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At four in the morning the alarms went off. Lois hardly stirred, but I went downstairs to the
kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and then slogged my sorry ass to the control console, next to
the laundry room.
Red lights glared from the temperature control panel. The needles showed an overtemp in the
secondary thermocouple but normal temperatures in the primary, so I couldn’t tell if the
relay was actually over-heating or if the secondary had failed again. I dialed down the master
motor-control rheostat a couple of notches —losing precious
speed— but the warning light didn’t go out, so instead of doing
anything more I went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and waited until dawn.
I spent most of the day under the home. Replacing the thermocouple dimmed the warning light but I
could feel, just by a touch on its titanium casing, that the number three stepper motor was
running much too hot. I took the motor offline and spent a few hours tightening and replacing
coolant lines. I inspected the narrow yard-tall wheels on the rear outboard truck assembly and
ended up replacing the bearings on two of the twelve wheels.
Around noon Lois came down the stairs, shook her head and grinned at me. “Come on up for
lunch, Herb,” she said. It was a nice day, cool for summer, so we ate sandwiches and
watermelon on the veranda.
After lunch I climbed to the roof, and in the strong midday sun I dusted off the solar panels and
checked the alignment on the control linkage. I stood for a while admiring our new cupola, built
a few weeks ago toward the front of the house. It was expensive, but Lois and I both believed the
cupola completed our home.
Lois invited the Smiths from next-door over for supper. I grilled steaks on the patio while Bill
Smith drank my beer and Lois and Dorothy Smith sat gossiping. “Nice cupola, Herb,”
Bill said, gloating.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Sure,” Bill said. “That thing must weigh a couple tons.” Bill’s
home had been inching past mine for the last year. He’d gained nearly half a house on me.
“Lois and I love the cupola,” I said.
“You should have gotten the high-performance relays instead. Like I did,” Bill said.
“I think the cupola is beautiful!” Dorothy said with a smile.
After the Smiths left we cleaned up, and I went to the control console and moved the master
rheostat up a notch. No warning lights came on. The indicators showed that we’d moved a
little less than thirty-three inches that day.
At dusk Lois and I climbed the stairs to the cupola. We opened the windows, let the breeze in.
“Bill isn’t racing you, you know,” Lois said.
I put my arm around her shoulders. “The hell he isn’t,” I replied, and I kissed
her.
From the cupola we could see the neighborhood as it stretched toward the horizon, each home
moving at its own good speed. We were heading toward the sunset, the sky before us streaked with
red and gold and salmon. I was happy.
From the cupola I could see that, from here, it was all down hill.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The board of directors of embattled U.S. automaker General Motors Corp is
considering "all options" including bankruptcy, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's
website late on Friday.div class="feedflare" a
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liDell comes out with Mini 12 artist editionsliDeclining demand affecting notebook chassis
makersliDell exceeds profit forecasts with cost cuttingliLeft 4 Dead game now available
Mouille, mouille, paradis
Tout le monde est à l’abri
Il n’y a que mon p’tit frère
Qu’est assis dans la gouttière
Pour refroidir son p’tit fion
qu’ont ramoné vingt garçons.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles in the North Waziristan tribal
region of Pakistan killing at least four people, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.div
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Ian Lesnet sent in a link to his Bus Pirate project, a universal bus adapter that lets you
interface with most standard integrated circuit serial protocols at different voltages - all from
you PC's serial port. The idea is that you can debug, test, and prototype ideas a lot faster if
you don't have to breadboard an interface circuit every time you work with a new chip.
the bus pirate is a serial terminal bridge to multiple ic interface protocols. we type commands
into a serial terminal on the computer. the commands go to the bus pirate through the pc serial
port. the bus pirate talks to a microchip in the proper protocol, and returns the results to the
pc.
all pins output 3.3volts, but are 5volt tolerant. on-board 3.3volt and 5volt power supplies are
available to power the connected chip. software configurable i2c pull-up resistors complete the
package.
the serial terminal interface works with any system: pc, mac, linux, palm pilots, wince devices,
etc; no crapware required. we considered a usb device, but usb isn't compatible with the huge
number of hand-held devices that have a serial port. we also wanted a 3.3volt device with 5volt
tolerant inputs, but most popular through-hole usb microcontollers were 5volt parts (e.g. the
pic18fx550).
The device supports i2c, spi, uart/serial, and raw 2-wire and 3-wire. It looks like a pretty
handy little tool, and Ian has included all the information you need to build one of your own.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the eldest son -- and heir apparent -- of Libyan leader Col. Moammar
Gadhafi, said he'd like to see "shock treatment" democratization in his country, while his father
wants a slower pace.div class="feedflare" a
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Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the eldest son -- and heir apparent -- of Libyan leader Col. Moammar
Gadhafi, said he'd like to see "shock treatment" democratization in his country, while his father
wants a slower pace.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/edition_world/~4/it1kUqeTI_U"
height="1" width="1"/
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. banking regulators seized California banks Downey Savings and Loan and
PFF Bank amp; Trust late Friday as the housing crisis claimed two more victims from the financial
crisis.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=Piyakvym"img
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This is so weird. I just had to get a new MOBO (old one fried) and picked up an ASUS PQ5 Deluxe.
Everything is working great except for this one weird problem.
On the left (bottom) is the read firewire header. Over on the right are two USB headers which are
right up against each other.
The problem is all three of those headers are much larger than the back plate expander or my front
pannel connectors. If I try to plug into those, the 5 pin row of the connector will fit over the 4
pins on the header.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Nokia Corp plans to launch a mobile phone service in Japan next spring, a move
expected to intensify competition among Japanese cell phone carriers, Japanese daily Yomiuri
Shimbun reported on Saturday.div class="feedflare" a
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My dad bought one. And I think it nice. Access only through LAN and even from web if you have a
router since it have a FTP service.
I have a MyBook myself, a Firewire/USB edition , and I am ok with, I complained with the noise in
the beginning but I grew up with it as long I don't swapping much files with it.
I look for a MBWEII at Costco, it will be a backup module I will store at my parents domicile, to
secure my datas in case of fire or thief. Does Seagate's external drives have some equivalents?
Packt: "Nagios also offers a tool for sending passive check results for hosts and
services over a network. It is called NSCA (Nagios Service Check Acceptor). It can be used to send
results from one Nagios instance to another. It can also be used by third-party applications
running on different machines to send passive check results to a central Nagios server."
I'd like to take a friend on a date, I'm from LA so must be in LA or arround the surrounding areas.
I'm running out of places to take her and im at a brain fart right now. I'd like to take her
somewhere she can relieve some stress because she's been really worried about college and is
usually caught up in homework, so lets here your ideas!
Just a few days ago, TiVo announced that they have teamed up with Domino's Pizza and you will soon
be able to order a pizza with your television remote. Last week, several cable television companies
announced they were developing technologies that would allow people to interact with their friends
through their cable boxes, such as being able to instant message on the bottom or side of the
screen, while watching a sports game or television show. They said they had hopes to bring basic
social networking such as Facebook to your cable box as well. Getting back to the "Make Me A
Pizza," this leads me to wonder just how long it will be until we will be able to use the
location-based function of our cell phone to order a pizza. The "Make Me A Pizza and Bill My iTunes
Account" App may not be such a distant concept. Maybe we'll have it in 2009. :D http://deseretnews.com/article/0,5143,705263886,00.html
I have a quick, somewhat silly question that has been bugging me. Does anyone know how to set a
default zoom in Word 08? The default on new documents is 100%, and I always have to bump it up 150%
because I already spend a lot of time on my computer, and don't want to strain my eyes any further.
It's a small thing, but it just seems like there should be an equally small solution.
Well folks, Michael is AWOL this Friday, so although it’s late, I shall post my own Friday
Five on behalf of Michael since we’ve had this feature going for about a bajillion weeks in
a row. Here’s what’s shuffling on my faithful Mac tonight…
1. “Young Turks” - Rod Stewart. from Tonight I’m Yours: A
great piece of early 80’s pop from Mr. Stewart.
2. “God Knows What I Want” -
Moodswings, from Psychedelicatessen: the first two Moodswings albums are high on
my list of favorites. Total chill music, a lot of ambient instrumental stuff, interspersed with
some beautiful vocals like on this tune.
[See post to listen to audio]
3. “Brownie Hawkeye” -
Jason Collett, from Idols of Exile: I don’t listen to Jason enough. Always
enjoy the indie-pop stuff he has to offer.
[See post to listen to audio]
4. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” - Elvis Presley, from Elvis: 30 #1
Hits: Perfection. Timeless.
5. “One Step Up” -
Bruce Springsteen, from Love, Tears & Mystery: this is a great compilation
from Bruce’s Devils & Dust tour. This one’s from August 3rd, 2005 (my
25th, I mean 35th birthday).
[See post to listen to audio]
Your turn!! What’s shufflin’ in your corner of the world?
U.S. military engineers are trying to design flying robots disguised as insects that could one day
spy on enemies and conduct dangerous missions without risking lives.
Gas prices in the U.S. fall below $2 a gallondiv class="feedflare" a
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iOwn is the inventory management system for the iPhone and iPod Touch. With its versatile attribute
system and easy to use yet powerful interface, iOwn can be used to keep track of just about
anything. iOwn was designed with a simple goal in mind: to allow the user to create detailed
itemized lists of their possessions. From household items that you might want to keep inventory of
(for insurance reasons) to detailed information about your rare
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
