Tue 5/1 - My kiteboarding friend, Christian Canese phoned. We had a good visit, but he had some bad news about Don Gray our fellow kiteboarder who lives in San Carlos, Mexico. On Sun Apr 22 Don had a stroke. I haven't the details, but he seems to be on the road to recovery, as he was blogging within 24 hours. Such a guy!
- Big shopping trip for me: to Winco Foods where I spent almost $50 for food that should last me until the middle of the month; then to Hobby Bench to buy a small sheet of stainless steel to use in a meter holder for my van's
house battery. I enjoyed visiting with their RC helicopter expert made me wish I had a $140 beginner's RC helicopter that flies like a real helicopter instead of my little $30 IRC one. Maybe next time... Maybe later! I learned something about the urpose of the fly bar and helicopter stability. Today I received three little Lithium polimer batteries that should fit in my little low tech helicopter. If I can get the slightly-larger batteries to work in my old helicopter, they will probably extend it's useful life for me.
battery monitoring system, I got both the 22 AWG 2-conductor shielded cable and the 10 AWG ground wire threaded through about 12 feet of 10mm heat shrink tubing (not an easy chore) and did a preliminary shrink with my heat gun.
- My day's trip was this afternoon to Mesa for
George
younger brother who lives in Mesa
's
retirement party at his school. What a deal! I have gained a new respect for what he has done and all the people he has influenced during his years driving a school bus and teaching. After the party, I took him and Cindy out for dinner at Red White and Brew (slow service and pretty pricey). When I picked up my mail this evening it included a duplicate helicopter that I had ordered from Fry's Electronics when I thought my old one was toast, as its on-board rechargeable Lithium polymer battery was only giving about 10 seconds of flying time. With the new Lithium polymer batteries I received yesterday, I might be able extend the old bird's useful life, in which case I may return the new one to Fry's.
Thu 5/3 - I spent most of the day doing microsurgery on my little old helicopter. Considering the time I spent, I could have bought a much better one, but (a) I hate to waste things and (b) it is difficult for me to resist a challenge. In the process I had to relocate the landing light in in the front to allow space for the new, larger, 3.7V battery. Then I had to rebalance the bird by replacing the two .65g weights in the nose with a thin 1g washer in the tail. I am disappointed with the helicopter's endurance now. I was hoping that the new larger 6.0g 210mAh battery would last longer than the original 4.2g 160mAh battery. After about three minutes of continuous flying with the new battery the helicopter can no longer hold altitude. After giving the battery short rests you are good to go for more short flight which reduces to about 20 seconds toward the end of the charge.
- For my
battery monitoring system project, I got the cable, which is the heat shrunk tubing containing the 22 AWG 2-conductor shielded cable and the 10 AWG ground wire, bent and shrunk to its final routing and finished the connectors on each end.
Fri 5/4 - Today I officially started my personal Helicopter Challenge. Unless I change my mind, after a month of sucessful discipline, my reward will be an RC helicopter that flies like a real one with a swash plate and a tail rotor (or at least simulates a tail rotor). The Helicopter Challenge is a big one: getting to bed early and following my morning routine for a month! The only exceptions to my morning routine might be the gym, since on occasion it will make more sense to work it into a trip if I have to be some place at a particular time during the day. An exception to getting to bed early woule be if I present a program to the
ARA
Arizona Repeater Association (ham radio operators)
.
- This morning I met two contractors at
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
regarding repairing the mansard roof and building the carport into a garage project.
- This afternoon, for my
monitoring system I drove to Circuit Specialists in Mesa to exchange a digital panel meeter in which all the numeric segments were not indicating; to a Harbor Freight in Mesa to try out their sheet metal break by bending my stainless steel meter holder into shape; to an Ace Hardware in Gilbert for some black nylon cable clips. My Android smart phone is so cool. I found all the above places without typing in anything - just went to Maps and said what I wanted. The system not only located them, but also showed me how to get there.
- I wrapped up the day at LA Fitness this evening and WILL be in bed before 9::30!
Sat 5/5 - I had a nice long phone conversation with
Shane
my nephew who lives in north Mesa and is an engineer with MedTronics
about verious topics, including RC helicopters because he has a couple.
I forgot all about the Saturday evening Hamfeast, being so focused on my projects, which included:
Making reservations for my 50-year jr college reunion in McPherson, KS
Calendering events for the above week I'll be in McPerson, KS
Increasing whithholding on my retirement to avoid another $45 IRS penalty for 2012
Buying a pair of cargo pants and shorts at Goodwill's half off sale
Under Silver Sneakers, going to Fitness 1, a new gym in the area
Buying an ice cream scoop at Dollar Tree (the free ice cream from WinCo Foods is getting expensive, eh?)
Eating a small bowl of vanella ice cream with bluberries
Activating my LifePrint (medical insurance servicer) online account
Registering for Amica online and checking the status of the Feb 22, 2012 incident
Sanding, to a brushed finish, the stainless steel meter holder I am making
Priming and painting the meeter holder
Catching up on emails
Sun 5/6 - I got lots accomplished today
Organized my list of things to do for the week
Went to LA Fitness for a legs workout
Laid out in the sun 10 minutes on each side
Added a highlight feature to my website's
CSS
Cascading Style Sheet, that controls the look of the website
Used the new highlight feature above the image at the bottom of my Van Life web page
Flew my little cheap helicopter for one session
For my van:
Did the final wiring for the engine battery's Voltmeter
Secured the cable mechanically to the ammeter
Fit all four meters into my meter holder channel
Figured the approximate location for the meter flood lights
Applied Velcro in all the necessary places
Re-secured the drawers and glides under the portside of my bed
Mon 5/7 - My morning routine is typically taking all morning, but that includes going to a gym. This afternoon, in my checking spreadsheet, I moved all the 2011 information to a new file so CHECKBOK now includes only 2012. I finished installing the meters for my van's batteries monitoring system and clipped the cabling into position. This evening in the dark I mounted, focused and aimed the blue LED floodlights which will be active while driving at night. For the house, I replaced the old pleated AC air filters and increased the air flow in the kitchen from 1.9 mph to 3.0 mph - about a 50% improvement. I have been keeping the thermostat at 85 degrees, so the system is operating only about 50 minutes a day.
The plastic coin tubes in my little battery-powered Money Machine coin sorter have pretty well filled up so I finally got around to counting and rolling the pennies, dimes and quarters. I won't have to count coins in the future because I'll be able to weigh them. Did you realize (or even care) that a roll contains:
50 pennies that weigh 110.9g and is worth $.50
40 nickels which is worth $2 (I don't have enough for a roll now, so don't know how much they weigh)
50 dimes that weigh 113.0g and is worth $5
40 quarters that weigh 227.3g and is worth $10
Tue 5/8 - Before going to the gym this morning, I cut my hairs and laid out in the sun 10 minutes on a side. That put my morning gym trip off until afternoon. After the gym I opened up the overhead control panel in my van and located van-on 12 volts for powering the new interior instrument flood lights.
-
Jim Pierce
present of the ARA (Arizona Repeater Association - for ham radio operators)
Arizona Repeater Association - for ham radio operators
meeting on the 24th!
Wed 5/9 - This morning I met contractors at
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
to look at fake metal tile samples for replacing the clay tiles on the mansard. They had two samples but, unfortunately, not the one in which I was most interested.
- This afternoon,on my way to Gangplank I went
all over
Pep boys; NAPA Auto Parts; O'Reilly Auto Parts; Auto Zone; Walmart in Chandler; Walmart 19th Av & Bell
looking for and not finding white LED floodlights to light my van's new monitoring system at night. At Gangplank I added my new wireless Vello camera remote control and my little travel mouse to my Technology web page. It always seems to involve more work than expected. To make the page easy to navigate I added the remote and mouse to the page index, regrouped some of the items and added the date to some.
Thu 5/10 - I went to 24-Hour Fitness at 32 St & Bell Rd and bought new floodlights for my van, paid off my two credit card bills online, rewired and installed the LED floodlights for my van's electrical monitoring system. I found that I had burned the previous LEDs by applying 12 V directly to them. The current-limiting resistors, I found out, are in the cigarette lighter plug. Finally, this evening, I secured the trigger on my infrared thermometer, which has been broken since I had some friends over at Thanksgiving. I think their boys had been a little careless with it.
Fri 5/11 - After my morning routine I spent over an hour organizing, phoning and entering PASA student certification - Got 2 additional students certified.
- It pays to do things right. I met Jose from JC Tree Trimming and we agreed on a price to top the five Italian Cypress trees and cut out a dead area near the top of the south one. On a blank piece of paper hand printed :
5/11/2012
Agreement between JC Tree Trimming & Louis Self
(1) Top 5 Italian Cypress trees appx. 1' below roof.
(2) Cut out dead part of south tree.
Final cost of job $160.00
(signed by) Louis Self Jose... 5/11/12
Why was that a good idea? Because the lady at their insurance company refused to give me any coverage information without a contract. I PDFd the contract over and it did the trick. I found out their insurance had lapsed.
- I downloaded May's statement information from DSFCU Checking and discovered that I had not resolved my account in April. I don't know where my brain was. I had downloaded the information and even backed up my computer system, which I do each month after resolving my account.
- I started my attempts to phone into the Clark Howard Show; didn't get through in the two hours I worked on it.
Sat 5/12 - I went to the gym before my 9am breakfast this morning. It seemed to get me off to a good start for the day. I may continue with the plan except when I combine another destination with the gym (saving trips and gas, ya know).
- Van jobs:
Last vacuuming before trip
Did some testing with the water hose in failed attempts to find the water leak at the sides of hatch when it rains, dripping exactly where my face is at night.
Refined the storage between the front seats: more & better storage, although it looks about the same.
Final routing of the cables to the meters on the dash for monitoring the
At this evening's Hamfeast they liked my shirt - especially the ladies. It was my black NHS 50-year Class Reunion T-shirt with shiny gold letters (gold for 50 years, ya know):
Newton
Class of 1960
(Railroaders logo) 50th Yr Reunion
I made tomorrow's breakfast and got to bed at 9:25!
Sun 5/13 - I went to the gym before my 9am breakfast, installed plastic drip channels above the headliner fearing at the top of my van's rear hatch (which will hopefully stop the drips when it rains long and hard), scrubbed its tire letters, resolved my checking and drained possible minerals from the bottom of my water heater by washing my van's engine with hot watter.
Mon 5/14 - I drove to
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
to pay the tree trimmer for topping the five Italian cypress trees and had vanilla ice cream on half an apple fritter as my Monday evening snack. I tell ya, that free ice cream from Winco Foods has kept me from losing my final two pounds - my choices and my fault, of course.
Tue 5/15 - I emailed the five contractors from which I got bids for enclosing the
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
carport into a garage, canceling the job because all the bids came in well above what I expected. I figure payback would take 16 years and by then I'll be 86 years old!
- I took Mildred shopping - the first time in about a month. This is the first time she brought along a shopping list. Winco Foods does not take credit cards, which is a little inconvenient for her, but I think the prices are good. We only went two places: Winco and Fry's (for her medication).
Wed 5/16 - What a neat day! I drove down to
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
to see how repairing the mansard roof tiles is going (nothing had happened yet and no one was there) and then on down to Frank's Hobby House to check out their RC helicopters. They are closed on Wednesdays (not the neat part of the day). Neither was phoning my Pacificare medical insurance and being told there was nothing they could do to solve, what I call, the date creep problem. I am allowed one refractive eye exam each year, but due to weekends and schedules, it is impossible to have the exam stay on the same date during the years. Now the exam date has creped into April, which is when I plan to be out of state kiteboarding in subsequent years.
- The neat part of the day was a major accomplishment at Gangplank this evening. In 20 minutes, Hafthor Stefanson helped me engineer a sophisticated two-column picture array using Jquery and Javascript variables in a way that would have taken me at least a month to do, if I could have done it at all. I am creating a new web page showing the development of my Van Auxiliary Power Project using the
battery. Eventually you should be able to see the result online.
Thu 5/17 - I hate to waste things, so spent a lot of time trying, unsuccessfully, to find someone who could use the 230 red Spanish clay tiles off the
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
mansard roof. No dice with Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity or Stardust Building Supplies.
- I configured a USB LED light so I can check the status of the
house battery
battery in my van without going into the garage, sprayed the weeds in my front and back yards, and again drove down to Frank's Hobby House to talk with Chris, the RC helicopter guru. It turns out that he was not there due to a problem with his father's heart.
Fri 5/18 - I have been practicing with my little toy RC helicopter and have gotten the landings down to 20-49% without crashing. Pretty good for me, but definitely not what you'd need for real helicopters.
- Internet addiction? You might say I have one. It may be curiosity or thirst for knowledge, but it's always interesting. Today, because little RC helicopters have coreless motors, I spent time studying different kinds of DC electric motors:
Coreless DC Motor
Brushed DC motor
Types of DC motors
Permanent-magnet motors
Brushed DC motors
Brushless DC motors
Switched reluctance motors
Printed armature or pancake DC motors
Sat 5/19 - Today's big accomplishment was to back up my
computer
Asus eeePC XP 9" net book computer
to the 1 terabyte Iomega hard drive I keep in one of my fireproof boxes, doing various configurations such as modified files, all files and images of logical drives.
- I lucked out at the only garage sale I went to and picked up a $7, 12" LCD digital micrometer that reads to a hundredth of a mm and a thousandth of an inch. That will be good, as I strain my brain every time I try to read a vernier sale in fractions of an inch.
- I guess I crashed my first little toy helicopter one too many times, as one of the lower blade mounting holes tore out. A spare blade came with the unit, so all I need is to find time to install it.
Sun 5/20 - MOST UNUSUAL DAY: I heard on the 7am news that there was going to be an
annular
the disk of the moon is smaller than the sun so a ring of the sun is seen around the moon
eclipse of the sun so I phoned
Harold Dean
Harold Dean Hayes, my x-brother-in-law
and we drove up to Dilcon on the Navajo Indian Reservation where I lived from 1967 to 1969 and saw the solar eclipse. It was neat that all my predicted times proved to be accurate. There was a group of young people at the Nazarene Church who were excited that someone parked in their parking lot who knew how to safely image the sun. We used my white van as a screen for projecting the image of the sun with a pair of binoculars. Harold and I had lively technical discussions during the eight hours of driving and I had a chance to show off the new instrumentation for my van and
battery monitoring. Got to bed about 12:30 AM - late, but definitely excusable for my Helicopter Challenge.
Mon 5/21 - I'm spending a lot of my time today and the next few days preparing for the
ARA
Arizona Repeater Association (ham radio operators)
.
program. - mostly finding and organizing photos, images and diagrams for my presentation at the meeting on Thursday.
- I flew my new little toy helicopter for the second time. Although its battery is rated only at 160mAh, it lasts longer than the 210mAh battery I put in my old toy helicopter. Today's flight was a continuous 6:55 minutes, with a 20-second pause for a crash.
Tue 5/22 - This morning I took Kathleen, through Duet, to the eye doctor, as she does can't drive after having a stroke. I caught up on some of my blog days while I waited for her. At her request, I took her by a McDonald's for her lunch.
- This afternoon I armed my new toy helicopter with its two rockets and fired the rockets at a gong I had placed on my kitchen counter. I hit it with one of them and it went ping.
Wed 5/23 - This afternoon I went over to
Shane
my nephew who lives in north Mesa and is an engineer with MedTronics
's
house and we teched out with RC helicopters. I got to fly his Blade MCPX2, which has collective control. I crashed it a bunch of times, but did not do any permanent damage, except into my right leg where I got a little cut. The cut bled a little bit but seems to be healing OK in spite of my taking Warfarin. Later, at Gangplank, it did not work out for me to fly the little Blade MCX2 with a simulated tail rotor, which evidently belongs to Josh.
Thu 5/24 - One of my plastic freezing bricks ruptured and some of the cloudy white liquid seeped out. Of course that was an opportunity for me to freeze the liquid in a container in preparation for some experimentation.
- I bought the T-Rex 100x helicopter, the reward for my Helicopter Challenge, although I did not have a time to get it going. Buying it a week early made sense schedule-wise, so I have established strict rules, relating to the Challenge, for flying it.
- This evening I presented the monthly
ARA
Arizona Repeater Association (ham radio operators)
battery. The show included a red-hot wire, a slide show of pictures, installations, charts and graphs, my little refrigerator set as a freezer and ice cream sandwiches. The group seemed to be very interested in the whole thing - especially as the technology would apply to emergency radio power.
Fri 5/25 - Today I emailed some ham radio operators in Hutchinson,KS about possibly showing them the
system in my van. It would essentially be the same thing I did for the
ARA
Arizona Repeater Association (ham radio operators)
.
program.
- In the helicopter department, it came with a Flight Model Simulator. You connect the controller to your computer with a USB cable. Crashing a helicopter (or airplane) simulation doesn't cost anything. The problem is the simulator would not install on my
main computer
My little 9" EeePC netbook computer
but would install on my 15" Toshiba laptop. Then some of the controls worked in reverse.
Sat 5/26 - Tonight we met at Codfathers Fish & chips for our weekly hamfeast. The good news is Codfathers is located nearby; Bad news the only thing they came up with that was healthful was steamed vegetables and a boiled sausage and they cost about $10!
George
younger brother who lives in Mesa
turned in his school keys so he is officially retired
Sun 5/27 - Accomplished my morning routine including LA Fitness gym, then rewarded myself with a TRex100x helicopter session. The session ended when the rotor drive motor pinion fell off and got lost somewhere in my carpeting. After looking for a while, I gave up since it is really tiny and made of brass.
- For lunch I drove to Mesa to
George and Cindy
younger brother who lives in Mesa and his wife
's
motel. It was the first time Cindy cooked there. It may be an additional 2-3 weeks before they get back into their house.
Mon 5/28, MEMORIAL DAY - I mostly hung around home today, although I did go to
Dahlia
my rental house located on Dahlia Drive
to sample the underlay for the mansard roof. I accomplished nothing except a brain strain attempting to figure how to get captions to accompany the big pictures on my up-coming
web page.
- I found a new efficient way to do laundry. You see, I have 30 identical pairs of white sox to have enough for a decent load of whites laundry. Today I happened to put all of 'em in the washing machine at once - nothing but sox. Taking them out of the drier and putting them away went so fast! There was no sorting to do. Simply grab and dump. Why does it take me 70 years to think of stuff like this?
- I read a magazine article about Barb Thomas, an Arizonan with no arms. That led me to watching people eat and drive cars with their feet and watching Nick Vujicic, with no limbs at all, brush his hair, shave, brush his teeth, use his computer, get around etc. He is intelligent, articulate and has a most positive attitude and sees everything as a challenge and does a lot of motivational speaking, from a Christian viewpoint.
Tue 5/29 - Three important (to me) things happened to day. 1) I located the TRex supplier and they are sending me a rotor drive motor pinion - YEA! 2) I got my 32nd student logged in as a Level 1
PASA
Professional Airsports Association for kiteboarding
kiteboarder so now will advance to the next level of instructor. 3) Toilet cleaning always seems to be a problem. I've sort of solved it by giving each toilet a quick cleaning when I install a fresh roll of toilet paper.
Wed 5/30 - This evening at Gang Plank Josh demonstrated flying his little Blade MX2 helicopter with counter-rotating rotors that simulate a tail rotor. He encouraged me to fly it as much as I wanted to. I got in about four sessions and improved during the process.
Thu 5/31 - Two trips today: 1st to LA Fitness gym, Walmart to buy an Amazon Kindle Touch 3G on sale for $109 (their last one), to Ham Radio Outlet to buy an MFJ-310 window-edge antenna mount to replace the one that rusted away on my van and to Dr. Dwivedi's for a followup on my INR (up to 2.5) and dosage of Warfarin due to my pulmonary embolism, eating lunch on the way.
- This afternoon Mildred and I went grocery shopping at Winco Foods and Fry's Food & Drug to the tune of 2 hours and almost 28 miles.
This is my new Kindle Touch 3G, and it is super! I particularly like touching a word and having the definition instantly pop up. Like my older Kindle 3G, this one can read to you with a male or female Text-to-Speech voice.
