HA!!!

I finally have gotten around to experimenting with the PROP-1 board I bought back in March.   Tonight I made a trip to Radio Shack, and bought a few relays and after some pretty ugly hardware hacking (I didn’t bring my soldering iron to work today)  I managed to get one of my halloween props controlled by the PROP-1.   I had initially thoght I would be a bit more fancy about how I was going to run the triggering inside the little squacking crow but the more I mapped out the circuit in the crow the more problems I kept running into.  I finally setted on just using a reed relay and inserting it with the “test” button on the crow.  The relay coil is then powered directly from one of the outputs of the prop-1.  Now when the prop-1 sees motion from its PIR sensor it fires off a couple events, one of which is to squack the crow.   I had also planned on using the CRYDOM SSR’s to control my foggers and the pop up jumper, but when I ordered them they only had 2 in stock.  That left me with one to few relay control. So for the moment I have rigged up a DPDT relay on another output of the prop-1.   The interesting thign about this is that I coudl theoretically control the two foggers quite easil now off one pin on the PROP-1.  I setup a loop in the cotroller that is its wait state while looking for the PIR.  during this loop it counts up to a set number, and then when that number hits it toggles teh state of the relay.  This in theory, if timed right should give me the ability to have constant fog.  While one fogger re-heats the other fogger starts fogging.  I worry thoguh that this will have a few unwated side effects.  The 1st being that there will be to much fog.  The second side effect would be that the fog juice will be consumed much to fast and I will run the risk of destroying the foggers.  (Granted I got them both for $5 at the end of the season closeout  at Target but i’d rather not destroy them.)  I am considering modding the foggers to have larger tanks… or to draw from the bottles of juice directly.  The other alternative, would be to use a float switch that kills power to the foggers when the juice runs out.  I’m pretty sure thought the fog juice would gum up the switch.  I’ll have to think on that one some more.   I still have a few weeks yet.  Now its time to pac this stuff up and go home though.

Ok, this message is to the powers that be…
Nice Subtle answer… and by subtle I mean like a tossing a brick through a window… Yes that subtle…  Sheesh…
Knock it off would ya!

I now return you to my regularly scheduled insanity…

Im here safe

Gaaah 2 miles from hotel and stuck in crappy traffic…

77 miles to faire to go

ok, there are times when I would really like to be in two places at once…

I just found out tonight that the Paramount theatre in Aurora is having a concert that I would very much love to go see. Gordon Lightfoot.  Of course it is one night only, and that one night is while I will be in St. Louis.   GAAAAH…  Stupid time space continuum…

Someone hurry it up and invent beaming technology will ya?  I’ll even settle for some sort of portal or any other type of instant transmission medium… heck it doesnt even have to be instant… just give me something that would let me safely get from point A to point B (no matter where point A or B is) in under an hour.  I’d also like it to not cost the GNP of a small nation either…

Have you ever had a day where things feel completely different? Well maybe not completely different, but just different.  Today, things have just felt more at ease, even some things that happened at work today that would, as of late,  pissed me off and put me in a bad mood didn’t.   After work, I found myself walking through the grocery store and noticed that I didn’t feel at all like I was weighted down like I have felt for, well I don’t know how long.  I hope this is something that will continue, becasue it sure is nice to feel somewhat more like my old self again.

I have my reservation confirmation for the hotel for St. Louis Pirate fest.  It turns out I the double -vs- single room price is the same.  So I went ahead and got the double room just in case anyone decides to come with at the last minute.   I’m heading down Friday afternoon (I may take off work a little early just so I can get there before 10 pm.).  I’ll then be heading back home Sunday after the fest is over.

I guess I should get my garb in order again.

Yes… Yes, I am tempted to wear at least part of it tomorrow for Talk Like a Pirate Day…

Somethign tells me the college administration might find that a bit wierd though.  Although they should be used to that behavior from me by now. Hmm I think I’ll throw it in the car and if anyone else turns up piratey I’ll do a quick change.

Yup… I’m a geek…

So where exactly does one list “god” at on their resume?

While working on re-imageing a few computer this afternoon the campus was hit by a mighty power surge/dip event that casued a nubmer of the computers in the library to reboot.  This event also caused some of the lights to go out and other quirks.   What bothers me is the looks i recieved from the students in teh library.  A number of them had seen me placing out of order signs on the workstations I was re-imaging.   These same students all turned around and gave me a look of absolutle disgust when the power fluxuated. As if the outage was somehow my fault.   “Why Yes, I am John the god of all electrical power… I have chosen to smite you and your computer for your transgressions against me…”

Get a grip people, the world will not end because you got kicked off of myspace.

Yesterday, before the party, I met up with kilted_bohemoth at o library in bollingbrook for a presentation on the King Tut art exhibit.   Afterwards he and I had lunch and then hung out for a while. Quite a while

1st we headed over to Hobby Lobby and looked around at the various things they had.  We got a few ideas on some projects to try.  I also finally found a chain I can live with to hold my aquataine.  It will be nice to have it again, although I’m pretty much completely out of practice using it.
After we spent a good hour or so in hobby lobby we decided that since Jo-Ann fabrics was right around the corner that we should probably stop in there as well.   We wantered Jo-Ann for quite a while as well.  We found leather needles for the sewing machine so we might actually be able to use tha machine to sew some of the leather we bought.   We also decided to see what the machiens there could do.  I ran out to the car and grabbed some scrap leather and let the woman give it a shot.  Their regular machines had no problem sewing it.  We then decided to convince her to try out the ebrodiery machine on the leather.  It has settign for the leather. It also seemed to be able to stitch ok, but it didn’t keep the pattern right.  We are not sure if it was because we could get it in the hoop or if the machine just went a little crazy.

After playing around in JoAnn we decided to call it a day.  Well that was the origianl plan.  But while we were in the parking lot we got to tlaking and spend another half hour or so there talking and watching the airplanes land.  It was nice to have some time to jsut hang out and relax, with no real plan or requirements for what we were going to do.   I need to do more of that I think.

Over all I had a pretty good time at the party last night. I was glad to see tha Uncle-Ho and His wife were there.  That gave me a couple more people that I know to talk with.   I arrived around 7:50, thanks to the GPS unit decideing to send me the long way.   I had other directions from the area I was starting out from but I couldn’t find them until after I gave up and followed the GPS.

There was a pretty nice bonfire, good food, and for most of the time cheerful people. As the night progressed Miek and Liz got into it a few times, I really don’t know them but I assume by everyone elses reactiones that it is standard behavior for them.   When I first showed up I was one of 5 or so in garb but after I showed up some others went and changed and a few other people showed up in garb too so I didn’t feel to out of place.  At about 11 or so Paul and I and someone else whos name I forget at the moment were talking about shanties… and Paul grabbed us and dragged us over by the fire and we jsut started in on a bunch of them.  We sang a wide variety of shanties till about midnight and had a pretty good time at it. By the time we broke off there were about six of us alltogether.
At that point I decided I was turning into a pumpkin and needed to head back home.  I don’t remember much of the drive so I know I was pretty tired.

I stole this…

It’s not to far off thoguh… kinda scary…

cap60552 took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test!“Desires a tranquil, peaceful state of harmony offe…” Click here to read the rest of the results.

I have GOT to get me one of these!

It’s not jsut any simple little USB powered gizmo, its actually controlled by USB!!!  ROCK!!!

Check out  a video of it in action

And someone wrote a linux python script for it too!!! How cool is this!!! You can use more than one of them on a machine too!  NICE!!!

I realize it is early in the day to pick a favorite, but I think this one is going to be tough to beat.

I was walking down the hall and a student walked past and just as she passed me yells out:

“Did you feel the cervix?”

Only in the nursing building would it be even close to normal to hear somone yell that…

It’s been five months today.   I don’t feel like going into a long post here about it. Not right now anyway…  So this may or may not become a placeholder.  I just felt I needed to mention it.  Sorry to those this post will upset.

Happy birthday to . Many happy returns my friend.