John Boal's Blog

Box in a Tree

John Boal — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:31:25 GMT

With the relentless motivation of my father-in-law and his help (well, I helped him actually) the tree house is now actually a box in a tree. We used a pulley and a large truck to hoist each wall up to the platform

and then set it in place and bolted it down and bolted it to the other walls.

(helping with the final wall)

It took us most of the weekend, but it all came off well with no injuries and successful completion.

(Inspector indicates approval)

Now the ball is back in my court to find a way to get some kind of a roof on the thing before it all gets wetted repeatedly this winter. Here are some photos for those of you who can't see it locally. It's 10 feet up a 140 foot Douglas Fir, and YES it does move a bit when the wind blows. The tree is 19" in diameter (bark included) at the 10' level where the floor platform was constructed.

Morning Ferry

John Boal — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:16:15 GMT

Today we rode the ferry to Bainbridge, for turkey and all the trimmings. Caught a nice glimpse of the cranes on the waterfront docks backlight with the clouds and sun behind them.

nice ride, now we just need to eat some turkey...

Happy Thanksgiving! (gobble gobble)

Bakersfield

John Boal — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:01:20 GMT

um... yeah. Bakersfield. Yes, on purpose. Flew down to SoCa to visit my family, and then drove up to Bakersfield from there. Had some business there in the greater Bakersfield area on Monday and Tuesday. I was asked to travel there to a client of my company who wanted me to do some training in software unit testing and test driven development fo their development crew. See my blog on Test Driven Development for more info on the content. The training went well so that was good. Kind of a bumpy flight from BFL to SFO, but otherwise uneventful. It was a quick trip, but good to see my siblings and their families for a day at least. Best thing about Bakersfield is *leaving* though I'd still have to say... oh well, someone has got to grow the stuff we eat and wear I guess. Just not my cup of tea. Seattle, here I come.

Kickin it with the EHL

John Boal — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:49:30 GMT

If you know what your EHL tendon is, then you probably have had about the most painful experience with it, as I have. I managed to get tendonitis in the EHL tendon which runs from the ankle bone to the big toe across the top inside of the foot. It's pretty much impossible to drive or walk with this sucker, but of course I had to do it anyway. Monday and Tuesday instead of staying off it like I should have, I walked all over the place at the office. Woke up Wednesday morning with one foot and one balloon. Almost couldn't even get my sock on because the swelling was so large. I had managed to make Mr. EHL very, very angry. A shot of Toradol and some toradol pills later (plus an upset stomach, a wonderful side effect) its now down to about only 25% swelling instead of 100%. Hopefully it continues to diminish as I put ice on it. Here he is in pictures: Mr. EHL himself.

Let this be a lesson to us all... never anger the Extensor Hallucis Longus.

Ham License Upgrade

John Boal — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:27:12 GMT

Today I went up to Everett to take my General class license test, to upgrade my license to the next higher class. It was 35 questions multiple choice, and I passed it pretty easily. Then, I was encouraged then to take the Amateur Extra class exam, even though I hadn't studied for it and didn't know all of the material. Amazingly enough, I did know enough of the material to pass the test! So I got two upgrades today for the price of one. Everybody there at the testing session was amazed that I actually passed the exam - me most of all.

So now I guess I can do more than just listen on the HF bands. It is kind of nice to look at the band plan and not have to worry about which frequencies in the band I can and can't use... since I have all amateur radio operation privileges! Now I'll have to see how that Icom IC-706MkIIG really works...

New Packet Station Server

John Boal — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:07:18 GMT

This is a portable packet station, complete with Windows Server computer, TNC, and mobile radio.

It's waterproof, portable, and pretty durable. Here's what's inside and how I made it.

The radio is an Icom IC-228H, a 45W 2m mobile radio. I interfaced its microphone input to the Kantronics KPC-9612 TNC using the gray cable as shown in the picture. The mic connector on the radio also has audio out for the TNC, so it is convenient for a single cable. The computer has an onboard ethernet, but it is not used since I have the USB WiFi card, shown on the left. Power is supplied by the battery on the left (note power switch on the top) and distributed to each of the components through Anderson Power Pole connectors and the distribution box shown.

Here is the tiny single board computer, an AMD Geode running completely fanless and on a 12V DC supply. I installed an actual 12V regulator to prevent any power spikes or over-voltage conditions from reaching the board. The board consumes less than 700mA on normal operation, even with the ram and flash drive. The 7812 regulator is easily capable of delivering up to 1500mA and the input voltage is never likely to be over 14V so it doesn't even need a heat sink. I soldered a 0.1uF capacitor across the output to absorb noise.

The CPU runs at 500MHz, pretty slow by today's standards. However it gets the job done. It has 1GB of ram on the back side of the board, and an 8GB flash drive that it uses instead of a hard disk. It is completely solid-state.

Here is the internal battery, with its own fuse and switch. The system is designed to run off an external power source, with a power cable with power pole connectors that plugs in to the distribution box. This internal battery will either run the system or charge when the switch is on.

The station uses a Kantronics KPC-9612 TNC. I added a USB WiFi stick instead of using the onboard ethernet on the motherboard. The power distribution box shown rear left distributes power to the 5 devices using 12VDC.

Here is the Icom IC-228H radio, an older single band 2m 45W mobile rig. It feeds audio and mic signals directly to the TNC.

Packaging it all up together, here is the top-down view of the box.

Here is the station, complete and running. The radio is hooked to the roof antenna, and it is tuned to 145.670MHz. The callsign is KD6GKD-4 for the RMS node, if you are in the area and wish to connect to it.

Any questions about it? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll reply.
73 de KD6GKD

Identifying the Dead Cat Bounce

John Boal — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:15:24 GMT

We've all seen the market dive. Then, suddenly on Monday it rises an unheard-of amount.

ahem. Lest ye be wary of the Dead Cat Bounce...

alas... thus it falleth further southward.

And there was no rejoicing.

And henceforth the knights would no longer said Ni.

Cataclysm. Doom. Mayhem. Please sell all of your remaining stocks, and make it quick. The End is Near.

Free Fallin'

John Boal — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:13:53 GMT

Methinks neither a latte nor a liter of Wild Turkey will help at this point.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. Please panic. Please sell all your stocks.

I think I will wait a week or so before I buy back in. If I only had more cash to work with I could probably retire in a few years...
But I think I will be able to cover a few latte's at least... stick around super-glue fans...

Black Monday

John Boal — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:41:50 GMT

It seems like such a nice day, temp in the low 80s, blue skies... and then this...

blackness... darkness... fear... panic... latte... brightness again.

The biggest one-day drop in the history of the market. OK so my stocks (both of them) lost about 8% today. on paper. but it will come back...

Right?

Mommy... mommy?

Lumberjack 101

John Boal — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 05:49:27 GMT

Trees are heavy. No. I mean REALLY heavy.

Yesterday and today I rolled a few more of the large rounds part of the way up the lawn. Mostly I wanted to move some of them so we could begin cleaning up the smaller branches underneath, and figure out what to do about the huge holes in what used to be the lawn. We'll have to make a concerted effort to spend an hour or two a day for the next few days rolling all these things up the hill so we can park them all for the winter. Looks like we'll have pretty warm weather though tomorrow... supposed to be 85. Only got up to 65 today, so that was nice and cool for log rolling.

we have at last count around 90 pieces of these, and they weigh between 40lb for the smaller ones to about 200lb for the ones from the base of the tree. I figure each round will split into about 10 decent sized pieces of firewood, so that's about 900 pieces. Should be enough from this tree alone to keep us warm for the entire winter of 2009. Not to mention that we already have a cord split from other down trees that we're burning this year, and about 2 cords more still unsplit from other trees. Hopefully we'll get to it all before the termites eat it completely.

New Bluetooth Accessory

John Boal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:24:38 GMT

Today I finally was able to locate and purchase the bluetooth accessory for my phone I've been looking for for a while. It doesn't fit in my pocket as well as it does let me talk on the phone hands-free on the road.

Hopefully it's in as good mechanical condition as it's outward appearance. It's got kind of high miles for a 2006, but seems to be in pretty good shape. Traded in the '01 330i on this one and didn't do too bad I think. Perhaps I may pay a visit to the local dealership to have it checked out and see if there's anything amis lurking under the hood.

Deforrestation

John Boal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 05:36:29 GMT

Today we had a tree trimmer come out and do some work for us. He did a good job, taking down one tree completely and trimming limbs off another up to about the 100' height. Here we see the guy in the tree at about the 80' level, after he had taken off all the limbs for the whole tree, and cut off about the top third already.

Can you tell from the picture that the tree is actually leaning toward the house? That's the only reason we would cut down a beautiful healthy tree like this. And, it's on the south side of the house which is the direction from which the high winds always blow.

He dropped pieces of the trunk in about 10' sections (about 700Lb each). Here is one falling to the ground. It makes quite a thud (and an indent) when it hits the ground.

So, now we have about 90 pieces of tree on the lawn (ok it used to be a lawn), which at least have been cut into firewood sized rounds. However, I will mention that at the base, this tree is 31" in diameter, and I estimate that the base rounds each weigh between 150 to 200Lb... We'll have to escort each of these beauties up the hill behind the house to stack them someplace out of the way that we can cover them so they dry out until next year.

As it is visible in the background, I will mention that the treehouse is now covered with a tarp for the winter. I'll start in on it next Spring I think.