July 2016

sat jul 2
A pick and a shovel.
The furnace next door was set in a depression in the floor so the air manifolds could be as big as they needed to be, and still fit under the ceiling. So when I took the furnace out, I was left with a hole in the floor, 6’x8’x18″ deep, that needed to be filled. That’s 2 1/2 cu-yds. And to fill it in, I needed to either truck back in the dirt I recently trucked out (from digging the trenches), or lower the whole floor by 2″ and fill the hole with it.
So I got out my pick and my shovel and I dug up and moved the top 2″ of the basement floor. Actually, it’s a work in progress, but it’s a hell of a start.

 

The metal plate (that holds the wooden linkage between the sickle bar mower’s gear case and the blade) was bent, and there were 2 ways to fix it.
1: un-bolt it, straighten the plate, and bolt it back together.
2: heat it up to red-hot and straighten it in place.
I chose door #1, and behind it, I found that my 27mm socket was just a tad bit too small, so I went looking for a 28mm socket. They either don’t make them, or the stores don’t stock them. So I bought a 1 1/8″ socket (28.575mm) and it was a tad bit too big. So I heated it up to red hot and straightened it in place.
Brute force: my specialty.

sun jul 3
Brutalized. That’s how my arms felt this morning. The rest of me felt fine, though, so I’ll take it, but I’m smart enough to know it’s a good day to take it easy. So I did, and I never broke a sweat all day long.

Mary, on the other hand, sweated all day long. She hasn’t weeded the rock garden next door for 2 years, and today was the day. She did it all by herself, and she did a good job of it.
Hey, Baby, can I buy you a creemee?

The sickle bar mower. Sometimes, I’m sick of it.
Today I made a spacer for the lateral draw bar so that, if I ever get it working, it won’t rattle around.
The PTO drive shaft is a square rod in a square hole and it’s supposed to slide smoothly on greased surfaces, but it was stuck. Really, really stuck. Not rattling at all.
So I got a big hammer and beat it apart, cleaned it up, and peered into the square hole. It’s a 1″x1″x20″ cast iron hole, and it’s curved about 1/16″ from straight. You can’t put a straight sword into a curved scabbard, so … somebody get me a grinder.

There have been 1600+ updates to the Master branch of the github linuxcnc repository since I tapped it last year. And the way Open Source works is: if you want your program to keep working, you have to stay up-to-date. So as long as I’m updating my OS, it’s a good time to re-sync my code with the Master. I did this once before and, in theory, it’s easy. But it’s also easy to screw up, and I don’t seem to have written down how I did it last time. So, in an abundance of caution, I read about a dozen articles about git branch/merge/pull/fetch/log/checkout before I held my breath and merged in all the updates. So far, so good.

the 4th of July
Some of the new apple trees are not doing well. All of them have at least a little bit of green growth, but none of them are what I’d call impressive, considering they’ve been in the ground for 6 weeks. It’s been dry: should I be watering them? They’re planted in your basic dirt: should I be fertilizing them? Today, I watered and fertilized them. Hey, it worked on the pumpkins.

It seems like a long time since I gathered everything I need for a motorcycle intercom, and we’ve still never actually tried it out on the road. Part of it is because Mary doesn’t ride with me very often, but part of it is because I know, deep down, that it isn’t going to work because, when it comes to my hearing, nothing ever works like it’s supposed to, and I was in no hurry to prove it.
But today was a beautiful day, and if there is one thing you absolutely MUST do on a beautiful 4th of july, it’s get on the motorcycle and get a creemee. So we wired ourselves up: Two lapel mikes mounted inside the helmets with velcro and a home-made staple. A transmitter. A receiver. Ear buds. We got totally tangled up in the wires when we got onto the machine. It was immediately obvious that there was way too much background noise, so she moved the mike onto her shirt, and it was a little better. It needs work, but it seems to be worth it. The bad news is that my processor batteries crapped out half-way thru the ride and I didn’t have a spare pair with me. I felt like a jackass.

tue jul 5
I seem to have a thing for obsolete computers.
My cnc machine was the cheapest computer money could buy – back in 2009.
My laptop was manufactured in 2010, declared obsolete in 2012, and I bought it surplus.
And today, the local high school sold off 200 iPads which it felt were too outdated for students. I snagged one for $80.
Then we celebrated with “thai pad” for dinner.

sun jul 10
In the green house basement, I’m tripping over all the piles of  debris lying around that’s got no place to go. Bricks. Wood. Garden tools. Paint cans. Wet cardboard. You name it, it’s underfoot. So I took a load to the dump and picked up some really nice swordfish steaks on the way home. Last summer at Lisa’s, they cooked beef directly on the coals and it was fabulous, so I thought I’d try it with the fish. It was neither ruined nor fabulous.

Friday, I put in a soaker hose on a timer along the south wall, where it’s dry. And then it rained all weekend. The plants needed it, but the people sure didn’t. Mary had wanted to go to a town fair in Craftsbury, but ended up cooped up inside instead. She’s not happy about it.

The hillside garden next door is overgrown with rugosa, and Mary is tired of mowing around it, so I took out the railroad ties that surround it and put them on the wood pile. THEN she told me she’s tired of mowing around the wood pile and she wants the RR ties next to her squashes, so I moved the RR ties again and then I moved the wood pile to the burn pile, even though it was soggy and rotten from being on the lawn, and underneath it all was the biggest toad you ever saw, wondering what the heck happened to his house. It made me sad.

I welded another 3-point hitch adapter for the sickle bar mower, because I made the first one too short. The wheel clearance was too small and the PTO linkage was too long and, frankly, if I had thought it through a little more thoroughly, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

wed jul 13
This c3pr crap has been going on forever. Today, I was stumped yet again about a problem that … wasn’t even a problem before I decided to upgrade my OS and sync to 2.7. Today, c3pr needed a special library because it uses kernel threads to do math. So I spent today making sure c3pr can do arccosine() in kernel space. Or, as I like to think of it, ‘in its head.’

I got rid of the furnace, the leaky oil tank, and the hot water tank at the scrap metal place in Hardwick. Back the truck up to the pile. Unload. Drive off. Wave at the attendant. Now THAT’s the way a dump ought to work!

I took my glasses back to the eye Dr and told them they ain’t right. She went thru several reasons why I should be seeing – if anything – BETTER than I used to and, when I insisted that I’m not, she took my glasses and – right in front of me! – brute force bent the left hand hinge and handed them back to me. And I’ve gotta admit that they’re better for near vision.
I thought it was odd that they didn’t do anything at all to actually measure the acuity of my vision. Seems like that would be the first thing you’d do when someone comes in complaining about their glasses.

thu jul 14
Today, I put the sickle bar mower on the tractor. It took about 2 hours and it didn’t go smoothly, but when it finally went together, everything fit. I cut a few trial swaths and it didn’t really do a very good job on the high grass, but I figured there’s probably a trick to it. So I parked it in the yard where Mary would be sure to notice it when she got home.

It was a hot day, so I took off on a round of errands on the motorcycle. Bank, hardware, gas, bread, mushrooms, a lot of open road, and a creemee, and when I got back, I did a little work next door.

I went back home and roused Mary for a demonstration of the sickle bar mower, and she was right on task: “Mow around that tree. Mow over the drain. Hey, you missed a spot!”
Remember that safety feature I told you about? The one where, if you try to mow an un-mowable object, a spring loaded release trips and the mower pivots out of the way so nothing breaks? And then you back up until it pivots back into place, engages the spring, and you’re good to go. On paper.
Anyway, I was taking a wide cut over the daylight drain, and the heavy drag force snapped the safety release, and it swung wide, just like it was designed to do. I realigned the tractor and backed up to pivot it back into place, but it locked up and I not only bent the frame, I ran over a nest of angry deer flies, and every single one of them bit me once, and then again for good measure. It was an ignominious end to a hot afternoon.

thu jul 21
A whole week without a blog entry. Missed me yet?
I decided I need a break from the broken sickle bar mower, and I moved it back into the garage to let it rest in peace for a few days. Then Mary decided to save herself 2 seconds by stepping over it instead of walking past it, and she tripped and fell hard on the ground. (Legal disclaimer: the mower was on My side of the garage when Ms Goderwis trespassed and tripped.) It could have been a lot worse, but she came away with an impressive bruise the size of a softball. I’d show it to you, but it’s something you can’t un-see.

I took out the rest of the hillside garden next door and got my hands full of rugosa prickles. I used the RR ties to enclose Mary’s squash bed.

I did most of the potable water plumbing next door  and got to the point where I’ve got to finish – actually finish! – the basement floor project so I can put in some permanent water tanks. I’ve been been avoiding this because it’s unpleasant, hard work, but I don’t see a way around it any more, so I rented a compactor, bought vapor barriers, wire brushed the foundation, and got some gravel. I couldn’t get through on the phone to arrange for a dump truck delivery,  so I took my own truck down to the gravel pit for a trial load. I’m telling you: rock weighs a LOT more than mulch does, and a yard of gravel flattened my suspension down to Nothing. Driving home on patched asphalt and dirt roads with bottomed out springs, I could have done a lot of damage, but I made it, and I decided that the delivery fee for a dump truck is probably a good investment after all.

Last night, we had pork chops and the beets, lettuce, garlic, squash, and cucumber were all fresh from our own garden.

fri jul 22
Oh, man … So little body, so many pains. Mornings hurt.

mon jul 25
According to my calculations, I need 8 yd of gravel to cover the basement floor, and they gave me 10 (plus my trial load). So I’ve got a pile of 11 yards of gravel on a tarp on the lawn, and I’ve got to get it into the basement. So I made a chute out of a piece of plywood, propped it up on cement blocks, and used the loader to dump the gravel thru the window. That was easy.

That night, it rained. Long and hard. And when the rain ran off the roof, it landed in the chute, and was funneled into the window, and it pooled up on the brand new vapor barrier, right under the pile of gravel I just brought in. So the next time you ask yourself ‘what’s the worst thing that can happen?,” there’s your answer, right there.
I decided this is one of those things that just can’t be fixed, so fuck it: It’ll eventually evaporate.

It’s a big pile, and it’s a little wheelbarrow, but it’s all I’ve got, so I got to work and, two 2-hour sessions later, I’m 2/3 done! I don’t look forward to it, but hey, it’s just manual labor and … what’s he worst thing that can happen? Well …
We’ve got the kids coming for a two night stay, and Mary was on her way to Burlington to pick them up. I was in the basement, loading my 21st wheelbarrow full of gravel, and smelling like a farm animal, And she texted me: “We don’t seem to have any hot water.”
So I quit digging and headed home, and the pipes were cold and the boiler was reading ‘ER4’: “24V not detected.” Fucking A!!
So I turned it off and then I turned it on, and it still said ER4. Shit!!
So I dug out the manual and I looked up the error, and it said: “turn it off and then turn it back on, and if that doesn’t work, get help.” Damn!!
So I turned it off and … waited and … turned it back on again and … it worked!
I took a cold sponge bath while the water heated up and took the motorcycle down to waterbury for a burger with the kids.
The hot water’s been fine ever since. I’m blaming it on a bolt of lightning.

C3pr has been brutal. You want to know what’s the worst thing that can happen?
For low latency, I need a realtime kernel, and therefore no nvidia drivers.
But I use openCV, with gpu acceleration which only works with nvidia drivers.
In other words, I am screwed, no matter what I do. So I’m going to punt: I’ll use the nvidia driver, and I’ll solve the latency problem … later.

thu jul 28
The pumpkins are looking healthy and vigorous, but there aren’t a lot of pumpkins. Just one, in fact. I got to thinking that ginormous pumpkins plants, like ginormous people, might have trouble mating, so I got a couple Q-tips and cross-pollinated the plants.
Would you rather be a bird, or a bee?

The apple trees are alive, and I know it because they’re being eaten alive by deer. So I got on the motorcycle and went looking for deer repellent. Agway was having a tent sale, and the first thing I laid eyes on was: deer repellent, $22 marked down to $5. Active ingredient: “Putrified egg solids.” I sprayed all the trees, and then washed my hands.

fri jul 29
This morning, I was reading 7Days, the local free alt-weekly, and it talked about a food truck parked at the Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro. Hill Farmstead, according to Beer Advocate Magazine, makes the best beer in the world, and the food truck, according to 7Days, makes the best pulled pork around, so I figured I would kill 2 birds with one stone, and went out for lunch.
There’s nothing like a full tank of gas and the wind in your hair on a beautiful day, except that the tank wasn’t full, and when the gauge started dropping, I went looking for gas instead of lunch and ended up in Glover instead of Greensboro. There are exactly 2 gas pumps in Glover. One was out of order, and the other one was about the same age as my motorcycle. They were like old lovers, and I was gassed up in no time.
I finally got to the brewery and had a pretty good beer and a really good sandwich and didn’t dribble on my shirt until the very end. I took the scenic route home.

sun jul 31
It was a beautiful day and Mary had ‘menu fatigue,’ as in: “I have no clue what’s for dinner.” I suggested Eisenhower steaks, with beans and salad from the garden, and she perked right up, except that we had no meat. So we got on the motorcycle, took dirt roads into Stowe, and haggled with the butcher about a piece of prime rib. Did you know that the thickness of a piece of rib steak has to be a multiple of the pitch of the cow’s ribs? Which is a perfect 1 3/4″. We rode the motorcycle home over the Notch, with a stop at the Long Trail Lounge’s ice cream window. I built a fire and a bed of coals, and topped it off with a layer of apple wood from a tree that fell over in a windstorm the day Kirsten was here. We googled it, and we got 2 pieces of advice:
1) cook it 10 minutes per side
2) cook it to 130º.
I compromised, and cooked it a little longer, and to a lower temperature, and it came out … Really rare. The lesson here: trust your thermometer, not your watch.

I finished the sickle bar mower – again. I put it together, tried it out, and it worked perfectly this time. It feels good to get another antique machine up and running, but I have to tell you that I don’t have a lot of use for a sickle bar mower, and I felt bad when I had to un-hook it and park it behind the trailer, because it’ll be awhile before I hook it back up again. Mary hinted that we could get rid of it, and I have to admit she’s got a point.

Despite all my bellyaching about the problems with c3pr, I’m in a good place again. Sure, latency is a big problem, but I’ve got the latest code merged in, I’m running in RT on Debian 8, it compiles, and I’m making a steady stream of incremental updates.
Do yourself a favor and watch a few Olympic table tennis matches this month.  Did you know: Out of the top 6 past Olympic medalists, 3 are named Wang, 1 is named Deng, and another is named Zhang. These guys are good.