Data's Blog

Well, as you can see, I’m not much of a blogger. Last post was back in Oct. I seem to do these in 5 month increments.

Lots has happened since the last post linking a video to my grandma’s slide show.

Frogster America has decided to pay me, We have gotten tons of snow, my Grandpa (on my dad’s side) passed away, And in 36 hours I’m flying to California… First time on a plane.

In between all of that, I have been keeping busy with my usual little projects – some of which I hope to start documenting on here soon so that I have a reference for future projects.

I’m mainly making this post as an excuse to try this:

This is a map of my shopping journey today. Testing to see if it will auto update when I add onto it tomorrow.

Seth

I made this for my Grandma’s Memorial service – Thanks to Mom for her work with the text on the slides.

Grandma passed away Sept. 10th, 2010, ending her years of suffering once and for all – Memorial service was held Sept. 14th, 2010.

[flashvideo file=http://cssquad.net:81/misc/grandma.flv /]

Recieved this via email to day – I highly recommend gcfl.net – Free clean funny emails every week day

*************from gcfl.net************
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ as written by a technical writer for a firm that does Gov’t contracting…

‘Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself – thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen – “Now Dasher, now Dancer…” et al. – guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved – with utmost celerity and via a downward leap – entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion’s floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about- face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage.
He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: “Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn.”
Received from Thomas Ellsworth.
******* —–

Man got a headache reading that 😀

Data

Well, as you all can see, I’m not much of a blogger. Don’t really have much going on.

Any ways, just wanted to let my blog know I’m not dead. Next post will be a list of usefull free software that I use. Seems like every blog has one, may as well do one of my own 😀

Back at it again. Getting my hands dirty (literally, old electric tape) again with wires.

But this one has left me puzzled beyond puzzled.

The task:
Unlike my last one, where I wanted to free a plug from the evil switch, I got a plug here that needs some control.

The desired setup is that a 3 way switch in the hall will control the plug. A second 3 way switch is in the dinning room, controlling said plug.

Power comes through switch in dinning room, box currently has 5 wires coming in – 3 traditional ones with just black and white wires, 2 with the red, black and white.

Fig 1 - Drawing of wiring

Again, some wire designations:

In the box, 5 wires are coming in. thus W2:black indicates the black wire coming from the wire labeled W2.

And again, since using a white background, blue indicates the white wire.

Switch one – Controls a light in the dining room. Switch one and Switch two are on the same wall side by side in the same box.

Plug – the plug we want to have controlled by switches two and three. Switch 3 is in the hallway, about 20 feet or so from this mess.

After crawling around in the attic, I traced the wires so:

W1 – Powers the light in ceiling of dining room, and powers a plug across the room -based on initial setup, explained below
W2 – powers an other plug – based on initial setup, explained below
W3 – wire from plug we want to control with SW 2 and 3
W4 – Wire from SW3
W5 – Provides power to entire mess.

Initial wiring:

W1:Black + W2:black + W5:black – Wired together, and attached to SW1 (Top black point)
W1:Red – attached to SW1 (Bottom black point)
W1:White + W2:White + W3:White + W5:White – wired together

W3:Black + W4:Black – wired together
I don’t remember the exact wiring for the rest of W4’s wires. I do know that when I first opened it up SW2 had a broken black wire attached to the one pole. And I believe the W4:Red was wired to the switch, can’t remember about W4:White.

With this setup, SW1 turns on and off a light in the dining room, and provides power to 2 plugs.

Interestingly, as a result of this setup, W1:Red is always powered, even when SW1 is turned off – I checked and as far as I can tell, W1:Red is not attached to any wire up in the light box. As soon as I disconnect W5:Black from W1:Black, W1:Red looses its power.

To further add to the dilemma, the plug we want to control has two wires coming in. One enters the box as W3, the other I don’t know where it goes.

the 4 wires connect to the plug, 2 black on the left – top and bottom posts, 2 white on the right, top and bottom posts. Neither wire has power, so I’m assuming that it is getting power from the light switch mess in the dining room.

SW3 wiring is:

SW3:Red – W4:red
SW3:Green – W4:Black
SE3:Black – W4:White

I think – its 1am, not thinking clearly any more 😀

help please!

What a mess

UPDATE:

Did some more looking at it today – just got more confused.

I drew this one up, its a simpler diagram (I hope) and gets rid of the wires that aren’t part of the circut

Simpler Diagram

And a new twist – combining the black wire from power to the BL1 wire on the plug, and the white from power with W1 from plug, the SW2 becomes energized… I am so lost 🙁

Just testing something out for my black hawk down gaming squad…

Wrote a simple PHP script to count each time some one clicks a link to our squad site from sites such as these.

Visit the *CS Squad website

One Switch, three plugs, one junction box. nine wires. What a mess! And I want to add 2 more wires to the mix, adding in a light fixture to the mess!

One of my projects that I get to do while helping my parents fix up their rental house, is adding a light fixture to one of the bedrooms. Until now, the light was just plugged in to a plug, with the light switch controlling the plug.

My project is two fold. One, set the plug free from the dictatorship of the evil switch, and two, put a proper light fixture in the center of the room, under control of said evil switch, where it belongs.

So far, part one is done. 3 of the four plugs, including the newly liberated one are now happily ready to serve at our beck and call.

Part two is proving to be a conundrum. For your visual pleasure, I have drawn a rough diagram as to the basic layout of the wiring in this bedroom.

Please note: The blue lines indicate the white wires… I could have drawn them white, but that wouldn’t have done you any good with it being a white back ground.

Also, to name the wires I’m using the format of device:wirecolor. For example, p3:white + p4:white means that the white wire from plug four is connected to the white wire from plug 3.

Here is the diagram:

As you can see, the wires from p2, p3, p4 and the light switch go to one junction box. p1 gets its power from the light switch.
The light switch has three terminals, two on the right side, one on the left – I can’t remember though which wire goes where.

To the best of my memory, the original wiring in the junction box was as follows:

Switch:black + p2:black + p3:black
Switch:white + p2:white + p3:white
Switch:red + p4:black (p4:white not attached, whether intentional or it slipped out while we searched for it, don’t know)

Setup was rigged so that switch would turn p4 off/on, rest of plugs stay powered

The current setup to get p4 free of the light switch:
p2:black + p3:black + p4:black
p2:white + p3:white + p4:white
plugs 2-4 ok

Keeping the above setup, now working in the light fixture and switch:

tried:

switch:black + p2:black + p3:black +p4:black
switch:white + p2:white +p3:white +p4:white + light:white
Switch:red + light:black

result: all plugs work, switch does not turn on light.

I have one more mix up to try, unfortunately I left the paper I wrote it on at the rental house, thinking on running over tomorrow/today to try it out.

I had the light fixture working up in the attic before we cut the hole in the ceiling and ran the wire down… which if I jotted it correctly on the paper, may be the solution.

So we’ll see – This will be updated once the working solution is found.

Seth…

History behind it – Several years ago while on vacation, I caught a water snake and brought it home. After some time, it escaped into my cold air return, never to be seen again.

i don’t know how old I was, but I came up with this for the fun of it 😀

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
1. I caught a snake, a snake caught me I caught a tiny snake.
Above the dam at the edge of the lake, I caught a tiny snake.

2. I kept the snake, the snake kept me, I kept the tiny snake.
All the way home and into the cage I kept the tiny snake.

3. I lost my snake, my snake lost me I lost my tiny snake.
Out of the cage and onto the floor I lost my tiny snake.

4. My dad saw the snake, my snake saw my dad, he saw the tiny snake.
From behind the board and out the door he saw my tiny snake.

(note following verses were added later, after I found an other snake)

5. I found a snake a snake found me I found an other snake. All the way home and into the cage I still have my snake!

6. The snake escaped and I found the snake in the air duct. I found an other snake, now I have two!

The end –

Incidentally, I can’t remember what happened after verse six – and yes, stanza six stinks… but who cares?

Data

This election I have been reading up a lot on the various issues, and I would like some one to explain how they can support abortion?

I have heard of one case of abortion where the baby was delivered in second term, then held for 45 min by a nurse while the baby died because it couldn’t breath.

I have seen ultrasound video of a 12 week old being aborted – just before it started the baby was starting to suck his thumb – then to watch it start to panic as it was torn apart.

then finally partial birth – 10 more seconds and you would have a new born baby. If any one were to have a baby and abandon it they would be prosecuted – why is it that 10 seconds makes the difference? Why is it that going into an abortion clinic makes it alright to treat living humans worse then the terrorists over in iraq – Being beheaded is much more humane then the abortion procedure… We treat animals better then our own flesh and blood. We get in trouble if we shoot a dog, yet I could pay some one to kill an unwanted baby.

How can we support such horrific practices?

How many people who support abortion actually know how it is done?

To me, abortion is just out right murder of an innocent baby, and no matter how bad things get, I refuse to vote for any one or any party who supports abortion.

Seth