Another Word for Nerd

I was feeling well enough tonight to assemble the Replica-1 kit - it’s a reproduction of an Apple I system using modern components. Well, it’s done!.

Tip - never eat anything with fish in it a few days after a power outage. Tuesday night I came down sick because of (I think) the “Salmon Friand” at La Madeline. Wednesday afternoon I ended up at the doctor, diagnosed with a sinus infection and got sent home with a prescription for horse-strength antibiotics. Today I’m still at home, watching my brain melt out through my nose…

The rest of the parts for the Replica-1 should arrive today, I’m looking forward to that. The 4″ LCD arrived yesterday, so now I’m just waiting on the serial interface and power supply cable.

I was a member of the OpenSolaris pilot team, and I got some “thank you” goodies in the mail yesterday - a Wi-Fi Finder, a T-shirt, and a nifty poster that I framed after a trip to IKEA.

We only had a 10-minute wait at a Shell station this morning to fill up on gas, and it looks like service stations should be back to normal by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Power was back on when we stopped by the house around 11, so we checked out of the hotel and are now back at home.

Power still hadn’t come back on by 3pm, so we’re “roughing it” in the Intercontinental hotel for the next day or two.

6am saturday: power goes out for 15 seconds

9am saturday: just heard a loud BOOM down the street as a transformer blew, I’m about to shut everything down as we’re running on UPSes.

Only a Category 3? Sub-50mph winds?

I feel cheated! “Not As Advertised!” I want my money back!

I’m going to have to buy this emulator on payday.

The question: How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?

The specifics:

- You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
- You are not allowed to touch a wall.
- When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is “out.”
- I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your magic number. The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy.
- The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of “counter-tactics” training.
- There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
- The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down.

(from MetaFilter)

This weekend I finished the Southern Cross 1 Z80-based single board computer kit.

All together, about eight hours of work spread out over three days. It works! Now to assemble the PC interface (so I don’t have to keep programming it by hand with the keypad) and get to learning Z80 assembly.

I’m really proud of this kit - it went together well (despite some missing parts; I picked up the missing resistors at Radio Shack) and I’m really happy with how it turned out. This was the project I was “working my way up to” when I started learning how to solder about a month and a half ago.