The Manic Mechanic

Being that I am pretty close to being the most uninteresting person on Livejournal, I am going to sit out this year's installment of "March is 'Ask Me Anything' Month" unless there is any sort of demand. It's you call.

I'm declaring a meme. Well, if not a meme, a movement. An uprising. Or, well, nothing at all, really.

This is in line with the Infinite Cat Project. But it shows instead who the true geeks and science nerds are here. I call it The Infinite Radiometer Project. I have drawn my inspiration from Bill and Bruce, the latter planting the seeds of inspiration.



Knowing that there are a few science geeks reading, and a true science geek always has a radiometer handy, this should be easy.

Just in time for...( FYFF )

Happy Christmas everyone! ;)

This episode of Words! brought to you by mark_monroe and his killer smile.

1: Minis - I was always a fan of the tiny original British Minis. Living near (and practically in) Fort Meade during my youth I had a chance to see quite a few. When I heard the cars were being redesigned and destined for the U.S. market for the first time in decades, I was pretty sure I wanted one. When I finally saw them up close and personal, it was confirmed. In March of '03, I left the house and came back with a MINI Cooper S practically on a whim. The car is still a flat-out blast to drive, very practical and economical. And with the mods I made, pretty damn quick. I fell in with a huge group of enthusiasts and have been gathering by the hundreds in Deal's Gap NC for the Tail of the Dragon and nearby drives and events ever since. Lots of great people. And every single car is different.

2: Jeff - Though I have answered this one before, it goes without saying that he means the world to me. So a repeat is more than welcome.

3: Tinkering - A generic term I used for fixing, building, modifying or just plain geeking out in my various hobbies. Not specific to any particular size or type of job either, 'tinkering' might mean putting an addition on a house to changing a light bulb. Tinkering in it's many forms for me has been around since I was very young. The term comes from when I had "Tinkertoys" and various other engaging activity toys as a young'un.

4: Mechanic - An offshoot from all that tinkering, being naturally mechanically gifted meant that being a mechanic would be both a profession and a hobby. Repairing engines and cars well before I could legally drive them, hanging out with other guys building and working on cars and being naturally curious about anything mechanical in nature has made such endeavors almost instinctive.

5: Mom - She was everything to me. A parent, a friend, someone I could confide in. She taught me so much, and allowed me to make mistakes as well as take on responsibilities that taught me well, starting off very young. I thought she'd be around forever. I never thought for an instant that I would lose her in such a horrible fashion. I still miss her dearly, and my life still feels directionless since she's been gone. Oftentimes, I still don't believe she's really gone. Love ya, Mom.

How it works: Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!", and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your journal, and explain what they mean to you.

I decided to participate in a meme. No, it's not one of those pointless ones like "What Type Of Chemical Food Preservative Are You?". No, this is a typical though rare one that creates a genuine discussion/discovery among the LJ denizens. The rules:

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!", and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your journal, and explain what they mean to you.

This set of five is courtesy of champdaddy.

1: Hillside - The now notorious gay male campground in northern PA. Jeff and I have been going for over nine years now, and it's always a chance to relax, have a family reunion of sorts with friends and regulars, meet new people, and more often than not host some of our friends on our site. No shortage of good food, relaxation, pool time, mens, and, if one chooses, potential encounters. Guaranteed fun. Even if it's a rainy weekend.

2: Guns/Muscles - My earliest and still strongest (no pun intended) fetish. During single digit age, I was not sure why I spent more time looking at the bodybuilding adverts in the back of the comic books rather than the comics themselves, it began to make sense later in life. I wanted to be strong like those guys myself, and I was blessed with good genes that made me naturally strong and able to get good results working out. A big pair of arms will always make me take notice.

3: Radio - Music and electronics were a big part of my life starting as far back as I can remember. I listened to the radio constantly. I eventually got a shortwave set and immersed myself in foreign broadcasts, ham radio, exotic music and propaganda. I built my own sets, restored old ones and came up with some crazy stuff in my early double-digit age that looking back, I should have patented. "Boomboxes" before there were such things, etc. These days, however, radio is an over-commercialized wasteland of syndicated formulaic tripe, right-wing nutso talk, Jesus-cramming, and pointless talk for the most part. To counter this, I have my own low-power transmitters, and crank up my own playlists or retransmit my favorite net radio stations and podcasts. There's something cool about hearing music the same vintage as the radio that plays it.

4: Hard-on - In the case of males (and some females), who doesn't enjoy a good hard-on? Sometimes they might turn up at an inopportune time, but mostly it's often the result of some of life's greatest pleasures. They come highly recommended.

5: Jeff - What can I say? He's my world right now, my only family, and I love him to pieces. I know I drive him nuts at times, and things can get tense on rare occasions, but we have each other, and that's the best thing in the world for me.

That's it for now, I have a couple more of these to post. Don't be afraid to ask away.

The other day, while I was fixing up the basement workshop and tossing out junk, I ran across one of my geeky gadgets I would build on a whim. This one was from about 1980, it was my version of a portable FM stereo receiver. Not exactly portable by today's standards, it measures about 2x3x6 inches, built in a blue plastic project box. Tonight I decided to dust it off to see if it still works. It does, and I am reminded of just how I would engineer my audio gadgets. The thing has very high fidelity, and it's loud. This thing is but a small link in a high-decibel chain of audio gear that has left me with tinnitus these days. Oh well. Just crank it up over the background racket and enjoy.

As with most of my throw-together, experimental pursuits of the day, it lacks finish, with no labeling or dial scales, it is meant to simply function and not look like much. Like me:



Appropriately, when I first powered it on and began listening, the local JackFM station was playing music I would have heard on the radio when I had originally built it. I closed my eyes and listened to the Supertramp and Steve Miller Band coming through the cans and thought of better days. I then tuned it to the frequency of my FM transmitter connected to the studio PC and listened to my own choice of music, bereft of the insane compression and processing plaguing broadcast FM these days. It's such a treat.

I unwittingly took part in "Wifebeater Wednesday" with the photo too.

There's that 'Make yourself into a Superhero' meme running around. I gave it a shot. This is the best I could come up with. I can only dream of having a torso like this. At least I got the calves and forearms pretty close. ;)



I don't know how they come up with the hero's names. And since I could not find a wrench or soldering iron or TIG torch as an accessory, I figure I could save the world with my super retail therapy powers instead.

Edit: Create your own here.

My freshly-tattooed friend baeritone asked:

Other than your birth, what is the most important thing that's ever happened?

If I were to take the usual definitions of "important" in this case, such as significant, life-changing, lasting,, etc, it would have to be when I lost my Mom to cancer. Though this happened in June of '06, it still feels as though it's an event still happening, and at the same time, it feels so distant. Losing the most significant person in my life left me with profound changes, and many things I have yet to resolve. Granted, this is something one would never entirely 'get over', but I think I am beginning to find my place in the world, albeit slowly.

One aspect of Livejournal, at least how it's being used by most on my friends list, is how involving it can make one another in each of our lives. And in the scant few years it's been since I lost my mother, I have seen many of you go through the same experiences of losing parents and loved ones. At each time I get immediately transported back to those last weeks and days and relive those moments. The extraordinary feelings of sadness, loss and hopelessness is something one can never prepare for. And every time it happens, it's a reset to zero. Going through it once does not make going through it again any easier.

ptownnyc asked the following:

But seriously - just what exactly are you building in your basement? You are constantly adding more servers, etc. - what's it all for?

This falls sort of in line with the previous answer posting I guess. It often sounds like a lot, and I guess to some it is, but there are in reality only two servers now and there was a big upgrade to the network that went in about the same time, this was all done in an effort to bring all that stuff into this century and make it usable for many years to come.

Some background info I guess will help here. My basement is actually set up in two sections. There is the big, unfinished part under the main house that has everything from my woodworking tools and workshop, the laundry area, a bit of a rumpus room setup, and the entire basement area itself that is piled up with boxes, lumber, old computers and electronic junk, furniture and accumulated cruft. The junk I am slowly dealing with, and as the weather gets nicer I am taking lots of it to the dump as well as to charity outfits. The smaller section of the basement exists under the sunroom, which originally was going to simply be a filled-in foundation until I figured it would actually be more effective to make an opening in the basement wall separating the two areas and make some use of the space. Since the floor of the sunroom drops a foot from the level of the house, the basement under the sunroom has a low ceiling. This 14x24ft area originally started out as a big closet space. The problem arose when my woodworking shop created so much dust it was impractical to have my electronics setup anywhere near it. I set up another workbench and moved all my electronics into a portion of the space under the sunroom. It was much cleaner there. I eventually finished off that third of the space to make it a sort of 'clean room' and to make it more comfortable in the winter as well (since the sunroom and upstairs woodstove do most if the work heating the upstairs, it gets cold in that damn basement when the heater is not running). This became known as The Lab Of Mayhem, a counterpart to the similarly named garage (and the name of my blog).

In the last couple years I've been putting forth a concerted effort in modernizing things around the house, including the home theater setup, the LAN, appliances, lighting, etc. Since a lot of this involved running lots of various cabling around, a convergence of seemingly unrelated projects started to happen. I wanted to finally have a network setup at home that was robust enough to handle high definition video, since I am soon buying a new big-screen TV for the home theater, I also added to the multi-room sound/music system at the same time, that prompted the running of TV cabling to finally bring the satellite programming into the studio and since the area where all the LAN and RF cabling was being overhauled, it was time to finally connect a phone line in the same wall plate, because I was putting the fax/printer in the hallway closet along with the color laser and running LAN cabling there as well the phone line was also added there, since the cabling was finally done in the studio I could now finish off the lights in the woodshop that would have blocked easy cable routing but now the upgraded lighting was too much for the original circuit it was on so I added two more branches and...

The paragraph above demonstrates also how my project planning goes, which usually means lots of balls in the air at one time. To make things a bit clearer, the home network is ready for just about anything I could ever throw at it, as well as being totally remote accessible. A hodgepodge of ancient computers and hubs and switches is now a tidy pair of servers, a single big managed switch and standardized cabling all at gigabit speeds. Much of the wiring for the home theater is all in place, all that is needed now is the toys. The workshop lighting is finally all installed after at least a decade, the area is nice and bright and I can work towards cleaning up and finishing off some areas of the basement. The unfinished section of the sunroom basement will become an office once all the crud is out and the drywall is up. The roof of the house and garage gets replaced this year (one of the few things I will not do myself simply because of time constraints). All this complicated-sounding work is an effort to finally simplify a lot of things here at the old homestead, so Jeff and I will be able to entertain guests and have some more free time. This is infrastructure improvements for day-to-day life. It's starting to pay off.

March is "Ask Me Anything" month!

Since I did this last year and out of the several hundred people apparently reading my blog a grand total of one person actually asked anything, I am gonna sit this one out. Y'all had yer chance and ya blew it. ;)

Since the greatest motivator of people seems to be telling them can't do something, if you manage to barge in with questions, I might be willing to give answers. I wont be holding my breath this time, however. I was all sorts of pretty blue shades previously.