Skin Deep

The Caribbean highlight reel continues: At the island of St. Thomas, we decided we should try a little open-water snorkeling, which is a tourist staple, of course. The idea here is that you pays your money and you get ferried a few miles out to sea where your (hopefully) expert Captain outfits you with fins, a mask, a snorkel, and a lifetime of experience before throwing you overboard to meet some fish.

As often happens in my family, there was disagreement in selecting an appropriate excursion - the majority of these involving a leisurely half-day on a catamaran with complimentary rum and sunburns. This is where my wife and daughter wanted to spend their time. My son and I felt the need for speed and were more interested in the Captain Nautica rock'n'roll powerboat snorkeling excursion.

So, we split up for the day - the ladies reclining on their catamaran while the The Boy and I signed on to Captain Nautica's crew. In the end, I think my son and I made the better decision. We started early in the morning and, since we were taking a very fast powerboat, we were able to make the 18-mile journey to Turtle Bay, Buck Island long before any other snorklers. As a result, we had some ocean and Green Sea Turtles all to ourselves.

 

 

 

Our boat disgorging snorklers (The Boy is furthest on the left).

 

Swimming over some curious turtles.

Curiouser yet.

The Boy, his turtle friend, and a bad re-enactment of 'Free Willy'.

After 45 minutes or so in the water with these creatures, we dragged ourselves back into the boat to make a second stop on the opposite side of Buck Island where there was a sheltered bay. There we attracted various smaler fish with bits of melon rind, saw a shipwreck, and even got Barry the Barracuda to pose for pictures.

The Boy summons his horde.

Gliding over a shipwreck.

Clever Barry waits under the hull of our boat.

In contrast, the ladies barely saw just one turtle and only got to snorkel in one location. That said, they got all the rum they could drink. And that ain't bad.

Sell You Pictures, I Can

You need to read the title above in your very best Yoda voice. Practice it a few times before you read any further. Be patient - this will all make sense in a moment or two.

So I've been away, chasing warmer breezes somewhere south with my family. We spent a few days at DisneyWorld and then floated towards a Caribbean New Year's Eve on the Disney Magic. In the past, I would have written a post for each day of such a journey, but not this time. I think we're going to go with a highlight reel - in no particular order - of things done and seen that might be half-ways interesting.

Let's start on the island of St. Maarten. Like pretty much every Caribbean island, St. Maarten caters to the cruise crowd's affinity for shopping. And that means a shopping district just steps away from the gangplank where vitamin-D deprived North Americans and Europeans can pick up high-end jewellery on the cheap. I don't why this is or how it started, but I'm talking about entire streets where jewellery stores stand shoulder to shoulder, selling diamonds and gold at prices that are (apparently) very reasonable.

I'm not a shopper, let alone a shopper interested in jewellery, but after we had finished our family trek down a rainforest trail that morning, my son and I dutifully followed my wife and daughter down such a shopping street. While the ladies poked around in store after store, us menfolk simply shifted our butts from one shady bench to the next, passing the time by sweating and looking for free wifi.

Positive that there was nothing on that street that spoke to our manly interests, we spied something very much out of context:

This picture is stolen from the Web. It's better than the one I took!

We found Yoda Guy. On a Caribbean island, in a shopping oasis full of diamonds and gold, we found Yoda Guy. Perplexed and slightly dizzy from the heat, we had to check out this Yoda Guy.

You can read Yoda Guy's story here, but the short version is this: Nick Maley was part of the creative crew that built the Yoda puppets for the Star Wars movies. At some point in his career as a movie artist, he, along with his wife Gloria, ended up on the island of St. Maarten. There they run Planet Paradise, selling movie memorabilia and Maley's artwork, along with running a movie museum in the same building.

My family and I had to check this out, of course. We're geeks. Walking in the front door, we found a winding staircase lined with photos and explanations of Maley's movie work - mostly Star Wars related stuff. At each step leading up to their store, we grew a little more excited at the prospect of maybe, just maybe, taking home a little piece of Star Wars and maybe, just maybe, hearing a really juicy Carrie Fisher anecdote from Yoda Guy. See what I mean:

Just inside the front door.

Further front door clarifications.

I cannot disagree with this.

Up the final flight of stairs towards the gallery.

It was at the top of the stairs that things got weird(er) and any visual evidence got lost. We first encountered a full Stormtrooper costume in a glass display case. There was a sign on the case that read something like this:

If you'd like to have your picture taken with the Stormtrooper, 
we'd be happy to open the case for $7.

Unsettling, we thought. Were they really charging a fee for a picture with this costume? And how did they arrive at $7? Why not $5. Or maybe $10?

Further down the hallway we entered the store proper. It was more or less a small art gallery with a display case in the center of the room and a sales counter in the corner. In that display case was a life-sized statue of Yoda and, again, we encountered a helpful sign:

Photography is reserved for Customers!

I put my camera away at this point. I got the fact that cameras in an art gallery might not be a good thing, but the sign added to my 'unsettled' feeling about the place. From the counter behind us there was a "Welcome" from Gloria Maley. Friendly enough, she launched into a pitch that I'm sure she has given hundreds of times. The upshot was this: there was all kinds of stuff for sale in the store and the price was not carved in stone. Since we were tourists from a cruise ship, we could get an additional discount. Now, if we spent $39 or more as a family, we could go into the museum for free. If we didn't spend $39 or more, we could still make a $15 'donation' and go through the museum anyways.

The word 'donation' seemed interesting, so I asked her about it. Their goal, said Gloria, was to raise enough money to be able to buy the building next door and turn it into a re-creation of the Mos Eisley cantina from Star Wars. It was unclear to me what they would do with a cantina, although I supposed it would involve a fee. I just chuckled and assured Gloria that theirs was a noble goal.

Free to peruse Planet Paradise, here's what I noticed:

• We were the only people in the store
• From what I could see, the memorabilia amounted to framed, photocopied pages out of a Star Wars script, autographed by Nick
• There were the odd bits of Star Wars trading cards and comic books
• There were pencil drawings of Tauntauns and the like, all done by Nick
• There were some pieces of original art done by Nick, all Caribbean themed
• Nothing had a price tag that I could see
• The museum entrance was a rather dark doorway off the side of the store, which suggested that the museum was likely quite smallish
• Pictures from inside the museum suggested it was pretty much a collection of costumes from Star Wars and a number of other movies

It wasn't too long - like 45 seconds or so - before Han Solo's words were in my head, "I've got a bad feeling about this." There seemed to be no actual memorabilia to be had - at least none that interested me. The vibe in the place felt a little bit grasping. I realize that people need to make a living, but the requests for money felt a little icky (although I'm open to better words here).

I decided that we needed to leave (nothing to see, move along...). Being the only people in the store, and under the watchful eye of Gloria, we would need to use a subtle bit of shuffling towards the door before making our break for daylight. But there was a problem. My kids were on the other side of the gallery and, as I strolled over to whisper a few words to them, Yoda Guy himself emerged from the back room.

Now, I found Nick to be a very nice chap, but his first few words after "Hello" were basically a repeat of the instructions we had just received from Gloria. When I mentioned the fund-raising plans for the next-door cantina, Nick chuckled a bit and called the whole thing 'his folly'. I searched my brain for a Star Wars question to fill the oncoming conversational void, but Nick had already wandered off to confer with Gloria. It was our opening! The four of us quickly, but coolly, made our way back down the stairs and out the door.

I admit feeling a a bit disappointed with myself afterwards, like maybe I should have bought a little something. Nick and Gloria Maley seemed like nice-enough people trying to make a living for themselves on a lovely little island. Maybe I shouldn't have been so turned-off by the fact they were so very up-front about 'money for something'. But in the end, it was all very off-putting. I wish them well and I hope they build their cantina someday (all without a visit from a LucasArts lawyer). And if "Nick's folly" ever becomes reality, I'd like to pay a visit and hear that juicy Carrie Fisher story over a cold mug of Jawa Beer.

Found Wandering

I've been elsewhere doing other things without the decency to leave a note so you wouldn't worry. I'm back - sort of. The majority of elsewhere and other things has been a long-ass vacation in warmer, Disneyfied environs. I'll share a few stories about all that real soon. Just to be a tease, those stories will include Segways, sea turtles, and tropical Yoda - all wonderous and sometimes bizarre.

The vacation is over now, but I'm still AWOL on a working trip to Canada's capital city. There are no stories to tell here beyond the despair of hotel bachelor living.

Watch this space!

Fine. You Asked.

Well, no you didn't ask, but it's about that time again - time for a GameCube Portable update. Actually, quite a bit has happened since the last installment, all to get us back to where we used to be.

When last we last looked in on our plucky GameCube modders...

All indications were that the latest problem with The Goddamn Right Trigger (TGRT) was that we had repaired it using an electronic gizmo - a potentiometer or 'pots' - from a third-party, non-Nintendo controller. With nothing to lose but a few more dollars, I started making the rounds on eBay and Kijiji looking for a genuine Nintendo GameCube controller that we could harvest (rip apart) for parts.

eBay had tons of controllers, still new in their packaging, but nothing under $50. Kijiji, however, is the flea market of the Internet and we found a few complete GameCube systems for $40 or less. It was a no-brainer when we encountered one young lady selling a GameCube with 4(!!!) controllers for $40. Just to add a bit of icing, the GameCube just happened to be the same DOL-101 engineering version that we used for our project - a handy bonus in the unlikely(?) situation where we needed a new motherboard or somesuch.

Kijiji Lady and I exchanged about a dozen emails before JediBoy and I made the trek to her place on the other side of town - our $40 in hand. When we got to her front door, she greeted us with a smile and an apology. Apparently she had sent one last email that we had not seen. It turned out that her GameCube - after sitting in a box for almost a year - would not play games.

She had tested it for us and it refused to read a game disk. She also found that one of the controllers was not functional. Although annoyed that she didn't think to test it before she placed a Kijij ad, it didn't matter that much to us. We had money and she had product. We told her everything was alright and drove off into the rainy night with our parts.

As if this story has not gone on long enough, the new part - the genuine Nintendo part - did the trick. TGRT was made functional once more as we silently prayed. I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't surprised. Logically, it was supposed to work. Emotionally, well, I'm surprised when anything works.

Gently, we re-installed the TGRT back into the case, this time using epoxy putty for a cleaner, safer job versus using hot glue or liquid epoxy. At every stage of the process we tested and tested again. The results are below:

Now we are ready (again and again) to finish the rest of the assembly. JediBoy was hoping to have it wrapped up by Boxing Day, but I'm pretty sure we're going to find some way to screw this up by then.

Lights for Baby Jesus - Part 2

The pause between Part 1 and Part 2 was solely for dramatic effect and in no way symptomatic of falling back into old too-lazy-to-post behaviours. Got that?

So! Wreath, ladder, painful injuries - that's where we left off. Before we continue our Christmas tale, here are some fun statistics:

• 35 Canadians die each year from falling off a ladder
• 1 Costa Rican dies each year from falling off a ladder
• 62 Canadians die each year from falling out of bed
• 1 Costa Rican dies each year from falling out of bed
• Canadians often decorate their homes with Christmas lights hung from their roof
• Costa Ricans often decorate their homes with flowers in pots and animal statues in the yard

Clearly, Christmas in Costa Rica is a safer, more fragrant experience. I also understand there's no snow there and the coffee grows on trees. We have a lot to learn from our friends in Central America.

I considered that a Costa Rican person would be a useful resource to help decorate my home for Christmas, given their emphasis on simplicity and safety (statistics don't lie!). But there aren't any such neighbours on our big happy cul-de-sac, and I'm pretty sure an ad on Kijiji would have taken too long to pay-off. I decided I had to tough it out myself using just my wits and my residential-grade extension ladder (aka The Widowmaker).

Unfortunately, there's not much to the story. I got my ladder out of the garage and extended it to the exact length where it will usually not flex like a bow against by body, the arrow. I was able to hang the wreath I almost made by myself. I hung a few smaller wreaths on either side of the garage door. And I finished off by replacing the outside lights with festive green bulbs (I would have used red bulbs, but I hear they attract the wrong sorts of new friends).

The only touch-and-go moments:

• My neighbour shuffled up my driveway to have a chat just as I was leaning my ladder against the house, so I was obliged to use my valuable Christmas-decorating time to shoot the breeze with him.
• Because I lost my valuable time chatting with my neighbour, it was darker and colder outside by the time my work got underway. I laugh at the Elements and I don't mind dermabrasion from cold ladder aluminum, however.
• There was a moment of uncertainty when the brick clips I was using first took the weight of the wreath I almost made by myself. Fortunately, everything held (until the first windstorm, anyways).

True grit won the day, of course, and my house is now a Wonderland. The downside of this is that I think I did too good a job. No neighbour has come by to congratulate me, so I can only assume they are over-awed and cowered behind their curtains. Looking at the picture of my handiwork below, I think you'll understand:

Lights for Baby Jesus - Part 1

I live in what passes for the suburbs in my town. Better yet, I live on a cul-de-sac in a great, big happy circle of neighbourly friendliness and holiday pride. The Christmas season here always starts in November with one of my neighbours dragging out a ladder and 5 miles of lights to hang on the house. This, and the fear of weather turning cold, has a domino effect on my other neighbours and, before you can sing the Hallelujah Chorus, our happy circle is awash in a Christmas glow that would put Las Vegas to shame.

I refuse to play nice, mostly because I'm lazy and not very creative about Christmas lighting. I eschew using the last warm days of November thinking about Christmas, telling all who'll listen that no tinsel shall set foot on my property until December 1. It also helps that, unlike many of my neighbours, I no longer have small kids in my house to cajole and whine about the lack of red-green-gaudiness in the front yard.

So December 1 has come and gone and, still, no Christmas lights illuminate my driveway. Having given up risking my health by hanging lights off the roof, I now put my lack of creativity to work on what I call 'the ground display' - various lighted and air-filled doodads that make the front yard look like a squatter's camp on the Island of Misfit Toys.

In my heart, I want to be good at this stuff. But what I would love to be able to do...

...is very much beyond what I'm capable of doing.

This year, however, I thought I'd try an upgrade.

I've always been underwhelmed by our lighted wire-frame wreath that hangs over the garage door. This year, I decided we should replace it with a very large artificial wreath. It would look good during the day and, once the Sun set, it would be lit with many white pin-lights woven into the wreath material. This was my simple dream.

It took a few days to find my wreath - a 4-footer that was the last one in the store. When I took it home I found out why it was an orphan. The wreath material had pulled away from the backing frame in spots. No problem, I could fix it with a handful of small zip-ties. But then I decided it looked pretty boring. It needed pizzazz. So I spent some time affixing plastic Christmas ornaments - a selection of gold-coloured balls - all around the wreath. After an of hour or so of effort, I was pretty impressed with myself, being all creative and stuff.

The plan was to hang my new wreath yesterday (and put out some other ground display doodads) to let my neighbours know that I'm no Scrooge. I imagined them making a point to knock on my door and complement my new wreath. I'd smile awkwardly and casually mention how I had just about made that wreath myself. And they'd be all impressed and basically consider me Christmas King of the Cul-de-sac.

Of course, it didn't work out.

True to form, my garage door broke a few evenings ago. With the door stuck in the 'closed' position, there was no way to get my ladder out to hang my wreath. Sure, I could have borrowed a ladder from a neighbour, but that would sort of jeopardize my plan to become Christmas King.

As of last night door is fixed - at least in a temporary fashion until new springs can be ordered and installed. So tonight it happens. Tonight the brand new wreath I almost made by myself will be hung over the garage door. I haven't quite worked out the details for how it will hang, but I'm pretty sure it'll get figured out. Right?

Vomit On The Finish Line

Leave to this guy to point out a sad truth:

So now you just stop? Now that you have me jonesing for a fix of daily blogging fun, you just turn off the faucet.

Harsh, dude. Harsh.

As this lone, brave Reader suggests, I fell a little short of 30 Days of Awesome. I took 'er right up to the finish line and, just 2 days away from the end-zone, I fell down on all fours and heaved up way too much Gatorade.

Seriously, could this end any other way? Constantly a few days behind in posting, I think we all knew the 30-day experiment was headed for the ditch on Day 1. It's not like the well ran (too) dry on ideas, however. I just procrastinated until there was no reasonable chance of saving face by finishing the job.

Something else will show up in this spot. That's a promise.

There have been some developments on the GameCube project. We're (surprise!) about 3 weeks away from sailing the ocean with these guys, provided we can get past some drama involving our cat. I continue to be delighted at the wide variety of ass-kickings that are mine for the asking in Skyrim. And my Christmas readiness is pretty much focused on the viability of finding and securing a very large wreath onto the front of my house - 'cause that's what the baby Jesus would expect, right?

So, yes, there's stuff to talk about here.

Nov 28 - Be Careful What You Wish For

Our local rag recently ran the following article - Go train: Are we next? You can read the it for yourself, but the upshot of the article is that residents of Kitchener-Waterloo will soon be able to use the GO Transit rail service into Toronto. The story then goes on to provide some sad analysis on what this means for London's chances of getting similar GO commuter service someday. I use the word 'sad' because it's a painful intellectual stretch to bring a local connection to this story. It's very unlikely that London will ever justify or need the slow-moving GO rail service.

The paper solicited the Usual Suspects for their opinions on the matter. The following quote from Gerry Macartney, manager of the London District Chamber of Commerce, caught my eye:

"Should we be making a pitch for it? If there is a business case for it, the answer is yes. Anything we can do to improve our economic plight, make our workforce more mobile and have more access to Toronto."

While Gerry knows a lot more about business stuff that I, it seems to me there are a couple of errors in his perspective. First off, there will never be a proper business case for Go rail service in London. The service is heavily subsidized by provincial taxpayers - aimed at providing lower-cost fares to commuters in the GTA. In financial terms, it's a money-loser that is basically a subsidy to GTA businesses who need access to workers (who live in outlying communities because economics make it necessary).

So if the balance sheet doesn't provide a business case, you need to look at the potential user-base and impacts on commuter traffic between London and the GTA. Again, the numbers are not there. There just isn't the mass of London residents who need to commute into the GTA on a regular basis. And for those London workers who do need to travel into Toronto from time to time, my guess is that a 3-hour commute (one-way) is not going to be very compelling (the Kitchener-Waterloo commute time into Toronto is estimated to be 2 hours).

My second problem with Macartney's quote is the idea that we need access to Toronto for our mobile workforce. A Toronto-centric workforce is exactly what London does not need right now (I know because I live that dream). Let's go back a decade or so when London was home to two local giants: Canada Trust and London Life. These corporations were bought out by larger giants in other places. The fact that these companies still have some corporate presence in London is due, in part, to a local, skilled workforce who could keep these operations running.

Over the years, both operations have been subsumed to some degree by their masters in other places. They do not have the local presence they once did. Their more skilled local workers are more and more forced to work part-time in other cities, providing business for Via and WestJet on a regular basis. In some cases, those local workers have simply given up and relocated closer to head office. I'm convinced, however, that easy and cheap commuter service to Toronto - be it GO Transit or the forever-mythical high-speed rail link - would all-but-eliminate the need for some companies to have a local presence. Instead, they would get access to local skilled workers without the nuisance of local bricks-and-mortar (and likely a healthy chunk of taxpayer subsidy to keep the commuter lines viable).

Maybe I'm living in the past. Maybe the days of big companies with a local presence are past us. But I think any manner of GTA-centric commuter service will only add to the hollowing-out of London, and further cement a service-based economy as the norm. We do have a skilled workforce in London. We do have the educational institutions to refresh and replenish our skilled workforce. In my mind, it's a far better business case to make the jobs come to Us, rather than sending Us to the jobs.

Nov 27 - Enough Already

Today I tackled the GameCube Portable problems once more. While JediBoy was off doing other things, I spent a few quality hours with a soldering iron trying to sort out the mess that we call The Goddamn Right Trigger (TGRT).

In the last episode, we suspected the problem with TGRT was either the controller board or the potentiometer ('pots' for short). So, I spent some time de-soldering the old controller board and installing our spare in its place. The problem with this approach, of course, is that it can cause more problems than it solves.

I got to the point where the spare board was in place and the Left Trigger was attached. It all worked, so I was at least back to where we were 90 minutes before. I then wired up TGRT and.... failure - as in: no change from before.

This points to a pots problem since it's unlikely that 2 controller boards would have the same issue with Right Trigger support. This also confirmed something I thought I saw a few days before. Just for fun, I attached a multimeter to the Left Trigger pots and tried to measure the range of resistance. I then did the same with TGRT pots. I didn't really know what I was doing, of course, but the ranges I saw were quite different between the 2 triggers.

This difference could be explained by the fact that the Left Trigger pots came from a Nintendo controller while TGRT pots came from an OEM controller. Same style of pots components, different resistance ranges, different controller boards.

As the dust settles around me and that vein in my forehead throbs, it seems like the best course of action is to get another Nintendo controller and rebuild TGRT using genuine Nintendo parts. In hindsight, this all seems commonsense, even if we took a few weeks' detour to get here. So, to Kijiji and eBay we go!

Nov 26 - A Fish, A Barrel, A Smoking Gun

I did 2 bad things recently, but Saturday morning wiped the slate clean. That means I win.

Bad Thing #1 - Our subscription to the London Free Press lapsed and I did nothing to stop it. My wife and I have debated this for years. I always opt to keep paying for the Freeps so that I have some amount of local news to read every morning. My wife has wanted to kill it because it's generally a pretty crappy paper anymore. She's right, of course, so I just never bothered to pay the bill. Sure enough, we got a final warning and then one day there was no morning paper.

Bad Thing #2 - After missing just one day of Freeps delivery, I called their offices and re-activated my account. The Globe and Mail was the first choice, but I'm too cheap to pay their subscription rates and I still wanted some amount of crappy local news. I felt dirty, but there you go.

Now for wiping the slate clean: Today's edition of the Freeps brought glorious opportunities for mockery, which means I can fill up some space here without too much effort. Observe the following letter to the editor:

Don't use taxes for porn

Regarding the article Porn filters up for review (Nov. 24).

What is the London Public Library board’s problem?

What makes them think it’s OK for taxpayer money to be wasted on public access to pornography? Am I wrong in thinking libraries were born of the need for an inexpensive access to books, so children and adults could be exposed to literature (not porn) they otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to have?

As a taxpayer, I am appalled a portion of my money is being used for free access to porn. I do not want my money being spent on access to porn for anyone. Period. No freedom of this or that. If a person has the desire to access porn, then let it be on their own dime in the privacy of their own home — not in a publicy funded public space.
What if the libraries were told all public money would be withheld until the free access to porn is halted? Would that make them sit up and take notice? And who exactly on the library board is supporting this? They must be out of touch with the average family.

Carol Vincent 

Carol really makes me wish there was someone down at the Freeps newsroom who could answer these letters in print. I'd even volunteer to do it. It would be fun to point out to Carol that, in fact, the library is not providing free access to porn. They're simply saying that information should be freely available. That's kind of an ethical foundation for a good library.

I'd also point out that one simply cannot withhold dollars from the library system until they cry 'Uncle'. At the very least, it's bad governance - and one reason why the library board is arms-length from City Hall.

I think I'd also want to ask Carol if she'd like to apply her finely-tuned sense of propriety to, perhaps, the books in the library's collection. I'll bet Carol could free up tons of space on the shelves for the Carol-approved literature that an average family so desperately craves to fight the good fight against all this taxpayer porn.

But my favourite Carol Quote^TM is "No freedom of this or that". That's gold, man. Pure gold. No freedom for anyone, except for half-wits like Carol who would decide on which freedoms are okay. She must be fun to hang around with. 

So, indeed, my two wrongs turned out alright (at least for today).

Nov 25 - Rinse, Repeat

Okay, let's go back to the GameCube Portable. I know you're tired of this, but it'll just take a sec, okay? Picking up from a few days ago, JediBoy rebuilt the trigger today. We tested as best as we could using a multimeter, and the everything looked good. The next step was to test the trigger with an actual game (Link, come on down!) and see if the repairs fixed the problem.

I actually wasn't very hopeful it would work. When everything went wrong (again), it seemed to me that there were multiple problems. The trigger mechanism, itself, was definitely a bit buggered. But I strongly suspected the controller daughterboard was screwed up somehow.

Today's test confirmed my fears, I think. The repaired trigger should have worked, but failed to make Link smash things with his shield. There's a slight possibility that the trigger's potentiometer is malfunctioning - and we'll check that out first - but my suspicion is that the controller daugghtboard is no longer processing any input from the right trigger.

We have the necessary spare parts for either problem. I'm hoping that we find the potiometer at fault since it's the easiest fix. But we'll leave it alone for now and, instead, go out for dinner and think of something else. I'm lying, of course. We will dwell on these problems until we fix them.

Nov 24 - Thursday Needs a Song, Too

 I don't know why it is, but Thursday has become my new Friday. There is a certain ebb-and-flo, a certain zeitgeist, to the daily pace where I work. From Monday to Thursday, things feel unrelenting, unstoppable. When you think you've found some equilibrium between what's urgent and what's not, you can be sure that something new will emerge from the ether, demanding that you pay attention.

And then Friday rolls in, wearing faded jeans and having no particular plan for the day, and you can feel a palpable 'sigh' whispering down hallways, floating the week's worries from your shoulders. Friday frowns on working lunches. Friday insists on actual coffee breaks.

So while the calendar said Thursday today, my inner-compass said otherwise. I just needed to get to the end of the day in one piece and I knew the Sun would be shining on the other side. Now we just need to do something about that crabby bastard Wednesday.

Nov 23 - What Would Oscar Wilde Say?

The 'cultures' found in the Facebook and Twitter communities fascinate me, but I don't feel like I fit in very well in either place. Wittier humans that I have tread this ground, of course, and the differences between these communities have, themselves, become their own memes. It seems to break down like this:

Your Mom uses Facebook. Your Friends use Twitter.

That's not true, of course. But it's the rule-of-thumb I keep in mind when I pass through those places - and I suspect I'm not alone here. To consider the evidence, I made a graph:

Science and Math prove that my main purposes for these popular social media tools are to share pictures of my cat and lure people to this very site (under the pretense of entertainment). So let's just wrap this up by giving people what they want:

Nov 22 - Crash Course

Let's switch things up today and not talk about the GameCube Portable project. We can do that because we didn't work on it today. Well, maybe it got worked on a bit - mostly JediBoy staring at the disassembled trigger, heaving heavy sighs.

The highlight of the day, I suppose, was JediBoy's commitment to take his written driver's test on December 16 - a completely arbitrary date, by the way. He turned 16 back in October and, really, we expected him to be all over the driver's license thing. This is the kid who broke down in tears at the age of 6 because he had to wait 10 more YEARS before he could drive. This is the kid who, for most of his childhood, has looked forward to driving something, anything.

By the time he turned 16, the itch seemed to have healed. Getting his license became one of those things that would happen 'someday' (in the same list as 'comfortable retirement' and 'climbing Machu Pichu'). So we had a talk this evening and agreed he should at least take the written test and get his G1 class - which is basically a license to learn to drive. Come Springtime, he could take some driver training, get his G2 class license, and get some independence *cough*drive-to-a-part-time-job*cough*

In related news, my Insurance Agent was reportedly seen chuckling and rubbing his hands together.

Nov 21 - Sometimes We Feel Like This

My lord but we're all sick and tired of hearing about the GameCube Portable project! It's become a sort of Foreign Legion Deathmarch with a climb up Mt. Everest as a cool-down. It is taking forever to make progress, and it doesn't help that we keeping taking 9 steps back every time we take 1 step forward.

But we are in too deep to stop. We've stopped counting the money we've spent on parts and supplies. We've never counted the hours we've spent on false starts and mistakes. Quite simply, we've come too far to quit.

After refreshing my memory about how to calculate resistance on a circuit, I tried wiring up a new LED and the required resistors (I never did visit the store for new supplies, but just used stuff we had lying around the workshop). Obviously I was screwing things up because I couldn't seem to make it work. Either an LED would blow out from too much voltage or it would not glow at all because there was too much resistance. I quickly came to realize I was getting too confused to make this work.

Luck came calling (likely She was on her somewhere else and took a shortcut through our workshop) when I magically found the original (broken) LED and resistor sitting on the workbench - in exactly the placed we looked yesterday. While the LED was still viable, I had no idea if the resistor would work. It was a tad scorched and the lead wire on one end had broken off.

With a strong magnifying glass and a shaky right hand, I soldered a new wire onto the end of the resistor. I expected nothing and had nothing to lose, but the multimeter show that (1) the part still worked and (2) my calculations for a replacement resistor were way off! Afterwards I was able to solder in the LED and add the whole mess back into the motherboard. As expected, everything was back to normal and we had solve one problem!

It was good progress and I was happy to call JediBoy to come have a look. Flushed with success, we decided to have a look-see at the broken trigger. Step 1 would be to somehow remove the mechanism from its epoxy tomb inside the case. This proved easier than we thought. Using a Dremel and some dental picks, we removed enough epoxy to gingerly pull the trigger free and open its mechanism.

We decided that was enough progress for one evening. There would be plenty of time in the coming days to screw things up again. For now, we would feel good about the project.

Nov 20 - Death Spirals

Sunday was all about ends and beginnings, I guess. Our game of brinksmanship with November came to a head as we resigned ourselves that cold wind and snow will come sooner rather than later. With a familiar sadness, we closed down the pond for the season, silencing the waterfall until Spring. The deck and patio furniture was stored Teris-like in the shed and the last bits of garden pruning were brought to the curb. Like the man said, Winter is coming.

JediBoy and I dragged ourselves into the workshop to assess the GameCube Portable's state of affairs. We highlighted 3 areas that needed focus:

1. An LED and accompanying resistor needed to be repaired or replaced. This was not a major functional problem (we assumed) - more of a cosmetic issue in that the LED only serves as a 'power on' indicator. Since the case already had a hole drilled out for an LED, so we wanted to make this work again.
2. The right-hand trigger mechanism (already epoxied into the case) needed repairs. At first blush, the 'tact' switch seemed to have slipped out of place, so that would need to be corrected. There might also be an issue with the potentiometer, but further testing would be needed.
3. The board containing the battery recharge circuitry might not be working properly based on a potential short-circuit. We'd either need to install a spare (not sure if the spare works) or source a replacement.

We decided to tackle the LED problem first since it was the simplest. Avoiding the gory details, we somehow misplaced the broken parts and we found we were lacking the necessary replacement parts. After a few hours of looking at all this carnage, we put off any action until I could visit The Source for some new resistors and LEDs.

Somewhere, the dragons of Skyrim were calling, but I could not answer. Not today.

Nov 19 - A Rebuttal

In his comments on a recent post, friend of Cruelty and all-round Red Lantern, Jim Dandy, lobbed the following incendiary over the wall:

I assume you posted this bit of "feel goodishness" to distract us from the unveiling of the Gamecube Portable, which was, I assume, supposed to be unveiled in celebration of the 10th birthday of the Gamecube.

Mr. Dandy trucks in language, so it's hard to tell whether he's anxious to see the unveiling of the GameCube Portable or if he's skeptical that it will amount to anything more than a series of skillful Photoshopped forgeries. To his credit, Jim Dandy pulls back on the joystick with some further commentary:

I sarcastically offer the European launch date (May 3) as your next target as I couldn't meet any date for a project of this kind no matter how far in advance.

So now I think he's actually suggesting that the GameCube portable is entirely feasible, but it's going to take many more months of effort before he can hold it in his hands. In this, as in all things that matter, Mr. Dandy is right on the money.

In hindsight, I have no clear picture in my head of what happened. At Noon today, all signs pointed to making some major progress in getting the GameCube Portable assembled. We dry-fitted the motherboard, batteries, and fan, all to get a sense of where things needed to be. Out of that exercise, we decided that a number of wires could be made much shorter, just to keep the guts of the device as clean as possible.

It should have been simple. Simply clip a middle section out of some wires, twist the ends together, and finish off with a little solder and protective tubing. But everything went to Hell, somehow. A resistor and LED broke away from too much handing. A trigger (yea, that trigger) suddenly stopped working. While triaging those problems, some wires came into contact in a bad way and we may (or may not) have fried the power-recharging circuit-board.

By dinner-time, the project was in dire straits despite my best efforts at cursing it into obedience. JediBoy kept a cool head, of course, and talked me down off the ledge.

"Leave it alone, Dad", he said. "Let's sleep on this and see how it looks in the morning.".

Damn his voice of reason! But he's right. It's time to step away for a few hours.

Nov 18 - Perseverance

For all the moaning and moping I do on this blog, I'm a pretty lucky guy in the grand scheme of things. I'm reasonably healthy, as are my wife and kids. I don't worry too much about the basics - a roof over my head and food on my table. I get to take vacations to nice places. No two ways about it - I'm a lucky guy.

Others are not as lucky as me. They have to work harder for less. They don't get to take things for granted the way I do. This was driven home tonight (in spades) in an unlikely place - my local gym.

I go to the gym about 3 times a week. I may not look it, but that's the honest truth. It's hard and it hurts and I sweat a lot. I'm not even sure I could keep it up if not for the gentle prodding from my family and the long list of podcasts that keep me distracted while I lift, squat, and lunge. I don't always like going to the gym, but I like what it does for my health.

There's another fellow I see at the gym from time to time. I don't know his name or anything much about him. All I can tell you is that he's younger than me, and he lives his life in a wheelchair. And if that weren't enough, he has some manner of motor impairment - a severe palsy shake that reminds me of an serious stage of Parkinson's or the like.

Whenever I see him there, he's hoisted himself from his chair onto a treadmill, where he wills his legs to walk in their herky-jerky fashion while the rest of his shuddering body wants to do otherwise. His face is always the first thing I notice - lips pulled back over gritted teeth, eyes just fixed on something I can't see. He is pure effort and concentration, all to keep his muscles from the atrophy that his condition seems to prefer.

Back to last night. I was mid-way through my workout when I noticed him on his treadmill. As usual, his presence was a gentle nudge to my conscience that I could, indeed, finish my weight routine even if I was tired and sore. As is my habit after finishing my circuit, I went to the reclining bikes to do 10 or 15 minutes of cool-down pedalling before hitting the showers.

Immersed in in my podcast, I paid little attention at first to the movement beside me. Then I noticed it was That Guy, still sweating from the treadmill and now trying to pull himself from wheelchair to bike. I tried not to notice him and yet I was fascinated by his efforts. Blind willpower seemed to be the only thing propelling him onto the bike seat. All the while, every part of his body, every limb, trying like hell to launch into random orbits around him.

Somehow he made it onto the seat, with his next goal to aim his toes under the straps on the bike pedals. Again, severe palsied shudders tried to make the task impossible and, again, somehow he did it with almost infinite patience. I remember thinking that he must perceive time differenly than me, just because every movement was such a deliberate, lengthy negotiation with his muscles.

His right foot in place, his left foot defied the straps at first, but after a few tries he seemed to have it. And then the left strap gave way. The fellow lost concentration as his left leg shot forward, then backward, again and again. He uttered a cry of frustration that I could hear even through the drone of my iPod.

I noticed the problem and paused a second as I wondered if I should help, or maybe that would be taken as a patronizing gesture. The split-second argument in my brain ended the moment I realized I wouldn't think twice about helping someone without a disability. To keep the idiocy momentum in my brain, I quickly pulled out my earbuds and started gesturing to the fellow that I could help - like somehow he was foreign and wouldn't understand me speaking English.

He knew exactly what I was asking him. Even though he had trouble speaking himself, of course he could understand me. So I asked him again, one guy to another, if he wanted me to help. He nodded wildly and gestured towards his left leg. So I knelt and helped him put his foot on the pedal as I snapped the strap back into place. Once he let me know that it was tightened enough, I got back on my bike and finished my ride.

I watched him some more while the remaining minutes of my routine ticked towards zero. He willed his legs to pedal while his hands, fingers tense and twisted, pawed at the controls so that he could set the time and speed of his ride. He talked some more as he tried to hit the correct series of buttons. Truth be told, I couldn't understand his words, but I imagined he was just barking orders at his unruly hands as they negotiated the control panel before him.

A few minutes later I was done and getting off my bike. I silently cursed myself for not introducing myself, getting his name. Would I have done any differently for someone else? (Probably not). I thought about him for the rest of the evening. I imaginied every small task requring Herculean effort. I imagined the grim reality of knowing that, for all the hours spent sweating on a treadmill, it might never make a difference.

I will wave at him next time I see him. Or maybe just nod my head the way guys do. But he'll probably never know that he inspires me a little bit every time I walk into the gym. And that's kind of a shame.

Nov 17 - Windmill Tilting

Nothing happened today. I went to work, closed the door, got stuff done with the requisite levels of stress and anger, and then emerged for the mad dash home. It's more and more like that everyday - just a brain in a bottle.

But already I've lied. Something almost happened today. Our local chapter of the Occupy movement had planned a protest march for this afternoon, and the building in which I which I toil for money was going to be one of their targets. Rather than face their wrath, I left the office early and finished my work at home.

I wasn't really nervous about some kind of face-off. It was just a good excuse to work from home, where the coffee is free and the clothing is optional. But I was pretty curious about the outcome of thw Occupy march. I won't opine too much about the movement, but our local version is rather small and the inevitable splintering into factions has already begun. It was a good bet that the march would only involve a couple of dozen disenfranchised souls. Then again, maybe they could muster a couple of hundred people to brave the cold wind blowing the first snowflurries of Winter down the main drag.

The evening news confirmed the probable. The protest started much later than planned and only managed to draw 30 or so die-hard Occupiers. By the time they made their way to my office building, darkness had fallen and most workers had gone home for the day. It was a sad picture in my mind - poor, sad souls chanting their anger at nothing and everything, and no one around to see their desperate faces in the half-light.

Like I say, something almost happened today.

Nov 16 - Getting Sticky

Wednesday should have involved going to the gym, but my ass was lazy and I had promised JediBoy that we'd work on the dreaded GameCube Portable. With the triggers rebuilt and seemingly functional, the next step was to finally glue them into place within the case. And when I say 'glue them into place' you know I really mean 'glue them into place only to find a problem afterwards'.

It was fussy work. Being commitment-phobic men, we seemed to spend forever finding the exact spot to place the trigger mechanism. The triggers, themselves, needed to poke out the appropriate openings in the case to be reachable by vidya-gaming geek fingers. They also needed enough travel space to be fully depressed.

On the inside of the case, the underlying trigger mechanisms needed to lay as flat and as low in the case as possible. This to keep them out of the way of other components and give us lots of surface area for the epoxy that would fix the triggers to their sticking places.

With a wee bit of trimming here and there, we found our spots. First came a few dabs of hot glue, just to hold the mechanisms in their places. Next, we hooked up some wires and gingerly tested the triggers (Link's shield did all the proper trigger tricks). The final step was to slather on the epoxy to ensure the triggers stayed put.

With all the stress and screwing around, getting the triggers installed was major step forward in getting to 'Done' on the project. It was also a major relief to JediBoy and I - a bit of a mental respite until the next hangnail is discovered.