So I Get My Kid’s MP3 Hand-me-Downs…
02.Apr.06
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Oh, the irony. I get my kids’ mp3 players when they upgrade. Well, ok — there’s a bit more to the story…
I recently took a survey for a vendor that we use at the day job. Part of the incentive to take the survey was the “some random survey taker will win an iPod” message. Ok, so I took 10 or 15 minutes and plowed through it. And lo and behold…. a few weeks later I am notified that I’ve won an iPod shuffle.
Back last Christmas, the daughter was hinting that she’d really like an iPod as a gift. As a tightwad father, I have to confess I didn’t see the need to spend gobs more money on one brand of mp3 player than other brands that did more, held more and were cheaper. Sorry, I’m just not quite ready to spend extra money for the logo. In discussing this with daughter, it turned out she was also quite interested in “the cube.” Looked at it, seemed like a great value and it became her present.
Turns out she hadn’t quite given up the dream of having an iPod… once she heard that I’d won the shuffle, she called dibs on it! On my shuffle. Oh, for shame… Well, the shuffle was 512 and her cube was 1GB. We toyed around with the notion of trying to return the shuffle at a large nationwide retailer and trade up to the Nano but frankly, the ethics of the thing bothered us all. So this afternoon we swapped.
I plug the thing into my laptop and suddenly realize I now have a 1GB USB drive. This thing holds a bunch of tunes but I can also throw all my utilities on it too. Now I have room to look into more of the portable apps too. Ok, I didn’t need the iPod that badly…
She Scores! & He Broke it!
09.Jan.06
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She Scores!
Daughter’s indoor soccer team had their first soccer game yesterday. In general, it didn’t go so well… they got smoked. However, there was a nice highlight though — she scored their only goal!
It was an interesting deal. The other team had too many fouls (6?) so our team got a “1v1″ run against the goalie. All the other folks had to be on the other side of the midfield. Daughter has the ball on the edge of the goalie “box”. When the whistle blows she can try and dribble and/or shoot and, of course, the goalie can come after her. Well, she took a step and kicked it. hard. But right at the goalie. However, the ball came off the goalie and right back to her! Showing a knack for thinking on her feet and using her head (*groan*) she headed the ball straight into the net. It was a great play!
He Broke it!
Gah. Broke the newly fast running Mini-T on Saturday. While going around a corner the left rear wheel was suddenly going in one direction and the rest of the car was cart-wheeling a different direction. I broke the “axle”. Picture:
(click for larger)
I guess you can admire the nice looking new aluminum rear arms (silver) and the aluminum bearing carrier (blue) that I had installed when I dropped in the new motor. Coming out of the bearing carrier is the remainder of the axle — it broke off a couple threads in.
Speaking of new motor, here’s a shot of it as well:
The Beast Raptor: corrected
06.Jan.06
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Earlier in the week, I posted about the new motor for my Mini-T:
My take on “the beast”? It is definitely faster than what I had, no doubts about it. But will it take on brushless motors? heck no. Doesn’t live up to that part of the hype. But I like it - a lot.
Well, I stand corrected. I hadn’t quite finished the install, the last bit of which involves a bit of 3-in-1 oil. Ran it a bit tonight and holy cow — it goes fast! I was happy before, now I’m ecstatic. 
The first non-tech post of the year
03.Jan.06
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I wonder when I became a technical blog? Reading my old entries from last year definitely showed much less “focus”. Ah well.
Our ferrets are continuing their efforts to bankrupt us. Last fall Shasta ate a small rubber worm which ended up (sorry for the medical lingo here) “blocking him up” and made him quite sick. Ended up in surgery and we had an $800 rubber worm in a baggie to show up for a bit. We’ve noticed Zeus having similar symptoms the last few days… *sigh* The missus took him to the vet today. No rubber worm this time, but 3 or 4 hairballs have him plugged up and sick. Same surgical procedure scheduled for tomorrow, but I don’t think we’ll show off the hairballs in a baggy this time.
Proud Father Moment: My youngest son can now officially start -and- pump all by himself when swinging! For those of you still pushing kids on swings, or looking forward to it (weirdos) you have no idea how exciting this news is.
My folks got me the Beast Raptor v2 motor (RC motor) for Christmas! Pretty exciting stuff, I’ve been reading about it for most of the past year. Getting that motor finally got me away from the computer and motivated to do some RC work. So that’s what I did for most of Saturday afternoon and a bit of Sunday. Had some rear aluminum arms and aluminum bearing carriers that needed installing, but some of the lower chassis screws were completely ground down… making it a bit of a pain. So Friday I got to the hobby shop and picked up some new screws, then Saturday drilled the mostly flattened heads out of the old ones and got to work.
Took a few hours, but by the time I was done Saturday I had the rear-end reassembled with all the aluminum (*bling*) stuff ready to go. And the motor was bolted in! Finished her up on Sunday and ran a couple battery packs through it. My take on “the beast”? It is definitely faster than what I had, no doubts about it. But will it take on brushless motors? heck no. Doesn’t live up to that part of the hype. But I like it - a lot. And middle son is excited too — he gets my old one!
Fun with pictures
25.Nov.05
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Check out what the folks at MyHeritage are up to on their beta site. Upload a picture to them and find out what celebrity you most look like by way of their nifty Cognitec technology.
Sounds neat and certainly is a fun diversion. But…
One picture of mine was alleged to look like Harrison Ford (rofl, hardly). So I tried another photo and was matched to James Hetfield… and the couple others I tried got no matches. Ah well. It would seem that facial expression makes a HUGE difference — as does wearing sun glasses. I’ve blown an enjoyable 30 minutes here now. Can’t claim to be overwhelmed by the technology, but it is kinda fun. 
