Thanksgiving

Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving Holiday (if you live somewhere that celebrates it on the last Thurs of November). While we should all try to be thankful for what we have any time of year, this Holiday allows some reflection time on being thankful.

Well, to start off with, I have good health. Then, I still have my job. Family seems well these days. My truck is running great. I have a new concrete driveway and sidewalk. Got some fresh coffee going, I've got a fridge that is about 2/3 full of food, and some home improvement projects I can do to save some cash, instead of hiring someone to work for me.

Well, life is good this Thanksgiving for me, hope it is for you as well.

Jimmie J - Champion Again!!

DOOOOD!!!

4th championship in a row!!!!

NASCAR ROCKS!!! - Here is the best athlete in the world.

DOOOOD.

He has become GOD of NASCAR.

10 Words On Racing

10 things you need to understand to be successful at auto racing:

10) Speed - obviously, since the object of a race is to be the fastest car to the finish line.

9) Acceleration - related to speed, and sometimes acceleration is more important than speed, and sometimes not.

8) Brakes - sometimes how fast you can stop is a crucial factor. Plus, short-track racing involves the brakes being used much more than super-speedways, and therefore the brakes get super hot, and how tough your brakes are against heat can be a factor in just finishing the race at all.

7) Tires - similar to brakes, since better tires help brake better. Plus, since racing involves pushing the car to it's limits to go fast, this means the better tires grip the road, the better you can go into turns without slowing down as much.

6) Fuel Efficiency - Ok, I know that's 2 words, so think of any one word that means fuel efficiency. Sometimes races come down to who doesn't have to stop for fuel as often, or who has just enough fuel to finish the race without having to lose time taking a pit stop for fuel.

5) Traction - related to tires, but this also includes the car's suspension system. Do your front and real wheels grip the track about equal, or does one or the other slip out of control at the turns? Do the tires grip the road when there's a bump in the surface? Things like that are important.

4) Aerodynamics - this includes how well air flows around the car, as well as how air flow changes when you are following another car closely vs. being in clean air with no one ahead of you. Sometimes if a car gets banged up the body panels do not allow air to flow around them as easily, and this makes the car have to push harder against the air.

3) Teamwork - auto racing is a pure team sport, absolutely. It's not just the driver, it's the pit crew, the Crew Chief and it's the mechanics in the garage, and even the company that manufactured the car.

2) Endurance - in a long race, the car must last all the way to the last lap, so if something breaks - buh-bye.

1) and the most importnat word: LUCK! Yes, even Jimmie Johnson needs a little luck sometimes.

Bread Machine Action

Yesterday I loaded ingredients into my bread-making machine, and then about 3 and 1/2 hours later - BREAD!




Hey, I geek like me will make bread using a microprocessor-controlled gadget like this. After all, we don't live on bread alone.








Bread flour mix, yeast, and water. Simple & easy. This is an Italian herb bread mix.

















First, water is put in at around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That's around 27 degrees Celsius I believe. Second, bread flour mix on top of the water. Third, yeast on top of bread flour mix.


Then just start the engine.







This loaf came out great - filled up almost the whole chamber. Crusty on the outside, soft & delicious on the inside.
















DEEEE-LISH!!!




This was great. More bread machine mixes will follow. Plus I've found some websites with bread machine recipes.

Old Computer Motherboards

Today is Friday the 13th, and this is my 113th post.

What a coincidence. I'm feeling lucky. Strange how this blog always puts a time stamp on my posts that is west coast time, but I'm on the east coast and my PC is set to the correct time & time zone.







I have a couple old computer motherboards that have some cool chips on them. They seem to be Intel 286-based boards and they each have a 287 math co-processor on them

They do not have the main 286 CPUs, apparently they were stripped, along with the ROM chips on one board.



















The 287-3 co-processor has a nice bit of information at http://www.cpu-museum.com/ and I've even seen this and similar chips on e-bay.















Here's how RAM looked in the old days. These 2 boards have what they called 'piggy-backed' chips, since there was one chip soldered right on top of another.

It amazes me how much information you can find on the internet about old computer technology that hardly anyone has anymore.

New Concrete Driveway & Sidewalk

Well, they finally came to tear out my old driveway and part of the sidewalk in front by the road. Here are some shots of the finished concrete work. It looks like a really good job, finished nice & neat and even everywhere.

And it has a finish coat of some kind, wreaks of chemical smell. So far no bonehead tried to write his/her initials in the concrete, and it's pretty much drying out. Hope it doesn't rain today.

Drum Machine Project

Time for fixing up an old electronics project - the 2-chip drum machine.

It's a glorified metronome.

It has a timer chip and an audio amp chip. If I recall, the timer is a dual 555 timer, which is an industry standard. It makes a couple of different sounds in repetition.

Runs off 2 9-volt batteries. In an upcoming post I'll go over a bunch of rechargeable batteries I use, and the little battery charger.