Derby Doughnuts

My kids were playing with their toy cars this morning, so I got mine out too. My derby car has always been good at left turns but when one of the propellers flew off, it became downright gifted at them.

Get Yer Derby On!

My Elders Quorum had a pinewood derby race Friday night - modified class only. About half of the men are engineers, so there was a little excitement about what might be produced - sadly, no rail-guns. The "no fire" rule kind-of killed the rocket motor crowd, but there were still plenty of clever designs. I went with a propeller (two other guys did too). There were a couple CO2 cars, but they kept having problems setting off the cartridges - one wasn't centered and went spinning off the track the amusement of all. There was a rubber band propelled car, a few that were just much heavier than standard rules allow (one was cast out of metal), and one that had the works of a pull-back car attached to the back wheel.

I was a little proud of my car, 'Driving Miss Daisy,' mainly because I made my own propeller out of a plastic water bottle and a paper clip.

Here is my first test vehicle once I got the propeller mounted.

The three propeller cars made it to the top of the standings. My semi-final race was against a car called "Vote 'Yes' for Proposition 102," (pictured below) named for the Arizona 'One Man, One Woman' marriage ammendment on the November ballot. I felt a little bad when I beat it.

The championship race pitted me against a car made using an RC airplane motor and propeller. When the gate came down, my opponent hit the throttle on his remote control and smoked me. Ah well. It was a good run. My only regret is that I forgot to try to race somebody back up the track.

You got extra points if your car was really good at making left turns - mine was.

Hmm, what else you got under the dirt?

Yesterday, we went to the Titan Missle Museum. There used to be 54 Titan II missile installations clustered in 3 locations in the South of the US. 18 of them were centered around Tucson, AZ. At the end of their operational life, 53 of the silos had their blast doors blown open, their missiles removed and de-activated, and were backfilled with tons and tons of dirt to make them completely un-usable. One was converted into a museum. Its top blast door was locked in the half open position (the missile can only fire if the door is completely open) the nuclear tipped Titan II missile was removed and a disabled training missile was laid on its side next to the silo. This was to give the Soviet satellites clear evidence that the installation was inoperable. Then the missile was placed in the seven story launch tube and tours began.

It's hard to get a good picture to demonstrate the size of these beasts (they are in an underground silo, by the way) so we'll let this amazed face convey the awe you should be feeling. In case you were wondering, the missile is 102 ft tall and 10 ft in diameter. That warhead on the top (not a real one, of course)? 9 megatons. Yup, that's the equivalent of 9 million tons of TNT. Thats almost 500 times more powerful than the bombs used to end WWII.

This face is a bit more of what I was feeling looking around this place. Awesome!

By the way. If you wanted to buy your own Titan I missile complex (much larger than the Titan II) there is one available.

Lightning is AWESOME!

This is the coolest lightning video I've ever seen. I could watch the first 5 seconds over and over and over and over and over... and over again.



You get extra points if you know why the main bolt strikes from the ground up.

Revenge of the Car!

I'm sure Ryan was biting his nails for our entire trip to Indiana with the check engine light on (see previous post and comment). Not to worry, we made it just fine. I even forgot to bring our spare jug of oil, so the engine was making some great rattling noises for the last state or two. But, because my car loves me (I get along great with inanimate objects - like cars, calculators, and Rubik's cubes) it toughed it out and took us to my in-laws.

Once there, it finally got some tender loving care. My brother in law popped the hood and showed me some things - like what a valve cover is and where my fuses are. We decided to change the valve cover gasket in case that's where the oil leak was coming from. We looked at the muffler bracket and sure enough, it was broken off with no good way of fixing it without a welder. We also checked my brakes - which some guy told me a year ago had only a month left in them - and decided that we might as well replace those too. A trip to Autozone got my check engine light read. Apparently, my engine was occasionally misfiring, so we decided to change the spark plugs too.

We headed on down to NAPA and used my father-in-law's fireman discount to get crazy discounts on all my stuff. Then we put the car back together. The new muffler bracket didn't fit, so we jimmy-rigged a wire sling to hold it up, but all the rest went together like a champ. Tada! my car's all fixed! The gas mileage is slightly improved, probably because the engine is no longer misfiring, and I don't have that annoying check engine light on any more.

So why did I name this post "Revenge of the Car?" Because I wanted to give Ryan some sense of satisfaction that my inattention to my car's needs led my downfall - before I dash all his hopes in the justice of the world and tell him that everything turned out alright due to sheer luck. OK, I guess the car still leaks oil - happy, Ryan?

It is a bit embarrassing for an electrical engineer to admit, but until recently, I didn't know how to jump start a car. Maybe I should correct that, I wasn't entirely sure how to jump start a car. I understand the basic theory, of course, but I didn't have nearly enough practice to make me comfortable, and this commercial scared me:



Anyway, a friend asked me to give him a jump a month or so ago, and I realized that the way I would have done it was completely right. Furthermore, my little Saturn didn't have enough power to blow up his minivan, so I felt much better about the whole thing.

On my way home from that same trip, I noticed that something about my exhaust system didn't sound quite right. Driving over 20 miles of dirt roads had apparently broken the hanger on my muffler, so it makes a throatier growl than previously.

My car has long had a slow oil leak. I'd noticed for a while that my car made a rattling sound to let me know when the oil needed to be changed. I'd never thought too much about why that was until I went to a new garage to have my oil changed. The mechanic told me that I should have my gaskets and seals replaced because he'd only drained half a quart of oil from my car. Half a quart!? Isn't that kind of a big deal? Doesn't my car need 5 quarts? Of course, being a cheapskate, instead of getting my gaskets and seals replaced I just add oil to my engine occasionally. This has the added benefit of keeping my oil fairly clean and increasing the time between oil changes - or so I tell myself.

We recently drove to St. Louis and back for my sister's wedding. About an hour from home on our way back, the check engine light came on. A few miles after that, the check oil light came on. Since the car was rattling, the second occurrence didn't surprise me, but I was still happy when we got all the way home without smoke pouring out of the engine.

I'm afraid I just don't understand cars very much, so I don't know what they need apart from gas and oil. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, which is why car mechanics feel so comfortable recommending everything under the sun to fix my car. (In four successive oil change visits I have had four different critical services recommended to me - I declined them all) I don't doubt that my car does have needs, but since I don't trust the guy who's trying to drum up more business than the oil change, I just wait for my car to tell me. So far it's been pretty uncommunicative aside for the cryptic "check engine" light. (I've checked the engine; it's still there. What's the problem?)

We are driving to Indiana next week and my brother in law, who is a self proclaimed genius when it comes to cars, is going to go over it with me and hopefully teach me a thing or two because I refuse to be afraid of my car anymore. Cars are mostly electronic these days anyway, right? That should be right up my alley. As long as my car doesn't die along the way, we should be in good shape...

Bling Out the Play Set

What does a nerd do when he's not writing a blog? I'll tell you what. Drumroll please...


Tada! I made it! All by myself!

Ok, my friend Phil helped too, and my daughter lent a hand every now and again (though, I don't know if I'd call that helping). And, if you want to get technical, all the wood was pre-cut and drilled and delivered to my house... but it was still a LOT of work. In total it took 3 Saturdays, 3 weeknights, and I got 3 sunburns - you'd think I would have learned after the first one - but now I have a fabulous play set, cheap babysitting, and a super sexy farmer tan, yeehaw!

I was talking on the phone to my mom last week and I told her that I was going to put string and cans up between the play set and the house so that we could tell the kids to come in for dinner and things (because yelling out the back door is way too hard). She told me that string phones don't actually work. For her and all the other doubters out there, check this out. HowStuffWorks.com never lies!

This did get me thinking, though. Maybe I do need to be a little more high tech - this is the 21st century after all. I could easily put a microphone and speaker out in the tower and run wires back to the house. Even cooler, I could do it wirelessly. While I'm at it, why don't I set up the play set as a node in my home wireless network. Along with the IP intercom, I could put a temperature monitor on the slide (yes, it does get hot enough to burn little bums), strain guages on the support beams, and a swing speed monitor to slow down enthusiastic swingers.

Hmm, maybe that's too high tech. Perhaps I should just start with a flagpole and a jolly roger and work from there. After all, my kids can't seem to figure out how to work the accesories they already have.

PS

Check out these other super cool play sets and tell me what you think I should do to bling out mine - yes, I have considered a paintball turret.

http://www.cedarworks.com/refer.php?src=GL&qw=playsets&gclid=CK7W28-WmpICFRTNiQodIDKppQ

http://www.danielswoodland.com/

http://www.rainbowplay.com/index.php/swing-sets/package/metropolis/