Length does matter

Published on July 27, 2008 in . 0 Comments

The wire attached to my Bare Bonz fuse panel was too short to reach my battery way in the back of the Ghia, so they sent me some more cable and a nice power junction box.

Sadly, there’s no good place to put the junction box along the route. There’s an OK place (under the driver’s side back seat) but I couldn’t find any good mounting points.

So I bought another junction box and will put one in the back and one in the front, just exactly the right distance apart for a single run of cable. This will be handy later, as the junction boxes have screw terminals for the attachment of power wires for high-current add-ons like power windows or air conditioners or 120vac inverters. There’s one junction near the rear electronics and one near the front electronics.

Tonight I installed the rear junction box, along with a 60amp fuse holder (no fusible links in THIS vehicle) and also a ground terminal strip. I’m running a separate ground system, and I’m going to replicate the +12v run with a terminal strip at each end.

Why a separate ground? I don’t want to have to troubleshoot any wacky grounding problems. Besides, electronics projects don’t use the project box for distributing power, and this is just a great big electronics project.

No more excuses

Published on July 26, 2008 in . 0 Comments

Well, one more.

I’m about done with my internship at Spaceport America (I built them some fancy Excel spreadsheets) and there’s about a month between now and the start of school. Let’s see how far I can get on the electric car in one month.

The remaining excuse is that I’m still missing the Zilla motor controller. Kind of like missing your carburetor on a regular car — it’s the component that controls the flow of energy to the motor.

I’ve begun rebuilding the 12V wiring in the car, which was such a mess that I pulled most of it out. I bought a new harness and fuse panel kit called the Bare Bonz from Ron Francis Wiring. I like it a lot. So far the fuse panel is mounted. I have all the parts needed to extend heavy-gauge wire from the rear (where the battery is located) and the front (where the fuse panel lives). I’m also going to put in a separate grounding system. This car will be complicated enough without having to troubleshoot wacky ground problems. I’m going to wire it like an electronics project — which, in fact, it is.

I’ve been ordering lots of goodies from Ryan at EV Source. I’ve got contactors (giant relays), tools of all descriptions, a small radiator to keep the controller cool, a PakTrakr battery monitoring system, etc. I still need to acquire a DC/DC converter, which will take the place of a gas car’s alternator and keep the 12V battery charged.

I’m kicking around ideas for the electronics box in the rear of the car. It will be a water resistant enclosure for the expensive electronics in engine compartment. Being a VW, the comparment is open to the rain from above and road splash from below. I want a see-through panel on the front so I can show off the bits that make it go.

So anyway I wanted to tell all my readers what I’m up to, so I have some accountability :)

Wish me luck and egg me on!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Published on May 11, 2008 in . 2 Comments

Hi Moms,

We love you!

Hope you enjoy this little video.

Love,

Doug and Anna

Mother’s Day 2008

My wife is awesome

Published on February 3, 2008 in . 2 Comments

I recently got a comment from Marty on my Good News and Bad News post.

Marty wrote:

Your wife does life coaching and editing? There’s definately some stuff in my life I’d like to edit out, like the heart attack I had 12/27 (don’t worry, it was a little one, I was a walk in, my cardiologist said to consider it a wake up call). If I could only edit out some of those bacon double greaseburgers, and edit in some excercise… Is that what a life coach is for? Proof read the rough draft before living it?

I decided I’d share my reply with the rest of my readers.

Hi Marty,

Glad to hear you’re OK. Sounds like you got the best possible heart attack :)

I’m also glad you asked that question, it gives me a chance to talk about my favorite person.

My wife, Anna Paradox, is both a life coach and an editor of books. Two separate professions. Sorry if I was unclear.

She can’t edit your past life — but she can certainly work with you to edit your future life!

Life coaching is somewhat difficult to explain because it’s a fairly new field and isn’t yet part of our collective knowledgebase. Here’s how Anna describes it:

Imagine your life is a game. A life coach looks at your game and helps you play better.

She might very well be able to help you get more exercise. Drop her an email if you’re interested. She’ll set up a free telephone appointment with you and the two of you then decide if Anna can help you. You can also sign up for her free email newsletter.

And as for her editing, she uses her life coach training and skills to

…help aspiring authors write the book that only they can write.

She helped edit two recent poker books, Elements of Poker and Professional No-Limit Holdem.

She has a great little $27 package called From Wishing To Writing that can get you past whatever’s got you stuck. There’s even a free preview you can download immediately.

Clearly I’m biased, but I think she’s the greatest thing ever. Please check out her web sites if you’re interested.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Doug

Simpleology update

Published on January 31, 2008 in . 0 Comments

I haven’t been checking (been busy with schoolwork) but apparently Simpleology hadn’t unlocked their special blogging content for me.

I reposted the URL where I’d pasted in their boilerplate and this time it took right away. I now have lots of presentation-style content available. Of course I’m pretty light on the time to look at it all. Being an aerospace engineer student is a fair amount of work.

Blogging for Fun and Profit

Published on December 28, 2007 in . 0 Comments

Let’s see if the Simpleology guys can help me out with blogging. They’re offering this free course on Blogging for Fun and Profit if you paste this into your blog:

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

  • The best blogging techniques.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.
  • How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

OK, now I’ve done that, so I’ll go and tell them and wait for the goodies to arrive.

Simpleology is very systematic. I’ll be interested to see how they see blogging, which is kinda loosy-goosy up here the way I do it.

Depositing checks via the Internet

Published on August 29, 2007 in . 0 Comments

Our bank, USAA, has a new service that lets you deposit checks with your scanner. Since our new printer has a scanner, I decided to try it out.

It requires Mac OS 10.4 on Macs, which we don’t yet have, so I fired up Anna’s Dell laptop. There goes an hour of time I’ll never get back. Frickin’ Windows.

Anyway, once the networking/update/virus scanner/firewall issues are all worked out the system works pretty well. I cut off the MICR codes on the front of the check on my first scan, but the second try worked fine.

One small issue: you can’t deposit more than the amount that USAA will let you withdraw in a single day. Since we have a large check for a student loan, we’ll (that is Anna will) need to manually deposit this particular check. I don’t think huge checks will become a regular thing, but if they do, that’s a problem I will be very glad to have.

HP OfficeJet 5610 mini-review

Published on August 21, 2007 in . 0 Comments

I love HP inkjet printers. They last forever.

Anyway, when we decided we wanted a copier and a fax machine, we started looking at HP devices. Then a special back-to-school offer came up for the OfficeJet 5610 and we decided to try it. I just finished installing it on our Mac.

It has an automatic document feeder, for scans/faxes/copies. There’s a flatbed scanner. It has a nice control panel which lets you make faxes and copies without the computer.

The scanning system is especially impressive. Load your original into the ADF or put it on the glass and hit the Scan button. The display asks you what format you want the scan to be in (TIFF, Jpeg, PDF, OCR (!!!) ) and where you want to send it (a long list of things including email clients and iPhoto). Use the arrow keys to select what you want and hit OK.

Now the printer signals the computer that a scan is about to show up, so the computer launches the scan software, which runs the scan and then routes the output appropriately.

It fits beautifully on top of our filing cabinet — actually better than the wider-but-lower DeskJet 5550 it’s replacing.

And all this for less than $100. With free shipping. That’s progress for you.

I have no idea how long it will last (it feels a bit flimsy), and it’s no speed demon. We’ll see how we get along with it over time.

Good news and bad news

Published on August 16, 2007 in and . 2 Comments

Time for some catching up.

The good news:

  • Our last tax return showed NMSU that I need lots more financial aid.
  • NMSU gave me lots more financial aid, including work study money.
  • I now qualify as a New Mexico resident, so I can take more than six credit hours and still pay in-state tuition. I’m signed up for 16 credit hours this term.
  • The NMSU Engineering department desperately needs a computer networking guy, and here’s this student with 20 years of experience who’s eligible for hire since he’s now a full-time student with work study money.
  • They hired me.
  • My fabulous wife Anna continues to build her life coaching and editing businesses. She now has repeat customers and books on the shelveswith her name in them.
  • Honeywell bought my textbooks this year.

The bad news:

It could be a whole lot worse. For me and Anna, but perhaps not for Charis. She loves cats.

Honeywell likes me

Published on August 15, 2007 in . 0 Comments

This morning I had an email from the engineering college that Honeywell has awarded me a scholarship! It will more than pay for textbooks (a surprisingly large expense) and supplies for this year. Thanks, Honeywell!

Here’s the essay I wrote for the scholarship application.

I am a freshman in the Aeronautical Engineering program at NMSU.

Enrolling in college was a scary decision. Twenty years ago I failed to graduate from college, and for twenty years I told myself that I hated school. I have been out of work since July 2005 and money is a concern.

I couldn’t seem to muster the energy to find another computer job. When I began having nightmares about going back to work putting together more computer networks, I realized that I needed to do something different. With the support of my wife Anna I sat down to figure out what it was.

It turned out that I want to build rocket ships. I’ve been fascinated with space travel since before I can remember. In September 1991 I traveled to Las Cruces to watch the DC-X fly from White Sands, and as I stepped into the return bus I heard a voice in my head say, “You’re doing the wrong thing”. I shook it off and went back home to Oregon.

Thinking back to that incident today, I realize that not only was the voice telling me that I was in the wrong job, but that I should never have turned my back on that little rocket ship and the gleaming desert it flew above.

But at the end of 2005 all I knew was that I needed to live somewhere with a space industry. We did some research and visited a few places and Las Cruces felt like home, so we moved here and I began looking for work while we waited for the spaceport to come on line. The decision to join the space industry stopped the nightmares about computer work.

Then I discovered NMSU’s new Aeronautical Engineering program on the nmsu.edu website. The voice spoke up again and said “I want to do THAT!” It was my voice, of course. And it was right – I do want to be an aeronautical engineer. Two weeks later I walked back in to the classroom. It was scary, but it was the right thing to do. Now I’m ready for school. I want what it offers.

And I can do this. I have a natural aptitude with machines and grew up building all sorts of devices. I still have all of my Lego. I worked in technical support for many years and gain great satisfaction from solving problems for users. I have a keen appreciation for good user interfaces and elegant design and will work on a design until it feels “right” and there’s nothing left to remove.

My friends and family have always told me I’d be a good engineer. I look forward to learning the skills to enable me to contribute to building a spacefaring civilization.

My resume and other information is available on my web site at http://www.gdunge.com. You can reach me via email at dougw@spamcop.net.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for this opportunity.

I was pleased with it. I guess Honeywell liked it too.