Kitten for Hoku

Well, Hoku's been kinda bored. I'm gone most of the day and she's left to sort out her own way to relieve the monotony until I come home from work. Despite being the brilliant conversationalist that I am on the evening and weekends, she's still alone 40 hours a week.

What Hoku needed was a companion to keep her company (I know that was redundant, but it was either make a parenthetical comment here or interrupt the flow of my freeform writing and think of something more clever, thus derailing my train of thought. Crap. Now I've done just that. Anyway...) and I thought that I would get another dog. But that in itself presents problems. It's not bad traveling with one dog and a simple matter to take Hoku to my parent's home when I have to travel, but 2 dogs complicates matters a lot more than one. Hoku is already a handful at races and meets, and having two dogs to look after would be a challenge. Addtionally, I thought that dumping off two canines at my parent's home would be too much for a couple of retirees, and seeing as I'm going to be gone for three months next year, making my dad take care of 4 dogs was too much.

So, what then? Something between a dog and a gerbil that is mostly independent, won't destroy the place and won't mind at all if left alone while Hoku and I go to the races. The obvious choice was a cat. Hoku loves cats and not in that "they're delicious" kind of way. That decision made, I went off to the Berkeley Human Society in search of a pet for my dog.

Right away I was drawn to a very cute kitten whose colors were described on the tag as "dilute tortoise" whatever that meant. Here's what a dilute tortoise looks like:
She's already integrated herself and made the apartment her playground and she's only been here 2 days. Upon meeting Hoku for the first time, she made the requisite hissing sound, something I would probably do if I'd never seen a dog before, but she didn't run or even growl at Hoku any further. It was probably more like a hiss born out of surprise more than warning. After that, the new kitten's curiosity got the best of her and later that evening she went and gave Hoku a very close sniff. Hoku, being the dog she is, treated the new cat as almost dangerous, and has been taking great pains to give her a wide berth, until she figures this new roommate out.

It didn't take long, and after 48 hours in the same apartment together, managed to conspire against their benevolent mutual guardian to hijack the couch.
Funny thing is, they even have similar facial expressions.
My next dilemma, one that has bugging me ever since I decided weeks ago before I got a kitten, was what to name her. Getting out a pen and paper (I recently re-discovered writing with pen and paper, something that lends itself well to brainstorming in a way that a neatly arranged keyboard can't) and played around with a few anagrams. I wanted something unique that would be a combination of letters from the names of other pets I've known over the years. I thought of Shandy and Isis. Shandy was my very first pet, a rat that I had while I was living in the dorms. She was perfect in every way except her lifespan. Isis was a cat that I adopted when I was living in my first off-campus apartment. Everyone loved her and she was a great cat, capable of some extreme cat toy driven stunts. Rearranging the letter in "Shandy" and "Isis" gave me a number of interesting combinations, however the only one that made any sense as far as being a name for a cat was...Daisy Shins.

It made sense in some weird way. Hoku and Daisy Shins are going to get along just great. They're already beginning to emulate each other.

I'm such a GTD convert

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

Yeah. Check. Got it.

For years I struggled with the ups and down, confused by my apparent lack of concentration for some things and my days-long laser beam focus on others. Like most people I really believed that ADD was a lack of attention to anything and everything. I thought that I couldn't have ADD since I had moments where my concentration was so incredible that I blamed a lack of motivation for the times I couldn't or wouldn't concentrate. I fell for the most common misconception about ADD.

As an example, I remember when I directed Heidi Chronicles for a small theater in Berkeley. Not only did I direct the thing, I also did most of the costuming, all of the music, some of the lighting, built some of the set, and acted. All while maintaining a 40-hour a week job. It was even more hectic for The Sisters Rosensweig. When I directed that play, I also did all of the things I did above in addition to being the play's stage manager. I distinctly remember not sleeping for three days while I worked to get the set done, the music edited, and the painting and wallpapering done. I invited my then-manager who was a theater buff to come see it. His first reaction was one of disbelief. He had trouble equating the tardy, late with projects basket case he knew at work with the fanatic workaholic that produced the play he just saw. That's ADD's Jeckyl and Hyde.

There's a reason that I've had fifteen jobs in 12 years. I either had the foresight to get out while I still had a good reputation, was smart enough to take an assignment that only lasted as long as it took for me to get bored, or found something more bright and more shiny and more interesting. Right about now would have been the time for me to leave my current job, but a coworker sat me down and had a long and enlightening talk with me. He actually had me pegged as someone afflicted (blessed?) with ADD and made some suggestions about what methods I could employ to help me exploit the Jeckyl and wrangle the Hyde aspects of my ADD.

One of the things he suggested was I try David Allen's "getting things done" methodology.

Ha! Right. That's all I need, some self-help guru telling me how to "get things done."

I borrowed the book Getting Things Done and thought that it was pretty boring. How was this going to help? Fortunately I didn't chuck GTD out of my life just yet. I figured I'd at least try to listen to the mp3s that were given to me.

What a difference that made. It was one thing to read the boring dry book and quite another to listen to David Allen's enthusiasm through my iPod.

In a nutshell, GTD has shown me how to "dump my brain" onto paper and onto my computer so that I can finally think. I hate analogies because they're weak, but think of your brain as RAM. If your psychic RAM is filled running endless loops of everything that vies for your attention, you might just have enough processing power left to brush your teeth in the morning. That was me until I started using GTD and writing things down.

One of the most startling things I learned was that your brain makes no distinction between promises made externally to others and those made internally to yourself. If you flake on yourself, it's as bad as someone breaking a promise to you. Crazy, but true.

Go ahead and check out what others have been saying on the web about GTD.

I now carry a small notepad everywhere and with GTD it's changed how I look at and process information. It goes beyond task lists and action items.

Works for me.

Batteries for remote controls

Well, I built this yesterday in response to my DLO remote for my iPod docking station going dead. After opening the battery compartment, I discovered that the power source for the remote was a small lithium button cell that put out 3 volts. I went over to the corner Walgreens and was flabbergasted to learn that one of those little button batteries cost $4.29! Why, that's nearly 2.7% of the cost of the docking station when I bought it new. I simply was not going to fall prey to the rampant highway robbery of purchasing a small power cell for my remote.

In formulating a strategy for replacing the remote's power supply, I set some criteria for getting the remote functioning once again:

The solution had to be less than the cost of a new battery.
The remote must be fully functional.
The power source must last as long or significantly longer than the 3V lithium replacement battery.
Must be friendly to the environment.

Ancillary problems to be solved:
Must be able to find the remote.
Solution must make the remote far more interesting than before.

To get the poor dead remote functional once again was simple: provide a power source of 3 volts or close. Obviously the amperage requirement of the device was very low given the size of the battery that normally powers the device. Making the device power source last longer than the button cell was simple; just make the capacity bigger. Batteries of this size normally deliver several micro-amp hours of current. I wanted to go completely overboard and provide at least several hours of current at several tenths, a whole amp hour if I could manage it. This would require a power cell significantly larger than the nominal power cell. My mind was reeling with the possibilities.

To satisfy the environmentally friendly aspect of the project, I decided to try to build a battery out of components I had lying around, or could buy at the local Dollar Store, keeping in mind the$4.29 limit. It turns out that rummaging through some boxes in my closet provided everything I needed to bring my concept to reality:

Two baby food jars that I was using to store miscellaneous small parts.
Two large hose clamps.
Two nearly dead D-cell batteries.
A brand new package of 2 part epoxy.
Black and red wire, 22 gauge.

In the kitchen I found sea salt and the tap provided a source of water.

I stripped the dead batteries of their steel casings so I could get to the zinc casing that acts as the anode for the cell. I cleaned the casings with some sandpaper to ready them for soldering. My next step was to use my Greenlee punch to make an aperture in the baby food jar lid large enough to accommodate the D-cell. About a centimeter down from the top of the cell, I soldered the cell to the lid around the entire circumference, making sure that I wasn't leaving any voids where electrolyte could leak through. To make sure that no electrolyte leaked through the nylon insulator at the top between the positive cathode and negative anode, I sealed it with a liberal coating of 3-minute epoxy. Since the EMF of a carbon-zinc chloride cell was about 1.4 volts, I would need two cells wired in series to satisfy the voltage requirements of the remote. My next step after soldering the two primary cells to their jar lids was to make a couple of small holes in each to allow the flow of aqueous electrolyte into the cell.

Making the new electrolyte was simple. I just need to make a saturated sodium chloride solution. I mixed the sea salt with water from the tap. No complex chemistry here and it was completely safe to make. I aliquoted enough of the saltwater into each jar to reach the holes I drilled in the dead D-cells. To ensure that nothing leaks out, I sealed the lid to the jar with more epoxy.

Now to make sure that these two cells stayed together as a pair, I used the two large hose clamps. Since one alone was too small to reach around both cells, I fed the ends of the clamps into the other to make one big clamp with two tightening screws, making the cell pair look that much more robust. After the epoxy set, I was ready to connect them in series. Soldering a wire from the cathode of one cell to the anode of the other cell and a wire to the battery's anode and cathode made the battery functional and ready to hook up to the remote. I opened the remote up, identified the positive and negative terminals and soldered the wires from my newly-built battery. I left the old battery cover off to provide an entry for the substantially larger wires to get through and I was nearly done. The hose clamps made a nice surface to attach the remote to the battery with heavy duty double sided tape.

The new power source has an EMF of about 2.8 volts; plenty enough to run the remote and will last substantially longer than the little lithium cell. The little lithium cell had about 225 mAh capacity and weighed in at 0.1 ounce or 3 grams, this bad boy has about 16000 mAh capacity and weighs in at over a pound and a half or 700 grams. The ancillary project goal of making the remote loss proof was achieved as it seems highly unlikely that this combo will be lost inside the couch between the cushions. It also gives the remote a new aesthetic that appeals to me - and maybe only me. At least I didn't pay $4.29 for a battery, and I got to distract myself for a couple of hours.

2mor is B9

That's the text message I sent out when my dad and I learned his renal tumor wasn't cancerous. Yep, got word yesterday that my dad is in the 30% bracket of people whose renal tumors are benign. His doctor joked that after the follow-up appointment in three months, there shouldn't be a reason for him to see my dad ever again.

That's one dis-invite that I liked hearing.

Blogging At 1995 Speeds

I'm in Salinas taking care of my parents since driving is verboten for my dad until he's fully recovered, and my mom can't drive anymore. They're pretty much on their own out here without someone to taxi them around and after my sister did her week and a half here, it's my turn. My dad had something of a scare this weekend that landed him in the hospital for a night so the need for someone to be around in case there's another trip to the emergency room is imperative.

I don't mind hanging out and parent-sitting. The problem is that there's no broadband access at my parent's house. They have satellite TV and a phone and that's it. And you all know I'm recovering from a TV addiction so television for me is verboten as well. (Hi my name is Fel and I'm a Full House addict.) Thinking that I could get a PC Card broadband modem through Verizon and update all my crap online that way proved to be futile. I walked in to the nearest Verizon store after work, and perusing the modems I saw that they were all on sale. Oh how they teased me with their promise of anywhere access and high speed surfing. The model I chose was marked down 50% and there was a 30-day return policy where all would be taken back, and my precious money refunded. I figured I would use the modem for the few days while I was in Salinas and upon my return, I would go back to the Verizon store and dump the modem and two-year contract. Moments before whipping out my card to complete the deal, I asked the sales rep about broadband coverage in Salinas. A quick check of the service area map confirmed that as far as wireless access is concerned, Salinas is as broadband-free as when Steinbeck was alive and roaming the streets. Dial up and it's glacial download and upload speeds for the next few days, then. It took damn near 3 minutes to upload the picture of the phone. Forget loading a new website until the end of the week, unless I lose my mind and think that watching the upload status bar move one pixel an hour is preferable to hanging out at the local mall.

So this blog is being brought to you through the damn phone line, something that I haven't done since the last millennium.

I've Hacked My iPod

After waiting weeks for the iVue front panel to come out, I finally plunked down my money and bought one.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like being different and that I often modify stuff I own to personalize it. My iPod is no exception. I wanted something so distinct and personal that I went to an extreme of sorts as opposed to getting a skin or case. I actually went to the extreme of nullifying my warranty and opened my iPod to do this. It's more along the lines of major surgery to replace the front panel and click wheel cover of an iPod. It's serious.

The level of seriousness made it imperative to conduct this modification under some special conditions. I was, after all, opening my iPod and the last thing I wanted was to introduce any particulate matter into the delicate works. I certainly didn't want to do this mod in my dog-hair ridden apartment (thanks Hoku) and I can't stand dust on the screen that I can't get rid of because it's on the inside of the panel. Luckily, I have access to a laminar flow hood which is dust and bioburden free.

After some major work and sweat under this laminar flow hood, my iPod now looks like this:There have been some comments from other people on the web about this being an ugly mod, but I like it and the whole point of this is to have my iPod be more personalized than anything else that's out there. I have yet to see someone else with this mod, so it's pretty safe to say that within the circle of people I hang out with and know, I have something very different. Add the firmware hacks I'm doing to change the look onscreen, and the combination will be uniquely mine.

No, I won't do this mod for you.

Clearing Out Mental Logjams, Dealing With Life

So this is the other blog that catches all the other stuff of my life. When I mean "other," it doesn't mean that this blog will be mutually exclusive of my other two (or is it three?) blogs in the ARL NorthAm universe. It would be difficult at best to try to compartmentalize my life into neat little blocks and of course you'll see some bleed-through here from the other aspects of my exponentially complicated life.

What you won't find here are rants complaining about how crappy my life is, because a) I refuse to beat myself up over it thus reinforcing the illusion that my life is crappy and b) my life isn't that crappy.

I use the word illusion when it comes to the perception of how crappy one's life is because it's excatly that: an illusion. Was Paris Hilton's time in jail tough? Probably not to us, but to her the perception of being in jail led to her having a nervous breakdown. Whatever. But enough already about this life coaching drivel, I have more important things to blog about. Like my upcoming iPod modifications.

Now some if not most of you have one or more of these devices from Apple and if you’re like me, you’ll want to make it more personal. It’s not enough that they come in different colors, or two if you own the full-sized versions. You have to make it more your own and personalize it so that you feel like it’s a part of you. For some people I know, their iPod is a part of them since I rarely see them without it on some part of their body.

I myself own four versions of the iPod: a 1st generation Shuffle given to me as a gift, an 80 gigabyte video iPod, a 2nd generation Shuffle, and an 8 gigabyte video Nano. Sure, I’m a little crazy when it comes to these devices.

What I plan to mod this time around is the 80 gigabyte video iPod. Right now it’s just basic black and encased inside an Otterbox waterproof case. When I bought the iPod I never bothered to take the plastic film that covers the front off, so it’s never been scratched and is essentially as pristine as it was in the box. The mirror finish back is preserved through the use of some protective film I bought when I bought the iPod.

So just what kind of mod will I be doing to this iPod? Well, as long as I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with things that are see-through and love to be able to see the inner machinations of things like radios and cell phones. In fact if there's an option for getting something with a clear case, I'll probably get that one. I've replaced cell phone cases with clear versions just so I could see their inner works. When I found out that RapidRepair came out with a clear front panel for the 5G iPod, I was right there to order it the moment it was available for shipping. I had the option of sending my iPod in for installation or I could do it myslef. I opted to do it myself. I wanted to opportunity to explore the guts of my iPod before I installed the panel. I also wanted to make sure that no dust gets inside during the disasembly and reassembly process. You might be wondering how I plan to do this. Here at my work we have laminar flow hoods that are are basically clean environments that are the size of a tabletop. Imagine a clean room shrunk down to bench size and you get the idea. Just in cse yu were wondering what one looks like, here's a photo:
It has a HEPA filter that will screen out all the dust, lint, and even microorganisms that might contaminate the surface. I'll avoid any problems with dust inside the facplate.

It's on it's way in the mail and I should be getting it sometime this week.I'll have a seperate blog for the installation when it comes in.

Other things I'm working on: getting the ARL NorthAm offices into order. However, I've been wondering about whether I want to keep living on the snoozy little island of Alameda or pick up and move to Berkeley. I really miss living there despite the obvious hippie-freak factor and Alameda just seems so bland. Actually what I really miss is having neighbors that interact with me. My current living situation would be great if there were neighbors that said more than three words to me a week. Being the highly social person I am, I get antsy at the thought of going home to four walls. Hoku is a great conversationalist, but her range of subjects is limited and she really doesn't care much for talk about iPods and driving around the world. I pretty much control the conversations we have and it would be nice to have a human being take over the selection of subject matter once in a while. Her main topics deal mainly with going outside, chasing fast moving objects, barking at those who might be viewed as invaders, and whatever I happen to be eating at the time. Ah, youth. Dog youth.

So I'm scanning the craigslist options and thinking that it may be time to get a place in Berkeley with roommates. As long as I have my own bathroom and enough space for my stuff, which was pared down substantially since the last move, I think I'll be fine. I'm not the stuff accumulator I was a few years back, and my collection of big bulky items has been relegated to the warehouse for a time when I can store it in a warehouse of my own.

Back on task. I did manage to clean up the ARL NorthAM office, currently located in my second bedroom. Gone were the styrofoam food trays from the take out places, miscellaneous paper trash and accumulated dog hair. Up went the ARL NorthAm banner and some photos and viola! ARL NorthAm headquarters.

Now if I could only get some work done in there.