Dog Days of Summer No More

Back when my Lovely Wife and I first married, we bought ourselves a nice starter home in the city.  It was great, with friendly neighbors, a good sized yard, and lots of trees.  I love a nice tree.

The weeping birch tree in the front yard was one of the most spectacular in town.  The almost as tall tamarack tree in the front yard was very cool, as it is one of the very few pines that turns orange and loses all of its needles in the fall.  Sadly, both trees succumbed not long after we moved out: the weeping birch from bugs and the tamarack from lightning (!).

My Weeping Birch in Fall with Tamarack at Left

The backyard was nicely treed as well: several big spruce, a small oak, a nice birch, an apple tree, and a lovely Shubert chokecherry.  The latter had been pruned to grow as a tree with several main trunks that arched over your head as you walked under it.  Lovely.

There was also something about the neighborhood that I hadn't counted on: competition.  Many of the houses there had been built thirty years ago, and many of the original owners still lived there.  That meant a lot of these folks were coming up on or already retired and had a lot of time to put into their yards.  The neighbors on our one side were semi-retired and their yard was beautiful.  The neighbors on the other side were even worse: they were both young school teachers and had all summer off to work in their yards, and that they did.  The pressure to have a nice yard in the neighborhood was constant and intense.  I had to kick things up a notch if I were to hold my head up.

So I did.  I bought a really nice cedar gazebo kit and put it up underneath the chokecherry.  It was gorgeous, with its delicate railings and cedar shake roof.  It fit the setting perfectly, and the chokecherry looked like it had grown up around the gazebo.  It was beautiful and it bought me some good cred in the neighborhood but it wasn't enough.

Beautiful, But Not Enough

So I built an enormous pond at the edge of one of the gazebo's edges, and made it as deep as city bylaws would allow.  I stocked it with goldfish and koi, and even built my own floating lights that were powered by the rest of the low voltage lights in the surrounding flower beds.  The fish were really cool, and would swim up to us looking for food whenever we walked by.

Olympic Size

The pond became a veritable black hole of my time and energy.  Things would spin rapidly out of control.  I built a ridiculously long stream from the back edge of the yard that ended with a small waterfall at the pond.  This ridiculously long stream was made even more ridiculous long by meandering it along the way.  A 1200 gallon per hour pump provided water circulation.  The sound of babbling water that crept into our open bedroom window as we went to sleep every night was hypnotically comforting.

This is Only About Half of It

The stream cut the yard in half so that drove me to build a Pete's Pond Page bridge across it.  Its minimalist design was a perfect complement to the rest of the yard.

Heavy Rocks are Heavy

And then at the head end of the stream, I built something made to look a bit like a monstrous beaver dam / waterfall.  This was really big, but it was big for a reason: it hid my single stage Pete's Pond Page biofilter built from a 100 gallon stock watering tank.  Cotton batting served as a filter media and a small bag of barley straw in there prevented algae growth as if by magic.

That Was Easy!

We enjoyed this beautiful yard for several years before moving to another city in search of bigger and better things.  We sold the house to a nurse, and we were hopeful that she would keep the yard up.  What we would learn later was that she actually bought the place for her out-of-control son.  Her son and his friends then turned the basement into a crystal meth lab.  After several years of turning the neighborhood upside down, the bank foreclosed on them.  The chemicals from the drug making process seeped into the walls, and the entire lower half of the house had to be stripped down to the 2x4's and rebuilt before the house could be put back on the market.

Something tells me the drug dealers didn't much worry about cleaning the pond filter on a regular basis.  We moved back into the area a few years later, and I could not bear to drive by the place for many years after, fearing that all the work I had put into the place would have been destroyed by a bunch of stupid dope fiends.  It broke my heart.

Fast forward to present day.  We have been on our acreage outside the city for ten years now.  Much of that time we had The World's Greatest Dog on patrol.  We are just past the one year anniversary of her passing, and our new dog Buddy is now keeping an eye on the place.  Now the thing about Buddy is that he doesn't much like the sun.  Black Siberian Husky crosses would much rather be running across the frozen tundra than soaking up the rays on a hot summer day.

The problem we have now is that we don't have much for mature trees in our yard, especially in the area where my lovely wife spends so much of her time in the summer - the garden.  No big trees, no shade where a dog can hang out to help beat the heat.  There had to be a better way.  There is.  I was taking a stroll through Costco the other day and came upon this bad boy.

Meet the Alexa Playvilion Sandbox

The gears immediately started turning.  I would build Buddy a gazebo to call his own.

Careful inspection of the display unit built up at the store showed an impressive level of quality for the thing given its $100 price tag:

• It was made of real wood that was already pre-stained
• There were a ton of screws holding it together.  Screw holes were pre-drilled and counter-sunk
• There were several nice finishing touches, like small ledges near the bottom and decorative railings at the top
• The fabric cover was nice and heavy

Construction began the next day.  Normally I don't have too much trouble with the "Put Screw A in Piece 1" type instructions, but I was was thrown off by a couple things.  There were two different types of "Piece 1" pieces for the left and right edges of each side.  And I apparently have just enough dyslexia going on that I kept getting confused as to which piece should be on which side.  Finally, I got the first few sides together and took stock of the situation.

It would not do.  I held a piece of plywood up to the roof line around 11am and saw that the shade cast by the wood fell about six feet back from where the bottom of the gazebo.  The sides were too high to cast enough useful shade over the course of the day.  The happy young children pictured on the box the gazebo came in are doomed to die from skin cancer for this reason.

Sorry Kids, But I Got Bad News For You

Modifications would be in order.  It would be a tall order for someone with the woodworking skills of Homer Simpson, but I'd be damned if I was going to do a half-assed job of this.

His Spice Rack is Also a Classic

It took plenty of cursing and more than a little swearing, but I shortened the supports by around 18".  This would give a gazebo three feet high at the roofline.  The pre-drilling and countersinking of the new screw holes that would attach the bottom boards was the second worst part of it.  The worst part was doing that twelve times for each of the support posts in the kit.  But once that was out of the way and a test fit against the end customer proved successful, things moved along quickly.

I got each of the sides built up and screwed a few of them together.  Everything seemed to be fitting together pretty well.

The six sides are together now.  The picture on the box also had six sides.  I appear to be on the right track.

Here it is with the ledges attached on the bottom pieces and the roof supports up.  They are hard to see, but there are also chunks of wood angled at 120 degrees screwed across each of the corners.  This makes the whole structure surprisingly solid.  Note that I put something on top of the concrete in the driveway to prevent the wood from getting all scratched up.

Like any good engineer would do, we had to do a final test for fit and finish.  The end customer seems to approve.  Note also how my Lovely Wife has to duck down now that I've chopped the roofline down to Buddy size.

And here is the finished product in place.  We put it up on the north side of a small Scots Pine at the corner of our garden to help cast additional shade.  Note the enclosed pool that my Lovely Wife picked up early this summer at 50% off.

So the job is done so I know what you must be asking yourself.  Does he like it?  Well...

Damn Straight, He Likes It

As I tell my friends, I like all the places I live to have a pond and gazebo.  Anything else would be uncivilized.

It Involves A System Of Pulleys

Engineering is not well understood by most mortals.  As a matter of fact, I gave a presentation at work last week to give others in our company a better idea of what we Engineers do in our department and how we see our role in the grand scheme of things.  This was Page 2.

Engineering, As Seen By Engineers

(Note that "Engineer", "Engineers", and the profession of "Engineering" should always be capitalized, just for reasons of general awesomeness.)

I must confess that this public misunderstanding comes as close to home as my own Dear Sister.  When talking to her about something technical, I generally get asked: "Does it involve a system of pulleys?"  A fine inside joke indeed.  It also speaks to the fact that simple things can become deceptively complicated.  Case in point, and something I've wanted to blog about for some time now, is my rainwater collection system.

Water is a precious resource out here on the Ponderosa.  All we had when we moved in to the place was a well to supply our water, and not a very good well at that.  It wasn't very deep and recharged slowly.  It was enough for drinking, washing, etc. but didn't have a lot of margin for watering gardens and newly planted trees.  I figured one thing I could do was build a rainwater collection system.  As usual, no half-assedness would be tolerated.

I based the system around the idea of a dry stream bed.  Building this was a big job.  A very big job.

Had I Known How Big A Job This Would Be, I Likely Wouldn't Have Started.

The previous owner had tried something on a smaller scale but it sucked.  It was just a rectangular-shaped pile of rocks down the slope to the back of our house.  Half the rocks were missing and it was a weed infested mess.  I cleared out all of the old stones and came up with a shape with a more natural flow to it.  I then laid down some heavy duty landscape fabric to keep the weeds down.  On top of that I laid down some 1" chicken wire to discourage any gophers that might want to dig a hole in the middle of it

It doesn't show well in these pictures, but there is a dry stream shape about a foot deep that winds its way through all of these rocks.  This dry stream is lined with a thick EPDM rubber normally used to line garden ponds.  The water I collect from my eaves-troughs drains into the top of the stream and winds its way down to the bottom.  The stream bed is actually functional when it rains.

Laying all of the rocks was a huge job.  There must be thousands of rocks here of various shapes and sizes.  And many of these rocks are heavy, big-assed rocks.  It took me a couple of years to get this part done.  Every rock was put in place by hand, both to give the right mix of large and small, and also to make sure the entire surface was well covered so you couldn't see the landscape fabric or the liner below.  The fact that it is on quite a slope added to the challenge.  Want to get strong???  Move out into the country.

All the water I collect up top gets to the bottom.  Right about here.

There Must Be More To It Than This???

This is where the "system of pulleys" come in.  Let's take away the gravel in the center of the picture above.

A System Of Pulleys

Here is where things get interesting.  Taking off the gravel shows a heavy grill meant to cover a fire pit.  It sits on top of a hard plastic sump basin that I got at Home Depot for $20.  It is just like the one shown in the left of the picture, only the one in the ground right now has a big crack in the bottom.  It didn't always have that crack, but it seems that water expands when it freezes.  The first one I used was left in place all winter to prevent the dirt around it from caving in.  It got some water in it which subsequently froze and blew the bottom out.  So the cracked one is used in winter to keep the shape of the dirt around the pit and the other one is used in summer to hold the water.

The above picture gives a closer look. You can see the heavy rubber liner used to carry the water down the stream peeled back.  The sump pump I use to pump the collected water back up to my holding tank is shown in the bottom left.  You can just barely see the check valve behind the float switch that prevents the water pumped up and out of the sump pit from flowing back down again.  You can also see a couple hoses poking into the sump pit.  The one at about 2 o'clock runs under the rubber liner and connects the sump pump to the holding tank above.  The other one around 5 o'clock brings in water from another downspout at the other end of the house.

Springtime means pulling the old sump pit, putting the new one in its place, connecting everything up, and making it all pretty again.  The dance goes a little something like this.

Step 1: Pull out the old sump basin.  The chicken wire and weed fabric are clearly visible.

There Were Only Two Dead Mice In The Hole This Year

Step 2: Put the good sump basin in place and connect the hose up.  I use some flat rocks to prevent the pump from moving around within the basin.  Otherwise, the float switch could get hung up and prevent the pump from turning on when the pit gets full of water (ask me how I know).  Tie-wraps are also used to keep the hose and the cords out of the way.

Step 3: Put the grill grate back over top of the sump basin, making sure the wires from the pump and float switch are brought out.  Lay the heavy rubber liner back down so the water carried down the stream will drain into the middle.  The picture below shows the setup back together, just needing the gravel to be put back on top of the grate.

Step 4: Plug the float switch plug into the AC power cord and the pump into that.  I run the cord through Liquatite flexible conduit because a critter will gnaw through an exposed power cord if they get half a chance.  They'll generally just do it once, though...

The top part of the design is a lot less complicated than the bottom.  Here is a picture of the front of the house in early spring where the downspouts are not connected in to the system of pulleys.  No point dumping a bunch of water in during spring thaw that could later freeze and bust things up.

Taking a closer look, you can see a black tube that comes up from below ground near our front step.  This is just a section of non-perforated weeping tile that is teed below every downspout.  The middle part of the tee connects to a flexible piece of downspout extender.

This picture gives a better look of the downspout extender connected in to the downspout above.  Rainwater from the eaves-troughs flows into the downspout, into the downspout extender, and then into the weeping tile buried below.  Silicone and hot glue keeps water in and leaks out.

The weeping tile carries the water from all the downspouts to the top of the "dry" stream bed.  Gravity takes over and the water flows down into the sump basin.  The sump pump cuts in when enough water has been collected and pumps it back up the slope via a hose hidden under the stream bed's rubber liner to a holding tank.

It's simple, really.

Now up top, I mentioned how water is a precious resource out here.  But since I got this baby together, we've gotten our house connected up to "city water" and so we no longer depend on the well.  I also since finished another mega-project to bring water up from the river 85' feet below to water our trees and garden (a topic for a future blog post, perhaps).  Finally, it  seems that every cloud that passes over the house lately brings with it an inch of rain. 

Water is still precious, just maybe not quite so precious as it used to be.

Craptastic Episode #1: KitchenAid Crap Can Openers

Faithful readers of this blog (that joke never gets old) will have noticed that I haven't blogged for a while.  Well, I've been busy.  Very busy.  Unspeakably busy.  I am tired.  I am weary.  I am grumpy.  However, I am also strong.  I am beat, but not beaten.  I am bent, but not broken.  I am shaken, but not stirred.

Best Bond Ever

The good thing about a gruelling workload and complete exhaustion is that it makes you want to tell other people how miserable you feel.  What better time then to unleash some hate on a piece of crap that nobody should ever buy?

KitchenAid Can Opener Crap

Yes, I'm talking about a can opener.  A KitchenAid can opener.  A Kitchenaid can opener that is a piece of crap.  I'm an engineer and I don't think it would really be that hard to make a good can opener.  And you know why?  Because I know how diamonds work.  A diamond is (almost) the hardest substance known to man.  And everybody knows that a diamond can put a scratch in just about anything because it is harder than just about anything.  So things don't scratch diamonds.  Diamonds scratch things.

It is that simple.  If you want to cut something like, oh I don't know, a can... you need to make something like, oh I don't know, a can opener... that is made out of stuff that is harder than the can.  This isn't rocket science.  But this seems to be beyond the comprehension of the incompetent designers at KitchenAid.  My lovely wife bought this can opener a couple years ago for $15 bucks.  Big handles, beefy looking construction... what is not to like?  What is not to like is the "unable to open cans" part.  Look at this.

Looks OK?

So what is the problem, you ask?  Take a little closer look.

Look Again.  Craptastic!

See how the gear that is supposed to grip the can is a mashed up mess?  That is the top minds at KitchenAid not understanding how diamonds work.  Because whatever this gear is made out of, it isn't harder than the tin can it is cutting through.  Instead of the can taking the damage, the gear does.  I sent this KitchenAid Crap Can Opener off to where I'm sure a few million other KitchenAid Crap Can Openers can be found.

One Man's Garbage Is Also Another Man's Garbage

You know, it occurs to me now that maybe the folks in KitchenAid's Can Opener division aren't really incompetent.  Maybe they think this is a brilliant planned obsolescence idea.  Maybe they think that people will just roll over and spend $15 bucks on a brand new KitchenAid Crap Can Opener every couple years.  Maybe.  But in this day and age of the Internet and the ability of people to spread the news of what they've learned, that shouldn't happen.  So screw you, KitchenAid Crap Can Opener Division.

We can't be can-openerless in this day and age.  After some research (and I research everything now), My Lovely Wife and I decided on this bad boy.

Meet The New Boss...

Meet the Nogent Super Kim Can Opener from the fine folks at Lee Valley.  The blade is made of tempered carbon steel, and it works (so far) like a damn.  It is great in that it doesn't leave that sharp little sliver just as you finish cutting the can through like every other can opener seems to do. It has a very smooth mechanism, does not leave a sharp edge, and takes up very little space in the drawer.  However, rest assured.  If this thing craps out in a couple years, you'll hear about it.

This wraps up the first Public Service Announcement from Mad Scientist Labs.  There will be more.

Blogger, You Suck Hard

I am angry.

This evening I went to sit down and finish yet another epic blog post that I've been working on for days.  Just a quick proof read plus a few cleanups here and there.  I open the post in Blogger's editor.  It goes on for pages.  It looks great, and it should, because I have put all kinds of effort in to this.  I type a couple characters and hit Control-Z.  Suddenly every word and image in my post disappears.  I see the Autosave button flash.

And I am right fucked.

Because it is gone.  All gone.  Undo does nothing.  Hitting the Back button does nothing.  Closing the post and reopening does nothing.  Frantics searches bring up nothing that can bring it back.  Why don't I just revert to an earlier draft?  Because there is no revert to a previous draft.

What the fuck Blogger?  Is a working undo something that is really that hard?  Really???  Why can't I revert to an earlier draft?  Why didn't the Undo work?  I am not the only one complaining.  There are many more who have suffered this problem.  And tell me, why do you sit there with your thumb up your ass and not respond to your users?  It goes on an on and on.  You could always do a Google Search to see how pissed off people are. Are you too blind to realize that the best workaround being suggested is to use Windows Live Writer as an editor?  Even with that I am still up shit creek because I use Linux.

So fix this.  Fix it now.  And then how about a basic table editor, for chrissake.

Motivating Myself for 2012

It is that time of year that people look back on the year it was.  I look back and I'm pretty pleased with how it went down.  I've gotten some things done that I've been meaning to get done for a long time, I have challenged myself to learn new things, I have had good success at work, and I like to think that I am a little better person than I was when 2011 was about to roll in.

It is said that one way of making sure you carry through on something is to tell other people what you are doing.  The more people you tell, the more people you are letting down if you fail to follow through.  With that thought in mind, and with 2011 drawing to a close, it seems like a good time to look ahead and set some goals for 2012 in a couple different areas.

Working Out

I have been working out pretty diligently over the past four years or so and have become decently strong on a few lifts.  This despite having the frame of a Japanese schoolgirl and the fact that the testosterone train left the station long ago (i.e. I'm old).  I'm not expecting huge gains in muscle mass but I do think I have the capacity to put on a few more good pounds if I eat enough and don't get hurt.

My best lift is the deadlift.  Pick a weight up off the ground and put it back down.  Simple enough.  I can usually do something like 350lbs to 365lbs for five or six reps depending on the day with a bodyweight in the low 140lb range.  Not bad.  This should translate into a 415lb+ one-rep max.  Should, but probably doesn't, at least for me.  I find that my body doesn't seem to obey the basic predicted formulas for one-rep max

one-rep max = weight / (1.0278 - (.0278 * reps))

and that my reps go down sharply as the weight goes up.  So...

Goal #1: Deadlift 405lbs for a single rep.  That's four wheels a side.  This goal should be doable.  I just have to do it.

This is 495lbs, but you get the idea

One of my weaker lifts is the squat.  Yesterday's workout was 235lbs x 4 for a calculated one rep max of 256lbs.  This lags well behind my deadlift.  I feel my hamstrings are letting me down and will work to strengthen them up.  I really need to build up my bottom position strength before I see some decent gains here.  Because this lift sucks for me, I'm thinking...

Goal #2: Squat 280lbs for a single rep below parallel.  285lbs - 290lbs would be even better, as this would be 2x bodyweight.

 I get mistaken for Tom Platz all the time

My other lifts are decent enough, so I'd be OK with basically maintaining them as I bring these others up.  I can pretty easily Military Press my bodyweight, and I can do weighted chinups with an extra 77.5lbs of weight (around 55% bodyweight) hanging off a belt for 5 reps or so.  Bench press?  Screw it.  It has done my shoulders far more harm than good in the past.  I might play around here a little bit, but pushing serious weight with them isn't something I'm planning on.

Work

Work isn't really something I talk about this on this blog, so I won't.  Suffice to say I just hope I'm not putting in crazy amounts of extra time that would take substantially away from all this other stuff I want to do.

Hacking

This year we went away for a few days to spend Christmas with the family.  We had our neighbor check in on the place while we were away.  You never know if the furnace might go out or a pipe springs a leak or something like that.

Actually, you can know.  And it isn't that hard.  I've spent a bunch of time researching this lately.  There are a multitude of ways that data can be collected and made available so I could know right away if my furnace stopped working or a pipe sprung a leak.  Then I could just make a phone call for somebody to check into it rather than having them waste their time when everything is fine.  One strategy would be to collect the data with some JeeNodes from JeeLabs and the incomparable Jean-Claude Wippler.  JeeNodes are a kind of Arduino clone with built in network capabilities and an emphasis on low power such that a single remote node ran on a single LiPo for a year without breaking a sweat.  More here.  And did I mention that these things are crazy cheap?

Now, that data has got to get onto the net, so why not just hook up a JeeNode to my router and write a script like that used to collect data from my weather station and push it out on to the web?  If only there was a site that was willing to store all of this data for me and make it easy to get to.

It turns out that there is.  Pachube is happy to take all of the data I send to them.  They have an open API.  Look at the data from their web site or pull the data into a Google gadget and display it on a web page.  And you can retrieve the data whenever you want in three different formats.  All for free.  So how about...

Goal #3: Get some basic home monitoring going by Christmas 2012.

This is what I have in mind.

One more thing that I have been playing with for some time is trying to understand how the Davis Weather Station outdoor sensor suite is monitored by the indoor console.  What I'm working towards is some means of building a standalone receiver that could listen in on its transmissions and collect the data without depending on the console.  I had initially proposed a Pretty Pink Pager for this task, and indeed, I was playing with this just the other day.  Unfortunately, I'm struggling with some kind of problem with my GoodFET where it doesn't want to talk to the IM-ME, and this is slowing me down.

There is a problem with this approach though.  The number of people that have a Davis Weather Station, an IM-ME, and the means to hack it is a number one less than two.  The IM-ME is a good prototyping platform for this kind of thing, but it isn't an accessible solution for others.  The biggest problem is the CC1021 chip in the console is not exactly hacker friendly.  The documentation is great, but actually building a board around this thing is not: the components are tiny and a good layout is critical to decent performance.  Development boards also tend to be either expensive or very expensive.  Then I came across the XRF module from Ciseco that puts a CC1101 processor (CC1021 RF compatible) onto an XBee form factor board for just £10 plus another £2.50 for shipping.  What a deal!  This leads us to:

Goal #4: Get a standalone receiver picking up the transmissions from a Davis outdoor sensor suite by the end of 2012.

Let's Do This.  You and Me.  Mano-a-Mano.

Wrapping Up (Finally)

Well, that is enough for now.  There are still a lot of other things I want to get done this year, such as

• I have a bunch of landscaping to get done.
• I'd like to get a little hydroponics setup going so I don't have to wait until fall for a decent tomato.  Life is too short for shitty tomatoes.
• I'm going to keep working at improving my breadmaking skills.  Incidentally, this Sourdough Rye bread is outstanding.

These things lead me to...

Goal #5: Keep this blog going, share the adventure, and enjoy the ride.

What are YOUR goals?  What do YOU plan to do?  We live in a great time where pretty much anyone can learn about anything.  The greatest threat to this is a lack of motivation.  Don't waste the opportunity you have.  Get started today.

Happy New Year from all of us here at Mad Scientist Labs.

Please Read This

Christmas was the best day ever when I was a little kid, just like it is for so many kids today.  But as I've gotten older, there are a few things about it that are like old clothes: for some reason, they just don't seem to fit quite as well as they used to.  I still enjoy the socializing and the food.  It is more the gift thing that just seems a little awkward now.

Best Christmas Movie Ever, Bar None

I am not a very materialistic person.  I also understand the difference between "need" and "want".  If I need something, I get it because I actually need it.  If I want something, I tend to mull it over for some time.  What I have found is that the things I think I want are fleeting, and what I think I want one month, I am no longer interested in the next.  To quote Sheryl Crow:

It's not having what you want,
It's wanting what you've got.

It is very rare that I will buy something I think I want on the spur of the moment.  This discipline serves me very well.  It saves money and keeps down on the amount of clutter around the house.  I've found clutter like this tends to depress me, so avoiding it in the first place just helps me feel better.

I Am A Few Ounces Of Discipline Away From This...

I also have gotten to be pretty particular about the things I buy.  If I decide I want something, I'll get something that does all the things I want it to do.  I do a lot of research before putting down my hard earned cash.  That doesn't necessarily mean that it is expensive.  It means it does what I want it to do at a good price.  The internet is an absolute godsend for me.

So lets get back to Christmas.  I was getting gifts in recent years from very well meaning friends and relatives that I wasn't really enjoying or using that much: books I wouldn't get around to reading, stuff that I never used, etc.  It just seemed kind of wasteful despite the best of intentions.  This stuff and another incident I won't get in to started turning me off the whole gift thing.  So after Christmas a couple of years ago, I decided it was time to do something different.  I simply asked everyone that in lieu of a gift to me, that they instead make a donation to a charity of their choice.

You see, one of my numerous shortcomings is that I don't donate much to charity.  My request would indirectly address this shortcoming and take some of the commercialization out of the holiday season that was bugging me as well.  I was killing two birds with one stone.  Sheer genius, eh?  I'm right up there with the great physicists of our time: Einstein, Planck, and Spears.

First Row, Fourth From the Right

So last year was the first year that there were no gifts under the tree for me.  How did it  work out?  Much better than I had expected, without a doubt.  It was a little weird in that it was different for me.  However, I felt great each time I heard of other person's act of giving.

Srsly

I learned of the most memorable of these events when I drove home on Christmas day 2010 to see my mom and spend the day with her.  She told me that she had made a donation to the Children's Wish Foundation, whose goal is to bring some happiness to children who are facing a pretty dire situation.  This is a charity dear to her heart (again for a couple reasons I won't go in to).  She had made her donation to Children's Wish earlier that month, and that was great.  But for her, what really made it was when the charity phoned her just before the holiday to express their gratitude.  They didn't ask for more money, they simply thanked her.  She told me that this was the best thing that had happened to her all holiday.

That made me feel pretty awesome.  I'm getting a little choked up typing this in even now.

Fast forward a year to 2011.  I got a Christmas card from my mom in the mail just the other day.  I opened it up so I could read it and put it onto the mantle with the rest of them.  But this was no ordinary card.

I didn't realize it was my Christmas present until I opened the card and started reading.

A goat brings lasting abundance to hungry families.

For impoverished families, a gift of one or even two goats is a fantastic milk, food, and income source.  The family will also receive training on how to breed the goat and start a business.  Because of you, this precious gift can even be the start of a flourishing dairy business for the family that receives it.  Thank you!

Mom had done it again.  I was totally taken aback.  The card was from World Vision.  They work "to improve child well-being and to serve people around the world regardless of religion, race, gender or ethnicity".  Mom had chosen this goat from the many options listed in their gift catalogue.  Her choice meant some family I will never meet will get a shot at a better life vs. me getting something I don't really want and won't use.  Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Whoever said it was better to give than to receive was right.  I know that now.

Why not find this out for yourself if you haven't already done so?  Consider giving either some of your cash, some of your time, or some of what you might have coming your way this season to a cause you support.  Or maybe you've enjoyed what you've read on this blog or learned something useful and want to show some appreciation?  That works too.  Pick a cause and help them out.  Whatever cause you choose isn't important, as long as it is important to you.

If you decide to do something, that would be fantastic.  If you don't, that is OK too.  Your choice.  Whatever you choose to do, the staff of Mad Scientist Labs wishes you a safe and happy holiday, and the best of 2012.

Shattered

My lovely wife and I live out of town on an acreage.  Our nearest neighbor is a half mile away.  We have no yard light and don't want one, either.  At night, it gets dark outside.  Very dark.  It looks a lot like this:

Seriously

We also have a dog.  A large dog.  A large dog that refuses to take advantage of modern conveniences like indoor plumbing.  If she has to "go", she has to "go outside".  "Going outside" is her favorite thing in the world, as it is with most dogs.  But our dog is also rarely more than a few feet away from either my lovely wife or myself.  If we try to let her outside to do her dirty, filthy business, she'll just stand on the step and wait for us to come out.  She would probably blow out a kidney waiting for an escort to take her into the tall grass where relief awaits before heading out there to do her business on her own.

Now going outside sometimes means going outside at night.  At night, it gets dark outside (we've been over this - remember?).  And at night, there are various critters that like to come out as well.  We regularly hear the coyote packs howling under the moonlight.  And then there are the porcupines.  Our dog has tangled with these and other critters.  Usually she comes out on top because of her size.  Sometimes, not.  A dog can't win against a porcupine, but they don't seem to be able to figure this out.  These battles can be painful.  And expensive.

Our Dog: Post Surgery after Porcupine Battle #2

So because our dog needs to go out at night, and because it gets dark at night, and because we have to go out with her, and because there are dangerous critters outside at night when it is dark, and because we can't see in the dark, we need a flashlight.  A bright flashlight.  A flashlight that can light up the night for a great distance.  A flashlight that can find the critters before our dog does and hopefully scare them away.  We started off with a four D-cell MagLite flashlight.

Great For Smashing Some Thing's Head In, But Not Great Otherwise

This thing threw a pretty decent amount of light.  We also got a good workout lugging it around.  And it would also go through batteries like Wynonna Judd goes through donuts. Not recommended.

I Am A Mean Person...

Then I discovered the wonders of LED flashlights.  I coincidentally also discovered the wonders of Deal Extreme.  They have Deals there!  And they are Extreme!  After much research a year ago, I picked up this bad boy: an Eastward YJ-XGR2 Waterproof Cree R2-WC 2-Mode 250-Lumen LED flashlight.  It is amongst my most cherished possessions.

Is It Wrong To Love An Inanimate Object?

The first night I tried it out, my lovely wife and I were outside.  I pointed this baby at her eyes and she had to look away.  "Big deal", you say.  "That would happen with any flashlight."  Sure.  But I was 200 yards away at the time.  This thing is light, far brighter than the Mag, and one charge of its single rechargeable batteries last up to 10 hours.  I love this thing.

That is why I was devastated to discover this after the pup and I went for our morning walk-about.

The Lens Was As Shattered As I Was

We don't know how it happened.  But it happened.  This flashlight was in critical condition.  What to do?

There was no way we could go back to the Mag: I am a man of modest means and cannot afford the batteries it chews through.  I had to develop a recovery plan, and fast.  Fortunately, all the pieces of the lens were still in place and nothing of any size had fallen out yet.  If I could only keep the lens together for the short term, I could then work out a longer term plan.  So I dug out a roll of clear packing tape.

You Can See Where I'm Going With This...

 I used a razor to trace around the lens and lightly pressed the tape around the glass.  This held things together enough so I could open up the flashlight and tape the back side together using the same method.  This would hold things together in the short term.

Next, I remembered from my research that Deal Extreme also sold flashlight parts.  I search for flashlight lenses and, lo and behold, they sell replacements.  Yay!  But the replacements come in 20 different sizes.  Time to dig out my calipers make a measurement.  Fortunately I had a banana handy to support one end of the caliper so I could free my hands to take a picture.

Better Eat That Banana - It's Getting A Little Ripe

The measurements vary from 41.6mm to 41.8mm depending on where I measured (smashing a piece of glass tends to affect its symmetry somewhat).  Not shown is my 1.5mm measurement of the lens' thickness.

Back to Deal Extreme.  And wonder of wonders: they sell a 41.5mm Diameter, 1.5mm Thick Replacement Glass Lens.  In ten-packs.  For $2.78.  For all ten.  And free shipping.  And no minimum order.  The well-intentioned recommendation of my cousin to consider somewhere else for a "decent light" falls on deaf ears.

This Makes Me Very Happy

So now that this post is written up, I'm off to put in an order to Deal Extreme.  Unfortunately, the "Add To Cart" button on that site is made of crack cocaine: you can't stop at just one hit.  I have a funny feeling I'll be spending more than $2.78.