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December 16, 2016 8:18 AM Off to a chilly start!  Today is my first day of what will ammount to a three-week vacation. Three weeks off. At Christmas. Honestly, I have not yet begun to wrap my head around it. I don't know what to do. The kids are off at school for their last day today, it's a balmy -28C outside, and I've got a list of plans, projects and repairs to do that is so long and overwhelming I don't even know where to begin. Part of me knows that I need to rest during this vacation, and truly I tell you that I have been looking forward to this vacation for quite some time. And now that it is here I almost feel stunned by it. I suppose this is the first time in almost 20 years that I'll have actually had a Christmas Vacation. I usually get a few days off, maybe a week some years depending on how the 25th falls into the calendar, but this year will be the first time I'll have weeks off since I began working full time at the age of 18. The cold and snow have brought back many memories of the Christmas breaks I used to enjoy when I was in school, along with hours of uninterrupted time to play with my toys. Most of these toys were computers - my Commodore 64 back then - and I look back on those times with warm, nostalgic memories. One year we went and cut down a real Christmas tree, and I somehow got to keep a small (4 foot) tree, which I placed in my room, adorned with a 100 light set of sequenced mini lights, and placed the bottom end into the only tree stand I could muster - a five gallon pail of water. Thinking back now (actually I'm sure I was aware at the time) it probably looked ridiculous, but I've always been a softie for traditions, lights and all things Christmas. It should probably be no surprise then to learn that my family Christmas tree now boasts 1,300 lights upon it's branches. Indeed, it draws 500 watts, which is as much as one of those quartz work lights - but I love the way it looks and brings warmth into this abnormally chilly season. Ok, so the plan for today is this: Go work in the garage, get a plan together for some sorting, organizing and going through some accumulated [stuff]. See if I can get the blue van to start (it's battery froze a few days ago, I can't charge it in place and it's a monstrous task to get it out of the vehicle) - I'm going to see if I can boost it, drive up to my parents house, have a cup of tea with them and shovel their sidewalks, then hopefully the heat from the engine will have thawed the battery somewhat and perhaps it can charge up a bit. In the afternoon, depending on how the day goes I have some projects to try to tackle. The other day I was working on the Shapeoko, making some Christmas ornaments with it when the controller died. It still powers up, the steppers lock in, but the computer does not even show that anything is plugged into the USB port. (Checked with Linux.) I've re-flashed the 16U2 chip which does the USB to TTL conversion for the Atmega328P running GBRL for driving the motors, it appears to be happy enough, but still the computer cannot see it at all - it's like it isn't even there so either the ports on the 16U2 got fried somehow or the zeners that protect the lines have failed and are preventing it from talking to the PC. (Presently they measure 1.6M Ohms in one direction and infinite resistance in the other - which seems unusual to me.) So I'd like to get that figured out as I had some pretty cool Christmas ornaments lined up to cut on it. Of course I can cut them out of wood with the laser, but then the edges will need to be sanded down as I was hoping to avoid the burnt edges look which means more work. My new collets came in the other day and they work AWESOME! It was cutting soooooo nicely! Better than ever before, and then it up and died. Sigh. I guess that's how it goes. Into the day we go!  BACK to Journal Index |