Ready for the big, rowdy party? It ain’t gonna happen. As I biked to the corner for a crossword I saw drunks rolling out of Flannigan’s at 10:30 AM. I believe the last time I went out for New Year’s was 1979. I don’t like large crowds of drunk people unless they are in my audience and tipping heavily. So let me review the positives of staying home as this day progresses. First, a coffee at the bakery and the now traditional horoscope readings for the gals present.
That means I found a use for that Nikon, although I’d rather have a proper macro camera. I was studying the “ground bar” shown here, made from a strip of breadboard pins. Can you spot the stray wire that was causing a short? I did not find it until I examined this photo. (It is on the third green LED from the left.)
This ambitious (for me) project has other rewards. I was able to go back and read certain passages in my reference materials that now made sense. The world is too full of writers who don’t comprehend that is not the order things are supposed to happen. It reminds me of the old saw that you get more creative ideas from a beginner than from the expert. The Internet has thousands of posts telling you how a resistor works, but none that tell you anything useful you can do with it. Like my booklet will if I ever finish it.
Without using the word defeat, I finally added an Elvis song to my repertoire. It’s his predictable hubba-dubba tune called “All Shook Up”. I never saw a band that played that bass line right so I wrote a custom version that emulates the boogie piano pattern. Thus, I had that part ready when I looked over my prospect list and I now play some Elvis.
Nine hours later I’m ready to admit defeat, in the sense that I can’t get any further with the control panel as I’ve constructed it. My consolation is that I know a lot more about designing and building these than I ever could have imagined before. I got most of the parts to work, but not together. I think I’m using the wrong wire and the wrong type of pins for wire-wrap. The pins are too short and the wire is too thin. I had many wires break. For the ten bucks in non-salvageable parts, I think I’ll start over and do a much better job of it this time. Along the way, I built a custom LED tester.
The payoff? I know enough about computer memory functions to design and build a crude computer if I had to. Wiring these up gains you a subtle understanding that nothing in the book or lecture hall can prepare you for. I thought I had the smallest, pointiest soldering iron tip made, but obviously not. Things like that. It’s now two hours to midnight and the fireworks crowd are at it already. And I may cheat a little by programming the Arduino to test the ICs before installation. Testing these chips by hand is diabolically complicated.
eBay has to be an idiot’s paradise for shopping new retail items. It has been some years since used articles dominated the listings, but what gets me is the insane pricing. The eBay price is often significantly higher than what you can buy direct from the manufacturer by scrolling a little further. With tons of identical new product why would anyone pay the higher price? Then again, this is not the same eBay as ten years ago.
You tell what kind of year it’s been by the fireworks show at the casinos. And it been anemic since 2006 until now. For ten minutes there it was like Red Square on May Day. At least the gambling industry must be weathering the recession okay. I’m not that far from two casinos and I’ve only been there a couple times each. The quality is just not worth the prices, you get a bigger bang for your buck buying a lotto ticket. And as for friendly games, they don’t call it betting against each other for nothing.
ADDENDUM
There you have it, the end of an exciting year for me and the prospect of an even better 2014. Technically, this is the best off I have ever been. There were times past when I had more, like my Cadillac, but I also had to work for it. Admit it or not, working for a living changes one’s attitude and behavior for the worse. I can instantly tell when a working class stiff expresses an opinion. Deep thought requires time they don’t have so everything they say has a slight half-baked ring to it. Even if they make a joke, it is because they heard it somewhere, probably on TV.
As far as reviewing progress, it has been steady improvement since late 2011 and I tend to view 2012 and 2013 as a logical block. That’s the stretch Wallace was supposed to wait for. He’d be living free by now instead of picking fights where there is nothing to gain. To recap, 2012 saw the Honda sidecar, Colorado, Key West, and an unspecified dabbling in behind-the-scenes speculation and posturing. Then 2013 set the pace for great things to come. Savannah, Fort Meyer’s Beach, the camper pod, Yakima, the Grand Canyon, Beale Street, and I barely missed buying a three-bedroom property.
Note the trip to Yakima was compulsory and ate up my entire down payment in addition to the cost of the trip. Each of the adventures above was expensive and costs were held down by the fact paying only in cash is a self-inhibiting process. I have other measures besides money, such as hobbies, health, and happiness. All on the upswing, thank you. And it’s about time.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
