Big Green Truck Pics 1

Blogger did it to me again, I typed this really interesting and funny text to go with the pictures and it somehow deletes it without a trace while uploading. Now I have to be brief.

We went to a party this weekend thrown by Marilyn for Family and Friends. Saw people I have not seen in years, and honestly, talked to some acquaintences more than I had sum total in all the time I knew them! Talked to some less than I would have liked, but it was bustling. Mike told me stories about games he would play as a kid in Brooklyn, mostly they revolved around some sort of punishment for the looser, very entertaining. I think we started talking about that because there was a water ballon toss that somehow became a water balloon fight. I don't think Mark started it though a little bird asked me "Why did Mark Start throwing water balloons at people?" I wasn't really paying attention to it but when I did look, I did see Mark peg a little kid, maybee age 3. Mark won I think. Party was good. The weather was great, company to, and the food was just right.

Being brief, the pics will show the catering truck. It was very cool, wood fired pizza oven, espresso machine, and ice cream served off the back. The tables tops become the side covers for the truck. Great looking and efficient.


 
 
 
  


 
 
 
  

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0

This is a post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is okay. It is not perfect, but what what do you expect for only $179.:-) I think it will take some getting used to have to speak in kind of a funny way. Hopefully it won't carry over to my normal speaking with human beings. You have two speak, and enunciate and a rather clear way. it is kind of weird talking and looking at the screen waiting for the words to appear. Right now, I don't have the hang of it and apparently the way I speak makes it have a lot of errors. You don't see that because I am using the commands to select the words and correcting them. It seems to be a little lag, he but I guess there is a lot of processing that goes on. I am running a sempon 2200 and it is not the fastest computer around. Even with all the corrections I had to do and I think it's faster than typing.

Road Warrior Mower, Free!

This is the coolest free thing I have gotten in at least a week! Sure it don't run but it will!

Specs:
Engine Briggs and Stratton
Model 190707
Type 0883-01
Code 75092211


 
 
 
  

Upgrade Harddrive

I ordered a 60 gig hd from newegg.com. I have to say that company does an excellent job. They ship super fast, and I have ordered hundreds of dollars of stuff, if not thousands and they have always come through quick.

I ordered the hard drive Friday and received it Monday. The pics are of the lifebook taken apart, and yes you have to take it apart to repace the hard drive. Thankfully there was this site on disassembly. It made the job less intimidating at least.

I got the new HD installed and put the b142 back together. I had forgotten what a pain win 98 was. I had to do the whole fdisk, and format etc, etc. Did the recovery with the floppy and fujitsu cd. Went pretty well actually.

I did try to install win 98se over the 98 install. Almost every pc card for sale has a minimum req listed as win 98se and it would be nice to use them. To make a long story short, it did not work out for me. I decided to live with it when I found I had a pcmcia wireless card that worked with the lifebook. I will settle for that.

Another cool thing happened this weekend. Some background first, I had wanted to upgrade the memory to 160mb from the 96mb it had. That meant I needed a 128 mb pc100 laptop memory card. I shopped around and for $25 - $30 I could get one. I just didn't want to do that on a $100 computer (yeah I spent $60 on a 60gig hd, but that is different, I can use that for something else:-) So moving on, Saturday I am out tagsaling and I go to this sale and they have a linksys wireless router forasale, I am chatting with the seller about it and notice a broken laptop in the garbage. I go through the "Are you throwing that out?" routine, well he gives me the laptop which is a t20 thinkpad, stripped but he says "hey, wait around and I will see if I have stuff for it". He comes back up and gives me the origional memory for the t20, a 128mb memory stick. Well it works perfect in the lifebook. I am happy now:-)

I am waiting for the lilliput monitor I bought off ebay (link is not the auction I won) to come. I am kinda disapointed in the seller, I paid paypal after doing the Buy It Now on July 30. No email notice for shipping or anything. Hopefully it will come in tomorrow.


 
 
  

Mostly Fixed

I installed the ccfl inverter from a case mod kit. It works but I only hooked it up to 2 of the 4 ccfl connections. It is a bit dim. I will eventually take it apart and maybee install a second case mod inverter I have to run the other 2 lamps. I am just pretty excited that my idea worked.

Broken Lcd Monitors for Free

Got a broken lcd monitor for free. It was taken out of service when it started smoking. I asked if I could take it and the reply was "You don't want it, it is going to burst into flames" or something like that. I took it anyway. Upon disassembly, and a rather easy disassembly at that the internals were rather straight forward, 1 Lcd screen assy. 3 circuit boards mounted on the case. The rightmost is the display board, the middle the power supply 12v and 5v, and the rightmost the high voltage inverter for the CCFL (Cold Cathode Florescent Light). The power supply showed some bulging caps and the inverter was burned. I pulled out the inverter and the power supply. They were nice enought to label the connection for the ground, 12v and 5v. I juryrigged a salvaged computer power supply for the 12v and 5 v and the display showed the "no sync" message. It looks like the display works, but no backlight because of the HV inverter. I think I might be able to repurpose something to power it, maybee a Case CCFL inverter. I am still looking into it. If I can get one cheap enought I will try it.



 
 
 
  

Ikea

Went to Ikea. Liked the idea of the Varda free standing kitchen stuff.
Bought a couple Trogdor units for kids.

 
 
 
  

Got Wood!

4 cords? We will see how it stacks up:-) Put in two tanks cutting it this weekend. Splitting green, non frozen wood is more work than I like to put into it. When it it frozen it is very nice to split. Maybee I will cut and stack it and wait till fall.

  

Sherline Lathe and Mill

I am happy to say I am the owner of a used sherline mill and lathe. One thing I have to say is they are really tiny! Have not really tried them out yet but they are pretty neat. I am going to have to put them on a suitable mounting surface. I have some decent cast iron bench legs and a decent heavy piece of scrap butcher block type table top that is rather small for anything else but should fit both the lathe and mill fine.


  

Fan Enclosure

I am almost done with building a fan enclosure to cool the lcd display on my projector project. I tried different ideas on CAD and this was as simple I could get in the time I felt like working on it. All I have to do is put a couple coats of polyurethane on it and mount the fans, and then mount it on the projector. I guess I am not really almost done.


 
 
  

Concrete Done

There, it's done. In the pics it looks like the concrete I poured is over dirt, it is not. It is actually on the rock foundation. The second pic shows it regraded, It has a slope away from the house now. Before it had a hump about 2 feet away that would catch the water and drain it into a hole next to the foundation and into the cellar. The 3rd pic is the grass and dirt I removed to create a slope away from the foundation. There is actually quite a bit there. Really.

 
 
  

Fixing the Walkout

Just one of many project I did the week of July 4th 2006. The end of the cellar steps was done really wrong. They poured the lip on dirt, no reinforcement. etc. etc.

Anyway I tried my best so I'll see what happens, they did the courtesy of dating their work, it was done 1994. Didn't even last 10 years (I have been putting up with this since we moved in 8 years ago)

Mine is at least on a solid footing, and with my regrading the slope of the yard AWAY from the house it should not be flooded like it was.


 
 
 
  

Making a Solar Panel, Of Sorts.

I got a deal on some old solar lawn lights. Solar lighted tires really. They had what appeared to be new nicd batteries in them. I recharged them and replaced them in the solar lawn ornaments and surprisingly they worked. Worked is rather misleading. Yes they made light but they illuminated nothing. No path could be lit by their upward shining 3 yellow leds. Anyway, their uselessness to me was enough to justify salvage. I could see 8 solar cells in each of the 4 solar tires and the idea that they charged their 2 AA batteries was enought to convince me that maybee at worst they could serve as battery chargers (That and the suggestion by Pete to do that).

Disassembly consisted of prying of the glued on "lense". Fortunately the attempt by the manufacturer to make it non servicable was betrayed by their choice of a adhesive that easily succumbed to a screwdrivers prying ability. Once the lid was off the rest broke down with 3 screws that mounted the so called reflector to the body.

The most interesting part was that the solar cells were glued down. Fortunately age and cheap glue made them easy to remove, the glue was barely sticking and the solar cells popped off easily.

Using hot glue to hold them in place I reinstalled the solar cells into 3 CD jewel cases. I am rather proud of myself for figuring out how to enclose them with what is basically a waste product in our society at this point.

Two of the jewel cases output roughly 6 volts. I did this for two reasons, the first is that they fit really nice in the jewel case, and second I could put them in series for a 12volt supply (really somthing like 13.6volts) to charge a 12 volt lead acid battery or for use with some item I have not decided on yet that needs 12 volts. The 3rd is the same 8 cells as on the original solar tire, I am going to try it as a 2 AA cell charger.

What I really want is a dirt cheap, and/or easy to make from salvaged parts charge controller that can handle any kind of battery charging task.






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