Tis the season for Christmas cookies and our household has them aplenty. Here Sandy is messing up the kitchen.
Blog
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Friends Passing
Even in this day and age you can still miss the passing of an old friend. I found out my old roommate Bill Adams passed a couple of years ago. Brain cancer of all things. It makes one stop and think. The older I get the more I’m stunned by the revelation that life is finite, it will end one way or the other. And given my age the ride is well over half way done. I really don’t like to think of it but it’s the looming iceberg ahead and there’s no way to change course, no way to avert.
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Sandy’s Rock Art
So I married a girl with an artistic streak, talk about opposites attracting. I’m completely left brained seeing beauty in logic and science, my career in and addiction to computers is convincing evidence. Sandy is solidly right brained, social worker, loves beach sunsets, likes art and can paint. I can draw a pretty convincing stick figure… In any case I thought I’d showcase some of the art I see laying around the house, enjoy!
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Lumberjack Day
I’ll be the first to tell you I HATE removing trees and shrubs. It has nothing to do with the labor, it’s easier than moving the friggin bricks and it’s fun to play with chainsaws. It’s the fact that it’s green vegetation and I love trees. But in the name of progress and reclamation of the outdoor area the tree and shrub had to go. Looks amazingly more open now.
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Autumn Sunrise
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a morning person. But for whatever reason every now and again God sees fit to have me be awake to witness dawn breaking over this beautiful creation. It reminds me to try to make the most of the new day and that if there wasn’t darkness, you wouldn’t get to see this.
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More Bricks
As I was hauling more of these it occurred to me that they are going to have to be moved again, alas but only one more time. And I’ll have a skid steer to load and move them then. But I’m down to two pallets left so we’ve past half way mark. I’ll eventually get the stuff over to the city for the permit shortly, hopefully. In any case we made progress on the new patch.
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3D – Print – AAA Battery Holder
So from yesterday, we were discussing how to rotate your AAA batteries when you’re changing them out. While I love the idea of this item, it really doesn’t work as cool as it looks, if the battery slide is empty and one has to slide all the way down it tends to get sideways and you have to open/shake it around to get it where it needs to be. The cover doesn’t fit right either, just not tight enough. But despite the lack of a wow factor, it does the job we need it to in that if you put your dead batteries in the top, they will properly rotate assuming you take from the bottom to full the charger.
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Rechargeable Batteries
So for better or worse we’re kind of stuck with batteries. Wireless mice, flashlights, remotes galore. I personally feel it’s pretty wasteful to buy batteries and throw them out, just in my life alone I could have filled up a pretty good section of a land fill. So that leads me to rechargeable batteries. Now I’ve always loved the idea of rechargeable but in reality they just aren’t very good. But we’re starting to see progress.
Science Lesson
mAh means milliamp hour and is a unit that measures (electric) power over time. It is commonly used to measure the energy capacity of a battery. In general, the more mAh and the longer the battery capacity or battery life.
So with our knowledge of how these are measured we shop. Before science I went with Amazon Basic, I was wrong, they are a paltry 800 mAh and although they work, why not go for the max. To this end I’ve landed on EBL batteries that have 1100 mAh. Along with this is the smart charger, the smart portion of this is so you can leave batteries on the charger without ill effect. So I have 8 batteries that are fully charged and ready for duty. You take the old batteries out and put the fresh batteries in, then you need to rotate your batteries. This is so you spread out the charging cycles over the range of the batteries. How to do this? Tune in tomorrow where we use the 3D printer to help us with this.
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Monday Progress
I got a helper with the pavers today, knocked out another 100 today and have the build/stage area at 300 sq/ft. Tomorrow I’ll put everything together to get the permit for building the shed. Slowly but surely we’re getting there.
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Lazy Sunday
Well the weather was somewhat atrocious today. Rainy and cold and just a do nothing kind of day. So I studied, napped, watched football and installed The Last of Us 2 and Madden 21 on the PS4. Tomorrow it’s back to the grind but there will be paver relocation going on. We’re going to make it a productive week!
