Orlando, FL

We had some very unsettled weather today! It was dry and sunny up until lunch time with occasional clouds blowing through. It was probably in the 80's when I went out for lunch.

After I came back, Fay went to Fairway to help Matthew Tang with his prices and to get him to sign an agreement with Frymaster. While she was out, some very dark clouds moved in. Craig returned to the office, but then it began to storm!

The winds blew very hard, it rained so hard I could not see the highway, and there was small hail. The rain blew in under the back doors! I had to mop it up. A lot of tree limbs were blown down and a house about a mile from the office had its roof blown off!

This evening for dinner we had a peppered pork loin that had been cooking in the crock pot all day long. We took Buddy for a short walk, but it looked like it was going to storm again, so we did not go very far.

Orlando, FL

The week seems to have gotten off to a good start. It was cooler when I took Buddy out for his morning walk.

When I arrived at work I found that the Chik-Fil-A Fairy had been there during the weekend and left a $20 bill and chicken strips coupons in my chair!

There were orders on the fax when I got to the office and we finished the day with $65k in new orders. Not bad for just a Monday! Manitowoc stock was down 38% from Friday after they announced that they did not know what they were going to do about their debt load from the Enodis acquisition - probably not a smart thing to say!

Chuhak and Sovel called today seeking the pricing on the Scotsman 500-pound flake-type ice machine. I told them I had been trying to get it since Wednesday of last week. Bob called Tony Wilcox himself and all of a sudden they have pricing ready for me. Assholes. I am sure Darden does not appreciate their fucking around like that.

When I got home this evening I saw that they jackhammered the side walks at the intersection of Pine Street and Lake Avenue and began pouring new, more up-to-date ramps at the crosswalk. I guess this will help the old folks get to and from Publix.

I am reading Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems On A Cocktail Napkin, written by three ODU professors. It is full of Fermi Problems whose solution can be estimated within an order of magnitude. It reads pretty easily, and I think I will have it finished by the end of the week.

Weekend

On Friday FER hosted the Edward Don Street Sales Monthly Meeting. There were about 20 people in the office and there were a number of people coming and going at all times. It is a little stressful because you have to keep an eye on all of them!

I left early. I went home at 4:00 PM after cleaning up the kitchen and mopping it out. When I came home I found Bobby making a chili for dinner. We took Buddy out for his evening walk and then we sat down for dinner.

During the rest of the evening we read the news and I hooked up the Motorola optical isolators to the Basic Stamp BOE just to see if they worked and could turn a seperate, electrically isolated circuit on and off. It worked.

Next I used the DS1620 thermometer in high-resolution mode. One strange thing about the 1620, was that the programmed high temp setpoints were going going off about 1.5°F early. I am not sure why.

Yesterday Bob pulled some recipes off of the Internet and we made gyros and a Greek salad for our dinner. It turned out very tasty! We had the leftovers for lunch today.

It was very windy yesterday - a front was approaching. This front brought some much-needed rain to Central Florida today. With the weather outside so crappy, we stayed indoors and did our laundry, and I worked with the Stamp some more.

Today I hooked the TAOS TSL230R back up to the Stamp and then I printed the neon/argon emission spectrum onto a transparency sheet. I cut the sheet into a strip 1/2 inch wide and I slowly pulled this strip across the sensor while it recorded the varying light levels to the Debug screen.

To keep it from recording all the levels while I was setting up, I programmed the Stamp to only record when the light level dropped below my arbitrarily set level of "250".



I copied and pasted the values from the Debug terminal into MS Excel and created a spectral profile in a chart. I superimposed the original spectrograph photo on top of the chart. I think it worked
pretty well! Take a look at the chart for yourself.

This chart shows the spectrum from about 700 nm on the left running down to about 350 nm on the right. The lower the line goes, the darker the light level it read off of the strip. The light intensity levels are just arbitary levels that the sensor returns to the Stamp.

I wish that I could have found a published, lab quality, profile from the Internet to lay next to this profile to see how accurate (or inaccurate) this was, but I could not find one. Perhaps I will make another one using fluorescent lighting and compare for accuracy.

This isn't the most sensitive set up in the world, but it shows that this sensor and Stamp combination can work as a microdensitometer - a machine that measured light intensity on photographic film for astronomers and cost tens of thousands of dollars in the 70's.

I think that if I pulled the strip through more slowly and at a more even speed, it would have recorded more accurately and more detail. I guess I will have to find a way to use the stepper motors to wind the strip across! Another source of inaccuracy is the fact that the sensor is not equally sensitive to all wavelengths of light. There is a chart with a curve on it in the sensor datasheet that I might have to take advantage of and compensate the measurements programatically.

We took Buddy out for his walk at 5:00 PM and then brought him inside, fed him, and then we went to Dexter's for dinner. We both ordered salads. I had a large Caribbean Jerk Chicken Salad.

When we returned home we started to clean the floors and fold up the towels. After I got the glass table tops dusted, Bob pulled the A/C air filter out and I tossed it into the trash chute -- it was clogged up!

Now we have to get ready for another hectic week.

Orlando, FL

Today was another exhausting day. While Fay got to leave at 3:00 PM to go to her thyroid doctor appointment, I did not get out of there until 6:35 PM!

Knowing I would not get out on time I called Bob to see if he was home yet. He was, but he was getting ready for his class. I asked him to get Buddy outside for a quick walk.

Craig was in the office today with his head all wrapped up. He had ALOT of swelling on the bridge of his nose and over both eyes. He said he was in a lot of throbbing pain too. I told him the doctor should have given him some kind of anti-inflamatory drug.

After I got home I took Buddy outside for a "just in case" walk, then we went to check the mail. When we returned to the house Buddy began eating the food in his bowl and I fried porkchops for my dinner and Bob's lunch tomorrow.

Now I am getting my blog caught up and working on a PBasic program for my Basic Stamp with DS1620 temperature sensor. Bob brought some transparency film from work and I want to print some test spectra on them, cut them into strips and pull them across the TSL230R light sensor and see if it is able to read the relative light intensities (I am betting it will).

Tomorrow we will have Edward Don street salesmen in our office. Most of them are obnoxious and I know that it will be stressful because Darden will be a demanding as ever and the people in the office will also expect us to wait on them.

At least we've made it to another weekend!

Orlando, FL

It's been a couple of very busy days for us at FER! Craig went to the doctor again yesterday to have the big crater in his forehead sewn up. It took 60 stitches to close it! He went home for the rest of the day after that!


My package of goodies from Parallax was delivered on Monday. I brought them home, but I really haven't had a time to plug any of them in and do anything new with them. Adel Tool Company shipped my Nibbler yesterday and it will be delivered on Friday. With the Adel Nibbler I will be able to precisely cut holes in plastic project enclosures from displays and buttons and switches to poke through. I am sure we will find lots of new uses for it too!

Still thinking alot about how I will build my spectroscope/monochromator and how to use the Basic Stamp to control it. I dug out a couple of very inexpensive digital cameras from my storage unit, and I think that after I have disassembled them, I can use one of the Basic Stamp output pins to trigger the shutter for automatic photos of the spectra. Then I can use the TAOS TSL230R on a stepper motor driven carriage to measure the relative intensity of each wavelength of light on the spectrum and record those values for plotting on an intensity vs wavelength chart - like the one posted here on the left.


This chart shows the spectrum of a fluorescent lamp. It runs from 300 nm on the left (ultraviolet) up to 700 nm on the right (infrared). The spikes on the graph agree with what I have seen myself using my primitive DVD minispectrograph (see the picture from the Coleman lantern). This information could be useful to me when it is time to calibrate the spectrograph or even create a scale for it.

I seem to find the most esoteric things to explore!

Tomorrow some big whig from Manitowoc is coming to visit our office. I will wear a nice pressed shirt and try to be shaved. Craig will be back in tomorrow too.

UPS delivered 14 boxes of stuff for the Edward Don meeting on Friday. These cases were full of cocktail mixers! They are going to use our kitchen for their meeting and they are going to discuss product that we don't even sell! Sheesh!

I accidentally found something else very interesting today on the Internet while doing searches for Palm Pilot software (yes, I am trying to resurrect my Palm m575) - Microsoft is continuing to develop the Basic programming language and they are fielding a new product called Small Basic aimed at helping kids and beginners learn to write computer programs. I shared a copy of it with Bob and I am playing with it a little too.

Weekend

This weekend I messed around with simple grating-type spectroscopes. I built a small reflective model out of black cardboard and a wedge of a DVD, and I built a transmissive model out of a Quaker oats box, two razor blades, electric tape, and a DVD with the label peeled off. The reflector was much easier to use.

We viewed various light sources through the spectroscope and I put the camera up to the viewing window and even took some pictures of what we saw, but taking pictures of the spectra was very difficult!

The picture here is the flourescent lamp in my Coleman camping lantern. The bright yellow line (it's actually two lines) comes from the mercury inside the tubes. The lines are curved because the DVD tracks are curved.

In the evening we went down to the street to walk Buddy and we took the mini spectroscope with us. Most of the lighting outside is flourescent lighting, but we also found sodium vapor street lamps, a mercury vapor insect repelling bulb, and even neon light tubes! Each type of bulb gives off a unique spectrum of light from the various materials it is made from.

I was hoping that the transmission-type scope would be easier to use and easier to photograph with, but it was a disappointment. I will try it again, but I have to buy a higher resolution grating from a scientific supply house first.

My order of small electronic components from Parallax is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I am expecting some shift registers, an op amp, a real-time clock chip, and a few other things. I took all of the electric stepper motor stuff off of the Board Of Education and set up the TAOS TSL230R light-to-frequency chip for some more testing.

I want to see if I can use the TSL230R as a sort of digital microdensitometer in a spectroscope. As a trial yesterday I printed out a colored strip with dark bands on it and I pulled it across the light sensor while I watched the intensity readings go up and down. So, that first primitive test looks like the idea could work!

Today we hung around the house until afternoon. Then we went to Altamonte and ate lunch at Salad Creations before going to Daytona. We mowed the yard at Tom's house. Bob mowed the front yard with the riding mower and I mowed the backyard with the push mower. Just as I was finishing up it began to rain!

Bob took the candy bars and chips into his parents. His mother was sleeping and he told his father he had to go back to Orlando for a work issue. I stayed in the car because I had no interest in seeing them this week. All they do is bitch and complain! Anyway, we were on our way back to Orlando shortly.

When we got home we took Buddy for his walk and it began to rain here while we were outside! Well, we surely need the rain, so no complaints from me! After this we made a dinner of fried sausages and and peppers and onions. Then we did out weekly housekeeping.

Now it is time to sleep and be ready for another exciting week.

Orlando, FL

I have been so tired these past couple of days. I am not sure if I am getting enough sleep or if the recent time change still has my internal clock messed up.

There were four new orders on the fax this morning. The FER-Orlando total is over $160k right now.

Chef Ryan came to the office today to use the mini-combi. He made shrimp, rice, lobster tail, scallops, fries, bread, salmon, and pin wheels.

Craig looks like Frankenstein right now with his forehead packed and taped up. But good news came today - the doctor got all of the malignancy and now they can close the opening up!

Bob began his music appreciation class this evening. He was on his way to the class as I was driving home. When I got home I found Buddy fed and watered and with his harness already on ready to go for his walk!

I fried pork chops for dinner this evening and I think I am going to try to get to bed early.

Dolphins at Seaworld of Orlando

See the marine mammals at Seaworld's Dolphin Cove blow circular rings of air under water and play with them! Here what the trainers and caretakers have to say about it.

This is just down the road from us. We will have to go and spend a day at Sea World soon!

Colbert Hosts ISS

Orlando, FL

Fay was out on vacation again today. Craig came in shortly after 8:00 AM, but he had to leave around 10:00 AM to go to the doctor for skin cancer excision. About 5 minutes after Craig left, Debbie finally showed up.

I went out at lunch to Zaxby's and got a chicken salad. I brought it back and ate it at my desk. Debbie went out shortly afterward. She said that she was going to her house to "let my children out and get something to eat". She took about an hour and a half.

She left around 3:30 in a big rush because her 941 payroll tax check bounced and she had to go home, get a deposit slip, and put more money into the bank.

About 5 minutes after she left, Craig returned.

He had to go back to the skin doctor tomorrow to have a tumor as big as a quarter removed from his skin. He has to go back each Tuesday for the next three weeks.

Bob is hurrying up reading his Music Appreciation book -- his course begins on Thursday!

AIG - Who's Getting Our Tax Money?

Weekend

On Friday Fay stayed home as planned. I went in early to go over the Darden New Campus quote that was causing so much heartburn. We needed to go over this before our 10:30 AM to meet with Steve Otto and Stephen Lee.




Nancy came in right at 8:00 AM and I had the coffee ready for her. I told her that she would be by herself for a couple of hours while we go over to Darden to help them un-fuck themselves.

Our meeting lasted about 45 minutes and Steve tried to impress on us how much pressure he was under to get this in on a tight time schedule. It's funny, and maybe it's just me, but it seems to be that nobody has time to do the job right, but everyone has time to go back and do it again.


They asked many questions that I did not have answers to, but I said I would request the information, or we just smiled and reassured them the items would deliver in time.


I was tired for the rest of the day. It takes alot out of you emotionally to have to go and face an important customer who is upset. Atleast they could not, or would not, bad-mouth ME to my face!


Fortunately for Nancy, and unfortunately for FER, the phones were very quiet while we were gone.


The rest of the day sailed by. When I got home Bob was making chicken breasts stuffed with mozzarella cheese for dinner. The first thing we do is take Buddy for his evening walk.


During the evening I continued working with the stepper motors. I was able to get a second stepping motor to work with the Darlington transistor array and the Basic Stamp, but I could not make two motors work at the same time (the Darlington has enough pins to drive two motors at once).


One thing I decided to do was tin the wires that I was plugging into the breadboard. They were very thin and they were fraying from the pushing and pulling. I got out the soldering iron and some solder and lightly coated the thin braided wires with silvery solder to hold them together tightly.


Later I moved the wires from the Stamp output pins around and was able to make the second set of Darlington output pins drive a motor, but not the top half. Finally I started to poke around in the code and sure enough, that is where the problem was -- and where I learned about OUTA(B,C,D) and DIRA(B,C,D). These commands specify the status of the Basic Stamp pins (Input or Output) and which pins the command applies to - A = 0-3, B = 4-7, C = 8-11, D = 12-15. Finally, I was able to drive two motors at the same time!

The good thing is that I learned another very basic command that I can use in the future as well as figuring out how to determine which wire powers which coil in stepping motors.

Buddy was starting to stink, so he got his first shower in three weeks and then I cleaned his ears out. I also clipped his dew claws back.


After this Bob wanted to go out, so we went to Altamont and ate lunch at Salad Creations. We had nice salads here. After this we went to Millenia to shop at Ikea. We listened to the Trends magazine CD from November 2008 on the way there.


Bob wanted to get additional storage for the office so that we could get our CD's and DVD's off of the floor and out of the way. With the floor cleared off we will be getting closer to the time when we can start building our Moddi Murphybed!


We chose two Effektiv storage units with roll-up tambour doors to run along the wall under the window. We also bought some small cardboard CD storage boxes for this. I have over 230 CD's and I knew I did not get enough boxes.


After Ikea we stopped at the Radio Shack on south Orange Avenue and I got some shielded quick wire connectors for my experimental power supply. Next we went to the SoDo SuperTarget store. This store was interesting. You park in a parking deck up on the roof of the store!

As we were walking to the escalator downstairs to the store we saw something VERY UNUSUAL! Shoppers on their way to their parked cars upstairs were walking their shopping carts to the escalator, then they pushed the cart into a little conveyor that ran parallel to the escalator. This conveyor towed the cart up an incline to the upper level!


The carts are returned to the store via a very large freight elevator.

By the time we got home it was time to take Buddy for another walk, but we had to carry our loot into the house first. We used our little folding hand truck for this.

Putting the new storage cabinets together would be my Sunday morning project. Fortunately it only takes me about 15 minutes to put each box together, but the roll-up doors took a little longer - Ikea did not drill holes in the panels for the screws!


For dinner this evening we had beanie weenies and Bob even found reduced carb baked beans in Publix! We had a nice fresh salad with our dinner. Then we went to the balcony to watch in vain for the space shuttle going up on its way to the International Space Station.


After this I ran the vacuum cleaner and cleaned the glass tables while Bob cleaned the kitchen and bath floors with the Swiffer.

It is hard to believe it, but the weekend is already over and it is time for another week of work!

Orlando, FL

The past couple of evenings I have been working with making a stepper motor work with the Basic Stamp driving it through a Darlington transistor array. First I used the Mitsumi motor that you can buy from Parallax and got it working. Then I tacked on the LCD and displayed direction of rotation. Finally I installed a bi-color LED that turns green for clockwise rotation and red for counter-clockwise rotation.

While digging through my storage unit on Tuesday locating a computer power cord for a power supply I am building, I found some old stepper motors that I salvaged from a 16-year-old fax machine and printer. I brought those home with me to try figure out which wires coming out of them were connected to which coil and which was the common ground wire.

Using my multimeter I measured the resistance from wire-to-wire and was able to easily determine which wire was the common ground for each motor. Determining which wire goes with which coil took trial-and-error.

A possible use for this set up would be for automating my screw advance box joint jig. Instead of cranking the handle and counting turns, all I would have to do is press a button, the Stamp would drive the motor the needed number of turns and hold the carriage still while I push the work through the saw. I hit the button and the Stamp/stepper advances the work again.

Work today was okay, but the afternoon was very stressful. Darden sends orders over and they contradict my quote, but they refer to my quote. When you ask for clarification you get a volcanic explosion from them. Tomorrow morning I have to go over there with Craig to help them un-fuck themselves.

Fay is taking the day off tomorrow. Nancy Baranet will be in to help answer phones and keep Fay's computer busy playing solitaire. I am sure my afternoon will be spent busily trying to catch everything back up.

Orlando, FL

Yesterday I left the Basic Stamp with TSL230R Light-To-Frequency sensor, 24LC128 EEPROM, and piezo speaker wired up on the breadboard in the bedroom window taking light intensity measurements every 3 seconds and logging the values to the EEPROM. After 12 hours and 15 minutes we had collected over 15,000 measurements!!

I took the Stamp to the office, plugged in the USB cable, and ran the data retrieval program, but it took over two hours to upload all of the measurements to the Basic Stamp Editor Debug Terminal. We went out to eat while this occured.

When we came home I tried to copy and paste the measurements to Excel so that I could chart them, but we found out (the hard way) that Debug can only hold 1024 lines! Most of the transferred data were lost! I was a little disappointed because I know that that many measurements would have made a really nice and smooth curve!

So, I had to re-write the data gathering program to take less than 1000 measurements. I figured that if the Stamp logged one measurement per minute, over thirteen hours it would amass 780 measurements, and this would fit into the Debug screen.

Another thing I changed was that I added a line to the LCD display so that it reads, "TRANSMITTING" on the first line, and "Address: 000542" on the second line. This way we know where we are in the data upload process. I figured the upload of 780 measurements would take less than 5 minutes, and I was right!

The chart shown at the right results from the light measurements collected today. This curve has a funny shape because I used a folded index card to shade the Stamp and the sensors. I did not want the sensor to get burned out by the sun! So, the curve is flat on top where the sun was behind the index card.

Craig is very worried about our sales. He said last week was the worst ever for FER. He thinks next month is going to be very lean for us. He got on a plane this evening to fly to Las Vegas for the Pizza Show. When he returns on Monday he has to go to the dermatologist to have more melanoma removed from his skin. He is unhappy about that.

Fay is going to be out on vacation Friday and Monday. Nancy Baranet will be helping me with the phones on Friday and Debbie is coming in on Monday.

I went to my storage unit today and got a power cord for my new switched power supply - an old computer power supply, but it can supply 5 volts and 12 volts to my projects. I also found a couple of stepper motors that I took out of an old fax machine, and an 8 ohm speaker. I am going to begin experimenting with operating motors from the Basic Stamp.

Buddy did not "get busy" during our walk this evening. Now he is licking my face and crying to go outside. I am going to take him before bed, but he needs to wait a little while. He needs to understand that walks are not just for his entertainment.

Eastern Standard Time

On Friday evening we were walking Buddy downtown. We walked through Church Street Station and back down Central Boulevard. As we were passing the Orlando Public Library, Buddy jumped up onto the short concrete wall to chase a squirrel up a tree in the planter. Soon he jumped down and we continued east in front of the library.

Before we were past the library he decided to jump up over the low concrete wall again. This time, as he was up over the wall he found a surprise - the wall drops straight down 14 feet on the other side!! A quick pull of his leash brought him back to safety on the side walk. We now refer to his harness as the "safety harness" since he is such a trick dog!

We had sliced up sausages with green peppers, red peppers, and onions fried up in the wok for dinner Friday night.

We managed to sleep in past 8:00 AM on Saturday. After walking the dog we had a breakfast of fried ground sausage with stirred up eggs poured over it and all fried together. It was tasty! We stayed in most of the day because I simply wanted to work with the Basic Stamp computer and master I2C communications, but we went out in the afternoon when Bob got a phone call telling him the pendant lamp we ordered for our track light rail in the dining room had come in.

We drove to Lightstyle to get the pendant lamp, then we went to Circuit City to check out the Epson printers. The Circuit City at Colonialtown was cleaned out (only two days left!), so we drove to the store in Millenia. As we drove up we found shoppers leaving the store with two and three printers in their carts!

This printer is a wireless model and it has a drawer to receive CD's and DVD's so that it can print directly onto their backs! This printer was $200 new, but due to the store closing sale, they were marked down to $50 on Friday. I guess the store had just marked them down again, because they were all gone when we got there! The only thing they had left was multiple copies of "Digital Video for Dummies".

We went back home and put our new lamp up over the dining table. We like the way it turned out and we are going to order another one for the dining table. We will cut the cord of the second one even shorter so that they are not symetrical.

I spent the afternoon working with my Basic Stamp trying to get it to communicate with the 24LC128 - a 16 kilobyte EEPROM chip that uses the I2C communications protocol. The nice thing about I2C is that you can communicate with multiple devices using only two of the input/output pins, but the trade off is more complicated programming.

By the end of the day I was successfully writing and reading from the EEPROM chip and then I modified my TSL230R light meter program to run for 13 hours and take a light reading every three seconds and write them to the 24LC128 EEPROM. I have the Board Of Education set up in our south-facing bedroom window, I have the wall wart power supply plugged into the floor (it would probably drain a battery to run all day), and I even made a little shade for the sensor with an index card so that the noon sun doesn't burn it out. This will record light levels from sunrise to sunset tomorrow - automatically.

See how complicated the wiring has gotten with a light-to-frequency sensor, a 16 kilobyte memory chip, an LCD, and a piezo speaker all connected to the Stamp?

We made a big pan of chili for dinner last night. The leftovers were eaten for lunch today.

Today we drove to Daytona Beach to visit Tom and Louise. We stopped at their house first. Bob ran the edger down the driveway while I changed the oil in his car. Then we went over to the nursing home.

We completely forgot about setting the clocks forward until we were on the way. We noticed that the cellphone clock did not agree with the clock in the car!

Tom wasn't feeling as sorry for himself as last time, but he still had plenty of complaints. For part of it I cannot blame him - he hasn't been shaved in days, he hasn't been showered in a week, and his bed has been broken since Christmas. Bob is going to call the administrator tomorrow to get her to fix some of this. Plus, he is thinking about calling the state anonymously to have a surprise inspection in the nursing home.

When we got home we walked Buddy, then we went back out to get some dinner. I had a salad and Bob had a stromboli at Metro Espresso Pizza. When we came home we started our weekly housekeeping. Bob ran the Swiffer Wet Jet and I vacuumed. Then I cleaned the glass tables.

These weekends are simply too short.

Colbert on Market Psychology

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Aurora Borealis, from Orbit

Orlando, FL

Today's picture shows the results of my little Basic Stamp data logging experiment. This morning I took the BS2 with TSL230 Light-to-Frequency circuit and a buzzer wired up on its breadboard lastnight and put the entire Board Of Education into the window and turned it on.

Every 30 seconds for an hour it would sample the light intensity striking the TSL230, and send the measurement to the BS2 as a frequency measurement. The BS2 would write the measurement to the 2KB EEPROM chip and then make the buzzer sound.

At the end of an hour the BS2 made the buzzer sound three times so that I knew it was done. Then I ran a different program that made the BS2 read the values in the EEPROM and transmit them to the debug terminal. After that I copied and pasted the numbers to MS Excel where I created this nice line chart.

I repeated the procedure this evening when I got home and let it automatically sample, record, beep, and repeat 120 times while we walked Buddy and ate our dinner.

The red line shows the progress of the sunrise. It spans 6:15 AM to 7:15 AM with each tick mark representing 30 seconds. The blue line shows the progress of the sunset from 5:55 PM to 6:55 PM. Nothing really surprising here - you expect it to get brighter during sunrise and darker during sunset, but a good skill building exercise for me anyway.

It would be interesting to write a different program that runs for 12 hours and gets the light intensity for the entire day.

Work was continuously busy today. Sales are still very weak. We ordered the seafood salad at Miller's Ale House and I went down there to get them. Nass showed up to install the Cleveland Range Mini Combi, but the technician had to leave to get parts. He said the oven will be installed tomorrow.

I am kinda wiped out tonight. I think I will be going to bed early to read my latest book: Buyology: Truth And Lies About Why We Buy. This is an interesting book about the mind and advertising/marketing.

Orlando, FL

Early this morning, like around 3 AM, I had a nightmare that Bank Of America had raised the interest rate on my credit card to 50.3%! I had a hard time getting back to sleep after that.

It was hard to get up out of bed at 5:30, pull on sweats and take Buddy for his walk. During our walk we saw a skinny cat walk up to the storm drain curb inlet and jump down inside. I guess he was going rat hunting!

As I was getting into the shower I saw myself in the mirror and noticed that a lot of my belly is now gone! What I am doing for my diet is working!

The day at work today was filled with the typical things that irritate me, but overall, I think it was a good day. Craig had a doctor appointment today to have more melanoma cut from his face. He came back in with large bandages on his forehead.

After walking Buddy this evening we sat down to a meal of peppered pork loin cooked slowly all day in the crock pot with diced tomatoes, okra, and mushrooms.

For the rest of the evening we were in the office at our computers. Bob worked at Rosetta Stone Spanish and I worked with my Basic Stamp.

My current Stamp project is a circuit that includes the TAOS TSL230R Light Intensity Sensor and a little piezo speaker. I have a program written that takes the frequency measurements from the sensor and logs them in the EEPROM memory. Later, another program can be run that reads the previously written values out of the memory to the terminal.

The program is set up to take a light sample every 30 seconds for a duration of one hour. It beeps after each measurement is written to memory so that I know it is working. This results in 120 records. I will put it in the window tomorrow morning and turn it on to record the sunrise. Then I will download the sunrise measurements and graph them in MS Excel.

When I come home from work I will put it in the window again and record the sunset. I will graph both events on the same graph and hopefully have the line graph posted here tomorrow as my picture.

You have to learn to crawl before you can walk or run, and I am steadily gaining practice using the Basic Stamp for little projects. There are a few advanced projects I would like to take on as I gain experience and more components.

Orlando, FL

It was cool and clear again today.

I was running late this morning and got to the office about 7 minutes late. Incredibly, I still beat Fay there by about 30 seconds!

We stayed pretty busy today. The phones were moderately busy. By the end of the day we'd added $105k to the purchase order log.

During lunch I took Betsy's check for $5 over to the SPCA. They could not stop thanking me! I picked up a salad on the way back to the office.

After my lunch, Fay went to BJ's during lunch. While she was out I managed to print the 330 page Process Control manual for the Basic Stamp. I brought it home and bound it with the Docubinder this evening.

It's going to be another cold and dry night. The Forest Service is very concerned about the potential for fires.

Orlando, FL

When the alarm went off this morning I did not feel like I had gotten enough rest. I really did not want to get up. I felt sore and I knew it was going to be cold outside.

I got up at 5:30 and took Buddy down to the street for his walk. Bob had to get up too because he had a meeting at 7:00 AM.

The picture posted today is somebody's temperature project using the Dallas Semiconductor DS1620 temperature sensor/thermostat. I like how it shows the various inputs on a graph in different colors and over the past 18 hours!

Today was sunny and cold. I stayed moderately busy. Fay stayed very busy. Evelyn came in today, but she mostly worked with Craig.

During lunch I went to Seven-11 and got a salad. I stopped at the Jiffy Lube next door to see how much it would cost to have my truck oil changed - $34! I guess I will be finding a way to do that myself.

This evening we had hot chicken wings for dinner. I feel like I have a sinus infection developing. I will take some decongestant tonight.

Things are probably going to be busy at the office over the next couple of days. We have a couple of people flying in from two different factories and Craig is having some lesions removed from his skin tomorrow too.

Weekend

FER-Orlando finished the week with $214k in new orders. Hollywood came in with $204k.

Craig said that he wants me to start going over to the meetings at Darden every Wednesday with him. I don't know what good that will do. Hell, they never made Didi go over there as often as I have!

My paycheck was deposited into my checking account at midnight Friday. On Saturday morning we had to go grocery shopping. We drove out to my storage unit to put things into storage and take things out of storage. Then we went to BJ's Wholesale Warehouse.

At BJ's I spent almost $300 on water, cases of Coke, hamburger, pork chops, cases of diced tomatoes, tomato paste, dog treats, two cases of yogurt, a big jar of shredded Parmesan cheese, three bags of cheese snacks, and other grocery items.

We packed all of the cold stuff together in a box and set everything in the bed of my truck. We went to SuperTarget next. Here I spent about $150 more on additional grocery items that we either did not need in bulk, or could not buy in bulk. Bob also got some DVD's and some new slacks.

We took all of our loot back home and carried the plastic bags upstairs. I got the folding hand truck out and took it down to the garage and stacked the boxes of cold stuff on it, three cases of water and Cokes, two cases of yogurt, etc etc on it -- probably about 200 pounds! This was easily rolled into the elevator and rolled into the house!

It took us most of the next hour to put the stuff away. The refrigerator and freezer are packed! I got the big plastic roll out and I broke the hamburger up into four, 1.5 pound packs to freeze, and I broke the family pack of pork chops into three, six chop packs.

Next we went to Skycraft, a local surplus electronics store, to look for components that would be suitable for use with my Basic Stamp. I picked up some leds, a few opto-isolators, and two solid-state relays.

We went back out to find Keto Crumbs - a low-carb breading material that I used once.

We tried Chamberlin's Natural Foods and we tried Whole Foods Market. No luck at either store. I do not care for either store because they are both very expensive. On the way home we stopped at Advance Auto Parts to get oil and oil filter for Bob's car. We will change the oil in his car next weekend in Daytona.

By the time we got home it was time to take Buddy for his evening walk. We took him around the lake for his walk. Back home we started a dinner of salad and grilled chicken strips.

After dinner I got my sewing box out and Bob put on his new slacks. I had to cut about an inch off of the bottom and hem them for him. This saved him having to take them to the dry cleaners to have it done!

For the rest of the evening we stayed in the office working at our computers. I was working with the Basic Stamp using the 2x16 LCD and the Memsic MX2125 accelerometer (tilt sensor).

Today we slept in until about 8:30. The only reason I got up then was because Buddy was whining to go outside. I took him for his walk while Bob got up, made coffee, and made me an omelet for breakfast.

By the time we returned the sky was going from sunny to very dark. The wind was picking up too! We got about 1/10-inch of rain today as a cold front went through. It is clear again, but much cooler now.

I guess March came in like a lion and we can look forward to it going out gently.

We went to Ikea today to get the last items to finish our office storage cabinet. After this we went across the road to DSW Shoes. I bought some black Sketchers that you can slip on and off to walk the dog in and possibly wear to work sometimes, and I got some nice new black leather square-toe dress shoes. I spent $117 on shoes today, but I needed new shoes.

We ate lunch at Zaxby's. Both of us had salads.

After lunch we went to the SuperTarget to get a small jar of tomato bruschetta and some Dr. Schoals for Bob. Then we went home.

For dinner this evening we had steamed broccoli and a baked spaghetti squash. Bob stirred the bruschetta into it with some mushrooms and cheese and we ate it like spaghetti. After dinner we loaded the dishwasher and began our weekly chores.

I vacuumed and cleaned the glass tables. Bob cleaned the kitchen floor and then he had to iron a shirt for work tomorrow.

The weekends are not long enough.