I had my 43rd birthday on April 12th. For my birthday I got a pair of New Balance shoes, a pair of Levis, a pair of Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate and Hazelnut bars, a pair of Trolli worms bags. My wife wanted to do something special like the Wolf Lodge thing we did for her only not so depressing. However she couldn't think of anything good. She suggested going to Mideval times restaurant but I didn't want to pay around $200 just for a dinner show. She suggested going to PuttPutt and doing the Super Saturday special. However when she called to check on it, they weren't doing it anymore and they weren't even called PuttPutt anymore. So we went to Mr. Gattis for lunch and Panda Express for dinner. Mr. Gattis was my first job ever so it was sort of nostalgic. After leaving Panda we went into Game Crazy which was next door. They had a used old Xbox system cheap and lots of Xbox games cheap. Of course, our family is video game deprived so these older Xbox games are great for us. So we got an Xbox, 2 Dance mats, 4 games controllers, and like 15 games for around $150. We've been playing xbox games ever since. We're addicted to Burnout race car game. It's fun nudging the bots and even human competitors into oncoming traffic. Even my wife is getting into it! Ah the fun! For my birthday the family went to see a movie, "Horton Hears a Who". It was cute and very kid friendly unlike the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch movies were. Of course I had to yell at my oldest daughter at least once and apologize. So, my birthday this year didn't stink too bad.

I got some 280,000 mcd white LEDs. Yep 280k! I've played with them. I'm not sure they really are 28 candle power but they are pretty bright. They apparently have 3 led chips inside of one package as when you shine it on the wall it looks like 3 bright spots like war of the worlds aliens. I'm hoping to put them to use in my front doorway at my house as it's really a dark walk.

I've mentioned Prosper before and people have given me referrals. Thanks! So far nothing has panned out for me as far as the referrals go but it's interesting to see that people are looking at it. I'm down to $5700 owed left on my $6500 loan so that's like 22% paid. The loan is cool, but the clothes I bought with it are not selling so that's not cool. It turns out that ebay has raised their Final Value Fees (FVF) too. They're cheaper to list up front but they take like 9% for a FVF. That's really expensive so I'm not liking selling on ebay anymore. This is forcing me to check out other auction and selling sites. I think I'll look into Amazon and Bidz to see what it takes to sell there. I don't know if Yahoo is still going well but I may check them out too.

My mom and dad are into rocks! They want to make ?Cabishawns? I just think of it as rock jewelry. They may try to suck me into it which is fine. I thought it might be cool to go round with them to the arts & crafts shows selling the jewelry. That seems to be a popular thing to sell at shows like that. I may try to make some too to try to sell. I've been looking at the Art Clay Sterling Silver Clay but it's exensive stuff and probably not practical if we're trying to make money at it.

I got 4 packets of 5000 catchfly seeds on ebay. Catchfly plants are supposed to be pretty hot pink flower plants. I hope so. Anyway 4 packets of 5000 is 20k seeds! I put some around the big tree in my front yard, some in front of my bushes and some in a flower bed to the left of my house. I'm hoping it will look nice.

Shrinky Dink Gears

I found some ShrinkyDinks paper that can be run through an inkjet printer. I thought it looked like great fun, so I bought some on ebay. It took a while to arrive so I ran down to Hobby Lobby and picked up a couple of packs of it too. The two packs of it at Hobby Lobby were cheaper than one pack of it on ebay!

I then wrote some code in Postscript to draw gears on paper. I downloaded ghostscript and gsview so that I could code and view postscript on my computer screen instead of doing lots of printouts to test outputs. I was able to make a function to draw gears of a calculated size based on the tooth number and size. On each gear I put a number for the number of teeth each has to help me not have to count all the teeth each time.

I found out the hard way that the shrinky dink paper is not 8.5x11 inches but rather 8x10 inches and of course I printed on the wrong corner and wasted a sheet. So I adjusted my placement and all worked ok for the next sheet. grr.

I made the lines at 50% gray because when they shrink they get darker and if I start out at 100% black it doesn't dry and the lines smear.

Here's what my postscript gears output looks like:

Notice the output is all crammed in the upper left hand corner because this image is with 8.5x11 inch regular paper but the shrinky dink paper is really 8x10 inch size. You probably can't tell it from the picture but the lines are 50% gray.

I then carefully cut out the gears to just the outside of the black lines (so you still see the lines). I punched the center hole with a leather belt punch I had laying around. A regular paper hole punch is too big for my purposes. Them I put the cut out gears in my toaster oven at 300 degrees. It's fun watching them shrink! The small ones with teeth sizes of 12 or less work great and shrink with no problems. The bigger ones like 24 or 32 teeth came out egg shaped. I figured out that it was because it was sticking to the foil so I sprayed the foil with cooking spray and the next one came out round.

The gears always come out bowl shaped so I got a cassette case of all things and pushed them flat while they were still hot and malleable out of the oven. On one gear I smashed it too hard and it sort of squished out like squishing a marshmallow and ruined it. So I must be careful to flatten but not flatten too hard!

The process makes hard plastic gears about 1/16 inch thick. Thought about stacking three gears and gluing together for the pinion gear to make them match up to the bigger gear easier.

Here's some sample gears I created:

I then got a couple of push pins and put the gears on the wall for my test. I was able to spin the gears very well.

Here's an example of the gears on the wall with push pins:

You can kind of get an idea of the size with the push pins for your reference and from the 8.5x11 inch paper picture above to see how far they shrink. They shrink about 50%.

I hope to try making a pendulum clock if it is possible.

I hope you enjoyed this fun info. Try the buffet, we'll be here all week. Come again!

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I borrowed money on Prosper to buy a clothes lot to sell on ebay. Prosper is like the ebay of loans. So far the clothes hasn't been selling. :'-(

Both of my cars broke down. :-( On my truck, the starter went out along with a few other things. I was unable to get the starter off! It was nearly impossible so I just gave up on it. It has 210k miles anyway so it's no big loss. On my Buick, we were on our way to the Great Wolf lodge and the engine got hot and blew the head gasket again. It was up there in miles too so it's pretty much not worth fixing. So we have two dead cars sitting in front of my house right now. We'll probably donate them or sell them to someone who might want a couple of dead cars to fix up.

So, my dad had pitty on me and gave me his White '97 Buick Rivera. It's nice but old. We then got about $3k from our tax money back and $2k from my mother-in-law and bought a Red 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee from ViewPoint Bank from their auto auctions they have. It seems to be in pretty good condition with an 81 point inspection. We test drove it and it seems like the the engine and trans is OK so we bought it for $4.5k. We scoured a lot of car websites and lots and this jeep seems to be the best we could do. We love it!

Some of the car buying experiences have been eye opening. We went to Kia used sales and a Kia Rio 2005 was $14k to $16k. We then went to Kia new sales and found Kia Rio 2007 from $14k to $16k. Something seems inherently wrong about that. shrug. Anyway we asked about the advertised no payments until next year and they had no clue what we were talking about. We went home and right away saw the commercial that talked about it. Didn't want a Rio anyway.

We went to Trophy Nissan. We'll never go back there. We drove in and they herded us to park. They asked if it was our trade. I said no and so they herded us inside where other people in glass cubes with bulging eyes gave us looks like "save yourselves now - run away!" We sat in a glass cube for about 2 hours then they came and told us we had one car we could look at. It was a really ragged out old red chevy colbalt. Inside it was a smokers car complete with cig burns in the seats and a headliner that was coming down and stains on about everything. We drove it and they quoted us $17k. I told them not to waste my time and they said that it wouldn't be anywhere near that price. So they wanted us to give them $20 and said they would "run the numbers." They came back and told us it would be about $17k. I told them it was over and that they have wasted our time and our day and that I wanted my $20 back and that I was leaving. They wouldn't give me my $20 back! So I went up to their glass room and knocked on the door. They opened it and I said I'm leaving I want my $20 back. It probably took a good 20 minutes of doing that to get my $20 back. As I was leaving they yelled to me how about payments of $189 a month? Not even close. Why would I pay $17k for a 3 or 4 year old car and $189 payments a month? That doesn't make sense! I could buy a new car for that. I really hope other people aren't agreeing to deals like that!!! I hear that other people say that if you do bring your trade that they take your keys so that they can value the trade and then don't give you your car back like they did my $20. Man that experience was totally insane! They wasted my day! I'll never go back. Then, they called me back in a day or two and didn't have any better offer or apology. Sheesh! Steer clear of that insanity!

So anyway, now I have the joys of cleaning my new to me used cars and getting all the minor stuff fixed up so that they'll be in good shape to drive.

At work, they haven't had me travel in a while. I really wonder if this company will stay in business much longer. Our lead programmer left which makes me lose more confidence. They have me doing testing and some minor programming. I'm really glad because I really need to be having a computer career and not a tech support career. So, here's hoping.

Our church voted to have VBS in 3D this year! Yea! So hopefully it might actually happen. Now there's a lot of work ahead of me.

My mother-in-law got married. We filmed her wedding but I haven't edited the wedding video yet.

I tried to make a slightly bigger stirling engine but I didn't have much time and in the time I worked on it I couldn't get it to work. :-( It's hard doing stuff without quality time.

With our DVR I've been recording science shows and watching them late at night. I love my DVR.

Trying to get my Zoysia grass to grow again this year. Some of it from last year has come back but there's still lots of dirt patches. So I bought some more seed and am watering a lot. Hopefully, my grass will start coming around this year. Here's hoping.

I found some 280k mcd LEDs on ebay. No joke, it says 280,000mcd. I couldn't believe it. So I bought some. they should come in soon and I'll play with them.

I bought some black tire paint on ebay. Black tire paint is of course different than just armor all. It was a little expensive. It's hard to find, I'm not sure why. I painted my tires on the white car. It looks good! It's not glossy, it just makes the tires look like new tires again instead of old and gray. Cool.

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I still love my roomba vacuum. My wife loves it too and she's been telling all her friends and family about how much she loves it! Wow! I thought I'd have to be the one to extol the greatness of this device but she's totally sold on it. We joke about when dividing up the house cleaning work that, "I'll do the vacumming!" I highly recommend it!

We now have two albino hedgehogs at our house. I bought the first one (a male) and my daughter bought the second one (a female). We've been going pet crazy and buying pet stuff for them. My daughters are so happy. The only thing, is they mostly sleep during the day so they don't really do anything until about 10pm at night. That's about when the kids have to go to bed so they don't get to play with them much. They are interesting and cute and we wake them up and play with them anyway. Last night we put about 1/2" of water in the bathtub and let the girl romp around in it. She seems to like playing in the water for a little while then she gets board and wants out.

The hedgehogs love mealworms and they're about $4 at the pet store for about 35 large ones. I found on ebay a mealworm farm kit for $10 that's supposed to supply endless mealworms for next to nothing so I took the plunge. Mealworms are really the larval stage of the darkling beatle. So the process goes that the mealworms grow to the pupae state then to the beatle state, they lay gobs of eggs then die and the eggs hatch as the cycle goes. You put some bran or oat flakes in the bottom of a tub with a apple or potato slice every so often and that's about all there is to it. My wife's already wanting me to count all the worms to make sure non get out. Yeah right. I've been joking that I will be keeping the farm under her side of the bed.

So anyway, this pet stuff is what mostly has been keeping my attention lately.

I saw that RobotsAustralia was going to Pololu.com for some of his supplies and body plastic. I checked it out and what really took my notice was the laser acrylic cutting he was using. That seems very useful. Looks like a $50 minimum, tho, but could be cool for lots of exact, intricate, or many parts that need to reproduce exactly.

My truck broke down. I think it's the starter. I went to a few auto parts places and no one had it. My wife went to a place near her work, and they didn't have it either. I finally found one but wow, I didn't think it should have been such a problem to get a starter for a GMC pickup. I thought that was strange.

Our washing machine broke down. I've been trying to figure out the best one to get that will last the longest and be the most efficient. After talking with a bunch of people we decided to go with a front loader model. Uses less water & less electricity, the clothes come out dryer so the dryer machine doesn't have to dry as much saving electricity there too. The clothes are supposed to produce less lint since side loaders are supposed to be easier on your clothes, so your clothes last longer. Since it uses less water, we're hoping we won't have as many plumbing troubles as we've had in the past with clogs and slow draining. So it's more expensive but we're hoping that all those positives will make it worth while. I'll probably break down in a week! :-)

I still have a job but I'm wondering how long this company will hold on. Actually, the company has a military side that is doing well but our civilian side is doing poorly. We've had another layoff and this time it really hit close to home. I'm hoping they will move us to the military side or my time here doesn't seem to have a future. It's the best I have for now but I have my feelers out. There doesn't seem to be a lot of jobs out there so I'll probably go down with the ship. That's adding a lot of stress.

I'm wanting to work on stirling engines again. At work, me and another guy watched a bunch of youtube videos about them and I just keep getting the bug to play with them. It seems like they would make great little electric generators. Anyway, they are still on the back of my mind even though I don't seem to have time for them.

I'm still hoping that we can do the 3d vbs. I'll probably do a presentation of what I have come up with at our February church business meeting. I'm still hopeful it will work out. I've got a lot to do.

My mother in law got married. We filmed her wedding and I have to edit her wedding video. It's just another thing on the plate but I want to do it. I had a person call our house last night asking if we'd do their wedding video. Alas we turned them down and told them we are not doing it anymore because there's just no money in it. I really enjoyed doing wedding videos but it seemed we were making less than minimum wage so what's the point. Plus every once in a while there was always some weirdo bride-zilla bad apple that reared their ugly heads that really made you think it wasn't worth it. I'm glad I told the lady no, but I still have those fond memories and wish it could have worked out because most times I really enjoyed it.

I keep wanting to make electronic or robotic stuff but I just don't seem to have the time for it. Plus, after it has been a few weeks or months, all my good stuff seems to have been cleaned out of existence. It takes me so much time to locate it all again that by the time I have everything I need again (parts, pic burner, breadboard, etc) I no longer have the time for it again. It's like at one time I was wanting to build another grandfater clock rolling ball sculpture. I had the 6 foot frame built and the starting of the clock parts. I had the cpu board, electronics and even the software with multitasking and rf remote controller and i2c networking all all working. But then, life got in the way. Now it's just seems about impossible to get back to as everything has been moved around and I'm not sure where everything is anymore. Distractions are a killer of projects!

Some days I feel so smart and on the bleeding edge and other days I feel stupid and worthless. Is that normal? I may not impress anyone else, but some days I manage to do things that impress myself so I guess that's good enough.

I was shown this perceptivepixel website and thought it was cool enough to share. I don't know how practical it is as I wouldn't want to stand up all day at work waving my arms around but it's a lot of cool eye candy stuff to watch anyways!