My next acquisition must be a camera with macro capabilities. I’m making fine progress with my electronics, but can’t take decent photos. I’ve gone back several times to re-do failed experiments. Huh? Doesn’t everybody? I got my first failure, Experiment 001, to now work perfectly. This was a design that turns on a yellow light when the current flows in the correct direction, but a red light if the leads are accidentally reversed. Originally, one LED would not stay lit. This time, after two months experience, it worked like a charm. Here is the blurry photo.
The gadget looks spidery, but that is because there are three circuits on one breadboard. My budget only allows one breadboard, so I often run several experiments simultaneously. Also shown here are, on the left, a light sensor controlled transistor motor speed circuit, and on the right, a 7805 power supply. Today’s experiment is the two rows with wires plugged into the nearest rail in the foreground. Smart move insulating the shed, and I did a top rate no-deficiency job of it. Don’t take me no 30 years to learn to do one thing right. The south wall is shaded by a concrete wall a foot back, so I left it as a large cooling fin. Despite the heat, it was shirt sleeve comfy inside all day y’day and with a single fan, almost livable. I’m hooking up a coffee maker in there. I got through the entire day without having to run an A/C but this was an unusual dry heat, so that wasn’t a real test. The president is going on TV to explain the ongoing role of the US in Libya. Don’t that just beat hell? The lambs will watch, nodding along, never the thought once crossing their tiny minds we have no business there. None. Not ever. But, there is oil in Libya and only 2 million people, so what one president or another says won’t make a lot of difference. We can land spaceships on Mars, but still play Stone Age politics at home, constantly “liberating” neighboring tribes the minute they exhibit any weakness.
This may be the day Google disabled video in blogger. If so, you will see a blank spot.
The inevitable rainstorm after a dry spell caught me in the library at the circle, always busy as one of the few libraries near the coast with free parking. Inside for two hours, I read articles on German V-2 rockets that were launched in 1946-1947 in the USA. One was launched from an aircraft carrier with mixed results. That’s how narrow the margin was, if Germany had one more year they might have won. Whereas the V-2 could barely reach London, the Germans had production-ready rockets that bore individual names. Nice German names like “Philadelphia”, “Chicago” and “New York”.
Four hours later I rode home in the rain (I have a poncho). This is not a hurricane which is the only other times it can rain more than a half hour. As I got in the door, Carlos called from New York. It seems Wallace has been not answering any other calls, either. I filled Carlos in on how what has been going on. He figured as much, Wallace talking big and thinking small and everybody knows it.
I even ran into Kim, the lady who was friendly with Wallace, but she told me she was within an inch of punching out his teeth over his constant “sex jokes” trying to turn every conversation into a bragging contest. Don’t believe me? Mention the word “Reno” around Wallace. He talks like he discovered the Mustang Ranch. Kim said that got on her nerves to no end.
Even during my tenure at the phone company, I have never met anyone as totally obsessed and preoccupied with strippers and whores as Wallace. I attribute this to a mental condition which he is unaware he’s suffering. His daughter has an equal obsession with dominating every conversation, which she does to cover up her lack of social standing and poor education. She thinks she is winning because people are too polite to call her what she really is. Now I know it runs in that family.
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