Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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Have a photo of the piece of Stichelton which I am eating for breakfast this morning. This is a raw cow’s milk blue cheese from the UK, which should, but can’t legally be called Stilton due to an inaccurately applied Protected Designation of Origin status by the EU.
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To deal with the stripped cleat screw problem mentioned earlier I headed over to Home Depot, encountered a toilet, then bought a Black & Decker Screw Extractor Set (#16270). Also known as “easy-outs”, these conical, left-hand threaded tap-like devices allow you to drill out the head (or center) of a screw and then thread the extractor down inside and remove the screw. These are useful when you strip the head of a screw, have rusty parts, break screw heads off, and other things like this. That is, they are useful when they don’t snap on first use.
I drilled out the hole, set the extractor in the hole, attached a tap handle, then started turning the extractor to embed it in the screw and break the screw loose. Right as I did this, there was a subtle POP and the whole tip of the extractor broke off and remained lodged in the hole.
While I was able to drill out the other screws to a slightly larger size and use the broken extractor, the first screw now had a bunch of very hard metal stuck in the center of it. This particularly hard steel thwarted all efforts at drilling with the bits I had on hand, so I had to slot the screw with a cut-off wheel, then go at it with a screwdriver. One very large screwdriver and a surprising amount of torque later and all four screws were out.
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It takes a very inconsiderate person to dispose of bags of trash and a used toilet in a shopping cart in the parking lot of Home Depot. Also, do not forget: HAM KING YUMMY.
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I just went to remove the Shimano SM-SH51 cleats from my biking shoes and the 3mm heads in each of the mounting screws stripped right out. I guess it’s time to go get some easy-outs and give drilling them out a go.
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Today while looking at my bikes and deciding which to try new pedals on I found that the the rear wheel on the Rockhopper Disc has a broken nipple, causing one of the spokes to be loose. I guess this means that I’ll be trying the pedals (more on these later once I have an opinion on them) on the Bianchi D.I.S.S. and taking the wheel in tomorrow.
While I normally like doing bike work myself, not having a truing stand, spare spokes, or spare nipples means that I can either take it in and pay $20 (or so) to get it fixed for riding this week, or spend 2x that (or so) and a tens hours of time (plus waiting for deliveries) and do it myself. I do wholly intend to be building bike wheels by the end of this summer, I want my bike up and working properly ASAP.
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Today I just happened to find a package containing 25 brand new SIO connectors in the mailbox. Because of this I have reopened orders of wholly assembled SDrive NUXXs. I’ve also put the assembled devices on the SDrive NUXX ordering page, so they can be ordered by people without my manually sending invoices.
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While doing the PCB layout stuff for the SDrive NUXX, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make the traces as simple and attractive as possible, while ensuring the components on the PCB are reasonably well spaced and thus easy for an average DIY person to solder. When I do this, I set up the board with two layers, with the top primarily being the ground plane, and the bottom holding as many of the other connections as possible.
After establishing part footprints and placement (mostly based on front / rear panel controls in the SDrive NUXX’s case) I then try to lay out the rest of the parts, fitting them together like Lego, taking into account things that need to be near each other (caps and certain things), and other stuff like that. Then I route the board, trying to keep as many traces on the bottom as possible and moving repositionable components as needed. Of course, surface mount parts often require their traces to be on the top, but generally most things can be kept on the bottom.
Once everything connected in a layout that is looking good I’ll turn off everything but the top and bottom layers and associated pads, vias, and airwires. I then look at every top layer trace, and if it’s not needed for an SMT part or crossing over a trace on the bottom, I’ll try to move it to the bottom.
Next I’ll turn alternate showing only the top or bottom layers, as shown above. On the left is the top (or component) side with its traces in red, and on the right is the bottom (or solder) side in blue. Looking at just one side at a time I can more easily see traces routed in unnecessarily complex patterns. Sometimes I’ll have stairstepped a trace or routed it around something when a much simpler, straighter path would do. I find that having more layers (documentation, part outlines, part names, etc) turned on while doing hand-optimizing causes me to keep traces of areas where they can safely go, particularly under other components. Hiding this information clutter lets me focus on the bare wiring itself making the task even easier.
After a few rounds of this I generally find that the result is a layout with simple, direct, and well organized traces.
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Today means to me that summer is open. The weather is finally nice enough that I was able to leave the house on my bike, wearing shorts and a cycling jersey, and run an errand then go for a nice ride around the area. After dropping off these two eBay packages at the post office I headed over to River Bends, down through Utica (including some night time road riding in safe areas), then into the Clinton River trail, only to find it flooded. I then headed back through Utica, down 21 Mile to Hayes, and back home, totaling just over 20 miles averaging 14.6 MPH. Not bad for errand running and lots of street crossings.
This was a really nice ride, and (per usual) it made good use the safe pedestrian bridges along 21 Mile and 22 Mile. I’m really glad they exist.
Now that I’m home and have changed out of the sweaty (and surprisingly stinky) cycling clothes, I’m sitting here in front of a wedge of relatively stinky Stichelton, acquired Sunday at Zingerman’s. This is, for all intents and purposes, a raw milk Stilton. However, it can’t be called that because of EU regulations saying that Stilton must be made with Pasteurized milk. (See the Wikipedia article on Stichelton for more info.)
Mmm. This stuff is incredible.
UPDATE: I’m eating this cheese slowly, so it’s having plenty of time to come up to room temperature. Thus, my office is starting to smell a bit funky. Like feet. And bike shorts. In a 300 year old cellar.
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Buying twelve SD cards at a time feels a bit odd. However, they are needed, as the assembled SDrive NUXXs each come with one. They’ve all now been reformatted as FAT, labeled (SDRIVE_NUXX), and had SDRIVE.ATR copied to the root. Checksums were done to ensure that the file arrived intact.
I’ve also got a line on some more SIO connectors, so it’s possible I’ll be able to open up the ordering further than I had before. Being able to do this would be good, as I’ve already got a couple people on the wait list.
Leave a CommentSince The Reg has now posted about it, I think I can discuss it publicly: Back on 18-Feb, right before taking off on vacation, I was informed that I’d be receiving a 5% pay cut. This isn’t terrible, and I’d rather have a job than less pay.
However, last Friday I was informed that my salary will be cut by an additional 10% for the month of April. This brings my total pay cut to 14.5% from a few months ago. While this won’t cause the world to come crashing down and isn’t terribly drastically life changing, it does mean that I’ll be saving less, likely won’t be taking any far-away vacations this year, and will need to re-balance (and drastically reassess) a number of financial things.
It’s an understatement to say that this is a little frustrating.
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