I was roped into sitting at the office this Saturday morning since our remote IT administrator wasn’t going to come up from Charlotte just to let the tech in to install a new network tape back-up deck.
So, of course, I am on time, my IT guy in Charlotte is ready to go, but the tech? Late, even called late to say he was going to be late, then left the new unit in Gaithersburg so he had to drive all the way there before heading to Silver Spring. (Run-on sentences are my specialty, by the way.)
Anyway, now I am here answering e-mail on a weekend, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. All the while, the sun is shining on a warm September day in your nation’s capital (where dissent is being crushed, as we speak, I’m sure).
I’ve been slow on the posts, myself, mostly because I’ve assumed the temporary role of director of the member services department here at the College. Two jobs for the price of one, you’ve got to love association management, right? So, it’s been a little hectic the last month or so.
But, hey, can’t complain, my beloved Nationals are still in the wild card hunt, and the Skins are 1-0 going into Dallas Monday night. So all is well in the world, at least until Tuesday morning.
Working on a Saturday?
Well, my Saturday? It started around midnight, with me at the kitchen table, soldering electronics in an attempt to convert a PC power supply into a clean 12V and 5V power source for some various electronics I need to power (specialty battery chargers, radio receivers, servos, etc.) Unfortunately, although the 5V source was good (consistent 5.68V unloaded, with a load that will drop some, but it’ll do), the 12V power was shot. It barely cranked out 10 volts, and the moment I hooked up my portable charger to it, that dropped to less than ten.
Since it’s supposed to be at least 11.5, I guess I know why the PC it used to be attached to died, huh?
For people who aren’t electronics nuts, volts and amps are like the water in your pipes. Volts are the water pressure, so to speak, and amps are how far you open the spigot. Multiply volts times amps, and you’ve got watts. Since your house voltage is set at 110V, for instance, and that light bulb in your front room is rated at 60 watts, you just use your high-school algebra skills to figure out the amps: 110 volts / 60 watts=1.8 Amps.
Knowing a little bit about electricity helps you figure out fun things about your home, too. Like 1 watt of power will cost you roughly $1.00 per year to drive (that’s a real convenient figure right now; soon, it will go way up due to fuel prices), so if you leave your 60-watt bulb on all the time, it costs you $60 a year.
Expensive light bulb!
Anyway, I’m going to go pick up a few 1-ohm resistors to put some load on the 5V side of the power supply to see if that will bump up the 12V side some. Heat dissapation will be a problem, but if I plan for it, it might give enough voltage for some of my electronics to use the 11V it might be able to put out at that point.
The nice thing was, Christy was right across the table from me, working on making some cards until about 2 in the morning. I’m a natural morning person, and working nights still feels weird.
Did some chores around the house after that, took a nap, and then around sunrise, I finished topping off the charge on five of my batteries, and took my GWS Slow Stick out for a spin in the field behind my house. It flew very nicely, with three 9-minute-ish flights, followed by two of about the same duration with higher-capacity battery packs that really let me unload at full throttle! Doing loops and hammerheads with the Slow Stick was really fun, graceful, and quite easy in a light wind. There are no ailerons on the aircraft, so I had to rely on dihedral to get the job done; nonetheless, it was a fun, relaxing morning. I’m looking forward to charging up the packs again and teaching Christy how to fly. She expressed an interest this morning, and I’m excited! I think she’ll pick it up quickly, particularly on this easy-to-fly plane.
In an hour or two, it will be time for me to go to sleep for the day, and do my little vampire routine. The nice thing is, I have another “day” in my weekend, then back to work Sunday night. I have a short airshow to fly in on Sunday, and back to the grind that night…
I, for one, am glad not to be working this Saturday! Sad that you have to, Tim. Get out of there soon and go spend some time with your family. I’m sure Lisa hates it when you have to work the weekend 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson
When is 60 minutes really 240 minutes?
Oh, a few hours at the office this weekend doesn’t compare to the two-day summit we held a week ago, requiring twenty hours or more in a small hotel basement conference room, with forty of my closest friends, discussing the ins-and-outs of prserving the profession for the future. Good times. Really.
In the end, the tech took forty-five minutes to install the back-up deck, but it took him more than three hours to get through mid-morning traffic on I-270 to get here so the little 60-minute exercise took nearly 4 hours! But, hey, I got to read the paper (since we had to take the network down to do the work, I wasn’t even able to check e-mail or rotate my Netflix selections. Critical work, you know.)
But we did enjoy the rest of the weekend – went to the zoo Sunday afternoon, most of the animals were even moving around which is a treat. Crowded though, and the line for the panda exhibit was too long. Little Maddie freaked out when one of the gorillas turned right toward us, but she perked up when we saw the tamarins in the small mammal house. But don’t get me started on the parking at the zoo. Ugh.
Hope we can see some photos from these airshows and back-yard test flights, Matt.
Let’s all have a good week.
Tim
Hard to shoot…
It’s hard for me to shoot photos while flying. I’ll have to coerce my better half into doing it some time 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Think of the clickthroughs
You could go the route of mounting a mini video camera on the plane, and posting some streaming video. That’d be cool. Or set a little digital camera to take photos every ten seconds or something.
By the way, Matt, since I am thinking of it, I’m going to be in Salt Lake City next May (yes, that’s a long ways off, but advance planning is this morning’s task, so it’s on my mind). We’re doing our annual meeting at the Grand America/Little America hotels there over Memorial Day weekend. Is the Barnson tribe in the vicinity? I’m all for a meet-up of old QOHS alums, if schedules can be worked out. (And it’s nine months from now, so if we can’t get the schedules worked out with this kind of lead time, then fate is working against us, I say.)
Yeah, I work there
I work in Salt Lake City, and we go there all the time. It’s a similar commute as from Gaithersburg to D.C.
Let’s definitely hook up when you come out. Send me details via email, and get on the social calendar? You’ll have to tell me what your favorite type of food is; we have some pretty good restaurants in town.
And my waistline tells me that I, and my family, love food 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson