Nike Campus, south entrance

Full ride stats can be found here. I cycled Baseline from my place all the way out to Cedar Hills and back. It’s not the most fantastic route ever, and you spend most of that time sucking down car fumes, but the weather forecast was saying 30-40% chance of rain so I wanted to stay close to the max line in case it pours. (It didn’t).

I caught up on some work e-mail and did some work for the evening. What? I left early. It balances out, I guess.

I’ve also been doing laundry for the last 6 hours. I guess I shouldn’t wait close to 2 weeks before washing a load of whites, dark clothing, jeans and most of my cycling gear. Have a good night everyone.

-T

Tuesday Jan 19th –
I got my boards today! They came to the lab at the end of the day (LATE!), but at least I have them now. I was able to spend one hour on the initial bring up of the switching power supplies this evening. They all work and are within regulation tolerance (thank goodness). I’m fairly relieved that at least that portion of the board started up with no issues. Other subsystems aren’t working yet, but we’ll see how that goes. Obviously I can’t tell you what I’m working on, so we’ll just keep it high level. Though… if you want to sign your soul away to me, I mean… yeah , I’ll gladly take it in exchange for information

Wednesday Jan 20th –
I went to sleep at 3am this morning. I couldn’t sleep at all. Just worried about the project and why the storage controllers aren’t seen at all. Is it a manufacturing defect? Is it a design issue??? I commented on my Facebook page that I really need a sleep button so I can just zonk out. That would have been real nice.

5 cups of coffee, 1 tea and 1 soda got me through the day today. Yeah.

I spent half a day of debugging and I got one of the two storage controllers working this afternoon. The issue was due to some resistor stuffing options which is a relief. The lack of sleep from yesterday isn’t particularly helping either.

I left work at 5 and started to prep for the Wet Wednesday party at my place. Teanna and John came over. It was a small crowd but still fun. I made spaghetti with sausages. The tomato sauce was from the store, but I added a red bell pepper, 2 fresh tomatoes (coarsely diced), and a small pack of mushrooms, also coarsely diced and half an onion. It took a while to reduce the contents, but it turned out well. Dinner was served with a side salad and garlic bread. Yum!

The movie selection for the night was Seven Pounds. It was nice to just chill for the evening and get my mind off of work.

Thursday Jan 21st –
I got 8 hours of sleep! Yesterday night was definitely some “me time.” So I’m halfway functional this morning.

I was chatting with Jessica online. She commented that it would be a great day to go cycling – lucky you since you don’t have classes in the afternoon – but I was stuck at work instead. 30 minutes later, I decided, screw it. I needed some mental health time so I left work around 2:30. I figure that I’m waiting for responses overseas anyway and their work day doesn’t start until 5pm US time. I hopped on my bike and put in 30 miles in 1hr 45minutes. It was really nice outside – around 53 degrees. Eat your heart out Jess Ride stats can be found here.

I went back to work around 5 and worked in the lab until 10 or so. The only thing that I had the entire afternoon was just a Clif bar during the ride. Man. That is not good at all. I was the only person left in the entire building… it felt like the long work nights back in August again. I did manage to get 90% of the board working and functionally tested. Just one more part to check out in the morning. I have less than 24 hours to figure out what is wrong with this board.

I went home and ended up working until 3am Friday morning wondering what is causing the remaining board issues. I learned the hard way that I should pay more attention to my own energy levels as the schematic error was right in front of my face and I said “oh, that works!” instead. Shoot.

Friday Jan 22nd –
I managed to subscribe to the 5 hours of sleep work plan this evening. I do not recommend it, especially after a less than stellar week of sleeping habits.

I did get the board completely working before 10am!!! This will be a nice and short afternoon… I still need to finish packing. Packing seems to always take forever!

Today was Teanna’s last day at work. I organized a going away lunch at CPR. It was mostly co-workers that attended, but Jessica, John, David Z, and Reed showed up as well. Good times! Glad everyone could make it out there. Note to self: I still need to e-mail each person that has a photo with Teanna in it… I’ll hopefully get to that in a day or two.

I hung out with Jessica and we watched some Firefly. The plan is complete! I have you addicted to the TV show, now you should spread the addiction on to others! Maybe the movie will make more sense now. I did get some work completed this evening at Starbucks. There are lots of reviews left to finish up and the next two weeks will be super busy.

Saturday Jan 23rd –
I decided that I should try to invert my nights and days while I’m still in the US – I went to sleep around 5am this morning! I drove up to Skyline and saw the view of Beaverton and Hillsboro from the West Hills. It’s always a good calming place to check out. Definitely worth it.

This week would have been so much easier if I didn’t have to go to China. I guess I should stop complaining because I’m going regardless and it should be a good experience.
I woke up at noon. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually sunny outside. The weather forecast was calling for 40% chance of rain and cloudy conditions. I’ve lost all faith in the weatherman. I’m glad they are wrong on this occasion. I went on a 11.5 mile cycling ride and rounded out 100 miles for the month of January. That’s good for now… but I put in 150 in December, so that’s a regression, not an improvement and it’s definitely not aligning with my resolution to cycle over 3K+ miles for the year! I need to get it together… maybe find more time in just riding during the work DAY and just work at night when the Asia teams are awake and online. I should let my manager know this is my intention, I’m fairly sure that will be OK to do.

Found out someone decided to wake up at 4pm for the day. That’s just lazy For the record, I went to sleep at 5am too, and this was also after 22 hour day, and having little to no sleep for the week AND cycling twice this week.

I’m spending the night out in PDX and had dinner with the parents. My flight is early in the morning on Sunday.

No one has a wireless network that I can tap into at my parents place. So I was in a pinch to find SOME kind of connectivity and connection to the world. I discovered the wonders of internet access on my phone. Free for the next 30 days. $10/mo after the trial ends. The browser on the phone is limited in capability, and it doesn’t seem to store cookies well at all so I have to login after almost every page load on FB… it does a little bit better on GMail though.

I managed to take 4400 photos / videos that total 12.5GB in 2009. My backup for the year spanned 3 DVD-Rs. As I have done in years past, I made one set for an on-site backup, and a second set for an off-site backup. (no, this is NOT overkill. You should have seen what i did with my film camera negatives — those are stored in Acid free books, and descant packs were used to keep the moisture constant ) Anyway, I did a file checksum compare between the original source file on the HDD, the first DVD-R backup set and the second DVD-R backup set to ensure there were no bit errors and the data integrity was solid. I also made sure that the DVD-R was readable on a second computer without issue. That part alone took 5 hours.

At 9pm my computer has a HDD auto-clone operation that kicks in every two days that copies everything from C drive to my D drive. I use the Casper software to do this. That took a few minutes to update. At 10pm I was finally able to copy the 2009 photos into my E drive which is powered on every once and a while when I need to do a quick digital backup without needing to burn stuff to media.

Oh yeah, I spent way too much time on Facebook while the backups were occurring. Too bad I didn’t go riding.

I registered for the following cycling rides today:

• Worst Day of the Year ride 2010 (Feb 14th) – 40 mile option
• LiveSTRONG Seattle 2010 – 100 mile option. Join my team at: http://seattle2010.livestrong.org/TIO
• Tour de Cure (Hillsboro) 2010 – 100 mile option. Join my team at: http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=7041&px=5551585

Monday Jan 4th – 1am: Tweeted to #FB: “1am. Still wide awake. I really should have tried to maintain a normal sleep schedule over the last few days… Need to be awake by 6!”

Well, 6am came by and waking up was an insane challenge. I had a 7am appointment at Kaiser (Mother Joseph Plaza campus), but I got the run around and the doc wasn’t in the office. That is not what I’m expecting when you have an appointment setup. So I had things rescheduled for 1pm that afternoon, but all the way over at the Kaiser Sunnybrook office in Clackamas. I took the afternoon off from work and drove all the way out there. A little inconvenient to drive out there, but I got medically cleared to resume cycling… thank goodness everything should be OK.

I went to Fred Meyer to pick up groceries and saw a car with plates that read “DR HRBL.” I took it as “Dr. Horrible” which made my day. Jill pointed out that it could be “Dr Herbal” … which kinda ruined the fun! Anyway, got food for the next few days. I made a tuna noodle casserole [recipe] for dinner. It was a quick and easy meal to make, and it was good. I would argue that the recipe only serves 2 people, not 4.

I went through Facebook in the evening hours and noticed I got tagged in Jessica’s vacation note. For the record, 10am is WAY too early to text while one is really wanting to sleep . Cycling plans for this Saturday with Jess is in progress.

Tuesday Jan 5th – 1:40am: Tweeted to #FB: “1:40am. Awake for the last hr & can’t sleep. Isn’t there a ’sleep mode’ for this mind?:(”

I really need to get the sleep schedule back on track. This is gonna hurt much more as the week progresses.

I looked at my Google Analytics report this morning and noted that the number search result that leads to my website is “Frootee stargate” and links to my blog entry in October 2009.

I’m pleased to announce that showing Dr. Horrible a few times over the summer months has taken hold in some of my friends… even when one is on vacation, and said person may have been watching it in the car as they were a passenger heading to their destination… ahem… Jessica.

I started watching Firefly again. Yeah, I think enough time has passed that I can enjoy watching the series again. The last binge was in August as noted in the entry titled “The last 3 Months” and subsequent drawings and collection of Firefly maquettes.

Cycling plans set for Saturday morning – 9am, 30+ mile ride around Hillsboro.
Plans set for Sunday too… this will be my second visit to Corvallis since graduation. Should be fun!

Wednesday Jan 6th – 1:00am: Tweeted to #FB: “Really? 1am. Why can’t I sleep?!? Three days straight of sitting in bed for 1+hr without falling a sleep. Crazy.”

I’m starting to think about getting a smart phone and a data plan. Maybe a Blackberry won’t be too bad after all. I’m gonna stay clear of the iPhone unless they can seriously increase the battery time. We’ll see what happens. It’s just a thought for now. It would be nice to be connected to the world and have access to information at your fingertips.

My refrigerator is on the fritz again. Its a 2003 General Electric GSS22WGPC side by side. The condenser coil in the back of the freezer is completely frozen over and the fridge section is getting close to 50 degrees. I spent the better part of the evening taking the food out and storing it in a ice chest so things won’t spoil. I removed the shelving from the freezer side and removed the back panel to the freezer. Spent a good 30 minutes aiming a hair dryer at the coil and got everything melted away. I didn’t have a chance to completely dismantle the freezer components and diagnose what is wrong, but at least this will get the fresh food section back in working order for a few weeks. Perhaps I’ll look at the components tomorrow night. Just need to do some research first. I did find a good forum and replacement parts website for some helpful advice from other consumers and repair guys:

Appliance Blog: http://www.applianceblog.com/mainforums/
Replacement parts: http://www.appliancepartspros.com/
Replacement parts (Sears): http://www.searspartsdirect.com/partsdirect/index.action
Exploded block diagram for my fridge: http://www.appliancepartspros.com/partsearch/model.aspx?model_id=5242135&diagram_id=22287624#d22287624

Thursday Jan 7th – I left work early today. There wasn’t much to do (and I’m thankful for that!)… though I still need to complete my performance review.

I took apart the freezer section once again. This time, I was on a mission to check what was wrong. It could have been one of three things: 1) the defrost heater , 2) the thermostat, or 3) the logic board. The logic board is the most expensive part… around $160. Visual inspection of the board didn’t show any signs of burns, or bulging caps. So that’s good. I’m hoping it’s item 1) or 2) since those cost MUCH less.

Anyway, I packed away all of the freezer food in a tote again and stored it outside with some ice. I proceeded to remove the shelving, then the back panel. Next came the ice maker motor, and the evaporator cover. The evaporator cooling fan was next to be removed. It covers and houses the access points for the defrost heater and thermostat that I was interested in. It took a bit of effort to disassemble as i had to squeeze myself into the freezer cavity. That was a bit awkward.

The thermostat tested OK and the wiring continuity was just fine. I tested the defrost heater last and found it open. It’s a resistive heating element, so it should have registered something on the ohm-meter, but didn’t. (In hind sight, I guess I could have checked the defrost heater FIRST without having to completely remove the freezer compartment components. Oh well). I found a replacement defrost heater from the Sears Part Direct website for $36 + $10 shipping. Not too bad I’d think — the closest part store that carried stock was deep in PDX, so $10 isn’t too much to pay for convenience. This is still cheaper than having a GE tech come out and shelling out $80 for just the diagnosis fee + parts + labor. I should get the part by next Thursday. Lets hope that fixes it.

I snapped a few pictures of the take apart and posted them onto facebook. If you don’t have an account, you can view them through this public link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2238986&id=19700626&l=3d5e1d27ba

To wind down the evening, I talked to mom for an hour and caught up on the week. She’s really worried that I’ll get cold in China… I keep telling her my jacket is warm enough; yes, I’ll be warm; and no, -4degC isn’t that cold with the gear that I’m bringing.

Rest in peace Mr. O’Halloran. You will be missed by all of your past and present students at Mt. Tabor M.S.

-T

Serenity Little Damn Heroes

I drew this freehand and it looks pretty close to the maquettes!

Work has been stressful, as I’m sure many of you can relate. I spent the better part of May, June, July and August cooped up in the hardware engineering lab or the EMC chamber until the wee hours of the morning. There were a few off-site adventures to NW EMC to checkout FCC compatibility of my project, and at times find out that we’re not so compliant which led to a lot of debugging. As it were, it was a constant rinse and repeat cycle of working from 8-5 verifying my project, and debugging issues. I’d go cycling for an hour or two to get my head on straight, then return to the office from 8-midnight or later. I’m sure that can’t be good for anyone. Some days I would be so tired that my mind was completely numb, and I’d just walk around in a daze.

Cycling, for the most part, kept me sane. I’d ride 20-30 miles after work just to get my mind off of things. It was really nice to just sit and propel yourself on a country road for miles at a time. I started the season back on March 12, 2009, and officially ended it just last week on Sept 23rd, 2009 with a total of 2321 miles over the last 6 months. My bike, a 2006 Specialized Tarmac Comp has seen well over 4000 miles since i bought it in the spring of 2007. I wore out the original set of brakes and the original set of wheels after 3000 miles. The chain was changed back around 2000 miles and it’s only been through one “accident” during the 2007 STP. Not too bad.

Other stuff
Somehow I found some opportunities to fall in love with a new movie — well, new to me anyway. In early August, I was over at a friend’s place and and watched “Serenity“. Yes, it was originally filmed in 2005. The acting was great and the concept of a colonized universe because the “Earth was used up” seemed appealing to me. Apparently my brother, David, tried to show me this movie back in 2006 after it came out on DVD, but I had no reason to watch it. Boy, was I mistaken. I come to find out that the movie was based on the 2002 TV show “Firefly.” I looked it up on Hulu the same weekend and gave the first and second episode a shot. Boy, it was good and I wondered why I never heard of it before — perhaps it was because it was stuck in the library studying my ass off at the time.

I watched almost the entire season in the first weekend and thought I’d better see how many seasons this show ran. I was saddened to find out that the series only ran for one season before being canceled by Fox. D’oh! I bought the Blu-Ray versions of both titles and watched them both at least twice over now. I think it just gets better each time really. As a side note, I found the character of Kaylee Fry (played by Jewel Staite) really sweet and loving. She’s the ships mechanic, who is sweet and “bubbly” and yet be very stern and straight with someone when she is upset. I think Jewel is hot, so that may have something to do with it as well The whole Firefly / Serenity series consumed about 2 weeks of the late night hours which is great – something to watch before I doze off to sleep for the night.

Somewhere in here, I bought a new home theater system. I thought, man, it might be time to get sound that is better than just the two speakers from my TV. I’m glad I made that choice since the “movie experience” in the house went from “OK” to “DAMN! I didn’t know that bullet went from the front left corner of the room to the rear right!” (Of course, you may have guessed the first thing that popped into the DVD player was The Matrix and the all mighty lobby shoot out scene

ANYWAY… After finding out that Firefly only aired for a season, i started looking at the Filmography of the principle characters and found a couple of other good shows as a result. Nathan Fillion (who played Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds) was in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (starring Neil Patrick Harris — yes, Doogie Howser); Adam Baldwin (who played Jayne) is in Chuck as John Casey (knew this one already since I already watch Chuck!); Summer Glau (the Terminator on the Sarah Connor Chronicles, duh!) and Jewel Staite who was casted as a recurring guest star in Season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis and promoted to a regular status in Season 5 as Dr. Jennifer Keller.

I watched Stargate: SG1 on and off for the last few years on SCI-FI and was familiar with the whole “Stargate” concept so I thought I’d give Stargate Atlantis a try — started with Season 5. I watched it and definitely loved the characters in the show as well as a continuation of what the SG:1 series had already established. But again, I was saddened to find out that the show did not get renewed for a sixth season. (Man, i thought, that’s two shows that I’ve watched and that’s two shows that I find out that has been canceled?!?). So if you know me, then you’ll also know that I really like Science Fiction — yes, even Star Trek; I’m sure there is a Trekkie side in you as well — so I went a head and bought seasons 4 and 5 of Stargate: Atlantis on DVD (there is no Blu-Ray version, unfortunately ). While I waited for those to arrive, I started watching the Pilot episode of Stargate Atlantis and for the next month I watched Seasons 1, 2, and 3 from, uh, shall we say, an “online, and out of country, source.” The video quality suffered a bit, but the story line was rather engaging. I then followed suite with Season 4, and re-watched Season 5 for continuity and clarification and got all of the inside-jokes in the screen play. Watching SG:A revived my love for Sci-Fi, I went a head and bought Seasons 1-3 as well.

Stargate: Atlantis (SG:A) is the second part of the Stargate series (preceded by Stargate:SG1). With the cancellation of the show, the SyFy network premiered Stargate: Universe (SG:U) to explore the 9th chevron of the Stargate (9th symbol address to “dial” between two stargate devices and establish a connecting wormhole). Some back history can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device). It should be noted that much of the “Stargate” travel is heavily based on theoretical astrophysics, particularly that of black holes and wormholes — so not entirely “far fetched” considering that there are real people, today, that spend their lives doing theoretical astrophysics. But of course, “far fetched” is used broadly in this context Naturally i watched the pilot episodes and find it intriguing at this time. The only actor/actress that i know from that series is Ming-Na (who played Dr. Jing-Mei Chen on ER).

Oh yeah, so after watching the last season and episode of SG:A (for the second time!) i started to search for other shows that the main characters are a part of. First, there’s the obvious (because I told you above, unless you just skipped a few paragraphs) — Jewel Staite from Firefly who played as Dr. Jennifer Keller, Chief Medical Officer of the Atlantis base. David Hewlett (who plays as a self-described genius and astrophysicist Dr. Rodney McKay) wrote a British comedy themed movie called A Dog’s Breakfast — which starred himself, Kate Hewlett (real life and movie sister), Paul McGillion, and Rachel Luttrell – which i found quite odd and hilarious since some of those are the primary cast members and recurring guest stars on SG:A. I bought A Dog’s Breakfast just yesterday along with SG:A Seasons 1-3, so lets watch it at a movie night sometime in the near future.

There’s currently rumored to be a direct to DVD Stargate Atlantis movie, but the release date hasn’t been announced. I hope that one makes it through.

In closing:
If you’ve have made it this far, I applaud you.

When i started to write this several hours ago, I re-watched the Firefly episode “Out of Gas.” – If you don’t get into the whole Firefly series or the Serenity movie, do yourself a favor and at least give this episode a try. It shows a lot of the character development and the back history of the main characters that were on the ship. In my estimation, which may or may not be worth anything to you, it is definitely a “MUST SEE”

Thanks for sticking with it.
-T