(grr.. my laptop has crashed three times while I’ve tried to blog.. I’m goign to make this short)

Ninety-three degrees … that’s what the car said right after Gabe’s lacrosse game in St. Albans.

That’s a full 25 degrees warmer than the same time yesterday./ They said it was going to get hot.. but I refused to believe it.. The weather folks do seem to nail the temperature even if they miss on rain and snow. It takes some of the fun out of guessing
   I go into a sort of walking hibernation whenever it gets over 75.. I don’t function too well. I try to move as little as possible. I can’t imagine how I ever survived so long in Houston.. but I did.  Poor satori is trapped in her fur coat.. It’s a blessing in the winter.. but she did a lot of panting today.. Look at that tongue

It was a very slow and low energy day.. in a very nice way.. after the lacrosse games I went and holed up in my lab because it was the coolest place by far on the homestead. I made use of the time to fix some of the casualties of my Seattle trip.   I had to completely rewire the theremin.. the weird musical instrument you play with your electric field.. It looks like it had either been trashed in shipping or someone tried to debug it by pulling it out of the box. All of the wires that hook it up were broken.

I got it rewired.. then realized that there was something more serious up.. After about 20 minutes of sleuthing I found out that the output amp chip. an LM386,  had been fired.. I foudn a replacement and voila !.. It worked. !!

I was on a role.. so I took apart the Tesla coil that had failed so unspectacularly during my talk in Seattle .. after the talk a bunch of students and I grabbed some test equipment that someone was demonstrating at the conference and used it to track down the likely problem. ,, a shorted IGBT output transistor.  It’s the third one from the left in this picture that was fried .. That $25 dollar transistor blew up in order to save the 15 cent diode right above it.. go figure.

Today I confirmed that diagnosis.. and gave it a transistorectomy.  I had  a few tense minutes after the repair when I realized I hadn’t completed a solder connection.. but when that was repaired .. victory .

I realize that I love debugging things like this almost more than I like building them/ it’s the ultimate crossword puzzle.. infinite possibilities.. only one right answer.  another thing which I marvel at is a way  my personality has shifted in the last year and a half since Sam’s passing. I manage to keep my work spaces.. here and at work clean and organized.. That may not sound like a big deal.. but you have to realize how much NOT that way I was for the first 46 years of my life.. I can’t quite fgure it out.. Just observing it though

We ended today with a nice quiet dinner with Jen and Tim.. it was so beautiful outside that we never turned on the lights.. we all sat there eating until we couldn’t see to eat anymore.. 

Nice day.. nice night… Good night all. Good night Sam !
-me