Sunday night.. at the airport (again), Had a really great and slow weekend. Good time with family and friends.. Some stolen time out in the lab. I’m taking the slow and steady route to finish this latest big project.. Made some progress forward and backwards today..    I was trying to track down some goofy behavior of the synchronizer logic.. and found the tiniest of short circuits.. A short circuit is an unintentional connection to something you’re not supposed to be touching..

Here’s the culrit.. a tiny bride of extra solder.. very tiny !

To give you a sense of how tiny.. this is a portion of mf the tip of my little finger as a size reference.. Anyway.. I cleared this short circuit.. and kept on testing..

Everything was looking great until about 5 minutes before I had to run off for this trip.. I started up the high voltage .. .. 20 volts.. loking good, 40 folts.. still good.. 60 volts.. bang.. something popped.. .. @#Y@&#&* !.. I don’t know what it was.. I didn’t have time to locok.. must e another short ircuit soemwhere..

Talk about short circuit.. I managed to find a short   circuit    to the middle of the last century. Gabe is doing a geneology project for school. He was lookign for pictures of his grandparents and great grandparents. I remembered I had this old box from Dave, my dad’s dad.. We opened it up. It was all his old Masonic stuff. I don’t think I;ve ever really looked at it. I knwo it was very important to him.. Dave died in 1968.. but I felt like I was in the room with him again.

Here he is in thhondourous where he lived in the 1930’s.. with a gun !

Diane also found some lace from her grandmother Pierene.. a wonderful lady Beautiful  into her 90’s ..

We also have these old brushes from my side of the family

It was so cool finnding that stuff..

I wonder if any of my great grandkids will find relics of this blog one day..

If so.. ‘hi’   ..  Nice finding you here 🙂   Good luck in your homework !

OK.. the plane is booarding.. gotta dash..

nite all, nite sam

-me

Spent much of the morning trying to clean up from last weeks wind storm. Tim was kind enough to come over with his chainsaw.. Luckily, I had the appropriate safty ware… namely a jason-style hockey mask..

Tim gave me a quick lesson in chainsawology and I was hooked… As of this eveing I still have the average number of fingers and limbs.. so I count myself lucky

I feel for this tree..Not sure it’s goign to survive the loss of this limb. It’s badly off balance now and leaning precariously over some power lines.  It’s always been out there.. the kids have built snow forts under it for years.. Like anything these days.. any change tugs a but at my heart strings..

Thansk to all the help from TIm and Matt, Ian and Gabe.. we got the whole thing cleaned up

Mid afternoon Diane and I did the annual ritual of the Richmond Holiday Salle.. we rarely buy anything.. but tis so wonderful seeing everyon from town.. I love my town.. I really do

As we not-shopped we were seranded from abovee by one of the high school choirs.. Here they’re singing a Chanuckah song (happy 4th night).. Their voices were wonderful.. I still maintain a catchy  catchy Chanukah song has never been written.

We saw so many frinds on both sides of the sale.. Here’s Chris with his very nice wares (he’s having an open studio next weekend.. I’l post details)

We saw the Grange Ladies again !

Amanda…

Abbot and Rose (Abbot inspired me to buy my first welder)

Deb

Then back home to finish cleaning the yard.. Here the kids are helping reerect the shelter over the pizza oven.. It went down in the wind.. and it must weigh 500 pounds !

OK.. gotta run to dinner. We’re all getting to talk about ‘Deb’s Big Idea’.. should be cool !

More tomorrow !

nite all, nite Sam

-me

Chappy 3rd day of Hanukkah.

Diane was teasing me this morning that I was batting about 0 when it came to the fire these last coupe of nights. I’ve managed to go to sleep without getting the fire lit and fully  burning . This mornign the fire was smoldering and  the spy glass was all black with soot. I told ter itww as because I was not pure of hearth..

Actually. i think my lack of snap when it comes to the fire is a simple reflection of my general state of excitement and distraction.. I have so much in my head about work. that I’m starting to mess up on things like the fire, and sleep.. and exercise.

I guess it’s ok to be sistracted.. at least I more or less hapy !

I’m glad it’s a weekend !

nite all.. night sam

-me

Happy 2nd night of Chanukah folks..

It was clear and still this morning.. ut it was an amazing drive into work.. tere were trees down everywhere.. some places liek wes white hill were devastated beyond belief. We’ll be looking at the destruction of last nights storm for the nest 10 years.

My first stop after several meetings at home was an hour meeting with my Echo brethren and cisterns (?)… sisters ? .. to All Earth Renewables. Our friend Dave had offered the group a tour. They make small scale wind and sall scale solar trackers..

… though they don’t look so small when you’re next to them .

Here’s Dave showing us his toys.. this shows the very cool mechanical governor that keeps the thing from flying apart in a wind like last nights.

Here’s one of the extruded blaeds.. (the one in the middle).. the one on the right is molly..  looks kinda like American Gothic.

THen outside to teh solar fields.. these are really cool. they use GPS to track.. they park themselves in high winds and go vertical in heavy snow..   pretty amazing.

oh.. I <3 <3 <3 silicon

GOt home late after an incredibly full , busy (and fun) day.. The power was still off at jen and Tim, but we went up there.. Deb and the kids are back from canada.. so we went up to eat .. They had their generator running.. the only lights on their street that I could see..

Thank goodness the generator can power the essentials

Another great meal with the friends.. it feels like old times when we’re all together..

tim even broke out the weird glowy stuff.

Afterwards we all started talkign aout our cool new project idea.. (still looking for a name).. it’s aotu finding ways to use kids and techical folks to help people in needy parts of the world..

I started using the whipped cream to draw a diagram about the idea..

Yum.. it’s got to be a good idea…

more tomorrow..

nite all, nite sam
-me