Today is the 9th of November.. 11/9.. or.. 9/11 in some parts of the world. It’s the day that Diane and I got engaged in 1985. We were living in Winchester in the south of England. Diane was studying for her midterms for her graduate program. .. ..We went out to eat at the Chesil Rectory.. a nice restaurant in Winchester that was first opened in 1450 (yes.. 1450 !). We had a nice dinner then walked back home along the river.. At one point I dropped to my knee and gave diane the ring I’d made her in my blacksmithing class.. no diamond. just a thin twisted band of mild steel I’d hand forged out of 1/4 inch bar stock. I asked her to marry me.. she said yes.. then she got on her knee and asked me the same.. it was one of the best decisions I ever made..26 years later were still very much in love..
There is an interesting story around the date.. It may come as a shock to you .. but 911 has always been my lucky number.. as a kid.. it occurred in my life all the time .. it was our locker number at the swimming club, my bike combo (by accident).. and many other things like that. in 1982 I even put it on the inside door of my first bedroom in this house where it remains today
I had planned to get engaged on Sept 11.. but that didn’t work out for reasons to complicated to explain here.. We opted for 11/9 as being the next closest thing…. 911 remained my lucky number up until 911 when it became one of the least popular numbers in history.. strange but true
anyway.. I’m happy to remember 11/9 as anniversary day.. I love you Diane
Today was so uneventful.. so pathologically bland .. that I can’t even think of anything to report.. I’m grateful for days like that every once in a while.. but 2 or 3 in a row is more than I can’t stand..
I’ll fall back to reporting on soemthing I did yesterday (Judges.. can I do that ? )… Long time readers will remember that last year I set out to build a smaller, lighter weight Tesla coil for use in my shows. I got a generous grant form the local IEEE chapter to get it started. I chose a design being offered by a company that also provided both circuit boards and most of the components.. .. It turned out to be something of a nightmare getting the design to function, the circuit diagrams had errors and contradictions, . the parts I received didn’t match the design. or were of poor quality.. .. but eventually.. by spring.. I was able to get the thing working. I was so excited that I took it to work to do a demo for some customers that were visiting. The thing worked for a few seconds.. then a giant spark.. and then nothing. It had shocked itself to pieces.. most of the components inside were fried.. For months it st in the shop staring at me.. ut I didn’t have the stomach to do all the repair.. Finally my friend Scott offered to help.. he had a little spare time and much more patience for the thing than I had.. He took the device and rebuilt the damaged parts using new circuit boards and components. He also cleaned up my less than perfect wiring layouts.. by August.. he had the coil working again.. but.. then.. disaster struck again.. it blew out the expensive output transistors… not once.. but twice.. and at $20 a pop.. that was no fun.. Eventually, we throttled back the power.. and got the thing stable.. Instead of the 30+ inch spark I was gettign.. it was now limited to a pretty tame 20″ spark
Sunday mornign I was looking at the coil trying to figure out what I could do with a device with that relatively tame output specs.. then it occurred to me .. that it would be a perfect base for a musical coil.. I did a little bit of staring at the deign.. and figured out a pretty simple plan.. I wrote a small bit of code on an arduino microcontroller that converted telephone ringtones into square wave outputs.. then I cut one of the signal path in the tesla controllers modulator control. I stuck the audio signal into the input trigger of one of the modulator oscillators…
ant this is what I got..
Next step is to tune the output to get about twice this spark.. wish me luck !
Today’s theme was gratitude.. I didn’t choose that theme exactly.. it was put in my head by a really wonderful yoga/essential oils seminar that Diane and Marci did today in the yoga studio.. It was 2 hours of yoga and meditation on the concept of gratitude.. .. the idea of counting your blessings.. There’s even a symbol for grattitude
There’s evidently a whole movement around it (with even a curious movie to introduce it ) , I guess. the idea is that if you reflect often and deeply on the good in you’re life, you’ll be a happier person.. Makes perfect sense … That message isn’t new.. but the timing is good for us. there seems to be quite a bit of emotional swirl in the world now.. there certainly is in our circle of the world.. friends, family, work.. all in transition.. even so.. we find our selves in a calm place.. This month brings lots of emotions .. Sam’s death date coming up always pulls us inward and quiets us.. somehow though.. we’re in a good place.. grateful for the things we do have in our life.. good friends.. health.. loving family .. all things I have great gratitude for ..
Time for bed..
nite all, nite sam
-me
ps. Gabe won the Coach’s award for his JV soccer team at the team banquet tonight.. (yet another thing to be grateful for)
