Category: acquired things

Burroughs Mainframe Cards

Published February 17, 2012

Years ago I got the chance to help empty out a friend’s neighbor’s basement after they passed away. This basement was stuffed with old computers and electronics, and I acquired a number of interesting items from there, many of which are now displayed around the house. (Core memory, old test equipment, notebooks, etc.)

The photos from this excursion can be found here, if you’re interested.

One of the items I’d acquired was a milk crate full of old cards from a Burroughs mainframe. Each is a bunch of discrete components built into what’s essentially a logical unit, designed to perform some function. These days a small integrated circuit would be used to perform the same (or multiple) functions.

I’ve given many of these items away, as in my excitement I ended up with many more items than needed. Everything from large boxes of valves to old, uncalibrated oscilloscopes have found homes with friends who had a better use for them than I did. A little while back I was contacted by a guy named William Donzelli who was interested in the history of the Burroughs mainframe and the cards from it. I didn’t know much about it and couldn’t answer many questions, so a couple days back I sent off this box containing the cards to him. Hopefully he’ll find them enlightening.

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Crucial m4 SSD for Data Processing

Published February 14, 2012

I’ve been processing some relatively large sets of data at work lately, and I’m running into disk IO issues after kicking off some of the data processing tasks. As an easy way to alleviate this I picked up a 64GB Crucial m4 SSD and stuffed it into my laptop’s optical drive bay via a $20 Nimitz-branded SATA hard drive adapter acquired from eBay. The drive itself was $99.99 from Micro Center, and since I purchased it myself once I’m done working with it I’ll be able to repurpose it in a personal machine of some sort.

While not a panacea nor excuse for my poor habits of bolting together VBScript and GNU command line utilities, it has helped quite a bit. One typical script (immediately post-reboot, with an empty disk cache) takes ~120.234 seconds to run a task from the hard drive and ~28.400 seconds from the SSD. I’ve seen similar speed improvements across the board, and this really helps when I’m prototyping things and wanting feedback as quickly as possible.

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MMBA Expo, Good Swap Meet Finds

Published January 29, 2012

Today was the MMBA Annual Expo in Lansing, MI, and part of this included the swap meet where people will bring spare/old parts to sell. There’s a few parts that I’ve been casually keeping an eye out for, and today a bunch of those found their way home with me. Spending a grand total of $40 I happened to acquire…

…a new CamelBak bladder for my trail work pack. (Only 1.5L, but it should be fine…): $10
…a nearly-new Shimano LX 11-34 cassette for the (temporary?) 1×9 conversion I’m planning for the El Mariachi: $10
…a 1.0mm Surly Toob: $10
…a Continental 26×1.75″ Hometrainer tire, in the original orange: $5

Thus far I’m really happy with all these purchases. Each was something that I needed, and each was something that someone was looking to get rid of. The Continental Hometrainer tire seems to be particularly great as It doesn’t make a chirping / squeaking sound while on the trainer, which results in an overall quieter ride.

I also thought that the expo came out rather well. (Nice job, Di!) I particularly liked how all the swap meet people were scattered amongst the vendors instead of in a swap meet ghetto at the back like they seemed to be last year. The snow and venue out in Lansing made for a long day, with ~1.75 hours of driving to get there and ~2.5 to get to my parents house afterward, but it was all quite worthwhile. The positive validation for the snow tires was rewarding after all the rain we’ve been having.

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Fruit of the Loom Boxer Briefs: El Salvador vs. India

Published January 24, 2012

This afternoon I received a package containing 8 packs (32 pairs) of underwear; Fruit of the Loom Boxer Briefs. While they were all purchased from Amazon at the same time, some of the packs were made in El Salvador and others in India. The ones from El Salvador are made of fabric from the US while the Indian ones apparently use domestic fabric.

The difference between the two can be seen in the image above, with the center/top pair being from India and the two side/top pairs being from El Salvador. The Indian fabric is a bit softer with a finer, less ribbed weave. I wonder which version will hold up longer.

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Two Six Packs of Hopslam

Published January 21, 2012

Bell’s has released this year’s batch of Hopslam and per usual it’s not at all stores. Thanks to Jon Boughner pointing me to Busch’s in Rochester Hills I was able to pick up two six packs for $15.99/ea. I believe there were six or eight cases of it sitting on display just waiting to be purchased.

I’ve got one pack sitting in the fridge, and I’ll let the other sit (and age) in the basement until warm weather arrives. Hopslam is always a nice surprise for people when summer comes around.

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The Brew Hauler

Published January 16, 2012

This past Saturday when I stopped at Cap N Cork to get some brewing supplies I also bought a Brew Hauler. This low-cost (~$12 or so) strap system made out of nylon webbing fits around a carboy making it much easier to carry. Instead of having to carefully lift a full (and potentially wet) carboy and hug it while carrying it around the house I can now just lift the nylon straps and carry it.

This worked well on the initial test of carrying a carboy of Chocolate Milk Stout from the laundry room into the bathtub where it’s fermenting, and I suspect it’ll work well after that. While looking up info on the product I did find this report of it not working right for one person, but I suspect that they didn’t have it set up quite right, resulting in the carboy sliding out one side of it. I’ll keep a careful eye on it, but it seems like it’ll be just fine.

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Winter Beer Assortment

Published December 23, 2011

It’s been a while since I purchased an assortment of beer, but finding myself near Red Wagon this afternoon I decided to stop in and pick up a bunch of winter-y beers. The assortment purchased today is as follows, from left to right:

· North Peak Brewing Company‘s Dubious Black Chocolate Stout
· Delerium Tremens
· Samichlaus Bier
· Lagunitas Hop Stoopid
· Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
· New Holland Brewing‘s Dragons Milk
· Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier
· Southern Tier Brewing Company‘s mokah
· Brau Brothers Brewing Company Moo Joos Oatmeal Milk Stout
· Weihenstephan Vitus
· Genesee Beer
· Keeweenaw Brewing Company‘s Widow Maker Black Ale

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General Tire AltiMAX Arctic Snow Tires

Published December 11, 2011

Having some time this evening I fitted the snow tires to my car. Purchased from Tire Rack, I ended up with a set of General AltiMAX Arctic snow tires on steel rims in 195/65R15 size. This is slightly narrower and with a taller sidewall than the original tires, but conveniently one of the spec sizes on the slightly lower model of Civic, which makes pressure selection a piece of cake and left me with little doubt that they’d be a decent fit for the car.

These tires were mentioned to me by a couple friends, and they are Consumer Reports #2 snow tire pick, just behind some that cost almost 80% more. Delivered just a few days after ordering (albeit with the lug nuts coming a week later due to a order packing screwup) they were here quite quickly and ready to go.

Installation went smoothly, and with the purchase of a breaker bar, proper size sockets, and a torque wrench I had all the tools needed to make the installation go smoothly. I had a slight issue jacking up the rear of the car which necessitated some oak blocks to extend the reach of the floor jack, but once on the jack stands everything went smoothly. The old wheels came off with little effort thanks to the 18″ breaker bar, the new ones seated nicely, the lug nuts snugged up evenly, and torquing them evenly (once the car was back on the ground, of course) took just a bit of time with the wrench.

The test ride around the area went well, and while I can hear a bit more road noise that’s to be expected from the heavily siped tires. I’ve now got the car sitting outside overnight so the tires can cool to ambient temperature. Come morning I’ll fill them to specified pressure and they should be good for a while, or at least until we get down near single digit temperatures.

Now to wait for some snow and ice… It’s too bad this week has a forecast for rain and higher temps. Maybe I should have waited before putting them on. Oh well.

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Used CycleOps Fluid2 Trainer

Published December 2, 2011

Look what I picked up from a friend this evening. I figure this will be nice to get me feeling good for spring-time riding, and maybe on track to try doing some seriously challenging rides next year.

This is a few-years-old CycleOps Fluid² trainer, fitted to my 2008 Specialized Rockhopper Disc, my first mountain bike. Thanks to Erik I’ve got a smooth rear tire for it, and I’m hoping that this will work out well for a bit of extra exercise and riding during the winter.

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Salsa Mukluk 2

Published October 30, 2011

This past week I received a new Salsa Mukluk 2, and yesterday I finally finished assembly and got it out for a ride. In short: I really like this bike. Being a fat bike it’s got tremendously large tires which were originally designed for riding in snow, sand, and on other soft surfaces. This makes for a very interesting but really fun ride. I’m really looking forward to trying it in snow. As I already do a fair amount of winter riding (up until the snow is too deep to ride) this should extend the riding season for me even further. I am also really hoping to take it up north to the area around Sleeper State Park and Danielle’s aunt and uncle’s cabin so I can explore riding it on beaches and on sandy roads.

This bike was purchased via our team shop, Trail’s Edge Cyclery, and this allowed me to receive it unassembled and have fun building it up myself. Over three evenings I slowly (and enjoyably) put it together. This involved putting all the major pieces together, cutting the steerer tube while fitting the fork, cabling the whole bike, and setting up the drivetrain. Putting it together myself gave me a chance to set up the bike fit things (seatpost height, saddle fore/aft adjustment) from the get-go, and careful measuring of my other bikes resulted in the Mukluk being wonderfully comfortable for the first ride.

I also made a few slight modifications during assembly, including switching all cage mounts to stainless steel fasteners, filling empty (potential water ingress) holes with screws, converting a downtube bottle cage mount into additional cable retention points, wrapping the chainstay with an old tube, soaking the rust-resistant zinc-coated chain in ProLink Voyager, and fitting Ergon GP1 grips. This was a really enjoyable process and I’m very happy with the results. Due to the larger wheels I also had to fit a spacer kit to my bike rack so the wheels to fit, but this generally went well and works as advertised.

Yesterday I took the bike out for a first ride at River Bends, and it went rather well. I’ve got a small tick that seems seatpost/saddle related that I need to look into, but other than that I had no issues with it. The twist shifters seem nice but will take some getting used to; having no particular indexing for the front derailleur is quite a change, but being able to trim the front derailleur on the fly is nice.

In the photo album Salsa Mukluk 2 you can see a number of photos that I took during the unboxing, build, and first ride. Click here if you’d like to see them.

(Incidentally, this just happens to be post #1000 since March 31, 2008 when I moved to using WordPress for blog posting.)

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