one monkey typing

I've made good progress on cleaning my room. Heck I can walk through it without stepping over stuff.
I'm also keeping up the pace on scanning old negatives and slides, and tossing them into a box for disposal when they're scanned. There's quite a heap over there in the corner but I'll get through it eventually. I have plans to rearrange slightly when that space is available.

We're going to NC next week. There's a slight urge to bring a small telescope, but honestly I won't have a chance to use it even if I did have it with me so there's not much point. We will be busy the whole time I'm sure. Maybe binoculars...

I chose South Lyon again as the Tuba Christmas event to go to, but when I got there, it was cancelled due to building issues. So an hour driving the truck for no reason.

Yesterday I redid the salt level sensor I built for the water softener a couple of years back. It has been working but not reliably - it stops reporting every day or three at random and needs to be reset, which kind of defeats the purpose. I didn't change the design or parts or anything, I just re-imaged with a 3 year newer version of ESPHome, and I hope that bugs have been fixed such that it doesn't have those problems anymore. Only time will tell.

The weather the last few days has been not the best. It snowed a bunch (maybe 6 inches?) then warmed up to 35, the snow turned to sticky gunk, then it rained but not enough to clear the snow, then it froze hard. In the middle there we tried to clear the snow. That did lead to the rain freezing to a hard cover, but at least it has a chance of clearing in the driveway next time there's good sun or above freezing weather. I find that if the driveway and the road in front of our house is good, I can safely ride a motorcycle, other than a few places where they have gravel parking lots (share house for instance) - they will still be icy.

I went to the gym yesterday and did not do so well. In hindsight I guess it could be because of the platelet donation the previous day, but it also could be that it had been 4 or 5 days since the last upper body day. I need to not take that long of a break. I dropped back to 4 days a week in the gym on the recommendation of the app I'm using, partly because December is busy enough that shooting for 5 days a week is difficult some weeks, but I'm planning to go back to 5 days when we get back from NC.

I got my old/experimental 3D printer back on its feet. It's still not printing quite as well as the Creality right out of the box but I'm getting it better. The last thing I did was to have it re-home the Z axis after warmup - if it homed cold then heated up, the print bed was too high and the head was dragging on the bed. Apparently the bed swells enough during heating to make a significant difference, because adding that final Z home just before printing fixed that issue.

I'm also in the process of trying to clean up the video and stuff on my storage devices. I'm recoding the archival copies of full runs of TV shows and stuff into x.265 - it saves space, sometimes a lot of space - I've seen 2GB video files go down to 500MB and still look about as good.

I'm currently powering through DS9 - I haven't seen all the shows, probably about half across the whole run, maybe less. First season was all re-watches but it's been so long that I needed it. I'm also behind on Strange New Worlds and Discovery. Discovery I honestly don't like all that much, and I'm afraid I'm in the "I think I'm just going to forget this series ever happened" camp to some extent. Or treat it as a non-canon type thing.

Since my early October post:

I've been getting up to speed working as (very) part time IT and website support for Lyndon Township. It's interesting and pretty straightforward. I did need to call their paid support a couple of times to get the admin rights on their domain that I'm supposed to have. I had a couple of things I didn't do correctly, but I think I'm on track now.

I'm working on a pretty large project for the choir I'm in; scanning the entire music library. J.S. is working on this as well. I've dragged out an old Epson Workforce printer that only really works as a scanner, and have been using that - it's a lot faster than my old flatbed.

I've got probably something like 40 to 60 hours of scanning in by now and am just over half done. I am probably underestimating that time, I'm putting in 4+ hours a day and have been for weeks.

I've been going a bit overboard on the astronomy front. First I bought a mount for the Maksutov that I've had for years. It shipped on a little table-top mount, I wanted something a bit nicer. I found this mount for $300, which is a heck of a deal. It connects via wifi to a tablet and not only tracks but does full go-to.


The Makustov optical tube is very sharp. I had it out last night, again the seeing was terrible, but it was getting stars to pin sharp focus, and Jupiter was sharp as well. Little maks are known for good stellar/planetary views.

Windycon 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the accepted "formation" of General Technics. I spent the weeks leading up to it prepping a couple of decor items for the GT room. First, the beach ball monster/pet from Dark Star, which hung out on the bed in the suite:


And secondly, a cake topper. It has all the circuitry for 24 LEDs on a circuit board that spins around at about 10 to 15 times per second and displays the GT logo, the phrase "50 YEARS!" and a graphic of a ray gun, rendered in glorious 96x24 resolution. It's also nearly impossible to take a good photo of. But a whole lot of people tried, so I call that a success.


On the 12th I found a first-generation Meade 8 inch LX200 telescope over in Grand Rapids for a reasonable price. Generally the guidance on this is to not pay more for the whole telescope than you would for just the optical tube, since the mounts are at this point 30+ years old electronics and are not known for super reliability. I got it for just about the right price I think. About 20% of what they sold for new and that's not accounting for inflation.

I've gotten it out once and though the seeing was terrible that night (turbulent atmosphere) I was pretty pleased with the view of the Orion nebula that I got. The optics, at least, are good and the electronics seem to work well. All I really did to it was to replace the capacitors in the hand controller (a known failure point) and buy some stuff - a new diagonal and a dew shield - and made a way to power it off a USB power bank.

Finally, just a few days ago, I caved on a telescope that's been on marketplace for weeks. I've been watching it for 6 weeks. It's the telescope that I was thinking of building. But this scope went for less than I'd have to pay for just the mirror. An 18" f/4.2 mirror is in the $6000 range. I paid less than that for this whole scope.
The mirror does show signs of being 15 years old - lots of little pinholes in the coatings. I can get it recoated, but honestly I don't think the coatings are bad enough to merit that for now. Probably in a year or so.
It looks a bit manky in this photo, but that's because I just pulled it out of the truck when I got home and tossed it together enough to roll it into the garage.


It needs some cleaning up. It's got some accessories that I'm not sure I really want. There's a wifi box that allows it to connect to a phone for navigation. It's got every dew heater known to science. I'm starting by pretty much removing all that stuff; when I had my 15" I had a navigation box, and I honestly never used it.

One thing that's clear to me having gotten most of these scopes out, is that I need to refamiliarize myself with the sky. I have a heck of a time finding alignment stars for these. Particularly the LX200, it has a VERY small number of alignment stars.

Also I need to get a better optical finder on the LX200, the stock one is pretty bad. And I need to get a red dot on there as well.

I put Windows on one of my laptops last night. Why? I "interviewed" for an IT position yesterday.
The township office that Jenn works in is losing their IT guy, he's moving away. It's about an 8 hour a MONTH job. I'm already in their payroll system since I was on standby for elections last year, and I figured "eh, it's something to do that's different, and I can't imagine it's easy to try to hire someone for 2 hours a week of work."
The "interview" was just sitting down with the current guy and giving him a quick history and some war stories.
Interviews are very stress free when you absolutely don't care if you get the job or not.
But of course it's an all Windows office. My primary laptop is a utility machine used to just carry around to troubleshoot, and to provide entertainment while on the road so I don't actually care what OS it's running. I default to Linux simply because it's easier and less headache than Windows.
Surprisingly SO FAR it hasn't been difficult to get Windows installed and up to date without connecting to a Microsoft account. We'll see if that continues; Windows in my experience will just pop up in the morning and say "Time's up no more running without an account for you." at random times, forcing another fight.

The CX was feeling a little squirrelly on the way home yesterday, the TPMS read 0 PSI on both tires. The sensors had lost sync.
I got them resynced today and determined that the "low pressure alarm" doesn't actually work. This is integrated into an Android Auto screen.
I'm leaving them on for now but I'm ordering a dedicated TPMS display/alarm.
The yak shaving? I tried putting some air in the tires and was getting no flow through my air chuck. Investigation and partial disassembly revealed some insect cocoons in the pressure side. It took picks and some round wire brushes to get it all out, and some brake cleaner just because no job is complete until you spray some brake cleaner on it.

I've been back from the picnic (in the Keweenaw) for a few days. Here's a quick recap.
Since I was on my own, I took the motorcycle. It's a nice drive but it's an even nicer ride. Highly recommended. Also being on the bike keeps my packing tighter. I actually still packed twice as much clothing and much more kitchen stuff than I actually used. I can tighten that up more next time.
The bike only has about a 180 mile range at highway speeds (80ish on some of the roads) so I had to stop at Claire, St Ignace and Marquette up and down.
I have mostly convinced myself to replace my entire stable, or at least most of it. I'm feeling like I'm pretty much over the older bikes. The Tracer is fantastic as a local bike; it's super versatile and agile. It's capable of long distances but it's not ideal; it gets uncomfortable after 5 hours or so and the range is a bit low. I'm sorta looking at an FJR1300. When I get rid of the Goldwing I'll start looking seriously. They're not hard to find for sale.
Lunch was at Hiawatha Pasties both up and down. It's about 45 minutes west of St Ignace in Naubinway. No bathrooms so I finally stuck my nose into the Snowmobile Museum for their bathroom, but I also browsed the gift shop and found a nice sticker for the bike. I really have no interest in snowmobiles so I didn't go in.
On the way up, on the approach to Munising, suddenly there was a slowdown and when I got closer there was a motorcycle down. I pulled into a driveway a few feet away and went to help. A woman on a beautiful Indian bagger was down. She was OK with just some scraping on her arms. The bike was just scraped a bit, it was a low speed incident. Her husband was on a matching (black instead of white) Indian. I helped him lift it (it was on its right side, I reminded him to put the side stand down before we lifted) and moved on. As I went into Munising a minute later there was a state cop and an ambulance on the way back.
I stopped at the Shrine of the Snowshoe Priest - dozens of times past there and I've never stopped before. There is a pile of markers there on HMDB so I got those as well, though I seem to have missed one.

I stayed at a friend's house in Laurium Mon-Wed evenings, going out during the day to hit some local historic markers and a couple of museums - the firefighter's museum in Calumet and the Houghton County Historical Museum in Lake Linden. The latter has a steam train but they only run it on Saturdays, so we were unable to ride that though we did ride a smaller gas powered train around the tracks.
I also finally visited the Italian Hall memorial site. I really should have gotten there earlier. The firefighter museum in town has the doors from the hall. I think they were the outer doors, not the inner, but touching them was still emotional.

I had planned to hit the site, set up my camp and help set up infrastructure on Wednesday, but it was raining steadily all day and the word was the porta potties were not yet on site, so I opted out. Thankfully everyone who was on site also decided to just sit it out.
Wednesday evening was at the house on the ridge, BYO takeout food and hang out.
Thursday I finally got to the site (it had stopped raining) and we got nearly everything set up - everything but the showers.

Thursday evening was pizza and hanging out on Mt Horace Greeley.

Friday morning we got the showers set up - wanting to TAKE a shower is a good motivation to work on it. There were some issues, there always are, mainly from trying to assemble a somewhat complex bit of random bits into something working before any of us were properly caffeinated, but in the end we got our showers.
My contribution was mainly wrangling.
Friday afternoon I went up and built the new sink platform from leftover plastic decking contributed by SK. When done I was reminded that plastic lumber is HEAVY and a 4x4 foot object does not fit in a passenger car. It was transported down Saturday morning by an attendee with a pickup, and we drilled the last few holes to bolt down the sink and manifold and put it in place.

Also, Kevin redid the entire filter and manifold assembly so in total, that area was much improved.

Friday afternoon and Saturday morning was more rain but nothing terrible. We sat it out and had a good Saturday for most of the day. There was a dawn double rainbow on Saturday.

Besides the aforementioned offsite food events, we had liquid nitrogen ice cream, carried in pasties, and a new addition, Sandy brought in a double pot deep fryer so we got on-site fresh french fries, experimental funnel cake things and jalapeno poppers.
The usual events had about the usual amount of unplanned but usually interesting or even exciting failures which are fun to look back on anyway and nobody required significant first aid. So it was a successful event!
One unfortunate thing was that JH's truck needed to be flat bedded out. While towing the trailer down, he noticed his steering felt wrong, and when investigated it turns out the tie rod was barely attached to the Pitman arm. He attempted to buy parts for an on-site repair but that didn't work out so he lined up a repair shop and a rental car.

The pavilion takedown is now MUCH easier - we do it as normal Saturday night but we have the trailer there so everything goes straight in and we never have to touch it until next year.
Sunday was as per normal. We announced water cutoff at 9AM, shut everything down and drained and put it away in the trailer. Everyone packed up the last of their stuff and we were off. Until next year...

Wow it's been a while since I posted an update.
The motorcycle that I had just acquired in the last post is running, but not well. It needs some work. Either a valve or a ring job. I'll be getting to that in a few weeks probably. I did a TON of stuff to it; there are photos and writeups on dragonflydiy.com though I doubt anyone cares.
This is concert week for Out Loud Chorus which I sing in. Monday is band rehearsal, plus load out of the risers from our rehearsal space and a bass sectional, so quite busy (and a late night) for me.
Those risers need to get out of my trailer sometime that week because I need the trailer for something else Saturday/Sunday (the church's rummage sale will finish Saturday and the leftovers need to be dispersed to Goodwill or whatever). That's not scheduled but will probably have to happen during the day at some point. Saturday morning may very well be the only chance since most people will be unable to do it during the day and evenings are full.
Tuesday evening is a going-away party for a former coworker-then-boss who is taking a new job.
Wednesday is tech rehearsal with the choir, which is usually a long slog.
Thursday is dress rehearsal, then Friday and Saturday are concert evenings.
Sunday is a lawn mowing day (I HOPE it doesn't rain) because on Monday I drive, picking up some friends, to Albany where we will overnight then start the 380 miles of the Erie Canal bike path. We're expecting to spend 8 days on that.
I have been doing SOME training on the bike, though probably not enough. I'm not concerned though, we're only shooting for 50 mile days and I'm confident I can hammer those out for 8 days. If not, this time we will have my truck tagging along in case someone has a bad day or an injury.
Things around the house are ticking along. Of course there's always a bunch of stuff to do, a bunch that doesn't get done, etc. I have some deck projects that I need to get to. We have been doing some plant moving, since the removal of the giant cottonwood trees a couple of years ago really rearranged what parts of the yard get sun, so some plants do worse, but also some plants that had not been doing all that well can now be moved to sunnier areas.

I've been doing a lot of reading, and a lot of working on my old motorcycle.

The latter is at a reasonable stopping point, the only things remaining are that I have new mufflers to install, for which I'm waiting for parts on Monday, and I have a cruise control to install. The only holdup there is trying to do a decent job of hiding the ugly bits and fitting everything into a pretty small space. The bike is running otherwise.

A few weeks ago I got the rose bush ripped out from around the deck. The project there is to replace the skirting. I need to decide how I'm going to anchor all that stuff. I'm going to use a tighter mesh than last time, and hopefully anchor it better, to keep critters (skunks, raccoons, cats, etc) from going under there. I think the big problem will be anchoring it at the bottom. I'll probably have to bury something then run rails, but unless it goes a way into the ground critters will just dig under it.

I need to start doing regular bike rides, I have the Erie Canal trip coming up in mid June and I need to be in shape for consecutive 80 mile days. The plan is for less than that, but things happen and sometimes you have long days, and I'd rather train for a bit more than is needed.

I'm also itching to restart the historical marker rambles; for both that and bike riding I'm just waiting for warmer days, but that's just me being lazy, it's not really a problem to do either of these on 50+ degree days.

I also need to move the strawberry beds; they don't get enough sun and with the big cottonwoods gone there's now a much better spot farther down the hill. I'll probably use new lumber and will definitely get a fresh batch of compost. The beds in front of the house could use some new compost as well. The west bed isn't much of a problem since it has large plants in it and I can just shovel compost in around them. The east bed though is largely ground cover and mosses and short of inventing a method of lifting the whole bed in the air and inserting compost underneath, there's not a lot I can do.

So in no particular order:
I spent a chunk of the last week working on the Yamaha. The story goes on forever, so I've moved it to my blog here: http://www.dragonflydiy.com/2024/12/yamaha-valve-adjustment-horror.html

Yesterday I went to the public Messiah sing in Ann Arbor, which was fun. I saw a couple of people from Out Loud, and it turns out the president of the group is an Out Loud alumni from way back.

I've been working on my old 3D printer for a couple of months.

I let the pond waterfall pump go too long, at least twice, and paid for it yesterday when I had to hook up a hose to the water heater, pull it out to the pond and use it to melt through several inches of ice to get the pump out before it froze and broke.

I got around to fixing the shower door a few days ago. One of the glass clips had a bunch of corrosion under it and it rust jacked the clip to where it was hitting other hardware, and broke the clip. I 3D printed a replacement clip, then had to excise a bunch of corrosion and rotten metal under where the clip was, and replace that with JB Kwik epoxy. One of the spring rollers was rusted solid and the other was very stiff. I got those both freed up, cleaned and dumped a bunch of silicone grease inside to try to stave off corrosion in the future.

I've come to the conclusion that I really will not ever be carrying an SLR around in the future. My purpose for photography is saving memories, and I can do that just fine with a phone or point and shoot camera. When I get back from the upcoming trip I'm going to start parting out my SLR gear. I also have some other stuff that I need to move - a Fender amp/speaker and some other stuff. I MIGHT get a new point and shoot camera; I was reasonably happy with Jenn's that I borrowed for the UK trip but it's 10 years old and the output shows it, particularly in the video recordings.

I really need to start cranking on memorization of the pieces for the Out Loud concert coming up. Especially the pieces that include choreography.

Last week was entirely consumed with fighting my 3D printer. It's been working well for 3 or 4 years since I got it but last week (of course when I had a printing deadline) it just wouldn't co-operate. I had ruined prints one after another. Just couldn't figure it out. In the end I wasn't able to fulfill the order, took what I had to the con and promised to ship the rest later.
When I got back, I decided it was time for a new printer. I have a new Creality K1C in the shop and I'm very pleased with it. It prints about 2 or 3 times faster than the old one and produces much higher quality prints.
I also did some work on the old printer; determined after a LOT of headache that the electronics board was faulty in some minor but irritating way. I ripped its brains out and put in some old RAMPS/Arduino stuff I had lying in the junkbox, and now it's printing happily. It's going to be my test bed for future experiments. I hadn't really paid attention to the 3D printing world for the last 5 years and I missed a LOT. There's some really cool stuff that's all open source that I can experiment with.
Anyway, Windycon was pretty good but short. Seems like we barely got there and we were going back home.

On the computer front, between the new printer software and Zoom and some other resource-hungry applications, the 10 year old tower PC just ain't cutting it anymore. Yesterday I swapped it out for the new laptop that I bought last month, which is an 8th gen i5. Should be good enough. I dug around in the junk boxes and found the old USB C hub I used when working from home, and a 150 watt USB C power supply I rescued from the trash at work, and I have an extension cable and a 10 port hub on the way from Amazon, so I can just plug into the USB C port and charging and everything else run through that. So far it's looking OK - though my old slicing software, Cura, isn't happy; it won't load models. But I did get the new Creality software to export a usable print file for the old machine so maybe I don't care.

I did a full write-up of the laundry room project here:
http://www.dragonflydiy.com/2024/10/laundry-room-refresh.html