Author: Peter Jones

Managed to do an intercept and recovery in Kerbin. That was way more difficult than it had to be, because me. I think what I kept doing was using both S to go forward and Shift to accelerate. The problem is that when your using RCS (canned air), Shift is up instead. Oops.
So the mill I was thinking about. I’m not a fan of chemicals, mainly, I’m terrible at storage, handling and disposal. With that being said, I’ve been looking at how to fabricate PCB’s at home, and etchant is totes a chemical, no matter what form it takes. But in researching different ways to fabricate PCB’s, I saw that you can also mill them. I have a rotary tool…

PCB CNC mill. I’ll have this idea popping through my head today.

Gah… trying to nail that’s killing me. I think until I’m all pro at it, I’ll need to start saving one I get into orbit do at least I won’t have to start from scratch next time.
Tonight the Wif is at clinical so when I get home it’ll be time to do chores. I can’t rightly make pint glasses when the sink is full of dishes. But Thursday and on? Time to start building my phone’s interface. I’m thinking permanent keyboard across the bottom of the screen in portrait orientation. I might add a rotate button, I might not.add space at the bottom for battery, signal, and notifications as well. That’ll be a start.

I’ve been doing a lot of VBA because Excel, and that definitely didn’t make me happy, but whatever. My code is actually looking decent enough legibility wise, but at the cost of speed because I rock a lot of selects and activates.
Last night though, I had to use JavaScript to mess with some PDFs (thanks for the recommendation Wes), and our just writing work. Finally figured out what the problem was.
VBA starts with one.
JavaScript starts with zero, even when we’re talking document page numbers.
And this has been another adventure of coding with what I have.

As a plus note, I went full NASA in Kerbin on Sunday. I had a satellite orbiting the Mun with a bit of fuel left. I didn’t need the satellite, and I had some fuel, so why not. I put it at a really low and slow descent, keeping at least half of the instrumentation on top and plowed that sucker in.
Temperature readings from the Mun? For free? Check.

So this is a boy of a rant.
Our corporate computer overlords are really studying to make me unhappy. A couple years ago the Wif, who had a five year old to shelf Apple desktop, had it start giving us problems. First, the video card took a dive because she was playing a seven year old game. Then we find out that updates are done. Then the drive fails, and here we are with a desktop that has proprietary hardware (I’m looking at you $200 video card for something that I can buy for $35), no more updates, no more over priced Genius Bar.
So next we get her a laptop, so she can study on the go, with Windows 8, which we disliked but it worked, and that was fine. Sure, Lenovo pre-installed with more bloat and spyware then a follower of Nurgle, but whatever. Microsoft decides that everyone is upgrading to Windows 10. Whatever. After they pushed me a step to far, no more Windows for me, I went back to Linux, knowing full well that there ate fewer development tools, fewer games and fewer drivers. But, I wasn’t being pushed into am upgrade I didn’t want. Windows 7 is still the best Windows I’ve over used.
But this is about the Wif’s Windows 8 laptop. So we do the upgrade to 10, because anything is better than 8 amiright? Hell, Windows ME want even that bad. This was a good move. We had a start menu, we had things that worked, shit like that.
That was right until the last update. Her computer took a dive, nothing. I need to make a recover disk. Microsoft can’t fit a Twitter disk in less than 4.4GB. I need to make it bootable the way that secure boot wants. I can’t even enter safe mode without power cycling until it gets the idea. Once I get a USB disk booting under secure boot, every time I tried to repair the installation, it would reboot, switch the USB to no longer be the primary boot media. Finally I find the right combination. I have a fresh Windows 10 install, I find the right menu options to do a fresh install. I move her old files to the new locations. I install the dictate she needs and we’re go.
But why did I have to all this.
So now, once we no longer having to deal with the day to day paperwork of whatever teacher or clinical site, the Wif is starting to think, why not Open Source.
It’s shower and a beer time for me.

It strikes again. The Wif’s computer isn’t booting. I think it might be a jacked update, bit I’m not sure.
So.
Can’t find rescue USB.
The external DVD drive she has uses a jacked plug (it’s two USB plugs to get up to the 1 amp it wants I’m presuming).
Microsoft said, wow, safe mode is way too standardized. I know we’ll kill F8, and you can power cycle until we say so.
Finally get to the rescue tools, is not helping.
All of the disk come back fine.
And Microsoft said wow! 3.9gb is way too little, let’s make the rescue iso 4.4gb, so now I need to go find another USB drive, and hope that doing a reinstall over the top a) brings everything back b) leaves the data there.

I guess I should get better about managing her system, but really Microsoft.

Well that was… disappointing. Enough about real life, let’s get Shan to copper standoffs.
I got my last shipment from Arrow, a stack of smd 555s and red LEDs. The 555s came in a tube, so that surprised me. I also got my free Pi 3 sho that was a happy little bind as well. Fun bit, this box was skipped to my Receiving Department! Totes wanted to grab one of the cats and take a picture showing the label, maybe I still should. Might be a hella cute picture. Next, I need to get done copper and get circuit making for my new components.
As an aside, I meant to post this idea earlier, but do a embroidery project thing, Martian surface, Martian night sky with twinklies, and the caption of the science quote from the Martian.
Also, my Excel Fu was studying yesterday. I figured out how to get 99% of what I needed done without having to use any cheap hacks. I even was able to get rid of the cheap hacks I did use. Who knew, there is a difference between joining things with a + versus a &? It was fairly redeeming when I was poking at stackoverflow for why something want working the way I expected, that people that were answering these questions were also complaining about the jacked way Excel works.

Thinking about my day, thinking about how I suck at Kerball. Thinking about…oh hello there. That’s how I can do my logging in Excel. Originally I was thinking of a row per file, when I should have a row per order, a number of pieces in the order, two columns per file, a status, and a filename…mane it three, I should have a quantity.
Earlier today I got talking about whatever stupid idea I had, my coworkers ribbed me about “do I write then down”. As you, my gentle reader knows, yes I do.
But yeah. I have a hate for Excel, not because it’s a bad program, but because it’s used badly. By me.
Update: replace status with timestamp, and add a field or two for operator.
Of course, I’m sure that this is all an exercise in futility. (By futility, I mean the enthalpy of bureaucracy)

Is Excel Macro induced carpal tunnel of my spine a thing? It’d be nice if someday I did legit stuff at work where I didn’t have to live with what I’ve got, and instead got to use what I should use. Pro-hint, Excel shouldn’t be used these ways I keep on pushing it.

Got Raspbian instances on an SD card. Starred up the Pi, doing good. Installed the first virtual keyboard I found. I had no dice, so I stopped that and tried xvkbd instead. That worked. Next I started on getting the TFT working. Well that was a bust. Following the detailed instructions (which I think we’re not do detailed) it only came up with a solid white screen. I filled the next step and I manned to break my console as well. Asher that I tried doing a fresh image straight out of Adafruit and that’s where things went way worse.
So I’ve now reformatted the SD card. Threw NOOBS on there,  and am installing Raspbian that way. Next, I’ll try running the easy install script from Adafruit, and see what that gives me.