Saw Stand

I got this nice table for my cold saw two weeks ago for free. Its standard height but has casters welded on it. For now I'm going to leave them on because I need it to be portable, when I get into a place that is larger Ill set it on the floor.

Posted to scare small children

Trump Rally

Yesterday I was afforded the opportunity of attending a Trump rally as a VIP. Originally it was going to be held where I work and at the last minute, Southport High School became available. I don't know all of the logistics but I'm guessing something as simple as not needing to obtain chairs for everyone would be a big deciding factor between hosting it in a hangar versus a gymnasium. Because we had expended some effort they gave us three VIP passes. Because it was last minute these were passed down from above until I got one of them.

Trump was not scheduled to speak until 7pm but we decided to be there by 2pm. Even arriving that early I had to park a half mile from the school. Walking from where we parked there were numerous street vendors much like a NASCAR event all selling various types of Trump paraphernalia. Once we arrived at the school it took a bit to find where we were entering. Even that early there were still at least 20 people in the VIP line. I could see at least three general public lines, this is a picture of just one of them.



This is a shot of of my good friend Jack as we waited in line.

At 4pm they started letting people in, we were given wrist bands and went through a metal detector. On the other side of the metal detector was an agent dressed in full combat gear searching people. After I passed through I walked up to him and raised my arms just like everyone before me had done, he then waved me on past, and people say I am intimidating.

We were then escorted to our seats which were just to the left of the stage. Apparently this is the area that the governor and other dignitaries would be sitting. As we were walking down the stairs I asked our escort what the yellow wrist bands we were given meant (they weren't visible under the sleeves of our jackets). He stopped and said oh you have those, you can sit wherever you want. Jack told him he wanted to sit directly behind the stage. He then passed us off to another escort that seated us in the first row behind the stage.

The next three hours were fairly mind numbing as we waited for the rally to start. With so many people in that area there was no cellular service and about once every 15 minutes our escort would move us either to the left or the right along the row we were sitting in as more people were seated. In the end after moving at least five times we ended up in the same exact location we initially sat at. During this time MAGA hats were handed out along with multiple sign boards that we were instructed to enthusiastically wave during the rally. There was also much discussion about placement of children and removal of various adults from the area immediately behind the podium.

About 15 minutes before the rally was to start our escort came over and informed us if we needed to use the restroom we should now and for the next two hours we would need to stand.

All of the pictures I took were on a loaner Iphone 6 which didn't work well with the stage lights pointed directly at us, but I still managed to get a few good pictures.

Here you can see the teleprompter, this was right before Vice President Pence gave his speech.

In this picture just next to Trumps left elbow is Medal of Honor recipient Sammy Davis. Trump actually pointed at him when he walked out and saluted him. Prior to the rally start he had a continuous line of people wanting to shake his hand and meet him, going all the way up the stairs on to the mezzanine.

This was taken with no zoom, we were that close.

Trump actually stayed on que with his speech for the most part. It was neat to be able to see what he was reading and when he went off on his own. During his speech he brought out Bobby Knight, but before he came out Trump went off on his own for so long that they brought a chair into the entry tent for Bobby to sit on.

One other thing bad about where we were sitting was the acoustics, basically I could only hear about 50% of what the speakers were saying, so I tried to follow along with the teleprompter.

After the rally once I got to my truck, my phone exploded with emails, texts etc. as it started getting service again. I got messages from people who said they saw me on TV and some even took pictures of their TV and sent them to me. Tania recorded the rally on TV and I watched it last night to see how much I had actually missed. Each news feed had a different camera angle which dictated wither Jack, David and I were visible or not.

This morning Trump tweeted this picture.

Football

I walk a lot at work, even if I spend most of the day in my office my walk is a minimum of a mile. I was also going though dress shoes like I owned stock in their companies until I started buying Red Wings. Yesterday I was walking across the hangar and realized the ball of my right foot hurt. it felt like my sock was bunched up in my shoe, I took it off and found nothing out of the ordinary. Later in the day I found myself taking it off again to check the sock. I then stuck my hand inside the shoe to feel the insole and it felt weird, when I flipped the shoe over I found this.

Immediately I start thinking to when I bought these, because they are expensive shoes and have a year warranty on them. Convinced they weren't a year old yet I jumped in my truck and drove over to the Red Wing store all puffy chested and mad.

The nice young lady working the counter convinced me that it was almost two years since I had bought them. Now that I documented it here I can just check the date when the next pair wears out.

Range Fun - Update

I spoke to my boss today about the AR-15 I sighted in for him yesterday, and through that conversation the mystery was solved as to why the windage was full right. The scope is a UTG Bugbuster and it has a lighted reticle for which he believed there was a spare battery. Instead of screwing off the cover on the left side of the scope he turned the windage knob full CCW on the right side of the scope.

At least I know now why it was so far off.

Al Bundy

I was traveling back from Dallas yesterday after a business trip. Normally I would be on Southwest but flight availability put me on an American flight. I had just looked up from watching a movie on my tablet when I saw this.

No this isn't photo-shopped and no I'm not on a SWA flight.

How does that even happen? Its like a rerun from Married with Children and Al Bundy is trying to find his seat. I also like the very professional flight attendant who has just seen the toilet paper and is probably trying to decide how to tell the guy without embarrassing him in front of the entire plane load of people.

One second after I took the picture the flight attendant with ninja like reflexes managed to grab the toilet paper right at the guys waist and tear it off without him even knowing. He then quickly wadded it up like it was something that happens every day.

Al Bundy never even knew it happened..

Rental

I have been traveling to Rockford IL for work, every week for the last six weeks. During that period I ended up putting about 700 miles a week on rental cars. I usually end up with a Hyuanda Elantra or a Nissan Altima with an occasional Malibu, the only one I actually like getting. Going into this I did not realized that you can be a Hertz Gold Member simply by signing up to be one. The change in how I was treated at Hertz was night and day once I signed up.

This week when I showed up the Manager was all excited to show me he had a premium rental for me at the same cost as my normal rental, it was a 2017 Mustang GT. Me not being a Ford fan at all was less than excited but with the alternative being one of those horrible Hyuandas, I took it.

Five miles into the drive I was ready to take it back, the wind noise coming from the passenger side was like the window was cracked 1/2 open. It was loud enough that I pulled over, looked at it, Googled the window sync procedure for a Mustang and tried stuffing napkins in the seal. In the end, the best fix was for it was turning up the nice infotainment system to a level that I couldn't hear the wind leak anymore.

The Hyuanda waiting next to it.

Its nice having a rental with remote start in Rockford when the temperature is below 20.

 The car ended up getting about 26mpg average for me, I really don't do much in town driving during the week there. I will admit I had fun driving it, the exhust tone on the car was awesome and the rev matching made it sound even better. The car felt very heavy to me and even in sport mode settings it was a bit piggish around corners with the rear of the car feeling mushy. Unfortunately for the Mustang my other car is a Corvette and well at least against this Mustang there is no comparison.

When I returned the car, the Manager came out again. He all excited wanting to know if I liked the car and enjoyed it that week. I told him no not really, I complained about the wind noise hoping that would end the conversation but he pressed on. I then went on to explain that my daily driver was a Corvette to which he responded "Oh I see" and walked off like I just kicked his dog. I fully expect to have a Hyuanda waiting for me next Monday, thats ok because I still hate Fords.

Fishing Trip - Fort Lauderdale

I took a some guys from work along with our customer on a fishing trip in Fort Lauderdale this week.

Its not something I was necessarily looking forward to, I have never been on this type of fishing trip and probably had some preconceived notions to what it would be like.

I ended up having a great time, with some good memories. I am not going to show pictures of who went with me or list names. I will say we got there the day before, went out the night before and one of the group didn't make the boat the next morning. He had to retrieve his cell phone from someone named George that was texting our group text when we thought we were chatting with our friend...

I sent Tania this picture just to show her the view from our hotel bar at the marina, she thought I was sending her a picture of the boat we were going out on. It happens to be the Sovereign a little boat with 8k square feet of living space. Its also for sale for a paltry 32.5 million.

 Our boat showed up a few hours later.

The following morning we headed out at 8am. The houses in the area were quite impressive.

This was one of the many superyachts  we passed on the way out of the marina. Out of curiosity I Googled "Vibrant Curiosity" and found the superyacht had its own wiki page. Apparently the $111,000,000 superyacht has a fuel capacity of 285.000 liters which at $2.50 a gallon for marine diesel would cost around $189k just to fill her up. Note what appears to be a Eurocopter on the helo pad.

The first hour or so while we were just off the coast trying to catch bait this was all over the place apparently on maneuvers.

 Cell phone coverage was pretty impressive, at one time we were 30+ miles out.

We ended up catching limit of kings and one albacore. It was a beautiful day and the water was very calm till we were returning around 5pm.

We passed by these at the end of the day on the way back into the marina. This is the "Seven Seas" and apparently belongs to Steven Spielberg. When I looked it up the information I could find was he is building another one because this one is too small. In the interim he rents it out for 1.2 million a month. At that rate with no interest it would take him 13 years to pay it off.

 

This military looking yacht is "Scat" which belongs to a former Microsoft software engineer.

This is me with one of the kings, I caught two, but which two who knows. All the fish went to the motel and they cleaned them and had a big fish fry. They served the albacore raw it was very tasty.

I wont explain this one, the right people know what it is.

Business Trip - Pittsburgh

Last week I had to make a business trip to Pittsburgh nothing really new or special, I normally travel at least once a month on average. This time though when I was searching for flights I came across a non-stop provided by a company called OneJet who operates bizjets. The flight was only $20.00 more than the cheapest flight offered by a major carrier so I jumped on it.

When I arrived at the airport I immediately regretted my decision. When I checked in at the counter, I was informed the flight was delayed for maintenance and to stand by. 30 minutes later a bus drove me and the four other passengers across the field to Millionair. There OneJet had secured a replacement aircraft and we were on our way in 30 minutes.

Looking to the back of the aircraft from my seat, not very good pictures, I was trying to take them secretly so I wouldn't be "that guy", he was actually in the back of the aircraft.

Seat view looking forward.

Even with the aircraft switch and delays, I was in Pittsburgh quicker than any of the major carriers would have gotten me there.
Landing at PIT.

On the way back we flew in a OneJet Leer 20.

When I returned to INDY this beauty was sitting in the courtyard advertising the Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational,  held every year on Fathers Day at IMS.

Overall I was very satisfied with my OneJet experience, the return trip was one hour and I was in my office by 7:25am that's earlier than I get to the office when I'm already home...

Gas Monkey Beat Down

I had to travel to Dallas this week for work. Our dinner was scheduled coincidentally at Gas Monkey Bar and Grill on the night of the big race between Gas Monkey Garage and Street Outlaws Oklahoma.

Not surprisingly after the beat down widely publicized on the internet, only two of the multiple TV's both inside and outside had aired the episode of Gas Monkey Garage. Even those two TV's had the volume turned off, I guess it would be bad for business.

We did have a great evening there with very good food. I wanted to buy a tee shirt in their gift shop but wasn't willing to pay $30.00 for a 100% cotton non-brand tee shirt.

Hockey?

This week I got a chance to take one of our customers hockey game at the United Center.

I've been to some of the minor league games recently but no major league games in the last 20 years. My company has a suite at the United Center that takes all of five minutes to get into from the parking lot.

The Blackhawks played the Dallas Stars. I forgot just how large professional ice is compared to the rinks the minors play on.

At times with all the lighting and sound system it looked and felt like being at a rock concert. The lighting on the ice was very impressive.

The Blackhawks won in overtime, it was a very enjoyable evening doing something I wouldn't normally do.

Not Gimped!

I play around with modifying photos in Gimp and get a lot of enjoyment from it, the best photos are the ones you don't modify though.

Yesterday when I was walking into work this truck was parked at our loading dock.

Fall Like an Old Man

This February I was in Atlanta for work.  I normally don't like to travel much but when I can go to a much warmer location in winter its not so bad.  Unfortunately for me it never got above 20 degrees while I was there.

Leaving the hotel on the last day I was walking to my rental car and fell like an old man on some black ice.  My thumb hooked on the handle of my roller bag and promptly bent back to my wrist. I was quite sure it was broken, but had a flight in two hours back home.  Getting through security with two laptops, shoes and belt off was quite fun but I made it through eventually and had the pins put in three days later.

So now I get to wear a splint for six weeks before the pins can be removed.

Laptop Repurpose

It has been quite a while since I posted last. I have been literally buried by work and during that period that after four plus years of faithful service, my beloved P-7811FX laptop decided to die. The P-7811FX was a loss leader built by Gateway exclusively for Best Buy. It had some bleeding edge features such as DD3 SDRAM, a 17" 16:10 WUXGA screen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 and a Labelflash DVD burner. This laptop was priced around  $1200.00, much less than comparable laptops at the time and probably much less than it cost to build. It apparently was only built for a few months and replaced with a new improved model that was actually a step down specification wise.

The problem with it was it had a design flaw which was basically a time bomb. Some of them failed within days or even weeks of being purchased, some like mine lasted much longer. The flaw was in the switching of the GeForce 9800M GTS video card. When the 3D side of the card was not in use and you wanted to play a game with the laptop it had issues switching, this required a software solution that forced the 3D card to work all the time. This created a lot of heat in a card which was notorious for running hot and cooked the motherboard.

This was a problem with nearly all laptops that used the GeForce 9800M GTS and is well documented on many fourms. There are only two fixes for this issue, one is to buy a new motherboard, knowing that it too will die really at anytime. The second was another band aid fix which is "reflowing" the motherboard.

Reflowing is where the solder on the motherboard is briefly melted to allow it to reflow. This fixes the problems created by the video chip overheating and cooling which develops stress cracks and cold solder joints at the chip to motherboard connections. These connections are much to small to solder with an iron.

There are businesses that do this work professionally as it is also a common problem with X-Box 360s. The cost for this service is anywhere from $100.00 - 200.00, with a very limited guarantee for the life of the work. Generally it is done with the following type of equipment which localizes the heat to just the GPU area.

I disassembled the laptop to the motherboard, wrapped all of it in foil except for the GPU and baked it in the oven. Before I did this the laptop would boot up but had a blank display, after reflowing it the laptop worked flawlessly. The problem is like I stated earlier this is a band aid repair and after 1.5 months of use it started to fail again.

Not wanting to discard the laptop due to a failed video card I started searching my options. There are some external video cards but they don't do what I want and aren't a very graceful solution. So I decided to repurpose the laptop parts and started searching for how I could do that. Again the solutions were extremely limited, laptops for one are very proprietary and secondly the mobile architecture they are based on is completely different than a desktop.

In searching for socket "P" motherboards I found that a couple different ones were made, the problem being "were made" as in they are no longer made. They were not common, not popular and very expensive. Finally I found a solution on Ebay in the form of an AOpen i45GMt-HD mini ITX board that was based on the socket "P" Penryn chip.

This board when it was still being built sold for a mere $309.00, I was able to get a new one along with an AOpen case designed for it for less than $70.00. This allowed me to use the 2.26 Core 2 Duo, Centrino wireless card, hard drive and optical drive from the P-7811FX. Unfortunately the board was built around DDR 2 memory so I had to buy some DDR 2 SODIM's.

The neat thing about this computer is its very small, the motherboard is 6"x6", it is completely fanless, the large heatsink came with the motherboard as well as a power brick to meet its 19VDC requirements. When it is on and running it is completely silent. It is able to display HD broadcast TV as well as receive HD radio.

Initially I had planned on putting the motherboard in my car as the basis for a carputer but because of the 19VDC requirements of the board it limited my power supply options. I am going to leave it as it is now and use it as a garage computer / file server.

Here is a shot of the front of it showing the optical drive from the P-7811FX.