-Friday took GFWTR out for a nice dinner while Na'nah watch Abby.

-Saturday me and Abby hung out all day. Went shopping in the morning and that afternoon tried out my big wheeled stroller I got for father's day with a little exploring off road at an old park near our house.

-Sunday was a USPSA match at the local club. Got beat in Limited-10 by 0.38% by a high-school kid. Good match the kid and I were squaded together and egging each other on all match.

-That afternoon did a little more shopping and out for dinner with both GFWTR and Abby.

-That even cleaned guns and watch Aliens, again. I forgot how good that movie was I hadn't watched it in nearly two years.

-Monday night GFWTR and I went on a double date with the new priest and her husband, went out to dinner and saw the new Star Trek movie. Overall it was enjoyable. Felt rushed at the beginning and weak on plot but I thought the new versions of the characters were pretty good. I especially liked the new Bones.

-Abby was up relatively early this morning.

-Off to the the Ohio BMV for a new drivers license. Service was surprisingly fast and friendly.

-No internet access at work and more detrimental to getting work done, no network server so I could not run my CAD software (network license) or access the main color printer.

-In the absents of real work progress:
--I made a stainless steel bushing for the clutch of my poor old lawn tractor
--I also fix a Co-worker's nephew's RC truck that has been sitting in my office for two months

-Left work early (since I was not getting any real work accomplished) and got a new set of Hankook tires put on the Element.

-Got home played with Abby when I could drag her away from the mother-in-law.

-Got Abby ready for bed and then washed bottles.

-Use above mentions stainless steel bushing and a few other parts to rebuild the failing clutch in my poor old lawn tractor.

-Cleaned all three guns from the 3-gun match. (Eugen Stoner is still a filthy engineer)

-Came upstairs to find an email stating that I have receive notice of award of my first Phase II program with the DoD (Army specifically) as PI!!!

-Abby is going to walk any day now. She has taken as many as three step on her own before converting back to linoleum lizard mode.

-The large aperture on a standard rear AR-15 battle sight does not work at 200 yards. This cost me second place at last weekend's three gun when I got a big fat zero on the long range rifle stage.

-My aunt is still using a broadcast TV signal, on a 46 inch 1080p capable TV. I installed the a new antenna to help boost reception of the new digital signal this weekend.

-I finished slogging through Charles Stross' Accelerando. It is a neat interpretation of the technological singularity. That said, my "Leave it to Beaver" childhood clashed severely with the painfully dysfunctional family that was the focus of the story. In addition my desire to shoot cats and drowned kitten was also accentuated, greatly. I can not recommend the book.

-The Ohio BMV does not send a reminder until after your driver's license has expired.

-The Element needs tires badly, almost 70K on the OEM ones. 215/70R16, any recommendations?

A beer and two Margaritas?... Yeah don't care if it is or not!

A short story by Vernor Vinge. I read True Names on the way home from the Rochester Brooks three gun match this weekend. The story is a moderately good cyberpunk genre short story (actaully a novella but who's countin'?). The cool part is that it was written in 1981. At that time ARPANET was only a bit over 200 host on the network. This story pre-dates William Gibson's work and in someways seems to more accurately predict what the network would become a bit more accurately then Gibson did IMHO. It's a pretty good story and when you read it now some 28 years later it has aged well. If your interested you can find a link to the full text at the bottom of the wiki entry for True Names.

Does Tiramisu and beer count?

So I have have been really busy lately with work and taking two extra days of vacation last week to make the long weekend really long. I got to spend time with Abby and do some shooting.

Well, Friday we finally finished the majority of the electrical work and mounted the turbine blades. This let us generate power for the first time. The wind was not real good, of course, so not much power was generate but we are getting close to finishing the system. We still have some loose ends to tie up but we will hopefully have the system up and running next week. The last major system to be finished is the close-loop controller that will keep the truss, that support the four turbines, facing into the wind. That is an active system and we are still tuning up the controller.

( Anyway, a bit more rambling, photos and a short video clip behind this cut. )

http://www.qik.com/video/1657574

Check out the above link. Jump to about 5:30 left in the video. The first 26 minutes are pretty boring.

I mentioned the CSU Wind Turbine Structure I have been managing the construction of in a previous post or two, I think. Well the structure was lifted onto the roof this morning. Everything went pretty good. The complete system should be up and running hopefully by early June. I will try to post some good still pictures and a better video. I was on the roof for the pick the above video was shot by someone else.

So we pulled the pictures from dad's game camera this weekend. We were suppose to work on the bulldozer this weekend but the bearings were not available in time. So we moved the game camera and took down 3 of the deer stands. The deer stands needed a little work and moving them off the trees keeps that from damaging the trees. Also getting them down before the bulldozer is done will save them from my uncle. He's going to be like a little kid with a new toy when that think is operational and so getting them out of his way seemed like a good idea. None the less I made a moderately large animated gif of the nearly three weeks worth of photos. You will see just a few deer in the pictures I was mostly trying to get empty photos to show the growth of the skunk cabbage in the small swamp in the background.

( 5MB animated gif behind cut )

Its time to start pressing again. In today's match I shot pretty good as far as my hits go but I was slow on several stages where I should/could have been faster. Last year I had several matches were I was pressing so hard to go fast that I was making bad shots and metal errors. Today it was just the opposite I was so focused on my plan, shooting and not making mental erros that I was slow. I need to start ramping up the speed until something breaks and then back it off just a touch. Last year I was less than 1% away form making A class in Limited-10. I have since fallen nearly 4% points from my high. Got to do something about that.