Here's a global campaign to get rid of nuclear weapons, which seems to be getting some real action by the big governments in the world: http://www.globalzero.org/en/about-campaign

I signed the petition, cause I don't really like nukes. Nothing personal, nukes.

ps. did you know that the peace symbol actually started as a nuclear disarmament thing?

I kicked butt on my Built-Green test! So apparently I get a certificate in the mail for that. Sweeet.

We picked up the Delica on Thursday and it's awesome :) Naomi cleaned it up yesterday and now it's even more awesome. The guy in Coombs did quite the mechanical restoration on it so it's as reliable like a new vehicle (perhaps even more so).

My brother is getting married today, so we get to hang out with the family all day.

The guy who wrote an article about our b&b in More Living Magazine is popping by this morning to drop off a set of magazines for us to have and distribute.

Tomorrow is the Rhodo Society garden show and our garden is on the tour. Naomi's art gallery is also ready to roll, so that'll be open to the public for the first time tomorrow.

Busy weekend coming up! And then it's back to school in Nanaimo for me for the next 4 days. The 1.5 hr commute makes for some long days, so I hope class doesn't run late like it did last week.

Well, I survived my first 2 days back in school. got up early and got home kinda late both days.
It was a very intense lots-of-information kind of course, with a test at the end of the second day (designed as a 3 hour test, like a final exam thing). Good thing I read the books *before* the class! I'll find out my mark on Saturday. You need 80% to pass, and then I think it makes me either Built-Green certified, or eligible to become a Built-Green certified builder... not sure how that works. But I just need this as part of the requirements to become a Certified Energy Advisor.
Next week is phase 2, for 4 days. I think it's mostly to learn the hands-on stuff of how to use the Hot2000 software and the testing equipment like the blower door (which checks your house for airtightness).
Guess I should play with the software a bit more before then. Thankfully no huge reading list this time, but the bit at the end of the month has a ton more reading. I best start that right away too.

Every year we have at least one woodpecker that wants to use the peak of our house to make noise. I guess they like the wooden shingles there, and maybe the way it reverberates through the house. And it's always the same type of bird - the Northern Flicker. All the other woodpeckers are happy to just hammer at trees and enjoy the suet blocks. The little Downy Woodpeckers are still my favourite because they're so friendly and don't mess with the house :) Plus they thank me for the suet by cleaning some of the riffraff of bugs off the trees ;)

So every time we hear this misbehaving bird hammer on the peak, I go out and chase it away by clapping my hands and yelling a bit. This has been surprisingly successful the last many years - seems they are somewhat trainable.

So today I hear the hammering, and I run out across the deck, down the steps, over the stream and start clapping and yelling to chase the bird away and this sleepy raccoon starts to slowly walk away from where I just ran past. Poor thing didn't even argue or look at me. just slowly groggily walked away. Last I saw, it went into the neighbours' yard - I guess their deck is nice to sleep under too.

Oh, and the neatest thing is that I can go out there and chase the bad bird off the peak of our roof, while all the birds nearby on the feeders barely pay any attention to me. It's like they know :D

Oh, and we just got a new addition to our woodpecker family - the BIG pileated woodpecker! Very cool!

I think we'll have to get a roofer up there this year to make sure that peak is still solid, and maybe to add some reinforcement and backup in that spot! Thankfully that peak does have several layers there already.

A lot of felines out there may not like me for this... ;)

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find your kitty's belly button.
Go!

I've been running the desulfator on a few of the batteries over the last week or so, and at first I wasn't sure if it was working or not. The old UPS batteries very quickly lost voltage when I put it on, and also the motorcycle battery dropped to around 7 volts over the week I had it on the desulfator.

I since read that I should be charging the battery daily as part of this process - oops. So I've been doing that since.

The other thing I learned is that the voltage in the battery will actually drop as its capacity increases due to desulfating - so it's possible that this process is actually working quite well.

I've also hooked it up intermittently to one of my solar system batteries, switching the little maintainer-charger and the desulfator between the two batteries.

I have a box of transformers in the basement from old electronics stuff (printers, laptops, and such) so I want to hook a 14 volt (ish) 1 or 2 amp charger into the desulfator so I can hook it up and leave it on while it desulfates and trickle charges simultaneously. Ideally I can make this something i can plug and unplug as needed...

And Canadian Tire has a regular battery charger on sale today so I should pick up one of those - the maintainer doesn't really give a good full charge.

Oh, last night I also built a peak voltage detector (very simple circuit doohickey consisting of a capacitor, a diode, some wires and some clips) - that showed me that the desulfator IS actually working! woohoo! :) Now I just have to figure what the 22 volt peaks mean in terms of how well desulfating is progressing.

I just exported my LJ to pdf using ljbook.com. It did a great job. Looks nice. Too bad I changed the location of some of my earlier pictures (I think we switched servers), so some of the older ones are not showing up.

In other news, I'm desulfating my motorbike battery right now. Started it on Thursday. Apparently it can take a week or more to rejuvenate a battery. Guess we'll find out. I originally tried desulfating some older UPS batteries, but I think those were too far gone already - they showed around 6 or 7 volts, and they are supposed to be 12 volt batteries. I might try them again while simultaneously hooking up a trickle charger.
The desulfator makes a high pitched squeal when it's working, so I can tell when it's on. Seems there might be a loose connection on the board though, as it doesn't always start right away... I'll have to check that out later.

And we're expecting a b&b visitor today who will be writing a magazine article on us - yay!
His website: http://www.thefreelancewriter.ca/

Maybe this can be my next gig ;)


(found on reblog)

I finished the timing part of my battery desulfator circuit and finally tested it today.


This is the timing part of the desulfator now permanently soldered onto a little project board that I got from The Source. That empty space will house the bigger components - 2 coils, a mosfet, a diode, and a capacitor.

( more pictures... )

Next I need to add the high amp part of the circuit and add some battery clamps, and then it should be ready to rejuvenate some old 12v lead-acid batteries!

It's been a while since I posted about my job situation at HSB Australia, and that's because nothing had really changed. But, as of last week I am finally done working for them, so now I'm officially unemployed!

( Read more... )

So Naomi and I are looking for other gigs, like website development, branding, and design for her, and maybe some website coding and general consulting for me. We do have savings, which combined with B&B and Art income will keep us happy for a while :)

Until then, I'm enjoying my time off!

Naomi needed a treasure chest for her art gallery event, so I built one for her out of wood I had lying around. The sides are from planks that I planed to make them straight. The rest is 4" t&g pine that is usually used for walls, that my neighbour gave me years ago.


( more pictures of my chest... )

The front needs some sort of latch still. I just happened to have some hinges still in the workshop, so that was cool :)

This is cool: http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/
What would the result of the US election be if the whole world could vote?

Wow, so cool! I saw at least 5 northern flickers, 2 bluejays, a robin, a hairy woodpecker, and many many little chickadees.
The flickers were all playing in the dogwood tree, eating the red fruitballs left where the flowers were (no idea what those things are called).
The rocks along the river are all wet - must have been some bird-bath splashing going on too :)

I got some video, so I hope I have some usable stuff in there :)

Did I mention I love birds?

We have the smartest deer here in Comox.
For one, I'm sure they hang out here because they know that within city limits people can't legally hunt them, plus bears and cougars are quickly deported if they ever wander this far.

They're generally pretty good about crossing the road too. Check this one out:



Yes, she actually WAITED at the crosswalk for the cars to stop, and then walked across :)

In the news today...

*It's sunny, with ominous clouds yonder. I bought my bike insurance last week and have only had one ride before the weather turned funneh again.

*My contract with the Aussies expired, but the work continues with more stuff being piled my way as usual. I'm not worried about the lack of contract in terms of continuing work and getting paid, but I had plans to negotiate different and fewer work hours for the new contract. So I'm tackling that one step at a time - I've already told them I won't be working my Sundays (their Mondays) and my Wednesday nights. Sunday mornings we often go to the Centre, and Wednesday evenings is SOM class. Both those times also coincide with the local bike club's group rides - thus the more reason to block that time off work!
I'm going with the flow as to number of hours worked. If that gets to be a pain I'll officially reduce my hours. So far, so good for this week.
This week their daylight saving time ended, which would normally see me working till 10pm (their 3pm), but I'm going to change that to stay at 9pm.

*Yesterday I replaced the burnt out brake light on the new bug. That took more skill than I thought it would!

*The hummingbirds are back. Or at least some of them. The others are huddling to keep warm in the South I bet.

*It's nasty cold out there. The forecast for Comox shows a line for our "normal" temperatures, and a jaggedy line clearly underneath it for our forecasted temperatures.

*oh, almost forgot - our B&B was inspected and approved by Tourism BC. The inspector lady did a lot of ooh-ing and aaah-ing, so I think we're doing alright. That approval also got us into the local b&b association (which was much more of a pain to get into, believe it or not!). So that adds us to a couple of significant websites that should increase traffic this way by a big chunk. As part of this process we both also passed FoodSafe, which some of you who've eaten here will be happy to know ;)

Heh, while reading about FreeDOS, I noticed there's an opensource alternative to VMWare and VirtualPC: VirtualBox

It's better than VMWare in that it is free. It's better than VirtualPC in that it will run on pretty much any OS, including Mac OS.

Maybe by the end of the year I'll be running ReactOS in a VirtualBox VM :D

The new Staples flyer shows an HP laptop with big lettering saying that it features a "FREE DOWNGRADE TO WINDOWS XP!".
Haha I guess Vista is not as popular as MS hoped it would be... I wonder where this is going...

Personally I'm hoping that Reactos gets done quickly and gets adopted by industry :)

Aagghh! that blank email problem Naomi has been having also hit me on Friday. Luckily, I only had one blank email come in on Friday. So I have no idea who that email was from. Hopefully they will email again when they realize I'm ignoring them! Could be just a work email that was sent overnight.

So I removed ShawSecure from both our computers and went back to AVG. We haven't had the issue since, so I'm pretty sure that ShawSecure (made by f-secure) was the problem - I bet it was having compatibility issues with Windows Mail in Vista. (Heh I always find a way to also blame Vista!)

'twas a dark and stormy night, and it was hard to sleep.
And then we woke up this morning and a BIG branch from our beautiful silk tree had snapped off and was just lying there on the lawn. lifeless. *sob*
What a waste! What a senseless waste!
Life, 'tis so fragile. Fragile like the branch off a silk tree. Snapped so early in it's life.
Anyway, I'm gonna try to "stekkie" a bunch of the branches. Stekkie is a Dutch term, it means to take a piece of a plant, stick it in the dirt, and grow it so it becomes a new plant. I've never actually figured out the proper English word for that, but for some reason people understand what it means, plus hey it sounds really cool hehe :)
I have a bunch of branches already just stuck in the ground, but once the guests leave I will use rooting hormone on a bunch more. So in the end I should have at least some new silk trees to carry the torch!
Plus, the branch was big enough to do some woodworking with. Naomi says I should buy a lathe and make some cool stuff that way. So I think I'll do that :) Wood will have to dry first though, so I have time to think abOOt it, eh.

So, how are you guys doing?

We went hiking at mt. Washington today, and were greeted by half a dozen cute little feathered friends (aka Whiskey Jacks)