this picture - I mean, the sky is still there - but the one prominent feature in this story, is, obviously, the tree.

A few days after I took this photo, while my wife was working in the Bay area, I was home in the evening, standing outside, watering her garden. I had not been outside in a while, due to being tied to my computer trying to meet a deadline, so the coincidence amazes me to this day that I happened to be outside at the time this happened.

It wasn't a huge event, but it was a new experience for me. As I was out watering the garden, I heard this loud pop. It sounded like my neighbor down the hill maybe was outside smacking a rug with a baseball bat or something. And then there was another one. And another. Pop! Pop! Smack!

I looked over to see if I could figure out what was going on down there, then suddenly the unexpected happened. There was a loud series of cracks and pops that sounded more like one collective crackle, and the one big (leaning) tree we had on our property just rolled over on its side like it was laying down to take a nap. CRRRAAAAACCCKKK!! SPLOOSH!!

It was really rather anti-climactic, as I always imagined big trees falling with big crashing thuds. And although the initial popping was somewhat loud, the tree just looked like it eased itself to the ground as though it were tired and sitting down to take a rest.

I felt sad for the tree, and felt sad that our big tree was, in a single moment, simply gone. It was home to squirrels as the base was littered with pieces of pine cones that the squirrels strewed about as they dug out the pine nuts inside. We later had someone come to cut the tree up for removal, and I counted the rings on the trunk, and the tree apparently was nearly 65 years old. Perhaps it was ready for retirement. More than 60 years this tree stood (leaning) there - it leaned quite a bit, so 60+ years was a surprising life span to me - yet it happened to fall one day while I happened to be standing outside in view of it, a year after I moved into my new home.

It has been a very dry summer, and I am convinced that had we thought to water the tree, it would still be standing. The roots were very dry. Apparently, they simply didn't have the strength to withstand the weight of the leaning tree above them, and subsequently, something finally gave way, and it was all down hill from there.

One reason is fell down so "gently" is because it had two other trees to break its fall.

We'll probably be removing those as well.

The tree fell right over top of our septic system, but miraculously, all the branches completely missed all of the tank covers, except for one, which spanned across the top of the main cover doing no damage. The only damage was to a piece of protective plastic screen atop a vent pipe. Fortunately, it also missed the main control box.

Here you can see the mighty roots that supported the tree all these years, and the earth that was disturbed around them as the tree toppled over.

And that's the story of the big tree that fell on our property. Goodbye, big tree! You'll be missed!

A Riddle. Sort Of.

2009-09-06T03:07:00.001-07:00

What goes: Smack! ... Smack! ... "what the f---?" ... Pop! Snap! ... Craaaaaack-CRASH!!! Followed by, "holy sh--!" ?

Hint: It happened at my new house.

Answer in my next blog entry...with pictures, of course.

This Blog is Boring

2009-08-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

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No Life at All

2009-06-07T21:38:00.001-07:00

I have no life of my own anymore. I'll post an update when I am awarded a minute of my own.

I think I pissed off a good friend - we got into an email discussion about religion - and I haven't heard from him in several days. My mom is having a knee replaced this week. And I'm searching for a way to make my everyday life satisfying in some way, as I seem to have lost interest in just about everything. Perhaps I'll become the next Uni-bomber.

At least it's good to know there's someone out there peeking in on me once in a while. I feel pretty isolated out here and miss having friends to do stuff with, like fly model airplanes or make movies or generally blow things up.

My eyesight is starting to go, and I have no muscle tone left. If it wasn't for the stairs, I'd probably be a puddle on the floor. >sigh< Something's got to give. Soon!

Is it worth sacrificing my life just to pay my mortgage and bills?

PAY ME! I'M A BILL! :)

I guess if I'm going to have any hope of winning the lottery, I ought to start playing it.

Sorry for the depressing post. Things should improve after I take a vacation. Although, I just wish I knew what to do with it.

Not Much

2009-04-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I have posted here. There's probably nobody reading this blog anyway.

This entry will be true to the name of this blog - a haphazard musing...or two.

I am working on a Web-based social networking module that is to become part of the enterprise software product that the company I work for developed, so I have recently joined Facebook to see what the craze is all about. I'm not sure I get it, though I think I went through that phase (in a different way) back in the '80s when bulletin board systems were popular (otherwise known as a BBS). It reminds me of adolescence. Fun, but not very productive.

I can remember when "picture phones" were practically a science fiction concept, and I can remember when an elite few began carrying bulky mobile phones in their cars, yet it seemed there were very few people even interested in the concept. I can also remember being approached by a stranger while I was getting money out of an "All-Time Teller Machine" that my bank had just installed, and he asked me what the machine was for. I remember being one of the few who actually used it at the time, wondering why all those people inside the bank preferred to stand in line.

Perhaps people just didn't trust machines.

Now it seems that if you don't have a cell phone with a camera in it (and perhaps if you also can't get online with it, play your favorite MP3 tunes, or send text messages), you're just not cool - an old fart, perhaps. If you don't have a cell phone, an ATM card, and an account on MySpace, Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube, you simply do not belong in the 21st century. In fact, how many times have you heard the phrase already, "that's so 20th century!"

I see updates in people's Twitter and Facebook accounts so frequently that I sometimes wonder if they actually live inside their computer - in a virtual world somewhere. About the only entry I seem to have time to write is one that says, "I'm writing another entry here." I mean, would anybody really care what I was actually doing in between making posts online? Who has time to read it all? What good does it do? And who cares?

Are we creating a culture of virtual voyeurs? Or a culture of self-centered exhibitionists? Or is it really providing an avenue for social interaction to bring people together? Just where is this all leading to?

So many questions. Not the least of which, however, is why are cell phones so f-ing small? The one I have now is so sleek, that they forgot to add a feature to make it possible to open the damn thing. I actually missed a call once or twice because I could not get the lid to flip open. And I have dropped the phone a couple of times in the process. I have since figured out a way to hold it so that I can open it, though it takes both hands, and if I can avoid hitting the buttons on the side of the phone, I'm doing well.

What's the point of the freakin' lid, anyway, if they have active buttons on the side of the phone?! I can't put the phone in my pocket without it either taking a (black) picture, or dialing someone (my birth mother was happy that I called her the other day, even though it was entirely by accident).

I hate cell phones. I hate everything about them, except for one thing: it's nice to know that if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere (which is basically where I live), I can call AAA. Assuming they can understand a word I say.

I always thought the future of computing was to become mobile - get off the desktop! But I'm not sure that combining it with vocal communication is the way to go (though I see that as but one feature of a mobile device). Perhaps one day someone will come up with a way to fix all the issues with voice (lag time, cut-outs, dropped calls, etc.), then maybe that won't be so annoying. I'd be happy with simplex. "Hi, this is Bill, over." "Hey, Bill, how's it going? Over." Then you don't get mixed signals from non-verbal communication - you know, the long pauses between responses that makes people start thinking negatively. I think they're called "Cingular moments" now?

Anyway, I am just astonished that Microsoft continues to try to improve their desktop operating system experience. It seems, though, about all they can do is create flashy graphics and impose annoying features that take up 16GB of disk space and 1GB of RAM just to give you access to your files without offering any real tools to help you live your life. You know, DO stuff.

When is all this technology actually going to start ENHANCING my life experience? To help me think better, remember things, perform tasks, do my chores, save money and time, etc. I guess once they become self-aware. But then if that happens, perhaps they'll want nothing to do with us.

I just wish I could find a way to make them earn money for me. Maybe I can tap into this social networking market somehow. I'm sure I can come up with a totally frivolous idea that wastes time and serves no purpose that people would happily pay $5 to play with.

Well, enough about that. How about I move on to musing #2?

I was on YouTube yesterday and came across a video of some guy vehemently spewing about the stupidity of some bumper stickers and the people that put them on their cars. And this guy was SERIOUS. Almost angry. I think his underlying message was, "how can these people be SO STUPID?!" But then, there's a lot of that kind of crap on YouTube.

But it made me think about some of the stupid bumper stickers that I have seen and the sort of judgmental thoughts it stirred up in my mind about how they must reflect on the driver. And there are two that really stuck out in my mind.

The first one was, "I hate stupid people!" My first reaction to reading that was, "how stupid!" And I laughed, because I thought this person must not know how much he hates himself. I mean, what kind of a statement is that? NOBODY is perfect, and EVERYBODY does something that at least can be perceived as stupid from time to time. And there are, truly, some truly stupid people in the world, but the bumper sticker made a statement that this person had absolutely no compassion for them.

Now, if the bumper sticker read, "I hate stupid drivers," then I may have been able to relate to it. But even I know that I cannot judge a person based on a single mistake. Not all stupid driving maneuvers are made by stupid people. It's just that there are thousands of people on the road (and some of them truly do not belong there), so you're bound to see people make mistakes. And it is the truly stupid drivers that stand out, that make us associate ALL bad moves to the driver being stupid. But now I'm on a tangent.

"I hate stupid people!" So what does that say about YOU?

The second bumper sticker that stands out in my mind was...and I quote:

"If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then why are they made of meat?"

I'm not even sure I know how to respond to that one. It's an argument that is trying to use the premise as its conclusion. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Turn it around and it says the same thing: "If meat wasn't meant to be eaten, then why is it made of animals?" It says nothing about whether either meat or animals are MEANT to be eaten. We CAN eat meat - after all, our digestive systems "know" how to break down meat. But that doesn't mean we're MEANT to eat meat. That implies intent from somewhere, which could only lead to a debate of a religious nature.

Perhaps I will have a bumper sticker made that reads, "if onions were meant to be eaten, then why are they made of onions?" I can't eat onions. I won't eat onions. In my opinion, onions should not exist, much less be eaten. I simply cannot hold anything down if I get onion in my mouth. Yet, I know people who actually enjoy eating onions in their food. People who think they actually taste good. People who don't go into dry heaves long after they've expelled the contents of their stomachs after biting into an onion - who, in fact, don't even gag!

It is truly a mystery to me, but I hardly think anything is MEANT to be anything, one way or the other. Everything simply is what it is, it serves whatever purpose others who interact with it decree that it serves, and some people can deal with it, and others can't. I think it is called "life." And life has whatever meaning you give to it.

With that, I have to say goodnight, for I must rejuvenate my body through sleep so that I may continue this cycle another day.

Enjoy whatever comes your way!

Photo Disaster

2009-02-22T17:09:00.001-08:00

It appears I royally screwed up somewhere when transferring pictures from one computer to another. I'm usually pretty careful about how I conduct my transfers, making sure I am copying files to the right place on the right computer before DELETING them from the original location. But, in a horrendous series of events that is prime fodder for the Computer Circus (but probably will never make it there), a ton of photos have wound up absolutely missing.

Gone. Finito. Exit, stage left.

To top it off, the one computer I had any hope of finding them on with a data recovery tool just had three gigabytes of data dumped onto it, ensuring that no form of data resurrection known to man could possibly retrieve anything now.

So. What does this mean? I mean, beside me being so pissed that I don't need to run the furnace in the house anymore?

It means I've lost a lot of pictures.

Progress pictures of the house.

Pictures of people and animals and things.

Pictures I didn't want to lose.

Ah, but then again, in five billion years, the entire planet will be lost to the dying Sun, so in the overall grand scheme of things, it doesn't really mean anything.

But it means something to me.

Anyway, on a lighter note, what do you think of the music that is playing? Hopefully, it's not using the horrid Windows Media Player on your end, or it will sound like crap (if it's anything like mine) due to this STUPID auto-volume-adjust feature that it has (more like a deliberately induced bug to make sure no one uses their products anymore).

Ah, perhaps I should wait until I am in a better mood to present this in a better light. But then again, it seems appropriate, since my wife is always good about bringing me back out of the darkness into the light. You see, this song... My wife made it. That's her singing. And I'm not sure, but she may have even played one of the instruments on it, or done some of the sequencing. I don't know, but the best part is, she is getting back into her music (after 14 years!), so hopefully the world will soon be graced with her musical talents.

In a series of tragedies much greater than the loss of my pictures, all her studio recordings were lost. All she has is a few old demo tapes - on cassette. What is playing now is a song from one of those tapes. It is the first step toward putting her music online. Now she just has to start creating some new stuff.

I can't wait!!!

Forks in the Road

2009-01-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

The division between people in this country has never been so clear as in the difference between these two blog entries:

As with all such extreme viewpoints, I suspect reality lies somewhere in the middle. Time will tell.

At least my wife and I are doing our part to help turn things around. We're stimulating the economy by spending all our money on this freakin' house. Ha!

Wanna see? Well, tough, because it's going to be a while. Time is once again scarce.

Circus, Circus!

2009-01-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

New entry on the Computer Circus blog. This was not the update I promised I would make a few weeks ago, but if you like that blog at all, you might like the new update. Just something fun I'm playing with.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T02:45:00.000-08:00

2009 is going to be great. I feel it.

I kicked off the new year with a couple of bangs around midnight. I found a box of fireworks that I have had since I was about 14 or 15 years old (I'm a bit of a pack rat). I lit a couple of the smaller ones, but they were duds, so I thought I would try the big ones. These were bigger than M-80s, and probably aren't made anymore (I got them in Mexico). But they worked.

Wow did they work.

I set off two of them (I have five left). Then I took the only, single bottle rocket that I had, leaned it up against a log, and lit the fuse. I didn't think it would work. I have had this thing for like 30 years! The fuse burned slowly, sputtered a bit like it wanted to go out, then, suddenly, FSSSST! The little bottle rocket took to the night sky, arched over the land, then popped.

It worked! The little rocket that could.

2009 is going to be a great year.
:)

Get The Lead Out

2008-12-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

I'm sick of the Republicans whining about how bad things are going to be once Obama takes office. As if it is up to one man to fix everything.

This is a country, people. It's up to us, We The People, to make positive change. Obama's not going to do it alone, and it's a LEADER we need right now, not a fall guy, and if anybody can inspire a nation into action, I think Obama can.

If the Republicans want to hang on dearly to their grim view of the future and fill their lives with doom and gloom, then I say let them have it. This country seems so divided that perhaps it should split up. Create an East and West (Divided States?) and make the Republicans live in and rule their side, and everyone else live in and rule their side, and then we can compare to see who's system works best.

Wouldn't that be fun?

I can only speak for myself, but I'm tired of living in the Divided States of America, and this country is sorely in need of something to unite the people again. The every-man-for-himself philosophy just doesn't work and only leads to greed and government bail-outs (that don't solve, much less address, the problem).

I think the vision that the founders of this country had in mind when they formed this government, was to have a government in place as an entity to keep things from getting out of control, not to be IN control. Hence, "We The People, by the people, for the people..." Sounds to me it was intended that the people of this country decide how it is to be run, and that the government REPRESENTATIVES actually REPRESENT the interest of the people.

Unfortunately, greed does not stop at money, but includes power as well, and subsequently, this country has suffered from greedy, power hungry "leaders" who couldn't give a flying fuck about what the people want, as long as the people THINK their leaders are acting in the people's best interests.

I don't know if Obama is any different. But I get the sense that he is, and we can surely hope that he is. Let's just hope he listens to his advisors and to the voice of the people and their representatives (who might actually represent them) and gives some power back to the people where it belongs.

I for one choose to believe the next few years will be good ones - because I'm going to do what I can to MAKE it that way! What you focus on expands. So, those who want to continue falling into the abyss (or who so desire to continue creating new fissures to fall into), pay no mind to them and let them fall on their own.

Let there be no lemmings. It's time to take responsibility for your freedoms, people, and do something about it. Leaders cannot change anything - they can only inspire us to make changes. We have the power, and don't let any greedy, power-hungry nay sayer take that away from you or make you believe otherwise.

Live life empowered!

Smile at someone and see where it goes.

Merry Christmas to All

2008-12-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

After all, that's what it is.

:)

Home Improvement

2008-12-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update and a sneak peek ahead. We've had some more tile work done. Remember the vertical strip of Hardibacker (the gray stuff) on the back wall of the shower? Well, now there is a waterfall of stones covering it up. I believe there is some additional similar treatments coming. Oh, and we need to select the grout color soon, too! By the way, the blue you see on the bench seat is some protective plastic covering the tile there.

And here is the shower inspector forming an opinion about the tile work that was done on the floor and on the dam. We're still waiting for her approval.

Here is a peek at the tub (or at least where the tub will go). The face has been tiled here and is looking rather nice. Notice the meandering wires on the seat area. This is a heating coil that will warm up the tiles so my wife has a comfy place to sit when she's not actually in the tub.

And here is the face of the tub again, this time with tile on it. You can see there is a set of heating coils up against one part of the wall. There will be some interesting tile work done there, providing a nice warm back rest to lean against. Notice that much of the tile around the rim of the tub area has been set.

And here is a sneak peek at the gas fireplace. We're out of money, so it may not get done right away, but we're working on it.

We're also trying out some cabinet extensions to decide on what angle they should be at so the cabinet guy can build the pieces needed to put them together. Next, the counter tops we currently have are going to be replaced with something a bit more custom, and nicer looking.

Speaking of formica, the house has been littered with hundreds of formica (and tile) samples. It has been hard to escape them, and my wife can't stop obsessing over the selection process. She complains about me standing in the kitchen when I eat, though I'm not exactly sure where I'm supposed to sit down, yet.

All these changes! Most of it is going to be done by Christmas...we hope. We're getting tired of house projects! I just finished installing all the outlets and switches in the basement, so we have power down there now. Woo hoo! It's all in a day's work.
Tomorrow's another day... (and this was yesterday's sunset)

On the House

2008-12-07T17:47:00.001-08:00

OK, so an update on the house has been requested. Here's the scoop: any and all updates I provide will be interior updates, only, until after January 2010.

We've got four things going at once right now: the master bathroom, the basement, the kitchen and the living room (fireplace). This entry will peek in on the bathroom with a look at the shower only.

Here is how the shower basically looked since the house was "completed" in May (completed enough to move in). The master bathroom had only a toilet and a temporary pedestal sink, so the small bathroom downstairs was used as the primary bathroom in the interim. The small bathroom downstairs could practically fit into the space we have reserved just for the shower in the master bathroom.

Some plumbing was done - someone goofed and built a 2x4 plumbing wall instead of 2x6 (perhaps originally there was to be no plumbing in this wall), so it was tight, but it got done. A window also was framed into the wall - eventually, it will get filled with glass blocks.

The tile people seem to be extremely slow, but they are also extremely meticulous and do an excellent job. Here, they have prepared the walls with a liner and Hardibacker is being applied. Additionally, the floor was being prepared, though there isn't much of it to see in this image. Note, also, the addition of a ceiling lamp, and a reduction in the size of the window.

For a long time leading up to this point, the tile selection process had been in progress. Just about every tile store around the area and around the SF Bay area was visited, with many samples acquired. We joke that a room could be tiled using just the tile samples, although no two tiles would look alike. Nothing has been more agonizing than to endure this tile selection process, although my participation in the selection process has amounted to little more than saying, "that looks good to me," or the occasional, "I liked the other one better."

I'm afraid I cannot describe or explain what the final tile configuration will be, for two reasons: 1) it's all in my wife's head, and 2) it is not simple. I figure the element of surprise will not only work out better for this blog, but also the pictures will speak for themselves. Hang tight, though - there's still a couple more weeks left to go before it's done!

Here was a process in which I did have considerable participation in (over a four-day period): figuring out the layout of the tiles that were acquired. This is an amazingly tedious process. My wife made a comment to the tile guy that she would spend an hour over the weekend to figure it out, while I was silently standing behind her, smiling at the tile guy and shaking my head. We knew better. It took hours and hours and hours of arranging the tiles to figure out how to make the patterns work.

We did the best we could and eventually arrived at a layout we were both rather pleased with (as were the tile people). Here you can kind of see just a small segment of the pattern arrangement. This segment of the wall somewhat resembles the surface of the moon, which we thought was pretty cool.

And here you can see the pattern up on the wall. You may even notice if you look closely that the pattern seen in the previous image was not the final arrangement. But the wall looks fantastic - and there's nothing like the feel of travertine.
You may also notice that the back wall appears to be lighter - almost white. That is because the back wall is a different tile - brushed Ankara, or something like that. The floor is even a different tile. And this is only the beginning. Wait until you see how it all comes together (in a future installment). I'm anxious to see it, myself, since I don't quite fully understand how it's going to work, yet (but it's going to be cool).

And here is the other wall. It is really hard to see in pictures, but the walls came out really beautiful. The glass blocks are not in the window, yet, but that's happening soon. Plus, we have to put a special watertight fixture over the can light in the ceiling.
You may have noticed that on the back wall, there is a long vertical block of Hardibacker where you might otherwise expect to see tile. I'm not even going to try to explain what is happening here, other than to say there is going to be some tile overlaid on top. Like I said, you'll see how it all comes together in a later entry.

You may have also noticed a bench in the back. This will be covered by larger pieces of the same kind of tile as the side walls (the travertine). It's going to be one sweet bench, which is mostly where my wife will hang out when she takes her soothing, hot showers. I have a feeling that it might be so inviting that I just may join her. :)
Here, you also get a peek at the blue tile that lines the floor.

That's it for this installment! Stay tuned to see how the shower turns out. In future installments, you'll also get to see the bathtub, the vanity, the bathroom floor, and even the commode. Then, after that, I'll take you down to the basement, then into the kitchen, and lastly take a rest by the fireplace. Mmmmm.

Y'all come back now!

Never Mind

2008-12-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

Forget I mentioned creating another blog. I never update the ones I have, and I think this one is personal enough.

Some Things May Change

2008-11-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Well, the moral minority has finagled yet another win for anti-sociological evolution by voting to amend the state constitution to disallow same-sex marriage. I'm sure the fight will continue, however, because I question whether it is constitutional to amend (or in this case, revise) the constitution by putting the decision to do so on a ballot - especially considering the gap between the yays and nays was so narrow.

With something that close - something that far to the middle - it is a crying shame to color it in black and white. With a decision so narrowly divided, it seems that it *must* remain open to give society a little bit more time along its evolutionary process to realize, hey, there ain't no threat here!

How many decisions have been based in fear? Decisions we all now have to live with because some vocal minority screamed louder than the rest of the world (who was just minding their own damn business, thank you very much).

The same people who voted to ban same-sex marriage must also be working for the oil companies, since both alternative energy propositions failed, too. Ah, and I thought this was supposed to be a progressive state. But I found it interesting that they voted down the alternative energy propositions, but passed the high speed train proposition. Yeah - that one - the one that was ill-conceived and fraught with unrealistic lofty goals. We'll see what kind of a mess that turns out to be. Hey, don't get me wrong - a high speed train would be cool - I just wish they did a little more homework before putting the thing up for a vote.

At least we have chosen someone new to lead this country. I can't WAIT until the current guy is out - he's not even funny anymore (even if he wasn't president. Show's over, dude, get the fuck out!). Nobody is perfect, so neither is the new guy, but I think he's just what the people need. If nothing else, he is motivational and I think he will inspire people to bring some sanity back to this country. I hope, at least, that he serves to remind us that the United States of America is a melting pot - that Americans have varied cultural backgrounds and are not all one color, one race, one religion or one mindset. But in order to be a productive country and a strong country, we need to all stand united - hence, the UNITED States of America.

I still can't figure out prejudiced people who live in America. If you don't like that this country has residents - i.e. fellow Americans - that come from all over the world, then what the fuck are you doing here? Take the KKK for instance - I think they need an island all their own. A place full of nothing but narrow-minded, fearful, bigoted white people, and that's it. That way, they can mind their own business (though they'll have to find something new to hate) and the rest of us can mind ours.

Anyway, my biggest fear is that some bigoted, scared little bunny rabbit of a man might try to put a bullet into our new president if given the chance, just because the guy happens to have darker skin. Let's hope the ugly side of Americans isn't THAT ugly (or that moronically stupid). This is probably the biggest, most hopeful historical event that has come down the pike in a long time. Let's hope some screw-up doesn't come along and screw it up. I'd like to think this country has hope, and that the people of this country have room to hope, and that we can actually rise above the uglies of the world and regain the admiration and prosperity (at least some of it) that this country once held - to once again become a beacon of hope and opportunity. I'd like to feel like I live in such a country, and I am tired of feeling the way I have felt for the past eight years!

Never before have I felt such despair, embarrassment and worry; never before have I seen such division between the people of this country; and never before have I felt such hope. I'm looking forward to the next four years (and, I predict, the next eight years, actually). Whatever it brings, right or wrong, good or bad, at least I'll feel good knowing (or at least feeling) that it's not all bad.

OK, I'll come down now. I think 2009 is going to be an interesting year. And on the more localized front, I now have a new web host (FINALLY!) for my web sites and my images, etc., and so now - as you may have noticed - my blog looks a little better, and some of the links (like the Questor Project) actually work again.

Perhaps I will actually complete the Questor project in 2009! I hope so - as of November 26, 2008, it will have been two years since I touched it, last. We're also getting close to wrapping up a couple major projects on the house, and in January of 2010, I'll actually be able to post pictures of that project again. Also, look for a new entry or two (coming soon) in my Computer Circus blog.

Here's to the next few years. >ching<

Election Day and Differing Opinions

2008-11-04T18:41:00.001-08:00

Well, it's election day. I voted. I won't even say which way, because I'm not convinced that it matters. Politics is full of words and promises (mostly broken ones, as I presume presidential candidates really have no idea what they are getting into).

So, while everyone else is focusing on the inevitable outcome of who is going to be the next guy to run this country into the ground, I'm curious about how the propositions on the California ballot are going to fare.

Just because I happen to live there.

It seems the one with the most controversy is Proposition 8 to disallow gay marriage. It doesn't matter to me, personally, because I have no stake in the matter one way or the other, but if this is truly going to be a progressive state, and if the do-gooders are really serious when they say everyone should be treated equally, then gay marriage should be allowed.

I watched some of the videos on YouTube by groups and people who want us all to vote Yes on the proposition (to ban gay marriage), and if nothing else, they were hypocritical. So utterly, totally and completely hypocritical. And, not surprisingly, most of them had disabled comments (probably after being hammered by opposition) and they had obviously removed all comments that were contrary to their agenda.

What cowards.

My favorite was this one called Proposition 8 in Plain English (which they have since replaced it with a shorter version and renamed to Proposition 8 Made Simple). It was all happy-go-lucky about how Mr. and Mrs. X were friends with the gay couple that lived next door and how nicey-nice they all were to each other and how hetero couple X respected their neighbors' lifestyle choice (which I read as "tolerant of their decision to live a gay lifestyle with each other") and how they believed everyone should be treated equally, but they didn't want to offend their gay friends by voting YES on Prop 8.

Take a breath.

Then they went on to justify it (using their own faulty reasoning, packed with arguments that had absolutely nothing to do with Proposition 8) and closed with this - and I quote: "But Tom and Jan have come to an important realization. They can respect Dan and Michael's lifestyle choice, without affirming and embracing their lifestyle."

What an ignorant, hypocritical couple Tom and Jan are!

It is apparent that, first of all, they think it is somehow a choice to be gay (who the hell would CHOOSE that, and when did Tom and Jan choose to be straight?). Secondly, IT'S NOT ABOUT BEING GAY - IT'S ABOUT TWO PEOPLE WHO LOVE EACH OTHER WHO WOULD LIKE TO GET MARRIED! LEGALLY!

Oh, but Tom and Jan X are scared, too, because if Proposition 8 dies, that means their church could maybe might perform same-sex marriages (according to the video, that could happen, and they don't want THAT to happen - God forbid. Then again, who's going to force their church to perform same-sex marriages?). They also seem to think that a domestic partnership (a.k.a. Civil Union in a few other states) and marriage are the same thing.

I guess Tom and Jan X either don't have a computer, or don't know how to use Google. Oh, but wait, they said they found this information on the Internet! Perhaps they just didn't look past their church's web site, or beyond their Yes on 8 friends blogs.

Maybe we should just ban marriage all together.

I think the problem stems from morality. It is difficult to justify morals, as they really boil down to personally accepted modes of conduct, typically rooted in a strongly influential belief system, usually spawned by some ancient religious text that was created back when people didn't even believe that air existed (yet, immaculate conception was a totally acceptable idea).

Speaking of morality, my wife had a bit of an encounter in the parking lot of a hardware store a couple days ago, where a family of Yes on 8 promoters were encouraging passersby to think like them. My wife, while walking past them, said, "you're a biggot."

Oops.

Maybe that was too strong a word, but it really pissed them off. A woman (standing next to what I presumed was her son), shouted out, "come here and say that to my face!"

That is the WRONG thing to say to my wife. Oh, man, I saw it coming right then and there, and I knew there was no stopping it, so I observed for a bit...before they drew me in.

I loved a couple of the arguments the Yes on 8 family members proposed. One woman asked, "think of an outlet in your home. Can you plug a plug into a plug?" I just about lost it. I didn't know whether to laugh or to put them out of everyone's misery. I wanted to ask her if she could stick a hole in her hole, but, respectfully, I said, "what's that got to do with it?" instead. Pretty lame, I know, but I just didn't want to engage. We both had our opinions and neither side was going to change, so what's the point?

At one point, however, we were breaking away, and the woman turned around and mumbled something about "I'll kick your ass." This was after we endured a lecture about morality and how science tries to tell us about homosexuality, but that God really has the right answer, blah, blah, shut-the-fuck-up blah.

There was that word: morality. Almost in the same sentence as "God", and certainly in the same context. That's when my wife finally closed the door on the matter before we went into the hardware store to get what we needed (a plug of all things - actually, a receptacle for plugging in a 220V clothes dryer). Actually, we were exchanging one receptacle for another, because we had the wrong one, and so the plug wasn't right for it.

How fitting.

Anyway, I can't wait until this whole mess is over with (the voting results, anyway). There's a lot of ignorant and narrow-minded people out there - it's too bad so many of them are voting. I hope there's enough of the other variety of people out there to offset some of the bad decisions to make the good ones prevail.

Time will tell.

Questor Lives?

2008-09-20T21:02:00.001-07:00

It has been over two years now since I began the Questor project. Remember the Questor project? No? Hardly do I. Nevertheless, it has been sitting in a box basically since sometime around late 2006 or early 2007, and I haven't touched it since late November of 2006.

How sad is that?

The good news is, what put the project on hold for so long was a much bigger project that intervened: I built a new home to live in. It has been a long road, and my wife and I are still working on it, but we're living in it now, and I am determined to live in it, if you know what I mean.

So, I am resurrecting the Questor project.

In case you forgot what the Questor project is, or don't know, it is the design and construction of a small RC model airplane that can be broken down into five pieces and carried in a custom backpack into remote areas. It is a kind of prototype, and I expect it to carry a small electronic payload to take aerial images of the regions it flies over, and possibly some form of auto-pilot control that will allow the aircraft to fly out and around a certain area and return, unassisted.

I'd like to use it up where I live to find nooks and crannies to explore and hang out along the rivers. Google Maps can get only so close.

Anyway, I took the first step last night by reading my blog entries of the progress I had made on the project. I realized there were a ton of details that were never captured, and I am a bit nervous that I have lost the vision for the design and may not complete it as previously intended. There are so many aspects to consider, I am really going to have to do some serious mental legwork with it before I resume actual construction. I have also lost some new skills that I had learned, initially, as I do not recall how I accomplished certain tasks and I do not remember how I was achieving such excellent results while sanding.

Nevertheless, the project WILL be completed. Sometime. And the plane will fly. I just have no idea when.

I took my second step tonight, by digging through all of my stuff to FIND THE PROJECT! I finally found all the templates in an envelope in a box, and I found the actual pieces in another box (of which I had seven other boxes that looked very similar).

I took all the pieces out of the box and examined them, and I had one single reaction.

"SHIT!"

The parts have be subjected to nearly two years of seasonal changes and have been up on the top shelf, so have undoubtedly been exposed to some heat. As a result, the horizontal stabilizer has warped. This plane will not fly quite right the way it is. And I bet if I reviewed my blog again, I would discover that the side that is warped is the side I used that horrible wood glue on when I laminated it.

Don't ever use water-based glue on balsa wood. I knew better, but someone sung the praises of how well it worked. They were either lucky, stupid or were using a different kind of wood, entirely.

I'll just have to get creative about how to fix it. I may try a little steam on one side. It will have to be a trial run to see if I can straighten it out, so I know what to do just before I paint it. I want it straight when I paint it, since that will seal in any moisture that may be in it - and I want just enough in there to make it straight again.

My masterpiece, the vertical stabilizer - my work of art - my prize - is also a tiny bit warped...but not much. It is just a natural warping which may even correct itself when things start cooling off and the rains come back. Either that, or it will get worse. Ah, but that's just the nature of working with wood.

Well, my wife is waiting for me downstairs so we can watch a movie, so I will end this entry here. I just wanted to put down in writing that the Questor project lives and will be revived. I figure by doing so, I will make it happen. I am getting my basement together so I will have a place to work on it, so hopefully it will resume soon. The first step is to engage the mental aspects, and all will follow from there.

:)

Time in a Space Bottle

2008-07-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

My wife and I watched the movie Contact the other night, with Jodi Foster. It was interesting to see it again, but today I was sitting at my computer, waiting for some code to compile, when a thought occurred to me.

In the movie, they portrayed that the distant alien intelligence sent back a television transmission to Earth that supposedly was one of the first broadcasts, showing Hitler announcing the opening of the Olympic games. I thought to myself, how did they get that footage for the movie? Was it fabricated? There weren't any video recorders around at that time, so was it film?

But that wasn't the interesting thought that I had. The interesting part followed.

What if someone wanted to capture those original broadcasts on video tape? It actually should be possible. Right now. Even later in the future.

Think about it. Everything we have ever transmitted from this planet is streaming through space at the speed of light. Eventually, those signals will (and already have in some cases) reach distant stars and planets and other celestial bodies or pass through distortions in space. It seems entirely conceivable (and probable) that those signals could be reflected under certain conditions, turning the signals around on a return trip back to Earth.

Years later, if we had a powerful receiver pointed at just the right spot in the sky, we could receive those reflected signals, and listen to what was on the radio, or watch what was on the television, fifty years ago. In a sense, we could say that we were watching live, because it wouldn't be a recording. In every sense, it would be the original transmission. Because it IS the original transmission!

These days, we could capture those signals on to tape or other digital media, clean them up, and sell them on the Internet for a profit. At least, that's probably what humans would do with it.

Little Miss Perception

2008-07-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

This happened to me a few months ago - just an example of how people's own ignorance can potentially get others into trouble.

I was driving down a thoroughfare along the San Francisco Bay Area peninsula (mid-peninsula), doing the speed limit, on my way to Taco Bell, of all places. There was some traffic behind me, but not close enough to be concerned about (I'd say like 8 to 10 car lengths).

My turn was coming up, and I'm a pretty habitual guy (my wife may say I am a stickler when it comes to driving laws), so I turned on my turn signal and took my foot off the gas. I applied the break to begin slowing down, and I noticed the vehicle directly behind me was quickly approaching, having made no response whatsoever to my actions (like, say, to slow down to avoid running into me).

Closer and closer she came (I noticed it was a female driving, but I am not picking on female drivers) and I became a bit worried when I noticed she wasn't even looking at the road ahead of her. Since my actions so far in preparation of my turn spanned a period of 5 or 6 seconds (which is a long time if you sit down and count it, considering how fast things can happen in traffic), I could only wonder just how long she had not been paying attention.

JUST before it was too late, she looked up and noticed me, just as my front wheels were crossing the curb line into the Taco Bell driveway. I could see the shock in her face as she realized she was about to careen into me, and she slammed on her breaks and veered a bit to avoid collision. [As a side note, I was just about to "punch it" to zoom into the parking lot, so she never would have hit me, anyway]

She then proceeded to sit on her horn and prominently display her middle finger in an unfriendly gesture.

What a stupid fucking bitch.

In her mind, I apparently did something wrong. I was just glad she wasn't 1 or 2 car lengths closer to me and that I wasn't just another moron driving down the road, making unexpected stops and turns with no warning or other indication, or she would have slammed right into me. I am certain that if she rammed me, she would have done everything in her power to hold me responsible, regardless of the fact that she failed to look in front of her vehicle while she was driving, failed to notice my turn signal which blinked prominently at least three times before I applied my brakes, failed to notice my brake lights, and just simply overall failed to notice that I was even on the road in front of her, never mind that I was slowing down to make a turn.

It astounds and amazes me that I can not only pay attention to what I am doing, but at the same time be aware of what others around me are doing, and yet some people can't even figure out that they're stupid. How can you NOT pay attention when you are driving? I just don't get that. How many lives are lost every year due to automobile accidents? How many lives change, permanently, due to accidents?

What does it take for people to get it?

My wife's driving scares the shit out of me, but that's another story. She gets annoyed when I tell her to fasten her seat belt, or question what she is doing, or point out potential hazards while I am riding with her. But, dammit, I have a right. It's not like I'm sitting next to someone in a bar who is drowning themselves in alcohol - I've got no business telling them they shouldn't drink so much. But when I am a passenger in a car, I am at the mercy of the driver - their actions affect me, directly! And it is the driver's responsibility -- RESPONSIBILITY -- to get their passengers safely to their destination.

That's a hard word for a lot of people (Americans?) to swallow, it seems - responsibility. I take it very seriously. If I am a passenger and I feel the driver of the vehicle in which I am riding is not looking out for my safety, I'm going to say something. Like it or not, end of story, period. If they don't like it, they can kick me out. If I don't like it enough, I may ask them to let me out, please, thank you very much, hope to see you again...alive.

I realize not everyone is perfect - I'm sure not - so I leave some room for error there. But if someone consistently exhibits the same behavior, and it's dangerous, I get very nervous about riding with them. And I get (rightfully) very concerned when I share the road with hundreds (and hundreds) of other people I don't even know at all. You HAVE to be on your toes at ALL times - even if your car is not moving!

There are so many people out there, and none of them are perfect, and so many people change or end their lives because of one stupid mistake, one lapse of attention or judgment, one wrong move, or even as a result of being distracted by someone else doing something stupid. Sometimes, people die as a direct result of simply BEING stupid, or as a direct result of someone else who IS stupid. We all do stupid things once in a while, but its those people who were truly born stupid and never changed (yet somehow wound up behind the wheel of a moving vehicle) that you really have to watch out for. And they're out there.

Boy, are they out there.

Good Taste

2008-07-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at lunch, the place where I work served sweet and sour chicken. I wasn't in the mood for it, so I grabbed a box lunch, instead: a club sandwich.

It was goo-ood!

Later, I ate a banana. It was good, too. But while I was eating the banana, I started thinking about all the things we eat. They're all things that are (or once were) alive. The wheat in the bread was grown, the banana was grown, the chicken that I didn't eat was once running around on a farm, and the meat in my club sandwich came from some animal(s), and the tomato and avocado were all grown somewhere.

Organic matter. Mmm.

As I was thinking about all these things I was eating, and all the things that get eaten, one final thought came to mind:

"When I go, I hope I taste good."

Phoenix Has Landed. World Gets Smaller.

2008-05-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

The Phoenix Mars lander landed successfully today. I was glued to NASA TV online live during the whole event. There's nothing like watching the event unfold live. I remember [barely] watching the first moon landing on a big black and white TV. I watched the progress of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Then, to see the pictures come back. I don't know how to describe it. Here we are, on a world we often take for granted, staring at pictures taken from the ground on an entirely different world. An empty, barren world, yet one with many mysteries locked away inside.

Perhaps we'll find some.

Anyway, my mom is visiting from Tucson - the home town of the Phoenix mission to Mars (and also where I happened to grow up) - and she was talking about "six word stories." Apparently, Hemmingway wrote a six-word story: For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

So much can be read into so little. And I love the concept. So, I am going to try my hand at coming up with some six-word stories of my own. Feel free to contribute yours! :)

Here goes...

#1: Still awaiting delivery. Never placed order.

#2: Once in a lifetime. No film.

#3: Fight it. Beat it. Poster child.

#4: What does a rose smell like?

#5: Did my job. Missed my friends.

#6: Lost: broken heart. Last seen naked.

I think I'll stop at six, six-word stories. For now.

UPDATE: Or, maybe not. One more for the road.

#7: Last flight home. I just waved.

UPDATE: I can't help myself...

#8: I'm addicted to six word stories.

#9: Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, boom!

#10: Sold my house. Playing the lottery.

#11: See you in the obituaries. Bang!

#12: Got what I asked for. Shit.

#13: Learn to swim now - ship's sinking!

#14: She never called. My number changed.

#15: Realized dream. Personal note: wake up.

#16: Stepped off the path. So beautiful.

#17: Life is short. Smile. The end.

Fight Back Against Terrorism - Their Way!

2008-05-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

We're fighting terrorism the wrong way. We have to beat them at their own game, by defeating them their way. They are closer to defeating us (or, rather, getting into a position of significant control of us) than most people dare to believe or admit - and they are not defeating us through brute force, or by crashing airplanes into buildings. No, they're smarter than that, and it would be a major embarrassment if we allow them to continue to have the upper hand in this game.

What is they're upper hand? Well, if you don't know, then you haven't been paying attention. It's oil. Or, more specifically, our dependence on it.

Check this out. This is the first real solution I have heard that makes any real sense - AND IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE - especially when you finally see the big picture: Energy Victory

Get it. Read it. I'm going to. I just heard the author speak for a couple hours on a radio show last night. A bill will be coming to congress, soon, regarding "flex fuel" automobile manufacturing requirements. Learn about it. Educate yourself about this Energy Victory plan. And do whatever you can to encourage your representatives get this bill approved. Bush plans to veto it if he sees it - but he's an idiot who would rather play right into the hands of his rich Saudi friends while the terrorists and related greedy bastards buy the country out from under us and truly put themselves in control, than fight this great and glorious fight to which he gives so much lip service.

You're right, Mr. Bush: you're either with us, or against us. It's obvious where you stand...even if you can't see it.

I'm Speechless

2008-05-21T02:39:00.001-07:00

Remember the Cube

2008-05-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Remember the Rubik's cube? I used to be able to solve it pretty quickly, though not as fast as the master speed solvers (I think my best time was somewhere in the 30-second range). Now I can't even remember how I did it. I solved the 4x4x4 cube without a tutorial, but I just found mine in a box the other day, and I have spent a few hours with it, cheating off the web, and I can't figure the damn thing out.

My brain is shot. Neurons are missing. Memories are gone.

Apparently, the cube is still going strong. There are plans for releasing an 11x11x11 cube this year! Anyway, I doubt I'll be getting one.

But check this guy out - just one example of someone who can do it well:

Also Cooooool

2008-05-05T22:59:00.001-07:00

And then there's this.

Ahhhh. If only driving could be this peaceful.

New Kind of Robot

2008-05-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

This is one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. Yes, it is real. Festo was one of our sponsors for BattleBots in - what was it - 2000? 2001? And I was just thinking about contacting them again!

All In Perspective

2008-05-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

I have come to the conclusion that people, in general, love black and white. They love to categorize things, as if it helps facilitate an understanding of them. Perhaps, in some cases, it does. But it has been my observation that this practice mostly serves to divide people.

Take politics for example. You can't talk about politics these days without falling into one of two camps, either "liberal" or "conservative". And God (if there is one) forbid you get labelled as one or the other, for then you can no longer express (or be seen to express) anything to the contrary. And be taken seriously, anyway.

Over the years I have learned much about myself. But, mainly, I have learned that I am many things...depending on who is observing me. Some people think I am a genius, and others think I am an idiot. And there's a whole slew of opinions in there in between. And the interesting thing to me is, they're all right. Or, they're valid, anyway. It all depends on the context within which I am being observed.

As for the liberal vs. conservative categorization, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon, at least in regards to myself. I have had friends and other people comment about how conservative I am. I have also had friends and other people comment about how liberal I am. And the more liberal they are, the more conservative I appear to be. And visa versa.

Funny, but I thought I was just being me. I never labelled myself one way or the other. I don't like labels. And it seems, from my perspective, that people are hard-pressed to change their opinions once they are established. I think the people who think I am a conservative still think I am a conservative, and I think the people who think I am a liberal still think I am a liberal. And I don't know that there is anything I can do or say to change those opinions - primarily, because they are not mine. I can only change in the eyes of someone else when their perception of me changes.

It seems this can be extrapolated to a larger scale. People form opinions of things, events, issues, other people, etc., and then that's it. As soon as something happens where we have that moment of, "that makes sense" or "that seems right," suddenly it's golden, and for many people, it becomes an unshakable truth and they will seek - knowingly or unconsciously - for everything that supports that idea.

What gets me the most is that people these days seem to feel that there is nothing in between. No gray area. No variance. You either fit into one category, or you fit into another. There is no fluidity - you are either round or you are square, and there is no adapting you to any other shape. But the reality is, I think, that everything is a spectrum, and real problems begin the moment you try to quantify things. And, in the end, so much complexity emerges in the process of trying to define what is observed that we forget what we're looking at and simultaneously proclaim that we know and understand it. Meanwhile, whatever "it" is simply continues to be, and simply is, and in the end, perhaps, suffers (or benefits) from the effects of what others THINK it is.

I think there is an innate need within most people to hang on to something. To have some foundation to stand on, something absolute and unshakable. And when it comes to perspective and perception, people REALLY don't like it when they feel a personal belief (or something they proclaim to "know" or "understand") is somehow threatened in some way.

I have had my world rocked a few times, having moments of revelation in my life where I realized things were not as I believed. As a result, I have become malleable. I do not hold so strongly to the understandings that I have of things, since I know they can change as I learn more about them. I do not purport to know anything with absolute certainty, except for such tenants as "nothing in life is certain."

All that we know about life, the universe, and everything, is perceived. We develop familiarity with our surroundings in an ever-widenening scope as we grow older, and -at least this is true for me - the more we learn, the more we realize how much we do not yet know. And, as a friend of mine once said, "you'll never know how stupid you are." His point being that, as soon as you learn what you did not know, you're not so stupid anymore. :)

I grew up an optimist, and have grown pessimistic and cynical in my later years, but am finding myself wanting to be hopeful. I typically feel that hope is a four-letter word that leaves you stuck in a mindset, perhaps living in the past, but one thing about hope is that is can motivate. And I want to be motivated. I want to believe that this world, and the people in it, can change for the good - can learn and grow and become malleable. I want to believe that this is not an idealistic hope. Unfortunately, my observations tell me that people are stubborn, and I see this perpetuating and expanding trend of people grabbing on to ideas about how things are, believing that this and that work a certain way without exception, or think that certain things are true just because so many people say so, and I struggle to believe that there is hope to be found and wonder if I am simply wasting my time with such notions.

People have not really changed at all in the course of thousands of years, and overall, unless something fundamentally changes in our intrinsic and/or genetic nature that allows us to advance to a "better" stage on the evolutionary scale, we probably never will. People will continue to rigidly believe what they believe, people of different beliefs will continue to wage war against each other, and so few standing back to observe and ask, "why are they doing that to each other?" and even fewer, perhaps, taking a step back to ask, "why are we doing this?"

And how few take the time to question their own beliefs, knowledge, understanding, or whatever it is they proclaim to comprehend? Does change start, first, with a moment of questioning, or does it begin with a willingness to question?

Who knows? But one thing that seems to ring true for me, is that, in the end, there is no such thing as right or wrong; only thinking makes it so.

Battle Bots is Back

2008-04-23T00:24:00.000-07:00

ESPN is engaging in a contract with BattleBots, so the sport may be revived at last! They are spicing things up a bit, and the next event is tentatively scheduled to take place in November. I have a new robot design in mind - something guaranteed to shake things up in the arena. I'm going to call it Double Whammy. Look for it in future blog postings. I will be putting a team together up near my new home. Maybe I'll even get on cable television!

I also vowed to resume the Questor project before August, since August will mark two years since the project began, and I refuse to let it sit idle for that long.

I am also making moves to change my career, so I will be studying hard and working in between. Anything to get out of computers!! I just haven't decided where I am going to get my training, yet.

I'm nothing if I'm not busy, I guess. Speaking of which, I'm moving this weekend. UGH!

Time is Running Out

2008-02-20T23:20:00.000-08:00

I will be cutting off my Internet provider in the very near future, which means my codesmart.com and rcnightflying.com domains will be homeless (at least if or until I can find a host). This means all the pictures on my blog will mysteriously go away, and I will be unable to post more (unless I use some other service).

The future is so very uncertain. I hope everyone is doing well and savoring every moment. It may be a long time before I am back online again, but I hope to see you all still here when I return.

Merry Frozen Christmas

2007-12-26T01:32:00.001-08:00

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! I didn't do anything for Christmas this year. Literally. Actually, that's not true. We put the first two windows in our house on Christmas Eve (plus the sliding door to the kitchen).

Next year will be a good Christmas. Not that this one wasn't good. I finally got my Christmas wish - a nice, quiet day all to myself. Well, sort of...if you don't count the phone calls. ;) Overall, it was pleasant.

Anyway, is it strange that crispy, crunchy carrots get soft when you freeze them?

Timeless Words

2007-12-24T00:21:00.000-08:00

Is it interesting that, alphabetically, after comes before before, and before comes after after?

Monster House on the Hill

2007-11-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

If you don't have a lot of time, you can either just look at the pictures, or come back later to do some reading. This entry is a chronicle of the past two weeks, as I did not have access to the Internet (much) during this period of time, so it is pretty long. Actually, this entry covers quite a bit more than the past two weeks, but everything you see starting from the photo showing the floor joists for the first floor, onward, are from the past two weeks.

I hope you enjoy it!

It has been a long road so far, but now things are moving rather quickly. We learned not to use Craig's List to find someone to draw up our house plans. I won't even get into that story, as it is long and frustrating (and might make for an interesting book), but I consider it outside the scope of this blog and I just don't want to recall the experience.

It was bad.

But to shorten an incredibly long and painful story, we now have a set of house plans that are approved by the county, and we are furiously building away!

You saw when we first got our land. The deal closed in early February of 2007, when the grass was still green.

You saw when we got our travel trailer and plopped it down on the property (it was actually there a day or two before the deal closed), and when we built a 12x12 shed and when we got a little 1981 Toyota Pickup (that I replaced a few things on to get it working better).

And did you see when we got irrigation water and let it run day after day to soften up the rock hard soil to make it easier to cut the driveway and the foundation for the house? The grass was quite dead by then (and around this time you saw me mow my ass off to get rid of a couple acres of brush with a silly little freebie gas push mower).

And maybe you saw that we moved our trailer down the hill a bit to be out of the way of construction.

	And perhaps you even saw a perspective from midway down our property of where our house will sit up on the hill. The grass was starting to turn green again from running the irrigation water. However, one story you have not heard is about how the water does not soak down into the soil. Instead, it just goes down a few inches, then works its way down the hill. We wound up having a bit of a mud bog just down around the base of the steep part of the hill (below the tree line), within which a truck got stuck and really tore up the land in the process of getting it out. Argh!
	Here are the ugly tire tracks.
	And here is one of them showing the water that pools just below the surface. The morning after I took this picture, the water level had risen clear up to the grass line!

And you have not yet seen the heavy equipment move in! We hired a guy (Chris Roach, who also happens to be a world renowned snowboarding champion) to cut our driveway and install our septic system. He enjoys that sort of thing, which is cool - I have always wanted to operate a tractor, myself. You can see his tractor and one of his trucks here, getting ready to do some dirty work near the end of August.

He went right to work and cut in our driveway. He did a nice job, too. This picture really shows very little of it, but you can see the sprinklers running to soften the land where the house will sit, and you can see where the grass has turned green from weeks of watering. Some of the trees have already been removed, and you can kind of see them piled up in the distance on the left. I hated seeing the trees go (I'm a softie when it comes to killing anything), but they happened to be in the way of our floor plan. It seems unfair, but then life is like that.

We have already faced a few challenges beyond getting some usable house plans (which are still giving us a few headaches here and there). Not the least of which is the soil. Apparently, our land is little more than a rock garden. There is no dirt - only rocks. Rocks, rocks and more rocks. Here is a small sample.

Despite the rocks (the endless rocks) the grade was cut for the foundation. The cut was not clean (because of the rocks), but here you can kind of see a very rocky ridge, in front of which will stand a retaining wall that will eventually support the back wall to a basement that we hope to actually turn into a living space sometime in the future (when we have some money again and want to deal with the whole permit process with the county - this crazy county - again).

Gravel was poured onto the driveway (like we need more rock!) and the shed, which was moved out of the way during the process, was moved back and levelled (yes, it is actually level). You can see the irrigation sprinklers still running in the distance. This was to soften the soil so a hole could be dug to bury the septic tank.

And a hole was dug in the muddy, rocky soil, to bury the septic tank. But there were too many rocks - big rocks - and a nearly solid rock layer - so it was impossible to dig a hole deep enough for the tank. So another hole was dug. And another. And another. In the end, five unsuccessful attempts were made. We had to go to the guy who designed our septic system and see if we could install it further down the hill, near the tree line. We got a green light and FINALLY, a good hole was dug.

But there were a lot of rocks. We have piles of rocks now, everywhere.

We have a special pressure dose septic system (oh joy) that requires a phone line (which we do not have) for the central office to monitor its status (or receive alert calls from the system). It is a special system, designed by a company up here, just for soil like ours that doesn't deal well with water dispersal.

The leech field was installed and it all looked good (to me), but when the inspector came out to inspect it, the guy said it was all wrong and needed to be rotated 90 degrees to the lines ran the other way. So, it all had to be dug up, new trenches dug, and the lines re-installed. Fortunately, the rest of the system was good and everything checked out. I have a 10,000 Watt generator that I got for a good deal before this all began, so that was used to power up the system for a test run. Apparently, it all worked, so now we just need a house to connect it to...and a power line...and a phone line...and a water line. Man, there is a lot to building a house!

Speaking of building a house... We know a guy up here who is a great builder. He grew up Amish, but now he's just a great guy with a lot of building experience and knowledge. So he is helping us build our house. He is doing most of the actual building, but he is also directing me, and my wife, and other friends and helpers to do a lot of work as well. You'll see a lot of that in pictures to come. But first came the foundation. Another one of our biggest challenges is the weather. In the process of forming up the foundation, it rained. More than once.

Also in the process of digging the trenches for the foundation walls, a lot of big rocks came up. I'm talking like 4 and 5 ton rocks.

More rocks!

Needless to say, between the rain and the rocks, the trenches were a challenge. They were not clean cut by any means, and they were wider and deeper (mostly from shoveling out rain water that absolutely does not seep into the soil) and from the removal of very large rocks. But in the end, we prevailed, and the foundation walls were formed up and ready to pour. I helped cut a number of the form boards and helped bend and install rebar over a weekend, but then I had to return to life so that I could go to my job (that is paying for a lot of this), so I was not around when the walls were actually poured. But they came out pretty well. My builder friend says it is the straightest and squarest he has built so far - however, he miscalculated the distance on the slopes with all the steps, etc., and came up three inches off! But he was able to compensate to make things work, so it is still a viable foundation wall. Whew!

	I returned the next weekend to see the foundation wall in place. All the form boards had been removed, and the pressure treated base boards were all cut and ready to be put down.
	I went around and secured them all in place with big washers and nuts that come down over big bolts that are embedded in the cement walls.

Then we worked on building up the foundation walls. I spent most of my time that weekend just cutting boards. Cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. We were able to build the entire structure using the 2x6 boards that were used to form up the foundation walls! It takes a lot of wood to form up foundation walls, I guess. I was surprised. And we even had some cement-encrusted wood left over that we can use here and there as we continue to build. Keep in mind that this is just the frame that holds up the first floor! The slope on this hill was very deceiving, and it turns out that the basement area actually will have almost an 8-foot ceiling!

Again, I had to return to work for the week, but I came back the following Friday for an extended stay (I am taking some time off work so that I can help with the building process so things keep moving along). When I returned on Friday, this is what I discovered. The floor joists were all in place, with blocking and everything, just waiting for the sub floor to be installed. As I said, this hill is deceiving. In this picture, it kind of looks like a normal house, just sitting on a foundation on the ground.

But then you come around the corner and look at the house from a different angle, and you see this! OMG! And look at that basement area! By the way, my wife had our builder friend move the door from the left side to the right side without consulting me. I didn't notice until I was called over to help stand up the wall. After some discussion, we will be moving the door back to the left side as originally planned.

And here is a shot of (about half of) the basement area. This is going to be a nice room. Now we wish we could finish it off right away. The one thing my wife wanted most was a music room where she could walk right out onto the land. This is perfect for her (and she vigorously explored ways to design this house so that a basement could be easily added on later - looks like her hard work paid off).

We promptly went to work and by the end of the day that Friday, we had the sub floor down. Now we had a nice place to sit and eat and look at the view.

On Saturday, we built some walls. The first wall was the big wall of windows. We still have some final decisions to make about the windows, so they were not completely framed in. But we slammed the headers all the way up and left the bottoms open until we know our final window dimensions. There are two big windows (obviously) on either side of a sliding glass door that will lead out to a deck. We tried to stand this wall up all at once, but between the three of us who were lifting it, it turned out to be too much. At one point, my leg became trapped underneath it, but fortunately I was extracted without injury. We split the wall into two sections and lifted them upright, individually. We may have been able to do it all at once if it was an 8-foot wall, but we have a 9-foot ceiling on the first floor, so the wall was a bit too heavy to lift.

The second wall to go up was the rear wall that borders the guest bedroom and the kitchen. The kitchen will have a small sliding glass door that opens to a small deck in the back, and there is a door into the kitchen that we will likely use most often. The area outside that has no walls around it yet is the laundry and storage room, which also will have a door, either with a ramp or steps coming up along the back leading up to it.

The third wall to go up was the "North East" wall, bordering our great room and the kitchen. Only part of it is visible here, again with a window of undecided (vertical) dimension. We are trying to decide a final height that will minimize our view of the neighboring home on the propery across the way. Barely visible here is a tiny window that will open to a small nook where we anticipate the telephone to be and possibly a small (very small) desk. Not visible is the kitchen window.

Sunday, we took a break (well, our builder friend did. I built a ramp and my wife went shopping for supplies). But then Monday happened. The forecast on Monday called for possible rain that day, thunderstorms that night and possibly rain Tuesday morning. Argh! We worked fast. Fortunately, my wife picked up a few tarps from the hardware store on Sunday (she never stops working...or thinking) so we were prepared. We were concerned since we didn't want the sub floor to get wet. It rained on us a little bit while we were building, but then it dried up pretty quickly (it was more of a drizzle). We managed to get the fourth wall up, which will have our "front" (i.e. main) entry door in it (which we already have) - it will be a bit of a climb to get to it, but it will be there nonetheless. You can also see a small window into the guest bathroom, and the window into the guest bedroom. After we stood up the wall, we put down the tarps and called it a day (and I enjoyed a good thunderstorm that night).

Picture taking was precluded by the laying out of tarps to keep the floor dry overnight, so I didn't take any more pictures until the next morning. It was a foggy day, and you can see we also managed to frame up the stairwell the day before, as well as hang the monster big boy beam that splits the great room from the kitchen. You can also see some water on the floor in the one area where we had no tarps to cover it. Most of the floor actually stayed rather amazingly dry through the rain that came in the night. A few areas bubbled up just from the moisture - the worst of which was under the stairs where it couldn't have been better placed. (Although, the next day was clear and dry and almost all the bubbling flattened back out as the wood dried out).

I do have a picture of the stairwell that I took at night, with the tarps down, etc., but it is pretty dark, so it didn't make it into this blog.

Here you can see we were preparing to roll out the second-floor floor joists. We had lifted several of them up on top of the walls, ready to be placed.

And by the end of the day, the fog was gone and the floor joists were in place - blocking and all!

The next day was Halloween. It was a short day, as my builder friend wanted to take off early to be with his family. But we got most of the sub floor down for the second floor. It is kind of hard to see in this image, but it is there. We were short of some building material, so the rest of the floor will have to wait until the lumber yard fills our order.

Meanwhile, the following day, we framed up the laundry and storage room. We are currently using the window as a doorway, since this has been our main access route while building. That's a good shot of the ramp I built. I built it out of necessity, as my wife and I simultaneously took a spill coming off the edge on Saturday night. There was a ladder leaned up near the corner (on a point that was really too low for the ladder), and my wife is not very sure-footed, so she was trying to get on the ladder to come down carefully. I was down below ready to help her off the ladder as she descended. But she got on the ladder, and the footing slipped out from under her, bowling me down to the ground, and toppling her down on the floor. She smacked her right shin on the corner of the floor and the ladder tore up my left shin, and we were both rolling around, moaning, and going, "are you OK?" If it wasn't potentially serious, it would have been great fodder for America's Funniest Home Videos (which should be renamed to Shadenfreude in America, by the way). Anyway, I built the ramp on Sunday - the day everyone "took a break" - while my wife was out buying things, like tarps, which you can see piled up in this image.

Friday came along and we finished off the sub-floor for the second floor (the lumber that was on order arrived), and I shot off the remaining floor panels with the wrong nails, so I was rather pissed. I just kept putting the same kind of nails into the gun that were in there when my builder friend handed it to me, and it wasn't until I was done that he noticed they were the wrong nails. So, hopefully, I won't wind up with a squeaky floor!

Anyway, we also got a couple of walls up, so now the house is turning into a monster house. Look at this thing! We're worried about how we are going to get the shingles on the roof and also how to get the facia on the front (the high side), since the roof has a six-foot cantilever overhang there! But I guess we'll cross that bridge (or fall off of it) when we get there. Hopefully, when the trusses come, the crane will be high enough to get the trusses up there.

Here is a small sample of the view that we will have from the second floor (which is really more like the third floor).

On a clear day, we can see the Marysville Buttes - the world's smallest mountain range.

We also finished off the back wall on the second floor on Friday. Well, almost. We left a couple of studs out so that we could still get up and down from the ladder since the stairs are not in, yet. The far window is the window to the master bedroom. The near window is the big window by the bathtub that my wife wanted. Apparently, this is her house. I get a sink in the bathroom (and I assume I get to use the toilet and the shower) and a small closet. She gets everything else - including the walk-in closet. THE FREAKIN' BATHROOM IS BIGGER THAN THE MASTER BEDROOM!

Oh, and the big windows in the front are hers, too.

Women! ;)

Speaking of stairs, the stairwell is quite prominately in place, but it is currently just a well with no stairs (it is a fast and painful way down if one is not careful).

Saturday, my builder friend did not show up. He needed a break, I guess. So, I basically wandered around and cleaned up the building site a bit, and sorted some of the scrap lumber that we might be able to use here and there. And I also decided to haul a bunch of 2x6 studs up to the second floor. I did all that with no problem, and with less exertion than I experience in a typical day when we're actually building. But then I made a big mistake of trying to measure a window. In the process, I dropped the measuring tape. In response, I jumped back (dropping the tape was unexpected), and in the process, somehow threw my back out. Now I can't stand up straight.

Nevertheless, I took a bunch more measurements to figure out how my builder friend built some of the walls, and I took it upon myself to lay out the next wall to be built. I made a few mistakes in the process, and had to move a window (the plans are still wrong), but I managed to get it all laid out just as it got too dark to see another line. My builder friend should be impressed when he returns (tomorrow?). Either that, or he's going to have to re-do it all. But I'm pretty sure I got it right. I just can't stand up straight, and my neck and back are killing me!

Stupid tape measure!

If only I had a chiropractor.

My wife arrived Saturday night and showed me some window literature while I lay on my back. Daylight Saving Time switched back that night (I think it was that night), so we had an extra hour to sleep in the next morning. Not that we slept all that well. On Sunday, our builder friend showed up and was surprised to see the wall I laid out. He commented, "you've been watching me, haven't you?" We didn't do any actual building, but he and my wife walked through the house, noting changes, etc., that my wife wanted to make. Nothing like building a house in real time. We're still sizing and positioning windows, which we need to finalize on by EOD Monday.

I was in no shape to be building, but it was nice to have some down time with my wife - she has been running a million miles a minute for far too long. If she ever starts writing a blog - and I wish she would - her tales would be far more interesting to tell than mine.

Anyway, we all talked about next steps, etc., and even got on the speaker phone with my mom for a bit, which is always entertaining. She's a character. Then, later, we were irritated by how it now gets dark an hour earlier, and my wife and I crashed early to get some good sleep. She got better sleep than I did, though 400mg of Ibuprophen helped me a bit.

After two days of no real building, building resumed. It was a bit of a busy day. In the morning, my wife and our builder friend went out to talk to the guy who is building our trusses to make sure of all the dimensions. I managed to get out of bed and go find a laundromat so I could wash all my dirty clothes and sheets. After all, I have been living in a trailer for over a week.

I found a place, put my clothes in the washer, and realized I forgot my laptop (I wanted to see if there was any Internet connectivity). I thought while my clothes were washing, I might be able to get online and do some blogging. But I left my computer at the trailer. So, I figured I would drive back to get it. By the time I returned, my clothes were done! And as soon as I put the clothes into the dryer, my wife called and said she had the plans that our builder needed and wondered if I could come get them (she was at an Internet cafe by this time, doing some work, and my builder friend was either back at the home site, or on his way).

So, I hopped in my car and drove the 20-some miles to get the stupid plans and drive the 20-some miles back to the laundromat to put another quarter into the dryer. I got online just long enough to check my email, and that was it. I folded my clothes and headed back to the trailer.

By this time, my back was aching again, but I managed to walk up to the house and climb the ladder to the second floor where my builder and his assistant were busily hammering together the wall that I laid out on Saturday. He had re-marked it, as I had pulled from the wrong wall for my measurements, and moved a window as we discussed on the previous day. But overall, the wall was pretty much as I laid it out. Seen here is the opposite wall, which is the "front" of the house as you approach it from the driveway. To me, the front of the house is the face that overlooks the land (i.e. the view).

But here you can see (from left to right) a window to the "music room" (which I told my wife is my new office), a window over the stairwell landing, a small window into the bathroom, and a door which will lead out to a small "sunning deck" where my wife can bathe in sunlight.

Here you can see a tiny portion of the wall that I laid out (on the right). What this really shows is the view we have from ~~our living room (the "great room" we call it). Somewhere along that side wall will be a fireplace. She also wants that window to be taller to match the windows in the front~~ upstairs. [I must have been tired when I wrote this - the striken text applies to downstairs] But, my god, this house is nothing but windows! And she is complaining about the heating bill in our apartment. Wait until we get the cooling bill in our new house.

Geesh!

Me? All I need is four walls, a place to pee and poop, a place to sleep, a place to eat, and a room for all of my stuff and I'm happy. My wife on the other hand, is running around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to make a thousand decisions, wanting everything to look just right. She is a very asthetic person. As for me, my four walls are usually blank. I'm the practical one. ;)

Anyway, the guy that fixed our house plans (and who is also going to do our electrical and plumbing) came by and was wowed by the view, plus he helped answer a few questions for us. He was on vacation the previous week (the absolute worst time for us for him to be gone), but now he is back.

My builder friend's wife came by and brought his two kids and some food from Taco Bell for him and his assistant (his sister-in-law) to eat. And not long afterward, my wife returned to meet with a woman from PG&E who came by to survey the site, and my wife brought more Taco Bell food for everyone (unannounced). I ate a couple tacos and the rest of the food went to waste, since everyone else had eaten.

We talked to the PG&E person and were absolutely floored to find out how much the fucking power is going to cost to get it installed. I don't event want to disclose the estimate, but it is not within our budget (not even in our imagination), so who knows when we will ever get power. It would be cheaper to buy a few solar panels.

A friend of mine called me on my cell phone and during the course of our conversation, my cell phone died. Permanently. Well, everything works except for the earpiece. My friend was talking and he just sort of fizzled out and faded away - now I can't hear anything.

My wife had to flee to get back home to the Bay area, so now I am living in a trailer with a sore back and absolutely no means of communication. But at least we got two more walls standing up today. Although, we are out of 2x6 boards, so it's time for another trip to the lumber yard to charge more supplies to our overdrawn account.

I will be heading back to the Bay area probably Wednesday night. Rain is expected at the building site on Thursday and Friday. We were hoping to get a roof up by then, but the trusses don't come until Monday. I'll probably be back on Saturday for the weekend - maybe stay through Monday so I can help stand the trusses (what fun!). But once that is done, I'll be pretty much going back to my regular life (oh God - back to work!) and coming up pretty much every weekend to help with the electrical and the plumbing and setting the windows and doors, hanging siding, etc.

Building a house is a lot of freakin' work!

It better be worth it in the end. We're saving a lot of money by putting in a lot of sweat equity (not to mention learning a lot!), and we're building at a good time, since the housing market is down and people are looking for business. The truss guy is banging out our trusses in a week! Typically, they're like five weeks out.

Now we just need to get the windows ordered...and find someone who will build the huge windows we (er, my wife) wants in the front room on the first floor. That's OK. If she wants them bad enough, she can wash them.

Tuesday came and went. I am standing again, but still working at minimal capacity. I helped carry a bunch of 2x4s up to the house and handed them up to my friend on the second floor, trying to bend as little as possible. My cell phone died on Monday, so after helping with the wood, I got in my truck and drove into town to the Cingular store to see about getting a new phone. But the place was all closed up, with paper on the windows, and signs indicating that it is becoming the new AT&T service center. Lot of help that was. So I looked in the phone book to see if there was another place. All it had was a toll-free phone number for Cingular. No help there - it is kind of hard to call with a dead phone!

So I got some gasoline for the generator and then drove out to the Habitat for Humanities Re-store to see if they had anything useful. I drove around for a long time just trying to find the place - nothing looked familiar (my wife always drove up there with me as a passenger, previously). I finally found the place and it was closed. Apparently, they are only open Thursday through Saturday.

Crap.

I drove the 20+ miles back to the plot, unloaded the gasoline, and then down to the trailer to fix myself a couple tunafish sandwiches. Then I emerged to see the progress on the house. My builder friend and his assistant had put up a few of the walls on the second floor. Then I helped him apply some of the sheathing around the first floor. We'll attempt the second floor tomorrow. Whoo boy! We're going to have to get creative about how to actually do it - the house is tall!

Every evening around dusk, several geese fly (usually) right over the house. I was hoping to catch a shot of them yesterday, but I didn't get the camera out in time. Too bad, as it would have been an absolutely beautiful shot, as the geese flew right past the house and I was on the second floor. I got a rather distant shot of them tonight, as they swung out a little further around the house and I was on the ground. Too bad. Maybe I will get a shot of them tomorrow before I hit the road. One more night in the trailer and I'm going home. I'll probably be back up again for Sunday and Monday, but we'll see how things go. It might rain on the weekend - yuck! Hopefully it won't rain much. It sure would be nice to get the roof up, first!

Wednesday was a day of sheathing. OSB board and more OSB board. The house is beginning to look like a box. Or some kind of fortress. Many of the windows got either covered or partially covered and will be cut out later. But three sides of the house are now covered. The trusses were due to arrive on Monday, but now we are told they will arrive on Friday. Therefore, instead of returning home this evening (like I WANTED to), I am sticking around for a few more days. My back is feeling much better today - still quite sore, but something has shifted back into place...or something. I can't figure out the back. It makes no sense. Anyway, I am going to try to put in a day of work tomorrow as my realtors (who have become friends of ours) will let me use their office. We used to be able to piggy back off someone's wireless router out here in the boonies, but after a big drug bust a few weeks ago (apparently, a neighbor was growing some weed) the connection disappeared. So, I have been out here with no phone and no Internet for a while. It has been really nice in a way, but really sucks in other ways. But then again - I'M BUILDING A HOUSE! How cool is that?

Thursday I worked for the day doing job things. Earning money things. Fortunately, I have a job that allows me to telecommute. But they are working on the highway up here - as they have been for months now - and the traffic is horrible, because they have one lane and block traffic to allow one stream of cars through at a time. And they do a horrible job about it. I got kicked out of my realtor's office at 4:30 when they closed (must be nice to get out so early) and didn't make the 3.7-mile trip back to my trailer for over an hour!

That was partially my fault, though. I got on Google and tried to find an alternate route around the construction zone. One way looked like it might work, but the satellite map showed an unnamed road that looked like a private drive that was the only road that provided a link to the back way to my property, but it turned out to be exactly that - a private drive (complete with NO TRESPASSING signs all around the property), so access was denied and I had to turn back. Back to Google again to look for another route. I found one that should have worked - even looked like it would on the satellite map - but some jerk had a gate across the road, blocking access. What is it with people around here? I had to turn back yet again (and it is NOT easy to turn my little truck around - no power steering). I had to relent and take the highway. It took me ten minutes just to get ON the damn thing. Then I got behind someone who insisted on going slower than the traffic in front of him (which kept getting further and further ahead of him) the whole freaking way. Jerk. Fortunately, I got in line just as the traffic in that direction was being let through, so I didn't have to wait the 25 minutes for the other direction of traffic to clear.

I made it back in time to eat something (I'm scrounging for food by now, as I was ready to go home yesterday, so was not stocked for three more days). It was dark by then, but I took a venture up to see what was done on the house today. The front got sheeted. And it looks like they shot a few thousand nails into the sheathing that was put up yesterday. Yep - it's a box. Then I got back in my car (well, my other car this time - driving the truck, with the clutch and no power steering, was a bit much on my back) and went to the annual road association meeting and learned all about what is going on with the road maintenance in the area. Aside from the highway work, the main road leading into Big Oak Valley is getting pretty rutty. Hopefully, people will wise up, the association will become a legal entity, and we'll all contribute to getting things back up to par.

Anyway, I've lost my patience with being up here and am anxious to get back home, where I can take a shower standing up, get on the Internet when I want (or need) to, get a new phone and sleep in a real bed. I was ready to go home yesterday. But, now I won't be going home until Saturday. AND, to add salt to the wound, I will be coming BACK up on Sunday, probably not to return home until Monday night.

ARGH!

I wouldn't mind staying up here if I had some amenities. I must say, the weather has been absolutely fantastic. I wish it would stay this way, but it is supposed to rain on Saturday. And I would rather stick it out all the way through Monday, since I'm here, but I am going to a play Saturday night - the last showing - that a fellow student from my acting class is in - so I can't miss that.

Friday was the big day. The trusses arrived! I spent the morning cutting out windows and doors through the sheathing that was placed over them, and knocking out "shiners" (nails that missed the studs from all the nailing that was done yesterday in my absense). The generator ran out of gas just after the guy called to say the trusses were on their way, so I quickly ran down to buy some more (10 gallons was like $35!), hoping to beat the trusses back to the plot. I didn't have to wait long for the highway construction (which looks like it will be done soon), and not long after I returned, the trusses arrived.

The trusses were stacked in the wrong order (the guy thought they were going on the other way on the house), but fortunately they were all built correctly. But they had to break the bands on the stacks (there were three stacks) and shuffle them around a bit with the crane to get them on the roof in the right order (actually, they are the roof, so I don't know what you call it when it is not there, yet). But we got them all up there without incident.

We spent the rest of the day standing the trusses. What a dangerous job that is! My builder friend did most of the high altitude climbing (it's like 40+ feet to the top!), but we got the last truss standing just as it was getting too dark to see. There was actually some light in the sky when this picture was taken, but not enough to show up in the picture (and my builder friend was still up above, out of the picture, hammering in the last nail of the day).

I was going to head home tonight, but I am just too tired, so I am going to head home in the morning. I will be returning Sunday, then going back home again Monday night, after which I will be resuming my regular life.

Yuck.

It is supposed to rain tomorrow, but the weather forcast has changed so much on a daily basis, so who knows if and when it will actually rain. It got cold last night thought, and was a bit chilly today (my carrots nearly froze in the refrigerator), so I had the heater on in the trailer for a few minutes to warm things up before going to bed. I didn't feel like making food, either, so I drove like nine miles to the only Taco Bell in the area to get my burrito and taco fix. Now I am ready to collapse for about nine hours.

And here I am sitting in the trailer, writing this blog entry. I can't wait to get home, even for one day, just to take a decent shower and sleep in my bed!

And there is the house with all the trusses standing. I took this shot Saturday morning before heading back home. It looks like I may not be coming back for Sunday and Monday afterall, as we have many other pressing things to take care of at home. But it was SO NICE to come home and actually take a real shower (in a shower stall where I could actually stand up straight, and not have to worry about running out of water). Not to mention sleep on a real bed! Trailer living is for the birds, and I have been a trailer bird for two full weeks. That's long enough. I can't wait to move into my new home!

Here is a shot from upstairs, looking toward the bathroom. You can see the stairwell in front of it. The master bedroom is out of the picture on the left. These rooms are going to look great. There are three different truss designs in here, as the ceilings are vaulted across the front rooms and over the bedroom, but are flat over the bathroom, and the little corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom required an extra little jog in the design. The truss builders came up with a solution that made my builder friend happy, so that makes me happy, because I know it will save some money in the end. And money is something we are running out of very quickly. Yikes!

I love this shot. This was taken from downstairs, looking up through the stairwell. You can see how the ceiling will come flat over the stairs, then angle down toward the face of the house (what I call the front). This house will have a very spacious feeling. I just hope we have enough places to put things, but I guess that is what the storage room and shed are for. ;)

And that's it for this tremendously long blog entry! There will certainly be more updates into the future, although I will only be around to take pictures on the weekends. Selecting pictures for this blog entry was difficult, as there are literally hundreds to choose from (actually, 1081 images and counting). I cannot imagine what 1081 pictures would have cost if I used real film! These digital cameras are great.

This Space Reserved

2007-11-04T17:32:00.001-08:00

Hello one and all. I have been away for about 10 days now, furiously working on my home (cutting wood, shooting nails, etc.). I hurt my back yesterday, so am taking a bit of a reprieve. I also am out of disk space on my server, so am unable to post any images, but I will fix that when I return home. I will be away for another week...then it will probably be a few days after that when I can actually get some pictures up, but I have been writing a long blog entry offline that I will hopefully be able to just cut and paste here when ready. But that means you won't get to see the process in real time, but you'll get a big bang blast all at once.

Something to look forward to, I guess. ;)

Got to go back to my trailer and lay down. My back is screaming at me.

Something to Look Forward To

2007-10-23T09:43:00.001-07:00

I have no time. But just to give you something to look forward to, here's a recent picture.

Want to see more?

Amazing Rovers

2007-10-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

I have been inundated with busy. But among all that is going on, it amazes me that the rovers on Mars are still going. They are now entering their third Martian year on the red planet. Keep in mind that one year on Mars is 687 Earth days long! Not bad for a couple of rovers that initially had a planned operation of only 30 Martian days!

Check out the link to the Mars rovers over on the right. I'll be back with more Earth-bound updates sometime before the next Martian year.

Mow, Mow, Mow Your Butt

2007-08-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well, we picked up a couple free lawn mowers a bit over a week ago, and the parts I ordered to fix one of them didn't arrive on time before I went back up to the land, so I thought I would see if I could find a place to get parts up there. I did. For $3.20. And I bought a quart of oil, which was actually more expensive than the parts.

I installed the parts - which included a diaphragm and a gasket for the carburetor - and the mower fired right up.

So I started mowing. And like Forrest Gump, when he started running, I just kept mowing. I mowed and mowed and mowed and mowed and mowed, taking short breaks only to keep from passing out. I drank about a gallon of water, and after I mowed about two acres with this tiny little 3.75 HP grass-eating machine (with the blade mounted backward), I said to my wife, "could we have been happy with 2-1/2 acres?"

She said no.

The mower lost some power a couple of times (I think I've wounded it), so I stopped a couple of times to let it cool off and to clean it up good. Unfortunately, the parts store didn't have any air filters in stock, but fortunately it is a foam type filter so was not difficult to clean up (to some degree, anyway) and re-use.
But after mowing about an acre and a half, I noticed the cutting blade was mounted upside down and that the grass was being "cut" by the back side of the blade. And it wasn't doing a half bad job, either (although, the grass is DEAD). So, I removed the blade and re-installed it properly and it worked a little bit better after that. But it is still a bit sluggish. But I'm not complaining - the thing was free! But now I know why people have tractors.

The view in the picture, above, is from about where the house will sit (actually just it tad bit in front of the house) and you can see some of the lines where I mowed.

This picture here is from a vantage point further down the hill on the property. That little green area up on the hill in among the trees is where the house is going to be. We have had the irrigation water running up there to soften up the ground to make it easy to grate (grade?) when the time comes. HOPEFULLY VERY SOON! We're getting the plans back to the county this Friday.

Keep your fingers crossed! We need those building permits!

All My Soup, Part II

2007-08-21T20:28:00.001-07:00

A while back, I posted some lyrics I made up to go with the song Auld Lang Syne. For some reason, this popped back into my head the other day, and I added a new verse.

Here's the whole thing so far...

I have a way of eating soup
that offends the nicest folks.
They don't like it when I suck it
through the nostrils of my nose.

My wife is embarrassed by me
whenever we eat out.
She hates it when I'm sitting there
stuffing noodles in my snout.

My friends they all say I need help,
they just make fun of me.
But I just smile and I say,
"have you tried Chef Boyardee?"

Oh, I've got to find some balance in my life.

Cold Days of Summer. Joy

2007-08-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am SO IRRITATED with the weather here in the bay area. This is supposed to be summer. You know, warm weather and sunshine and all that.

What's the deal?

It was nice out during the day today - somewhere in the low to mid 70s - when I went for my walk. But I came home and now it feels like it's in the 50s. I can't WAIT to get off this freaking peninsula!

It is so much warmer and nicer up on our land. We've got the driveway and the perimeter of the house marked out, and we're waiting on the last corrections to the plans to be done so we can re-submit them to the county, and soon the ground-breaking will begin.

I was up there last weekend, and it is beginning to cool off a little bit already. It's maybe in the 90s during the day, and it got down probably into the 60s at night just before dawn. A bit annoying, but tolerable. It seems like it is ALWAYS in the 60s (or lower) where I currently live, so I get annoyed when I go somewhere to get warm and it drops into the 60s.

Argh!

But I got the chance to just sit out on the land at night a couple of nights in a row, and just look at the stars. You can see all of them out there - the band of the Milky Way that I haven't seen in ever so long. I saw a few really spectacular meteors. Then I found out there was a meteor shower on Sunday night, but I couldn't see it, because I was driving home at that time. But I got a good view while I was there, anyway. I saw a couple satellites go by - I saw one the week earlier, too - one of them might have even been the space shuttle or the space station. I don't really know, but it was cool.

Anyway, I have had some fun swimming in the Yuba River and just taking care of things on the property. I bought a Stihl FS-55 weed eater a while back, so I have been spending a lot of time cutting back the grass and brush (trying to avoid the poison oak so we can deal with that separately). Five acres is a lot of land!

There is a radio program up there called Swap Shop, and people call in to announce what they have for sale or what they are looking for. It's a trip to listen to - I'm not used to the small community country living lifestyle. But my wife happened to turn on the radio and heard someone giving away two free lawn mowers - we were actually looking for one and even talked about turning on the program just minutes before! So, she picked them up and brought them back to the trailer and I spent the entire next day fiddling with them to get them to run.

The short story is, neither of them is quite working at the moment, but I have some parts on order (for less than $10!) and one mower should be up and running real soon - but only if the part gets here before I leave again tomorrow night! $10 is not bad for a working lawn mower. It's got a Briggs & Stratton engine on it that runs great - it just isn't getting any fuel (the carburetor isn't working quite right). Once I get it up and running, I'll have to be careful not to hit any rocks and set off a brush fire. There's lots of dry grass out there!

Maybe I'll make a Battle Bot out of the other one. ;)

We took the trailer to the dumping station at the fair grounds and emptied the holding tank - FINALLY - and moved the trailer down the hill and parked it under some trees. The nose faces West, now, instead of the side, so it stays a bit cooler in the afternoon sun when it blazes in. I admit, it gets a little too warm inside at times. But outside, it's perfect.

The trailer looks like it is adversely jacked up the way it is situated on the hill - like it is popping a wheelie. But in reality, it still leans just a tiny bit downhill, believe it or not. Next, we have to move the shed somewhere so the driveway can be grated.

I finally figured out the starter problem with my truck, so that was an awesome day! I should have marked it on my calendar. It turned out to be a connector. The truck is a 1981 Toyota Pickup, and after putting all the pieces together, it came down to "the starter is not getting enough power from the battery." I traced the wires (thanks to a mechanics book my wife found at a yard sale!) and came across a connector. To make the story short, simply disconnecting and reconnecting the connector fixed the problem. There was just enough corrosion (tarnish?) in the connection that it was making enough of a connection to allow the solenoid to click, but not allowing enough current through to crank it over.

I had realized that it would sometimes start on a hot day - and it mostly started when we were up at the land - but here on the freakin' peninsula, the damn thing didn't have a chance of starting - it was too cold. The cold was enough for the metal in the connector to contract enough to break the connection. Anyway, now it fires right up every time. And I fixed the horn, too.

Beep, beep!

We set up some sprinklers a few weeks ago, since we have irrigation water, and just let it run 24x7 for a few weeks to get the ground softened up and ready for grating. It has started to turn the area green again - and the birds are loving it. There's also wild turkeys that wander around the area from time to time, too. Nine of them.

It's getting close to time to build, and I am just not feeling right. I seem to have no strength lately, and no stamina. This has to change if I am going to start pounding nails and carrying heavy things. I don't know what's wrong with me - maybe I'm just not eating right (no surprise there) or getting enough sleep or enough exercise (what's that?). I think I'm going to see a doctor just to make sure it's nothing serious.

Anyway, no downer talk here. It has been a harried ride thus far, but I think we're going to get there. Speaking of rides, I went to the Nevada County fair last weekend and rode on the Fire Ball. I love that ride! I didn't have the guts to get on Vortex, though, and didn't feel like spending another $5 (one was enough. Well, not really, but it was within budget). If I wasn't building a house, I would have spent the $27 for unlimited rides and gone crazy.

I'll always be a kid at heart.

Ugh - so much to talk about, and no time. It has been too long since I have written. My acting classes are over for a while - I had a couple very profound experiences in the last two sessions - and I think it has changed me in a positive way. At least for the time being.

I feel joy - despite the cold weather.

How magnificent is that?

Everyone Must Back Up

2007-06-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

I thought of putting this entry into the Computer Circus blog, but it was so general and uneventful, that I figured it was appropriate for this general, uneventful blog.

I was feeling this feeling in my gut that I get just before something bad happens to my computer(s). I have learned to pay attention to these nagging little feelings, because they have been so foretelling in the past. This time, I decided to do something before something happened.

I have had some drives sitting around for some time, waiting for something to be done with them. One was a drive that crapped out some time ago (I am sure there is an entry in the Computer Circus about it). Another was an image copy of that drive...I THINK...as it was labeled as a mirror drive (with the added notation, "in limbo"). I have no long term memory anymore, so I do not know what the state of the drive was, exactly. But another drive that I didn't notice until I was just about done with my operation today, was a backup of my current data drive, as of January, 2006.

My operation today consisted of backing up my main computer. I took the "in limbo" drive and wiped it and backed up my 120GB data drive onto it. Goodbye original content (my current system was a descendant of that data, and I figured it had been sitting around long enough). It had previously been used in a data recovery operation, and I think I was holding on to it until I determined that the files on my current system were really intact. Well, now I know I'll never know for sure, so I decided it had sat around long enough, so not it contains a copy of my current data drive as of today.

So there.

I also had another spare drive that I picked up during a swap session at the robotics club that I never get to anymore - the last time I went was December 2005, I think, as that is when I got this drive. So I used it to back up my system drive.

So, now I have a complete image backup of my system drive and my data drive - if either drive craps out in my computer, all I have to do is drop one of these backup drives in its place and fire it up again (then immediately back up THAT drive).

MAN, it feels good to have a backup! I'm thinking of running a backup every week from now on. I used a great little piece of (FREE!) software, called Drive SelfImage, to make my drive image copies. I recommend it to anyone who is not afraid to open up their computers and add a second hard drive to save their files onto (or for anyone who simply needs to make an image copy of a drive). It is very simple and fast (well, as fast as your drives and buses are).

And, now that I have a new power supply in my media/backup computer, and a working fan in the Linux box, it is time to perform some backups of the other computers in my little network. An ounce of prevention, you know!

Up And Running

2007-06-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

New post on the Computer Circus blog. Look for it in my links in the right hand column.

Server Down Under

2007-06-20T01:06:00.001-07:00

My server is down until I can replace a fan, so no pictures for a while. At least, not until the system is UP again.

What's Up?

2007-06-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

All this time, I thought I knew what "up" meant. Then I started thinking about all the ways in which the word is used, and now I'm not sure what it means at all. Consider the following:

Show up.
Slow up.
Pay up.
Give up.
Shut up.
Wash up.
Look it up.
Call 'em up.
Eat up.
Throw up (well, that one kind of makes sense - similar to cough it up).
Fed up.
Close up (can take that two ways).
Cover up.
Spin it up.
Wind it up.
Turn it up.
Start it up.
Crank it up.
Fire it up.
Make up. Or make it up.
Screwed up.
F'd up.
Wake up. Time to get up and go in for your check-up.

I'm sure there is a ton more - can you think of any? And do we have a clue what we're saying?

What's Up?

Life in the Works

2007-06-01T03:01:00.000-07:00

UPDATED WITH PICTURES

Man, what a week.

I spent Memorial Day weekend - plus an extra day - up at our new land. Our new spot is 4 miles from Lake Englebright (Englebrite?), and our builder friend just bought a new boat, so of course we had to spend some time on the lake.

I tried my hand at wake boarding, but I could not get up on it. I tried until my muscles gave out - and I *almost* got up on the last try.

We also bought a nice new weed eater and I cut a path across our land down to a sweet little meditation spot that my wife is creating for herself.
She's up there right now taking it easy. She has had a HELL of a time the past few weeks, looking for work, building her portfolio, coordinating a million details with our house plans, etc., etc., etc. Now she is looking at not one, but THREE awesome job offers and is stressing over which one to choose.

A couple weeks ago, she picked up a 1981 Toyota pickup truck so we would have something up on the land to cart stuff around with. It's a cute little 4x4, and we have no idea how many times the odometer has wrapped around, but it's not in horrible shape.
The key was nearly impossible to turn in the ignition, and just today I made it very impossible to turn anymore...shortly after I extracted it from the steering column. My gut was telling me its time was close, but I had no idea it was THAT close. In order to remove the key cylinder, you have to turn the key to the ACC position so you can push in a little button that sets it free. It took me close to 10 minutes fighting with the key before I got it to turn.

I have a new cylinder on order, so I decided to do a post mortem examination of the old one to see how it works. Unfortunately, since I didn't know how it worked, I basically destroyed it in the process of taking it apart. Had I known how it worked, I could have dismantled it with very minimal damage. But now that I know how it works, I am armed for the future.

Oh, MAN was that cylinder worn! It's amazing it worked at all.

So, now I can easily start the engine with a screwdriver. So could a thief if he noticed. Only one problem, though - the starter is going bad, too. I have one of those on order, too.

The truck is sitting in my garage right now - I managed to drive it home from Grass Valley on Tuesday. I had to stop four times to latch the hood down, though, because the catch was missing a spring. Good thing the safety catch works! I bought a new spring and put it in. I also noticed there was a bad hose from the air cleaner to the block (what's that for?) so I tried to find something to replace it with. not much luck, but I have a piece of fuel injection hose on it that should hold for a bit.

We stopped at a wrecking yard and picked up some window crank handles and put those on to replace the broken ones. I also replaced a couple little broken lamp lenses on the side rear, and realized the lamps, themselves, were busted out, so I have to go back and find some replacements.

Someone had jacked up the battery mount pretty good, so I fixed that...pretty good.

Oh, and I figured out today why the horn doesn't work (it worked one time - when it was really hot last weekend - which makes sense now). There is a spring-loaded contact pin that rides against a metal plate behind the steering wheel to make electrical contact for the horn. It was worn down so much that it was no longer making contact. However, on a really hot day, it will expand just enough to make contact. If I can get a steering wheel puller tool, I can get in there and braze a bit of metal back on top to make it work again.

In the meantime, the horn sounds sick when it works, so I am going to go back to that wrecking yard and pull a horn that I saw on an old 1981 pickup truck that they had there (the same one I got the other parts from). Oh, the funny thing it, this truck in the wrecking yard also had an air filter that was almost brand new - so that's in my truck now.

So, why did I drive this truck over 160 miles back to home base? Because a while back, I bought a 10,000 Watt generator, and we had no vehicle to carry it in. This thing weighs nearly 300 lbs. I had to build a ramp (simply made from two 8-foot 2x6 boards each nailed to one of two 8-foot 2x4 boards. I just dropped the tailgate down (all the way down to prevent breaking it), lined up the boards, and HEAVED this generator up the ramp. Yes, it has wheels, but it still weighs nearly 300 lbs.

Between eating weeds with a killer weed eater, trying unsuccessfully to ride a wake board, mounting some shelves, tweaking an old pickup truck, building a ramp and shoving a 300 lb. generator into the back of the truck, I ACHE ALL OVER!

I still ache. And I might be going back this weekend. Then again, I might not.

I went up with my wife last weekend, then on Tuesday she got on an airplane out of Sacramento to go to an interview in Connecticut (with a company she could telecommute with), and Wednesday night she flew back to Sacramento and drove back up to the land where she is relaxing in our little trailer, awaiting my return this weekend. We're trying to coordinate with our architect person to get our plans submitted to the county on Monday. That's a story for another time - GEESH! What a jerk-around experience that has been.

And I am in a killer crunch at work right now, trying to complete a new component for our web-based enterprise application. God, I hate JavaScript! Hopefully, after this, I will never have to deal with it again, directly. Then again, I hope to find a better [paying] job and get up to where our land is, soon.

What a journey!

Interesting times lie ahead for sure. Wish me good fortune!

Remember Different

2007-05-12T01:01:00.000-07:00

I was driving home from my land last weekend and I saw an American flag in front of a house with a big sign that read, "Remember 9/11. Support our troops."

I remember 9/11. It's kind of hard to forget. It's like when you ask someone what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was shot; if they were old enough at the time to remember anything, they can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. If you were old enough to remember 9/11, trust me - you won't forget it.

Ever.

But then there's our troops in Iraq. I support THEM, as people, as Americans, because they (well, most of them, anyway) did not go over there by choice. They were sent there. On orders. That's kind of how the organization works. But then, what's with the sign?

Remember 9/11. Support our troops.

OK, I remember 9/11, and I support our troops (please don't confuse that to mean I support the decision for them being there, or whatever spin is spun to convince us as to why they are there or why they should be there). But what do the two have to do with each other?

Nothing.

Yes, remember 9/11. But remember also why we are in Iraq...if you can. So, just why is it that they are there, again? The Bushies (including the man himself) would like us to think we're fighting some kind of WAR in Iraq and that it has something to do with 9/11, but don't kid yourselves, little lemmings. Have you seen the gas prices lately?

If this war has done anything, it has weakened our ability to fight off those who truly aim to do harm to this country and the citizens thereof. It also has done exactly what I EXPECTED it to do the very moment I heard ol' G.W. first open his bumbling mouth about starting this war in the first place (nevermind the moronic "axis of evil" comments, or the mighty "you're either with us, or against us" stance that followed): it has stirred up the hornet's nest. It has riled up those people in the world who hate us the most. The real people and organizations that would just love to take down the Western world given half a chance.

Well, I think with all our military resources getting sapped by a war that can't be articulated or defined, I think they might have half a chance. And while we're over stomping on some old, incohesive hornet's nest, all the hornets are regrouping and building new nests somewhere else (or, perhaps, where they have been all along). And the more stomping we do, the more building they do. The more we're distracted, the stronger they get.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, "support our troops - let them win!" Win what? What are they WINNING? What are WE winning? What is the payoff here? How can we win a war that can't even be defined? Does losing mean we lose access to the oil reserves? No, that can't be it - war is NEVER about money or resources. I hear stories about schools being built over there, and all the good we're doing, yadda, yadda, yadda... Is this a war or a relief effort? What IS the plan? What IS this "war" about?

You cannot fight an idea. The whole "war on terrorism" concept is flawed in its conception. You can't fight terrorism! You can only fight against those who commit terrorist acts (and just what is the definition of terrorism these days?). There is no winning until everyone is dead. I mean everyone - all 6.5 billion of us on this fragile little world. There will ALWAYS be those who hate us. And as long as there are people who hate US, there will be those of US who hate THEM. See how that works? It's a never-ending cycle - a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can't win against enevitability. No one can. Sure, you can stave it off, postpone it, keep pushing back as hard as you can until finally something slips through the cracks and brings a ton of shit crashing down. But it can't be stopped. Controlled to some degree, perhaps, but never stopped.

But that's the problem with the people who think this world is governed by rules of black and white. You're either with us, or against us. You are on our side or you are on their side. You're on the left or you're on the right (and the gap keeps getting wider). This war will either be won or it will be lost. All these absolutes! All these ultimatums! It's that very thinking that will result in defeat...however one might define that.

The universe works in the middle - in the gray area between black and white. There are no absolutes. There is no finish line to cross. Life is a process, and although an individual's life may have a distinct beginning and a distinct ending, life, itself, continues. Everything is an ebb and a flow, a negotiation, a decision, a choice, and ultimately a path.

And, perhaps, ultimately, all paths lead to the same conclusion. After all, in about five billion years, the sun will burn out and the Earth will die - all of it - so what are we really fighting? Shouldn't we really be focusing our efforts on saving HUMANITY? If we think we're smart enough to somehow win some kind of absolute war against an abstract concept, certainly we can figure out how to live in space and understand the fundamental laws of the universe and work with them to find a way off this rock in search of (or in development of) other habitable environments.

What if we are the only "intelligent" beings in the universe (sans the lemmings)? We don't have a whole lot of time here, and striving to wipe each other out isn't helping things. Listening to some moron who sits in a position that really needs to be occupied by someone respectable, doesn't help either. Listening to the spin will only lead to trouble. And there's PLENTY of that lurking around the corner, with or without the spin!

I question the intelligence of a species that continues to repeat historical mistakes, and in bigger and badder ways. That seems more like our animal nature kicking in - perhaps leading us to think, "things will be different this time!"

Well, Good Luck.

OK, sure, yes... I will remember 9/11. And I will remember that it was Osama bin Ladin that was behind the plan, and he was (perhaps still is?) in Afghanistan. And his followers are in Afghanistan...and Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and... Oh, and I should support our troops. And, oh, wait...why are we in Iraq, again? Oh, yeah - I think it's because the Republicans think that if we stay there long enough, they'll figure out a reason to justify it that actually sounds reasonable, or that maybe SOMETHING good will eventually come of it, or maybe they just want to somehow shove the whole mess into the Democrats' laps, or at least into the next administration.

Or maybe it's just good for business.

They can all shove it as far as I'm concerned. I want the fucking planet back! Love it, or leave it!

Tortured Soul

2007-04-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

I have been ill, but now I am back on my feet. Been depressed and haven't felt the desire to write. Anyway, I hopped on over to Tracey's blog and found something interesting, so here's my results:

You Are a Retrospective Soul

The most misunderstood of all the soul signs.
Sometimes you even have difficulty seeing yourself as who you are.
You are intense and desire perfection in every facet of your life.
You're best described as extremely idealistic, hardworking, and a survivor.

Great moments of insight and sensitivity come to you easily.
But if you aren't careful, you'll ignore these moments and repeat past mistakes.
For you, it is difficult to seperate the past from the present.
You will suceed once you overcome the disappoinments in life.

Souls you are most compatible with: Traveler Soul and Prophet Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

I guess I need to figure out how to overcome my disappointments in my life so I can become successful. OK, then, that's what I'll do!

Shaping Up and Tired Out

2007-04-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

The shed is pretty much all done except for the roof. Actually, that may have been completed today in my absence -- I'll know the next time I visit.

It looks like a box up on the hill.

I had a few minutes to take note of the beauty of the land, so I snapped a few shots. here's a very select few of the many that I snapped.

Everything sure is green!

How pretty...

It will be some time before the house building begins, but hopefully we can get it framed by July, or it's going to start getting way too hot. But we have to get the plans decided on and drawn up and get the building permits, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah. Phooey!

I'll get there...somehow...eventually. Speaking of eventually, eventually this new shed will be moved to another spot on the land once we're done building the house.

That will be fun.

Wheeeeeeee!!!!

Sheds-R-Us

2007-03-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

I spent some time up at our new land last weekend. A friend and I took a couple trips down to the lumber yard and got some material and proceeded to build a 12x12 shed. We didn't get as much done as we hoped, but we made good progress. My friend did most of the work (me being a desk jockey and all) - after all, he had all the tools and knew what he was doing.

We pulled the trailer up to get it out of the way and proceeded to build the foundation. Did I tell you I got a trailer and stuck it on the property?

This is a temporary structure and will eventually be moved to another location on the land once our house is built, but for now it will stand as a place to lock up tools and materials while the house is being built. We've still got a long way to go before we get to building the house, though.
Anyway, the shed basically will just sit flat on the ground for now.

We built the foundation frame, then put some plywood flooring down. We used thinner plywood than we originally were going to use, because there was like a $10 difference - per sheet - and I'm on a tight budget. The floor is a tiny bit mushy in spots, but definitely strong enough for my needs. We added some 2x4s underneath in spots to help make it more sturdy.

Once the floor was done, then the easy part began: building the walls. We built one, sheeting and all, and stood it up.

Then we built another. This one was framed for a door. I got to cut out the door later on.

Then the third wall. This wall will have a small window in it. I got a recycled window, and I didn't realize that it opened vertically until my friend looked at it and told me how strange of a window it was. Oh, well - it's just a shed.

Then the fourth wall went up. I might add a window to this wall, though I haven't decided, yet. We'd like to do it before we put up the siding next weekend, but it will still be do-able later on if I decide to wait. I'm already over budget, though, so I probably will wait.

Then the framing of the roof began.

And it went pretty quick. I marked and did some cutting of the 2x4s and handed them up to my friend who did the bulk of the hard work.

Then, in a whirlwind, the roof sheeting went up. I was complimented for cutting some straight lines when cutting a couple of the 4'x8' sheets in half. At least I felt like I accomplished something. Oh, and if you've noticed, I also cut out the doorway and window. I did great on the left-hand cuts, but the right-hand cuts went a little wobbly - not sure why that was - something about the angle, I guess.

And this is about as far as we got. Not bad for two days of work. And I sure learned a lot!

Next weekend, we will finish the tar paper, shingle the roof, install the door and window, and put up the siding and it will be done for now. Saved about $1,000 over what it would have cost for a Tuff-Shed, so I am happy about that. However, it wound up costing more than expected. Ugh. Something to look forward to when building the house?

One thing I love about it up there (besides the beautiful scenery): IT'S WARM!!!

I can't WAIT to move off this freakin' peninsula!

Absenteeism is Not a Religion

2007-03-19T02:24:00.000-07:00

I have been absent from my blog lately.

Obviously.

I have been busy with other things...like YouTube. That thing is ADDICTIVE! I've posted a couple monologues under my stage name.

Oh, man, I almost forgot - I have to build a house. I better get off the computer before my wife gets back into town.

OH, HI HONEY!

P.S. I still don't know what this music is from!!!

Gore vs. Bush

2007-02-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

Supreme Court Strips Al Gore of Oscar; Declares George W. Bush Winner

Fresh off his Oscar victory last night for Best Documentary, Al Gore has been stripped of his title by the U.S. Supreme Court. George W. Bush was declared the new winner despite the fact that he had not received a single vote or even watched a movie in the last decade except for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

In the Court's opinion, new Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that he was proud to follow in the steps of his old boss and predecessor, the late William Rehnquist, who helped decide Bush v. Gore in 2000. "You've gotta love lifetime appointments," Roberts said. "We aren't even trying anymore!"

Insiders say a disappointed Gore has already begun regrowing his beard, although a spokesperson claims it is only so he can save energy on heat now that climate change has made the winter months colder and more unpredictable.

Meanwhile, jubilation abounded in Crawford, Texas, where George W. Bush was leisurely enjoying a few weeks off from his normal vacation spot in Camp David. "I didn't even know you could win an Oscar for pretending to be something in real life," Bush said. He also issued an executive order demanding that Martin Scorsese's long-awaited award for Best Director be given to Dick Cheney for his handling over the White House.

Plans to melt the statue down into gold coins bearing Bush's likeness were scrapped after Bush decided it had been involved in terrorist activities. The statue is expected to arrive in Guantanamo by tomorrow morning, where it will no longer be under the jurisdiction of Roberts and the Supreme Court.

</End plagiarism>

Ding Ding Ding!

2007-02-25T01:04:00.000-08:00

It's official: the land is ours!

Escrow closed on Thursday. We've got our hands full planning our next steps, which is why I have been so absent.

While I Was Away

2007-02-16T00:33:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posing any content to my own blog, so I may as well post stuff from other blogs. I thought this was interesting.

Some Days Are Just That Way

2007-02-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

What a shitty day.

Last night, our cat got out when my wife went out get something out of her car. I was feeling under the weather and it was raining, so we figured she wouldn't go far. She's gotten out before. She was last seen this morning by a neighbor around 8:00 in the morning, arguing with another cat - we forgot to let her back in before going to bed last night!

Now she's missing. I went to look for her around the back of the apartments and tried to step down on a fallen fence siding, and discovered the hard way that it was covered with wet moss. I went down hard and now, many hours later, my back and neck are killing me. And the cat is still missing.

Then my wife and I had an argument about something stupid, and she started having the pain in her gut that she sometimes gets and the doctors can't identify. This just added to her lingering disgust over the way Google treated her in a job interview last week (morons!). The only good news I got today was that our loan for the land has been approved.

It's still raining. I'm still not feeling well, and I'm in increasing pain. All I want to hear is a meow at the door, and then the day won't seem quite so bad. But I wonder if I'll even bother to get out of bed tomorrow.

UPDATE: The cat returned around 11:00 pm. I took some ibuprophen and went to bed soon thereafter.

What's He Up To Now?

2007-02-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

The Big B. is up to something... -- http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11508

Is it fair OR balanced? Maybe he doesn't like that. -- http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/goals/objectivity/

Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? -- http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/2005/11/tomlinson-slinks-away.html

What are you up to, Big B.? What do you want to cut us off from this time?

Plea for Identity

2007-01-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

I have begun a process. A long process. A very long process. I have hundreds of old cassette tapes, some dating back to when I was probably 8 years old, where I have recorded a ton of weird crap. Everything from me reading horrible jokes from a book (that I amazingly still have), to making sound effects, to recording (audio only) stuff from television.

I was a weird kid. It explains a lot about my current weirdness.

Speaking of weird, I am now in the process of digitizing all these tapes into my computer. Like I said, it's a long process. If I do one tape a day, it will take me over a year to record them all. Then I want to go through and compile a "best of" collection. Who knows how long that will take.

Anyway, there is a song that I caught the tail end of, that you should be hearing now (unless you are using a browser that won't play it), and it has haunted me for years. I have NO IDEA what the song is, but I absolutely must know. It is just one of those burning mysteries of my life that I need to solve.

If you have ANY idea what the song is, PLEASE let me know! I remember I called a radio station once and played it for the DJ, but he didn't know what it was. I gave up easily. But here it is, once again in my life, and now I have a means of putting the word out for someone to identify it.

If you don't know what it is, send all your blog-hopping friends on over to step up to the challenge. I believe the song was recorded (on my tape) sometime in the '70s. I will be forever grateful to whomever can reveal this secret to me!

UPDATE: I may have a clue. Following this song snippit on my tape was a recording of me tuning around on the radio, and there was a car commercial for a 1979 Oldsmobile. So, this at least establishes a time frame of when this snippit was captured on my tape. Man, that's like 28 years ago!

Pick Your Pic

2007-01-20T04:19:00.000-08:00

I'm looking at a bunch of pictures that my wife and I have taken over the years. I am curious which ones you like the best. I have created some thumnails to choose from. I know it is REALLY hard to tell about some of them, as they all take on an entirely different impression in their full size versions. But just from what you can see, give me your votes on your favorites (you can pick more than one).

1: 2:
3: 4:
5: 6:
7: 8:
9: 10:
11: 12:
13: 14:
15: 16:
17: 18:
19: 20:
21: 22:
23: 24:
25: 26:
27: 28:
29: 30
31: 32:
33: 34: 35:
36: 37:
38: 39:
40: 41:
42:

I just threw that last one in there, because I like it. That's my wife.
By the way, my wife took photos #5 through #11, #19, #23, possibly one or both of #24 & #25, #27, #32, #34, and possibly #36 (although that one is highly debatable). I took all the rest. She takes better pictures than I do, and yet, she takes so few. She's quality, and I'm quantity, I guess. ;)

Man, I gotta tell ya - looking at these now, as small as they are...they just don't look like much. When it comes to photographs - size really matters. A lot of these just don't look like anything at this size - especially #30 & #31.

Anyway, do your best - tell me which ones you like.

P.S. Think "blog skin".

Changes Are A-Comin'

2007-01-19T21:18:00.000-08:00

Well, escrow has been opened on the land. We are awaiting all the disclosures and crap. I'll be going up to Grass Valley next weekend (a week from today) to look at the land and take care of some business. And to clear up some additional issues (God, this has been one screwy transaction, though I'm not going into any details). The pump in the well is really good, and we still have to do an appraisal and all the necessary inspections, etc., to make sure this deal is golden.

It better be.

I'll dance when the deal is done. Because once the deal is closed and the loan is secured, I CAN FINALLY CHANGE JOBS!!! That is one horror story that I will NOT get into here...just yet.

On the home front (and on a lighter note), I feel my blog may be getting a face lift. Either, I will butcher it royally, myself, or perhaps someone else will come along and skin my blog alive (I heard rumblings about some sort of "blogskin team" traipsing about). Either way, it should be interesting. I have collected a bunch of photos that my wife and I have taken - tried to pick out the best of the best. My thought was I would use bits and pieces of them to fashion a blog skin of sorts around my haphazard musings. But like I said, I may butcher my blog in the process. I'd get my wife to do it, if she had any free time to speak of, because she's good at that sort of thing.

We're both working too damn hard! It's 9:30 p.m. on a Friday and I haven't left the office, yet. But I'm leaving now!

Ready, Set...

2007-01-10T23:36:00.001-08:00

OK, 2007 is here. Now what?

Thursday:
OK, maybe I'll start by going to Grass Valley. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll leave in the morning. Early.

Friday:
Okie dokie, now I'm in Grass Valley. Perhaps I'll go look at some land.

Saturday:
Looked at some land and ate some great Chineese food yesterday.
What to do today, what to do?

Sunday:
Signed offer on land yesterday - now waiting for word from seller. Had a good time with the wife last night (mine) - ordered take-out from a Mexican restaurant owned by a friend of a friend. Drove home, took a shower, then went back across the bay to visit a friend who is up from Bakersfield for training - the same friend who knows the owner of the Mexican restaurant. Visited for a few hours, drove home, and now I'm going to bed.

All My Soup

2006-12-19T19:35:00.000-08:00

Sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne...

I have a way of eating soup
that offends the nicest folks.
They don't like it when I suck it
through the nostrils of my nose.

My wife is embarrassed by me
whenever we eat out.
She hates it when I'm sitting there
stuffing noodles in my snout.

What can I say? I had a moment.

Questor on Hold

2006-12-04T15:31:00.000-08:00

The Questor Project is officially on hold. Too much going on. But it will resume later next year, for sure, for sure. Also, I'm about ready to take a bazooka to work. More details when I have time. HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

The Second Coming

2006-11-26T19:41:00.000-08:00

I couldn't pass this up - it's just too funny. Well, I think so. I'm sure there are many who will be offended.

Religion has been on my mind today, because a good friend of mine - who also happens to be a Jehova Witness - sent an email today containing an attachment consisting of a monologue by Drew Carey. In it, he made reference to how many holidays we have in this country that have nothing to do with the Bible.

Huh? How many biblical holidays do we need? Do Christians have exclusive rights to what we celebrate? Hmm - this is a little reminiscent of why the founders of this country separated church from state!

Anyway, Drew mentioned how Christmas is really a Pagan holiday and that Halloween was a Satanic holiday. True, Christmas has Pagan origins, but so does Halloween. But I'm just curious - isn't Satan part of the Christian belief system? The origins of Christmas and Halloween pre-date Christianity, so how could Halloween be a Satanic holiday if the idea of Satan didn't even exist, yet?

I don't celebrate any religious holidays, because I'm not religious. I just celebrate holidays because they're holidays, not because of any religious undertones (or overtones). What's wrong with spending some quality time with friends and family and just being joyous and happy about being alive?

Every day should be a celebration, and I think life is more about having faith in ourselves and in others than it is about having faith in some unseen force or entity. After all, it is undeniable that we exist. And if you reach out to me when you need me, you'll actually feel my hand.

Dream Shopping

2006-11-19T18:48:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed that the biggest shopping day of the year is creeping ever closer to Halloween? Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? I guess it's dead - it's been outgrown by Christmas trees. Pretty soon, people will start believing that the colors of Thanksgiving are red and green. Then again, what colors are associated with Thanksgiving? Golden brown? Nobody's going to rob me of my turkey!!

I don't celebrate the holidays. At least not in the sense of knowing what the holidays actually mean. I wonder sometimes if anyone knows anymore. It's just an excuse to take time off work. For me, it's kind of a piggy-backing off other people's religious beliefs. Christmas? SURE, I'll take time off for that! Time to get as far away from the Christmas madness as possible... What I want for Christmas is to not have to go Christmas shopping. Then again, there's not many people who would notice if I didn't.

I went shopping for a dream today. We took another trip up to Grass Valley - we left early in the afternoon on Friday, hoping to beat the traffic. Apparently, everyone else who was going away for the week of Thanksgiving also left early on Friday to beat the traffic. It took us nearly six hours to get there. Today, it took less than three hours to return home.

While in (or I should say, near) Grass Valley, I took a look at a 5-acre parcel of land that my wife and I really like. Here's a couple of shots of it:

The land has a gentle slope to it, leveling out at the bottom. This shot was taken up at a high spot, near where we would build a house, looking down (toward where my wife would have her animals, and I could fly my planes).

And here is a shot from down low, looking up the slope. The area where the trees are is where we would build -- probably a bit to the left of center in the image. You can kind of see my car behind a tree on the right.

It's a dream. We don't know if we can get it or not. They're asking more than we can afford, but it is a buyer's market right now, and we hope to be able to make a reasonable offer that we can afford and that they would accept. There's already a well there and the perc and mantle has been done, we would just need to put in a septic system and start building.

Either way, if we can get the land and discover that, for some reason, we can't work it out, it is in a great area that is growing and we would have no problem selling it. It would be a huge change for us to move out there - we'd have to figure out the whole telecommuting thing with work - but we're ready for a change. Ready to get away from where we are now, anyway.

We've got to follow our dreams while we have them, or they'll never happen. We have to make our dreams come true, as I don't think they will come true on their own.

Keep your fingers crossed. And send your donations to.... Just kidding. I think I'll start playing the Lotto - maybe I'll get lucky.

It's So Cold

2006-11-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

I'm sure my previous post is getting old and tired and certainly it's not very up-beat, so I'm posting a new post. Not sure what to post, but anything has got to be better.

Interesting changes in the house and senate, eh? It will be interesting to see what the new crew can do to start putting a stop to all this madness. It will take generations to recover from Bush's regime, and people will probably blame it all on Clinton and Lewinsky. Somehow that is worse than anything the Bush's administration ever did. Ha! Well, we're still stuck with the guy for two more years. Hopefully, in time, America will recover some semblance of what America used to stand for. Maybe someone will figure out how to piece our Bill of Rights back together.

Enough ranting and bashing - there's plenty of other voices out there doing that for me. Progress has been slow on the Questor project. Oh, and here come the holidays! Joy. I'm not going to have this fuselage done anywhere near Christmas, which was my goal, but then life is like that. I just have to keep forging ahead.

Well, I think it's time to put some more Questor photos together. Until then, keep smiling. Oh, I've got a whole script written up for a continuation of the Roger and Eric conversation... but who knows when I'll ever get around to shooting it.

Wanting to Go Home

2006-10-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

It is a terrible feeling to be sitting in the place where I live, feeling like I want to go home.

Where do I go?

My wife and I had a "falling out" of sorts today. Pretty significant one. It was pretty much another installment of an infinitely repeating episode (broken record?), but I have pretty much reached my breaking point. I have no capacity remaining within me to deal with this shit.

I really don't.

I try to make her understand that, but I think she believes (or just wants to believe) that it's just my anger talking. But I'm pretty fucking serious. I really can't take this shit anymore.

I don't care if it's her or me. Make it all me if you want - put it all on me - it just doesn't matter, because I'm miserable either way. Whatever, or whomever, the cause, the effective result is what I have to live with. And I'm not doing so well.

I just want to go home. But I don't know where that is.

I hate this feeling.

Flying Day - Plus More Video

2006-10-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

I finally went flying today! I flew my 24-year-old airplane and had a blast.

Here's my plane, sitting peacefully on the table after a nice afternoon of flying.

And here's the same plane in the sky where it seemed right at home. It has been too long!

And there's the smiling pilot, vicariously participating in the experience, and enjoying every minute.

My wife even came with me and enjoyed the time out. What more could I ask for?
I wish more days could be like this.

By the way, since my first attempt at creating a video entry got truncated to five minutes, I thought I would include the complete sequence here, in two parts, so you can see the whole story. If you saw the first one already, just watch the second.

Part I:

Part II:

Enjoy.

By the way, I have also completed the narrative on some of the incomplete Questor project construction pages, and have added a short progress report for this weekend. Check it out.

Joining the Video Revolution

2006-10-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm trying something different today. I have been trying to get on blogger.com all freakin' day, but without success until just now. I finally decided to shut down all my browser windows and restart the browser - I don't know if there is any direct correlation there, but at least I got through.

I have posted my first video blog entry, as you can see below. It was a far too time-consuming experience, so I'm probably going to revert back to my usual type-written content with jpeg images that actually seem to convey more than I professed they did in the video - especially seeing how compressed the video turned out. But then again, I did crank up the compression, because the video is quite long (9 minutes).

UPDATE: Apparently, photobucket only allows a maximum of 5 minutes for videos, unless I go pro, so this video is truncated. Perhaps I will split it into two. Sorry about that!

Anyway, without further ado...ENJOY!

My text-based blog style will resume from here on out, though I may plug in an occasional (SHORT) video now and then, now that I am all set up for it.

Oh - here's something silly you can watch in its entirety. I created this today, too.

Smart Guy, Eh?

Weather Forecasting for Mummies

2006-10-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

I imagine that if you are a mummy, you really don't give a damn about the weather. So, I have concluded that the weather forecasting around here must be for mummies, because it is NEVER RIGHT!

Mummies: "WHO CARES?"

I care. I have a little weather toolbar in my FireFox browser, and I have actually been watching it, primarily because I wanted to go flying this weekend. Today, really. And I wanted to go flying TODAY, because it was supposed to be the warmer day of the weekend.

On Wednesday or Thursday, the projected high for Saturday and Sunday was 68 degrees. On Friday, the projected highs were 69 on Saturday and 71 on Sunday. YESTERDAY, I got online, and depending on the forecast source, it was supposed to be anywhere between 71 and 73 degrees today and mostly sunny.

WTF?!

Today, it is completely overcast - has been all day - I'm freezing my ass off and the projected high for today is 64 degrees.

I hate Northern California. The peninsula, anyway. I really do. I can't wait to move. I'd rather suffer the process of moving than to suffer here another f-ing year. Besides the shitty weather, there's not even anyplace convenient to fly.

I miss Arizona!!

Time Keeps on Ticking

2006-10-15T01:21:00.001-07:00

The weekend is here, and again I am spending my time on the Questor project. I am anxious to complete it, though I know that won't happen for a few months, yet. My class ended (and I believe I aced the final exam) on Thursday, so now I am free from that burden.

So, you might begin to see some Questor progress updates during the week, now. That is, if nothing else intervenes. I might also be going back to Grass Valley next weekend, so I will not make any progress on that weekend if that happens.

I have updated the development entry for 10/09/2006 in the Questor development area, and added a new entry for today (well, technically yesterday, since it is after midnight). Ugh! I can't wait for daylight saving time to go away!

The Jig is Up

2006-10-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

More Questor project advancement today. Click the link in the right-hand column and check out the development area.

I went to the AjaxWorld conference last week and had a good time. I'm too tired right now to write anything else, and besides, I think I hear the Wraith...or is it the Cylons?

Yes, it's time for bed. Or war. Not sure which at this point.

Wretched, Rancid Ranch Hand

2006-10-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

Don't ask. I have no idea. It was just a tongue twister that [somehow] came to mind today.

All I really wanted to say was that I found some time to post an update on the Questor project.

See you next weekend!

Flying Time

2006-10-01T23:16:00.000-07:00

I was going to fly this weekend. I really was. I bought some fuel and mounted the engine on my 24-year-old airplane and got it all ready to go.

And then the weekend came.

And it was overcast and cold. Too cold for this desert rat, anyway.

So I stayed home. But I made some good progress on the Questor project today. Woo hoo! I pretty much built the tail boom. Well, that is, it is no longer four sticks and a handful of ideas. I laminated some sticks together to make the two main boom sticks, then I joined them at the tail end, so it's all one unit. I've even got some wires hanging out, just waiting for a connector to be installed. But first, I need to do a considerable amount of work, yet, on the tail end to get the fin to fit in where it belongs and to provide an alternate connection point for electrical power.

It will be quite some time, however, before I get an update posted on the project pages. I was not following my checklist, because I was doing a lot of experimentation and inventing along the way, so I really had no checklist to follow. I've got another LONG, TIRING week ahead of me, so who knows when I'll get some time to post anything, but life is good again...and Questor WILL fly!

Hitting a Wall

2006-09-27T23:03:00.001-07:00

I lie awake at night, tormenting myself with thoughts about how to design this airplane I am building, even though it is already partially built. I hate the design for the power connections to the tail (where they are located), and I am really not liking the four-bolt attachment idea anymore.

I thought of an idea that would greatly simplify the mounting of the tail to the tail boom, and solve the connector problem, but it means a radical change to the horizontal stabilizer, and I haven't been able to figure out exactly how to do it, and I don't know if it will equate to more weight, or less weight, than the four-bolt approach.

So now I'm kind of stuck. Which is kind of OK, since I haven't had a chance to even work on the thing over the past few days. The project is becoming not fun. It was supposed to be simple. I'm half tempted to forget the whole night flying aspect which has created all these ridiculous problems in the first place. Or, I might just go with the external lighting option, even though I've got lights already installed inside. Or maybe I'll just build a new NORMAL tail.

Somebody shoot me. Shoot me now.

Bang, bang!

I think I need to go back to doing some prototyping. If I write a book, it will be about how NOT to do things.

Ah, well, at least the car alarm isn't going off.

Car Alarms - Useless Fad Gadgets

2006-09-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

I wish I had invented car alarms, right along with leaf blowers and those icicle Christmas lights you see all over the place every year.

Every idiot owns one (as well as a few smart people, too, I'm sure). But there's a lot of idiots out there.

Take the car alarm, for example. Many people who have car alarms installed in their prescious vehicles still haven't quite figured out that if their car is parked somewhere where they can't possibly hear it, it doesn't do any good. How many times have you come running in response to a car alarm to make sure somebody isn't really breaking into somebody else's car?

The thing is, if it's yours, nobody else cares. Who looks? Mostly, people respond to the obnoxious noise factory by an overwhelming desire for the dumb thing to just shut the hell up.

I figure people who set their car alarms in parking lots while at the mall or watching a movie at the theater, just haven't figured it out, yet. I sometimes wonder if they even know that their car alarm has ever gone off - if they've ever heard it. We bought a car recently and didn't even know it had a car alarm, until one day when it went off and I happened to be somewhere where I could hear it. I wondered why nobody was coming out of their apartment to shut the stupid thing off, so I went out to see what car it was. I was floored to discover that it was mine, and then I had to figure out how to shut the stupid thing off!

We haven't used it, since.

Today took the cake, however, as I stopped into Long's on the way home from work, and as I pulled into the parking lot, I could hear someone's horn repeatedly blasting at regular intervals - the characteristic car alarm scenario, but without the myriad of whirs, chirps and whoops.

I got out of my car and walked toward the entrance of the store, all the while the car's horn incessantly repeated its call for help. When I got to the door, I came to discover the car was parked, literally, right in front of the door, such that the horn was blasting into the store. Yet, no one was coming to the rescue.

I meandered through the store for a bit, looking for some shampoo (as a guy, this is a rather baffling shopping experience), and there wasn't a corner in the store where the alarm could not be heard. I even overheard two Long's employees talking about it, one asking if it was a store alarm, the other reporting that it was a car alarm. Meanwhile, other shoppers were simply going about their shopping, minding their own business, thinking about things like, "what shampoo should I get?"

Still, no one came running.

Finally, it fell quiet. The alarm was shut down and peace was restored after several minutes of miserable suffering.

The one fact I failed to mention up to this point was that the car in question - the one parked at the front door with the car alarm blasting - had two very young occupants (toddlers?) sitting in the back seat. Yes, they were alive, and looking rather perplexed and sitting very still (as if, perhaps, this had happened before?).

Now, it's one thing to park your car somewhere where you can't possibly hear your car alarm. If it goes off and you can't hear it, no problem - out of sight, out of mind. Though I have to wonder why they have a car alarm in the first place, and I can't help but wonder if they think maybe they have something of VALUE in the car that they might be concerned about. I think if someone DOES actually hear their car alarm, they might actually respond to it.

So, I really have to wonder why, first of all, someone would set their car alarm when there are live occupants STILL INSIDE? Maybe they don't quite understand how car alarms work. Or, maybe the kids were looking a bit petrified because their parent(s) threatened to discipline them if they moved so much to set off the car alarm. (Hmmm...) Because, what I REALLY don't understand is, if your car is BLATANTLY where not only you, but everybody ELSE can hear it, and you have two kids in the car and the alarm is going off - WHY DON'T YOU COME RUNNING LIKE HELL TO SEE WHAT'S GOING ON?!

It's bad enough there are two small children left alone in a vehicle. Although, perhaps that was the owner's plan all along - leave the kids in the car with the car alarm blasting and they'll be fine, because nobody is going to want to go near the thing.

Ah, well, such is life. Life in the age of technology. Where leaf blowers are your weekend alarm clocks, and unattended (usually) cars sing to each other in distant parking lots. Oh, and let's not forget keyless entry systems that don't work when the battery is dead.

What's next? Self-tying shoe laces? Come on, somebody think of something stupid that everybody would want so I can invent it!

Questor Respite

2006-09-25T02:15:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy, busy weekend for the Questor Project. Check it out. I'll be taking a little break from the project again this week, as I have a ton of homework and other personal issues to catch up on. Not to mention, I need to make an entry into the Computer Circus blog, as I have been the long-distance computer fix-it guy today.

When it rains, it pours.

Project Updates

2006-09-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

I have been busy today on the Questor project. I didn't think I would get to spend much (if any) time on it today, but as it turned out, I spent most of the day on it. And I made tremendous progress! Look for the development link on the project page.

I have also added a specifications page, which lists some of the design requirements for the aircraft. Right now, it is a disorganized list, though eventually I hope to group things more logically so that I can keep myself on track.

My wife is going on a business trip, beginning tomorrow afternoon, so I will have some free time in the evenings next week (YOU MEAN I CAN TURN THE STUPID TELEVISION OFF?! WOO HOO!!).

A while back, I sold a few of my model airplane engines that I wasn't using. Two of them I regretted selling, because they were engines that I had a lot of history with, and one of them flew for many, many hours on my first airplane that I ever built (and still have). That original airplane turned 24 years old, recently, and I have the itch to fly it again, but it has an engine on it that has been converted to diesel and that I am not very familiar with...and I just want my old airplane back, just the way it was.

The interesting part of this story is that I kept in touch with the guy I sold these two engines to (the one engine in particular). He is a collector and has nearly 500 engines. GEEZ!! I had not run my engines in years, and thought they were kind of worn out, but this guy took them and cleaned them up and said they ran great and that my original one had a lot of power.

That's when I began to feel regret that I had let them go. Both of those engines had a lot of sentimental value (I'm like that about things, especially things that last a long time). So, I decided to ask the guy if he would be willing to sell them back to me.

He was!

The engines arrived two days ago and are back in my sentimental little hands. The weather is supposed to be nice all week this week (in the 80s! WOO HOO!) and into next weekend (though you know how forecasts go - that could change tonight), so I'm thinking maybe I'll just slap that engine back on that old plane and go find a place to fly it next weekend.

What do you think? Should I do it?

Questor Project Relocation

2006-09-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

I have created a new section in my project notebook specifically for the Questor project. Questor information and progress has been officially moved there. I will post updates here as they develop, but I am returning my blog to my normal blog status and not relegating it to only project updates.

You can find the Questor Project by clicking on the link that now appears under my list of links in the right hand column.

Enjoy!

Would it Kill Ya?

2006-09-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

Would it kill you to use your TURN SIGNALS?

No?

WELL IT MIGHT IF YOU DON'T!!!

Oh, and by the way -- you can get off my butt
OR EAT WHAT COMES OUT OF IT!!!

End Vent

Questor, Questor, Questor!

2006-09-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

My blog entry titles are getting rather boring - they're all about Questor these days. I really need to move this to a project page. But then I don't seem to have anything else to blog about.

I made some more progress yesterday, though it was painfully slow. It seems the more progress I make, the further I am from completion, but that's only because the deeper I get into it, the more issues and details I uncover.

I have identified 31 additional steps remaining just to complete the process of laminating the top half of the horizontal stabilizer to the bottom half. However, here's what I got done yesterday...

I got to thinking about how I haven't yet decided how to physically connect the power from the tail boom to the horizontal stabilizer, and I thought I better give myself a couple of options. I already had access to the power traces under the mounting plate, but that would be difficult to get to unless I made something that was recessed into the tail where the stabilizer mounts. So, I decided to add a couple more power traces off to the side where they would be unobstructed in case I wanted to connect them through an easier access point.

You can see the new traces (copper foil) on the left. You can also see a couple new clearance holes that I cut for the heads of the mounting bolts to sit down into. You'll see how that works later (though you got a hint of it a couple days ago).

Here you can see the completed upper half of the horizontal stabilizer. Bear in mind that this thing is only 3/32" thick! It now has six functional LEDs installed (three of them were not working yesterday - I had somehow cut one of the wires near a solder connection, probably while I was grinding off high spots, but I fixed that problem). With all the LEDs, wire, solder, copper, mounting bolts, etc. that will be part of this tail, I am hoping weight is not going to become an issue. I am thinking of cutting a hole or two in the fin (vertical stabilizer) to reduce some weight, as well as drill some holes in non-critical areas in the tail boom. Although, there are very few options for where I can do that, so it may not be significant. I may just wind up shortening the tail boom a little bit to decrease the moment arm, though that will make the plane a bit more responsive to the elevator, and I'm not sure I want that.

Here's a close-up of the mounting plate that will become part of the lower half of the horizontal stabilizer that gets laminated to the upper half. This is made of light plywood and is 1/8" thick (1/32" thicker than the upper half). It needed to be thicker than 3/32" to provide enough strength for securing the horizontal stabilizer to the tail boom. You can see the four keyhole mounting holes of the kind I featured in an earlier blog entry. This is where the mounting bolts will do their job.

You're looking at the side that gets laminated to the upper half. You can see a couple of square-ish clearance cut-outs in the bottom corners. This is to give room for the elevator hinge. I decided to cut them prior to laminating the layers together so I would have an easier time of installing the hinges afterward, and could also ensure a precision fit. You can also see two additional holes that I drilled off to the side to provide access to the new copper traces.

Here is a shot of all the pieces (thus far) of the horizontal stabilizer temporarily assembled, including the elevator. The remaining two pieces of the lower layer are made of balsa wood and are 3/32" thick, which makes the whole stabilizer 3/16" thick after assembly (except for the center, which becomes 7/32" thick due to the 1/8" plywood). One of the steps I have to take before laminating the pieces together is to sand the sides of the center plate down at a gradual angle until the sides become 3/32" and sit flush where they butt up against the 3/32" balsa sides. I know that is as difficult to visualize as it is to describe. It's hard enough to see the assembly in this picture, especially while it is resting on a big piece of wood that is about the same color.

And here's the mounting holes as seen from the top side of the horizontal stabilizer. When completed, the stabilizer will be covered with MonoKote, which is a heat shrink plastic covering that adheres to the surface. The mounting bolts will actually be permanently attached to a mating mounting plate on the tail boom, and the stabilizer will [theoretically] slip down over the four bolts and slide back to lock into place. The holes you see here will be covered by the MonoKote, so the heads of the bolts will not even be visible. It will be a nice, clean installation with no interruption of airflow over the stabilizer!

My motto is, I've got a long way to go. But I can see this plane in my mind, and I see it flying, so I know it will happen. I know when I can see the end objective so clearly in my mind, that it is something that will be realized, and I hope to fly this thing at least a dozen times before this time next year.

HA! Well, THAT remains to be seen.

Tale of Questor's Tail

2006-09-16T23:47:00.000-07:00

Gather 'round kids and let me tell you the tale of Questor's tail. Today's progress, anyway.

I have a problem I have not yet worked out a final solution for, and that is connecting the lights in the horizontal stabilizer to the power rails in the tail boom. However, I proceeded ahead with my original plan and will probably just implement a connector I will have to plug in, manually, unless and until I have another aha moment.

I called up a friend of mine to bounce some ideas off of. Actually, he called me, but I sent him a message in ICQ first. :) After we tossed some ideas around for a while, tossing most of them out, we finally came to a solution that my friend said that I had suggested to him at some point in the past (and it would have probably saved me a lot of time had I remembered this particular suggestion). He said, why not mount the LEDs on the fuselage, externally (in my case, on the tail boom) and simply aim them at the tail? In other words, instead of going through jars of Excedrin PM to get the thing to light up from the inside, I could simply light it up from the outside.

Brilliant! (no pun intended...ok, yes it was)

Well, that would be the easy solution. Really, it would. But, being the complicated person that I am, I decided to press on with the current design. After all, I had already cut out all the frickin' pieces!!!

Progress was extremely slow going in the beginning. I made a couple of false starts, which cost me an hour here and there. I neglected to mark all the places where holes needed to be drilled, hinges needed to be inserted, etc., but at least I didn't do anything irreversible and was able to drop back and restart without killing anybody.

I can't even remember what all transpired to make things go so slowly. I guess there was just a lot of testing of ideas going on. One test failed, at least temporarily, then I thought of a tool that I could make to fix the problem that made the test fail, so I was happy about that. It involved a method of preventing the thin sticky-back copper strips from coming off when I soldered the LED wires to them. I figured that out pretty quickly and was able to move on.

I used an old dried up ball point pen to make traces (tiny canals) in the balsa wood for the LED wires to run along so that when the layers are laminated together, they would press flush together. At some point, the pen started working again, so that was kind of annoying. Luckily, I had another old dried up ball point pen that I used to finish the job. It makes perfect little trenches in the wood for the tiny wires to sit down inside.

Most of the time spent on this stupid (can I say stupid?) project is in thinking about this thing in three dimensions and trying to figure out where everything goes without getting in the way of something else. It turns out, I have very little wiggle room in this tail and it has been far more complicated than I ever anticipated. I only wish I had thought or (rather, REMEMBERED) the external lighting solution in the beginning, since then I could have built this tail in a weekend. Who would have thought that running a couple wires to the tail and installing six LEDs would be such a pain in the tail section? I guess I should have.

Anyway, how about some pictures! I know they're kind of small, but I'm low on disk space, so can't host larger ones at the moment.

Here's the upper laminate of the horizontal stabilizer with all the LEDs installed. The blue wires are all run along the little canals I dug with the ball point pen, and you can see the two peel-and-stick copper strips at the top (which is really the rear of the part).

Here I have placed a couple of the lower laminate pieces over the assembly (the bottom is facing the camera) to show kind of how the final product will look. The tail will be covered with MonoKote, so the light from the LEDs will show through the covering. I cut out triangles on the lower laminate, and parallelgrams on the upper laminate (which is underneath in this picture, since the part is turned over). That way, I can tell the difference between the top and the bottom of the aircraft if I happen to lose orientation in the night. One LED faces straight forward, which is always helpful from many angles, especially during night landings (the plane is hardest to see at night when it is coming straight at you).

And here is the implementation of the idea I had the other day (yesterday?). I have drilled two holes in the mounting plate for access to the copper strips so I can wire the thing up once I get it all together.

OH MY GOSH! How could I have forgotten this? I just remembered what took so much time this morning - why things got off to such a slow start (besides going down to Cingular to get my SIM card upgraded and to drop off my late rent check). I had to select the LEDs to use on the plane!

I wanted to use LEDs that were closely matched throughout the plane, and I needed 27 LEDs for the entire project. I set up a test station to plug in the LEDs and measure their forward voltage drop. I tested probably 400 LEDs, and piled them in separate piles, depending on the voltage readings. Once that was all done, I took the biggest pile and re-tested them, breaking them into smaller piles, depending on voltage readings (a finer breakdown). Once that was done, I picked 27 LEDs that were about as closely matched as I could get (considering my setup).

After I had my LEDs chosen, I put all the piles of LEDs into separate little ziplock baggies and labelled them, so I won't have to go through this lengthy process again in the future. Man, that took a long time, but I think it was worth it. Six of the LEDs are now mounted in the tail! Woo hoo! Only 21 more to go!

Sigh.

I still have a long, long way to go on the tail, and an even longer route ahead of me when I finally ever get to build the wing. Right now, I am working on the mounting plate (above), which is the center part of the lower laminate of the horizontal stabilizer - it is the piece that will hold the stabilizer to the tail boom, once that is built. I've got some tricky hole drilling and cutting to do, and I haven't quite worked out the tooling sequence I need to make this work out right, yet. It's a jigsaw puzzle. I find myself making tools half the time just to make the pieces I need. I guess that's part of the art of woodworking.

I am learning a lot, that's for sure. I picked up a couple of excellent books on this stuff and am reading all about paint and finishing now, so when I get to that point, I'll be armed with some new knowledge. I went to a class the other day on how to improve your memory, and I am practicing the techniques and it seems to be working. I am confident that now I won't forget this stuff when it comes time to use it. I'm even thinking of using this one book as the first book that I memorize. Yes, it is possible to memorize an entire book - even word for word if you want to go to that level - but that's a subject for another blog...or a book or something.

By the way, I learned 14 words in Spanish during this three-hour memory class - and that was just one exercise. I still remember the words (though I can't spell them), as well as the names of the 21 other people in the class. Cool beans, Maynard!

Anyway, back to work. Er, uh, well maybe it's back to bed. Rats! Weekends are TOO SHORT!!!

Oh, man, I just realized I'm hungry. Did I eat today???

Please send food!

UPDATE:

Here's a few more pictures for you:

The horizontal stabilizer will be secured to the tail boom via four 10-32 nylon bolts. This is a sample of what the lock-down slots will look like - kind of like what you might find on the back of an average power strip.

Here's what it will look like when it is secured to the mount with a nylon bolt.

I have gone ahead and cut the clearance holes in the upper laminate for the horizontal stabilizer. The mounting plate seen earlier will get the tricky holes cut into them, like the kind you see on the back of an average household power strip (or wall-mounted telephone). I have no idea what the name is for that kind of hole.

Now I'm going to bed. It's almost 3:00 a.m.

Questor Continues

2006-09-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

Well, the weekend is here, but my wife isn't, so I've got the place to myself for a couple of days. I may as well work on my airplane.

I was working on figuring out how to get the power lines connected to the tail section for the lights in the horizontal stabilizer, and I think I came up with an awesome solution. I originally was just going to have wires running between the laminations and exiting out through some exit point, but I figured there is a possibility that over time, or in the event of a mishap, the wires could break at the exit point, making it impossible to reconnect them.

So, I thought of running some kind of wide metal conductor between the laminate and simply drilling a hole down to expose the conductor so that I could solder a wire directly to it. That way, if the wire ever broke off or became severed, all I would need to do is solder in a new wire.

The solution was this stuff:

This is a sheet of very thin peel and stick copper sheeting, presumably used primarily in stained glass work. All I need to do is cut a strip to the size I need, stick it down between the laminated pieces, and I'm done. I constructed a test piece to determine if the idea would work, and it worked beautifully!.

I drilled two holes, because I didn't know if I was going to be able to effectively solder within the smaller hole. But it turns out it wasn't a problem at all. This was just the answer I was looking for. This fixes the big question mark for the horizontal stabilizer, so now I just need to work out something similar for the tail boom. There will be a connector coming from the boom to mate with a connector in the stabilizer once it's all done. I hope to complete a good portion of the tail this weekend.

I think I'll start by getting some sleep!

Questor Tail Trial Fitting

2006-09-10T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've got most of the tail pieces cut out, and you can see many of them fitted together in the image. I am very pleased with how it is coming along! Nothing is glued together in the picture - they're just assembled to see how they fit. I am amazed how close the tolerances are in the pieces I have made.

It may be a while before I can get back to working on this project, however, as I have a busy week ahead and may be out of town next weekend. I just hope I can get the tail DONE by Halloween so I can start on the fuselage. I hope to have the fuselage done by Christmas so I can start on the wing. The wing will take the longest, but I hope to finish it by April so I can install the engine and radio, etc. and be flying by June '07.

That's if we don't move between now and then. UGH!!!

Wish me luck.