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PA

Published January 11, 2011

Last night neither Danielle nor I slept well, tossing and turning and frequently waking each other up. Just before 6am Danielle decided that she’d sleep downstairs, but after being unable to find a sufficient warm blanket I told her that I wasn’t sleepy, would just get up, and that she could have the bed. No more than a minute later my phone rang with my mom calling to tell me that PA (my grandpa on my mom’s side) had died in his sleep.

Recently he hadn’t been doing well so this was not unexpected news but such things are always a bit of a shock. Still, I can’t help but marvel at the timing. Life is strange and it’s weird how things like this happen.

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Area 51 IPA Kit

Published January 9, 2011

After a ~3 year hiatus from brewing beer, I woke this morning and decided that today would be the day I brew a batch. Not wanting to take the time to put together a recipe I decided to use an off the shelf kit, and off to Cap n’ Cork I went. $48 later I had the Area 51 IPA kit seen above and a packet of Wyeast 1272 American Ale II yeast. This partial mash kit should make about five gallons of 5.6% American IPA, perfect for filling my newly acquired corney keg setup.

As he’s been wanting to try it brewing himself and curious about the process Nick came by just as I was beginning the partial mash. Everything was going great, until it came time to boil the wort and I found that the burner on the outdoor stove (burner from a turkey fryer) wouldn’t light. Troubleshooting pointed to a bad regulator, so we set off to Home Depot where I purchased a new regulator and some brass fitting to connect it all. Despite it all connecting nicely, the new regulator didn’t let through enough gas and the burner petered along barely heating the wort.

Nick then remembered that he has a turkey fryer burner available and that Marty would soon be passing through the area and would be able to drop it by. She did, and this replacement burner provided a proper amount of heat, taking the wort from the a tepid 160°F to boiling in less than 15 minutes. Then, an hour later, it was ready to cool, rack to a fermenter, and pitch the yeast.

Now it all sits in a bathtub in a warm interior room waiting for fermentation to begin. If everything goes according to schedule primary fermentation a week from Monday (or so), I’ll then rack it to secondary and dry hop it, then a month or so later I’ll keg and carbonate it. After sitting for another month or so beyond that it should be ready to drink. In the mean time I can contemplate dispensing possibilities, including maybe fashioning some manner of kegerator.

OG for this batch is 1.053, which is just 0.002 shy of the target OG of 1.055. Hopefully the rest of the batch will go as planned and it’ll come out great.

UPDATE: Racked to secondary on 16-Jan-2010 with 1oz of Cascade hops. Gravity (at this point, after degassing) was 1.012 making for 5.38% ABV. Will allow to condition for another 2 weeks to 2 months before transferring to a keg.

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Salty microSD Card

Published January 9, 2011

On Friday while out at lunch I found a microSD reader and card in the parking lot of a local Biggby Coffee. While it had been run over, was caked in salt, and appeared to have a cracked microSD card, I decided that I should try and see if it’ll work anyway. Unfortunately, after washing it in water and alcohol and drying it I found that the crack damaged the chip inside. Thus, when placed in a microSD reader, the card wasn’t detected and no data could be read.

Comparing the image above to this one (from Bunnie Huang‘s excellent article On MicroSD Problems) shows that the crack ran through the area where silicon lies. This photo, where I finished breaking open the card after failing to read it shows a thin silver line which I believe to be the chip itself.

If you’d like to see more photos of the microSD card that I found and my attempt at recovering data from it, check them out here: Salty microSD Card.

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Roomba is Not So Smart

Published January 5, 2011

Upon arriving home today I found this. Danielle’s Roomba had driven away from next to its dock, leaving telltale tire marks the whole way, and died. Before leaving for work I set the Roomba up with a virtual wall so that it’d run in a small part of my living room and the kitchen, all of which is within sight of the dock and no more than 20′ long. Once again the Roomba died before it found its way back to the dock.

I’m starting to think the battery is going dead. Thus far it hadn’t docked successfully except for the few times that I placed it in front of the dock and commanded it to charge itself.

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First Ride of the New Year

Published January 4, 2011

With the recent thaw and freeze the deep snow of the last two weeks has been replaced with pleasantly hard ground and a light dusting of snow over ice; perfect conditions for winter riding with studded tires. The new single track at River Bends was like pavement with trivial bits of ice and far, far more fun than the last time I attempted to ride it.

Tonight’s ride netted just under 16 miles, which is not bad for the first ride of the year, only one day later than last year’s first ride of the year. It was pretty uneventful, save for some weird car traffic in a local neighborhood. First I had someone pass me then pull in front of me while turning into a driveway, but this wasn’t close enough to be properly threatening. Then, a few seconds later, someone turned right in front of me, realized that they’d just pulled in front of someone and pulled over, then almost rear-ended a parked car while doing so. It’s really silly, especially considering that I’m essentially wearing a car headlight on my head and with a multiple-mile-visible blinky red light on the back of my bike. I guess it’s better than daytime riding when people just don’t see you at all.

Tonight I finally also tried out the Pearl Izumi Barrier GTX shoes that a friend of mine is trying to sell. While my toes were numb after 1.5 hours of riding they were just fine for the first hour, and they seem to be quite a bit better than my Sidis with neoprene shoe covers. They also come with toe studs, and it won’t be possible to get snow inside of them like I can my shoe covers, which makes my feet rather wet. The whole shoe is insulated, they fit reasonably well (perhaps a little loose), and were quite comfortable when coupled with long tights and tall wool socks. I think I’ll purchase these from him.

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New Year’s Eve Preparations

Published December 31, 2010

Here’s a corney keg of Salonius Pale Ale from Sherwood Brewing Company on it’s way back to my house for New Year’s Eve festivities. The child seat lock on the seatbelt finally came in handy, allowing me to lock the keg in place to keep it from tipping. I believe this is one of their new beers, and a small that I was given while picking it up showed it to be outstanding. It’s a bit sour, a little spicy from the yeast, and with some really nice, fruity hops that come in part from it’s being dry hopped. Supposedly it’s about 6%.

Danielle is currently cooking BBQ sauce and pulling pork, and with some chili, cheese, and dessert stuff that’s on the way we should have quite a ready supply of tasty food. Mmm.

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Riding In Circles

Published December 30, 2010

In a fit of boredom I just rode a bit over a mile indoors by doing laps of the basement. With it cleaned up there is a clear figure eight-like path around the futon then around the table near my workbench and I was able to ride a whole mile without running into anything or putting a foot down. This took roughly 15 minutes, as I was probably averaging around 4 MPH. I was riding Danielle’s bike (it’s the only one currently with platform pedals) and its computer doesn’t do elapsed time or average but (strangely) it does do maximum speed, which was 5.2 MPH.

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Unsigned HSBC Cash Back Checks

Published December 30, 2010

At the end of last month I received a two standard $25 cash back rebate checks from HSBC, one of my credit card companies. Unfortunately they forgot to sign the checks and I didn’t notice before depositing them. This resulted in a phone call from my bank, account adjustment, letter from the bank formally rejecting the checks, etc. When I called HSBC about this I found out that they had a batch of these sent out and that they will immediately send me replacement checks.

The replacement check that I received looked completely different, so I’m figuring that their check printer screwed up, didn’t catch this, and thus HSBC went to another vendor.

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Non-Winning AUTO-intelliKEY Teardown

Published December 30, 2010

This is a non-winning AUTO-intelliKEY, a fake key-shaped vehicle remote sent out as a promotion by a local Kia dealer to try and get people into the store. Apparently some of these keys will actually active different locks on some vehicles, and those specific keys win prizes. This photo shows the inside of the unit, with just some metal domes where contacts would otherwise be and no other electronics. Thus this key doesn’t work and is not a winner.

The flier that this was mailed on also includes a scratch-off number and barcode, all of which offer other prizes that must be checked at the dealership. Since I’m not going to be visiting the dealer to check on the state of these numbers then I guess I’m just like the poor souls who failed to claim a $30,000 cash prizes (Lisa C.) and a new vehicle (Lorayne D.).

If you’d like to see some more photos of the AUTO-intelliKEY teardown, take a look here.

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Geiger Counter Headphone Jack Fixed

Published December 30, 2010

Thanks to my dad, many years ago I came into possession of a fair amount of cold war-era Civil Defense radiological monitoring equipment. One such item is the CDV-700 Geiger counter pictured above. For years the headphone jack had been broken which meant that I couldn’t use it to hear the telltale clicks whenever it detected radiation.

After a friend stopped by tonight to pick up some parts (a box of tubes that had been collecting dust) our conversation had me wondering if some of the things around my house are radioactive, so I set to work fixing the rather odd headphone jack. After fixing it I was able to establish that none of the odd tubes or aircraft equipment in my living room was radioactive.

Hopefully in the next few days (or weeks) I’ll find the time to photograph all of this old gear just to document it. It’s not particularly special or rare equipment, but it was a very physical tool through which I learned about both the fear of nuclear war and how a society can be placated by giving it the perception of control in the face of overwhelming force. I love having this stuff around for both the technical and historical aspect of such detection equipment and the memories of playing around with it while growing up.

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