Another Word for Nerd

Got up this morning, and have done the following:

- Shipped a PC and parts to a friend
- Shipped a digital camera to another friend
- Replaced the burnt-out left headlight on the car
- Finally put the new registration sticker on the car

I’m in the process of cleaning up the “lab” (middle bedroom where a lot of the computer equipment, ham radio gear, and my soldering equipment resides) and will be putting up my new shelves. Once they’re up, I’ll throw out the old plastic shelves.

I’ve already filled one of our curbside trash cans with miscellaneous junk, and will have most of the second one full by tomorrow night.

Once the lab is done, I’ll dissasemble and get rid of the dining room table and finally assemble the BowFlex in its place.

I really wish that “big trash day” came more often than the first Friday of each month, as I’ve got at least a recliner, shelves, and some chairs that I’d love to get rid of this weekend.

I’ve always been interested in Freemasonry, and reading about the organization has been a long-time hobby of mine. My grandfather was a Mason, although he passed away before I got interested in it so I was never able to ask him about it.

I decided a couple of days ago to see what I could find out about his participation. Some helpful folks pointed me to the Secretary of the Lodge in Guthrie, Oklahoma. I emailed him about an hour ago, and in less than forty-five minutes had this response back:

“George Stanley Williams was initiated an Entered Apprentice on 5/12/31, passed to the Degree of Fellow Craft on 6/9/31 and raised to Master Mason on 6/2/53 in Marlow Lodge #103. He moved his membership to Anadarko on 1/18/55. He held no offices.”

How’s that for speed and service? Pretty neat, I say.

I finally ended my 3-year love affair with the Linksys WRT54G (currently running DD-WRT firmware), and replaced my last unit tonight with the new Apple Airport Extreme.

I’d already replaced one of my WRT54Gs (the one acting as a wireless-to-wired bridge in my middle bedroom that acts as a “projects lab”) with an Airport Express a couple of weeks ago.

So, now my entire network is based around Apple products. So far, it works great - the only stumbling block was a bit of manual configuration for the WDS setup that lets me bridge two wired networks with the wireless connection.

I don’t have any 802.11n devices yet, but plan on picking up another Extreme in a couple of months to replace the existing Express.

In roughly 1 day 3 hours 13 minutes 50 seconds, the project that I’ve spent eight to twelve hours a day working on since Friday, December the 22nd, will be complete.

Note to self: Next year, actually take Christmas vacation and then use your vacation time from your day job to actually rest and sleep. At least the money I’m earning from this consulting job will pay off most of my credit cards.

Apparently the P-trap that I bought, the nuts and compression fittings that came with it, and the old “waste pipe” and nut on it were all crap. When I assembled everything, there were leaks where the nuts and compression fittings held things together. We gave up and called someone who does this for a living.

The plumber cut most of the waste pipe off, and replaced everything between the bottom of the sink tailpipe and the stub of waste pipe with a new PVC P-trap, pipe, and compression fittings/nuts.

Without the “late night emergency” charge, it would have only cost us $138. Not a bad price, really - we’ll give them a call (during normal hours) next time we need something done.

If you need good 24-hour plumbing service in Houston, give 911 Plumbing a call.

At least the plumber said I did an excellent job on the sink tailpipe.

I finally unpacked the Apple IIc monitor that got here a couple of months ago, dug out the Replica-1 that I built a year ago, and hooked everything up. Thanks to the new video chip I got from Vince Briel a while back, everything works just fine!

I’m going to learn how to pick locks.

I bought everything I needed off of Amazon:

I’ve also got a copy of the MIT Guide to Lockpicking and a few other documents.

Hopefully by this weekend I can be good enough to open the deadbolt.

This is one of the most beautiful examples of electronics assembly that I have ever seen. Someone in Germany built a digital Nixie clock using only tubes! Even the wiring job underneath the clock is amazing.

She let me order a SBC6120 kit!
I can’t wait to build it and fire up ADVENTURE.

It will be a while, though - I’ll have to practice on some other small projects to get un-rusty with the soldering iron, and then order some other small parts to complete the 6120 kit.

As seen on CNN today:

Except for the gun, I can find everything in that picture in my workroom or electronics junk boxes - multimeter, soldering iron, C-cell battery holder, old cell phone…