August 14, 2014

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 14, 2013, building the camper.
Five years ago today: August 14, 2009, the Taurus dies.
Ten years ago today: August 14, 2004, meet Sue, 28.

MORNING
           That does it. This is my last summer in south Florida. It is just too damn hot. I strive to fill my days with constructive activities, but you wind up taking a siesta that lops off half the useful hours. For openers, there is nothing to do in the summertime here. No worthy pursuits, not even any good movie releases these days.

           Define summer as mid-July to mid-September. Fine if you like working in the sun, most people don’t. A motorcycle is okay as long as you keep moving, but the instant you stop, the pavement burns your toes through your boot leather. I know many who don’t place any truck with heat indexes and wind chill factors, but if you look in the yellow ring in this jpeg, you see the RealRFeel resting at 110°.
           No, I first don’t want to hear any tough guys, but let me tell you most people have never experienced 110°. And it is going to say in that range for another month. It can’t get over a hundred in the shade because of the ocean, but that means we are always humid. I don’t mind the down time, but this heat saps the productivity out of your life. And that is something I definitely mind. I don’t like being forced to do nothing by any source.
           Summer has never been a pleasant experience in this zone. There is nothing to stop me from spending two months in Idaho or someplace nice. I can be loyal to the band the other ten months of the year. But right now, you could not get me to walk to the corner store. Then again, the heat also drives back the neighbors who have learned there is always something underway when they poke into the yard to ask how’m doin’.

NOON
           Beans don’t bother me. You can’t say the same about my brothers, especially if you ever make the mistake of riding in the same car with them. In particular, I like my beans baked, but not with tomato sauce. Molasses and either honey or brown sugar. I don’t like pork or bacon mixed in, that’s chili if you ask me. So I was happy to find this site with 3,175 different sauces: Yummly. No link due to serious Google spyware on the site, but you can view the photos without signing up and most of the recipes are available elsewhere once you get the name. Maple syrup? Yeah, but the price of that stuff has moved it over to the gourmet section. When I think gourmet, I don’t think beans.

           What’s the connection? This day I tried find a local restaurant that serves beans. No luck, this is just not a food one finds in S. Florida. That, and rhubarb. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone who knows what rhubarb is, and when you do, they’ll tell you it is poisonous. Nonsense, I’ve eaten rhubarb jam and sauce every time I could find it. I wound up over at Five Guys for fries and that is more likely to kill you.
           In the background, I’ve got WLRN. Public radio. People went to dinner with the president and the radio was interviewing them. What would I tell the reporter about dinner with the Big B? I know. I’d tell them it was mashed potatoes with gravy, a port chop, and some peas. With salt and pepper. What do you mean that’s not what they want to hear? They asked about dinner, didn’t they? Are you done with them fries?
           As for your appetite, don’t watch any videos of the outbreaks of whooping cough out west. Yes, it is a childhood disease but anyone can catch it and that is the danger. Those in weakened condition can’t recover from the spells. A lot of people have had mild whooping cough without knowing it, that is, just thinking it was a bad case of the flu.
           Trivia. Building high speed rail networks in America costs twice as much as in Europe. Eg, California high-speed rail is projected at $90 million per mile as opposed to $43 million in France. Gee, it’s a good thing America isn’t as plagued by corruption as those foreign places. The price of a one-way ticket from San Diego to San Francisco? At least $100, about the same as gas in your car. Of course, the many stops on the route will take the projected travel time down to a quarter of the projected top speeds. Like Federal Highway, it isn’t really a highway until you get north of Jupiter.

AFTERNOON
           Here is the Mercedes controller. I worked on it all day, listening to the rainstorms and “All Things Considered”, the radio program. God, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Anyway, this circuit did not work and I am about half way through the troubleshooting. This photo was not at first due to be published because it doesn’t show the massive progress that’s happened behind the scenes here in the past year.

           Then I looked a little longer. Note the vastly superior wiring and test gear now available. That is a DC motor to test 5V to 12V, there is a chip barely visible dead center of the breadboard. It is a 555, a ubiquitous circuit that quickly becomes a robot staple. Also, this is the first time I’ve wired a MOSFET, pointed at by the yellow pencil.
           The part you don’t see? The experience gained. This circuit was slapped together without a schematic from a chart displayed on the Internet. Time, maybe an hour, as now I could substitute and replace, tweak, and improve. A 24 months ago it would have taken me two hours to see if I could find the parts.
           The bakery is still closed for holidays, so it was coffee at home and work on this circuit. This WLRN station is discouraging to single people, I notice that. It is geared toward the non-existent nuclear family ideal. I realize there are men my age bouncing their grandchildren on their knee and taking pride in a job well-done.
           But that is not the reality that’s out there, is what I’m saying. I’m happy and occupied and I don’t miss the marriage and children simply because there is no guarantee any of those things would have left me any better off than I am right now. But that radio station is really depressing to those who don’t understand the ultimate goal of everybody’s life is not the American style “TV family”.
           Ebola is at it again. And outbreak odds getting worse that the disease is this time heading for the USA. It’s a matter of how fast the infection spreads but apparently the source appears to be the locals eating dead fruit bats they find lying on the forest floor. Ebola incubates for 21 days. Time to suspend all entry to the USA. But too many people here still cling to that 1960s misconception that people have to meet face-to-face to do business. And of course, the airlines will do nothing that might make companies discover otherwise.

ADDENDUM
           So, after years of tinkering, the terms power transistor and switching transistor finally make sense. I’ve used them interchangeably all this time because there was no adequate instructions of when and where to use what. “You’re supposed to know.” I would generally use the transistors that were cheapest or that I had in surplus and every circuit eventually worked fine.
           The switching transistor, well, they would switch motors off and on and lights, too. But apparently the fact that big motors and lights require big power, means you use a “power” transistor. Got it? On one type, you “switch” the power, and on the other type, you switch the “power”. Such things make perfect sense to nerds, you know.
           How this information came about is from designing the test device for that Mercedes motor. (If I spell it Mercedez, forgive, I like “The Count of Monte Cristo”.) All transistors get hot, so something controlling 36 volts needs to be designed to take it. It gets too hot to touch, so I’m fishing around for a large cooling fin, which I kept from every old computer I ever threw out. The weightless aluminum kind. Ha, ha, I just got that. Fishing for a fin.

           The circuits look funny, in comparison to other commonly seen. Then again, I’ve learned to use very heavy duty components because they are easier to handle. Resistors of 1 watt are eight times the size of the 1/8 watt I started with for economy Here, take a gander at these two resistors. Which one is easier to work with?
           They both do the same job, but one has a higher heat resistance, I call them “army resistors”. Note also how the thin lead wires on the tiny resistor get all bent up when using them on a breadboard. However, I must preciously hoard my army resistors as there is no longer any place to buy them. I’ve already used up all my common sizes and what’s left is used sparingly. The emerging SMT (surface mount technology) is rendering old style parts very difficult to get.
          The theory is that on-line simulators have become so advanced that prototyping with components is outdated. That brand of thinking is why America lost the space race. Using a simulator programmed in C+, it is just plain stoopid. I know of one bunch that was trying to build a robot that way.
           There is the option of buying [parts] in bulk from overseas, but they really mean bulk. Like ten thousand minimum order. Here’s sort of trivia, I’ve mentioned how expensive things have become at AutoZone and other supply stores. It turns out this may be due to their policy of no longer stocking Chinese goods. That sounds about right.