Back Home Again....

And really tired.

And slightly short of breath.

And I'd knock down someone's grandma for a cigarette!

I also have a headache from the various meds, and 4 new ones to take.

One "anti-platelet" to prevent the stent from clogging up, two for "high blood pressure" which I've NEVER had (gonna talk to my regular Doctor about that tomorrow morning), and a different cholesterol lowering drug.

And.....

NO more smoking

NO more caffeine (we'll see about that one..)

GREATLY increased exercise when I'm able to get around better

LOSE ~50 pounds

NO driving for a few days (dear wife is taking me to Primary Care Provider tomorrow)

NO heavy lifting for a few months

NO stair climbing until cleared to do so (cool....keeps me OFF the launch platform!)

And a dietary change.

Since I married my sweetie, I *have* been eating much better than when I was by myself, so these coronary artery blockages probably go back years, and have been steadily closing down, and finally caught up with me.

Some of the weight gain I attribute to the workplace accident I suffered last August, which cut down my mobility in walking long distances.

When I was laid-off from Boeing back in 2009, and became a "House Husband", I dropped about 30 pounds, felt great, and my A1c was down to ~5.6 or so.

Within a few months of getting called back to work for the project's new owners, I'd gained the weight back, and my A1c was creeping upwards.

I respond very well to exercise to control my weight and diabetes, and I have to get back to the regimen I was on before I went back to work.

Early retirement is looking better every day.....

Three Stents, No Further Damage or Complicactions.

Just woke up a few minutes ago.They installed three stents, and told me everything elses was OK.

Nice be able to use a real keyboard again!

I'm in the hospital.....

Had a heart attack Friday night. Getting an angiogram and stent or two todoay.blogger on the hone sucks.

Happy Birthday, Col Cooper.

Jeff Cooper would have been 93 today.

Whole lotta good stuff over at Fr. Frog's place.

Rest easy, Jeff!

Spock vs Spock

Shamelessly pilfered from Tam.

Enjoy!!

The Nest Is Almost Empty Today......

The stepson and his girlfriend will be moving to the Fort Collins area at the end of the month, and her Dad (a really cool guy) got down here Saturday morning to load up her car and most of her stuff to haul back later today.

"The Kids" have been working pretty non-stop all week sorting things out, packing stuff up, and help her Dad load the truck. They made a really big dent over the weekend, and I'm astounded how much stuff they got loaded.

Her entire car is floor-to-ceiling with her belongings, and loaded on the flatbed he towed down here.

The box of his crew cab dually is completely packed, up to about 6 feet! He had plenty of tarps and tie downs, but I gave him a 4-pack of ratcheting cargo straps "just in case".

So, now that we're back from dinner, the hands have been shaken, the hugs exchanged, and we waved them off on their way to Fort Collins.

They're going to overnight in Las Vegas, and then finish the trip Monday.

She'll be coming back out here in two weeks to be Maid of Honor at her best friend's wedding, and then she and stepson will load up the rest of her/his/their stuff, and motor on out of Kaliforniastan.

I wish them well, but DAMN....they're taking BOTH dogs with them.

Looks like we'll have to start the puppy search again.....

Vacuum Tubes, a "Modern Aladdin's Lamp" by AT&T

Some of the early glass tubes used in transmitters were truly works of the glassblower's art.

When I worked at Fermilab, the RF Power Amplifiers used in the Booster and Main Accelerators used water-cooled metal-ceramic tubes made by Eimac.

They were 4CW100000X, indicating they had a Plate Dissipation of 100,000 Watts!

A quick look at the "Eimac" website doesn't show them listed anymore, so I'll have to get a hold of my buddy Dave who still works there and find out what they're using these days.

Anyway....a friend of mine sent me the link to this AT&T video about the Good Old Days.

Enjoy!

The Twelve Truths In Engineering

This was originally published as an April Fool's Day RFC, but I thought it was relevant to all of us who do geeky things.

Enjoy!

The Fundamental Truths


   (1)  It Has To Work.

   (2)  No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority,
        you can't increase the speed of light.

        (2a) (corollary). No matter how hard you try, you can't make a
             baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up
             *might* make it slower, but it won't make it happen any
             quicker.

   (3)  With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is
        not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they
        are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them
        as they fly overhead.

   (4)  Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor
        understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in
        networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither
        builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational
        network.

   (5)  It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems
        into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases
        this is a bad idea.

   (6)  It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving
        the problem to a different part of the overall network
        architecture) than it is to solve it.

        (6a) (corollary). It is always possible to add another level of
             indirection.

   (7)  It is always something

        (7a) (corollary). Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't
            have all three).

   (8)  It is more complicated than you think.

   (9)  For all resources, whatever it is, you need more.

       (9a) (corollary) Every networking problem always takes longer to
            solve than it seems like it should.

   (10) One size never fits all.

   (11) Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and
        a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.

        (11a) (corollary). See rule 6a.

   (12) In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there
        is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take
        away.

OUCH....Hard Drive Failure In My Weather System

Well.....Sunday afternoon I decided to clean all the dust bunnies out of the little PC that controls and logs the data from my Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station.

I shut it down, unplugged all the cables, took the cover off, and took it out on the back porch to blow the dust out like I've done many times before.

Yes, both the PC *and* the air gun were properly grounded. I've seen boards get blown out (pun intended) by blasting them with compressed air, which can generate quite a healthy static charge if the air gun isn't grounded.

Got it all cleaned, put it back together, and it wouldn't boot.

Going into the BIOS showed that it recognized a SATA drive was in there, but couldn't read it.

Thinking I'd maybe (crossed fingers!) knocked a cable loose, I pulled it out, took it apart again, and reseated all the cables.

No dice....

So, off to Newegg to order a new drive, as all the drives I have "in stock" were way too big to dedicate to this PC.

A new 120GB Samsung Solid-State Disk was installed, and I'm loading OpenSUSE 12.3 64-bit on it now.

Then I'll update it, download the wview software and all the special libraries it requires, and configure the whole shebang.

*IF* I'm lucky, I might be able to recover the archived data from the "failed" disk, and transfer it to the new SSD.

Otherwise, well......I "start the clock" all over again recording weather data, and sending it to the CWOP, and on to NOAA.

Really OLD Radio/Electrical Magazines

I was at a board meeting for my radio club this afternoon, and one of the board members had a sack of OLD magazines with him.

He saved them from the dumpster as he figured they have some historical value, and I agreed to scan them.

They're from 1911!

They're in remarkably good condition, but some have tape holding the covers on, and some of the pages are starting to deteriorate, so I'm going to be extra careful as I scan them.

After I get them all scanned, I'll make a DVD with the magazines in pdf format, and I'll also post them on the web if I can find a place that doesn't charge.

In the meantime, here's a scan of the cover of one of them.

RCA "Indian Head" Test Card et al

Most people call these a "Test Pattern", but this particular one is more accurately referred to as a "Test Card" since in the early days of television, it was printed on heavy card stock, and held or positioned in front of the camera.

Wikipedia (where else these days?) has a very good article on this particular RCA Test Card, along with some external links to a guy who found one of the originals in a dumpster back in 1970.

When I worked for DirecTV, we used one of these, showing how far technology has advanced sine the early days of TV.

The history of optical targets, or "test patterns" is quite interesting if you're geeky, and covers everything from the TV test patterns to the strange markings painted on aircraft and missiles to track them during flight, and conversely, strange patterns painted on the ground or roof tops to serve as resolution checks for high-flying cameras.