A Bit of Humor.....

Saw this on FarceBook and had to share it.....

Blessed Easter To You All

Rejoice, He Is Risen!

Having The Kids and The Little Guy over for burgers and stuff. We usually have a big family Easter gathering here, but not this year.

Y'all be safe out there!

Radio Control Car Guys Help Local Hospitals

One of the forums I'm a member of is the Arrma Forum for the Arrma brand of radio-controlled models. This is one of the BEST Internet Forums I've stumbled across, and I'm happy to be a member. Rather than in-fighting about who's little toy car is "best", "fastest" or "coolest", like several other radio-control forums I've visited, these guys help each other with tips, knowledge, and humor. "Dumb Newbie Questions" are promptly answered correctly, without prejudice, and the newcomer is welcomed. It's a great forum, and I've learned tons there, along with helping a bit by answering some electronics questions.

Besides all the tech advice, some of the forum members are quite creative at 3D printing. So much so that I've downloaded the required 3D design software so I can start learning about designing stuff again. I've had courses in AutoCad, and in high-school and college I took numerous "Drafting", "Mechanical Drawing", and several other "Graphics" courses. It helped me a LOT in my career, as I could crank out a properly dimensioned drawing, sketch, or schematic diagram in short order to get parts made, or for reference in the future.

These guys go far beyond that, and have started making "Ear Savers" for the hospital masks that health care workers are stuck wearing these days.

 Rather than having the elastic cord rub your ears all day, just use one of these:

How many you can print depends on how big the bed of your printer is, but one guy was printing nine at a time with his printer.

The stl file can be had here if you have a printer.


Pretty clever work from a bunch of "hobbyists", and they're giving them away by the dozen.

Well done, guys!

Just Trying To Keep Busy.....

Besides baking, house cleaning, garage cleaning, and goofing off with TLG, I've been quietly tinkering away on my Arrma Limitless "Speed Run" car.

The best it's done is 62.6MPH, and that was limited by the amount of room I had to run it in.

Following the advice of the guys on the Arrma Forum who have run these cars well over 120MPH, I trimmed down the front and rear spoilers to cut the drag down.

Arrma provided some molded in "cut lines", so I trimmed the front spoiler down to the lowest cut line.

And trimmed the rear spoiler down a little over half-way. The prevailing wisdom, proven by track testing, is the the rear wing has "way too much" downforce, which will push the rear of the car down. If that happens and the front hits a bump, the front of the car can lift, causing a "Blowover", like I'm sure you've seen with hydroplanes, and Top Fuel dragsters.

I'm going to trim the rear wing (more of a "spoiler" than a true wing) down one more line. I'm not entirely convinced you need to cut ALL of it out, as a bit of downforce makes the car more stable.

But too much is bad.....




I also took the center "spool" apart and shimmed all the slop out of it. It was grossly loose, with .05" clearance on the left side where the big silver washer is sitting, and .025" on the right side, where you can see a thin silver shim between the bearing and the thin red spacer.

And I ordered a set of driveshfts that are about .100" longer than stock, to get rid of most of the fore-and-aft slop as shown by the two pix below. One picture shows the shaft all the way forward, and the other shows it all the way aft in it's drive coupling.

Another trick is to put a small O-Ring into the drive coupling before you install the driveshaft. The O-Ring will fill the remaining space, and yet be soft enough to have some compliance to compensate for chassis flex.

And I installed a motor cooling fan using a 3D printed fan mount that one of my friends sent me.

After just a few runs the motor is getting to the "Ouch Point" when you touch it, indicating it's about 135*F. The little fan should keep that somewhat cooler.

And I installed a new motor mount plate and center spool mount made from billet aluminum.

The motor mount uses a screw thread to move it back and forth so you can set the gear lash precisely, and the other aluminum parts are both lighter and stiffer than the plastic parts they replaced.

Tonight I'll get started on making up the new wiring harness so I can install the upgraded speed controller.

Let There Be......Cornbread!

I decided to try my hand at something a bit different today, and it came out stunningly well.

This picture was taken literally 5 minutes after I pronounced it cool enough to eat.

This is the first time I've made a non-yeast type bread, so I was extremely careful not to over mix it. You have a fixed amount of leavening in it, and after it burns out, it better be baked! Mix your dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls, then dump the wet stuff into the dry stuff (W-Stoff and D-Stoff?) all at once. Whisk it all together just enough to combine it all and get all the dry stuff completely wetted by the wet stuff. It'll look more like a "batter" than a "dough". Dump it into a buttered glass baking dish, pop it into a preheated oven, and wait about 20 minutes. When the sides pull in and the top is brown, stick a knife in the middle, and if it comes out clean, you're done!

It came out with a nicely crunchy top crust, and a soft, moist inside with a great texture.

I'm calling this one "Outta The Park and Across The Parking Lot" good.

I've always liked cornbread, but this is the first time I've ever made it, and the first time since I was knee-high to a married grasshopper that I've had it fresh out of the oven.

Super simple to make, and you spend more time cleaning up and waiting for it to bake than you do actually making it.

Quick "Recon Run" Into Town

Well, it was actually a trip to the local Target/CVS to pick up some meds, but "Recon Run" just sounded so much more.....exciting!

Traffic was extremely light, as to be expected, and the Target was a ghost town. All the checkout lanes, and the Pharmacy pick-up lane, had "Social Distancing" stickers 6' apart on the floor tile, and the self check-out lanes had a little signpost telling you to stay out of the area until called. As soon as you were done using the keypad at the kiosk, a Target employee swooped in and wiped it all down. I was In-N-Out in about 15 minutes, almost a new record for me.

The one thing the struck me on this short trip was how many businesses are shuttered. Chipper's Lanes was completely empty, and normally at 1400 there'd be a bunch of cars in the lot. Several restaurants which had opened in the last few months are closed, most with signs listing their carry-out hours, if they offered it.

A few places had signs proclaiming they were still open, and to come on in.

Most of the gas stations I passed had NO cars at the pump, and maybe a person or two (that I could see) in their convenience stores.

The kids report that my favorite little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Laporte, Vern's Place, is carry-out only, as are all the other restaurants in their town.

So even out here in my part of "Flyover Country" things are pretty much closed down. Many relief funds are set up with either PayPal or GoFundMe asking for help for local groups, and I hear about them on the radio and from signs ate the places I've visited since Emperor Polis decide to shut down the whole freakin' state.

My SLW has a cold, so she went to the clinic yesterday to get checked out. Based on her symptoms, the Doctor said "It's a cold. You'll be fine", so she came back home and has decided to "self quarantine" for two weeks.

Uh-huh.......Don't know who she's trying to protect, but if it makes her feel "better".......you know the rest.....

And I crossed a million total page views sometime last night. Took a little over 11 years, and some of you get that many hits in a month or two.

Back to the basement. Got some parts in the mail for the "Bonneville Car", so off to install them.

Be safe!

Bizzare Total Page Count...

This is "one of those things" that we all see in life from time to time.

I know, it'll be over 1 million today, but "999,666" just seemed too strange not to comment on and record...

Quiet Sunday In A Typical Town

And what do we do? MAKE BREAD!

Ready to pop in the oven...

And out of the oven and cooling...

This batch is rye bread. I took my basic "Can't Screw It Up" white bread recipe, and substituted 1-1/2 cups of dark rye flower for an equal amount of the King Arthur Bread Flour I use, and added a couple of things to give it the distinctive "rye bread" flavor. 1tsp of dill seed, 2 tsp caraway seed, and 1tbs of Gulden's mustard.

And this is my first loaf of rye with an acceptable texture...

This batch was almost a disaster because of mistakes I made, but I recovered it on-the-fly with acceptable results. I was busy with The Little Guy because Sweet Little Wife made an "emergency run" to the drugstore. I started the chain-of-errors by leaving 1/2 cup of flour OUT of the ingredients as I added the water and Happy Joyous Bubbly Yeast to the mixture. As I was watching the timer I use to help with my mixing, I noticed that the dough hadn't become dough yet at the 4-minute mark, so I started adding some flour to get it right. It took almost 1/2 cup to get it right, and by then it had mixed six minutes, what I consider to be the upper limit before damaging the dough. I turned it out on the "lightly floured" breadboard, and cleaned and butter the mixing bowl. Popped it back in the oven at ~105*F and let it raise for 90 minutes. Turned it out, divided it, put it in the butter pans, and back in the oven for the second raise, covered with damp cloth.

The cloth stuck to it as it raised, and when I took the cloth off, the loaves deflated. ARRRRRGH!

Following advice from SLW, I took them out of the pans, kneaded them again, and put them back in the pans, this time "tented" with buttered aluminum foil.

They raised just fine again, and SLW put them in the oven when I was playing "Jump The Little Truck" with TLG.

She forgot to "liberally brush the tops of the loaves with warm water", and popped them in the oven when it hit 400*F. This kind of killed the nice, browned, crunchy top I was getting, but it baked OK, and tastes very great, mistakes and all. I'm just glad I caught the mistakes I made, otherwise we'd have two loaves of very thick "Rye Hardtack", which probably wouldn't have been eaten.

Anyway, we had a fun day playing games and R/C truck, and wound up with some bread, too.

And played with little trucks.....

Sorry, can't figure out how to snag the video SLW posted on the Book of Farces...

USNS Mercy Arrives in Los Angeles

I'm not sure who took the photo, as it was posted without attribution on an FB page.

AFAIK, the Mercy will be berthed directly behind the Iowa in San Pedro at the now vacant cruise ship terminal. Much more info can be found using your Google-Foo.

May God Bless and watch over her crew during these interesting times.

The Physical Therapist is quite happy with the improvement I'm showing, and so am I. I still have some pain, but it's not nearly as bad as it was a month or so  ago when all this started. Easily managed with the Naproxen and a bit of Tramadol "as required".

Overcast, cold, rainy day and evening here, so I'll think I'll go crank up the fireplace, grab the wife, and we'll watch a movie down in the den.

The Virtual Doctor's Visit

Almost a house call, if you will, although next time I do it I'll run a GigE cable between the router and the laptop to get rid of a lot of the lag.

Anyway....While I thought my lipids were "normal", he called them "A+", and commended me on keeping my weight down, eating a decent diet, and exercising.

My other blood work was also "outta the park good", so at least my basic blood chemistry machinery appears to be working properly.

I inquired about an EKG "for the record", and he informed me that they no longer do them yearly, but rather every three years now, same with a stress test.

We then talked about the lightheadedness and afternoon drop in BP, and reviewed my medications. Since my weight is staying down and I show no signs of edema, he's taking me off the furosemide ("Lasix") diuretic. He's a big supporter of "If You Don't NEED The Medication, Don't Take It", and I agree with that philosophy. That particular drug can cause low BP on it's own, so we'll knock it off the list for two weeks and see how I do. If I'm still having the same issues with my BP dropping too low, we'll cut the metoprolol ("Lopressor") in half and "reconvene" (there's that word again...) after another two weeks.

I'll admit, I should have been checking my BP regularly (and so should you!), and just didn't for no good reason. I'm also going to pick up one of the blood Oxygen sensors that clamps on your finger. It's another good data point to have, and those little things are only about $20. I think everybody should have one, and a good-quality Blood Pressure cuff, in their home "First Aid" kit.

Then I asked him if he thought I was sturdy enough to withstand hip replacement surgery later this year. He was pretty sure I was OK, but we'll do a stress test before he'll sign me off, as it's still major surgery and I WILL lose some blood (Type A Negative, donations accepted!), so he wants some more evaluation before he'll sign off on it.

And then we talked about the Corona Virus for a bit. He thinks it will peak here in the US in the next couple of weeks, hold for a week or so, and then start to drop. He told me it aerosolized, and spread by coughing and sneezing, and the virus can hang around for up to a week, so keep washing those hands, avoid crowds, and all the usual things you during flu season, but be more careful about doing them.

Be safe out there!

UH-Oh....Kung Flu is Here.....

Last I'd heard, we had two confirmed cases here in town. I haven't heard any stats for Larimer County, and last week I think there were 80something cases state-wide.

Today it got a bit closer.

I was scheduled to have my Cardiology appointment tomorrow, but the office called and said that "they" had gotten together and decided that "non-essential" office visits would be conducted on a "virtual" basis to limit exposure fot all involved.

SO...bust out my laptop, and fire it up so it's all updated and ready to go tomorrow.

I have a USB webcam, but I don't know if it's supported on this (Ubuntu/Debian based) platform, and I also don't have/can't find the little desk mic I used to use. Since my laptop has a built-in camera and microphone, it's a whole lot easier to get it up and running at this late hour vs scrambling around trying to jury-rig an older USB camera and some kind of microphone on this Linux rig.

Besides talking with my Cardiologist about whether I'm sturdy enough to do a hip replacement, I have a couple of other things I need to talk to him about, namely the blood pressure drops I seem to be having every afternoon. I noticed I was light-headed at times, and needed a nap around 1600. I got the BP cuff out of the closet, put some new batteries in it, and started monitoring my BP. Sure enough, around 1600 every day it would drop down to about 95/65 for an hour or so. It "normally" runs around 118/70, and my Primary Doctor had indicated last summer that she might cut the BP meds back a bit, so this needs to be addressed.

No word yet if the PT session will be cancelled. The exercises seem to be helping; it still hurts, but not as much.

Speaking of batteries, they seem to be in good supply in the stores here. I remember when batteries would go flying off the shelves at the first sign of an "emergency". Guess people are used to having extremely reliable power here. This might be a good time for all of us to check our battery stocks, and replace those that are stale. If you have the room in your refrigeration devices, cold-storage will extend their lives considerably.

Be safe out there!