Kuz I said so

of dogs and renos

Mike — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:32:08 +0000

We’re taking a trip out to the west coast in a few weeks and unfortunately Maggie is not carry on. So we’ve been looking for a good place to board her. A couple of the neighbours have offered to look after her, and it’s very much appreciated. (Awesome neighbours here) but Maggie’s a spoiled brat and requires a lot of attention. And since she’s a big dog, she’s quite a handful.

Our two options remaining for the dog is a dog sitter, or take her to a kennel. Dog sitters are expensive… $45/day for 3 x 1/2 hour visits… not enough time for the dog I think. And I don’t want her in a kennel where she’s in a box all day long. She still sleeps in her kennel at night here and likes it just fine, but I’d rather her be able to roam during the day.

We found the perfect spot for Maggie… Harry and Rupert’s Hotel for Dogs We went out there sunday for a visit, and Maggie got to play with a dozen or so dogs, running around a large fenced in area. The dog run is over an acre for sure, and the sleeping quarters is a converted barn. Maggie will get an old horse stall all to herself. Rather a converted horse stall, it’s got a floor, bed, and her own food/water bowls. And it’s cheaper than expected… $40/day. That and there’s someone around 24 hours/day makes it a done deal.

It’s been a while since Maggie got to run around with a bunch of dogs off leash, and she did great! She was scared quite a bit at first, but soon managed to relax enough to play with another pup a bit. She was still quite excited/nervous as she was slobbery! Foot long string of drool pretty much the whole time there, and refused water even though it was really hot out. Never seen her do that before… I’m sure the anxiety will drop within a few hours of her being there and it would have been nice to spend a bit more time there to see, but it’s a busy place and our visit time was up.

So, dog’s taken care of for our trip, so that turns my attention back to the house and our soon to be arriving visitors…

I decided that I should put a quick fix on the downstairs bathroom… it’s needs an overhaul, and might as well get it done before company arrives. I would have liked to redo the shower, but there’s a line that you have to draw somewhere with these old houses as we are not doing a full gut on it.

I’ve got the drywall up, now it’s mud/tape time. Once I’ve got the primer on the walls, I’ll get on the flooring…

Here’s a few shots of the bathroom in progress, and a few shots of nap time.

New Oscilloscope

Mike — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:51:37 +0000

I bought a new oscilloscope off of eBay the other day. I’ve always had good luck with eBay and this purchase was no different. I ended up with a Tektronix 2246A; It’s a 100MHz analog scope from the late 80s.

My last scope was an old 2 channel 20MHz scope made by Brunnel Instruments. Not sure when it was made, but it’s old. It works just fine though. Actually, It works really well. So why do I need a new scope? Well, need doesn’t wander into my vocab very often, it’s more about want

The 2246A has 4 channels, it’s 100MHz, and just look at all those buttons! Had to have it But the added complexity of this machine means that I have no idea how to use it. Well, the ‘standard’ ops I can figure out… a scope is a scope when it comes to basics. But this one has menus, and soft keys, and all sorts of things that require a manual.

Since this scope was only in production for 1 year, and was end-of-life in 1999, Tektronix does not support it, repair it, or have any manuals for it. But the very helpful lady at the Tektronix help center recommended a number of places to find/buy manuals for it. EBay topped the list, but they were selling for $50… She also recommended the Boat Anchor Manual Archive (BAMA)… apparently it’s a place for people to dump scans of old docs and it’s all free… Cool, but no luck finding my scope’s manual. My scope didn’t get a lot of sales apparenlty and was not one of the most popular products. So not a lot of people out there who have a manual for it.

In the end, I found a site called qservice… it’s a very sketchy and old skool site. Actually they own a number of domains and one of them plays an awesome techo dance beat as when you hit the front page. lol. So my ‘run away’ spidey senses are in full alert, but I _need_ (yes need) the manual and they have it. They have an instant download for pdf feature and had the operation, service, and quick reference manual for about $12… sweet. Unfortunately, their unencrypted order page requires my full address, phone, and credit card info.. NOT going to happen… so I use my thow away email, and obviously fake home address, and select they PayPal payment option. Gotta love Paypal.

So I hit purchase, and paypal the guy $12, and wait for my download instructions. Turns out someone actually uploads the files to a server, and sets a unique username/password to a directory on the server. Wow… but, it works and I get my files. I also get a reply thru paypal from the site owner chiding me for giving a fake email/personal info. (How can he email me the download info if the email is fake he says, props to him for sending the info via paypal though, as he would have known I would have to have a real email address for that.)

I email him back, and we ended up having a bit of a discussion about how unsecured his site is, and that the email I gave him was real, and that it wasn’t him I didn’t trust, just his web site is very hackable… and I’m not about to put it all out there for someone to get. I also told him I got the files, and they looked awesome (and they are really good scans), and that if I needed any others I would buy from him again.

If you are looking for old manuals, it’s the place to go… just don’t use a credit card, and don’t give out any personal information. (I’d even suggest getting a throw away email) … the site is not to be trusted.

So, now I’ve got some great pdf manuals for my scope. It’s just going to take some time to read and learn all the advanced features and functions.

More Parts

Mike — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:35:19 +0000

I got another shipment of electronic components from Digikey.ca the other day.

Their ordering interface is crap. I spent many frustrating hours setting up order lists only to be confronted with the inability to combine them. Searching for parts is difficult, and all in all just a bad experience. But, they have a deal with Canada Customs, and shipping (including any customs charges) is $8 for UPS. I usually get the parts in 2 days. That is why I continue to use them.

Conversely, Mouser has an awesome UI. Save projects, share them, searching is quick and easy… it’s all very easy and almost fun to use. BUT the big downside is that the shipping is slower, and they don’t have a deal with customs, so the last order I had to pay $20 COD for those costs on top of their shipping charge (which was also only about $8 but for slower USPS)

Now that I’m familiar with Digikey’s new BOM manager, it’s major limitations, and how to work around them, it will be easier to reorder more parts as required. I’ll keep using Digikey because of the order fulfilment side of the process. I just hope they ’2.0′ their site some day soon.

With this last shipment, I have all the parts to build the remaining SSRs and the Ren-C for my display. Those links go to ChristmasInShirley’s wiki for all things automated display… it’s the best site I’ve found… tons of maintained info. So now I just need to wait for the remaining boards to arrive, and I’ll be able to finish up the electronics side of things.

The Ren-C is a board that allows my Grinch controller to work over the serial port rather than the parallel port, and adds dimming capabilities. It’s run by a PICMicro chip that needs to be programmed. It’s all out there (source files, howtos, etc) but I need to have the hardware and software to program the PIC chip.

Luckily, I was into PIC programming before… I used the PIC16F84s for a few things, so I am familiar with what needs to happen for programming the chips. Unfortunately, that was many years ago and my memory, and chip programmer did not stand the test of time. So, off to Microchip’s site to grab MPLap, and then find WinPic to program the chips, and I needed to build a new programmer.

This would have been quite a daunting task but since I’ve got all the equipment it’s relatively easy to build a board. I’m no electrical engineer, but there are a lot of schematics for simple PIC programmers out there… I found PICPROGv5 by illumicon. Unfortunately, he’s out of stock, and not building any more or I would have just ordered the board… so I used his schematic and parts list to design my own board.

I grabbed ExpressPCB and started building a design… a few hours later, I had a workable single sided solution… I’m sure the EEs out there will point out many problems with it, but I’ve built it and it works… Here’s the pcb file (myPicProg5v2) but be warned, that I have only tested it once, and not sure that’s it’s 100% right… also, it’s built off the PICPROGv5… so it’s their hard work that went into my crappy ‘redesign’. Note: the top layer traces are just jumpers… it’s a single sided board. Also, not all the values are correct/entered, so take a look at the original PICPROG site for the schematic and component values. Component IDs are the same.

So after building the board, I went for the tried and true toner transfer method of getting the design on the board… In a nutshell, you print the traces using a laser printer on a glossy magazine cover(the toner doesn’t stick to glossy as well and transfers better than if you used regular paper), then place that on a very clean copper clad board, iron it down then soak in water and peel away the paper. I had good luck with very thin paper rather than super glossy paper… pages from my Mouser catalogue work great If you want more detail, there is a myriad of sites out there that have full instructions… check YouTube as well.

Since coper oxidizes quite rapidly, I decided to spray paint the bottom of the board to protect it… lol.

So the programmer is built and tested with a simple flashing LED program for the old 16F84s I had laying around. Haven’t tried it on the PIC I’ll be using for the Ren-C… Perhaps this weekend I’ll try to bang something together. Now it’s just waiting on the boards to finish this all up. I’ve got plenty of work to do around the house to keep me busy, oh… and a bunch of mini and mid trees to build

No boot device…

Mike — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 23:42:21 +0000

Opened up the laptop this evening and that’s what I was greeted with. No boot device… nice. A reboot, and all appears well, but that’s not what I want with a new lappy. Hope it was an isolated incident and will not be happening again.

Being that it’s the end of June, it’s time for me to start thinking about Christmas. I know, I know… it’s nuts… but I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. This weekend started out with me building up the boards I got last winter. I have 7 SSR (Solid State Relay) boards, and enough parts to build up 6 of them… My supplier sent me an extra one because a shipment got lost in the mail and I had to wait for a while.

I started a little assembly line, one group of components at a time for all boards… I hooked up a fan in some silver flex duct line (think it’s for a dryer) to keep the noxious flux fumes out of my face… it worked pretty good and I was done in no time.

Here’s the days work… still missing a few parts so not all are done, but I’ve got a lot of components on the way, so I should be back at it for the weekend.

I’m still waiting for another 9 SSR boards and all the components to fill ‘em up… I’ve also ordered the parts to add dimming capabilities to the display. Currently I can only turn the lights off and on, so it will be nice to be able to dim rather than shut off abruptly. So, 10 more boards, and 300 components to solder in… that’s why I’m starting in June

And that doesn’t even count the display parts… I’m running all LED lights, so I’m not too worried about power requirements, but giving the history of wiring I’ve fixed in this house, I’m not taking any chances… I wired up 2 20amp, GFCI protected circuits, dedicated for the lights. That should be more than enough for my ‘year one’ display.

I picked up another 26 tomato cages from the Despot today… 6 4′ cages to round out the 4 mid-trees I already have. I wanted 10 total so I can do a pyramid setup of the mid-trees. Pretty standard stuff as far as displays go, so it’s an easy one to start with.

The other 20 cages will be mini-trees. They’re 3′ but I’m cutting the bottom ring off, and they will end up being 2′ tall. I’ll prolly ring the flower bed or run them down the drive. Not 100% sure yet.

So, I’ve got 10 mid-trees (4 already built) and 20 mini-trees, and the house lights. Gonna add icicle lights this year to have some lighting options and variety. I’ve got the capability for 64 channels, and I think I’m going to have about 40 channels this year, if everything goes as planned… and if I can get enough strings of lights. If all goes well, I’ll be adding a mega-tree next year… I’ve got another 24 channels before I need to buy/build more controller gear so that’s almost enough for a mega-tree… or perhaps I’ll do a ‘star of David’… we’ll see

Oh, and I have to program the sequences to make the lights dance… That’s prolly going to take more time than building the trees. I’m not planning any musical display (no FM transmitter), and I think that’s going to be a bit of a reach for the amount of work I need to get done in the time I have… between renos

Speaking of renos, here’s some ‘done for now’ shots of the bar.

… and no, the taps are not hooked up.

More renos

Mike — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:52:42 +0000

I got fired up about doing some more work on the basement, so I thought I would start on the bar area. We are trying to save a bit of cash, so we’re going to reuse the existing bar, and paint out the bead-board, or wainscoting, or whatever it’s called.

I really don’t want to be spending a lot of time on this right now; It’s summer and I’ve got plenty of work to do outside, but I need to do something to get that space usable. We’ve decided just to get it working with plumbing, electrical, drywall done.

So I got all the rough ins done

(Yes, I know the sink is not properly vented, but I have to leave a surprise or two for the next owner don’t I? …mind you, I can fix that really easily with an AAV (Air Admittance Vent) or ‘cheater vent’)

and I got all the drywall up

But not before finding another present from the previous remodeller…

Seems it was too hard to run the power in the wall, so they just ran it along the baseboards. Awesome. I fixed as much as I can, but I am not ripping out the rest of that wall. I did remove another 2 feet of drywall, but there’s another 15 feet or so of wall I’m not touching. I wired it properly to a new plug that I placed in a better spot, and I’ll be building a bulkhead to cover in the HVAC and some more of the wire… from that point, I may be able to run the power through the sub-basement and fish it up to the rest of the outlets and fix it right. But for now, it’s staying as is. Oh, and they also walled in a clean-out for the plumbing stack. Nice.

We poured some floor leveller. $45 a bag… stuff is not cheap. I was surprised by how fast it went from really, really runny to not flowing at all… way sooner than I was expecting, and subsequently, I’m not totally happy with the results. Next time I’m adding more than the recommended amount of water. Sure, it will weaken the final product, but not sure by how much… I’ll let you know. Mind you, I was pouring a very thin layer, so perhaps that’s why it didn’t flow right. Any tips for next time would be appreciated!

Once I had the rough counter top in, I hooked up all the plumbing… was just planning to cut in the sink, but figured I better check if my poorly vented sink actually drained (it’s about 7′ away from the vented stack) … and it works pretty good… no backup/slowness at all.

I was going to get oak plywood, to match the rest of the oaky-ness of the bar, but at $80 a sheet, I thought it would be cheaper to go with rough 3/4 then get some veneer…. but adding up that cost (after the fact) it would actually be more expensive. lol nice. Soooo we are just going to sand down the rough plywood and stain/finish that… or put on tiles or something else… Apparently I’ll spend a dime to save a nickel… or however that saying goes.

Wifey got tired of hearing my bitch about not having a table saw, so she bought me one for my b-day! It’s awesome. The stand that it came with folds up into a wheeled cart, so it’s a breeze to set up, tear down, and move that saw around. All of the accessories (rip fence, blade guard, etc) have a spot to clip into and stow securely during transport. It’s got a port for dust collection, so I plugged the shop vac hose in the back of it, and there was almost no dust from the cuts. Awesome awesome.

So ‘part one’ of the bar is wrapping up… we’re just going to put a finish on the counter top, add some flooring, and move in the fridge. It’s a bit ‘out of sequence’ but I really don’t want to start mudding and taping now… especially since I don’t have the ceiling done, nor do I have the bulkheads done… and that is far more work than I’m willing to do now. We’ll use it as is, then once I can’t work outdoors anymore, I’ll get back into the drywalling and finish up the basement.

I don’t hate the French

Mike — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:31:40 +0000

I just hate their keyboards…
I recently bought a new laptop. It’s just a web surfin’ and email kinda machine, but I needed something other than my work laptop. It’s been forever since I’ve actually bought a new computer, and I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time researching, so I just picked one.

It’s an HP G60… looks nice, I’m happy with it so far. Coolest feature is a button to turn off the touchpad. My work Dell doesn’t have it, and nothing pisses me off more than accidentally hitting the touchpad while typeing… the click moves cursor the cursor and I start typing in a different spot.

The worst thing about it is the keyboard. It’s a multi-lingual one version and the changes are subtle, but very frustrating. I’ve been using a ‘US’ keyboard most of my life, and my fingers have gotten used to where the Enter key and left shift keys are supposed to be.

Here’s what I got…

Here’s what I want… ney… what I need…

It’s just that I’m so used to the US layout, and my pinkies don’t easily stretch over that extra key. Very frustrating when on a typing roll.

So, I’ve ordered a new keyboard out of China… $30US including shipping. HP part support sucks, but perhaps I’ve been spoiled with the Corportat Dell support I’ve gotten for my work laptop. I went to the HP site, and after clicking through pages of model selection, I found that a replacement keyboard is not orderable thru their web site, and must be purchased thru a 3rd party reseller… So no clue as to the quality of the keyboard either… it may be junk…

Not sure how long the keyboard will take to arrive, or even if it will work with this laptop… It’s for the US version of the same laptop, and I can’t see them changing too much between regions, but you never know.

I’ll let you know how it all works out.

UPDATE: I’ve just received my new US keyboard… It’s a cheap knockoff, but laptop keyboards have never felt that solid/robust to me in the first place. Anyhoo… I ordered it from a company that is based in California, and has 3 or 4 different web sites for the same shop. The only reason I know this is because I’ve been in email contact with them regarding package tracking… or lack there off.

Every reply I’ve received from them has been from a different email domain… so I was a getting a little worried about the legitimacy of the company. Also, the emails were sent at 3-4 AM my time, which means they are responding out of China or somewhere ‘over there’.

The keyboard was sent from the states according to the US postage stamps and stickers, so they do have a presence in north america at least.

Tax, shipping, exchange all in was $30… and in less than 5 minutes, I have installed my new keyboard. The keys are where they are supposed to be, and all is right with the world again

ahhhh… feels sooo good to hit the enter key
it’s in the right spot again.

simple things…

The reclusive Toad-snake spotted!

Mike — Tue, 18 May 2010 18:17:36 +0000

The struggle of life and death is on display in my back yard…

As I’m strolling in my back yard having a smoke, I hear a rustle at my feet and I glance down to see a snake (hopefully of the relatively harmless ‘garden’ variety lol) having a toad/frog for lunch.

I’m pretty sure I stepped on the snake… it slithered quite quickly under the deck as I screamed like a little girl and soiled myself (just a little bit). While the snake looks like it bit off more than it can chew (ugh… sorry), the toad appears wholly unimpressed by the situation.

It’s all over now; The snake won. I’m amazed that the little snake, it’s head no bigger around than my pinkie finger, was able to swallow that (relatively) big of a toad.

My couch now.

Mike — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:00:25 +0000

Maggie’s taken over. She won’t even share the couch any more…
That couch is 6′ long… and she’s not full grown yet.

Healing fine

Mike — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:59:18 +0000

Seven to ten days have passed since Maggie’s surgery and she’s almost healed up completely. It was tough to keep her quiet and not running/jumping around, but I think she’s well enough to start chasing her rope around the yard again.

She’ll be happy to get rid of the lampshade; We ended up putting it on her every night, just in case. I’ll be happy to see it go too! She never really hated wearing it, but every time she moved around at night she would run that plastic against the kennel… plastic on steel bars… nice and loud, as it’s shaped like a megaphone, so no sleep for me or the wife.

Back on her regular schedule of walks and runs she is much happier and a lot calmer in the evenings.
She was sprinting around the yard the other day so fast that both of her ears flopped back and it cracked me up… had to share.

Spayed, Tacked, and Chipped

Mike — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:14:12 +0000

Big day for Maggie yesterday; She went in for major surgery.
Since she’s almost 6 months old, it was time to get her in to be spayed. I really don’t think there’s a decision point for fixing dogs other than ‘do you want to breed your dog?’. I’ve heard(read) some arguments that people want to leave the dog intact for reasons other than breeding(personality change, weight control, risk of surgery) but I don’t agree that any of them would outweigh the risk of unwanted puppies. I’m sure there are exceptions and valid reasons why to not spay… but for the every day companion dog, it shouldn’t be a difficult decision to get them fixed.

My vet is pretty awesome and she recommended we also get her stomach tacked. It’s a procedure called Gastropexy and it’s done to prevent Bloat or GVT which is a serious, life threatening, and fast killing condition. The dog’s stomach flips, trapping gas and cutting of blood flow… they can die within hours.

Danes are the #1 at risk dog for bloat (Check the previous link above to see a chart of the top 25 at risk dogs) so it was a no brainer. Well, almost a no brainer… Our vet started calling a few places for prices and we were looking at $1300 -$1500 for it… that seemed a bit much to spend on an elective, preventative procedure…

In the end, one of our vet’s buddies made room in his schedule and agreed to take Maggie in even though she wasn’t his patient. Now that’s a huge win, because this vet is a large breed specialist, and is booked up way in advance. And we got the procedure for less than $300. Wins everywhere.

We also got her micro-chipped… I actually expected this procedure to be in the hundreds of dollars as well for some reason, and never asked. It was about $30 for a ‘permanent’ id that will always link back to us.

So all in, it cost less than $800 for the surgery including meds and a lampshade…. Maggie shows no signs of trying to lick the stitches yet, so I’m not putting it on her unless I have to leave her alone, or she’s not leaving the incision alone.

Part of the prep for surgery is no food or water after 8 the day before. We dropped her off at about 8 day of surgery, and got a call just before lunch that she was all done and everything was perfect. No issues or complications, and our vet was there and scrubbed in with the surgeon to learn the gastropexy procedure. She would be ready to go home later in the day they said… anesthetic needs to wear off.

We picked up a very groggy dog about 4… Maggie is a pretty hyper puppy, especially when people are around. But still coming out of anesthesia her tail was barely twitching when she saw us. Lifting the 65lb dog into the back seat of the truck was a bit of a challenge, but since she was zoned, she didn’t put up too much of a fight. Getting her out once we got home was a different story She did not want to come out and was squirming out of the way any time I tried to get a grip to lift her out.

It took prolly 10 minutes of cajoling to get her to stand up so I could lift her out of the truck…. she slowly made her way to her kennel and crashed.

About every hour we tried to roust her to see if she needed to go out or would take some water… it’s been over 24 hours since she’s eaten or drank any water and I’m starting to get nervous. She eventually asked to go out at about 5am but still didn’t want any water. Couple more hours nap and she was up and ready for some food… but no water, so we are pushing 36 hours without a drop of water… that can’t be good for the dog. So, I wet down her kibbles and she goes for it, then has more water. fiiiinally…

So here are a few pics of her from last night… she was pretty drugged up and not very happy
And no, she does not have a white pillow and a black blanket in her kennel… those are both smaller pieces of bedding that were under her at one point… she fidgets a lot and she’d pushed them out from under her