Space Robots

My Wife

2011-06-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

Someone shared this video today which makes me think of my wife Chris. She often teases me that I don't express how much I care for her as she does for me. The age old woman and man issue I guess? But I have to say that she is my life. I'd do anything for her and love spending time with her. She is my partner in this world and even though sometimes we all need our "me" time I would rather spend time alone with her than with anyone else. My fondest memories as an adult are times spent with her. The love runs deep like a parent and their child. She is a part of me and we are like a single person when together.

If life were like a huge mountain you had to climb where you only reach the top at the end of your life. Where there are some long and some short steep spots, some level spots and even some downhill spots. She is the person I chose to make the journey with me and along the way I have grown fond of her company and got used to having her beside me. She has led the way sometimes. She has encouraged me when I didn't want to go on. We have paused together to take a look around and have never given up.

So the video reminds me of her.

My big heart

2011-06-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

You know how when kids are born they always say stuff like he has her eyes or she has his ears. I think it is the closest thing to immortality or reincarnation to pass on our genetic traits to our children. I've always thought that even though my mom has been gone from my life and this world for almost 27 years I'll always have a piece of her with me because I inherited her heart. I often forget about this until at the strangest times I am overcome with empathy or emotion for someone or something. As a man I have always tried to hide this trait deep down inside. "Big boys don't cry". Who wants to see a grown man get all emotional over something stupid like a movie, play or live event. It's actually one of the reasons I stay away from music. It often speaks to your heart which is a place I try not to visit too often for fear of looking like a emotional wreck or idiot (same thing really). Don't get me wrong, this compassionate heart of mine doesn't always turn me into a blubbering idiot. Sometimes I just feel it. I can't stand watching the humane society commercials or read or hear about any sort of animal cruelty. I don't like reading or hearing about all the pain and suffering of my fellow humans all over the world. But it isn't just bad stuff. I feel the joy of new parents or newlyweds. Recent graduates from preschool to college. The happiness of family and friends and the sadness of illness or death of any one of them, mine or others.

I've often lamented that the gift of a big heart is a blessing and a curse especially for a guy. But it is a gift from my Mom that I'd never want to loose. So I go on through life figuring out how to deal with it and trying to remember that I'd rather feel too much than nothing at all.

Listening

2011-06-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

I know I have written about this before. But I am a visual person. I love movies, TV, Theater, video games and just about anything that I can watch with my eyes. I forget sometimes that my wife who is my soul mate and lifelong partner is quite the opposite. She is a listening person. She prefers to hear her entertainment. The way to her heart is through sounds. She is a music fan but not only that but her emotions are affected more by the tone or sound of something than mine are.

Tonight on a whim we decided to go to a local pub we have never been to and listen to a neighbor friend perform his own songs. He is very good and we don't get to see him that often. It was fun sitting just listening to him play. Even better it was what she likes to do which we don't do often enough. I don't know why lack of auditory interest gets so overshadowed by my visual interest but it does.

I need to work on that for her sake.

Birthday thoughts

2011-02-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

Another birthday has come and gone. I'm 48, 10 years older than my mother lived. My sister is 46 and my dad is 67 this year. Been married for 28 years this year to the love of my life who was born late in the year after me (didn't have to type her age, smart huh?). Lived in the same house for 22 years. My 30th high school reunion is this year.

Like most of us in my mind I feel as young as I did when I was 20. My body on the other hand says differently. I can see 50 just around the corner and no matter if you are 20,30,or 40 50 seems old. I seems old to 60 and 70 year olds. You just can't pull young off at 50 the generation gap starts to really show at that point.

Wife and I at the beginning of our marriage decided not to have kids. We've spent the better part of our lives together building a home and working. We have traveled some but not as much as others. We have lived for the moment not bothering to save much for a rainy day but we have great memories. We were talking the other day about what we would say to each other if we somehow had to convince one another who we were because we were not recognizable. A memory that only the other would remember. For me it would be so easy. There are so many. I had to give her some examples and then she agreed too. She's always been the forgetful one.

Both my grandfathers died when they were in their early 70's but both of them had smoking related illnesses. My grandmothers died at 84 and 90 the younger of breast cancer. So I figure I have at least another 30 if not 40 years left in me. Hopefully I can take care my health better than I have so far.

So what does the next 30 years hold? I'm not sure. I wasn't sure what the last 30 did but it has been an interesting ride. In fact I didn't think that much about my future then as I am now. But now I ask questions like...where will I be living, who will I know, where will I be working, what will be my financial situation, and mostly what will Wife and I be doing together then?

I don't consider myself a depressed individual. At least not in the clinical way. I'm sure I have the same ups and downs of any normal person. While writing these thoughts down I'm sure it sounds all gloom but I'm always optimistic and hopeful about the future and thankful about the past. Just being a little introspective which doesn't happen that often.

Jib Jab

2011-02-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

Playing around with www.JibJab.com

Collaborative Art

2011-01-31T15:48:00.000-08:00

I've never really thought of myself as an "Artist" but just the other day I got an email from someone who was talking about needing an artist and said my name came to mind. I have thought for a while now that the Halloween hobby we enjoy is definatly some sort of art expression. It is probably born out of my interest in live theater and the desire to put on a "show". After thinking about it for a while I think the best way to put it is that what we do is collaborative art. It is a collaboration of several skill sets that create the artwork. I can't just do it on my own. When I want to create something it involves others. This is really no different than any theater production. A play can't be easily done by just one person. And an elaborate play with sets, actors, effects, and venue all takes the tallents of multiple people.

So, am I an artist? Sure I am. I can't create my work by myself and show it in a gallery and if you ask me to produce something I'm going to gather my team to do it but as part of that team I am an artist.

Triannual UK trip

2010-12-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

When I was in College in 1982 I spent the month of January in London studying theater. I spent the following summer back home working and living off $100 a month to pay it off but the trip was worth it and I fell in love with the country.

Chris and I were married in 1983 and we have been traveling to the UK since 1993 every three years around November. Our first trip was 7 days in London in 93. We then did 14 days in London in 1996 but we took a weekend trip to Paris via the new tunnel and a weekend in Edinburgh Scotland. It was that trip that we fell in love with Scotland and it's people. We took a 3 week trip to the UK were we spent 1 week London and 2 weeks in Scotland in 99'. We took 2 trips in 2003 one week in February for my 40th birthday in London and 2 weeks in Scotland for our 20th anniversary where we stayed in a castle with our family and friends for a week and then a week in Edinburgh. We spent 2 weeks in the UK in 2006 staying 3 days in London and the rest in Edinburgh Scotland.

During most of our trips to London we have taken day tours all around the area to Dover, Canterbury, Salisbury, Bath, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Oxford, Warwick, and Windsor. But we also like to just stay in the city and go to museums and theater. We always rent an apartment if we are staying at least a week no mater where we are so we can feel at home.

We had planned on taking our next trip in 2009 but the exchange rate was so high we decided to skip the trip and wait a year. So in 2010 we planned a 3 week vacation to the UK. So many of our friends had heard about our stay in the castle in 2003 that they wanted to arrange another trip like it. So we rented a castle and had 5 other couples stay with us. We stayed 3 days in Edinburgh our favorite city before the castle stay in West Kilbride on the west coast of Scotland. After the castle stay we traveled to the southern tip of England and stayed in Penzance and traveled around Cornwall which is an area we have never seen before. We then spent our last 3 days in Bath which included a day tour of the area and a day train trip to Cardiff Bay to see the Dr. Who exhibit.

A photo

2010-07-14T08:52:00.001-07:00

This photo is sort of a famous one in our family. It s the last photo taken of my mom before she died in a car accident on July 14, 1983. My sister reminded me of the date today. I was 20 and my sister was 18. She and my dad had been married 20 years and met in high school. The photo is of her seeing off Yuko our Japanese foreign exchange student as she traveled back home.

But for me this photo isn't the one I like the best. Actually there isn't just one photo. It's more the different phases in her life in my 20 years with her that I remember.

This is one of my favorite looks. The 70's straight long hair. A young boys memory of his mom before he got too old to hang around her.

The business professional look. The bank manager during my teen years.

I can't say that I remember this one but I love the late sixties outfit with the gloves. This was probably Easter Sunday.

Best Christmas present ever

2010-07-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

My wife gave me the best Christmas present ever last year. It is a hand painted sign for my shop. She even cut the wood trim and puttied it and sanded it. The lettering is all free hand and the design is hers.

I have wanted a shop sign for a long time and was considering either a metal plaque that just said Jeff Davis Shop on it or a hanging metal sign that said the same thing. Either one would have been pretty simple. This sign is so cool since it has that old 18th century English pub feel to it.

She finally finished putting the last of several coats of lacquer on it and I hung it on the shop this weekend.

The basement - the bigger picture

2010-07-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

The office project is just phase 1 of a 4 phase project to remodel the basement. The office was the cheapest and easiest part to do first. It also helped us get more organized and forced us to clean out the basement of all our junk.

The grand scheme is to put a 1/2 bath in the basement and divide it into an extra living space and storage/laundry area.

Now that the office is done our next project is build the dividing wall between the living space and the storage and laundry area with a 36" pocket door in it. This is a little tricky because we are also going to replace our water heater with a tankless water heater that will hang on the inside of the wall. This has to be done all at the same time. Shut off the water, remove the water heater, build the wall, install an outlet for the tankless, install the tankless. It will take the framing guys and a plumber working at the same time almost. Once this is done we'll build some more storage shelves on the inside of this wall and move all our storage to that side.

The 3rd phase will be to install the 1/2 bath. We want to use a standard toilet which means cutting into the concrete and connecting to the exisiting cast iron sewer stack (our quote for this is pretty expensive so we'll do it next year) . Then we have to frame the bathroom and plumb the water for the toilet and sink. Then do the drywall and finish work. The bathroom will have a standard door.

The 4th phase will be to finish the main living space by framing the outside, doing the electrical including lighting, insulating and then drywall the entire room including the ceiling. Then we paint and trim the room and decide on flooring options.

I used this software to do an initial drawing of the what we wanted to do.

My new office

2010-06-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

We've been working on my new office for over a month now. We started planning it at the beginning of the year. You can see some of the construction progress on our house blog.

For over 20 years we have shared an office together. Now that I work from home these past few years it has got a little too crowded for the 2 of us so we converted our junk/hobby room in the basement into a nice new office and I moved my stuff into it this weekend.

I have all sorts of plans and just got the basics up and running for work but it is going to be a nice setup and it is the most modern room in the house right now.

Now Chris has all this extra room to work with. We even set her up with a cool old office desk from my parents and a little hutch to hide all the routers etc.

My birthday present

2010-05-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

I bought tickets to see Carole King and James Taylor play at our local Rose Quarter Stadium.

I've seen JT many times before but have never seen Carole King and seeing them together was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

Their music is the music of my childhood and a deep connection to my parents. They had her Tapestry album when it came out in the 70's when I was just 10. My mom was close with a high school girl she was trying to help stay out of trouble and the album was a favorite of both of theirs.

I went with Chris and afterwards I told her that seeing this kind of thing is like dropping mentos into my emotional 2 liter coke. Hard to maintain my composure.

My wife is the coolest person in the world!

2010-04-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of reasons but the biggest one this week is that she worked it out with her work to let me borrow their brand new iPad for a few days to play with. I've been in heaven.

It is one thing to read about this wonderful device and another to actually use it. The unit I have is the WiFi 30Gb model. Pretty much a high priced netbook with touchscreen.

Couple of frustrating things with it so far. The USB cable won't let you charge the device off of the computer you must plug it into the wall with the wall adaptor. But you have to connect it to iTunes to begin with to get the software loaded. It has the same issues as an iPod when it comes to content downloaded from your iStore account. If you switch iStore users the content is not there. I downloaded a free book but when I logged out of the store I went away? I am also not in love with the onscreen keyboard. Not sure what it is exactly but it has been difficult to use for me.

The App store is fantastic. While I don't own a iPhone I am familiar with the number of free and low cost apps on the store from my friends with iPhones. It is similar to the Andriod store I have for my G1 phone. But there are apps just for the iPad and some of the recent ones are even in HD so they graphics are amazing. Lots of free stuff and all kinds of apps.

By far the coolest thing about this type of device is being able to use it while watching TV. You can browse the web and see what you are reading. The news readers for USA today, NPR, and AP are all very nice. I can add Netflix movies/shows to my Instant Que while I am thinking of it instead of going into the office. I can manage my DirecTV recording. A lot of this you can do on your phone these days but on a very small screen with a tiny keyboard. Plus just reading on this device is so much easier. It is a book reader on steroids.

I am not looking forward to giving this back. But when I do I won't go out and buy one. I'll wait for at least a year for the price to come down a bit and for 2nd generation units to show up.

I got a new phone

2010-03-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Funny thing is that I'm not much of a cell phone user. Or at least I never was before I found out about data phones. My last phone I had for over 2 years and that one I got for free because my wife upgraded her phone. I only use it when someone calls me or I'm

Which is how I got my latest phone. She needed something she could text with and had good email, contacts, and calendar features so she can stay connected with home and work. The touch screen phones didn't work for her because she has fingernails and you have to use the pads of your fingers to touch not your nails. So she wanted a full pull out keyboard. So she got the Motorolla Cliqe. It also has twitter and facebook integrated so you can stay connected to your social network which she loves.

When we got her phone it was a better deal to upgrade our plan which allowed me to also get a data phone. So I got the cheaper and simpler Google G1 phone which basically has the same features just not quite as nice of a user interface. I have to say this phone is pretty cool. I love the free apps that you can get with it. The pop out full keyboard is fantastic for texting which I have found myself doing more recently and with the number pad on a phone it took forever. Now I can type out full messages in no time. With the built in GPS and google maps you have great navigation and location finding tools. I set up a twitter account and hooked my facebook page up. Now I am more social than I was before. I set up all my email accounts so now I get email notifications when I'm not at my computer. I even setup my Instant Messaging so I can tell when someone is trying to contact me. I LOVE the cool apps that let you take a photo of a bar code and look the product up and give you the cheapest place online and locally to buy it.

My only negative thing about these data phones is that the screen is too small to practically surf and read stuff on the web. It is also too small to watch videos or look at digital photos of any quality. But those tasks are better suited for the PC anyway. The other drawback is that the battery drains pretty quickly if you are using all the features. If you just let it idle and only used it as a phone it would be fine but since you are playing with all the apps and touching the screen it quickly kills the battery. I find I have to charge it every day where as my old cell I could go a week without charging it.

I'm getting a lot of grief for being so into my new phone when I always said I didn't care about a new cell phone. But I love gadgets and this is a fun one.

This is the coolest thing ever!

2010-01-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

Apple just announced their new product the iPad (click on the image to go their site). As everyone has probably heard it was one of the most anticipated releases of a new gadget in quite some time. And it turns out it was worth the wait. I can't wait to own one of these. It will be great for browsing the web, email, organizing photos, watching movies, listening to music, reading books, navigating, taking notes, and maintaining your calendar and contacts.

It has a 9.7" LED backlit IPS display with a 178 degree viewing angle.

It weighs 1.5 pounds is 0.5" thick.

It has a 10 hour batter life.

It will come with either Wi-Fi 802.11n or 3G for fast internet connectivity

The interface has an onscreen keyboard for typing or you can buy an external keyboard dock.

Comes with either a 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

Price

16GB 32GB 64GB

Wi-Fi $499 $599 $699

Wi-Fi+3G $629 $729 $829

I can use this to surf the web and check email on the couch or while traveling. I can watch a movie almost anywhere. It is a ebook reader and so much more.

They start shipping the Wi-Fi versions late March and the 3G in April. I'll probably wait a year if I can stand it just to see what kinds of issues they have and get them worked out first and let the price drop.

Robots, Spaceships, and Ray Guns, Oh my!

2010-01-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

This blog post is the coolest collection of Robots, Space ships and Ray Guns I've ever seen.

I am so inspired and envious.

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/02/chrome-delicious-robot-art-ray-guns.html robot-art-ray-guns.html

The Future

2010-01-06T08:17:00.000-08:00

Well, its 2010 and everyone's talking about where's their flying car and robot maid, even me. This year seems so futuristic. But the Jetsons, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon that we base all future expectation on, was made in 1962-1963 based on a future in 2062. So we have a while to wait for our car and maid.

The other image that comes to mind with this milestone of a year is Arthur C. Clark's 2010 the sequel to 2001 in which the US and Soviets send the Discovery 2 to Jupiter to find out what happened to David Bowman and the Discovery 1. The book came out in 1982 and the movie was made in 1984 which does seem like a long time ago. But we haven't sent any maned spaceships to anything further away than the moon. And although we have a space shuttle named Discovery which is about to retire and a International space station we are no where as close to the type of space travel that the movie and book describe. We are still thinking about going to Mars and that's still in the early planning stages. Plus, our relationship with the Solviets is so different today than the early 80's the storyline hardly makes sense now.

And of course we have not colonized the moon or found any large black monoliths. Nor have we found any new life on other planets. So even though 2010 sounds very futuristic I still feel we are in the stone ages.

I'm Mr. October 2010

2009-12-15T08:50:00.001-08:00

OK not really a photo of me but I'm mentioned in a Calendar. My good friend Jon Williams as EFX TEK asked me if I wanted to have one of our Halloween props that uses their controller in the Parallax annual product catalog and calendar for 2010. I suggested the gravedigger project might be a good one so I said yes and sent Parallax some info and pictures and they used it for their October page. I just got a package yesterday with a stack of them in it. Kind of humbling having my silly little project listed with 11 others.

You can download the whole catalog/calendar here or if you want one mailed to you for some reason go here.

I like rockets

2009-11-17T21:56:00.000-08:00

I was 6 when we landed on the moon. I spent my elementary years during the Apollo program watching men walk on the moon on a regular basis. The toys of my childhood all had to do with spacesuits, rockets, moon landings and anything having to do with the Apollo program. So it's no wonder that I love anything to do with space and rockets.

I've always been a big fan of the space shuttles and have always wanted to go to Florida not to see Disney World or Universal Studios but to watch a launch and tour the Space Center and see the original Apollo memorabilia. But since I live on the west coast this will probably never happen.

So the other day I was thrilled when I was reading my daily Google news bites and saw that the Shuttle Atlantis was going to launch in about 30 minutes. I quickly jumped onto the NASA site and launched the live video feed. Then as the count down started at T-minus 9 minutes I thought, "hey I have a high def LCD TV and I get the NASA channel on DirectTV?". So I sat and watched the launch live as it was happening on my TV Set. I got to see it take off and then drop its boosters and then reach orbit and drop the main fuel tank. Traveling at over 8000 mph at 67 miles high it begins its trip to join up with the space station. I had never watched a launch live before and it was pretty thrilling just thinking about how routine they make such a complex achievement take place.

Tools

2009-09-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

Hum...haven't posted here for 4 months! Really haven't been doing anything that extrodinary and haven't had anything to post about. But I thought of something today worth talking about.

So I have been spending a lot of time out in my shop recently building halloween props. And I have been giving a lot of thought to what tools I'd like to purchase first. I have had a long list of tools that I want for some time but I started thinking about what do I REALLY want the most. And I thought of 3 very important ones.

First on my list is a new Band Saw. I own a small table top version that to put it plainly SUCKS. It isn't big enough to cut anything large and it is cheap and won't cut straight to save it's life. I am a big fan of Delta so I want the 28-276 14" 3/4HP open stand band saw. This puppy runs about $400.

Next on my list of tools is a table saw. I own a simple right tilt 10" contractor saw with a VERY cheap fence that can't cut a square line to save it's life. It also has cheap pressed metal wings that are not smooth or worth much of anything. I probably counldn't even sell the saw for $50 on craigslist because thats about how much a new one would cost. I replaced the motor in it after a few years so I've paid more for it than its worth.

So what I want instead is a Delta 36-982 10" left tilt contractors saw with a 30" Biesemeyer commercial fence. This new version comes with cast iron wings and a nice mobile base. It has a 1.5HP induction motor. The left tilt blade makes cutting angles MUCH easier. It costs a mere $1000.

Something else that is on my list is a Delta 50-875 3-Speed Air Filtration system with remote. I have no doors or windows in my woodshop and I'm sure I've probably cut years off my life with the amount of junk I have inhaled. This bad boy can go through 1200 cubic feet per minute of air capable of filtering the air in a 20 by 20 foot room 13 to 18 times an hour. Not really high on my list but probably a must have. This one costs about $500.

Well, all of these are nice but I've decided what my first purchase is going to be. I've always wanted a CNC machine. My main idea for one is to carve really complex tombstones out of foam and other foam based products using a rotary tool. I've looked at the shopbot but that puppy is $8000 which is WAY beyond my reach. So I have discovered the DIY CNC sites and found that I can build my own CNC machine by purchasing kits and following some plans and using free software and my own laptop for about $600. I'm thinking that it would be fun to make my own. It will be sort of like a hobby kit that I can put together this winter. I'm quite confident that my computing skills will come in handy to understand the software side. It might take a little more effort to build the actual machine. I'll probably find a plan that is simple enough to meet my needs. More to come on this...

Shopbot for $8000 DIY CNC for about $600

Animated Skull V2

2009-03-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

I have been working all month on a revised version of the animated skull I built last year which was something that took me 2 years to complete. I am building a new skull for a seminar I am doing the beginning of May. I thought I'd make a few improvements over the first one while I was at it.

1. Use 1/8" instead of 1/4" plexiglas for the plate. It is easier to cut and lighter weight.

2. Use 60lb fishing line for the Jaw connection instead of wire or rod. Reduces the stress on the jaw servo and creates a more life like movement.

3. Use rare earth magnets instead of zip ties to hold the plate down. Much easier to take the plate on and off with.

4. Use 2-56 sized ball and socket linkages instead of 4-40 ball swivels. You can easily pop them on and off and they are much smaller

5. Use RJ-45 ethernet jacks for wiring connectors. Easier to organize the wires and less obvious.

I am working on a design for moving eyes but it hasn't worked out yet. I think for my seminar I'll probably use the same fixed LED eyes but for this halloween I'll figure out the eyes.

Dangers of cat wrangling

2009-03-01T11:32:00.001-08:00

I know it looks like I was suicidal but only if you consider trying to put a cat in a cat cage suicidal. Our 2 younger cats that are brother and sister have unusually sharp and hook like claws so we take them to the vet once in a while to get them trimmed. The male (Mason) is a HUGE cat for being so young and his back claws are like knives. So it was pretty stupid of me to grab him and stuff him in a cage with my bare arms exposed to his back legs. Before I knew it he had climbed up my arm and out of the cage.

A great birthday

2009-02-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

My birthday is normally not much of an event these days. I have also always had trouble trying to find something I really wanted to do that I would enjoy. This year I put a little thought into it. I don't really have a favorite resturant or type of food that I gravitate to. So when asked where I wanted to go I thought about it for a while and said I'd like to eat at a home style italian resturant where I could get a Calzone, Pizza or pasta that was home made and not some food chain style dish. So I did a bit of looking and decided on a place we hadn't been to in years, a great family italian resturant that had what I was looking for. I ordered the Calzone which was $20 and Chris had Eggplant Parm. We both had a glass of italian wine. I suspected the Calzone would be big at the price and figured I'd be taking it home but I didn't expect it to be HUGE. I ate about 1/3 of it and took the rest home. It was great food though. We then went to our new Century Movie theater at the Mall and saw Grand Torino with Clint Eastwood which was VERY good. Went home and watched TV and fell asleep on the couch.

It was a great birthday. One of the best in a few years. I guess it goes to show that a little thought about something and some planning can sometimes help make an otherwise normal day turn into something you really enjoy.

I'm not that much into music

2009-02-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

Never have been probably never will be. Not sure why. But I got a crazy reminder of it when Chris and I went to a Play this month called The Seafared by Conor McPherson at Artist Repertory Theatre. The play, which is about 4 Irish men, drinking, gambling and the devil, has an odd line in it from the fellow who apparently is "The" Devil. Someone turns the music on and he cringes and says he can't really hear it and that it annoys him and he asks if someone could just turn it off. Which made me wonder, am I the Devil?

Now I don't really think that music anoys me or that I can't hear it, well most if it anyway. I'm mostly just indifferent. I don't own an iPod and the CD's of my music would fit in a shoe box. I only have 2 points in time that my musical tastes come from. The first is when I was 10 (1973) and it was what my parents were listening to on records and the radio and again when I was a teen (1976-1981) in a small town that didn't have a record store or local radio station. What filtered into our small Oregon logging community was always years behind the trend. So I like the beatles, Peter Paul & Mary, Simon & Garfunkle, Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, Carol King, Elton John, and John Denver. I also like Kenny Rodgers, Cher, Don McLean, a few others that had hits in those years.

Most of the time I prefer silence to music. I listen to the car radio with top 40 hits from the past as background music most of the time. Once in a great while some song will come along that grabs me and I listen to it for a while but then I always go back the silence. I'm just not a music culture person. I prefer movies and television as my cultural interest I guess?

Of course I can read!

2009-01-08T10:01:00.001-08:00

I read all the time. I read blogs, internet news, technical specs, web comics, emails, and tons of other stuff on the computer. I just don't read much on paper. I have 3 or 4 unfinshed books lying around the house. I have a HUGE stack of books I intend to read. I used to read my favorite authors books all the time and whenever a new one would come out I'd pick it up and read it right away. Now I don't even pay attention when new stuff is out. I was a big fan of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Robin Cook. I did read all the Harry Potter books though. In fact that might be the last book I have read? So I have been thinking that maybe I ought to look into one of those digital book readers? I am so used to reading on the computer maybe this would get me back to reading the paper books again? Plus I LOVE gadgets. Only thing is that it is out of range of the current budget right now. Oh well, somthing to save for I guess?

Xbox 360 the gift that keeps giving

2009-01-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

One of the problems with owning a gaming console is that there are a LOT of accessories that you end up buying plus the games you need to keep buying in order to enjoy the whole thing. So recently I have been on a used game buying spree. Thank goodness for Game Crazy. I bought Orange Box so I can play Portal on the Xbox. I bought Overlord which is a great adventure style game like Fable but with evil minions. I got Laura Croft Legend which has great graphics and fun puzzles. I got Burnout Paradise so I can crash stuff in HD. I also got Legos Star Wars since the Indiana Jones game was so fun. I have ordered a replacement for Indian Jones Legos which should be here soon. I just need to get a copy of Halo 3 and Fable 2 and I will be set for a while. I think I will stick with buying used games and returning ones I don't want anymore for credit for buying more games.

I exchanged my new copy of EndWar for a rechargeable controller battery and one extra and a charger.

I got a Dlink wireless client that I can connect to the XBox 360 to download demos and free stuff. It also installed a whole new interface that is pretty cool.

I need to get another controller so I can play along with someone else on some games.

Hopefully there are no other parts I will need or upgrades to purchase for a while.

A new toy for Christmas

2008-12-31T09:03:00.000-08:00

I got a Xbox 360 over the Christmas holiday. It came with 3 games. A two pack that had Indiana Jones Legos and Kunfu Panda. Both were fun. The other game was Tom Clancy's EndWar a RTS that uses the headset to give commands to move your players around. Not my type of game and haven't spent much time with it.

I ruined my Legos game by leaving it in the Xbox while moving the box and then turning it back on. The disk was off center and spun and made a racket and when I took it out it had a HUGE scratch in it that made it unplayable. Darn I was only about %25 through the game. I did play Kungfu panda all the way through though. Jack Black is always funny.

I rented Fable 2 so Chris and I can play together. We liked Fable on the Xbox. Since I have been sick since Christmas Chris bought me a used copy of Gears of War which I have partially played on the PC. It is a graphic war game that is intense and a lot of fun to play.

I love the graphics of the Xbox 360 on my new 42" LCD TV. I am going to get a wireless connection hooked up soon so I can download demos etc.

Where is my watch?

2008-12-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

For as long as I can remember I have worn a wristwatch. I think it started when I was about 10 when my parents gave me my first watch as a gift. My Dad showed me how to wear it on my left wrist since I am right handed and wearing on my right hand would get it much more banged up. Not sure if that was lifelong advice or just what you tell a kid that you want to have the watch you just gave them to last longer than a few months. From that day on for over 40 years I wore my watch all the time. I took it off when I went to bed and put it on when I got up. I took it off to take a shower and put it on when I got dressed. I felt naked when I didn't have it on my wrist. I had many a summer with a watch tan.

Most of my watches lasted for a long time. I usually had 2 watches at any given time. My nice watch and a working watch. I wore my nice watch when I wasn't doing physical labor or things that could mess up the watch. The work watch (usually a much cheaper watch that I replaced more often) was one I didn't care about as much. I have had calculator watches, cheap digital Casio watches, nice Seiko watches and several other nice brands. Nothing expensive just functional.

Well recently since my last watch I bought (with a JC Penny gift certificate from my Grandmother over 10 years ago) had the batteries run out I stopped wearing my watch. Since I started working from home a few years ago I always started carrying my cell phone with me everywhere I go and when I was home I am surrounded by clocks (at the computer and all over the house) so I never needed a watch. Sometimes though I don't bring my cell phone with me and I find myself looking at my bare wrist. I need to get my watch fixed or buy another, I'm just not used to having nothing on my arm and knowing at any given moment what time it is or how much time I have left. I know it is supposed to be freeing to be unleashed from our time pieces but for me it is a part of me that seems missing.

By the way this watch is WAY to big but it sure is cool!

Interesting way to get out of the house

2008-12-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine who shall remain unnamed. Uses Dial-up for Internet access (I know, can you believe it!). He says that when he needs the bandwidth he takes his laptop to a hotspot and uses the free Internet. I should probably mention that my friend is also VERY cheap. To his credit though he is much more financially secure than I will ever be. Me and money have this love/hate relationship. I love to spend it and hate it when I never seem to have any.

Anyway, my friends comment of using a public wireless access point for broadband internet made me think that would be a great way to get out of the house more often. I have been cooped up here for a couple of months hardly leaving once a week if I am lucky. If I loaded all my work on a nice laptop I could go to a different public space each day and work all over the city. From Starbucks in the morning to public buildings and other fun areas in the afternoon. I could even meet people and become a regular at certain spots. Problem is I don't drink coffee or tea (never acquired a taste for either). I'd probably spend too much money at all the locations out of guilt for using their free internet. There goes that whole money issue again. Still sounds like a cool idea. Of course I'd have to buy a laptop beefy enough to do my work on first?

HD TV is pretty cool

2008-12-05T13:41:00.000-08:00

The DirectTV guys came by a couple of weeks ago and replaced our dish with a HD version and gave me a new HD DVR. It is something else watching HD shows on the TV. BIG difference from normal TV. I setup all the shows to be recorded in HD. Something I learned though...shows you didn't like in regular TV even if they look better in HD still aren't good shows. And it's also funny how some shows aren't HD? For example David Letterman is in HD but the Late Show with Craig Ferguson which is on right after is NOT HD? I prefer Craig over David. Too bad the show isn't in HD.

Also FX, SciFi, TBS are all in HD but Comedy Central isn't? I like John Stewarts Daily Show but it isn't in HD?

It actually been more fun watching shows in HD that watching movies on the new TV.

Now all I have to do is get a Xbox-360 and see what 1080p video games look like. I'll keep you posted.

We got a new TV!

2008-11-17T20:54:00.000-08:00

On our way home from the coast we stopped at Video Only and looked at TV's. The talk we had in the parking lot was something like this. We can spend up to X$ if it goes over that we will have to wait a few weeks. So we go in and the 42" LCD 1080p Toshiba TV that was much more earlier this year was exactly X$. So we bought it. I quickly came home unloaded the lugage and brought the TV box into the living room we finished painting the weekend before. The TV was the reward for me helping with the painting and not being a grouch about it. We spent the evening watching movies and TV on our new flat screen. My only complaint is that we don't really have anything to show off the higher resolution. DVD's look pretty good but they aren't HD. The Digital Satalite looks good too but it is still only 480i (4:3). And regular TV programs seem pretty lame at 4:3 on a wide TV. So I ordered a HD DVR and HD service for our digital Satalite. I am also getting a used X-Box 360 which does high res output of games. Still working out all the connection issues and figuring out the best way to set things up but this is a LOT better than our 10 year old 32" tube tv we had.

I love my new TV.

Funny thing happend at the office

2008-10-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

I got an email from a friend the other day that was one of those joke emails. It was about the 6 levels of hangovers. It was well written and very funny. In fact, half way through reading it I busted out in a hearty laugh that made my eyes water. Afterwards I thought about it. If I were in an office instead of working from home someone probably would have noticed and maybe even came over to my cube and asked what was so funny and I would probably have been embarased a little. But no one noticed when I laughed because no one was home but the cats and nothing I do seems to phase them. So I wondered if I laughed even more freely because I was at home or if I would have even laughed at a cube? It now also seems a little weird that I did laugh so hard with no one around. But I did enjoy the email.

The 6 levels of hangovers

* 1 star hangover

No pain. No real feeling of illness. Your sleep last night was a mere disco nap, which has given you a whole lot of misplaced energy. Be glad that you are able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 10 sodas and still feel this way. You are craving a steak bomb and a side of gravy fries.

** 2 star hangover

No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only exacerbating your rumbling gut, which is craving a rootie tootie fresh and fruity pancake breakfast from IHOP. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels.

*** 3 star hangover

Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the random gin shots you did with your alcoholic friends after the bouncer 86'd you at 1:45 a.m. Life would be better right now if you were in your bed with a dozen donuts and a meatball hero watching the E! fashion awards. You've had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 Snapples and a liter of diet coke - yet you haven't peed once.

**** 4 star hangover

Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can't speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can't hide the fact that you missed an oh-so crucial spot shaving, (girls, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars.) Your eyes look like one big vein and your hair style makes you look like a reject from the class picture of Grover Cleveland HS, class of '84.

***** 5 star hangover, aka "Dante's 4th Circle of Hell."

You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the shit fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva, so your tongue is suffocating you. Death seems pretty good right now. You definitely don't remember who you were with, where you were, what you drank, and why there is a stranger still sleeping in your bed at your otherwise empty house.

****** 6 star hangover, otherwise known as the "Infinite Nut smacker"

You wake up on your bathroom floor. For about 2 seconds you look at the ceiling, wondering if the cool refreshing feeling on your cheek is the bathroom tile or your vomit from 5 hours ago. It is amazing how your roommate was as drunk as you, but somehow managed to getup before you. You try to lift your head. Not an option. Then you inadvertently turn your head too quickly and smell the funk of 13 packs of cigarettes in your hair. Suddenly you realize you were smoking, but not ultra lights...some jackass handed you Marlboro reds, and you smoked them like it was your second full time job. You look in the mirror only to see remnants of the stamp "Ready to Rock" faintly atop your forehead......the stamp on the back of your hand that has magically appeared on your forehead by alcoholic osmosis. You have to be to work in t-minus 14 minutes and 32 seconds and the only thing you can think of wearing is your "hello kitty" pajamas and your slippers.

Yet drinking SEEMS like a good idea...

Halloween Prop for 2008

2008-09-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

I REALLY like how our animated skull for our hearse driver came out this year. This is a project I have been working on for 2 years. Ever since we created a hearse for our graveyard display I wanted a talking driver. A lot of things just came together the right way and it turned out better than I could have thought.

I wrote an initial speech that Chris helped me edit. We found a voice talent guy at HaUNTcon that turned out perfect.

One of my original plans was to use the uMP3 player from Rouge Robotics. It has a SD Memory card slot so any sized MP3 file can be used. It requires a custom cable to be built for use with the EFX-TEK line of controllers but it wasn't hard to make and it works great!

One of my original plans was to use the standard "Bucky" skeleton from Anatomical chart co. that we always use. I didn't want to manufacture any special parts or at least none that anyone could make. The issue with this is that the skull is VERY heavy and most people couldn't figure out a way to make it work. I had one of those creative moments and bought a 2" nylon ball and drilled a hole in it and slid it down the bar that holds his had and then sanded out the base of the skull a bit and it pivoted nicely on the ball. I added a spring to counter balance the head and it now could turn and nod without much effort. I later added a bearing below the ball to make is spin smoother. The rest of the mechanics (placement of servos and linkages) other people had already done so I just copied them.

I also wanted to use an EFX-TEK prop controller that loaded the entire movement show onto the the controller and just played it back on repeat. I didn't want to hook a computer to the animated head (that's how a lot of them are done). Another goal was to use a standard RC transmitter with 2 joysticks to puppeteer the the head and store the movements so we could play them back. I didn't want to have to to manually program each movement while listening to the audio track over and over which is how a lot of this type of thing is done. The joystick option is more how the movie people do it.

So EFX-TEK had a program on their forum that would allow you to use a VEX transmitter which I got off of eBay to move 4 servos using their Prop-SX controller and send the data out it's serial port that a PC could then capture. With the captured data you could create a show program that read the data and played it back. One of the first issues I ran into was that trying to move the head around and make the jaw move was just not practical. So I decided to use a "audio talker" which is a servo controller board that moves a servo based on a audio signal. It automates the jaw movements for you. So this freed up my transmitter to move the turn/nod/tilt servos while the audio played and the jaw moved which was MUCH easier.

After capturing what I felt was a conservative amount of head movement for the 2min speech I took at look at the data. It was just under 3000 data points which is 3 servo positions every 20ms. A lot of the data is redundant since the servos weren't always moving every 20ms so I compressed the data down with a 4th value that was a counter of how many 20ms frames do the servos stay in that position ( a common technique I found out from EFX-TEK). This reduced the data points down to just under 2000. The program area for the Prop-SX is 8K. When I created the reader program combined with all these data points the program was too big to fit into the 8K memory space. The program for the SX was pretty big and the left over memory was pretty small. I decided to try using the Prop-SX which is much slower than the SX but the data reader program is VERY simple and took hardly any memory so I could use the rest for the data points. It still wouldn't fit so I had to reduce the data points by increasing the counter to a minimum of 240ms frames instead of 20ms which created 425 data points. This fit into the Prop-2 but made the head movement a little jerky. I didn't have time at this point to fiddle with it any further so I stuck with the jerky movements. The Prop-SX has a 32K EPROM that you can burn data to but I had never done it or written/used any code that read from the EPROM so it will have to be something I try next year and get my entire 2000 data points in the EPROM.

I still have to come up with a amplifier solution for the audio since the output of the MP3 player is just line level. I found a couple of small amplifier solutions that I think will work.

But I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

The Halloween Monster

2008-09-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a exerpt from a chat session with my good friend....

Friend: You bastard

Me: ???

Friend: you really want me to play Portal

Me: oh? sorry. I hacked portal and got the sounds out ot it. Grabbed all of the ones for the companion cube. We are going to have them play from a speaker in the cube Chris is making.
Me: funny sh*t

Friend: when I get a computer that can actually handle it I'll play.

Me: I still think it would make a great console game. But you have to have a 360 or ps3

Friend: feckin' bastages

Me: used 360 would probably be cheaper than a new computer?

Friend: ah but I kinda need a computer. the boys and wife have homework that requires internet access.

Me: WHAT! You living in the stone ages? No Internet?????

Friend: yes we have it because we are borrowing a computer but eventually we have to return it.

Me: ah...I was worried about your geek status. Thought we were going to have to revoke your badge
Me: I see X-Box 360 used on ebay for $189?

Friend: nope...because I know how long the tube used in the Hedron Collider is

Friend: I get to keep my geek badge

Friend: :-)

Me: F*ck you da smart one

Friend: since when did smart become a qualification of being a geek.

Me: So...how long is the tube?

Friend: approximately 20 km

Me: WOW! you even know it in metric!

Me: You must be some sort of Mad Scientist?

Friend: that's all science cares about

Me: Hey I am trying hard here to give you sh*t and you are making it difficult!

Friend: I'd like to say I'm an evil scientist but we both know that's not true.

Friend: roflmao...I'm supposed to play nice and let you give me crap?

Me: Well...no but....

Friend: where's the fun in that?

Friend: :-)

Me: fun for me!
Me: me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me

Friend: roflmao...It's all about you until Chris is around. *Evil Grin*

Me: shhhhh

Friend: hee hee

Me: don't tell her....we are being sneaky
Me: I can only do this if I whisper.....if she catches me talking about "me" then I'm doomed
Me: Oh BTW did I mention that I am LOSING MY MIND!

Friend: feckin' christ I can't stop laughing
Friend: where is your mind going?

Me: It is being eaten by the big horrible HALLOWEEN MONSTER!

Friend: does the Halloween Monster listen to light country music and dream of a day when Monsters everwhere can wear pink lace?

Me: yours does THAT too?

Friend: Mine is frends with the Tequillia Monster

Me: seriously, I'm not THAT crazy....yet

Friend: call me when you get there, man.

Me: the HALLOWEEN MONSTER keeps you up at night and steals time when you are not looking and gives you more work to do than you can handle

Friend: Does your's smoke menthols?

Me: no but he smells like CANDY!
Me: lots of milk chocolate and peanut butter

Friend: Mine love's pop rocks

Me: too noisy....wouldn't be able to sneak up on you and wake you up or change your schedule without you noticing

Friend: That's the brilliance of monster design. It's head is so massive ya can't hear the popping until it opens it's mouth and drolls on your head.

Death, a part of life

2008-08-01T09:10:00.001-07:00

Wow, 2 posts in the same day. This one came to me while writing that other introspective.

This year I have seen the loss of 2 great people. Earlier this year my wife Chris' grandmother Jeanne Robert passed away. Even though we were only related through marriage I was glad to have known her and have fond memories of her. And this summer I lost my last living grandparent and probably the most influential, my grandmother Maurene Davis. She was the typical grandmother and a strong figure in the family. Both will be missed but lovingly remembered.

But these were not the only losses I have endured. I lost both my grandfathers in their 70's. My other grandmother to cancer in her 80's. Chris' estranged father to heart failure in his 50's. And my mother to an auto accident at the young age of 38. Unfortunately these won't be the last since like it or not, death is a part of life.

I have developed my own thoughts and ways of dealing with death over the years. Probably loosing my mother at such a young age gave me an early start on my thought process. I have never been a big fan of funerals or the grieving process (although pain is a natural feeling after loosing someone dear to us). But I prefer to think about those that I have lost at their best not at the worst. I feel it is my responsibility as a living person to remember those that I knew that are no longer here in the best way that I can. No matter how many mistakes they made when they were alive or how sick they were or how much pain they might have felt. It just seems like such a waste to me to dwell on the negative of a persons entire life instead of keeping the best of them in our memory.

So I prefer to remember those that I have lost the way I want to remember them instead of sobbing with my fellow mourners over how they left us. My hope is that when my time is up that those that knew me would do the same.

My life

2008-08-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

I was reading our friend Marc Acito's blog this morning like I do every day. And I re-read his blurb about himself. It says "he leads a blessed life". Forgetting for a moment about the religious sounding tone I asked myself do I have a blessed life?

Truthfully I have always been a little embarrassed about how lucky my life has been. I wonder sometimes if that's what a WWII veteran felt like after surviving 4 years at war uninjured. Not to say that I have not had some tough times or been touched by tragedy. Loosing my 38yr old mother to a car accident when I was 20 is something I'll never get over. I've had to deal with some crappy jobs and had to deal with some tough family issues.

But I think that I have been fortunate to be born a white male and even though I don't think about it much some of what has landed at my feet is probably due, unfortunately, to the way the world works. I've always been able to find a job. And sometimes have made really good money. I've always been able to buy the things I really want and do the things I really want to do.

So what is so blessed about my life? Well, I have a family that loves me. I have a wife who I have spent more of my life with than without and who loves me and who means more to me than anything else in my life. Currently I have a great job situation. Our recent set of cats are the best we have ever had and I have been fond of them all. I have traveled to the UK a number of times and had the chance to see the bigger world and share it with friends and family. I have met and befriended some great people. I have never had to really suffer any real hardship (that alone makes it a blessed life).

That's why I feel so embarrassed about how good my life has been almost without any effort on my part or any real sacrifice. But I wouldn't change a thing. And for what it's worth I will always be greatful for it even if I'm a little bit ashamed about how lucky I am.

Thinking about the past

2008-07-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

Damn you classmates.com! A website where people from High School or College can find out what old classmates are up to these days. I've had a profile for quite a few years and get emails some times about people visiting it. I recently figured out that I can also look for college friends (I previously just thought it was mostly about High School connections). I had to grab my college year books to remember who people where. As usually with this site no one I liked or hung out with is on the site. It did prompt me to contact the Alumni department and get them to send me a yearbook for a year I didn't have! The yearbook and the search for old friends on classmates.com brought be down memory lane. So let me tell you a little bit about where I spent my first years out of high school.

I attended Whitworth College in Spokane WA. A small Presbyterian college set on a beautiful campus in a small eastern Washington town. I attended Santiam High School in Mill City OR population 1500 or so and the student body was about 200 and my class had something less than 40 students. So I wanted to go to a smaller college where I would have the chance to participate in all sorts of things and not be thought of as a number. Whitworth is a unique school I think. It has a lot of tradition probably like most Colleges do. There is a religious feel to the school but it wasn't overbearing. At the time I enrolled I had all sorts of ambitions. I started out as a Psychology major with the idea of being a youth councilor either through the church or professionally. Within the first year I realized that psychology majors where CRAZY! I also found a job within my first month on campus working for the stage crew. I was always into theater in high school and I even had a drama course I was taking. I quickly changed my major to theater at that point. I schemed my way into taking a winter term in London to study theater and funding it with my student loans. I spent the following summer living on campus and working to pay it all back. I ate spagetti-o's and Top Ramen all summer. The next year I took a computer programming class to fulfill a math requirement. Turns out I loved computer programming and was quite good at it. I got an A without trying too hard. So I switched my major again to computer science. I also found out that there was good money in programming and the hours were a lot more regular than theater. I spent my next summer working at a theater arts camp on California where I met my wife. I took a year off from school and then returned the following fall. It turned out to be too hard to work, go to school and be married all at the same time and something had to give. So I left half way into my 3rd year and moved back to Southern California where my wife's family lived and started my career in computers.

I have often thought about my time at Whitworth over the years. I don't regret making the decision to leave and my choices afterwards have led me to some great memories. But I do wonder what happened to the people I knew then. Where are they now and what type of choices did they make. It was a great time. I was young but independent. I lived in a dorm my first year and then moved off campus during my 2nd year. I hung out with the stage crew and the the staff the managed it. I didn't get involved in as many other groups or activities as I thought I would. The college was huge compared to my high school days. The other day I was thinking back about how we used to play Frisbee golf on campus during lunch breaks in the summer. The course was so unmarked that if you didn't learn it from someone else you'd never know where it was. So I googled Whitworth College Frisbee Golf and found this link called 95 things I love about Whitworth written by a student Dec 2007. Most of it I connect with except for the newer stuff since I was there from 81-84. Looks like the Frisbee (disc) golf is alive and well. Of course they are now called Whitworth Univerity, I don't know when that happened? When I ordered the missing yearbook I sent my payment in for it and got a letter back thanking me for my donation so I guess now I am an official donor to the school?

Anyway. Fond memories.

There is less of me lately

2008-07-22T11:58:00.000-07:00

I've always been a big guy. I'm 6' 2" and large framed. I've always weighed more than I look like I do. In fact I remember once when I was at a amusement park as a teenager and they had a guy with a scale that would give you a prize if he couldn't guess your weight with a certain percentage. With the range he allowed for error very few people got anything. But when I walked up there he was amazed at how much I weighed compared to his guess. Wow, a prize for being heavy...who'd have thought?

My size was perfect for playing football at a single A high school for 4 years. I was one of the bigger guys so I played offensive guard and defensive end and was on the field for most of every game. After high school and on to college I wasn't as active and on went the pounds. I spent a summer after my 2nd year in sunny California and lost most of those pounds NOT eating the lousy food at the camp I worked at. It was the first and last time I ever had a tan too. I got married that fall and then the pounds started coming back on again over the years.

When I turned 30 I figured I REALLY needed to do something about my growing weight. So I put myself on a medically supervised fast and lost all of it in about 6 months. I wish I could go back now and tell myself to enjoy the huge weight loss but instead I really didn't change my life that much and in time I gained it all back and more. I did the fast again about 7 years later. Lost almost as much as the first time in 6 months again. I was good at the fasting with no food options but it makes you a little crazy from the deprivation and is hard to control your appetite when you go back to eating. You feel SO good for being so much smaller that you think you can eat anything. And I have always been able to eat a LOT!

Well it's been about 8 years since I last did the fast and with the working from home thing for the past 3 years I have really put on the weight. I didn't want to do the fast and wanted to make a change that would be more permanent. I also wanted to lose more weight but at a MUCH slower rate so I can keep it off. So a couple of months ago something in my head just clicked. I started eating the amount of food a day that I would if I weighed what I want to weigh. And over the past few months the pounds have just started melting off. Not something you could really notice since I weighed so much to begin with. Like I said I never look as heavy as I really am. I figure at this rate it will probably take me 2 years to get to a healthy weight but I will probably be able to keep it off this time.

At my annual doctor visit at the beginning of this year I weighed in significantly more than I did the previous year (a whole year of working from home at a desk). My doctor suggested I try to lose a few pounds before my next visit. He also suggested just trying to loose a little bit. He said the people who are successful at keeping it off are ones that loose it slowly.

What I find amazing is that even though it hasn't even been 2 months yet the weight I have lost has made me feel like a whole different person. I already have more energy and am not as winded as I used to be going up stairs. I'm still a VERY big person and have a LONG way to go but I am encouraged by the way I feel already.

Here is a link to some calculators that might help?

Halloween Electronics

2008-06-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm kinda funny about electronics stuff. I'm a computer programmer, I own a solder gun, and I subscribe to Nuts n Volts (electronic geek mag). But I'm really not all that much of a electronics nut. I write programs on a computer and use one every day but I HATE opening up the hardware and touching anything inside. What a pain that can be. I have been known to solder a few things together but if I had to solder each component onto a circuit board it probably wouldn't work and I would be bored. I subscribe to Nuts n Volts just for the ads but I just scan the real geeky articles. I have always maintained that I am more like the Jeff Goldblum character in The Fly when asked by his girlfriend if he is a genius for inventing such a machine and he says that he works with geniuses that build the parts that he puts together. Yea, as a kid I loved electronics (my Dad worked for Bell Telephone and brought home all kinds of stuff). I had a radio shack 101 electronics experiment kit that I fiddled with. I built my own strobe light and color organ from kits. In the 80's I preferred to assemble my own PC's than buy them assembled (mainly to save money). These days most electronic components are so cheap and readily available that you don't need to build much yourself just buy the right parts and connect them together.

So, lately I have gone a little crazy with a company called EFX-TEK that sells small micro controllers and accessories for building Halloween props. A couple of years ago I had 1 of their controllers and used it to make a animated head of a grave digger. Last year I got more ambitious and bought a few more and built a complicated footstep effect for the display. I had intentions of converting the gravedigger head to a more sophisticated controller with better programming but didn't. This year my big plan is to build an animated skull using a more advanced controller. After our last meeting with the guys the run the company in Utah I bought a few more parts to make another project that Chris wanted (those candles you light in a church). Now I have quite a collection of their controllers and accessories. I need to find projects for them all and the time to build them. Most of the interest I guess lies in the fact that the controllers are programmed in BASIC which I am VERY familiar with. Just build a cable here, connect a part there and before you know it, you have a cool effect. Well, I'm having fun at least.

The Road Trip

2008-06-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

We were invited to give our video effects seminar at a halloween gathering in Provo UT. Instead of flying I thought it would be a little cheaper and fun to drive.

We headed out after work on Thursday and drove to Penelton which is 3 hrs east. Stayed the night in a nice hotel (Holiday Inn Express). We drove the rest of the way to Provo on Friday. We stopped to eat lunch at a rest area and had to get gas a couple of times. We bought a GPS unit (TomTom) a couple weeks before and boy we were glad we did. I can't imagine making a road trip without one. It tells you how far you have to go and what time you will arrive. It will tell you how far to the next gas station and what hotels are ahead in the next town. It even tells you how fast you are going and if you over the speed limit.

We also bought a 12VDC cooler that we kept it plugged into an outlet in the back of the CRV. We didn't need to keep buying ice and everything stays dry. It was perfect for all our food and drinks for the trip.

We stayed in Provo until Sunday Afternoon when we headed home. We drove all the way to Ontario which is on the Idaho/Oregon Border. Stayed in the best hotel we could find which wasn't much. We then drove a few hours to La Grande where we met some haunt friends from Hauntcon for lunch. We then drove the rest of the way home.

It was kind of fun doing a long road trip. We hadn't done that in probably over 10-15 years. It was like the family trips we used to take when I was a kid. I'd love to do more of them but they really take a toll. I'd like to someday do a cross country trip and see some stuff.

Ashland

2008-05-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Just got back from our yearly trip to Ashland on Memorial Day Weekend. I always have a good time but this year it was even better.

The B&B we stay at called Oak Hill was TOTALLY EMPTY! No guests but us. We got to pick the best room of the house. The hosts Tom and Pat originally from Minnesota are fun to visit with and we were able to talk with them each morning at breakfast by ourselves. They even invited us to have a glass of wine with them and their friends Sunday evening.

This year we only saw 3 plays because there were no plays on Sunday evening. So we went to Jacksonville and had dinner at the Jacksonville Inn. It made for a earlier evening. We also decided not to make the drive up apple valley on the way back home Monday so we got home at a decent hour. The entire weekend was a lot less exhausting and more relaxing than usual.

I have a SONIC SCREWDRIVER!

2008-05-21T16:43:00.001-07:00

If you don't know what a sonic screwdriver is then you have never watched Dr. Who. This one is a replica from the new series. Turns out the prop makers of the show liked the design of the toy version so much they asked for the molds and now the show prop is the same as the toy.

I'm going to put this one in a plexi-glass case and keep it out in my shop. It will have a sign that says "open in case of emergency".

I have a new flashlight

2008-05-14T08:42:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I went to stay at my sisters new beachhouse in Ocean Park, WA. It was a old house that she and her man rebuilt into a nice 3 bedroom 2 bath vacation house. One of the cool things in Ocean Park is a big country store called Jacks Country Store. They have all kinds of stuff including some very unique old fashioned toys. I bought myself a "Space Boy" flashlight with morse code button and siren. Now who couldn't use one of these!

Haunted Houses

2008-04-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a 6 day trip that you can read about on our house blog www.davishousenews.blogspot.com . This anual trip inspires us for halloween. It is also a chance to see some of the best haunted houses in the country. The majority of the attendee's are haunted house owners and employees. So most of the conversation is about running the haunted house. I have always said that after talking with these people this isn't something I would do. Too many horror stories of asshole Fire Marshalls and strange customers. Besides I am not really turned on by making people pee their pants, barf or pass out. But what does turn me on is working on cool projects. One of the things I saw on our trips was a haunted house in a old Morturary. They had completely gutted it and rebuilt the inside. There was a lowered ceiling with wiring for sound, mics, and video everywhere. They had the COOLEST control room with a bunch of flats screen montors and racks of amps. They had some computer controls that managed all the mics, speakers and video. They showed a new exclusive effect that used CO2 fog shot down from a device in the ceiling then projected a video image on the fog. Got me thinking of all sorts of ideas for our halloween stuff. But this haunted house was one I could see myself getting interested in. As long as I didn't have to deal with the Fire Marshall or the customers.

PCS Tour

2008-04-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

I did something really fun on Monday night. I went on a technical tour of the theater at PCS . Chris and I have been members of the theater since it began in 1988 . When they built the new theater out of the old Armory downtown we had many offers to take tours of its construction and once completed last year we had invites to get a grand tour. We always put it off. Last week we got an invite to take a technical tour of the place with some other subscribers. I accepted.

The tour was arranged by Jessy Friedt and given by Creon Thorne the General Manager. Creon was involved in the design and construction of the new theater and knew every inch of the space. He gave us a great background on the historical building and all the LEED Certification details. But my favorite part and the reason for jumping at the chance to go was being able to see behind the scenes of the theater. I even brought my camera but was so interested in seeing everything that I never stoped to take a picture. Seeing all the lighting cables and fixtures brought back a flood of memories. The technical booth was very interesting (I wish we could have had some more time in there and a more detailed overview). I loved the feel you get when back stage. The notes left on the walls, the odd decor of the people who worked there. The feeling of family and creativity. I had a great time and the hour long tour just flashed by. I will have to remember to do that again.

Martian Child

2008-04-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hey, these posts keep getting longer? I'll make this one short. Watched a movie last night called Martian Child. Based on a award-winning short story by David Gerrold (wrote the Trouble with Tribbles episode of Star Trek) about his experience adopting a troubled young boy and raising him as a single parent. Chris picked it out and as usual it was really good. It stars John Cusack and his sister Joan which we both love. Great story. It was one of those movies that you are surprised that 2 hours flew by and it was already over.

Sometimes we all feel like we must be from another planet.

The Cats

2008-04-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

After posting about working from home it made me think about the cats. I am a big animal lover which is probably one of the biggest reasons I have stayed a vegetarian for over 20 years. As a kid we had dogs, cats, fish, Guinea pigs, and rabbits. As an adult I have had birds but mostly cats. I really love dogs but they are VERY demanding of your time and I hate the thought of not being able to devote the attention they deserve. So I have stuck with cats. They are very independent and can have quite the personality. I got married when I was 20 in 1983 and we got our first cat, Merlin an orange tabby, that same year. He was the only cat we had for many years so he was VERY spoiled. I liked to ruff house with him so he was a bit of a hunter of peoples ankles and fingers. When we lost him to old age at 19 it was like loosing a member of our family and I wasn't in a rush to replace him. By that time we had also lost a female friend of his named muffy a few years earlier We also had a female kitten Chris found at the side of the rode that became Merlins best buddy named Maddie. We lost Maddie to old age just over a year ago but before that we started a new generation of cats.

In 2005 while setting up the Halloween display that we do every year we found a new guest that had the great habit of sharpening his claws on the foam decorations we built. He was a VERY friendly black and white tuxedo cat. After I got laid off I started leaving food out for him which he would gobble up and then hang around and nap and then disappear. We named him "Halloween" or "Hal" for short. As the days started getting colder after Halloween he would follow me to the back door wanted to be held and petted. One day, since I was home alone during the day, I just let him in. At that time we just had our older cat Maddie. Who didn't like the idea of Hal being in the house much. Maddie had always been an indoor cat and hated the outdoors (OK really was terrified of a leaf dropping on her). She eventually warmed up to him after weeks of hissing. Hal loved living in the house and didn't want to go outside all winter. He and I hung out all the time. After year you could see that Hal REALLY wanted to play with Maddie but she was too old to be bothered. Around that time I was taking her to the vet every day to get fluid IV's because of her failing kidneys. One day the vet set a cage out in the waiting room and stuck 2 kittens in it. They put a sign on the cage that said free to good home. The sign said the kittens names were Dorie and Mason. I told Chris about the kittens and after a few days we went down to check them out and brought them home. They were just little things and afraid of everything. Hal took to them right away and Maddie who was already used to Hal really didn't care about them (she was having her own issues with life at that point). Dorie is a grey and white short hair and is VERY small. Mason is a black and white short hair and is HUGE. He has VERY large paws and even after a year is still growing. Hal has fun chasing them around the house and playing with their toys. The kittens just love the open house to play in and have really settled in. Because Hal used to live outdoors in the neighborhood we don't worry about letting him outside. He never goes far and he is always in a hurry to get back inside where the FOOD is. The kittens are curious about the outside and last summer got out a few times and had to be wrangled back into the house. We are trying to keep them as indoor cats since they have no idea what is out there and would end up getting hurt or lost.

Hal will never replace our orange tabby Merlin but he is a unique personality in another chapter of our life. Now that Dorie and Mason are both a part of this house my days are filled with interesting adventures of the cats. Hal wanting in and out during the nice spring and summer days. The kittens finding new and interesting things to play with and get into which keeps me on my toes.

Working from home

2008-04-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

Working from home isn't as great as it sounds. Sure, you get to dress how you want and can more or less set your own hours. But you also work alone. Or at least in my case. I don't have any kids and Chris works in an office all day. One of my friends will go to lunch with me once in a while just so I can talk with someone and get out in the world now and then. But sometimes I can go weeks without seeing anyone during the day. THAT can make you a little crazy. Surfing the internet is NOT a subsitute for real human interaction. I sometimes find myself be a little more chatty with the store clerks than I used to. Or if I haven't been around friends in a while I will catch myself dominating the conversation out of desperation.

The actual working is also a mixed blessing. No one disturbs me while I work (except for the occasional phone call) but I don't get to interact with my fellow employee's so I miss out on some of the work communication that goes on when cube hopping. You also don't get as much direction as you would within an office. This way of working isn't for the people who can't be self motivated.

Don't get me wrong I would take working from home over a normal office job any day. Not having to commute up to an hour to and from work, working in a sea of cubes, and conform to each and every corporate policy that is put in place is worth it.

I left my corporate job in November of 2005. I decided after 13 years of working for the same company to take a year off and do the things I didn't have time to do before. Turns out 12 months goes by pretty fast and you don't get as much done as you though you would. I worked as a contractor (which means you only get paid when you work) for a year before getting hired as a full time employee so technically I haven't really been working from home for very long. I will have to learn to deal with the few drawbacks to working this way as I continue to work from home.

My new blog

2008-04-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

I started a blog were I can post stuff that interests me. I wanted a place where I could post stuff that didn't have to do with work, my wife and I or about stuff that happens at our house. We have other places for that stuff.

I've always had a fondness for Robots and Space since i grew up watching men walk on the moon and the toys of my generation were all NASA related.

One of my favorite Robot characters is Floyd from Infocom's Planetfall . Back in the day I had numerous little robot figures on my computer monitor all one form or another of Floyd in my mind. I still think I have a copy of the game somewhere?