(Photo) shoppin' for happiness

[greatbear]

Here's a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the underground bunker at La Casa Mayhem. What am I doing, you might ask? Well, once again I am directing the full power of my fully operational battle station awesome IT infrastructure to bear on an innocent old man in hopes of making him cry again. In other words, I am fixing and printing more family photos lost to the fire at Jeff's parents' place.



He has "officially" moved in today, getting his permits signed off. Jeff's phone rang this evening, announcing the number as originating from the landline rather than dad's cell, something that made us both smile. There are some relatively minor tasks that need tending there, railings for the stairs into the basement, walkways and landscaping, some of which I will help with this weekend. The trailer gets moved back to its storage space in the driveway so the yard can be repaired and grass planted in remaining areas. Right now it's raining, and the yard is pretty much a mud bog. This is typical during construction. By mid summer, the place should be looking mighty fine. Dad can finally begin to relax and start making the new house a home.

I spent a bit of a beautiful yesterday trudging around in a junkyard auto dismantling and recycling facility yesterday helping a friend collect parts for one of his cars that recently got wrecked. I managed to find a rare item, a compass/mini trip computer out of a 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible. This is the same JA body series as my '00 Stratus, and I had wanted to hack the computer into the Strat, as it was never offered as an option. Today I took some time to tear into the dash and wiring, splicing wires and modifying the dash to accept the computer. Success! I also lucked out in that the yard also had a section which had tractors and other outdoor equipment, and I found a steering wheel that I could adapt to my old Gravely garden tractor. The original wheel is still available from Gravely, but it goes for a downright silly $160. 12 bucks later I had a perfect replacement which also got installed today while I did yearly maintenance on the tractor. So, garage duties today were productive.

My aforementioned friend and I go way back, to the 6th grade. For years he had operated his own auto repair shop, but hard times as well as disability forced him to close down. I took a lot of the equipment off his hands and set it up here at Mayhem, and there's still more to get as I make room for it. Sadly, he's not going to be in the business anymore, even the relatively short walk through the junkyard wore him out. His health has never been stellar, at 6'8" and 400-something pounds, all that weight finally is taking a toll on his well-being. While he has tried to address some issues, old habits (and a healthy appetite) are hard to break, and the lack of income and job opportunities keep him from obtaining medical help that could help. He says he is not going to undergo surgery on his back that is the major issue. I am far from a glowing example of successful back surgery, and I am one of the many examples of people he knows that are no better if not worse off after surgery. Still, he could be better off losing the ample belly he's had ever since I've known him. I've suggested it many times with no success. I worry about his future.

A week ago Jeff and I roused the pooches before the crack of dawn and took a weekday trip to the beach. We wanted to get Snickles accustomed to crowds, walking, other pets and the beach. Well, we hit on all points but the last. As it turned out, Rehoboth beach no longer allows dogs on the beach or boardwalks between Memorial Day and Labor day, and we missed the opportunity. We could've taken a trip north to the state park where the dogs are welcome, but that is a pretty quiet area and we wanted immersion education for da Snick. We were disappointed, but rather than waste the two-and-a-half hour trip, we hung out downtown and walked the dogs while doing some shopping and eating. Snickles did pretty good once he got acclimated to the surroundings. He's naturally very friendly with people, and surprisingly good with kids. He barks loudly at anyone on a bicycle. Little does he know the next step in his preparation for a Big Gay Life with us will involve not only getting used to Jeff and I on bikes, but riding along as well. I got a new pannier carrier for my bike as well as a made-for-the-purpose pet carrier which attaches. Kodi has his front-mounted carrier on Jeff's bike, with mine being a full suspension bike the best I could do is a rear mount. I will soon be taking the little guy for rides in the neighborhood. If that is a success, he and the rest of us will be ready to ride through the streets of PTown together, where the dogs are certain to be rock stars. People got a kick out of Kodi riding with Jeff, a pair of pedaled pooches is certain to bring out the smiles of passerby. Not to mention hunk/babe magnets deluxe. ;-)

Comments

[dan4behr.livejournal.com]

Yay for barkers on bikes!!!
I can just see Sonny lasting all of 12 seconds before making a flying leap from a basket on a bike....

You managed to hack install a dash computer in your car and manage to have it work? Again, you sir, are a god.

Congrats on getting dad up and moved back into his new place! What a wonderful thing that I'm sure he'll appreciate - especially with restored memories to go along with the new.....

hugs...

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

These pet carriers come fitted with a clasp and short strap you attach to the dog's collar or harness to keep them inside and not jump out. It's short enough to keep them seated comfortably but not stand up. Snickels with his long legs will be stuck sitting no matter what. I just have to make sure he doesn't freak out. Kodi is fine and actually enjoys the ride. We'll see how the new pup does.

This dash computer was a simple hack, there were only five wires, switched and unswitched power, ground, and two data lines. The computer acts as a simple listener on the data lines, taking all the info on speed and fuel duty cycles, fuel tank level, outside air temp and other parameters already used by the engine control computer and turns that into mpg, distance to empty, trip odo, outside temp and other readings that are human readable. The only parameters the computer has self contained is a timer and the compass sensor. The tough part was taking apart the glued-together dash hood and cluster trim, I didn't need the wrong-color major dashboard piece, just the trim around the cluster, which is the only thing different. It looks factory. I'm just glad there was no unnecessary programming needed. Since the car is old, stuff was simpler back then.

I can't wait to give him the next batch of photos, plus his grandson/Jeff's nephew graduated from highschool and I printed another copy of a photo of him with dad when he was only about five, he loved that photo and was upset it was lost. He has his own copy as a graduation gift in 8x10 color glory. :-)

[mikiedoggie.livejournal.com]

That is quite the impressive work station setup.

Your plan for being doggie rock stars will undoubtedly go off beautifully. I want to see photos!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

This is where I have the servers and switches and all the other stuff that the rest of the computers and such in the house connect to.

I hope to have some good shots of all of us in PTown. Right now I am just hoping to get there!

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Aptly named workstation of doom

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

In my best Darth Vader voice, thank you.

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

Ooooh wee, I remember that space. It makes me smile to look at the photo. My office, computer room, retreat room, or whatever will be in what used to be a bedroom for a very small creature. Small is good, everything is at reach and for the first time, I'll have my own office. I didn't care for the notion at first, but now that the first machine has come to life, I'm seeing the advantages. One in particular is that being a person of great noise, I don't have to worry about disturbing Morgan when he is at work. I once accidentally fired off a fairly loud belch which was reproduced perfectly to every member of a conference call Morgan was on for the bank. I now peek in the room and look for the wee green light on the side of his head first before I even enter the room. Oh by the way. An arduino, compass board and color display shield costs next to nothing, runs on 12 volts and is easy to program with any language that is compatible with Linux.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The space is entirely different from when you saw it. It's all cleared out, the equipment on the lab bench redone, the computer corner was entirely rejiggered, I put these shelves to help consolidate this stuff in the corner. I got the bugs ironed out of the massive workstation and started using it again. I splurged on a high-end video card for it as well a couple weeks ago. It is more a workstation than a server, but I use it as both. The pair of quad core Xeons never break a sweat.

If you notice on the floor, there are a pair of big subwoofers, one for the 4.1 channel setup on the workstation, plus a 12 incher I use on the home theater receiver in the room. I am able to crank this up yet barely hear it upstairs. Jeff can sleep soundly and I can rock my ass off. There's about a kilowatt of audio power in that little room! It's nice to have my own little space. I can be quite noisy as well. =D

I want to jump into Arduino and R-Pi tinkering, but put it off as I work on other things. When winter rolls around and I spend less time outside, I will start more electronic tinkering. I need to work a bit on my programming chops too.