Fun at Work

When presented with a less than serious question, respond in kind…

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Vehicle Problem Report VIN: JTEGF21A130074429

Make: Toyota

Model: Highlander/Limited - 3.0L V6

Year: 2003

VIN: JTEGF21A130074429

Color: Silver

Dealer: Leith Toyota

Dealer Stock Number: 074429Z

Dealer Other: Offered as “Certified”

Odometer: 41402

Warning: At 41402 miles i had this vehicle inspected by a local ASE Certified Mechanic who found the engine sludged.

It looked nasty in there. Additionally, the transmission fluid was pretty nasty for only 40k miles.

Besides a sludged engine and burnt transmission, the vehicle was in great condition otherwise. :-/

This has been a public service announcement. Thank you.

Culture of IBS and Yogurt

This may fall into the category as TMI for some folks, if so, move along and have a great day. :-)

Irritable Bowel Syndrome — IBS as folks like to call it so as to not use the word ‘bowel’ — is exactly that, a syndrome.

The term syndrome is most often used when the reason that the features occur together has not yet been discovered. — Wikipedia

In other words, physicians ain’t got no clue yet. This provides ample opportunity for folks to publish information, personal observations, etc. and present them as factual. But they aren’t. My first google experience with ‘IBS’ was about what i expected; lots of pages with conflicting information.

This is my observation.

Yogurt cured my IBS symptoms.

Rewind a bit. I’ve dealt with IBS symptoms for some 10 years or so. I’ve also dealt with my loving bride telling me to go to the doctor for years. I finally stopped ignoring her and made an appointment. She said “they do have medications you know.” Okie doke.

The doc and i chatted, he listened and palpated, and after a few minutes he says its probably IBS. I’m thinking to myself, “yeah, great, now tell me something i don’t know.”

So here’s what he told me.

1. Keep a notebook of what you eat and flag foods that trigger symptoms.


2. Try some drugs. In my case Levsin for starters, but with the option to call back for an alternative. Start with “as needed” not to exceed the prescribed dosage.


3. Yogurt. There are some trials underway using good bacteria to offset some potentially bad intestinal bacteria. The trials involve large quantities of good bacteria, but yogurt could help. They are also using large doses of antibiotics to treat the same thing.
   

   He also warned that IBS can be related to some lactose intolerance and yogurt could make it worse.

I was already keeping a notebook and wasn’t seeing any food correlations.

So, i got the Rx filled and started taking the Levsin “as needed”. No good. I then took it as prescribed; better, but certainly not enough to deal with the side effects.

The following week, i bought some yogurt at the store. The rest, as they say, is history. I have been symptom free for weeks now.

Like i said, this is my observation. Yogurt could kill you, particularly if the container is left open for months in your refrigerator and you accidently grab it while going for that tub of cream cheese to curl up with in front of the TV late at night.

Gripe Session Revisited

A little over two years ago, i had a gripe session. So i thought i would post some anti-gripes:

• The litter box doesn’t smell as bad as it did — new box and new litter helped a lot.


• Spam no longer annoys me thanks to GMail.


• Our garage door has new springs and a new LiftMaster opener.


• Firefox has been very stable for me.


• And by tonight, Lord willing, we’ll have a new dishwasher.

We are really looking forward to the new dishwasher. Logarithmically speaking, this one should be orders of magnitude quieter. Unfortunately, we had to have some of the kitchen tile pulled-up to get the old one out. The upside is that we happened to have four tiles — the exact number needed to replace the ones that had to be removed — in a box of goodies the former home owners left us. We are praying that the new unit is not as large.

Our house is 23 years old. The dishwasher was 23 years old. It actually looks like they installed the dishwasher, then installed the floor. My wife may disagree, but i find it comforting that our kitchen floor tiles are sitting on 2 inches of reinforced concrete. :-) They don’t build houses like they used to…

FIFA + Cheap Cable

We are enjoying the clear TV reception via cable now. Like i said, we got the no-frills $12 cable package. A timely surprise is that we are actually getting live play-by-play of all the World Cup games! The catch? Well, its not World Cup, it’s Copa Mundial.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

Francia just beat España, 3-1. Bueno.

Hurricanes and Hockey

I’m probably not the first one to mention that the very day that the Carolina Hurricanes will take the Stanley Cup, the Raleigh, NC, area is getting pelted the remnants of hurricane Alberto to the tune of 6 inches of water.

For those interested, check out the home page of our local CBS affiliate, WRAL.

ps. I should add that i have a huge pine tree down in my front yard; no other damage currently.

NC Gambling, or How to Promote Trips to Las Vegas

Via our local happenings blog: Bad Gambling Set to Begin Today.

More money will save our educational system? It always has, right?

To review: play in Vegas, lose 5%; play in NC, lose 99%.

Personally, i don’t plan on losing anything. :-)

TeeVee, Money and Time

Why You Too Should Cancel Cable? and I’m unplugging my TV?

I’ve talked about TV in the past. The problem with TV is that it is too convenient. You turn it on, and its there. As i mentioned earlier, there are only two shows that i want to watch (currently): Battlestar Galactica and Lost. Another way to say it, those are the only shows that i would be disappointed if i missed them.

I still don’t have cable, and still have no plans to get it. Actually, i am about 100 times more likely to buy a terrestrial HDTV receiver. The only thing slowing me down there is figuring out the best antenna set-up. Perhaps if i turned off the TV i could figure that out and get a plan together…interesting how that works. The main push for that is just better reception of the channels we get now (Channel 4 — PBS — is always fuzzy; long wave lengths, etc.).

There are lots of things in our house that don’t get done, yet don’t take that much time. Some nights i am tired. Seven o’clock rolls around and i just want to veg til bedtime. But if you factor in 3 hours per night, five nights a week = 15 hours … times 4.2 weeks per month = 63 hours.

Wow. That’s a lot of time.

Refuse Container of Champions

A while back, i noticed a test post that accidently got posted on the simplehuman blog. As a reward for my efforts, they offered me a can. I couldn’t refuse (no pun intended).

After browsing their product catalog, i decided on their flag-ship model: simplehuman butterfly step can. Not because i wanted the most expensive product they make, but because it was what would be ideal for our kitchen setup.

It is a really nice product. Well constructed, looks sharp, and works well. The practical side of me would have a difficult time justifying that price for a trash can; however, you do get what you pay for. Any kitchen sized stainless steel step can is ninety bucks or more (and most of those have plastic lids). Add a silent closing mechanism and your at $120. Add useful styling and your over $200. The butterfly step can hits right in that price range. If your going stainless, it outta be a simplehuman. Their other stainless models are stylish and price competitive as well.

The can it replaced was a $10 Sterilite white plastic can from Roses. :-) Our initial trash can shopping criteria was (1) cheap and (2) would keep the cats out.

Coastal Bits

My blog host changed from East coast to West coast; odds are no one noticed, but there was a few hours where things weren’t quite working on the new host. Hmm, don’t even remember why now — something to do with fastcgi and parameter passing. I do know mod_security was breaking some things and i disabled that.

Battery Eliminator for Fisher Price Baby Swing

From the Robinson House mailbag:

James,

I was interested in the info you posted about the battery eliminator for the baby swing. I don’t know anything at all about wiring, but have been wanting to do soemthing with our baby swing so we don’t have to spend our life’s savings on D battaries. We don’t have the same kind of baby swing as you (ours is a Fisher Price Aquarium swing). Do you have any idea if most baby swings will have about the same wiring, and if I could probably use your same instructions for our swing?

Thanks,

Stephanie

My Response:

Hi Stephanie,

Looking at the swing on the internet, my hunch is that you don’t need a setup quite that complicated.

I’d bet that if you got the following pieces:

• 6V adapter


• extension cable - may not need, depends on where you swing is located with respect to a power outlet


• hobby leads


• alligator clip jumper set

…and hook them up like this:

Use two of the alligator clip jumper cables to connect to the ends of the hobby leads. Then plug in the 6V adapter + optional extension cable + hobby leads and use the other end of the alligator clip jumpers to hook to the battery terminals.

It should work. Here are a few more details:

If you’ll look at this picture: there are battery terminals on both sides where the D batteries touch; on one side the two terminals (the spring and the flat part) are actually hooked together - sometimes you can actually see that they are made from the same piece of metal. On the other side the spring and flat part are separate - unconnected. You want to connect the alligator clips to the side that is not connected. Additionally, it will matter which alligator clip goes to which side. Flip the swing to the on position and touch the clips (one to the spring terminal, one to the flat terminal - like the right hand side of my picture above) and see if you have power! If not, switch the two clips on the SAME side. If still nothing, try the other pair of terminals on the OTHER side of the battery compartment and repeat. If you see a little spark when you touch the clips, odds are you’re on the wrong side (but not always); but don’t worry, you haven’t damaged anything.

A few quick notes: the voltage/current at the clips is safe. It would be best to put some electrical tape around the hobby lead/alligator clip connection so that the two ends do not touch each other.

Worst case, you’ve wasted some time. You can return all the parts, just don’t completely destroy the packaging when you open the items.

Hope that helps!

James

And Stephanie’s Response:

James,

Thank you so much for your help with our baby swing. We got the parts you suggested and it worked just fine. (We ended up hooking the red aligator clip to the top right battery terminal and the black clip to the bottom right terminal, just so you know). Really appreciate it! That will save us a lot of money on batteries in the end. Plus now we can use the “extra” features on the swing, like the mobile and music, which we weren’t using before because they ran the batteries down more quickly.

Thanks,

Stephanie

Security Fix-ups

Bruce Schneier on Sneaking Items Aboard Aircraft:

There are two points worth making here. One: ridiculous rules have a way of turning people into criminals. And two: this is an example of a security failure, not a security success.

I got so fed-up at one checkpoint that i threw the pocket knife in the garbage while the security guard was pleeding with me to take it back out to the car; he really didn’t want to see it tossed. The guy actually felt bad that the “rules” were costing me something.

The Leaders in Greensboro

A beautiful new kind of byline: “contributing reader.”

– Ed Cone

Making strides. Anyone want to start a pool on how long it will take the Raleigh, NC based N&O to catch-up? I’d say 12 mos., minimum.

A Log Tale

Its not often that i complete a project at home and am truly happy with the service i received. This project was gas logs for the fireplace; an anniversary present to each other to celebrate 8 years of marital bliss. We began the project with only a large empty fireplace. We had neither a natural gas line nor a propane tank. I began the project on the web (where else?) and found a fellow by the name of Carl Newton from his web site, Chimney Keepers.

I crafted a simple email stating that i wanted gas logs and needed to know where to start. Carl’s reply came by close-of-business that same day. He said the guys at Dixie-Denning LP (Angier, NC - 919.639.2141, no web site yet) could set me up and would give me a fair deal.

I took Carl’s advice and called Dixie-Denning and got a hold of Russell Wilson (the receptionist, Janet, was out sick). Now Russell is a character, a real good ole boy.

me: i want some gas logs installed. What do i need to do?

Russell: You got gas?

me: nope, ain’t got nothin’ but a fireplace. (i was born and raised in NC ya know)

Russell: i don’t have any tanks available right now, but call F & G in Garner. They can get you a tank pretty quick if they have some in stock. Oh, just wait a sec, i’ll give’em a call for ya. (calls them on his Nextel phone) They’ll have a tank in tomorrow, call’em now and tell’em you want a tank. Oh, and go ahead and get the regulator too. Then call me when you got it, we’ll get ya hooked up.

me: Will do. Thanks!

I went over to F & G Distributing (Garner, NC - 919.662.7507, no web site) to pay for the tank and check out their gas log display. While i was waiting for them to ring me up, some guys came in. One of the guys had a name tag - Russell. Hmm, i happen to look outside and the name on the truck is Dixie-Denning LP. I introduced myself, told him i was there to pay for the tank and it would be delivered the following week. He told the lady behind the counter (Francis) to throw the tank on his truck, he’d take care of it for me (cha-ching - saved me $65 bucks). Russell told me to pick out the logs with my wife and then give him a call. He offered to pick them up, but said they’d probably fit in my car.

A couple of days later, i went back to F & G Distributing to pick out the logs. I was accompanied by my lovely wife. The guy at the counter, Chris, was a great help. Answered all of our questions and even darkened the lobby so we could get the full effect of the burning logs. We bought a set and he loaded them up into my car.

I called Dixie-Denning LP and told them i had the logs; two days later they were installed. Russell and his sidekick, Boyd, came over to the house and did a quick and professional set-up and installation.

Done! Only 5 hours of my time and a few dollars invested.

Battery Eliminator for Graco Baby Swing

Introduction

So you’ve got a baby, a baby swing and your considering a direct-buy stock purchase plan with Energizer or Duracell. Or perhaps you’ve talked with some friends and are contemplating an adventure into the world of rechargables. HALT, don’t take that plunge just yet. Why not forget about batteries altogether? In this article, i’ll show you how to stop wasting batteries and pocket some cash rather than investing in rechargables.

Disclaimer

• This article is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose


• No warranties of any kind are made with respect to the contents, completeness, or accuracy of the information listed herein


• The Robinson House is not responsible for incidental or consequential damages resulting from use of this information


• This project uses household voltages (~110V) and could result in injury or death


• Improper wiring could electrocute you, your child(ren), your pet(s) or all the above


• Performing any modifications on a consumer product will void all warranties and, if electrocuted, your life


• Modifications to a baby swing are best performed by a licensed contractor and wiring performed by a licensed electrician


• Excess current and voltage with improper wiring could cause the swing to hurl a young child across a room and possibly damage furniture or crush small pets


• Do not submerse the swing in water as this could lead to electrocution if drowning does not occur first


• Operation performed by professional driver on a closed course

Background

This looks a little complicated, why is all this necessary? Short answer: microprocessors. Long answer: microprocessors require DC voltage to operate. Batteries delivery DC voltage. An AC power adapter also delivers DC voltage, but with an inexpensive adapter, its not “clean” (2); it has ripple, which is amplified when placed under load.

If a pin on a microprocessor is expecting a signal of ~5 Vdc for an “on” state, but the voltage fluctuates within some time (frequency, e.g. 60usec.) and value (e.g. below 3.4 Vdc), then the signal on that pin is perceived to drop to an “off” state.

I initially bought only the power adapter, set it to 6 Vdc, hooked it up and expected it to work. The swing has 6 speeds and plays music and with that configuration i could operate the music and speeds 1 thru 3. At speed 4, it would run a little while and stop. At speeds 5 and 6 it would cut off immediately.

Tackling the Problem

I first thought it was an issue of power. <insert Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor grunt here> After all, it was working on the lower speeds. So i went back and grabbed a 6 Vdc adapter that could deliver 1800 mA (versus 300 mA). As you probably guessed, it didn’t work. The only alternative was that it didn’t like the voltage signal. The voltage was correct: four D-size batteries, at 1.5 Vdc each, wired in serial yields 6 Vdc. (This ain’t rocket science ya know.)

Being scopeless (referring to an oscilloscope, not mouthwash), i had to guess what the problem could be and bounced the problem off my co-worker (we’ll call him John, as he wishes to remain anonymous to avoid lawsuits). The only conclusion had to be ripple in the DC output. Searching the web, i found a couple of good resources for designing a ripple filter (1,2). One reference (2) has a great diagram of what is going on.

So, let’s get started.

Parts Required

1. Graco Baby Swing - 6-Speed Reclining, Model 1992CJG or similar - Qty. 1


2. Power Transformer 120Vac to 12.6Vac at 300ma - Qty. 1 (RadioShack part# 273-1385 or equiv.)


3. Capacitor - Electrolytic - 1000uF - rated 15Vdc min. - Qty. 2 (RadioShack part# 272-1032 or equiv.)


4. Universal Power Adapter - rated at 300ma for 7.5V - Qty. 1 (RadioShack part# 273-1662 or equiv.)


5. Alligator clips - small - 1 red, 1 black (RadioShack part# 270-378 or equiv.)


6. 22 Gauge wire - 5in. red, 5in. black (RadioShack part# 278-1224 or equiv.)

Optional Parts

1. Adaptaplug Extension - 6ft - Qty. 1 (RadioShack part# 273-1641)


2. Adaptaplug Hobby Leads - Qty. 1 (RadioShack part# 273-1742)

Tools Required

• Needle nose pliers


• Wire strippers


• Soldering Iron and rosin-core solder


• Heat sink(s)


• High speed drill with 1/2″ bit


• Electrical tape

Schematics

Component List

• C1,C2 - 1000uF Electrolytic Capacitors


• L1 - 120V/12V AC Power Transformer

Assembly

Soldering with the heat-sinks attached.

I used a high-wattage soldering gun. A typical 25-30 Watt soldering iron would lessen the need for the heat-sinks, but they are still a good idea.




The finished goods.

The picture shows the circuit wired according to the schematic diagram above. DCin on the left, wires for DCout on the right.

Though harder to see, i covered the leads for the primary side of the power transformer with black electrical tape to prevent any shorts when placed in the battery housing of the swing.

The completed assembly shows the alligator clips and the Adaptaplug connector.

As above, the assembly is fashioned like the schematic diagram above.

To facillitate the wires entering the battery housing, drill a 0.5 in. diameter hole in the plastic. Drilling from the inside out will keep the bit from walking all over the place.

The modified battery housing cover.




And the finished cover.

Now place the components in the battery housing. Note that the transformer sits nicely on the plastic lip the seperates the two side of the battery compartment.

Close it up and tidy the power cable with some zip-ties to keep it from getting caught in the swing and possibly strangling seat occupant.

The proof is in the pudding; happy baby make for happy family.

(Paid endorsement.)

Appendices

References

1. Electrical Engineering Training Series - LC Choke-Input Filter from Integrated Publishing


2. All About Circuits - Volume 6, Chapter 5 - Discrete Semiconductor Circuits - Rectifier/filter circuit

Addenda

• The RadioShack Digital Camera Power Adapter may provide a ripple free output source.


• Compare with price of quality rechargables at Thomas Distributing.


• If you enjoyed this project, see also Live Cat Audible Voltmeter

On Holiday

On holiday for another week, see ya’ll soon.