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More reef tank pics

2011-11-18T18:28:00.001-07:00

Reef tank update

2011-10-18T19:50:00.007-06:00

Moved the tank to it's final destination last week, my desk at work.

This is a closeup of the toadstool leather up top. There's a lot of detail in these guys that's hard to see without magnification.

The toadstool has also changed shape, it's stem is taller but the top is flatter.

Added a striped mushroom. These are one of my favorite corals, even though they are a "beginner" coral because they're hard to kill. Still look awesome.

If you scroll back to the old post and look at the warty mushroom, then look at this shot, you can see it's way bigger and way greener. It's tentacles have not only gotten longer, they have started to branch -- very cool. Most of the other corals have started to fill in too, especially the Green Star Polyps, blue cloves, and green zoanthids.

Also, if you look in the red circle, I have a baby! The spotted mushroom on the left is the parent. Over the course of about 3 days, it walked along the rock about 3/4" away and as it did, it tore off a piece of it's foot and left it behind. Over the last month or so, the piece has gone from a little blob to a bigger mushroom-shape and even has two stripes and some bumps like it's parent. Aw, so cute!

Saltwater Coral Reef Tank, take 3

2011-08-20T15:13:00.002-06:00

Haven't been blogging much, been busy with two things of late: Fallout: New Vegas, and my third reef tank (the other two were torn down years ago). (I'll do a review of Fallout NV later.)

Those of you not familiar with the reefkeeping hobby, skip the following technical jargon and just scroll down to the pretty pictures below.

Equipment:
Dymax IQ3 acrylic tank
Display about 6"L x 6"W x 8"H
Display approx. 1.5g, 1.75g total volume
Custom Cree LED light in 2" x 1"aluminum channel, 2 RB XR-E and 1 CW XM-L, 1000mA dimmable BuckPuck
Dymax Robot LED hacked as rear chamber 'fuge light
Stock Dymax powerhead relocated to left rear chamber
Mini-Jet 404 in right rear chamber
Penn-Plax Silent-Air B11 automatic battery backup air pump, plumbed through partition wall to hide airline
Finnex HMO digital titanium heater, 50W
Azoo digital heater controller
Wal-Mart indoor/outdoor min/max thermometer, probe sealed with superglue
Twin-float switch, twin-relay DIY ATO in Radio Shack enclosure
Two Little Fishies Nano-Mag
Spritz bottle of RO/DI for cleaning acrylic
Kent hydrometer
API Master Saltwater test kit
DIY airline gravel vac

Aquascape:
Approx 2.5lb of Live Rock
1/2" of black Petco sand

CUC:
Blue-leg hermit A.K.A. Mr. Lazy
Astrea snail
Cerith snail
Small orange stomatella
Large white hitchhiker stomatella
Large black hitchhiker stomatella (freakin' awesome)
Two tiny hitchhiker asterina stars
Bunch of hitchhiker brittle stars
Bunch of hitchhiker bristle worms
At least one hitchhiker peanut worm (those guys creep me out! Bristleworms never bothered me)

Corals:
Green spotted 'shroom
Purple warty 'shroom
Unidentified tentacled green/brown striped 'shroom
Orange riccordia florida
Green riccordia florida (about to split)
Brown palys
Green zoas
Orange zoas
Eagle Eye zoas
Pulsing Xenia
Green Star Polyps
Blue clove polyps
Toadstool leather
Several hitchhiker aiptasias (all nuked with Lye now [I hope])

Refugium:
Chaeto
Carbon (as required, not all the time)
Filter floss (as required, not all the time)

Food:
Hikari small fish pellets, 3 per day most days
Coral Frenzy on order

Maintenance:
1/2 gallon water change per week w/ IO Reef Crystals
Maintain 1.025SG w/ RO/DI
Maintain 80-82°F (hopefully once I move it to the office, I can reduce this to 78-80°F)

Right side

Left side

Top down

Scale shot with U.S. Quarter:

Blue Cloves

Eagle eye zoas

Green zoas and unindentified tentacled 'shroom

Orange zoas

GSP

Riccordia florida

Speckled 'shroom

Warty 'shroom

Xenia

Toadstool:

It's a nice day outside, so I'll explain the hobby in this blog some other time.

Let there be light

2011-06-28T21:39:00.003-06:00

Lemontree said I should machine something fun. So I cut off a piece of brass, drilled a hole across it in the drill press, drilled again through the middle on the lathe, then cut a 45° angle across each end. Then I cut it in half and got two lamps:

The cross-drilled hole is for the wick and oil to get in to the central hole. Tiffany supplied the wicks from her crochet kit.
You're supposed to use olive oil because it doesn't smoke like vegetable oil will. We seemed to be out of olive oil, so a quick Google search revealed that sesame oil works as well. I'm pleased to report The Internet was right, no smoke or even soot on the back of a spoon placed over the flame. The lamps do produce a faint odor of sesame, though, which is pleasant enough... as long as the neighbors don't come to our house looking for the new Mongolian Barbecue.

We just put them on a saucer, but they get kind of hot so we should probably find a little candle jar with a thick bottom to put them in.

Fenced and sharpened

2011-06-28T19:34:00.005-06:00

Cutting off rough stock freehand with my angle grinder was a pretty crooked affair, so I splurged $6.50 on an attachment from Harbor Freight. They call it a safety guard, I call it a fence. I was able to cut pieces for the new knurler straighter this time. Still not as nice as a bandsaw, but about $143.50 cheaper. Speaking of cheaper, I spent a whopping $2.28 on the steel (!) for this knurler. With prices like that for the good stuff, why would I ever buy Home Lowes metal again...

I scribed an "A" pair and a "B" pair of arms so they are drilled together (2 at a time, not 4 at a time) for the best possible alignment of holes. I also noticed in the picture that the original author had, after drilling one hole, put a bolt through that hole so subsequent holes would be as aligned as possible... something I'd neglected to do last time and won't forget this time.

Also to improve drilling accuracy, I sharpened my first drill bit today. Wasn't as dramatic as I would have thought, though it did take me three tries to get it looking somewhat like an unused bit. I drilled a test hole and noticed: 1. I didn't have to pull down on the drill press handle nearly as hard as I used to, 2. I got less of a raised lip of smushed metal around the top of the hole, and 3. I actually got a long continuous string of swarf instead of little chunks.

Drill bits have to be sharpened... who'd a thunk?!

I have high hopes for the rest of the build now.

Cold steel

2011-06-27T19:13:00.002-06:00

I decided to remake the knurler with cold rolled steel. Above, you can see the dark scale and rounded edges of the Home Lowes crap steel. What you can't see is that it also varies in thickness several thousandths over the length. Below it is the bright finish cold rolled Gem State steel with nice sharp corners and consistent size within .001". This should make for a smoother and more accurate tool.

Now I need to learn Google Sketchup so I can make my design changes without ending up with a knurler that doesn't work after I've made it...

Knurler Part II

2011-06-25T19:30:00.004-06:00

The pivots still needed holes in them. I could do this on the drill press, but the lathe is more accurate. It does take a while to dial the part in to center though.

There were two parts to tap (create threads in). This is where I discovered that cheap tap & die sets (purchased pretty much anywhere retail) are for cleaning up damaged threads only. Using them to create threads where there were no threads before is merely an exercise in frustration. I destroyed both of my tap handles, utterly destroyed one die, and boogered up one tap by ultimately using Vice Grips on it. Ugh. But I got it done. I will have to buy real "machinists" taps and dies online if I want to do this again.

I also got the hardware (including the spring, did you know Ace sells springs?) and bolted it all together. The result?

Well, it knurls. Unfortunately, because my drill wandered when I drilled the stack of 4 arms all at once, one knurling wheel is slanted so I get an incomplete impression on one side. Bummer. I have to decide now if I want to remake just that arm or do it all from scratch again using real steel and a further modified plan.

Knurler Part I

2011-06-24T22:58:00.005-06:00

Since most flashlights are knurled, one thing I'm going to need is a knurler. Like many machine tools, you can go out and buy one. Or, for about 1/10th the cost in materials, you can make one. If you've read this blog before, you know I generally prefer the cheaper option. And, it's good machining practice.

Normally, parts are cut from rough stock on a bandsaw. I don't have one of those, so out comes the angle grinder with a cutoff wheel.

This is steel flatstock from Home Lowes. The only reason I'm using Home Lowes metal is I already had this from some forgotten project like 8 years ago before I knew how poor quality Home Lowes steel is. There are at least two real metal suppliers here in Boise, like lumberyards only for machinists and welders. One of them was closed without warning the first time I wanted metal, and I never bothered to go back. Gem State Metals is where I go now, and even though most metal suppliers like to deal in $1,000+ orders from real shops, they are so tolerant of individuals buying $50 at a time that the guy actually gave me a tour of the place today. Thumbs up.

Once I have my parts rough cut, I clamped them together and ground the ends so they're all about the same length. Tolerance is not critical here.

Then I begin layout. I'm following some plans that someone posted online. I'm making some minor alterations, however.

The stock surface is coated with a blue dye, then I set my calipers to the dimensions specified in the plan and then use the jaws of the caliper to scratch lines. Places for holes to be drilled are dented with a centerpunch so the drill bit starts on center and doesn't skate around.

This hole has been started with a spotting drill, a short stubby stiff drill that will start a straight hole for the normal drill bit to follow.

The plans said to stack and drill, but I think it was a mistake in my case. The first one was drilled perfectly but the deeper I went, the more my drill bit wandered -- my drill press vise isn't the best and my drill table flexes a little. The locations of the holes were not critical, however, so everything should still work ok.

This part was fun. The plans call for half-rounds in the edges of the pieces, so I just clamped them side-by-side and drilled one hole in the middle where they met. Each piece got half a hole.

Swarf mountain.

Then I deviated from the plans. I don't like how many bolts are holding the thing together. There are 2 extra bolts top and bottom that I assume the author added to stiffen the assembly. My scrap steel is already thicker and wider than the plans, so needs less stiffening. Still, just to be safe, I decided to give ears to the upper and lower pivot points to keep the arms from bowing out under pressure.

Here's one ear ready for a trial fit...

Yep, fits nice. A close fit so there is no slop but not so tight it binds.
Finished pivot point.

I used 12L14 "leaded" steel for these pivot points. Man, that stuff cuts so nice and easy. No drama. It costs a little more than regular mild steel, but the extra money is worth it for a newbie. If you're curious, here are some of the prices I've paid for metal. These are all per inch of 1/2" round stock:

6061-T6 aluminum: $0.08 (mild steel is about the same)
12L14 Steel: $0.12
303 Stainless Steel: $0.33
Tool steel: $0.36
416 Stainless Steel: $0.50
C360 Brass: $0.67 (spendy!!)

Of course, the price goes up with diameter. The 3" aluminum I made the Jetta alternator pulley with is $3/inch! So as you can imagine, 3 feet of metal stock (depending on the metal and the diameter) probably costs more than 8 board feet of nice lumber for woodworking. I still think metalworking is way cooler though. ;)

Here you can see how the arms fit into the grooves, with the ears securing the sides of the arms.

This is as far as I got as it got late and I need to buy some bolts from the hardware store. But wait, you say, you have a threadcutting lathe, you can make your own bolts! Well, yes, I can, but hardware store bolts are actually cheaper than the metal stock I'd use to make my own! The whole "economy of scale" thing.

My 5 minutes of fame

2011-06-23T21:54:00.003-06:00

I made a little video and put it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRv6UXpVwrE

My Macaroni & Cheese Lunch

2011-06-23T14:23:00.013-06:00

At times I find myself slipping from what I would consider healthy eating. I know probably everybody has their own idea of what that means, but for me, what I struggle with most is increasing the amount of vegetables that I eat and decreasing extra sugars, extra fats, and animal products, while still eating foods that are appealing to my family. Food is a sensitive subject to most people, and no less around our home. Still- there's this struggle within me to increase vegetables that my family eats, without upsetting the balance too much.

On to lunch today. Katie wanted macaroni and cheese. The obsessed mother that I am decided I can make mac and cheese, and add some vegetables, and we would both be satisfied. I gave a moments thought to what might work in mac and cheese and what I have available. I started by picking some herbs from my herb garden. Spearmint, lemon mint, and oregano. Then crimini mushrooms from the refrigerator. I chopped everything up, putting a pan on the stove with a little canola oil to heat.

I sauteed the mushrooms first, then added the herbs to wilt. The smell of mint cooking is an interesting one. Mint is one of my favorite herbs for a stirfry. The flavor is very different than you might imagine. It is not what one thinks as "minty", it is not gum or toothpaste or mouthwash. Instead, it is a rich herby flavor. It reminds me of middle eastern food.

While that was cooking, I started on the cheese sauce. A little water in the pot, mixed with salt, pepper, and flour, brought to a boil and thickened to a paste. I know this may also seem strange to some of you, but I am opposed to using milk, unless I really need to. Water works just fine.

Next, I added a can of petite diced tomatoes to the pan of herbs and mushrooms and left it to simmer and the flavors to mix.

Back to the sauce, here I am adding cheese to the pasty base. On low heat, added a little at a time the paste transforms into a thick cheesy sauce.

When all the cheese has been added to the sauce and melted thoroughly, it is time to combine the elements.

I put the sauce on low heat and finally started cooking the macaroni. I really like the shells form of whole wheat pasta best, but the grocery store was out of stock, so I bought macaroni this time. I think I like the shells better because they are able to be coated on all sides with the sauce, so they don't have the heavy flavor often associated with whole wheat pasta. Here's the picture of the final product. Appetizing, no? I guess that all depends on who you are.

The final assessment: Three girls come in for lunch. Right away Tiffany tells me how good it looks. I expected that. She's a food lover and hard to disappoint. The other two, however, fall into, I kid you not, howls of how awful this latest food monstrosity is. Not looks, but IS. I dished up bowls for the kids. I gave Tiffany a full bowl, Emily a generous scoop (about half a bowl), and Katie a mere two bites' worth. Yep, I know my kids and how much I'm able to coax them to eat even when they truly don't like something. Tiffany ate her bowlful, as expected, and had seconds, then thirds, raving the whole time. :) Emily continued her protest, I left the table to let mine cool, it was still pretty hot. When I came back, she not only tried it, she finished her bowl, then went back for seconds, and thirds. Yay! it was a hit for her as well. :) :) Well, then we were down to Katie. This kid is stubborn. She tried every dodging tactic. "Can't I eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich instead, mom?" "Or wheat thins?" "or peanut butter and honey on saltines?" I told her if she chose not to eat the (two bites!) macaroni, the only thing she could eat was fruit or vegetables. It took a lot of coaxing. She ate one macaroni and declared it tasted like a skunk smells. I finally suggested she put a little parmasan cheese on top. She did that, and ate her two bites all up, minus the vegetables. I then let her have a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

The Incredible Shrinking Garage

2011-06-22T13:05:00.006-06:00

Looking north...

...and south:

It's amazing. The garage shrunk when I got the Jetta out, and shrunk again when I cleaned the stuff out ot it.

On the upside, it's not a single-car garage any more... it's a two-motorcycle garage. :) During the summer, at least. Winter 2011-2012 will finally be the year I don't have to scrape my car every morning, though I may end up backing the car out during the day to make room for reloading or woodworking.

Wall upgrade

2011-06-18T18:33:00.011-06:00

Possibly the first time "wall" and "upgrade" have been used together?

One thing that I found very, very handy is a whiteboard in the home machine shop. I use it to to jot down Home Lowes shopping lists, measurements, etc. Since I hadn't permanently mounted mine to a wall yet, I would just lay it on the workbench where I was working. Doing that was so handy, I decided not to permanently attach it after all.

I've had this bit of sheet steel in my scrap bin since the engine rebuild. My Harbor Freight piston ring compressor was way too big for wittle VW pistons, so I had to cut this section off to make it work. Now I'm putting it to good use by drilling two holes and gluing it to the back of my whiteboard. I had to glue it because the sticky foam that came with the whiteboard didn't stick to metal.

I used the belt sander to clamp the glue joint until it dried:

The other thing that I use often is a chart that shows drill sizes in Imperial (inches) and Metric (mm) as well as the size of hole you should drill to tap a particular thread. I've gone through several of these because they get dirty and oily and wrinkled and lost. To solve this, I used "clear contact paper" (adhesive plastic laminate) to affix it to some sheet steel from Home Lowes.

The sheet steel came big enough to make two page holders, so using front and back I still have room for 3 more reference charts should I want to add them in the future.

Drilled another hole, put some brass hooks on the wall (I decided to risk hammering them into the drywall, time will tell if that turns out to be a foolish mistake if I have to remount them with proper metal spider drywall anchors), and done:

(Yes, that's a calculator stuck to the magnetic whiteboard with magnets. Also very handy.)

Oh and while I was having fun doing non-Jetta things, I decided to fix our broken lawn chair. I drilled a bunch of shallow holes for the JB Weld to grip. JB Weld seems to be strong enough for many tasks, but it's adhesion, especially on smooth plastic, has often left me wanting. The holes should let JB Weld make little "fingers" to keep the joint from pulling apart. I hope.

Not too pretty, but our lawn chairs are fading to white so I should probably paint them anyway.

And the results are in...

2011-06-18T11:28:00.005-06:00

Stamped...
Chalked... looks great so far...

...and clear coated.
It actually looks better in the pic than it does in real life. I think the spray paint blew away some of the chalk, in retrospect I should have used clear paint from a container and just dripped a drop over each number. Still, it worked ok.

Fortress still not quite done

2011-06-17T20:56:00.004-06:00

I'm not a fan of drywall anchors. They never seem to hold (which is why I hung all of the garage shelving from studs). The anchors holding our towel rack in our bathroom failed, as did the ones I attempted to use to fasten my workbench power strip to the wall. The only thing I still trust drywall anchors for are paper towel dispensers, and even then, I used the upgraded metal spider type and not the crummy useless plastic slug type.

For the power strip, which takes a lot of force when unplugging cords, I had Lemontree get me some toggle bolts. I used these to securely mount a scrap of plywood to the wall. Then I was able to use wood screws and zip ties to get the power strip off the workbench, saving precious space:

I also tucked the cords neatly up and away, behind the shelf and 3-zillion-drawer-unit. You may notice that this power strip has those annoying "child safety" covers on the outlets. This is by design -- some time ago, I was turning aluminum on my lathe which makes big long curly strings of swarf. Suddenly, the lights went out and my lathe stopped! Looking around in confusion, I assumed I tripped a breaker somehow. Nope, breaker in the main electrical panel wasn't tripped. Breaker at my power strip wasn't tripped. What the... oh, the GFCI outlet tripped. Reset and it immediately tripped again. I finally isolated the issue to my power strip, and saw that a very long continuous string of aluminum had shorted my metal lathe with the "hot" slot of one of the outlets! The GFCI sure saved me from some fireworks there. I went out and got a strip with safety covers after that.

Anyhoo, one thing lacking on my tool wall was allen keys. I couldn't find anything suitable at Home Lowes* or online, plus with the Jetta (mostly) done I now have time to spend on fun projects like making my own allen key organizer.

* I like to use the term Home Lowes, because when I need to get something from a "Home Center" or hardware store, I don't care if it comes from Home Depot or Lowes -- just whichever is more convenient at the time. I don't care if it comes from Ace, either, but "Ace Home Lowes" is just too long of a name to rattle off.

Like the drill organizer, I just measured each of my allen keys across the points and selected the next drill bit size up (measuring across the flats would of course result in holes too small for the key to fit in). Even still, the larger keys fit perfectly but the smaller keys wouldn't go in the resulting hole. Apparently, when you drill small holes in wood, your holes end up undersize? I guess because the wood grain relaxes and moves as you relieve internal stresses. Anyway, the last few holes were a pain, drilling and redrilling bigger and bigger until things fit.

That done, drilled a snug hole in one end and Gorilla-glued in a pegboard hook:

Unlike my drill bit organizer, I decided to paint this one. Mainly because my hands get black and greasy working on cars, and plain wood would look pretty nasty after a while.

Lemontree bought a letter and number punch set, so I plan to stamp the allen key sizes on the organizer at some point. I don't think they're going to show up black on black painted wood, though, so I'm going to try highlighting them in white by scrubbing chalk over them and then wiping off the excess, then hitting it with a coat of clear spray paint to seal the chalk in. We'll see how that turns out.

After this, I need to make an abrasives section in the garage for all my sandpaper, scrubbing pads, files, brushes, etc. And I still need to organize the woodworking supplies, as well as my "hot work" stuff like propane torches and such. Then maybe I can start machining things in earnest, if no other projects crop up first...

Fortress becoming Awesomer

2011-06-11T20:27:00.006-06:00

I finished up a couple of odds and ends on the Jetta so I can take it to a shop to get an exhaust system installed next week (right now it has none, so the exhaust just comes out the engine compartment. Open pipe turbo sounds neat though! Screams like a jet engine.) That done, I started on the final leg of the Fortress's construction.

I hung some standards, screwing them into studs...

Then attached brackets and snapped wire shelves on. The shelves serve two purposes, and only one of them is to store things:

I've suspended a second shop light from the shelves to provide better light for drilling and reloading. Then, to power the drill press and the new shop light,

It's hard to tell on a cell phone pic, but there are four screws and two zip ties holding the power strip on. I think zip ties are the new duct tape! Anyway, I didn't want this on the work bench, space there is precious because the work surface is so shallow. Underneath is slightly less convenient but works fine.

Look what I can do now!! My baby won't get rained on any more. :)

Workbench upgrades

2011-06-09T21:05:00.006-06:00

I made the workbench height kind of low on purpose, both to accommodate Lemontree and to make it easier to work on tall things sitting on the bench. One drawback to this was the (lack of) height of the grinder, which I use to make and sharpen toolbits for the lathe. I had some scrap plywood left over from making the tool bench, so I sawed a few chunks off and made a grinder riser/storage box:

The box's dimensions were largely dictated by the size of my scrap. It holds a "dressing stick" and a cup of water. The grinding wheel is a mixture of abrasive and an ablative material; after a time, it stops grinding and just rubs on what you're trying to grind. The dressing stick has abrasives of it's own which strip off this glazed layer of ablative and gets you back down to fresh abrasive. The cup of water is to cool the toolbits periodically -- otherwise scorched fingers result. You might ask why I don't wear gloves? Well, you never, ever want to wear gloves when working around any kind of rotating machinery. Gloves might sound like a good idea to keep your fingers from getting scorched or scraped, but in reality you have less control of your toolbit with gloves and worse, the gloves tend to catch between the wheel and the toolrest or guard which grabs you and sucks you in. Ugly.

I also got to use my new drill press for the second time today. Yesterday was the first; I have a little motorcycle lock key that had a big ugly plastic handle. I broke the plastic off and drilled a tiny hole in the metal key shank so I could put it directly on my keychain:

Much better.

My second use of the new drill press was to drill and countersink the strip of steel that I just put across the front lip of the work bench:

I probably can't call this an upgrade, because I had planned to do it all along but it got put on the back burner until the Jetta was done. The strip has three functions: 1) protect the wood edge when humping large, heavy, hard objects like transmissions up onto it; 2) to keep round objects from rolling off the front of the work bench, never to be found again; and 3) to provide a durable surface for pushing or banging on things to put them together or take them apart.

I used a countersink bit so the screw heads sit flush and don't stick up above the metal strip, but unlike a drill bit that makes neat little curly strings of swarf, the countersink makes thousands of tiny sharp needles. Nasty. I used a rare-earth magnet to pull most of them out of my skin. Again, no gloves around rotating machinery, so that's about the best I could do. Hopefully countersinking is not something I have to do often...

More workbench

2011-06-07T20:45:00.003-06:00

Now that the Jetta is out of the way, I was finally able to finish the other half of the workbench. Off to the right of the original bench on the back wall, I built another 8 feet on the side of the garage. Since this is a single car garage, however, I couldn't make the surface very deep, or I wouldn't be able to get a car in. And since it is so shallow, I can't hang any shelves on that wall above the surface. Well, I think I might still hang some above head-height where they won't be in the way.

I also upgraded my drill press. The little $50 8" press was fine for wood but was simply not rigid enough nor could it go slow enough to drill 1/2" holes in steel or even aluminum (the bigger the hole, the slower RPM you need, and the little press's slowest speed was about 3 times too fast). My options were to spend $60 and many hours upgrading the little press, or spend $103 (on sale) for a new press and sell the old one for $40. So in essence the new press cost $3 using man-math. (Don't tell Lemontree I said that. ;) ) Unfortunately, this bigger 10" drill (which is way bigger than the mere 2" size difference would suggest, and something that came as a bit of a surprise when I opened the box) wouldn't even come close to fitting on my shallow work bench. So, I lag-bolted a couple of 2x4s to the bench and then bolted the drill press to that. It sticks out, but it's solid -- I can bounce all my weight on it and it doesn't even flex. I enjoy over-engineering things. :)

Oh and while I was playing with drill presses I made a drill organizer, seen behind the drill press. I have several drill sets that came in nice metal and plastic boxes, but over the years I've collected a bunch of odd bits that either didn't fit in the box or the box was lost or destroyed, so drilling a hole with each bit in a scrap of 2x4 solved that.

The other section of bench is going to be for reloading. I already mounted my press on the far right, though I still need to buy a little stool so I can sit in comfort instead of standing like I used to do in the pre-garage-revamp days.

I think I've going to start referring to the garage as my man-cave (again, Lemontree need not know this). Admittedly, we plan on getting some woodworking stuff that Lemontree will use out in the garage too so maybe I'll have to come up with a different name. Fortress of Awesomeness?

The garage is empty

2011-05-31T18:50:00.002-06:00

That is all.

Ad-free, free Android apps

2011-05-24T20:30:00.002-06:00

When I got my Android smartphone, I was looking forward to all the cool apps I could put on it. Then I discovered the cruel reality that you have to pay for apps (lame) or allow them to show you ads (super lame). At least the ad-laden apps are easy to spot since they all require the "Full internet access" permission, so I can reject them with extreme prejudice before installing them.

Anyway, since I'm cheap, and I hate ads (which is why I use a DVR to skip TV ads, and FireFox to block web ads), I've been forced to dig deep to find decent apps that are both free and ad-free. There aren't many, and most of them are crappy. Nevertheless, here are the hidden gems, the ad-free free Android apps I have on my phone right now.

File Expert (Geek Software Technology)
Really, Android should come with a file manager of some kind. This kind of omission is just silly. File Expert does the job, though the user interface is clunky (copy/pasting and other operations require too many tap-and-holds and too many sub-menus). It also puts itself in your notification bar, which is annoying (I hit Back repeatedly to exit completely and get it out of the bar). For ad-free and free though, I shan't complain.

Nudnik Calendar Notification (Amit Moran)
By default, Android only vibrates once when you have a Calendar reminder come due. Useless. This led to a lot of missed reminders until I installed this app. I have it set up to constantly vibrate, forever, until I acknowledge the reminder. Android should do this out of the box. This ad-free, free version is crippleware (many features locked out), but I don't miss reminders any more so it's 100% functional for me.

Mine Message (Lei YU)
Same as Calendar notifications, Android only vibes once when you get a text message. Again, useless, and the cause of many missed messages. Like Nudnik, I have it set to vibe forever until I read the message.

Moon+ Reader (Moon+)
Android can read text and html files, but using the web browser to do so is a pain (remember, there's no file manager, so you have to type a big long nasty URL to get to every newly added document). The display and search capabilities of the web browser are also limited. The other feature I really, really like on a reader is auto-scroll. That's where the text scrolls slowly by (at a user-adjustable speed) so you don't have to hit any buttons or swipe the screen to "turn" pages. Turning pages is so 19th century. Moon+ addresses all 3 needs with no ads and at no cost. The main menu is kind of clunky (a few extra taps that are really not needed to get to my docs) but on the whole it's a darn good app.

Replica Island (Team Replica)
Fun little game. Very difficult to play with the touch screen, fortunately I have a slide-out keyboard that works quite well for control.

Netflix (Netflix)
Just found this one today. Shame I'm too cheap for a data plan, so I can only watch when I have WiFi access.

Brightness Widget (Sisedi media)
Color smartphone screens are difficult to see in daylight yet are so bright they hurt my eyes at night. To adjust brightness takes a tap, a scroll, and another 4 (yes, FOUR) taps with stock Android. Ridiculous. Try doing all that in sunlight when you can't see the screen, or at 3AM when the screen is blasting your dark-adapted eyes with the visual equivalent of a theater spotlight in your face. This app (or rather, widget), lets you define three brightness presets -- night, indoor, and outdoor. Then you put it on your home screen and tap it to cycle through the 3 settings. Since you know right were the icon is, you can tap it "blind" in sunlight until you can see the screen.

MotoTorch LED (Ryan Alford)
This is neat. The built-in camera has a "flash", which is just a high-brightness LED. This app (with Widget mode) simply turns it on solid so you can use it as a flashlight. It's surprisingly effective, probably a good 10-20 lumens which is more than enough to navigate indoors or in the woods (maybe not so great with city light pollution). As a widget, it's easy to get to by just tapping the icon on your home screen, no sub-menus and junk to fiddle with.

ColorNote Notepad (Notes)
When I first got my smartphone, I found myself composing a lot of emails to myself so I could jot down notes. This takes care of that ugly kludge by allowing fewer taps to enter a note and easy retrieval of notes all in once place instead of scattered in my Inbox.

WiFi Buddy BETA (Andre Rabold)
There are a ton of WiFi apps out there, this one probably isn't the best but it works well enough that I can't be bothered to look for another. Shows a list of available access points and lets you tap on one to connect. Simple and effective, though a little buggy.

Ad-free free Speedometer
Yes, that's the name. I am so obsessed with ad-free, free Android apps that when I wrote one myself, I named it as such. Yes, I wrote an Android app. :) Stock Android will tell you your speed via GPS, but it's a torturous path to open My Tracks, start recording a track, and switch to the details screen to see the speed in little tiny numbers. Not that you should be operating a phone at all while driving, but this is particularly dangerous. Also, I don't like the privacy concerns of software recording my whereabouts. My app just shows the speed in great big numbers as soon as you tap it's icon, and that's it. That's pretty much all it does. Oh, eventually I will upgrade it to read in MPH, km/h, and knots, save your top speed, display your compass heading (N, NE, E, etc), and allow different display color schemes, but for now it's just a simple free speedo with no ads. It's not in the Android Marketplace, because it would cost me like $30 to publish it there (remember I'm cheap, and I won't be making any money from an ad-free free app). So if you want to use it you'll have to tell your phone it's OK to install apps from "untrusted sources" and download it from here.

State Fair

2011-03-23T21:23:00.003-06:00

Each child in Tiffany's fifth grade class-- in fact all the fifth graders in her school were assigned a state to study and report on. After this nearly one month project, they held a "State Fair" where each child acted as a tour guide of their state. They dressed as a famous person from the state and even handed out samples of local cuisine. Tiffany chose to study Illinois-- as that is where her dad served a church mission. It was difficult for her to decide between dressing as Abraham Lincoln or Jackie Joyner-Kersee, an Olympic athlete. As you can probably guess from the picture, she decided on the athlete. I made her two gold medals to wear, and cut the letters USA to tape to her jacket. Her food sample was even harder to choose. We considered and threw out the idea of getting a Chicago Deep Dish Pizza. She finally decided to give out Oreo cookies, as Illinois has the largest cookie factory in the world-- Nabisco.

Fire Lite CC LLC

2011-03-23T20:50:00.002-06:00

That's the name of my new business! I just set it all up today. I made up a website, too. Come check it out at www.firelite.cc. That's where I'll sell my svg files, cards (plus a card mailing service!), and whatever else I come up with. Eventually, Corwin will include flashlights and other trinkets he will make on his lathe... once the Jetta is done.

Me and my Cricut

2011-03-07T13:46:00.005-07:00

Last fall I visited my cousin, and she showed me all the cool things she makes with her Cricut machine. Now, I'm not one to spend all my time decorating or scrapbooking. Still I was intrigued. I mean, how cool is it that you can make paper dolls, cards, scrapbook pages, decorate walls, make glass etching templates, etc, etc all with one little machine? So, yah, I was impressed. Machines were on sale for black Friday, and I decided to buy one. Now, there was a drawback that I could see, and it was buying cartridges. All the cool little design elements have to be bought separately via cartridges. Corwin encouraged me to search the internet for alternatives. This I did, and happily came upon a design studio for the Cricut called Sure Cuts A Lot. (Cricut also has its own design studio for purchase, but it is not compatible with making your own designs, and you still have to buy their cartridges). So for the price of a cartridge or two, I can make and cut practically whatever I want!

There's so much I've done with the Cricut already! The kids made simple valentines that were personal and unique for each of their classmates. I cut the words out to decorate our Primary bulletin board at church. We've made many cards besides.

I made our Christmas cards last year. I started out by designing a snowman family. It was quite fun. I paper pieced a few together. There were so many little pieces! It literally took me an hour to glue all the pieces on one card! After a few of them, I got smarter and decided to simplify my cards, so the rest were simply wreaths. :) I thought they were cute, and oh! so much less time consuming.

Lastly, I'm going to start offering my designs and cards, etc. for sale. I've just made a new blog site for this purpose. If you would like to follow it, it is located at http://firelite.cc.

Alternator pulley done

2011-02-12T17:20:00.008-07:00

One of the important steps was to make the outer circumference of the bearing as concentric (centered) as possible with the inner bore for the bearing. If the two are off, the bearing will run eccentric and hammer on the belt. To ensure concentricity (neat word eh?), I indicated my 4-jaw chuck on the bored hole to within .001", the most accurate I've ever been on my lathe.

Once indicated, I turned the outer circumference just enough to true it up. Then I mounted it on my rotary table -- that's a cool little tool that lets you mount things to it and then as you turn a handle, it turns a fairly precise number of degrees. So if you want six holes in a circle, you drill a hole, spin your rotary table 60° and drill another one, and so forth. This (theoretically) spaces the holes evenly, which is important for balance if your part will be spinning 15,000RPM.

My rotary table is 3" so normally the largest item I can work with is maybe 2", to allow room for clamping. However, since I had already made a hole in the middle of my pulley, I was able to do some creative clamping to just barely fit a 3" pulley on a 3" table. Here I'm drilling pilot holes -- smaller bits drill straighter, and then when I enlarge the hole with the larger bit it will "follow" the existing hole and you end up with a straighter and more accurate hole.

They say a poor workman blames his tools, well, my cheap Chinese drill press really wanders and worse, is way too fast for drilling 1/2" holes in metal. In spite of my care, some of my holes ended up in significantly the wrong place but oh well, we'll see how badly out of balance it is once the car is running. Once the Jetta is done there are some things I can do to the drill press to improve accuracy (just like you have to do on a Chinese lathe).

Then it was time to beat on it:

This was the most critical part of the whole pulley. Bearings are "press fit" which means that the bearing is smashed into a hole that is slightly (.0005" to .001") TOO SMALL for the bearing. This means the aluminum is actually deformed -- stretched -- and the springiness in the metal itself will squeeze on the bearing tightly so it doesn't fall out. In my case, the hole I bored on my lathe was still smaller than the bearing but not by as much as I wanted, so I used some red Loc-tite (essentially, a special form of super glue for metal) to ensure good grip.

...and here it is, installed on the car. Looks nice, even if I do say so myself.

So, the reason I did this was to push tension on the outer edge of the belt. This increases the "wrap" on the alternator pulley to nearly 180° as seen above. The stock setup I replaced pulls tension on the inner edge of the belt, thus reducing the "wrap" on the alternator pulley, which is then more likely to slip and squeal and eat belts.

I hope this works.

Jetta update

2011-02-10T22:06:00.006-07:00

Haven't posted in a while but I've been busy on the Jetta. Lemontree helped me put the engine in, so I've been busy hooking things up to it. And since I already had the dash apart anyway, I went ahead and did the heater core too since it's a right pain to get to.

Anyway, since I've gone the do-it-better-than-the-factory-did route for the alternator mounting, I need a tensioner pulley for the alternator belt. I got started making it but had more and more trouble until I realized I had to take my lathe all apart and adjust it again. Since I didn't really know what I was doing the first time, I didn't really adjust it right to begin with and then actually using it made things loosen up and move so it was time to start over with the carriage, cross slide, and compound adjustments. I also switched to a different type of cutting tool as the $5 Harbor Freight junk is, well, junk. That all done, I was able to make this:

That's several ounces of aluminum "chips", though aluminum makes such long stringy chips the phrase "bird's nest" comes to mind as a more appropriate name than "chips".

Here's the half-completed alternator pulley:

This 3" aluminum stock is about as big as my largest chuck can handle (definitely too big for the chuck that comes with the lathe). Though aluminum, it's still quite heavy for something going to be spinning 15,000RPM which is why I'm hollowing it out and will follow that with drilling some holes to lighten it further (and make it look cooler).

While I was making lathe improvements, I made a second chuck key for my 4-jaw chuck. Unlike a drill chuck which automatically centers the drill bit, each of the 4 jaws is independent so you can grip irregularly shaped pieces. This also means centering something round is done manually by the machinist one jaw at a time... or better, 2 opposing jaws at a time, which is why I made the second chuck key:

The left key is the one I made and the right key is the one that came with the chuck. By turning them together, I can shift the work piece left or right and that dial you see will tell me when I am centered (then I rotate the work 90° and do it again for the other set of jaws). At first I had tried it with just a single key and it's a real pain since the normal key is short and hits the dial indicator and you have to keep turning the work 180° and measuring again. That's why I made my key really really long so it would stick out beyond the dial without hitting it -- clever, no?

I had a hard time soldering the handle on my second key, too. I swear I am cursed when it comes to joining metal... I love cutting it but I sure hate getting it to stick together.

Makin' stuff for the Jetta on the lathe

2011-01-21T21:27:00.005-07:00

Even though Jettas came from the factory as either gas or diesel, some of the diesel-specific parts are NLA (No Longer Available) from the dealership or simply missing from the local junkyard. So when you don't have the parts you need, you make them!

When my engine came from the junkyard, it had a crushed the oil pan. Unfortunately, the turbo-diesel uses a special oil pan with an oil drain for the turbocharger -- a special oil pan that is now unobtanium. So I took a regular oil pan, drilled a big ol' hole in it, and made a threaded bung on my lathe. "Made" might be too strong a word, as I bought a brass fitting at Home Depot, chucked it in my lathe, and modified it. I can cut threads on my lathe, but that is an "advanced" operation that I don't have the time or tooling to tackle right now so it was faster to just buy something with the threads I wanted and cut away the stuff I didn't want.

Brass if fun to machine, by the way. It hisses and sprays a lovely golden glitter everywhere. It's like a Barbie glitter gun for men. Makes me want to make more flashlights out of brass than aluminum... but not until the Jetta is done!

Anyway, I attempted to solder my bung to the oil pan and completely and utterly failed. Solder stuck to my brass fitting but not the steel oil pan. Conceding defeat, Lemontree took it to her father, a career welder, and he brazed it (you can't weld dissimilar metals -- brass and steel -- so brazing, which is almost as good, is required). It may not be pretty but it'll be hidden inside the engine where no one will see it (arrowed in green).

Next up was a blockoff plate where the blowoff valve used to be. You'd think VW knew what they were doing when they engineered a car, but believe it or not, they stuck some extra stuff on there that is not needed. One of these things is a blowoff valve which is designed to prevent the turbo from over-boosting the engine... it's unnecessary because the turbo already has a wastegate to limit boost. And anyway, I sort of lost the little clamp that clamps the blowoff valve (oopsie) and of course the clamp is now unobtanium too (anyone that has one, needs it for their car!). Solution? Turn a blockoff plate on the lathe! Took a long time to saw off some 2" aluminum stock... I could really use a bandsaw, but just don't have a place to put it. :(

Plate made (arrowed in red above), I again (foolishly) tried to solder it on. Even more dismal failure. It seems I am not destined to work with hot metal, just cut it. Fine. This part is not subject to stress and only needs to hold back 15PSI of boost pressure, so, JB Weld that sucker on. Gotta get 'er done!!

Next I needed to mount the alternator. I'd lost the arm (yeah, I've lost a lot of things) that braces the top so I got some 1" x 1/8" flat stock from a metal supplier in town (well, Lemontree did... thanks Lemontree!), measured, drilled two holes in the drill press, cut to length, and ground down the sharp edges and corners (arrowed in red above). The thing is though, the alternator bolt hole is scooted over half an inch from where the arm is attached, so the arm either needed to be bent or I needed a spacer. Hm, making a spacer would require using the lathe, so... no brainer! Faced some 3/4" aluminum stock, drilled, and parted off to length (green arrow above). Since I haven't equipped my lathe with precision readouts yet, I eyeballed it and ended up .004" too short... ah well, close enough!

Next, I was somehow missing the correct lower alternator bolt. I had one that was too long but didn't have enough threads, so I just whipped out a die and cut some more threads, then cut the bolt shorter to a more convenient length. My hands now smell of the lovely sulfur-based cutting oil I used, mmmm, reminds me of Yellowstone.

Tomorrow the engine should go in. I hope.

Boltin' more stuff on

2011-01-18T22:53:00.004-07:00

VW diesels are a little unusual -- the pistons poke up above the surface of the engine block:

This is due to the extremely high compression ratio of 22.5:1 (your gas car is probably between 8:1 and 9.5:1) -- it needs to squeeze all the air into as small a volume as possible.

Due to this piston projection, you need to keep the pistons from crashing into the cylinder head. As the amount of piston protrusion varies based on your main bearings and wrist pin bushings (you recall I just replaced those), VW supplies three different thicknesses of head gaskets. Why not just use the thickest for maximum clearance? Well you can, but the lowered compression ratio will make your car hard to start in winter. So you actually want as thin as possible for cold start performance without being too thin and things hitting each other. I measured my piston stick-up and determined that I needed the thinnest gasket available. This made me a little nervous, but after I bolted the head on

and installed the timing belt

I was able to turn the engine over just fine without the pistons bumping into anything. Whew!

Boltin' stuff on

2011-01-11T20:18:00.005-07:00

Bolted on the windage tray, oil pump, oil pan, water pump with upgraded rubber gasket (better than fiber, and re-usable), A/C bracket, A/C compressor, front crank mainseal, intermediate shaft seal with pulley, oil galley plug (machine shop forgot to reinstall -- grr), injection pump brackets, and injection pump with sprocket. Discovered the crankshaft sprocket bolt VW sold me was totally wrong (what is with me and bad parts?!), and also the water pump pulley is wrong (see?!).

A lot of the parts I'm bolting on are rusty and dirty, unlike the eat-off-it-clean and painted engine. I don't care. No time for pretty.

You can also see a mock-up of the alternator, this is just a random spare I had from somewhere I used to see how things will fit. The stock VW alternator tensioning system leaves a lot to be desired, so I will be making a new and improved one (having a lathe rocks :) ).

I could have had the engine in the bay this week if VW had sold me the right bolt -- tomorrow the head should go on, and once that is done (and I get my bolt) it's ready to install. I think.

Found 'em

2011-01-07T20:48:00.002-07:00

Can you spot the all-important engine-bolt-bag in this picture?

Just kidding, it's not there, it's safely in the garage where I'm about to start using it tomorrow. Lemontree found it in the place I'd looked about six times.

Go watch Inception

2011-01-06T22:31:00.005-07:00

...and in an attempt to set a record three postings in a day, let me say how awesome Inception is!! The best movie ever made, is, of course, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But Inception just made #2 on my list. After the first time I saw it, I thought it was great and deserved to be the #3 best movie ever made, but it just came out on DVD -- and after watching it again, now I think it's #2. That's how good it is.

Fantastic (and very very appropriate) soundtrack, stunning visuals, good acting, good casting, good plot, good script... admittedly there are a few minor holes in the story but who cares when the other 99.9% of the movie is stuffed with awesome like a giant teddy bear stuck in the stuffing machine?! This movie makes you think, but isn't boring. Stuff happens fast, but it's paced so it doesn't wear you out. Unexpected things happen to keep you off your feet, but you aren't beaten over the head by obvious plot devices. This movie has subtleties: man I love subtleties, and they are so rare in movies.

I even, dare I say it, wasn't bothered by a little bit of shaky camera -- those of you that know me know I hate shaky camera movies (i.e., the second and third Bourne movies were totally ruined by the epileptic camera guy overdosing on meth). And I'm sure I'll catch some flak from you by admitting this, but Inception used it correctly -- i.e., sparingly -- and Made It Work.

So few movies are worth watching these days. This is one of 'em.

Anti-fatigue mats

2011-01-06T20:42:00.003-07:00

Unfortunately, now I can't find the big bag of nuts and bolts that hold various parts on the engine... so tomorrow will be an excavating party in the boxes of Jetta parts to find it. In the meantime, I installed some more rubber mats to go all around the workbench. I got one of them a couple years ago and they make a HUGE difference when you're standing on concrete. Those things would still be a deal at twice the price, in my opinion.

I cut these a little to fit, easy to do with a utility knife. The sections snap together with little nubs. Dirt and swarf fall down in the holes, so you don't slip or get metal slivers embedded in the soles of your shoes. The mats still lift easily so you can sweep under them occasionally -- say, annually, or whenever the holes look like they're about to overflow. ;)

Pistons are in!

2011-01-06T09:33:00.006-07:00

This lump of iron is finally starting to look like an engine again. Though I haven't posted for a while, I have been busy with things. Hit yet another snag after all the work I went to to install those wrist pin bushings -- the wrist pins did not fit!! I only discovered, after it was far too late, that new wrist pin bushings ship undersize and have to be reamed to fit your pins. Ugh. Thankfully, I found a really good machine shop that did it for about 1/4 the cost I expected so the damage to the wallet wasn't too bad. There was yet another delay of several days, though, which hurts the most.

Once I got my rods back from the shop, installation of the pistons went a bit easier than I expected. I purchased a cheap ring compressor from Harbor Freight, which, typical of Harbor Freight, did not work out of the box. Apparently it was designed to install the pistons in 18-wheel Mack trucks or perhaps ocean-going cargo ships, because it was way too big for my little VW pistons. However, cutting it down to 2/3 it's original size allowed it to compress my rings and the pistons were tapped into the cylinders with a chunk of wood and a rubber mallet. With any luck, I can finish the major portions of the engine block tonight and bolt the head on tomorrow. That means the engine might be ready for installation in the car on Saturday! Exciting times!! But I'm not getting my hopes up... some minor snag will probably delay things yet again. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't have a head gasket -- hopefully the local shops stock them so I don't have to wait for shipping.

Lathe got legs

2010-12-27T12:37:00.008-07:00

When we built the workbench, we set the height to something that Lemontree would be comfortable with, which put the lathe a bit lower than optimal. Actually, I wanted the lathe up on legs anyway, to make cleaning the chips out from underneath it easier, so it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Since I had finished the wrist pin bushings (even drilled the oil holes, above) and was waiting for parts and supplies to do the next stage on the Jetta, I sawed, sanded, and drilled some 4x4 left over from the workbench to make legs for the lathe. After drilling the small holes for the bolt threads, I transferred the locations to the bottom for bigger holes for the bolt heads.

I used some tape on the big drill bit to gauge the proper depth for the bolt heads. Came out pretty good!

Fortunately I had an extra-long Allen wrench from working on cars.

Looks like Bigfoot...

Success!

2010-12-24T11:18:00.010-07:00

I completed one more diameter on my press mandrel -- the shoulder that pushes on the wrist pin bushing in the connecting rod:

Here's what the press looks like:

There's a bottle jack on top, the same type you might use to jack up a car, or that Tom Silva uses on This Old House to lift up walls and ceilings and things. As you extend the jack, it pushes down on the column in the middle, which presses on your part. I'm using a small 2-ton jack instead of the 6-ton jack that came with the press -- the 6-ton was a cheap jack that lasted for about two pressing operations.

Here we are, about to start pressing and hope nothing (like the connecting rod!!) breaks. There's always a bit of apprehension when you're applying, literally, tons of force on things.

No drama, fortunately. Here you can see the old bushing is partially pushed out. My mandrel won't push it all the way out, but it doesn't need to. Once I get the old one on started it's way out, that makes room for the new one to push the old one out as it goes in. Here you can see, from top to bottom, the press ram, my mandrel, the new bushing, the connecting rod, and the old bushing peeking out the bottom:

And there we are, one connecting rod re-bushed, three to go. Also, annoyingly, the new bushings don't come with oil holes (as you can see in the old one), so I'll have to drill them too. But that shouldn't be difficult to do on the drill press.

Christmas came early

2010-12-23T20:39:00.010-07:00

So... ran into another problem on the Jetta. Tried to press out the old wrist pin bushings from the connecting rods, using one of my sockets to press on the bushing. No go, one size of socket was too big and the next size too small with no in-between. So, our options were go to a machine shop again, or make a press mandrel of the proper size. Since we didn't want to wait days and pay $$ for a shop and had a perfectly good lathe sitting in the garage, Lemontree gave me special dispensation to turn a press mandrel on it!!

First we needed some metal to machine. The first place we went to was closed, even though it was during their normal business hours. We assumed they were on a holiday break and just failed to hang a sign or change their voicemail greeting (grr). Fortunately, Lemontree noticed an old phone book on the floor of the car, and managed to find another place that sold metal. That place had moved, but they had kindly put a sign up listing their new location (the first place could learn a lesson from these guys!). So it was we finally arrived at Gem State Metals, where I got a 1.5" diameter bar of leaded 12L14 steel, 12" long. 12" was way more than I needed but hey, there was a minimum purchase requirement and I can always find uses for it later. Cost was $7, if you were curious. Here it is standing next to the lathe, as I clean the shipping grease off:

Next I needed to cut a suitable piece from my bar stock, as my 10" lathe really wouldn't be able to do much with 12" of steel. I clamped it in my vice and started cutting with a hacksaw, but ended up with a tired arm and only a shallow slot. Wising up, I grabbed the recip saw, loaded it up with a metal cutting blade, and made better progress. It still took a good 15 minutes to make it through that thing, but at least I was just standing there letting the saw to the work. Here's all the metal "sawdust" I made:

Before I get any further, here is a diagram of a lathe so you know what I'm talking about:

Next I had to mount the workpiece in the lathe chuck (which mounts on the spindle). This wasn't as easy as it sounds, because both ends had been rough-cut so it would wobble around if I seated it solidly back against the chuck jaws. Fortunately, I had watched the entire series of MIT machine shop videos, so I knew what to do -- whack it with a mallet. No, really. I got it straight within .004" of wobble ("runout", in machine-speak) which was not bad for a newbie.

Now I got to make a facing cut to square up one end. I made my first chip and had to stop to take a picture before getting any further.

Then I started making pass after pass to flatten the end, but after many passes my hand got tired and the lathe didn't seem to be cutting any more. Watching the entire machine instead of just the cut as I wound in the cross-slide, I saw the entire carriage was winding itself out under the pressure of the cut! OK newbie, lock that carriage down and try again... yup, now we're cutting metal again!

With one end faced, I flipped it around -- easier this time, as my newly flat end could simply be seated against the chuck jaws without wobble (or at least, no more than the .004" I had when I faced the first end). This was quickly and easily faced, and I moved on to drilling.

My intention was to make two mandrels, a top and a bottom. This piece was going to be the bottom, so it needed a hole for the old bushing to fall inside as it was pressed out. I started the hole with a 1/4" drill, then moved up to a 1/2" (my biggest). Drilling with the 1/2" was scary easy, just the slightest pressure on the tailstock and the bit dug right in. This leaded steel is nice stuff to machine, which is good as it's designed to be easily machined.

Next was to bore out the 1/2" hole to 1.087", but the cheap little Harbor Freight tool bits I was using wouldn't fit in the hole (well, they would, but not in the right position to do any cutting). I didn't expect to be using the lathe this soon, so I haven't gotten all the tooling I needed for it, such as a proper boring bar. Ah well, plan B! I'll use this piece for the top mandrel, and bodge something together for the bottom mandrel later. The top one is the critical one anyway, as it's the one that needs to be perfectly straight and centered. It'll have an extra hole in the middle now, but that's ok.

I needed to turn down a section to fit inside the old bushing. This will center the mandrel and guide it straight. I needed to go down to 0.940", from 1.500", so it took a lot of work. I made even more work for myself by mounting the tool a little crooked in my tool post, so I ended up with a taper instead of a nice sharp shoulder. Ah well, live and learn, re-adjust the tool and take pass after pass to make the shoulder square. Finally, I turned down the guide section to the final diameter and tested the fit with a connecting rod -- eh, a couple thousandths of an inch smaller than I might have liked, but it will do nicely.

As I worked, I even managed to improve my surface finish by adjusting the lathe speed and how fast I cranked the handles. Steel makes a neat "shhh" sound when you cut it right, though the chips are quite hot (yes, I got burned a few times when they landed on skin).

That's it for the day... will do more tomorrow!

Zen and the art of... tool walls?

2010-12-22T20:42:00.002-07:00

One of the impediments to getting the Jetta done was the state of my tools. Oh, they started out organized a few years ago... but as time went on, everything just got thrown into one of two large toolboxes with no regard for... er, with no regard. Thus digging into the bottom of two toolboxes was required to find most things. This was clearly unacceptable for putting a Jetta together in the minimum of time, so one trip to Home Despot and a bit (well, actually, a rather lot) of time later, we have a rough approximation of tool nirvana:

If you noticed the mirror, it's not because I'm vain, honestly -- it's sometimes necessary to see what's going on behind engine blocks or in other nooks and crannies.

I still have stuff in one toolbox, but it's stuff that is only rarely used and it is somewhat organized with lots of little compartments molded in to the plastic lid. I also recycled the tin box one of my socket sets came in -- it now holds crochet hooks. Crochet hooks, it turns out, are handy instruments for, well, hooking on to various automotive bits like seals, boots, and other things and pulling on them. Also for crocheting.

Lemontree also managed to fill 50+ of the little drawers by cleaning out the jars of screws and nails and such.

The garage is still only half done, with a good 7 feet or so of wall to the right of the workbench to be cleared of existing stuff and clad with new shelves, but I think things are well enough organized to proceed with Jetta work for now. At least, until I'm stopped by an incorrect or missing part... which seems to happen with distressing regularity.

More progress

2010-12-21T21:16:00.002-07:00

Got the upper standards hung, brackets slotted in, shelves snapped in place, and storage bins settled. Katie supervised.
Still need to fill the bins though...

Having an organized workshop ROCKS!

2010-12-18T17:05:00.004-07:00

The valve adjustment shims for the Jetta arrived today, so I decided to make a holder/organizer for them. About two dollars worth of PVC, bolts, and nuts and 5 minutes cutting, drilling, and deburring resulted in this:

Now I can browse my shims like a card catalog. :) Man, I don't know how I ever survived in that dingy, dirty, unorganized garage... it's sooo nice having power tools, a place to plug them in, and a clean, open surface to work on all within two steps!

128 drawers

2010-12-18T10:06:00.002-07:00

If you thought we were going to have a lot of shelving, you haven't seen our drawers yet! Yep, 128 of them just arrived. These will hold fasteners (bolts/screws/nuts) and electronic components (resistors/capacitors/ICs) and anything else that now gets thrown in a jar and is thus impossible to find and requires making a mess to get to.

Got more stuff done

2010-12-16T22:53:00.003-07:00

Got the rest of the shelves hung. Annoyingly, Home Depot sells 8" shelf brackets but no 8" deep shelves. What's up with that? Thankfully I now have a moderately equipped workbench, so I was able to cut 2" off some 10" shelves without much drama. Actually I'm a bit ashamed I'm even buying premade shelves instead of cutting my own from plywood and painting them, but really, I am very very motivated to get the Jetta done (have I mentioned that before?) and it's faster this way.

As you can see, there are shelves above and shelves below. And that's not all the shelves -- those white wire racks you see are going to be additional shelving above the black shelves. And the side wall to the right? It, too, will eventually hold more shelves. Seriously, we have a lot of stuff, and only some of it will go away once I finish this Jetta.

Speaking of the Jetta, I went to assemble my pistons and connecting rods the other night and discovered the rod bolts I ordered years ago were the wrong size... ugh. So it's back to the dealership for me. :( And I used my fancy new work bench to try to adjust the valves on the cylinder head, only to realize I was lacking a ton of shims in my set and had to order a bunch more online. So now I am waiting on two batches of parts!

Anyway, if you looked closely or clicked the pic, you may have noticed the 5 shelves stacked mere inches apart on the far right. These have a kind of rubber non-slip grid on them so they can be used to hold lathe tooling -- as the lathe is on the right side of the bench, the tools will be in easy reach there. The cost of the tooling will easily exceed the cost of the lathe once I get going with it, and will no doubt fill those shelves and then some. A person can spend just as much time making tools to make things, as he does actually making things. Not only that, this cheap lathe has a lot of warts from the factory so there are a bunch of parts to machine for the lathe before it ever starts making actual products! Indeed, I expect to have just as much fun polishing and accessorizing this little lathe as I will making flashlights -- I already have a list of enhancements to make to it as soon as the Jetta is done.

Lesson Learned

2010-12-16T10:12:00.001-07:00

I learned a lesson this week. I need to be absolutely clear with my children. I can't beat around the bush. I need to actually make a decision and stick to it. Pushing something to the back of MY mind does not make it go away.

Here is my anecdotal story:

About a week ago, I had this conversation with Katie:

Katie: Mom, I want to make a club with the girls in my class. For the first meeting, I want to make a Christmas present for my teacher. Will you buy a wreath so we can decorate it?

Me: That sounds like a fun idea. When do you want to do it?

Her: Monday, after school.

Me: Ok. Sounds great. I'll buy a wreath for you and supplies to decorate it.

Her: Thanks, mom!

As Friday, nears, I realize things are getting busy for me, and this idea of Katie's sounds like a hassle. And about the same time, our car wouldn't start, and Corwin declared it unfixable-- so I am also without the use of a car, which complicates things drastically.

Me: So, this meeting you're planning? Things are getting kind of crazy. We may have to cancel it or postpone it until later in the week. Maybe Wednesdayish.

(Of course I'm not being very clear or precise because I just want it to go away)

Her: Ok, mom.

So, after this, I think nothing more of this gathering. That is until this conversation Tuesday night, as I'm putting her to bed:

Katie: Logan says he will walk home from school with me tomorrow-- he's the only boy that said he could come. I invited a few boys along with the girls.

Me (surprised): Wait a minute! Why are people coming over? What's going on?

Her: For my party mom! I told everybody it would be until 5:30 (right in the middle of dinnertime). You said we were going to do it on Wednesday. You were going to buy a wreath. You didn't get one?

Me: No, I haven't had a car, and I didn't know you were still planning it. I'll have to figure out if I can get supplies and stuff. Let me think. I may be able to walk to the dollar store tomorrow and get stuff. I don't know. You may have to cancel it altogether. I'll see what I can do and let you know in the morning.

In the end, I was able to get some supplies, I emailed her classmates' parents to make a formal invitation-- late notice though it was (and I really hate to inform people of stuff at the last minute). A few people showed up, we had a nice gathering and a wreath was simply decorated with pony bead bells and pipe cleaner candy canes.

It was rather stressful for me, but it was good for Katie. She had fun, and I think it is important that she be able to invite other kids over once in a while and actually plan things herself. She really is a good planner and a good people person. It is a blessing to me to see my kids develop their many talents. When I am caught up in my day to day, I don't always take the time to notice what my children are good at, help them strengthen their skill set, or just let them have fun-- and when I take the time, sometimes all three happen at once.

Made progress!

2010-12-14T07:32:00.002-07:00

Shop light installed, power tool shelves, and vice installed. Ready for work on the Jetta now, I think!

Woot!

2010-12-11T17:57:00.007-07:00

I recently took an interest in machining, particularly to turn aluminum and brass on a metal lathe to make flashlights and other interesting items. Unfortunately, I still have my last project taking up space in the garage, so I've been very very motivated to finish it ASAP so I can start making metal chips (that's a little machinist humor; you see, the chips are what you throw away after removing them from your metal bar stock to form your desired shape).

My "last project" is converting a gasoline '88 VW Jetta to diesel. I had the engine block bored out some time ago, so I took it off the shelf and masked it off for paint:

Once painted the factory Volkswagen diesel color, I attempted to use a homemade tool to install the intermediate shaft bearings (the intermediate shaft drives the oil pump and vacuum booster for the brakes):

See that little star pattern? Yeah, that's where my tool broke into pieces shortly after destroying my $30 bearings. So, with another set of bearings in hand, I dropped off the block at a machine shop. If I had my metal lathe up and running, I could have made a proper tool to do it myself, but I had no room to set up the lathe -- and Lemontree wants the Jetta done before the lathe makes chips -- so it was just easier to wave money in someone else's direction until it got done.

...And that's where I hit another snag. I started working on the cylinder head, but I had to use the kitchen table, which was a right pain for both myself and for the owner of the kitchen table (that's Lemontree, of course). The garage was just too cramped and crowded to work in, so I decided I needed a work bench. The previous owners of our house had installed some homebuilt shelving in the garage, but it was a massive 4 feet by 7 feet so there was no way you could reach the back corner. Also, it was under-engineered and the shelves sagged in the middle (especially the one that got water spilled on it... oops). Driven to get the Jetta done, we started ripping out those useless shelves to make room for a work bench. We were in such a hurry we didn't even take any "before" pics, sorry. But here's what it looked like after we removed them and started hanging vertical rails for improved shelving and a horizontal beam to support the back of the work bench.

We used some serious lag screws that claimed they didn't require pre-drilling. Well, maybe if you have a bigger drill than I did, which literally smoked before fully seating them. So, we started predrilling and drove them flush with the ratchet I use for working on cars.

Where the previous owners under-engineered, I over-engineered. The dark bar you see underneath the work surface is just that -- a 1" steel bar. There's a second one just behind it, too. I can sit and bounce all my weight on the front lip of the work bench and it is rigid. I can literally drop an engine on there.

You may be wondering why that left leg is not at the corner. Well, there will be another leg at the corner, and between those two legs will be shelves for power tools.

Here we've hung a few of the new height-adjustable shelves and Tiffany and I are testing out the location of the bench grinder (for sharpening lathe tool bits) and, of course, the lathe itself. B-)

The lathe, if you are interested, is a 7x10 mini-lathe. The '7' means it can theoretically spin a metal bar 7" in diameter, but in reality, it would struggle with much more than 4" (still much larger than any flashlight I intend to machine). The '10' is the length of the bed, or how long of a bar you can work with. 10" is also a little optimistic; while it can indeed turn a 10" bar, in the factory configuration various things get in the way so a little modification is required to take full advantage of the bed length. Despite these shortcomings, it is incredibly cheap, er, inexpensive compared to a "real" lathe, and you already know I'm cheap, er, frugal, so there you are.

Now, since we'll be doing all sorts of dirty/greasy/oily/messy jobs on this workbench, we decided to slap a coat of paint down. I don't really care if the surface gets messed up, because it's just a sheet of cheap plywood and I designed it to be easily replaceable , but I wanted to be able to at least kind of wipe it off from time to time. At the hardware store, we looked at the colors of oil-based enamel available. One was a dark gray that I thought would be too dark, so we went with the lighter gray labeled "aluminum". Imagine our surprise when we opened the can and discovered that "aluminum" is not a shade of gray but is, in fact, a bright silvery metallic aluminum color! Ah well, splash it on!

So here I am typing this out while the paint dries. Work will resume on Monday! Gotta get the Jetta done!!

When sorrows come, they come not as single spies but in whole battalions

2010-11-16T21:30:00.004-07:00

Roll call of the battalion:

Washer breaks
We attempt to disassemble washer to repair it, and fail
We research a new washer and drive out to buy it at Lowe's
Washer not in stock, placed on order
Back home, old washer starts working again but Corwin's computer breaks
Call Lowe's, they say we have to go to store to cancel new washer order
Corwin drives out and picks up $60 computer part, and then heads to Lowe's with Emily in tow. After standing in line, "Returns" says they need to go to "Appliances"
Nobody at "Appliances", have to page someone and wait interminably
"Appliances" sends them back to "Returns"
Have to do two transactions, one for washer and one for extended warranty. Second transaction requires much head-scratching and button-pressing as Emily dances because she needs to go potty
Halfway home, Corwin's car loses brakes on the steep downhill section of Mountain View drive coming down off the Bench from Goddard to Glenwood/Chinden
While Lemontree drives out to Corwin with tools, Emily bumps head on rearview mirror which then falls off the windshield
Lemontree arrives with tools, whereupon Corwin discovers he has asked for the wrong tools and Lemontree must now go back home for the right ones
Finally home, Corwin performs digital (as in, "fingers") contortions to replace a too-large power supply in the too-small computer case, but computer still will not power on

The good news is, now that we've gotten all that out of the way, we've filled our stress quota for the month so we should be good to go until December, maybe January.

Don't worry, Corwin/Emily are fine and did not collide with any other cars or stationary objects. Corwin's emergency brake cables broke a couple weeks ago and rather than blow it off, he replaced them... which is just as well because they were used to good effect tonight.

Turns out one of the two bolts that hold the passenger side caliper assembly on the car had inexplicably gone missing -- a rank violation of protocol and a blatant dereliction of duty. The remaining bolt bravely clung to it's threads with it's metaphorical fingernails to keep the entire caliper from bouncing down the road, but sadly was insufficient to the task of actually stopping the car (as evidenced by the loud complaints the driver received when the attempt was made). Nevertheless, the one heroic bolt has received a medal of honor for outstanding service in the line of duty, as well as a new companion bolt, and car was able to get home under it's own power.

And the computer? Power cord came unplugged from the power strip. Now we have a perfectly good, slightly used, extra power supply on hand.

Plug Computer DVR

2010-06-13T19:35:00.005-06:00

As some of you may already be aware, we run a homebuilt DVR (Digital Video Recorder) which records TV shows from our rooftop antenna, stores them, and then plays them back on our TV. The name of the software that does this is MythTV, and I used a spare old desktop computer for the MythTV server to run on.

It's an great system, but has a couple of issues. One is power -- that desktop PC sucks a lot of power 24/7 to record our shows. The other is maintenance -- the CPU cooler clogs up with dust and about once a month the overheat alarm beeps and I have to pull the cover and blow out the heat sink with canned air. Annoying.

The solution is a Plug Computer. You know those annoying wall warts or power bricks that every electronic device seems to come with these days? Well, they made one with a computer built right into it. Called a SheevaPlug, it draws about 10 watts (I estimate it to be about 1/10th the power draw of the old desktop server) and has no heatsinks, fans, or other moving parts. Best of all, it was only $100 which is less than you'd spend on a traditional desktop or server.

Here it is installed on my computer desk. The green-arrowed item is the digital tuner, which captures the signals from our antenna and sends the data over the network to the red-arrowed plug computer. This computer saves the data to the purple-arrowed low-power, low-noise, laptop hard drive. When we want to watch TV, we will use our existing set-top box (arrowed red below) to stream the data back off the hard drive via the plug computer, over the network, and display it on our TV:

I only just received the SheevaPlug the other day, so this will be an ongoing project. I installed Linux already, which went remarkably easily, but MythTV has always been a bit of a bear to get installed so it will be some time before it's ready for prime time (pun intentional).

Oh, and in unrelated news, all my gravevines were apparently DOA. Dunno if Home Depot left them outside and they froze, or I did something stupid, but none of them show the least sign of life, even the cutting I brought in and stuck in some water. So... next year. :(

It's OK for guys to wear pink

2010-05-22T11:24:00.003-06:00

If it has cool things on it, like Hello Kitty, or a Kalashnikov. Or both!

It's aliiive!

2010-05-12T21:26:00.005-06:00

"We can do it. We have the technology. We can build it better than it was before..."

Well there it is. Aside from polishing the engine, it's DONE! Everything we've done:

De-rusted and painted frame
De-rusted and painted bracketry (airbox, battery tray, taillight assembly)
Added blanking plate to close up ugly taillight opening
Replaced shocks and forks
Painted and modified CB100 side covers to fit this CL100
De-rusted and painted tank
Painted exhaust and polished heat shield
De-rusted and polished fenders and chain guard
Recovered seat
Cleaned the carb
Lubed and adjusted all operating cables
Replaced front tire
Added turn signals, including XOR relays for front running lights and rear triple brake lights.
Added 7.5V Zener diode to help prevent overcharging the battery
Replaced rubber centerstand stop to keep the chain (!) from hitting it
Helicoiled stripped mirror mount and added mirrors
Added a proper Honda tool kit to hidden compartment

I took it for a little spin to cure the paint we put on the exhaust, and it's such a ton of fun to ride! I think Lemontree's going to love it! :)

Bike update

2010-05-08T22:42:00.009-06:00

Today was Bike Day. In the last week the new fork stanchion pipes came from Thailand and I finished the relay modules mentioned in an earlier post so we were able to make a lot of progress.

If you recall, XOR logic can be built with relays thus:
And here we have the real thing:

You'll see the 'X' shaped cross-connects between relays here, just like in the diagram:
First attempts at soldering the relays "dead bug style", i.e., with the relay placed upside down like a dead bug with it's legs in the air and soldering directly to the pins met with failure. Second attempts with my soldering pencil also met with failure because the teeny little holes were too close together and the solder balls of adjacent connections touched and shorted things. A trip to Rat Shack for a fine soldering iron tip and some teeny .022" solder made soldering a real joy as the solder went right where I wanted it and flowed like water instead of peanut butter. Ok, I'll win no awards for aesthetics but the proof is in the results, and the modules work.
You'll see above I had to make two connections to the Common legs of the center relay, so I just used a long lead and bent it over and soldered it twice on the backside.

Finally, the modules got a little protection in the form of hot glue and electrical tape. With the front end re-assembled, we reinstalled the main wiring harness and added in my modules. Some consternation was experienced when the rear turn/brake lights inexplicably malfunctioned. We checked, checked again, and rechecked our wiring and it was all correct. Based on the pattern of the light display, I suspected a faulty brake/taillight bulb, so I broke out the multimeter and started testing. Bulb was fine but the socket had some very strange results -- zero volts between either bulb contact and ground, but 5.5V between the two contacts! That's not supposed to happen. Finally we pulled the lens off and determined that the ground wire for the bulb holder had fallen off, resulting in the taillight grounding itself through the brake light and confusing the heck out of my relay module and confusing the heck out of us. Ground wire reattached, everything worked as designed. Whew!! I was starting to doubt my electrical engineering and soldering skills for a minute there.

With the day almost spent, we made it look like a real motorcycle again. Lemontree put on the mirrors, tank, and side covers. All that's left now is odds and ends -- clean the carb, adjust the front brake and lube all the cables, polish the engine, and... well, that's about it really.

Bike Beautification

2010-04-18T09:24:00.005-06:00

Here is a look at the custom pieces I painted. These will definitely give my bike character. I'm not going to put them on until everything else is finished, because I want them to be the finishing touches. I think it would be too disconcerting to put them on an unfinished bike. So they will have to wait for a while.

I have ambiguous thoughts about what I have done here. I sprinkled glass beads on the white paint for a reflective effect. The point is that as I'm riding I want to be seen. Which brings me to the rub. I hate to be noticed. For anything. I want to quietly reside in the background. Don't get me wrong, I love to make a difference. I love to help others live a more quality life if I can, but I don't want to be recognized in doing so. I don't have any objections to people saying "thanks" or "good job" or whatever, but then I want to be quietly forgotten. So comes my problem here. People will notice my paint job, but it's not really something that can be quietly forgotten. This is very custom. Nobody else has a bike that looks like this. I WILL be noticed, and I'm a little uncomfortable with that.

Grape trellis

2010-04-17T20:05:00.004-06:00

Today was a busy day. The other day I attempted to drill holes in our concrete sidewalk so I could secure the trellis fenceposts to it (to keep them from tipping over under the tension of the wire). I used a masonry bit with our regular drill. For those of you currently laughing, you already know that this was a waste of time. Lemontree's father was kind enough to loan us a hammer drill that worked much, much better. I was then able to install lead sleeves in the resulting holes and screw fencepost brackets into the sleeves.

On the far side, there was no sidewalk so I drove rebar into the ground at an angle, then ran wire from the top of the fencepost down at an angle to the rebar at ground level. (The cat is a neighborhood stray.) As you can see below I also set up a soaker hose -- these baby vines need a lot of water because they were transplanted and their roots are small, but in future years they should need very little because they grow some pretty incredible root systems.

Finally I ran the two top wires and tensioned them with turnbolts. I have not yet run the lower set of wires as I'm not quite sure where to place them. From Vines to Wines and other viticultural resources say the lower cordon (horizontal branch of the vine) can be 24 to 36 inches high (or even more), but I do not yet understand which height is best for my situation. Until I learn more, I'm just going to wait. The vines have not yet broke bud (nor should they, as it may still frost this spring, which could be disastrous) so I still have time.

Oh, and while we were at it, we also secured our raspberries to our back fence. They are always falling over onto the grass where they get chopped up when I mow the lawn. Considering many prior failed attempts, this year we got some thick nylon string (almost twine) and then made a critical improvement: we hooked one end of each string with an S-hook so that the string can be unhooked when desired.

This hook allows us to temporarily remove the string to ease in pruning, reposition canes, and more easily slide new canes behind the string in the fall or spring should we have neglected to do so when they first grew that tall during the summer.

We have quite a lot of raspberries, as they have been spreading since we planted transplants a few years ago. This year we dug up two more fence section's worth of bed for more raspberries and there transplanted some shoots that were coming up too close to the grass. Unfortunately, some of the canes are of a different variety that produce a more tart and lighter red berry which tends to fall apart. I tolerated them in years past but this year we're going to let them fruit one last time (so we can identify them) and then rip them out to make room for the canes that grow the sweeter dark red berries. In some ways this reminds me of The Allegory of the Olive Tree, which is kind of cool.

Half a motorcycle, still/again

2010-04-17T19:36:00.007-06:00

Lemontree did a whole bunch of work on her bike today and yesterday. She recovered the seat and painted the frame, and then together we reinstalled the swingarm, rear wheel, fender, shocks, chain guard, exhaust, and passenger footpegs.

As you can see, the exhaust is now black. The chrome was too far gone to save, so Lemontree used header paint (1,800°F) to make it black. I think it looks good.

That accomplished, we removed the front wheel and dug in for a fight! The two front forks were seriously rusted in place and it took a sledgehammer -- quite literally, a 2.5lb sledge -- to beat them off. Tip to anyone removing rusted fork stanchion tubes on a CL100, get a M10x1.25 threaded rod a couple of feet long, thread it into the top of the tube, and proceed to whale on it.

So the reason we took the fork apart was a ripped gaiter -- that's the rubber accordion that keeps dirt out of the shock absorber part of the fork -- and leaky fork fluid seal. Sadly, the reason the fork seal leaked was because the fork at some point had been chewed up by rocks etc that were allowed in by the ripped gaiter. Now replacing the seal is useless because the rough fork tube will immediately tear it up. :( So... we will have to either replace the fork tubes or weld up and re-machine the damaged sections. It'll be a few more weeks at least. :(

But, the parts that are done look really good!

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

2010-04-16T10:56:00.001-06:00

This is well worth the time to view.

Bud push

2010-04-07T18:26:00.003-06:00

It's not nearly time for bud break yet, but I think my baby vines are alive because the buds are starting to "push". Once daily temperatures regularly hit 50°F, and they have been, grapevines start to come out of dormancy. Left is an ultra-closeup of a bud that is enlarged and fuzzy. 5 of the vines look pretty good, which is the good news. The last one, one of the Pinot Noirs, has fewer, and smaller, buds but still shows signs of life so it'll hopefully catch up with a little extra TLC.

While I'm waiting for some exciting mini-vineyard action to happen, I'm reading From Vines to Wines by Jeff Cox. No, I won't be making wine, but there's a lot about viticulture as well as dealing with the juice, which I will be doing. I think it would be an interesting read even if you don't intend to grow vines, both because Jeff has an engaging writing style and because wine -- even if you don't personally imbibe -- plays a role in modern as well as ancient society. There are other interesting tidbits, as well: for example, I was not aware that the juice from red grapes comes out nearly clear, so the grapes are first crushed and the skins are allowed to stew with the juice for about a day so that the colors can bleed into the juice. Much of the complex flavors of wine come from the skins as well -- wines from grapes picked and directly pressed without crushing are (at least, according to Jeff, as I have no personal experience in this area) "light" and "clean" tasting, but lacking in depth of flavor. Even white grapes are sometimes often crushed and allowed to sit for 8-16 hours before pressing to enhance flavor, though like apples, white grape juice can actually turn brown from oxidation if left exposed to air for too long. For vintners (winemakers) this is not a problem as the subsequent fermentation by the yeast generally clears it up, but it will be a potential issue I will need to avoid.

In short, this whole business turns out to be a bit more complex than I anticipated, but I'm still looking forward to everything from cultivating to bottling. If anything I now appreciate the high prices for vitis vinifera juice... perhaps they really aren't gouging after all.

Corwin the viticulturist

2010-03-28T09:59:00.003-06:00

I've been really excited about wine variety grapes for the past year or so. I'm not a big fan of the "foxy" flavor of the native North American vitis labrusca grape juice; the European wine varieties of vitis vinifera have a much more delicate and interesting flavor that I like a lot more. Problem is, I don't drink wine, and vinifera juice isn't really sold in stores. I did find a couple of places online you can get it, which is wonderful and I really enjoyed the bottles I ordered, but it's really really expensive.

I was all set to order some vinifera vines and grow my own, until I discovered Idaho has some really lame legal vine importation restrictions which meant no nurseries were willing to ship to me. And the local vinyards are not really in the business of giving half a dozen vines to anyone who asks. (And I can't start with cuttings, because they can't be grown on their own roots -- they must be grafted onto labrusca rootstock to give them resistance to the pervasive phylloxera pest.) So, I sort of despaired until we saw some grape vines for sale at Home Depot. I humored Lemontree when she wanted to look at them, knowing they'd just be common labrusca varieties like Concord or maybe Niagara, but lo and behold, they were Pinot Noir and White Reisling -- two of my favorite viniferas!! My head nearly exploded and next thing you know...

We planted three of each on the south side of our house (they really like a lot of sun). We have yet to build a trellis for them to grow on, but they're just babies so we still have plenty of time. In the meantime, they should start budding in a couple of weeks and you can bet I'll post pics as things progress. :)

Progress on the bike

2010-03-28T09:38:00.007-06:00

Painting the tank and headlight bucket

One of the side covers Lemontree ordrered from Taiwan (only place to get them) was for the wrong bike. Our CL100 has a high exhaust, so the right side cover must be cut down to provide clearance. Here it's being marked for cutting.

Mesh reinforcement to join cut

Bondo applied

Bondo sanded smooth

Inspecting rear fender

Seat, airbox, and fender removed

Wheel and swingarm removed for frame rust removal

Pile 'o' parts

Funniest thing I've read all week

2010-03-12T19:57:00.004-07:00

Says MarketWatch: "Now is a good time to buy stocks". Hilarious. Where do they dig up pure comedy gold like this?

I think this MW reader echoes my own thoughts on the matter:

Honda

2010-02-23T22:50:00.001-07:00

As Corwin hinted, this is my post to make.

I bought a motorcycle! It's a bit of a fixer upper. It's also older than I am. It's not very big or very powerful (but then, neither am I-- so it's ok). It will be fun to have a life size project-- and I expect I'll learn quite a bit in the process. Corwin gets to help me figure out the wiring and stuff I'm unfamiliar with, but I'll be doing the work. It runs on a 6 volt battery (which is where his random post and strong hint for me to blog came from). It's a 1972 Honda CL100, and here are a few pictures for your enjoyment.

Fun with relays

2010-02-20T21:59:00.003-07:00

As I mentioned in one of my older posts, some electrical relays arranged in a XOR (eXclusive OR) logic circuit can be used to turn your front turn signals into DRLs (Daytime Running Lights). On my motorcycle, I used a trailer light adapter for plug-n-play simplicity, but that won't work for an old motorcycle with a 6-volt electrical system (modern vehicles, and therefore trailer light adapters, run on 12-volts). So, here is a homebrew alternative using 6-volt relays:
Basically, it allows both lamps to light if you turn on your DRLs, or, one lamp to light if you use your turn signals, or, one lamp to stay steadily-on and the other to flash if you have your turn signal on while your DRLs are activated at the same time (the magic is in the crossed wires seen above connecting the relays together). Normally you'd need four relays for this (two for each side), but a double-pole relay reduces our parts count.

Conveniently, this same logic can let you have three brake lights. Especially on an old 6-volt bike, the brake light can be pretty dim in direct sunlight. If you use red rear turn signals (it's not legal to use amber for brake lights!), you can have all three light up when you hit the brakes, yet still allow one side or the other to flash when you turn your signal on (you'll need another set of three relays separate from your front DRLs of course). Just as DRLs increase rider safety so people ahead of you notice you, triple brakes lights similarly help protect the rider from rear-end collisions by inattentive drivers that might otherwise miss that one little dim brake light.

Now, if only we had an old 6-volt motorcycle to try this out on...

Funny name

2009-12-05T22:58:00.002-07:00

A long time ago, we got our first digital camera and boy, did it eat batteries. Not only was it annoying, it was expensive, and as you well know -- we're cheap (uh, thrifty). Thus, I got the bright idea to get some NiMH rechargable batteries, since in my youth I had used the older NiCd rechargables to good effect in many devices.

The new NiMH rechargables have a huge edge over the now-obsolete NiCds, and that's capacity. A NiCd AA only holds about 1Ah worth of "charge", while the NiMHs hold anywhere from 2 to 2.7Ah so they last 2-3 times longer.

Since our camera was eating batteries like crazy, we got the highest capacity NiMHs we could find. We were all set, right?

Wrong. High-capacity NiMHs have this nagging little problem called self-discharge. You can charge them up but if you don't use them for a week, they're half dead. A month later, they're now useless and need recharged even though you didn't use them much, or at all! Worse, our camera's "low battery indicator" would activate after taking only a few pictures and die soon after. You see, it also turned out that NiMHs are about 1.2 volts while throwaway alkalines are about 1.5 volts. .3 doesn't sound like much but our camera was not happy about the difference.

We weren't happy, either.

This was several years ago and times have changed. Digital cameras (and other devices) are now designed to operate on both 1.2 volt NiMH and 1.5 volt alkalines, and battery makers have solved the self-discharge problem, if you know what to look for.

You can now get "LSD" or Low-Self-Discharge NiMH cells, but you have to check carefully what you're getting because the labeling is not clear. If the package says "Pre-charged" or "Hybrid" or "Lasts 6 months" or "Holds a charge for 1 year", those are LSD cells. If it isn't labeled as such, they are ordinary NiMHs and you should probably steer clear.

There's just one catch: LSD cells do not hold as much energy -- only about 2/3 as much as high-capacity NiMH... but the tradeoff is soooo worth it. The only situation where high-capacity wins is if you're charging and then totally discharging them the next day, such as a professional photographer doing a wedding or something. Otherwise, LSD is superior in every other application. And in some cases, LSD even beats throwaway alkalines! More on that later.

Though Lemontree was skeptical after our last attempt at rechargables, I put down the money for the best LSD cells available. That's where the funny name comes in: Eneloop. Yep. They're from the Japanese company Sanyo, so maybe something was lost in the translation. But in spite of the funny name, they're the best LSD for all sorts of technical reasons that would probably bore you so we'll leave it at that.

Incidentally, Duracell Pre-charged NiMHs with white tops are actually rebadged Eneloops, so if you can find them at a store they're great (Eneloops can only be ordered online). Pre-charged Duracell black-top, Energizer Hybrid, and Rayovac "4.0" are also LSD and also work fine, but are not quite as nice. I'm told Kodak also makes some LSD but I don't know what they're called.

Anyway, I have a small LED flashlight I carry in my pocket every day that takes an AA cell. With an alkaline, the brightness would start to dim within minutes as the battery was used up. With an LSD NiMH cell like an Eneloop in it though, it stays full brightness for over an hour. That's because an alkaline battery's voltage drops linearly, while NiMH voltage stays steady for most of it's lifetime. And, of course, I can feel more comfortable actually using my light instead of worrying about spending piles of money on batteries and polluting the environment with piles of batteries. Same goes for the camera, we no longer have to be stingy about using the flash so our pictures have better color saturation and are less blurry since the the camera can use a faster shutter speed.

I suspect Lemontree will remain unconvinced until we have logged more hours on the camera using the LSD cells, but Canon (who made our camera) actually says we should be able to get more pictures out of the NiMH than with alkalines (same reason my flashlight lasts longer, the voltage curve), so I remain optimistic.

So... save money, save the environment, use LSD!

...I think I just told everyone to do acid.

My Black Friday

2009-11-27T17:13:00.002-07:00

Gray would really be a better name for it though. The whole day has been overcast and drizzly, which wouldn't be so bad except I had to spend several hours out in it using cold tools in numb hands.

Even though I just barely replaced our family car's water pump a year or two ago, and have put probably less than 10,000 miles on it since then, the pump recently developed severe incontinence. So, I got to spend Black Friday morning driving around to get coolant ("antifreeze") and a new pump; then the afternoon getting soaked alternately by the rain, the wet ground, and coolant showers.

I give Volkswagen credit for making most parts on the car relatively accessible for replacement, but one thing VW totally omitted was a drain plug for the cooling system: instead, the official procedure to drain the system is to remove the lower radiator hose. Owing to the location of the hose, you must do this laying on your back reaching above your head and since gravity is not just a good idea (it's the law), the coolant will run down the hand, arm, and into the armpit of even the most careful of mechanics who had the foresight to shield his face from the gushing slimy green torrent that results.

The bright side is I got a new tool! Any job that requires the purchase or fabrication of a new tool cannot be all bad. See, I've had this mystery bottle of coolant in my garage for some time. Because I'm cheap, I buy full-strength coolant and mix it with distilled water (this method costs about half as much as buying pre-diluted or "50/50" coolant). Unfortunately, I had opened this jug some time ago and then failed to remember if I had diluted it or if it was still full-strength (it's not good to use the wrong concentration in a car). So, for the princely sum of one dollar, I got a little eyedropper looking thing with little floaty plastic balls in it. The number of balls that float indicate the density of the fluid and therefore the coolant/water mixture; thus, the mystery was solved (full-strength, if you wondered).

The downside was I ended up with an extra washer, and one nut went missing. This however is nothing unusual, so I'm not worried.

So, that was my Gray Friday shopping spree. I think I did okay.

2009-10-23T12:24:00.002-06:00

Last month Katie had to bring a snack to school for her class. We made some sugar cookies shaped like leaves in fall colors. Not real healthy, but in a moment of weakness, I gave in. We put them in individual baggies for her classmates, then in the treatbag she needed to return to school.

Tiffany and Katie caught the bus as usual, then I noticed Katie had forgotten the treat bag. I ate my breakfast, then drove to the school to deliver the bag. I got to the school just as everybody was lining up to go inside. Katie was so excited, as was her friend that she rides the bus with. They both were trying to talk to me at the same time. I quieted them and had Katie talk to me first. She burst out, "I knew you would come! It works! When I was on the bus I noticed I forgot my treatbag. So I did a prayer. And it works! Here you are!" Then I looked at Katie's friend who was also bursting with energy. She said, "That's what I was trying to tell you! She did a prayer and it worked!"

So, from the testimony of six year olds, prayer works! And I got to be an angel on an errand to answer a child's prayer that day.

2009-10-21T13:29:00.000-06:00

We were out grocery shopping. It was nearing lunchtime, so I asked Emily what she'd like for lunch today. She answered, "sandwich." "Oh," I said, "what do you want on it?" "Beans. And lettuce. With my favorite bread." She took me aback a little. It sounds nice and healthy, but how do you get beans to stay between the slices of bread? And how would it taste? It got me to thinking. Should I try making bean patties or something else. I asked Emily if she'd like red beans or black beans. She declared "red."Then if she'd like them whole or mashed. She said, "mashed." We made our way to the bakery area and I let her pick out her "favorite bread," (since I had no idea what is her favorite in this particular instance). She chose whole wheat hoagie rolls.

When we got home, I drained a can of kidney beans and mashed them. I added mayo and a little mustard, thus making a concoction almost but not quite like tuna salad. I made her sandwich first. She had the beans, pickles, tomatoes and lettuce. I watched her reaction before making a sandwich for me. She was eating it! Actually eating it! I went ahead and made myself a sandwich. I have to say it was pretty good. In the meantime, Emily took some of the bean salad out and declared she didn't like it (which wasn't very surprising). However, she finished the rest of the sandwich which still had about half the beans in it.

From this experience, I have a new standby. If I can't think of something for lunch, I can now whip up some bean salad-- though for me alone, I think I'll have to add some onions and chopped pickles.

2009-10-15T20:38:00.002-06:00

I had the opportunity today to work at the church cannery. It was a hassle to arrange for a babysitter. I also knew it would be hard work. Every time I've worked at the cannery, I have come home sore. In short, I was not looking forward to this assignment.

Canning pears was the order of the day. My job was to pick up the washed pears and place them upside down in little cones which had fingers that would grab them and insert them on a rod where they would be peeled, cored and sliced. There were three other people working with me on this job. I was at the end of the line and sometimes I had to wait for the pears to come my way. Other times I had to too many and had to make sure the conveyor belt didn't get jammed up with pears, because then they would skip out over the top and onto the floor. When a whole pear got in with the cut ones (because one of us dropped a slippery pear), a person down below in the next phase of the assembly line would throw them up to me.

Even though I didn't really want to go to the cannery today, I had fun. I got to play catch, and I got to race the machine. Both of which were enjoyable. I came home sore and tired, but it was a good day.

(500) Days of Summer

2009-09-11T23:01:00.002-06:00

Lemontree hosted a bridal shower for some relative or another, so I hopped on my motorcycle and made myself scarce for the evening.

One of my favorite shows is "At the Movies" with Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz. You may be familiar with movie critics Siskel and Ebert (Gene and Roger, respectively)? Well, these guys are their successors. Anyway, Ben and Ben gave (500) a glowing review -- and I had some free time to kill -- so even though some might consider this movie a "chick flick" I went and saw it anyway. My other choice was G.I. Joe, and while I'm sure I'll get around to watching that one eventually, I was in the mood for something with more substance and less explosions.

In a word, (500) Days of Summer is outstanding. While it falls just short of such all-time favorites as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Logan's Run, or Dune, it's right up there with the Top Ten and I will be very disappointed if it doesn't win several awards. I'm already a little miffed that I've never seen it listed on any of the streetside theater marquees -- the only way I knew it was playing in our area was by searching for it online. It might have something to do with it's "chick flick" stigma, or perhaps the short 1h 35m running time (an almost sure sign of a bad movie), or maybe it just doesn't have enough explosions.

Regardless, it's worth searching for. A word of warning, though. It is rated PG-13 for a about 60 seconds of "adult" content. Said content was actually relevant to the storyline though and not just thrown in to bump the rating up to get more viewers, unlike some movies I could mention *cough*Titanic*cough*. I don't know that I can go so far as to say it was tastefully done, but it has to be one of the least explicit scenes in any PG-13 movie, ever (uh, I still wouldn't let my kids see it).

Anyway, the movie is sometimes billed as a "romantic comedy"; it is nothing of the sort. Sure, there's some romance, and yes, there's some comedy, but (500) has as much in common with Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail as I have in common with Rosanne Barr (in short, nothing). I can't even call it a chick flick because there's plenty here for guys to enjoy (I can only assume the girls will like it as well). It's got a nonlinear timeline and it has some unusual film techniques, but these odd devices all just click and work together. There was only one scene in the whole movie I found fault with, and that was just because it ran 10 seconds too long (I think because they wanted the music to swell). Really, that's just nitpicking and I couldn't find anything else to complain about.

Due to the nonlinear timeline, you might fear that the movie's ending is known well before the end of the show. Worry not, for there are some twists. I cannot say more without spoilers.

In short -- grab your spouse or girlfriend and get to the theater, for there's actually a movie worth paying the exorbitant ticket price for.

It's gone

2009-09-07T15:33:00.006-06:00

We had some good times, though.

Today I sold my old motorcycle. It was with mixed emotions, a little sadness, but mostly satisfaction. We had a good run. It was a humble bike, but it served me well... and it's not like I'll never see it again: I sold it to our next-door neighbor. Apparently he used to ride "back in the day" but some of his buddies wrecked, so he swore off them for 20 years or so. I guess SMAS (Sudden Motorcycle Acquisition Syndrome) is infectious though, because he seemed to change his mind and want one after seeing me get a new (well, not factory-new, but new to me) bike.

I was going to repaint it black, since I had a bunch of black paint laying around, but he wanted metallic blue so he bought the paint and I painted it to order.

Ironically, when I bought the bike, it was a flat primer black and I wanted to paint it metallic blue. I even painted the side covers blue but never got around to painting the tank. So, it somehow seems appropriate that right after I finally painted it the right color 9 years later, I immediately sold it. Actually, part of my reason for never painting it was to leave it a little... well, not ugly, but uh, homely. The theory was to make it less attractive to thieves, but really, I think it was mainly because I kind of liked the "ratbike" look, as if it was something out of a post-apocalyptic movie (my favorite kind of movie).

Anyway, the tank was a little dinged up and the empty mounting points for the "Yamaha" logo looked pretty stupid (the "Yamaha" badges having fallen off long ago). So, I got a chance to do a Bondo job for the first time. (For those of you not acquainted, Bondo is a two-part putty-like dent filler that you heap over the dent, then sand smooth to match the metal surface.) The tank still isn't perfectly smooth but from 5 feet it looks pretty good for my first try.

Lemontree also found a "dent puller" tool at a thrift store which came in handy. It only works for large, shallow dents, but the tank had one like that and it worked great. You use a hot glue gun to glue what's basically a big screw the middle of the dent, then you use a handle on the screw to pull the dent out. I was skeptical the hot glue would hold, but it did great, and was easy to remove by peeling instead of pulling. Thanks, Lemontree!

I had purchased the bike at around 19,000 miles, and it was at 23,997 when I got the new bike. So today, I went around the neighborhood a few times until it rolled over 24,000.0 exactly.

Here's the crazy part... I sold it today for $100 more than what I paid for it in 2000. Whoever says that motorcyles depreciate is wrong! Actually I think I just got a really good deal when I first bought it. And I have upgraded a lot of things on the bike so my asking price was more than a fair (and still less than the Blue Book). The neighbor still got a deal, I think.

I'll miss the old bike, but only a little. At least I know it has a good home.

Adding some niceties to the new bike

2009-09-02T18:16:00.007-06:00

I guess I was spoiled by my old '81 Yamaha because it has a useful helmet lock and a luggage rack I could bungee stuff to. The Ninja has a tiny space under the seat, but you can't put stuff there because it will jam up the seat lock assembly and you'll bend your key trying to unlock it. Go ahead, ask me how I know. :( Also, the helmet locks are useless for my helmet because they are right next to the hot exhaust pipes... my helmet would melt even if my strap were long enough to reach, which it's not. Not to mention, someone could cut the helmet strap anyway.

So, to address these problems, I had my personal seamstress (ok, well, Lemontree) break out her sewing machine. First, to help me carry things like pizzas (yes, every once in a while I will get a pizza on my way home from work), she made a seat strap out of this vinyl fake-leather stuff. It attaches to itself with velcro, making a loop under the seat:

Next, I got a cheap bicycle cable that I can loop through the face shield opening of my helmet and attach to the helmet lock. While the primary reason was to address the useless location of the helmet lock, it also makes it more difficult to steal the helmet (as a knife isn't going to cut a 1/4" steel cable, unless you have some kind of super-knife I've never seen before).

You can see the lock that Kawasaki put on the bike at the very bottom of the picture, which is about 2" above the hot melty exhaust pipe.

Now I just needed a place to carry the cable and a couple of bungee cords. As you know, I'm online a lot and I found a discussion forum where someone had, very cleverly, used a $12 car trash container as a motorcycle tailbag. It's the kind that hangs on the back of a front car seat with a strap -- this chap had used the strap to go under his motorcycle seat, and then tucked the back end into the grab bar (that's the sticky-uppy part behind the seat). $12 is about 1/5th the cost of the least expensive motorcycle-specific tailbag I've found, and you know I'm cheap, so off to K-Mart we went. However, once there, I discovered something even better. See, the $12 tailbag sits on the seat, which would interfere with my pizza-carrying desires. Fortunately, I found a $5 glove box organizer (hey, $7 saved!) that could instead mount behind the seat, leaving the entire seat available for pizza duty.

Lemontree fired up the sewing machine again and added two small straps, which I poked holes in and secured to the bike using the fairing screws:

Here's what it looks like loaded up:

And finally, all closed up:

I still need to do something about the useless mirrors, though. Mirror extenders are available but cost waaay to much, so I'll have to see what kind of cheap solution I can find.

Getting to know you

2009-08-25T20:06:00.003-06:00

I got the new bike (maybe I should name this thing?) registered this morning and took the scenic route home from work, turning a 15-minute trip into an-hour-and-15. It's much smoother than the old one; both use the same engine layout (180° parallel twin) but the new one is counterbalanced and runs like butter by comparison. In fact, it almost seems like a toy bike when your fillings aren't rattling loose. ;)

I was a little bothered by a raspy sound that I kept hearing, though. When I finally got home and shut the engine off, the raspy sound continued! Come to find out there's a cute little electric radiator fan that keeps the engine cool when the bike isn't moving.

I've got to do something about these mirrors, though. They give me a really nice view... of my arms. I guess even a new bike still requires work projects. Sigh.

My first modification was to remove the dorky lower fairing, it's so 90's. I think it looks much better without it, and so far everyone who's seen it agrees:

New horse in the stable

2009-08-24T21:19:00.003-06:00

After 9 years of faithful service, my old '81 Yamaha XS400 has done it's job well. Originally purchased to serve as a "learner bike", I liked it enough that I just kept on riding it. However, advancing age means things are starting to break and 28 years after its manufacture, replacement parts are becoming scarce (some are already impossible to find). So, it was time to upgrade to a bike that was a little newer and a little more popular so that parts (both junkyard and factory) were more available. The day my kickstand literally snapped off was the final motivation.

Let me introduce you to the Ninja 500R. I'd take a picture of my own bike but it's dark out. So, here's a stock photo (correct color, though):

Yes, yes, I know the first thing most people are going to think is "a sport bike? You're gonna kill yourself!". Actually, I got "you're going to die" comments all the time on my significantly more pedestrian Yamaha, so I suppose I should not be surprised. Maybe you'll call it justification, but allow me to explain the reasons I got it.

First, it's not a supersport. The "crotch rockets" or "bullet bikes" that get a bad name from dangerous riders have 4-cylinder engines with power-to-weight ratios that are unworldly. Those are the bikes that young men with more money than brains tend to destroy along with themselves at 100+ MPH speeds. However, not all supersport riders behave like that... I'd even say that the majority of supersport riders are safe and responsible, but it's the idiots that make the headlines (especially the ones without safety gear). Just like people, not guns, commit crime, it's the riders, not the bikes, that turn themselves into organ donors. However stories about safe gun owners and safe riders don't sell papers, so you generally don't hear about them.

I'll be riding the Ninja the same way I rode the Yamaha -- cautiously and within the speed limit.

Regardless, this is still not a supersport. It has half the engine, only two cylinders, which means that it cannot do roll-on wheelies -- it simply does not have the power. (This is good, because wheelies are not on my agenda.) In other words, the sporty appearance is writing checks the small little engine cannot cash. This lack of acceleration also means that insurance for it is cheap compared to a supersport.

So why the Ninja? It's a very popular bike, which solves the parts problem. The model has not really changed since 1994 (and still shares a lot of parts with Ninja 500s back to 1987). This makes the purchase price lower, because Kawasaki didn't invest any money on retooling. It also means that I can grab almost any Ninja 500 part and it'll fit my bike.

And speaking of fit, my old bike was fine for short commutes but on the rare occasion I took it on a longer trip, the seat was too far forward which made for a sore tailbone and cramped legs. I haven't made any long trips on the Ninja yet but so far it seems to fit me better. It also has a windshield, something my old bike lacked, which means I don't get beat up by the wind anymore.

I haven't rode the new bike much yet -- only to get it home -- because the prior owner let the carbs gum up (this happens if you don't ride often enough). Tonight I cleaned those up after removing the EPA anti-tamper plugs. I had to "tamper" with the pilot jets, you see, to clean them. Stupid EPA. That done, Lemontree then made me change the oil because it looked dark, and I didn't complain.

Tomorrow I'll transfer the plate and registration and get the old bike ready to sell to someone else, so it can resume its role as a learner bike. I'll make a discount for blog readers if you're interested. ;)

They're like Tribbles...

2009-08-22T11:21:00.002-06:00

"They appear to be asexual, reproducing at will."

Also known as SMAS: Sudden Motorcycle Acquisition Syndrome. Strangest thing, the silver motorcycle jumped underneath me and made me take it home.

Review of the Chevy HHR

2009-06-19T20:00:00.002-06:00

For the last week, I had the opportunity to drive a 2009 Chevy HHR for our Yellowstone trip. At first blush, the HHR doesn't have a lot to recommend it. As you sit in the drivers seat, right away you find a tacky hard plastic dashboard... ick. Then as you pull out, you notice the huge A-pillars block much of your view, especially when turning. The low-mounted rearview mirror similarly blocks forward vision, which is especially annoying given that the view through the small rear window only fills about half of this oversize mirror. The side mirrors are also oversize, which I'm sure Chevy did on purpose because visibility to the rear is so poor thanks to the large D-pillars.

Another annoyance was the low front lip that sits lower than most curbs. Parking my usual daily-driver cars, I like to pull right up until the front tires bump the curb -- no way in this car, you'd destroy the front bumper assembly before the tires got close to the curb. As a result, I found myself parking about three feet from the curb.

So, the HHR and I did not get off to a good start. The good news is, that's about where the major negatives end. I even didn't mind the automatic transmission -- and that's high praise from me, because I hate automatics and will never own a car with an automatic if I can help it. The HHR's transmission didn't constantly shift or "hunt" for the right gear when climbing and descending the hills of Yellowstone, and I especially appreciated that it didn't downshift at the slightest pressure on the accelerator (as our Mazda 5 did on last year's Colorado trip). The 'I' or 'Intermediate' selection on the shifter was also put to good use descending long steep mountains, and while engine braking was anemic compared to a manual transmission, it was adequate. Again, that's a ringing endorsement from a confirmed automatic-hater such as myself.

On a related note, the Chevy engineers did a good job on the throttle response. The aforementioned Mazda 5's front end would "hop up" as the car surged forward with the slightest press on the throttle, but the HHR had very good manners and accelerated smoothly without nose lift even when the pedal was inexpertly mashed. The brakes were similarly refined, resisting the tendancy to nose-dive even when the brakes were manhandled. The suspension and steering handling were also well-engineered (though the power steering required a bit more effort at freeway speeds than I might have liked, making one-handing steering awkward and tiring).

One interesting feature was the cruise control. Chevy eschewed the traditional Set/Accel and Coast/Resume format and instead used a new (to me) +/Resume and -/Set. The 'Set' is self explanatory, and once engaged, you can then use '+' and '-' to accelerate and decelerate. Since there is no Coast button, you must tap the brakes to disengage the Cruise (which can then be resumed, appropriately, with 'Resume'). My only gripe is the lack of a Coast button, otherwise, I had no complaints. Well, almost. If you tapped the brakes to Coast and slowed down significantly below the set speed, hitting Resume would accelerate to about 3MPH before hitting your set speed, and then it would decide to downshift for those last three MPH. Odd but not a major problem.

A major problem, incidentally, was the fact that the power windows refused to roll up if the ignition was turned off. I lost count of how many times I had to turn the ignition back on so we could all roll our windows up. I guess Chevy never expected anyone to actually roll their windows down in this day and age of the air conditioner?

No major problems with the other controls. The heat, A/C, and radio controls were logical and well-laid-out. Speaking of the radio, there was a neat feature that automatically increased the volume with road speed (to compensate for road and wind noise). I sorely need that feature on my 20-year old cars where the radio's volume can barely overpower the roaring noise at freeway speeds, but it was unnecessary on the HHR as the cabin was pleasantly quiet at 75MPH.

In short, it's not a bad car, but the visibility problems ultimately prevent me from recommending it.

Motorcycle safety, part III

2009-06-10T21:01:00.002-06:00

No pictures for this one I'm afraid, because there's not much to show. But, I purchased a headlight modulator -- this device flashes my headlight about 4 times per second when I flip my high beam on. This is useful for three reasons:

It's attention-grabbing. Obvious.
Some drivers see a motorcycle, but misjudge it's speed (leading to a collision). The same thing happens when motorists try to beat a train to a railroad crossing -- the sizes of motorcycles and trains are different than the size of cars, which makes it more difficult to judge their relative speed. A headlight modulator knocks a driver's brain out of it's "comfort zone" and forces a re-assessment of the situation.
Most new cars are wired so that their headlights are on all the time, even during the day. Motorcycles also have their headlights wired to be on during the day, so motorcycles now tend to "blend in" with a pack of lighted cars. A modulator helps make them stand out again (hopefully, modulators will not ever be allowed on cars).

Installation was plug 'n' play. It simply plugs into the back of the headlight for a tool-free install, which is part of the reason I didn't take any pictures. The other reason is it's hard to see a flashing light in a still photo. ;)

I don't have it set to modulate all the time, however, as the flashing in the rearview mirrors can be annoying for the person immediately in front of me. Since I'm constantly scanning side streets and oncoming traffic for people who may become a threat to me, I just flip it on whenever the situation warrants it.

You may be wondering if a flashing light is legal if I'm not an emergency vehicle. A modulator is 50-state legal for civilian motorcycles per the Federal Department of Transportation if it meets certain specifications (which mine does) in regards to flash rate and time of day (it has an 'eye' to sense the light level and automatically disable itself at night). The DOT has done a lot of stupid things, but this was one thing they got right.

And it does get noticed. A couple of times now, I've flicked it on and been satisfied to see a driver's head swivel to follow me as I ride past (they're probably thinking "is that a motor cop?"). The device was fairly expensive, but cheaper than a hospital visit. Plus, it gives some piece of mind, which is -- as they say -- priceless.

Motorcycle safety, part II

2009-05-19T21:21:00.005-06:00

All that earlier work got me nice LED turn signals, but not DRLs (Daylight Running Lights). Today I removed the headlight from the "bucket", revealing the spaghetti mess of wiring you can see to the left. Just about every electrical circuit on the entire bike passes through this bucket, but it was pretty easy to identify the turn signal wires since the turn signal stalks run right into the bucket.

Now comes the challenge. Normally, the blinker relay sends voltage to the turn signal bulbs to light them up. However, if you set them up as DRLs, the bulbs then get voltage all the time and you need to blink them off when you use your turn signals -- this is, of course, backwards.

To "invert" the signal, I used a trailer light adapter. Trailer light adapters exist because most vehicles have three wires: stop, left turn, and right turn. Trailers just have two wires going to two lamps though. This saves money on wiring and lamps, but as you can imagine, there's an extra step to make three signals transform into two signals. The solution requires a little XOR digital logic, which is a little complicated to make from scratch but you can easily buy a plug 'n' play solution prepackaged into a little box. You can pay $100 for a motorcycle specific DRL box, or you can pay $16 at your local U-Haul for a trailer light adapter that does the same thing. I, of course, went to U-Haul. Actually, I first bought a cheap one online but it wouldn't fire LEDs so I wasted some time and money there. All new U-Haul trailers have LEDs so U-Haul's adapter supports LEDs just fine.

Basically I just cut the wires going to the turn signals, and inserted the box in between the turn signal voltage supply and the bulb. This still just gives you normal signals until you connect the "brake" wire on the adapter box to any ignition-on wire: now the adapter will think the brakes are on all the time, and light up both lamps all the time (until you turn a blinker on, and then that one side blinks off). The adapter box was a tight squeeze into the headlight bucket, but it just barely fit.

The LEDs do not cast an even light like the old bulbs did, instead they concentrate most of their light in a couple of directions. From the direct front, they're not very bright but that's ok as my headlight will always be on and is much brighter than the DRLs anyway. However, once you get off to the side a little bit, the LEDs shine nicely. These pictures were taken in the evening, so they are not going to seem as bright in broad daylight but I still think these will give me a nice bit of added visibility to other drivers.

Motorcycle safety, part I

2009-05-14T22:04:00.007-06:00

I've been thinking about making myself more visible on my motorcycle, since the other day when I did a head check to change lanes and found another motorcycle riding in my blind spot. I almost didn't see him... and I'm hyper-sensitive about looking for other two-wheeled vehicles! It didn't help that he was dressed in black on a black bike.

So... I'm taking a three-pronged approach to making myself more visible. Phase 1 is marker light upgrades. Most of you are probably familiar with DRLs, Daylight Running Lights, which were introduced on new cars just a few years ago. Though motorcycles have already had always-on headlights since 1978, I want to use my amber turn signals as running lights for added visual impact (yellow is more attention-getting than white... plus, I have twice as many turn signals as headlights ;) ).

However, there are some considerations to leaving two 21 watt bulbs on all the time. One is heat -- since the signal housings and lenses are only designed to have a light on inside them occassionally, they can actually be melted by the heat generated from a continuously lit bulb. The other consideration is electrical -- motorcycles have weak electrical systems, and the added strain can kill a battery or prematurely burn out alternator brushes, rectifiers, and voltage regulators.

To address these concerns, I switched to LEDs for my front turn signals. LEDs take far less power and generate far less heat, so they are perfect for this application. Rather than replace the entire turn signal stalk, I simply purchased a LED module designed to replace a common automotive 1156 bulb -- it just plugs right into the bulb socket for the world's easiest LED installation. It's the silver cylinder you see in the middle of the bulb housing (don't worry, the amber lens was reinstalled after taking the picture ;) ). You can easily do this upgrade on cars, too, if you are so inclined (LEDs practically never burn out, so you're less likely to get pulled over and issued a fix-it ticket... the only downside is, they are pretty expensive).

Great as LEDs are, there's a catch: Old-school turn signal blinkers won't blink them. The flasher relay requires a certain amount of current to be flowing through it, and since LEDs draw less current, you get no flash. The solution is a modern electronic flasher that doesn't care how much current the bulbs draw.

In my case, installation was a snap and is completely reversible. I was prepared to cut and splice wires into an ugly mess but I got lucky not once but twice.

First, my stock blinker relay had a plug (green arrow) with female spade connectors. All I had to do was add male spade connectors (red arrow) to my new blinker and stick them into the stock wiring plug with zero modifications! This means I can easily switch back if I ever sell the bike (the expensive LEDs will be staying with me for my next bike!).

Happy coincidence number two was the mounting of the flasher. I was expecting to have to zip tie it or resort to other ghetto methods of securing it, but as it happens the stock flasher has a neat rubber vibration-isolation mount (motorcycles vibrate a lot, and vibration kills relays). My new flasher very conveniently had a mounting tab like the old flasher, only a little too wide. A few seconds with a Dremel fixed that and the new relay slotted right into the existing rubber mounting like it belonged there from the factory.

As an added benefit, my blinkers blink faster, which I think is more attention-grabbing than the old sedate pace.

All that work, though, and I still don't have running lights. That's a project for another day... stay tuned.

Easter Dresses

2009-04-13T13:06:00.002-06:00

Here are some pictures of the new Easter dresses I made for my girls. My sister gave us some ribbon the day before, so I was able to tie bows in their hair.

Sack lunches III

2009-03-18T10:19:00.002-06:00

Just one more comment on sack lunches, because I thought you might be curious. Tiffany likes the cute lunchboxes. They really didn't improve her problem much, though. The biggest problem is that what she eats is unfamiliar to the other kids, so they tell her it looks like puke (or whatever). She usually takes it in stride, but there are days it really bothers her. Her new strategy is to think up gross names for her food before her friends do. So she eats monkey brains, owl pellets, and alien blood. Right now she thinks it's fun. This morning she told me some of her friends actually tried her owl pellets and (surprise!) really liked them. She packed a few extra to share today. So far, this is a better strategy for her. Click here for the recipe for owl pellets.

Pickin' Up Worms

2009-03-17T13:14:00.002-06:00

On rainy mornings, the worms come out. Trying to get out of their waterlogged homes, they commit suicide on our sidewalks, driveways, and roads. I always feel guilty walking past a worm that I know will soon die. Over the years, however, I have come to ignore most of that guilt knowing I have so many more important things to do than save as many worms as I can before the sun takes their lives from them. To assuage this guilt (and the eew factor), I have taught my children to pick up the worms and put them in the grass. Perhaps I am only passing the guilt on to future generations, but I like to think instead that I am teaching compassion. My girls notice the creatures around them and know they have the power to give a chance of life to the helpless. They love doing it. After dropping Tiffany off at the bus, Katie and Emily slowly walk home looking for worms in the gutters and on the sidewalks. I happily point the worms out to the girls, as I seem to have a better eye for such things. I am amazed that Emily's little fingers are the absolute best for picking worms from cracks and crevices. I am more prone to injure the soft bodies, so I have given up trying to pick up the small ones. In fact, I've given up picking them up at all, content to pointing them out with the toe of my shoe. I relish in the joy and fun my girls get from such a simple thing.

Sack Lunches II

2009-02-10T14:15:00.001-07:00

After writing the post yesterday, I decided to try to find some nice containers. I started with the dollar store because I needed something from there anyway. And guess what? I actually found almost exactly what I was looking for! At the dollar store! I was very pleasantly surprised. I bought a little 4 inch round two compartment stacked box with a folding spoon. I also bought a square sandwich box and a little snack container set which were two containers with animal lids and a dipping spoon. I hit the jackpot!

So, today, as suggested by a good friend of mine, I cut up numerous veggies so Tiffany could make faces with them. Tiffany was quite excited about it. Plus I included a handful of clover sprouts Tiffany had been working on sprouting herself (to use as mustache or beard). We put some hummus and chili in the little piggy containers, included toast and a little ranch dip. It looked like it would be fun for her. Katie wants to have it for lunch today, too.

Sack Lunches

2009-02-09T11:54:00.002-07:00

Almost every day I pack a sack lunch for Tiffany to take to school. That way I know she is eating healthy, and we're saving some money besides. I try to include a variety- fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes, and she usually likes what I send. The problem, I think is presentation. There have been several times she has told me that other kids stare at her meal, poke fun at it, or even tell her it looks disgusting. I usually tell her not to worry about what they say, at least she knows she's eating healthy. I'm concerned though that she does worry about it (she is only 8 after all and she wouldn't say anything if it didn't bother her). So, how do I go about making her meal prettier and more appealing looking?

Today I sent a macaroni salad for her (whole wheat macaroni boiled with frozen vegetables with ranch salad dressing to add later). now I'm thinking I could have made it a whole lot prettier by putting the macaroni on a lettuce leaf, with the cooked veggies on that, then the dressing on the side. I also sent a cut up pear, left over chili and 2 pieces of toast to eat with the chili. I have no idea how to make pears or chili look good. Ideas anybody? I'm also thinking I should have dedicated shallow bowls with lids for her lunchbox. Right now I just send her meal in small kitchen storage containers (4oz or 8oz). Maybe that's contributing to the problem as well. I wish growing up wasn't such an involved complicated affair.

Sunny Days Are Here Again!

2009-01-30T09:56:00.002-07:00

It's still pretty cold outside, but yesterday afternoon the temperatures rose above 40 degrees! The sun was shining and it felt quite warm. As a result, I walked to the school so my children could walk home instead of riding the bus. It was wonderful! And I finally got a couple miles of walking in!

Christmas Happenings

2008-12-21T20:12:00.002-07:00

I was able to help in Katie's kindergarten class Friday. It was a partial day, and they had lots of fun activities to do. They had a rotation of 4 activities. They cut out antler hats and had red put on their noses, so they could look like Rudolph. I got to help them with their snack, frosting sugar cookies and applying sprinkles, and lots of other things. I read stories to them as they ate. One of the stories was quite memorable. It was about a little pine tree who wanted to be a Christmas tree, but he was crooked so nobody chose him as their Christmas tree. Instead, a family chose him to plant in their backyard where their little boy would play around him, but he still wanted to be a Christmas tree. He was sad that the family chose a different tree to put in their house and decorate for Christmas. The story ended with nature adorning the little tree as a Christmas tree. As I read, I wanted to say that it was dumb that he wanted to be a Christmas tree. If he had been chosen, he would have been dead! It would have been much more fitting for him to have seen the chosen Christmas tree being dragged from the home after Christmas with the needles gone. Bare. Brown. And dead. Then realize how blessed he was for having a family who loved him and cared for him, and chose him to live in their yard to bless their lives a lot longer than the few days around Christmas.

So maybe that isn't such a cheery Christmasy thought, but I just watched the recorded episode of Dr. Who from last night, which was a pretty nightmarey Christmas Day.

Anywho, yesterday was our ward's Christmas Dinner where Santa Clause came, and my children got to sit on Santa's lap.

Cooking Club

2008-12-10T16:46:00.003-07:00

I joined with a few other ladies in our ward to spend a day together about every other week to cook. I hosted this week, meaning we used my kitchen. It was a pumpkin theme (because I have a shelf of winter squashes I wanted to use in the girls' closet). We made cranberry pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, and no bake cream cheese pumpkin pie. All the recipes tasted really good. I was particularly surprised about the pumpkin soup, because my imagination did not prepare me for what I tasted. It was really, really good.

I don't have anybody else's email addresses but I do have a couple blog addresses, so I'm posting the recipes here where they can copy them off freely.

Cranberry Pumpkin Bread
this is my original recipe

1 Cup whole Wheat Flour
3/4 Cup white flour
1 tsp soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 Cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup orange juice
1 egg
1/2 cup honey
1 cup Chopped cranberries
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Spray a 9 x 2.75-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

Mix together flour, baking soda, and spices in a medium mixing bowl. Mix in the pumpkin. Separately mix orange juice, egg, and honey. Mix both combinations of ingredients together until there are no dry spots left. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Spread evenly in loaf pan.

Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (keep in mind the cranberries add moisture, so the toothpick may never really come out totally "clean"). Cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely. Wrap and store overnight. Makes 1 loaf (16 slices).

Suggestions for substitutes:
Flour: Of course you can use all white flour, or use up to 3/4 cup other kinds of flours.
Pumpkin: Any winter squash will do.
Orange juice: Any other juice or even water. Whatever you use will subtly change the flavor.
Honey: You can use any sweetener in place of the honey- maple syrup, agave syrup, sugar, or brown sugar. For a darker flavor, you could even use molasses.

Pumpkin Soup

1 large onion, diced
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
2 cans chicken broth (about 14 oz)
1 small can pumpkin (we used 2 cups puree)
4oz evaporated milk

Cook onion in butter until clear. Add flour. Cook one minute. Add broth and pumpkin. Simmer 30 minutes. Add milk and serve warm.

Cream Cheese Pumpkin Pie
originally from kraftffoods.com

1 graham cracker crumb crust or baked pie crust
4 oz. Cream Cheese, softened

1 Tbsp. cold milk

1 Tbsp. sugar

1-1/2 cups thawed whipped topping

1 cup cold milk

1 can (16 oz.) pumpkin

2 pkg. (4-serving size each)vanilla instant pudding mix (can use sugar-free)

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp. ground ginger

Beat cream cheese, 1 Tbsp. milk and sugar in large bowl with wire whisk until well blended. Stir in whipped topping. Spread onto bottom of crust.

Pour 1 cup milk into medium bowl. Add pumpkin, pudding mix and spices. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended. (Mixture will be thick.) Spread over cream cheese layer.

Refrigerate 4 hours or until set. Garnish with additional whipped topping, if desired. Store leftover pie in refrigerator.

Halloween, one holiday late

2008-11-26T22:29:00.003-07:00

I don't know what it is about getting pictures off my camera, but it seems a colossal chore. So, here it is Thanksgiving Day in a few hours and I'm finally showing you my kids costumed up for Halloween.

First off, there's Katie and Tiffany by their respective carved pumpkins. Katie's was a witch. Tiffany's was a haunted house. Emily was napping when we took this picture, so we had to get one of her later. We made a circle trick or treating around our block, and the girls came home with heavy bags. They ate candy for a few days, then I asked Corwin to take the rest to work to share, so it wasn't laying about the house tempting us (especially me) any more.

Just a few things

2008-10-27T20:46:00.002-06:00

Emily is pretty much potty trained now. She's been wearing panties all week and has very few accidents. She tells me when she needs to go, and makes me come along. Well, that is until today. She's actually gone to the toilet a couple times by herself. It is sooo nice not to deal with diapers anymore.

We spent some time a few days ago going to a corn maze. Even though Emily got tired almost off the bat and had to be carried, it really was a fun time. Wonder of wonders, we got through the evening with no whining! That was the best treat of all, family time without the whine. We also enjoyed hot chocolate and mini donuts from the shop at the corn maze. I figured (with the diet), that once in a while it's ok to splurge. The next day, I had sugar withdrawals again (a headache), so maybe it wasn't such a good idea for me after all. I need to be a lot more careful with sugar.

Speaking of dieting, I have lost a little over 20 pounds now, putting me back within my normal range on the BMI. So, I'm not looking so much at weightloss now, but more at focusing on eating healthy (in case anybody is curious). The focus for me is whole foods, without a lot of added fat and sugar. I'm still not going to eat meat, and very little dairy. Though, for the sake of peace in my household, my baked goods will mostly have to be half white and half whole wheat flour. Corwin just doesn't like heavy breads, so he compromises with me.

We had our trunk or treat at the church last Friday. I dug out our Halloween box to see what costumes had been put away. There was the winged unicorn that Emily wore last year (that really, she was already too big for at the time because it was for an infant, but we let her feet hang out the end instead of snapping it under her feet). I don't really know why I saved it, except it was so cute. Sigh. Of course it fits none of my girls this year. There were two costumes that fit Emily this year. There was a jack-o-lantern shirt thing, and there was a baby Simba (Lion King) costume. She chose to wear the lion. Next we had a firefighter costume that fit Katie quite well. Lastly, I had placed my cap and gown from my highschool graduation in the box. Tiffany was so excited that she could wear it this year, as it didn't drag on the ground like it did when shetried it on last year. Yep, I admit it, I save things. I'm working on that habit, and I am getting better about letting go. The Simba costume is going to the thrift store soon after Halloween (I'll let them store it for a year) since it won't fit any of my girls after this. But the other two will go back in the box, even if it takes Emily two or three years to grow into the firefighter outfit. And I'll save the cap and gown, after all I had to pay for them. I have to get my money's worth. Ok, maybe I'm a little crazy. I mean isn't it easier to buy new costumes every year than to store the ones you got? But then again, I've seen what the stores want for a costume that will only be worn for a few hours. Even the thrift stores want quite a bit for one. So, I guess I'll save the two that have a chance of being worn in my family at least one more time.

I'll let the girls dress up and go out one more time on Halloween. Then I'll get a few pictures.

Update

2008-10-07T20:55:00.002-06:00

It's been a while since the last post, so I thought I should give an update as to what we've been up to. Let's see. My dad gave me a bunch of grapes, and I made raisins. His neighbor gave me a bunch of peaches, and I made fruit leather and smoothie popsicles. I've had a birthday. Tiffany and I have been getting a workout everyday riding our bikes to and from school. She averages 2 1/2 miles a day, and I get about 7 1/2 with my three times a day trip.

In other news. Well, I don't know how to put this, but I've changed to a mostly vegan diet. I'm eating much better, and I feel great. I say "mostly" because, I'm still adjusting to how I can eat when away from home. When I'm home, I have no problems sticking to the diet. Unfortunately for me, I've got to find new "family favorite" recipes. Besides animal products, I've also cut out sugar, processed grains and added fat.

You're probably wondering what Corwin thinks of all this. Well, perhaps he'll write and tell you. From my view, he's been very tolerant and supportive of me thus far. He insists on cheese and milk for him, so sometimes I make part of a dish a little different, and he takes care of his own breakfast. So, there's only friction when I run out of dinner ideas.

I've also created a separate food blog for experimenting with new foods and sharing my experiences. It is located here.

Other than that, things have been plodding along. Things get done slowly, and we haven't really started anything new. We're just working on the same old projects.

Air Show

2008-09-13T22:21:00.004-06:00

We went to the Mountain Home Air Force Base Air Show today. It was quite windy, but we had fun together looking at airplanes, watching the show, and touring airplanes close up.

The first pictures are from the search and rescue plane.

The girls sitting on the fold down bench seats along the wall:

Emily sitting on the floor of the cargo area:

Tiffany in a seat at the front of the cargo area:

Corwin in a seat behind the copilot:

Tiffany as copilot:

Katie flipping switches and pushing buttons:

The Blue Angels flying in formation:

Katie standing on the wing of a Diamond Star:

Tiffany's baptism

2008-09-12T20:38:00.003-06:00

Our oldest daughter was baptized last Saturday. Here are a few pictures from that day:

Corwin and Tiffany:

My three girls:

This is what the children did after the baptism:

Heart transplant begins

2008-09-02T20:28:00.003-06:00

Well, I did it: I removed the gas engine from the Jetta. I foolishly forgot to unhook a few things before renting the engine hoist; a 2-hour rental turned out to be a 4-hour rental and I ended up just cutting an exhaust clamp off because I got sick of fighting with it with the clock ticking. But, out she came, so now I can continue disassembly of the brakes, steering, subframe and suspension. I'm not going to just replace everything with new parts, but I am going to disassemble and inspect everything and replace as necessary and upgrade where I feel like it. I've already got a list of electrical improvements to make; stock Jettas of this year won't warn you if you leave the lights on, but this one will by the time I'm done with it. :)

Here's the engine on the hoist, the transmission is on the floor. Transmissions always seem small to me once they're out of the car, for some reason. They're pretty light, too, easily liftable by one person. Uh, don't try that with a pickup truck trans though.

Lawn mower update

2008-09-02T20:01:00.007-06:00

A while ago I blogged about a lawn mower left out for the garbage men. It had a bit of rust so I decided to paint the deck. I didn't really do it to increase the selling price of the mower, though I'm sure that helped -- mainly I wanted to practice a technique used to paint cars for about $50.

Normally, a cheap paint job for a car costs $200 and looks terrible. A good paint job costs $2,000 and up, but some clever (or frugal) chap realized that enamel or polyurethane boat paint can actually be rolled onto a car if properly thinned so it becomes self-leveling. Of course, it can take upwards of 10 coats to get full color density, but if you have cheap labor (yourself) you can get results that rival more expensive professional spray jobs. Since I like cheap, and I have three cars that need painted, I decided to experiment on the mower before tackling a bigger project.

It turned out ok. At first I was a perfectionist and it went well but was going to take a really long time; I won't say it's necessarily difficult to get good results painting metal, but your prep work and technique (and patience) are critical. My final result did have a few imperfections as a result of my haste, but I wanted to get this mower out of here so I could work on the Jetta (see previous blogs) so I didn't go back and start over so it could be done perfectly. Still, I ended up with a good four-foot paint job: looks fantastic from four feet away, but you can see a couple of high and low spots if you look more closely.

I ended up accomplishing two things: a better looking mower, and valuable experience for when I take on a car paint job.

I sold the mower today. I was afraid it wouldn't sell at the end of the mowing season, but I got three bites on the Craigslist ad and the first person to show up started it with one pull and they took it.

I still keep an eye out for mowers pushed to the curb before garbage day... there are worse hobbies, I suppose.

What's up with the specs?

2008-09-02T20:01:00.005-06:00

Thanks to Spectacular Six for pointing out that I haven't said anything about the girls getting glasses. Here's the story.

Tiffany and Katie had been asking me if they could get glasses. They don't need glasses, but Corwin & I both wear them (or contacts), and recently Tiffany's best cousin had to get them, so they wanted them, too. We've tried explaining what a pain it is to have to wear glasses and to take care of glasses, but they were not to be dissuaded (yes, of course we could just say no, but there's really no harm in it). So I thought I could just ask at the optometrist's office if I could buy the old demo frames when they were done with them. Well, when Katie's birthday came, we were at walmart picking up supplies, and the girls saw the optometrist's office there was open, so I went in and asked. Of course, they just send the demo frames back to the company. But the lady there told me I could just buy the frames right off the rack. The name brand letters come right off with a little fingernail polish remover. And they sell kids frames for as little as $10! So, I bought the two girls demo frames with demo lenses, and they were so happy. Surprising for me, Katie has taken really good care of hers, and she loves to wear them.

10 tips to beat clutter in less than five minutes

2008-08-29T18:20:00.001-06:00

I just saw this on unclutterer.com. It is too good not to share:

10 tips to beat clutter in less than five minutes

Make your bed each morning.
Throw away the newspaper each night, even if you haven’t read it yet.
Follow the “one-minute rule” – push yourself to do any chore that takes less than one minute. Throw away the junk mail, close the cabinet door, put your dirty socks in the hamper, hang up your wet towel.
Identify an organization or person to whom you can give things you no longer need – it’s much easier to get rid of unneeded stuff if you can envision someone else getting good use from them. Also, figure out a place to store those things until you hand them over. We have a special shelf for books that we’re taking to the Housing Works thrift store. When the shelf is full, we drop off the books.
Pause for a moment before you “store” something. Storing something means you don’t intend to use it much. Other than holiday decorations and seasonal clothes, you should strive to “store” as little as possible.
Beware of freebies. Never accept anything free, unless you’re thrilled with it. A mug, a tote bag, a hand-me-down toy, the lamp from your mother-in-law—if you don’t need it, don’t take it.
Get rid of things if they break. When I went through our apartment, I was astonished by how many things I’d kept even though they didn’t work.
Don’t keep any piece of paper unless you know that you actually need it. I have a friend who, for years, carefully filed away the stubs when she paid her gas bill. “Why?” I asked, mystified. “I have no idea,” she said. Along the same lines, don’t keep anything that would quickly become dated—like travel information. Remember the internet! If you can easily find information online, you don’t need to keep a hard copy.
Hang up your coat.
Before you go to bed, take five minutes to do an “evening tidy-up.” Don’t tackle anything ambitious, but just stack up the magazines, put your shoes away, shove the chairs into place, etc. Just a few minutes of tidying can make your house look a lot better, and it’s a calming thing to do before going to sleep. Plus it makes the morning nicer.

Birthdays and Misc.

2008-08-29T11:08:00.008-06:00

Katie got her staples taken out yesterday. Even though they said it wouldn't hurt, it did. Poor girl!

I know I am such a slacker. There have been so many things that have happened, but I didn't want to post without pictures, so I put it off. I finally got the pictures downloaded, so brace yourself for the longest post in history. Ok, not really. I think I'll just post a few things now, then come back later for a few more.

Two of my children recently had birthdays. Tiffany turned 8 on August 12, and Katie turned 5 on August 20. First off, Tiffany's birthday. We had watermelon at the park with some of her friends. She loves reading mystery novels, so we had a "clue" scavenger hunt. It may have been a little advanced for them, but they had fun.

Then there was Katie's birthday. Again, we used our local park. It's so much easier than cleaning a house after a party! Katie wanted cupcakes. We found cute little party toothpick candles from the dollar store to use. Here are a few pictures from that:

Ever Wonder How Much It Costs to Go to the Fair?

2008-08-21T19:49:00.004-06:00

The answer is about $420. That may seem like a lot of money for some of you. Well, it really does to me, too. Sometimes things don't go as we planned.

Corwin took the day off work so we could go to the fair during the day when it was less crowded. We showed up about noon, when the carnival opened. We paid admission and Corwin and the older two girls got wristbands for unlimited rides.

I took Emily through the exhibits while the others were off to the carnival. They had a blast. Later, Katie joined me, while Corwin and Tiffany rode rides that Katie wasn't tall enough for. We also bought a little food there. I had brought apples, bananas, and nuts, but apparently, that wasn't quite enough for everybody, so we bought fries and a burrito to share.

We heard about this great show called Splash Dogs. We tried to find it, but to no avail. Instead, we passed this tent where they were doing a CSI show. I thought it sounded interesting. Corwin didn't, so he and Tiffany took off for more rides. Katie, Emily, and I sat on the bleachers at the back of the tent to watch the show. It was kind of interesting, but also hard to follow because for me, it's hard to listen to those funky echoing microphones. The girls didn't sit real still, but they weren't loud. Emily got up a couple times to get her backpack off the stroller and to put it back for her snack (nuts). Katie adjusted herself on the bleachers, then slipped down to where her bottom hit the foot area and her head hit the seat. Of course, she let out a cry. I took her in my arms, and Emily by the hand out of the tent, so she could calm down. Then I noticed blood on her shirt collar. I looked through her hair, and sure enough, there was a gash about 3/4" long. It looked fairly deep, too. I went back in the tent for the stroller, put Emily in it, and took Katie by the hand across the fairgrounds to the first aid station. They looked at it, put a bandage on, and told us to take her to a clinic for stitches. I texted Corwin. He met us at the first aid station, and carried Katie to the car.

Now, how hard should it be to find a quick care clinic open in the evening? All of them I knew of in our town closed by 6. And guess what? It was 5:55. So, the only thing we could come up with was to drive to the next town over to get her in. She got two staples put in the back of her head, and a pair of nitrile gloves to calm her. Oh yeah, and stickers and popsicles for herself and her sisters.

So, for a little more than $420, we got a fun afternoon at the fair with a little food, three staples, a pair of gloves, a few stickers, and three popsicles.

2008-08-10T23:13:00.002-06:00

Going through the pictures on my camera, I found this video of the girls playing in the rain a couple weeks ago.

Free lawn mower

2008-07-25T20:38:00.003-06:00

As I was on my way home from work yesterday, I noticed a lawn mower pushed to the curb for the garbage man. I asked permission to take it and got my first free lawn mower!

It had obviously sat for a few years, so I disassembled it to clean the carburetor and free up the frozen butterflies and linkages. (Lemontree lent a hand too.) One of the throttle shaft seals disintegrated when I attempted to clean it, so I cut some foam from Tiffany's "eggcrate" mattress pad and made a new one. Sharpened the blade, put in some fresh oil and gas and... it started up on the first pull! Not bad for free garbage.

There is a broken throttle control lever, so I'm going to hit up some local lawn mower junkyards and see if I can get a better one. Other than slapping some paint on the rust, this "garbage" is ready to cut a few more lawns for somebody. If I value my labor, I'll be selling it at a loss, but it's still fun to divert something from the landfill. The best form of recycling, in my opinion. :)

Painting!

2008-07-18T22:43:00.003-06:00

This is what we've been up to just about every Saturday for the last month or so, and every day during the whole week Corwin had off work. Painting our house! It didn't quite work out as planned. For one, the prep work takes some time. We had some peeling paint, so we did some scraping and applied primer. We thought we could do a side of the house each weekend. We also thought our spraygun worked. But apparently it is broken, so we did it the old fashioned way, which in a way is probably better, because we can get into the crevices better than I think a sprayer would have done. Also, we didn't count on it getting so hot so soon, so every day we've been able to work on it, it's only been a few hours.

I wish I could show you a finished picture, but alas, we are destined to work at it for a while longer. Most of the main color is finally applied, and I've started on the trim (a reddey-orangey color). For your enjoyment, I attach a photo of Corwin painting where I couldn't reach. The color on the slat below where he is painting is the dried finish color. I know it's not a huge difference from the original color, but now I can say our house is light gray, and not some tannish wierd color.

What's That Bug?

2008-07-11T08:50:00.003-06:00

We were spending the evening watering our various plants in the backyard. I checked my compost bin and saw that it was very dry. While I was doing this, the girls joined me. Tiffany looked in and saw several little bugs running around. Of course, you know that compost bins are full of bugs of all sorts. I know this, too. Lately, I've seen a lot of ants, but it's not uncommon to see pill bugs and earwigs, so that's what I expected when she asked, "What's that bug?" Well, it obviously wasn't any of those afore mentioned bugs, but it was really hard to get a good look at. They liked the dark, so if I moved a piece of compost, I saw maybe a hundred of them, but they scattered and disappeared deeper into the compost, that it was so hard to get a good look at them. Finally one of them got caught in an eggshell. Despite their speed, it couldn't climb up the smooth sides of the shell, so I caught one!

It's really dusty. The picture really doesn't look like I remember it looking. Funny thing about pictures. I remember it being blacker and skinnier. Of course it was moving really fast. It was tough to get it to sit still for a picture.

Anyhow, I went searching on the web for this strange creature. I knew it was some sort of larvae, so that helped. But what really helped was running into a wonderful website called What's That Bug? I'm not sure I've figured out what it is, but I think it is the larvae of a carpet beetle. I sent the picture to the administrator of that site to ask, so I may yet find out definitively what the bugs are. I then spent 2 hours looking at bugs on the website. It was way cool.

Teardown begins

2008-07-06T20:44:00.003-06:00

Our VW Fox has served faithfully as the family car for several years, but it's a little on the small side for a growing family and the paint... well, Volkswagen picked a bad formulation for their red paint in 1988 and the result is not pretty. The VW Jetta is larger than the Fox both in legroom as well as trunk space, so we purchased one a while ago and it's been sleeping in the garage until I had time to get to it. Last week, I finally had time.

I've removed most of the front end to expose the now nearly naked gasoline engine. The gas engine will be replaced with a turbodiesel engine from a local junkyard that has been bored out and will be rebuilt with new pistons and bearings, so we will essentially have a new engine ready to go 300,000 miles or more (VWs and diesels both last a very long time -- some VW diesels have passed 500,000 miles without a rebuild). Yes, yes, diesel fuel is currently more expensive than gasoline, but at 45 to 50MPG, it still ends up being cheaper per mile than a 30MPG gasoline car. Plus, you have the option of burning waste vegetable oil in a diesel engine... free fuel!

I'm also going to be replacing all of the wear items. Once the Jetta is done, we will sell the Fox so the Jetta has to be reliable enough to go on interstate trips -- any part that might leave us stranded is going to be replaced now while it's all in pieces anyway. The cost of replacing the engine and various parts will be high up front, but will still be less than new car payments over the long term... and because it is an older car, it will be cheaper to insure and less likely to be stolen. Plus, it's kind of cool to build your own car... kind of the ultimate Lego toy.

Fishing

2008-06-26T22:17:00.003-06:00

I finally gave in, after much youth persuasion, to buy a fishing license. My girls wanted to go fishing. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that fish and game officials were at the park teaching kids how to tie knots and giving them a chance at casting. Or the fact that my brothers and parents regularly go fishing. I'm kind of a cheap skate. I didn't really want to fork over $25 for a license when I know for a fact I probably won't catch anything. What can I say? I'm a bad fisherman. Or maybe I'm not dedicated enough. Nah. I'm just lousy at it. I could go fishing with a group of people and be the only one who didn't catch anything. This is probably the reason I haven't had a fishing license in the past ten years.

I couldn't find any of my old poles. It seems I most likely left them at my parents' house where they got commandeered by my brothers. For some strange reason, I couldn't find my tackle box either. I don't really think I would have given it away. I'm sure it's around here somewhere. Happily my family had given my two oldest each a pole, which they have never used. These were old poles, so I looked at them, and found the reel on one was actually broken, so I had to throw that one out. The other was in great condition. That is, until somebody stepped on it and broke the reel. So, we went to Walmart, where we bought new poles, and a few essential tackle supplies. I even got a little pole for Emily. She was so happy about it, she carried it through the store, gave it up only to check out and allow the checker to cut it off the packaging, then she proudly marched out of the store, carrying her new pole over her shoulder (it was a small teaching moment for her to no longer drag it on the ground).

For our first attempt, we went to fish in the river. We parked, then walked through the brush (Emily proudly carrying her pole all the way) and sat ~~under a tree~~ in a nice shady spot, because ~~I'm crazy~~ I didn't want a sunburn. Emily wanted to get in the water, so I kept pulling her back. I helped Tiffany get her pole ready first. Then I let her cast. She stood and threw her line out. She promptly caught the tree overhead. I showed her how to pull the line from the tree without breaking her pole. It took a while, but I finally got Katie set up, and helped her cast her line. Meanwhile, Tiffany reeled hers back in and cast again. This girl caught the tree at least half a dozen times. Not to mention that Katie and Tiffany tangled their lines together several times. All this before I even got Emily's line set up. Emily was very possessive of her pole. She didn't want me to touch it. She let me cast the line once for her, and I think she even got a bite. She wanted to hold her own pole, by herself. And practice swordplay with it. After I helped her reel it in, she didn't want the line back in the water. It took me a while to realize I needed to remove the hook from her line. After she impaled Katie's pantleg. Katie was really good and sat still most of the time. Tiffany learned to sit down to cast, so eventually she (mostly) avoided the tree. We only stayed about 45 minutes, but it was an exercise in ~~frustration~~ patience.

Next time, I think I'll choose a nice, quiet pond with no trees.

Tiffany asked if we could go fishing every day.

How I spent my Saturday

2008-06-14T23:13:00.003-06:00

Today I made a bike-cam mounting bracket out of an M5 x 0.8 screw and nut, a random chunk of spare metal drilled, heated, bent, and ground, and a 1/4"-20 bolt and nut. The little screw goes where the front reflector threads on, and the bigger bolt fits the tripod mount for a camera. Here it is mounted below my left turn signal (click for a slightly bigger view):

The metal was left over from a failed attempt to build a tool to work on my VW Rabbit so it was nearly free.

I was a little worried that the spot-welded nut that the reflector threads into would snap off the first bump I went over due to the weight of the bracket and camera, but the 'Yamaha' sheet metal badge it's attached to has some give to it for shock and vibration absorption. It also means the video ends up being a little wiggly but not too bad (you can just barely see my fender at the bottom right of the below video as a reference point for the wiggle). If you want to watch it, you may want to skip ahead to 15 seconds in as the first bit is really boring:

Clicky: http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=21j3y4z&s=3

I don't have a really cool video yet, unfortunately... this was just a proof of concept. :)

The project turned out ok, and really, half of my desire to make it was just to give me a reason to play with power tools, torches, and a sledgehammer... and it succeeded in that respect. The other half is, I thought it would be a cool thing to do after I watched a bunch of motorcycle videos on YouTube. One thing that you really notice on videos like that is that motorcycles are like airplanes when turning -- they really bank or lean. The interesting thing is that the lean seems much more radical on video than in real life. In the video, the corner was taken a fair bit faster than the recommended 10MPH (but still within the posted speed limit, I promise!), but it looks like I'm practically dragging a footpeg.

Variation on an old theme

2008-06-07T07:45:00.003-06:00

I don't know about the extended Thueson clan, but we all love "Yummy Potatoes" or "Funeral Potatoes" or "Wedding Potatoes" or any of the other dozen names it's known by. The other week we tried something a little bit different: "Easy Cheesy Salsa Potatoes", and they actually turned out quite good. No, this isn't a food blog but since Yummy Potatoes is a popular dish with just about everyone I know, I thought it wouldn't hurt to kick things up a notch.

Here's where we got the recipe: http://www.bettycrocker.com/Recipes/Recipe.aspx?recipeId=18970

Rainbow Clouds

2008-06-06T14:00:00.005-06:00

This was yesterday. There was a circle rainbow around the sun, and a second upside down rainbow in the clouds underneath. Unfortunately, I don't have a wide enough angle on my camera to get the circle, but I think I still got some pretty good pictures.