Brainwaves of Sken

From Stilyagi Picnic

I went to the Stilyagi Picnic / Pengui-Fusion-ConCom meeting on Sunday, and had a great time with great food and an awesome looking (but quickly passing) storm. I somehow escaped without volunteering for additional things er, I sort of volunteered myself to help Mr. Ops, so we’ll see where that goes.

My friend sheryl67 is going to be doing the masquerade for ConFusion this year, and I’m totally geeked about it, ’cause she’s awesome, and has some great plans already.

Lucy is back in town again this afternoon (between storm cells), which will make me feel a lot more relaxed for a number of reasons. She starts her job at Banfield (the Vet Hospital) next week, so we’ll be trying to find a reasonable routine we can smash on a regular basis.

I know you’re dying to know about the status of my car. So am I. However, The Adjuster has yet to get back with my insurance agency. They’re the ones losing money by the day, so … whatever.

I’d like to get out there today, if possible, and clean out my car, which is going to be a hot smelly mess, fo sho.

I was hoping to know whether or not it will be “totaled” in advance of that (’cause if it is I’m taking the goddamned new tires), but no luck so far. Work is sympathetic, in that “Aww I’m sorry to hear that, here’s a dozen additional tasks” kind of way.

And the most exciting thing to happen this weekend that doesn’t involve nipples: rbradakis efficiently popped the vibratory camshaft out of my raygun shell, allowing me to design and build out the interior! After many people spent much time on it, it required a hammer and two 2×4’s.

So, it’s my goal to learn some simple electronics and design a system that will power two or three tiny motors and six-to-eight LEDs, and then design the Raygun exterior. And then give it a name!

(indiscriminate bolding for the tl;dr audience)

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It’s nice to see some good news for once.

Also:

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Be prepared.

Hazardous Weather Outlook

Basically there might be storms, and the heat index is going up to 100 at points today, so bring your suntan lotion and hats, will ya?

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I covet!

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Tags: covet

Somehow, I think I may survive this one.

Boss is letting me work from home today. We’ll see how much work I get done!

Last night was spent with Randy and Sheryl and Big B and Little B, as well as some serious Rock Band. Good times! I’m getting better, I even 100%’d a song on Medium. My attempt at hard, though, was on a more difficult song, and showed me the wide gulf betwixt the two.

I have a Pontiac G6 from enterprise. It’s larger than my car, but it’ll do. I expect to hear news about the quality of my poor red beast today.

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From Mazda3 crash

I’m fine, barring some soreness from the seat belt.

I was coming east on Haggerty, heading to work, and an older gentleman in a minivan pulled out in front of me. He was, apparently, attempting to cross the entire 5-lane road.

Fortunately for my deductible, he admitted it was entirely his fault. Unfortunately for my life, heh, the car was relatively new and is sure to be worth less than the loan on it.

I have rental coverage, so I’ll at least have a car available for driving.

My darling Lucy picked me up immediately. I had to ask the police officer to help me find my glasses, which flung off with the airbag. The coke I’d just gotten from mcdonalds exploded everywhere (the ice sure wakes a guy up!), and my breakfast was a mangled mess on the floor.

As usual, I am pleased with my quick response in this kind of situation – I got out as immediately as I could, checked on the other driver (who said he didn’t need the hospital), came back and took out the keys, all in a few seconds.

I guess that’s all there is to say. I’m taking the day off.

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Original Jawbone for $50.

If you want to buy the king of noise-cancelling bluetooth headsets (the kind that will clear your voice when standing next to a leaf blower), check out this clearance sale. They’ve come out with the next version, so the original is way cheap.

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Well, I’m from an LGBT family. Most of you who know me know this, but I spent my summers with my Grandma and Lois.

Lois was, for me, my grandfather figure. She’d take me out to her workshop and I’d watch her work while drinking her pepsi from the glass bottle. She’d take me out back and I’d help her mow the lawn or rake the seaweed from the dock. She built a go-kart for me and my cousins and would drive her truck around the parking lot of the nearby park with us in tow.

Grandma and Lois also built a tree-house for us, and Lois took us hiking into the forest on a fairly frequent basis. According to Jenny, she once took us a few miles out and told us to find our own way back home, heh… which we did. We went camping every year, and she’s make us egg muffin sandwiches with fried Spam.

But when Lois had lung cancer, there wasn’t much my grandmother could do for her. They’d moved to Florida by then, and despite living together for about 20 years at that point, she had no automatic power of attorney. She also received no benefits when Lois died, which is a damned shame, since they had supported each other for so long by then.

Anyway, when you are talking about “those people”, you are talking about my grandmother and her partners – my family for my entire life. When you say that they don’t have a right to the same benefits as straight couples (and pass a law to that effect, like they have in Michigan), you’re saying that the person I most respect and care for in this entire world must suffer and be alone simply because she prefers women to men.

And if it is your religion that tells you it is fair to treat people this way, I will tell you that it is for God to judge, not you. It is for YOU to love your neighbor, no matter their sin, and if you love someone, you will not stand to see them suffer.

On that note, people who want to marry someone of the same sex don’t need your acceptance – they need durable power of attorney. They need to share insurance. They need the right to be taxed as a single living unit. Athiests get married. Jewish people get married. Even those gosh-darned pagans get married, and you wouldn’t believe what they do.

Gay people don’t want to change your way of life, they just want to be left alone to live theirs with the same freedom, safety and dignity.

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I write some funny stuff when I’m up too late. I’m not -that- clueless. ;)

This page, for instance, is a very nice page on how to read multimeters, and explains that, surprise, you can only measure the resistance of something after you take it out of its circuit.

I’m going to have to clamp everything together so the razr functions again if I’m going to test the voltage.

In other news, my finger’s stiff again this morning. grrr, I thought that was going away.

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I’ve taken apart my RAZR rather masterfully. In front of me is the tiny speaker (could I somehow hook it up to a mini-jack and use it with my cheap 64 meg flash MP3 player?) and the board that contains the vibrating mechanism.

It says 6 5y6 on it, but the tiny motor otherwise has no markings. It’s pretty solidly adhered into the board – at some point I’ll need to break out the solder gun and see if I can’t melt it off – hopefully it isn’t glued in.

I can find NO real information about this motor. This is as close as a get, from some schematics I rustled up:

in images and words, I express my dismay

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