Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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After three days of sales being open I’m nearly sold out of SDrive NUXXs. As you can see above there are four assembled units and ten kits remaining. I suspect that as the first round of orders arrive there will be another bump in sales and the rest will go.
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Yesterday evening while riding to Addison Oaks by way of Bald Mountain I came across this robin laying on it’s back in the middle of the Conklin Road connector. It was laying across the entire trail, and it took a bit of effort to stop before running it over. Looking like it’d just been in some sort of fight it just laid still while I took it’s photo, doing little beyond pivoting it’s head to look at what I was doing.
After a minute or two of looking at it I tried to get it to grab on to my finger with it’s feet, but seeming uninterested in this I tried to pick it up and move it off the trail. As I went to pick it up it bit/pinched me with its beak then lopsidedly flew away down the trail. I’m quite curious what it’d been hurt by. Perhaps a cat or maybe some larger bird?
Once the bird was moved from the trail I carried on, not stopping until I got back to the car, a bit more than 2 hours later. It was a great night for a ride on one of my favorite local trails.
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Erik and Kristi recently came back from a long weekend trip† to Colorado bearing beer. As a result the house is now graced with thirteen bottles of stuff that’s not available in Michigan. The twelve normal bottles are now in the fridge cooling and the one 22oz of Magic Mirror is sitting in the basement aging.
This sampling is comprised of (left to right):
Left Hand Brewing Company:
400 Pound Monkey
Milk Stout
Black Jack Porter
Stranger American Pale AleNew Belgium Brewing:
Mothership Wit
Ranger India Pale Ale
Somersault AleGrimm Brothers Brewhouse:
Magic Mirror Imperial Köttbusser AleOdell Brewing Co.:
Myrcenary Double India Pale AleBoulder Beer Company:
Kinda Blue Blueberry Wheat
Mojo India Pale Ale
Sweaty Betty Blonde
Hazed & Infused Dry-Hopped Ale
These will be quite tasty over the coming weeks. I know for certain that the couple of these which I’ve had before are quite good, and I’m quite certain that the rest will be quite tasty as well. Mmm.
UPDATE: It turns out that the Boulder Beer Company stuff is actually available in Michigan. That doesn’t make it any less tasty, though.
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New Garmin cycling GPSs (such as the Edge 500 and Edge 800) use a new style of mount that can only be affixed to bikes with an elastic band mounting system. This Quarter Turn Bike Mount (Part Number: 010-11430-00) comes with EPDM bands for this mounting, and documentation (seen above) strongly suggests that the same sort of replacement band be used. This is a valid recommendation as EPDM is a very good material for long-term exposure to the elements, but it’s not always that easy to find a specialized material like this.
While Garmin sells the Bike Mount Elastic Bands (Part Number: 010-11430-01) set (six bands, three of each size) themselves for US$5.99, it’s possible to buy them from an industrial supply shop like McMaster-Carr for quite a bit less. Specifically, these rings appear to be as follows:
Small Garmin Elastic Band
AS568A Dash No.: -125
Width: 3/32″ (.103″ Actual)
Inner Diameter: 1 5/16″ (1.299″ Actual)
Outer Diameter: 1 1/2″ (1.505″ Actual)
McMaster-Carr Part Number: 9557K158
Price (as of 2011-Aug-03): US$9.12 for 50 PiecesLarge Garmin Elastic Band
AS568A Dash No.: -131
Width: 3/32″ (.103″ Actual)
Inner Diameter: 1 11/16″ (1.674″ Actual)
Outer Diameter: 1 7/8″ (1.880″ Actual)
McMaster-Carr Part Number: 9557K165
Price (as of 2011-Aug-03): US$9.62 for 50 Pieces
While a pack of 50 bands is overkill for most people’s needs, the price of ~20¢/ea is considerably better than Garmin’s ~$1/ea. At that price a group of friends, a team, or a shop could go in on a box of replacements and just keep them sitting around for use as needed. It also would be trivial to order smaller or larger bands if one needs the mount to fit larger or smaller surfaces; just be sure to get the 3/32″ (.103″ actual) bands and order whatever diameter desired.
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Today’s public service announcement is to inform you that the Black & Decker Pivot Driver (Model 9078) uses a 5VAC ~200mA power supply with a typical 2.5mm barrel connector for charging. The 3.6VDC marking on the driver itself is the power requirements for the motor, the charging connector is unlabeled, and a decal on the unit simply directs that only power supply 90500898 be used. Now you know that 905 That is all.
(This sort of information is often terribly hard to find when needed, such as when the device needs a charge, the power supply is missing, and a suitable replacement can’t be found. Hopefully stuff like this will one day help someone.)
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For the last few months I’ve been using a tube of Trader Joe’s-brand Fennel, Propolis, and Myrrh toothpaste when brushing my teeth. I rather like this toothpaste, as it tastes strongly of fennel (one of my favorite flavors) while brushing, yet doesn’t leave a lingering, cloying, fake-mint taste in one’s mouth like most big-name toothpaste. Also, unlike mint, the slight leftover fennel taste also doesn’t clash with whatever breakfast food I happen to eat later in the morning, be it coffee, orange juice, cream cheese, or just about anything else.
I’d prefer it if I could get this flavor toothpaste with fluoride, but neither the Trader Joe’s labeled product nor the natural toothpaste heavyweight Tom’s of Maine (now partially owned by Colgate-Palmolive) offer this flavor with the tooth-friendly additive. Unlike some It’s a good thing that I’m a regular drinker of tap water; I’ll just get my fluoride that way.
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There we go, twenty nine (29) assembled SDrive NUXXs packed in bubble wrap and ready to ship. The thirtieth unit is waiting on some parts (small plastic key caps)that Digi-Key mis-shipped. Or, if a buyer so chooses, I’ll fit their unit with yellow key caps. Here is the USPS Priority Mail packaging sent complimentary upon request. It, of course, requires that I use them for all shipping, but I was planning that anyway.
Now, time to sleep. I’m very overtired. This is a bit more work than I planned on.
Leave a CommentOrders for the second run of SDrive NUXX parts will be accepted beginning on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 beginning at 2:00pm EDT (2011-08-04 @ 14:00 GMT-4) via this page: SDrive NUXX Ordering Page.
Pricing is US$150 for an assembled and tested SDrive NUXX, US$40 for a PCB / End Panel / Microcontroller set. All prices include shipping within the United States, and shipping to international destinations require a US$10 surcharge for each assembled device and every five PCB/panel/uC set.
The ordering page is up, but is not currently live, with all order submissions going into a sandbox. At the date/time mentioned above the page will go live and orders will be expected up until items are sold out. There are 30 assembled SDrive NUXXs available and 20 PCB/panel/uC sets.
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This evening I finally got around to soldering the last of the washable parts on to the SDrive NUXX PCBs that I’m assembling. After washing off the water-soluble flux I blew off the water with an air compressor then stacked them as seen above to dry under a fan. With the air conditioning running most days here (due to the hot weather and Roxie now living here) the house’s air is nice and dry and should be perfect for allowing any lingering or absorbed water to evaporate before soldering the rest of the parts in place.
I took a few more photos today during this work, including a bunch of the PCBs laid out on the workbench, flux that needs to be cleaned off, a now-clean PCB, and another view of the PCBs stacked for drying.
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This weekend involved a bunch of racing. First there was the Tree Farm Relay on Saturday, then today (Sunday) was the annual Stony Creek Time Trial put on by Tailwind Racing, LLC..
The Tree Farm Relay was wonderful as always, with sunny, humid weather. While it was hot and sticky it was much nicer than the mud at last year’s race. Our team, the East Side Step Children, comprised of Erick Mile, Nick Shue, Erick Silvassy, and I came in 19th (out of 54), which wasn’t too bad. We would have been a good bit higher up the list, but when receiving a shot of liquor (from a syringe) at The Crater a whole bunch went up my nose and in my eye, forcing me to spend a few minutes cleaning my nose, eyes, and glasses before continuing. If we hadn’t lost those 3-4 minutes we would have been up a few more places. Not that it matters, after all… It’s the Tree Farm Relay which is more about having fun and riding than racing.
In the raffle at the end of the race my number was drawn, and I chose the bar-mount squeaky cow horn seen above fitted to my old Specialized which is now serving as a commuter / errand / path bike.
This was my first time doing the Stony Creek Time Trial, and while I came in nearly last in my category (still waiting for the results to be posted) I still had fun. I woke this morning a bit after 9am and realized that if I made it to Stony Creek by 10:20am I’d be able to register for the Sport Men 30-34 class, so I hurriedly got ready and went. This was definitely not my fastest ride of the course, which I attribute to it being hot, my being tired, and generally not being prepared. On the upside, all the hard/tedious climbing in the race is at the beginning, which made for a rather pleasant route to ride.
In the past I’d been particularly hesitant to do this race because of two river crossings which were reported to result in frequent crashes and be best done via a dismount and slog through the water, but this year they were said to be shallow enough to be ridable. I found this to be the case and was able to ride through both without issue. While my feet did get soaked, the cool water on my legs felt good and it was no worse than unexpected large puddles during wet springtime riding. If the weather is similar next year I’ll probably do this race again, although hopefully I’ll do better then.
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