Local Traffic Reporter goes for Grammy
One of our local traffic reporters decided to mix it up a bit while doing the traffic earlier this week. :-)
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One of our local traffic reporters decided to mix it up a bit while doing the traffic earlier this week. :-)
-- W.A. Clennan
(Originally about Tae Kown Do, I believe, but applicable to Odyssey of
the Mind which I've been working on a lot lately.)
I started building model rockets when I was in 3rd grade. The first rocket I ever built was an Estes Wizard (with the old paint scheme, not the new ugly one). With my cousins, I built and launched model rockets continuously all through elementary school until I went off to high school. I took a bit of a break through college but about 15 years ago or so I started back again. About 10 years ago, I started going to launches at a "high power rocketry" field near Whitakers, NC. The people there at Whitakers were very friendly and several years later I started building bigger rockets than the ones I built as a kid. However, in order to use larger rocket engines, you have to go through a certification process.
Rocket engines are classified by letters. A basic engine is classified as an "A" engine and from there each subsequent letter indicates that the motor has twice the power of the previous letter. Basic model rockets when I was growing up used engines in the 1/2A to D range. When I got back into rocketry after college that had been raised to an E engine, but not much beyond that. Estes engines are made of black powder and you can't get that much more power out of them without making them a lot bigger. Above E engines generally use Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant (or APCP), which is the same propellant used by the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters. When you get to H motors, though, you have to go through a certification process in order to be able to buy and fly these higher power motors. There are 3 levels to this certification: Level 1 includes H & I motors, Level 2 includes J, K & L motors and Level 3 includes M and above motors.
About a year and a half ago I managed to successfully get my Level 1 certification at a launch in Richmond, VA. My rocket actually ended up landing in a tree (!!!) but the Richmond club members got it down within a few days and according to the rules that was good enough for me to certify.
This past summer, my entire family traveled to Potter, NY for LDRS28 (LDRS stands for Large, Dangerous, Rocket Ships) and got to see a lot of really cool high power rockets.
All this past year, I've been working on building a rocket that would let me get my level 2 certification. With level 1 certification, you simply have to build a rocket and launch it with an H or I engine and get it back intact. With level 2, you have a test, which I took in November and aced, and you have to launch and retrieve intact a rocket with a J, K, or L engine. With my rocket, though, since the altitude for a rocket on a J motor would be much higher, I decided to go for what's called "dual deployment". With dual deployment, you have an altimeter in the rocket that handles ejecting the parachutes. At apogee, it ejects a small parachute that simply keeps the rocket stable as it falls to ground. Then, once the rocket is closer to ground, say 500-1000 feet, the altimeter ejects the main parachute which is large enough to land the rocket very gently. The advantage of this is that you don't have to walk as far as you would if you ejected the main parachute at apogee.
I finished building my rocket this past summer and this past fall I tested it out with lower power engines. I wanted to do my certification flight in December, but weather and other problems prevented that from happening. This past weekend, though, I finally went out to the high power rocket field near Bayboro, NC and launched my level 2 rocket on an Aerotech J350 motor. The weather wasn't perfect. There were fairly low clouds and haze and the rocket disappeared fairly quickly. Luckily, though, I had the forethought to borrow a friends radio transmitter and put that into the rocket. We pulled out the receiver and after a while determined that the rocket was now on the ground. I then looked over in the direction of where the rocket should be and saw my 36 inch, hunter orange parachute on the ground and flapping in the wind! Yay! After walking quite a ways and having a local farmer help out with his four-wheeler, I managed to retrieve the rocket intact and officially get my certification.
So, now I'm level 2 certified for high power rocketry. Will I go on to get my level 3 certification? At the moment, I'm not sure. I can do quite a lot with level 2 so I may just stay here for a while. I think eventually I will want to get my level 3 certification, but I'm in no hurry.
Anyway, here's a video of the launch. You can hear how windy it was (between 10-20 mph winds!) and see how cloudy it was and how quickly the rocket disappears. But, it should give you a good enough view of how the launch went. Once you're done with that, you can see a few other pictures I took that day.
This seems like an interesting concept. Big banks helped create the financial crisis and politicians say they are simply "too big to fail". This idea is that if enough people move their money out of big banks into local community banks then perhaps the banks won't be "too big to fail" anymore. Now, I'm not sure my family would actually do this, since there are advantages in belonging to a nationwide bank, but it's worth at least thinking of.
Apparently there's more information at http://moveyourmoney.info/ including a way to enter your zip code and find good rated community banks. They don't yet include Credit Unions because the source of their data (a database by Institutional Risk Analytics) doesn't include information on Credit Unions. Credit Unions are scored by the National Credit Union Administration. However, from what what I understand, they're trying to get that information added to their webapp by early 2010.
It's hard to believe it's almost been 10 years since 2000. A lot of stuff has happened as this video shows.
So as I’m driving in to work this morning I hear on the that the Cash for Clunkers program I recently posted about is now basically bankrupt! I guess a lot of people thought it was a good deal. I wonder if this means that auto dealers and companies will be reporting record profits soon….
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
Subaru not qualified
So, apparently today the government has a program that will let you get a cash rebate if you trade in an old car for one that is newer and gets better gas mileage, up to $4,500 in some cases. A free $4,500 towards the purchase of a new car is nothing to sneeze at so I went to the website to see if my car qualified for a trade in. Apparently your car needs to be made within the last 25 years (since 1984) and its combined fuel economy needs to be 18 mpg or less. My car passes the first test, it is a 1998 model, however, it just barely fails the second test. My combined fuel economy is listed as 21 mpg (this is the average between city and highway). So, basically, if I want to get a car with better fuel economy, I’m on my own. Oh well, it was a nice idea.
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
Generally, when I work I have streaming radio on in the background. I generally listen to either my local NPR station or Pandora. Today, however, instead of radio, I’ve had NASA TV up in a little corner of my window watching the space shuttle astronauts in their first of several spacewalks to repair and rejuvenate the Hubble Space Telescope. While the endless hours of it (the spacewalk itself was over seven hours) could be a bit boring, it was pretty cool to be able to glance over every now and then and get the same view the astronaut in space was getting (since they were feeding directly from his helmet camera). In addition, NASA TV provided commentary that explained what each step the astronaut was doing which really helped to make sense of things.
The NASA astronauts will be doing several more spacewalks over the next few days as they continue working on Hubble. Since this will be the last time anyone from earth visits Hubble, they definitely want to make any and all repairs possible right now. If you’ve got a good internet connection and are intersted in the space program, you might also find it interesting to throw up one of NASA TV’s video stream to listen to and glance over at during the day.
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
I filled up my car’s gas tank this morning at the Circle K at Hwy 55 and Cornwallis Road. When I was taking my son to school they had the best gas price at $1.989/gallon but by the time I got there it had gone up to $1.999/gallon, matching the other two gas stations at that corner. While I was filling up, though, I had the pump automatically stop a couple of times at the highest pump level (when the tank was obviously not full) so I put the pump on the lowest pump level. My mistake was then to walk around the car to get my logbook. A UPS driver who was on the opposite side of the pump came out a few minutes ago and got my attention. It was a good thing too since the pump was overflowing out of my gas tank! It looked like I lost about a good 2-4 gallons on the ground!
So, if you’re pumping your gas, it’s probably not a good idea to leave the pump unattended.
Originally published at Southern Kind of Life. You can comment here or there.
For the last three years I’ve had a lot of fun attending and presenting at BarCampRDU. BarCamp is what’s known as an “unconference” where the entire content of the conference is organized the day of the event. Imagine, if you will, a conference crossed with a wiki and you’ve basically got BarCamp. The first two years of BarCampRDU I taught Juggling. Last year I simply attended. This year I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I’d like to present something. We’ll see. I’ve got three months to think about it. If you might be interested in attending BarCampRDU 2009, go register here. Unlike previous years, registration this year is not on the wiki. Instead, we’re using EventBrite this year. Registration is still free, but make sure to get in early before all 200 spots are gone!
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
So, after getting my laptop hard drive replaced last week, today I have an appointment at the Genius Bar to see about getting my top case and hopefully my battery replaced. This is the same repair jklGoDuke had done on her laptop last week. The Apple store at Crabtree Mall in Raleigh was able to perform the repair the same afternoon that we dropped off her laptop, so hopefully it will be able to do the same for me today. I’m definitely glad to be getting it repaired as my Applecare runs out this coming June. I’m starting to wonder just how much I might be able to get for my laptop if I were to sell it and put the money towards a new laptop. Of course, what I’d like to have is a 15 inch MacBook Pro but the $2000 price tag is fairly daunting. Still, it might be worth looking into. But, the first step is to get the cracks in the top case repaired and the battery replaced.
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
My replacement laptop drive arrived this evening. I went ahead and stopped DiskWarrior. It had been running for about 94 hours without finishing and, in fact, I had to shut down the computer to stop it. 
Installing the new drive went quickly but in the process I noticed that my battery is just starting to bulge! J’s battery was bulging a lot more when she got it replaced on Tuesday but I’m thinking I don’t want to let this progress very far. I already wanted to take the MacBook in to fix cracks in the top case near the keyboard so I’ll try to take care of both problems at once.
In any case, the laptop is currently restoring from Time Machine backup and it looks like it’s going to take 10-12 hours. Apparently my last backup was on March 30 so I’ll lose a little over 2 weeks of data. Also since I didn’t get my iPhone until April 2 I’ll have to set that up again (and I’ll probably need to recreate my custom ringtones). Hopefully that won’t be too much of a problem.
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
The latest release of Ubuntu, Jaunty Jackalope, has been released as of today and it looks like there’s a release party happening in my area.
So, if you’re in the Triangle Area of North Carolina this evening, come down to the Flying Saucer between 6 and 9pm. More information at this link.
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
This morning as I was taking Big-B to school my odometer rolled over to hit 234567 miles. I pulled off the road and snapped this photo. My car is a 1998 Subaru Legacy GT station wagon. I bought it in 2000 with about 20k miles on it already. My goal is to make it to at least 300,000 miles before I consider replacing it.
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
Every now and then when I run a lot of programs, or maybe just Firefox with a lot of tabs, and then leave my laptop for a long time, when I come back to it it takes a while to get going again. I generally figure it’s because it has to swap things back into memory from disk. Every now and then, though, it takes what seems like forever and I sometimes give up and just reboot the laptop because that can be quicker. This past Sunday morning I went through that and finally rebooted my MacBook. I then went upstairs to finish getting dressed. When I came back down about 5-10 minutes later I was surprised to see that my laptop was continuously rebooting! Not having any time to deal with it, I shut it down and left it off for the day. Later that evening, I booted the MacBook in verbose mode (hold down Cmd+V when booting) and discovered that there was an “I/O error” on my hard drive! I booted up using an install disk and tried to run Disk Utility on it. That completely failed so realizing the drive was probably toast I went ahead and ordered a new drive. Since the drive wouldn’t be here until Thursday (today), though, I borrowed a DiskWarrior CD from a friend and applied it towards trying to reconstruct the disk (since I’d heard that DW was about the best there is for reconstructing Mac disks). Well, as of this morning, DiskWarrior is still going. I realize it’s a 500GB drive, but really, 4 days and the last 3.5 of them it’s been on what appears to be the very last step.
Anyway, the new drive arrives today. If DiskWarrior isn’t done by tonight I’ll stop it and consider the drive a lost cause. I have a Time Machine backup but unfortunately I had not plugged in my TM drive in about 3-4 weeks, so I’m sure there’s things I’ve lost. Oh well, I’ll know better next time (hopefully)!
After I get this fixed I really need to take the laptop into Apple to get the top casing replaced as it’s cracking on the sides. jklGoDuke just took her computer in this past Tuesday and got both her top case replaced and her battery (which was apparently bulging and had damaged the trackpad!). Then, finally, in what is hopefully the last computer thing that needs to be repaired in a while, I need to take my iPhone in and have Apple look at it since my mic doesn’t seem to be working. Right now I have to use the headphones microphone in order to have a phone conversation. Ah well, such is the life when one has lots of electronic gadgets, eh?
Originally published at clubjuggler.com. You can comment here or there.
