Family stuff / CJ’s T
19.Nov.05
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Well, I ended up working more than planned yesterday, but I did get some time when CJ got home from school and we got his Mini-T running. Or at least, stage 1 of it. He now knows how the body clips work, he can remove wheels and has a decent idea of what bearings do and how to work with them. His car runs nicely and we ran ‘em around in the street for a while chasing each other and such.
Later this morning I guess we’re all headed to the latest Harry Potter movie — the plan had been to go yesterday afternoon, but I just couldn’t quite get away from work so it was rescheduled. After that we just might have to work with the RC cars some more. I know CJ is chomping to get his bigger/gnarlier tires put on. Maybe we’ll look at doing the motor upgrade too. 
Family Stuff: Happy Birthday Son!
18.Nov.05
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Lots of family stuff yesterday.
Preface:
Wednesday night, the daughter and I went and picked up our new/used Air Hockey table (found it on craigslist). We have a lot of the wife’s family coming out around Christmas and we like to be the “fun” house to hang out. 
The air hockey goes well with the foosball table. It also worked out well yesterday with all the neighborhood boys over for the birthday.
My folks arrived yesterday a bit before noon. Dad ran over to the school to pick up CJ and take him out for lunch to celebrate his big 11th birthday. Then he got back and got drafted into helping me carry that air hockey table to the rec room and getting it set up. Probably not what he had in mind… After school, CJ invited all of his friends over for cake and ice cream, then they all disappeared downstairs to check out the new Gamecube game and … yep, air hockey. It was a big hit. Later on we all headed over to Pizza Hut. That’s where the birthday boy wanted to have supper. His aunt and uncle from Littleton came to town and joined us for supper. It was a good time.
One of the presents CJ hasn’t had a chance to mess with much yet is his very own Mini-T. I think it was a big surprise. He’d been asking for one and we’d been stalling him off… his eyes really lit up when he got it unwrapped! As a dad, I’m very excited that he has his own car now. As we do upgrades to it my hope is to begin teaching some basic automotive/mechanical prinicples. His “uncle” Hans sent over a bearing kit for it and his Aunt got him some nice tire and wheel upgrades. I have a spare “speed” motor as well, so we have lots of little projects to do on the car. FUN stuff. 
I just hope he can resist the urge to follow in my footsteps and crack the chasis in half in the first week. *cough*
As testing seemed to be going well, I attempted to take Thurs and Fri of this week as vaca to see my kids, wife and folks. Yesterday didn’t work out so well, in amongst all the stuff going on (above) I worked fairly steadily from 5:30 am until around 8:30pm. Maybe 8 hours steady, all told. I guess that’s a vacation day for this project. Wonder what today will bring? It looks like I need to be on a few conf calls and support something this afternoon. Hopefully they’ll give me a chance to hit Karl’s Deli with dad for lunch… good german food should come before work, right?
