Year: 2009 Page 5 of 15

With Lorena and the Kids gone, I have been stuck at home alone by myself for the last few days.  Jeff called me earlier in the week and asked if I could help him a little on the program his is writing in C for the GaugeCam project we are working on at NCSU.  Jeff is doing the lab automation for us.  Our hope is to be able to perform a bunch of functions that have to do with the lab equipment over the internet.  We have a pump and a couple of lights we want to turn on and off.  We want the light to move in an arch to emulate the kinds of bright spots and shadows caused by the sun.  We also want to be able to read a transducer that measures water height so we can compare it to what we are getting from the camera.

The upshot is that Jeff and Troy came over last night to work on it.  I got some sandwiches and some chips, showed Troy how I work on my programs at home, and worked through the programming problem with Jeff.  Among other things, I found that Jeff is an oil painter and plays the guitar.  He will fit right in with our clan!  It was good to have both Troy and Jeff over at the same time.  Troy really understands many facets of the problem we are trying to solve better than I.  Jeff, because he is a mechanical engineer had some great ideas about how we could do some of the stuff.  At any rate, I enjoyed myself a lot.  We are using some Arduino micro-controllers for the lab automation, so I got pretty inspired to get our controller going with Christian, too.

There is an amazing article in the August 15, 2009 issue of the Dubois County (Indiana) Herald about some of our friends.  We used to get together with them when we lived in Oregon.  On our way out to North Carolina, we spent a night (or two) with them and had a wonderful time swimming, talking, eating, and just hanging out together.  A reporter and a photographer spend many hours with Eric and Audrey Gabhart to learn and write a story on homeschooling.  It was a very well written, positive article that came out on a Saturday after five days worth of articles on the local government schools.  The photography that accompanies the article is stunning.  The photographer deserves a prize.

I think one of my favorite things about the article is the clarity with which the author describes how one homeschool family educates their children, volitionally and unapologetically, to prepare them to live useful and fulfilling lives.  The article is very careful to explain that the children’s education is academically rigorous with great attention paid to socialization, community involvement, physical education, art, and financial responsibility.

Congratulations to the Gabharts, Kasey Hawrysz (the author), and Krista Shinagl (the photographer) for a wonderful article.

Lorena took the kids over to visit Aunt Julia and their cousins last night while I was stuck at home scanning in the rest of this week’s Betty Blonde comic strips and working on the GaugeCam program.  The house is slowly getting trashed and the dirty clothes are starting stack up.  Jeff and Troy are coming over tomorrow to work on our robot programming, so I am going to have to clean up a little before they arrive.  That is a good thing.  If I do it once now, it won’t be so onerous to do it the night be for Lorena returns.  The last time this happened I was up to my elbows in dirty clothes and dishes for four hours.  I think my problem is that I can get away with being way more of a slob than when Lorena is here.  In addition to doing what is necessary not to drown in my own waste, I still have homeschool planning, GaugeCam work, and one more session of Betty Blonde scanning to perform before everyone comes home.

We have been to Boston’s Pub and Grill in Wilsonville at least a half a dozen times with our friends David and Gladys.  Dave was Grandpa Milo’s business partner for several decades in the doll house business and a long board surfer (born and raised in Hawaii).  Gladys is, well, she is just Gladys–one of the most loved people in our family.  We all agree that Boston’s is a requirement for future.  The have awesome (heart UN-healthy) chicken.  We need as much time with these folks as we can get.

Here are a few pictures of our time here in Oregon (so far) There are descriptions below the pictures if you click on them!

I was very happy to see Rubix and Kiwi, the twin cat sisters were fine when I arrived home from Oregon last night.  It was a great time.  My buddies Vernon and Bryan Joyce ran me to the airport yesterday morning at 4:00 AM.  We got to see almost all of the Newberg crowd as well as all of my Oregon nieces and nephews except Amy who is in Mexico right now.  Lorena, Kelly, and Christian ran down the valley to Albany yesterday, but were only able to see about 10% of the people on their list.  When they saw it was not going to be possible to see everyone, they decided to just go see the ones they knew they were not going to be able to visit at Saginaw later in the week.  We will put a picture or two up here as soon as the kids send them to me.

I did a ton of programming on the trip because I had so much time on the airplane and in airports and hope to do a ton more before everyone returns and school starts.  There was a great comment on one of my post on how to take the CLEP test that put me in the frame of mind to work on our school plan for next year.  I have to do the first couple of weeks worth of scheduling for Kelly and Christian before when they get back on Tuesday of next week, so I really have my work cut out for me.  Christian has one more year of Sonlight, so his schedule should be fairly straightforward, but Kelly is going into uncharted territory as she has moved on to more college oriented material.  I am very much looking forward to building their plans over the next couple of days.

Lorena and the kids were amazed that beside Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah, Bryan showed up at the airport to meet them and he brought along Kendall, Megan, McKenzie, and Abigail (ALL of Gary and Brenda’s kids)!  Please note that Bryan is wearing a Betty Blonde t-shirt!  The very first one spotted in the wild.  What a great surprise.  I understand, cousins Julia and Kylee and their friend Nicole were planning to be their, but Kylee stepped on glass and had to go to the emergency room (Grandpa Milo says she is OK).  Bryan popped me a not and said there are going to be a big kids get-together on Friday night, so with all the already planned activity, it sounds like the kids will be very, very busy.  As for Lorena and I, we mostly just want to hang out with Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah, Bryan, and some of our other friends around Oregon.

Today is the big day for Lorena, Kelly, and Christian to head out to Oregon.  I will drop them all off at the airport this afternoon after work.  They are all very excited to get out there to see Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah, and all their cousins and friends.  They have a very busy social schedule with lots of eating, visiting, and playing involved.  This is the last gasp because, as soon as they get back home, we dive right into homeschool.  Testing will even start sooner than normal–Kelly has to take the PSAT test on October 14.  We found out she will be taking the test with her friend Sarah M., so she is excited about that.  We have a couple of conventions to go to in September, too, so we will have quite a busy fall.  We will try to post some photos of the trip when we have the chance.

A synopsis of the results of a study to answer that question was posted on the HSLDA website today.  Click here to read the report.

Yesterday, our friend Jeff came over and we played with our new little Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller board.  It is very cool.  It has all the things one needs to make all kinds of cool robotic projects.  With the cat tower not complete, volcano computer project on hold, and the ham project waiting for winter debugging, Christian and I have been talking about what we should do next.  We want to build a robotic “something” that hold some appeal for Lorena and Kelly, too.  The leading candidate is a throwback to something we had in Albany.  We had a half, wooden barrel filled with water to hold goldfish on the back patio.  We were thinking of a three tier version of the same with a webcam to monitor water height (like GaugeCam) and look at our fish via the internet, and a temperature monitor, some pumps, tubes, and levers, and other stuff controlled by the Deumilanove to move the water around in fun ways.  We do not know what we want to call it yet, but we think that might be something we would all enjoy.  The cats, in particular, might enjoy it too much, so that is why we would want to keep the fish outside.

North Carolina lacks sidewalks, soda can eating machines, gas station attendants and Douglas Fir trees. Oregon lacks sweet tea at convention, accents and y’alls, churches, and square rocks. North Carolina has BoJangles, Biscuitville and Chick-Fil-A. Oregon has Baja Fresh, Burgerville, and Elmer’s. North Carolina is humid. Oregon is wet. Oregon does not have Kitty Hawk, but North Carolina does not have Crater Lake. North Carolina houses have garages on the side. Oregon houses have garages in front. North Carolina rednecks are loggers. Oregon rednecks are loggers. North Carolina hippies live in Chapel Hill (or so I’ve been told) Oregon hippies live in Oregon. Real Oregonians are Beaver fans. Real North Carolinians are into Nascar or something. I’m not sure. All I know is that we’re not supposed to be Tar Heel fans. Barbecue is a specialty of North Carolina. Marionberry jam is an Oregon specialty. Harris Teeter and Safeway are very similar, but Safeway has better Chinese food, and Harris Teeter has free cookies. Alberstons and Fred Meyer are Oregon stores. Food Lion and Lowes are North Carolina stores. Ginger Rogers and Beverly Cleary are from Oregon, and so is Herbert Hoover. Dolley Madison and Andy Griffith and Michael Jordan are North Carolinians. Krispy Kreme was founded in Winston-Salem, but Nike’s headquarters are in Beaverton. Oregon state motto: She flies with her own wings. North Carolina’s motto: “To be rather than to seem”

To be continued…

We have picked the winner of the first monthly Betty Blonde t-shirt giveaway!  We will tell you who the winner is as soon as she or he responds to our e-mail.  If we don’t get a response within a week then we will pick again!  There are still eleven more chances to win a t-shirt of your favorite cartoon characters this year, so keep on reading and tell your friends!  Remember, you have to be on the e-mail list to participate in the contest.  Click here to subscribe!

-Betty Blonde and Co.

We have lots of things to do this weekend.  I send the Lorena and the kids off to see their Oregon grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends for a couple of weeks.  I will join them for a few days in the middle of that.  We have lots of stuff to do to get ready for the trip, but this should also be a big project weekend as we are having a big meeting at NCSU today to decide exactly what it is we are trying to accomplish with our project.  I am hoping to set up a lab in the bonus room to program our Arduino controllers to control stepper/servo motors, turn lights on/off, and generally get Christian and our buddy Jeff going on robotic programming.  That means I will have to work my way through a bunch of boxes in the garage to find motors, relays, opto-racks, power supplies and all that stuff.  We have the workings of a new project.  I think I might have Christian do a programmed fountain/fish barrel like one we had when we were in Oregon.  Also we are going to do the first big Betty Blonde t-shirt giveaway and, hopefully, go to the Holly Springs Public Library.  It should be a great weekend.

Running hurts. 😛 After the shoulder-swimming thing, I started running a little.  It’s not fun at all.  Sometimes I feel like I can run forever without any problems. Other times it takes me four steps before I start cramping up.  My legs always hurt afterwards.  I’m terrible at pacing myself.  It hurts more to jog than to run.  I can’t go more than a mile and a half without having to walk.  My throat starts burning because of how I breathe.  Short of slowing down to a walk, NOTHING will make the cramps go away. It gets super boring after the first three laps.  The music selection at the Y does not help with the boredom.  I sweat like a pig. RUNNING STINKS!!!!

Swimming is the ultimate sport.  A good swim feels like slicing through warm, soft butter.  All my sweat is washed away.  It’s relaxing and repetitive and refreshing. It doesn’t jar my bones every time I move.  I usually get a killer workout. It’s not as boring and I don’t know why. I don’t cramp up. Breathing is easy and controlled. I know how to pace myself in the water.  It never hurts as much as running. Also, being underwater is so much cooler than running around a short track eight million times. Swimming is just plain awesome. I would do it every single day if I could. However, our Y doesn’t have an indoor pool yet and I’m still staying off of my shoulder and I’m going to need to do something all winter long and I hit a plateau on the elliptical and the elliptical is boring anyway and running is something that you can do competitively which I like and sometimes when I’m running it feels like I’m running super fast on a cloud and I could run forever and that feeling is really, really good, almost as good as swimming like butter. So running it is.

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The Big Betty Blonde t-shirt giveaway is this weekend!! So sign up with your extra e-mails, cross your fingers and anxiously await the results! 🙂

This is what Troy, Christian, and I have been working on at the Ag Engineering department at NCSU.  It is really coming along nicely now.  It looks like our buddy, Jeff, is going to join us on the project.  He has a mechanical engineering degree from Virginia Tech and will work on the robotic elements of the project.  We are hoping to get together this weekend to plan this out and go through some of the programming issues.  We identified the Arduino board as the embedded robotic controller we want to use.  It costs less than $40 new, but Jeff one-upped me and bought one from a buddy for $20.  He has already started programming it.  I really need to get a little bit more organized with Christian’s programming project, too.  Jeff is going to write the program to control the pump, some lights, and a motor to move one set of lights on a track.  I think I will have Christian start looking at the possibility of using an Arduino board to read the results from one of the competing sensors.  That way, if two people are learning the same technology, they can help each other and there is some redundancy of knowledge.

Yesterday, the kids spent most of the day out of the house for piano and guitar lessons.  After that, Lorena took Christian over to work on Charlene and Steve’s computer.  When I got home, no one was there.  that was a good thing because I got what has been going around so I programmed as long as I could then went to bed.  I know this is all not that interesting–I tell myself I am saving up writing energy for when the school year starts.  Hopefully, though, I will have some good pictures of the Oregon trip between now and then.

This weekend, the kids and I will do the drawing for our first t-shirt give-away.  We will input the number of subscribers to our email list at random.org.  We will then let the random number generator pick a number and send an email to the winner asking what size t-shirt they need and where we should ship it.  Although it is not necessary for the winner to do so, we will ask them for permission to post their name and, if possible, send us a picture of them in the t-shirt to post on our “winners” page.  That’s it.  We will do it again next month.

On another note, I have always thought that I could eventually start a business with some of the code that I write for learning and to help with a number of projects.  I am rethinking that idea a little right now.  There are two programs I would like to write just to give away.   The reality is that I have already written the bulk of both of them.  The first is the BleAx comic strip panel aggregator/uploader.  Really, I would like to convert that from Python to C++ and add a little more functionality first.  I might have Christian help me with that.  The other is a speed camera program to measure the speed of vehicles that travel past a house with the help of either a webcam or a security camera.  I will keep you posted on my efforts.

With so much stuff going on, I do not have too much time to write, so I thought this would be an opportune time to put up an image of the finished cat tower!  I selected this image with the system up and running in user mode.

This will be brief because we are on the run today.  This is the last day before Jorge, Mari, Grandma Conchita, and the kids head back to Mexico.  We have places to go and things to do–mostly involving shopping, eating, drinking, and watching the kids play.

I get off from work at noon today to go hang out with our family visiting from Mexico.  The really good thing about hanging out with my brother-in-law Jorge is that we like to do the same things when we are not working–that is basically *NOTHING!!!*  How cool is that?  All we do is sit, talk about technology, houses, the kids, and God.  Well, maybe we don’t just sit, we do a lot of eating, too, but we kind of count that as doing nothing.  I think that is the plan for today and tomorrow.  Grandma Conchita and Tia Mari have been shopping with Lorena almost non-stop since they arrived.  I hope they can survive a couple of days away from the mall.