Coolest Kid in Town...

Ran across this suave machine in the Old Port the other day, clearly belongs to the hippest of the hipsters.

Sex-Machine

Had a good weekend, I re-installed the carbs on my motorcycle Saturday but it is idling very, very high. I've been trying to adjust the throttle cable and the idle screw but haven't quite gotten it all to jive together yet. I probably would've been able to get it today but didn't want to be the neighbor who is literally revving an engine for half an hour trying to adjust stuff. I will probably just have to suck it up and do that soon so I can safely ride the thing. Hoping I don't have to uninstall the carbs again just to readjust stuff. We'll see... Good news is I am fairly certain that I fixed the original problem, but I've just created a new one in the process.

Made my way downstate today to catch up with Sean, Doug, their associated compadres and the one and only Joe Durgs. That's right folks, he's back from the dead and working full-time at Unum in South Portland. Joe is just as slick as ever and is the proud owner/operator/commander? of a herd/gaggle/flock of bees. I guess he plans to make some honey from them eventually. Either way I'm planning on giving him a tour of Pika (which is only a couple miles from Unum) and then hopefully incorporating him in a completely stacked Trivia team consisting of James and Josh Scrip. Hoping to hang out with Joe more actually though. In all honesty I haven't seen him in a long time, I really enjoy him and I was happy to learn he is in the area.

Hoping to start a regular regiment of rowing this week. We'll see how that goes. Also trying to acquire a cheap grill on craigslist, I've been seeing inexpensive grills that need replacement grates/ignitors. My dad just ordered some for his grill online, so it can't be THAT hard. Finally got a charger for the laptop I got from David a while back only to find out there is a login password. Hoping David has a good guess on what it is, either that or I'll be spending some time bashing around with a linux Live CD trying to break into it somehow.

Also one of our cats peed on my bed this weekend when I accidentally shut her in my room. I am taking this as a good omen for the week. SSSSSHHH Don't ruin my optimism.

More 'Stralia

Neighbors Dog

Refracting waves off the sea wall

New Roommate... he was on sale!

Plaque is a photograph taken in the same place 131 years prior

Great Ocean Road

Tall Tree is Tall

Cantilevered viewing area

My Dad running back when he realized it was swaying

Chief export of Australia, cute fuzzy stuffed marsupials

Craigslist for life!

The other day we moved the Bridgeport to Pika. I took one picture of it fully assembled next to our awesome new lather but it came out like crap, so instead I will show you an epic picture of it being unloaded.

And that was the last time the bottom of the milling machine ever looked that way again.

Just kidding, the move went pretty well. In all honesty I didn't have much to do with it.... I wonder if there is a correlation there. While I was taking pictures I figured you guys might like to see some of the stuff I do. This is the wind turbine dyno we have at work. Basically, we spin the turbine with an electric motor to simulate different wind conditions and then do a bunch of debugging and reliability testing with it. The power from the turbine is actually fed back through to the grid with our inverter too.

Givin' windymills the hot suppah! 

Ended up getting a pretty good deal on this rowing machine from craigslist. $75 for a rowing machine that is about $600 new, I didn't even haggle with the guy on the price because I'm fairly certain I could throw it right back up and sell it for twice what I bought it.

I'm currently thinking about some modifications to make it into a more legitimate rowing machine. Basically there is this one machine that all the gyms have that is super legit and like $1700. All the big rowing enthusiasts/snobs on the internet love it and stuff. After rowing on this one just once I can tell it is different from the one I used at Umaine. Also, tentative plans to hack into it and make it grid tied... more on this in THE FUTURE.

Checked out some garage space today that is about 2 miles from my place. Looked pretty good, not huge but big enough and seems to be the right price. If I can get this other fellow to go in on it with me it might become the bus' new home. This guy used to run a car detailing shop out of it, seemed like it was kinda under the table. Anyways, it's even insulated and the guy had a pellet stove in there for the winter. 

Only problem is it is kind of in a ghettoish area of Westbrook, but I think it would be fine. When I say Ghetto, I just mean weirdos mostly a lot of harmless weirdos. 

Looks like more rain coming up for the weekend... I will need to find a way to play this to my advantage somehow... 

Don't Lathe Me Bro

So, this arrived at work today.

Brand new lathe! It's like Christmas for dorks!

Had a fun time getting it uncrated and slowly lowering it to the ground using our ancient egyptian wooden lever arm techniques. The lathe is a Grizzly G0709 Gunsmith Lathe with 14" swing and 40" working length. It's fresh off the boat from China where all quality products are made. Hopefully we'll get someone (possibly me) on wiring it later this week, we also need to put in 7 liters of oil (that's a lot of oil). Basically it will be sweet when we get this thing up and running. We're also moving in the Bridgeport tomorrow morning. Hopefully no one is harmed in the moving of that behemoth. 

These machine tools are making me want to build a battle bot this year. I've got a 2.4Ghz radio I picked up from hobbyking a while back and I've recently found the old McCartney bot motors and wheels. I'm going to keep my eyes open and slowly accumulate some parts, maybe learn solidworks along the way. Either way, I basically have access to a lathe and milling machine now so.... uhhh... hell yes?!?!?! 

Struck out on buying a rowing machine on craislist today only to find an even better deal that was just posted today.... More on this soon, I hope. 

Waiting on some gaskets for my motorcycle before I can get it back on the road. Hopefully will be in by the end of the week, but that's no biggie because the weather is calling for thunderstorms all week. Go go gadget Maine June! 

More Australia

Lemon tree very pretty, A+ Chinese restaurant, my cousin Olivia, cargo ship.

And Now Our House Smells Like Gasoline...

Went to this Beach called Ferry Beach in Saco, pretty sweet place with very few people. Found two hermit crabs and overall had a nice time. Trying to hit as many different beaches as possible this summer, it is very nice living like less than a 40 minute drive to all kinds of different beach options. I would highly recommend beachin' it, as it is wicked fun and super relaxing.

Anyways, after the beach I went to town on my motorcycle. It's been having this intermittent issue where I start it get into it a little bit (give it some gas) and the engine just kinda bogs down. This only happens sometimes and might be consistent over a ride and might not be. Since my bike no longer acts like a BP oil rig, I figured it should start acting like a more consistent motorcycle.

I took the gas tank off and checked for any blockages in the fuel line/valve. I also removed the carburetors in hopes of cleaning them.

Funny how awkwardly naked a motorcycle looks when it doesn't have a seat. 

 I couldn't removed a couple of the screws in the carbs, not to mention I didn't have much of a clue what I was really looking for or doing. I just knew I wanted to attempt to clean the carbs incase this was the source of my issue and also for my own education/edutainment. Anyways, so like any strong willed, independent young adult.... I kinda gave up and called an adult. I really needed a vice to hold everything and take it apart without stripping screws. I read online about folks breaking screws trying to get these things apart, I was hoping to avoid that.

Flash forward to today and after a trip home my carbs have been disassembled, cleaned and reassembled. Found some sand-like crap in the bottom (float bowl) of each of them, hoping that might be the source of the issue. Also learned how carbs work.... kinda sorta. I need to locate a couple of new gaskets and then I can reinstall the carbs and see if we fixed it. Hoping to do that by like Thursday...ish.

Since I was home and all, I took the opportunity to feed my ongoing desire to fill our basement with stuff, so I grabbed a bunch of my electrical stuff to setup.

Look familiar?

Yup, it's the same table I had in our old room and believe it or not... some of the stuff in that box has been with my since before then. It's pretty hard for me to part with good junk ok guys. The table is pretty lulz too and has epoxy stains from like forever ago. Lots of things have been created and destroyed on this table. Hoping to mess around with a fancy microcontroller board thingy at some point too. After I get a windows machine up and running that is. The board uses an ARM processor (similar to what is used in your cellphone) which means its BAMF and STMicro subsidized the making of this dev board for students so it's very cheap and packed with cool stuff. 

In other news, I got an interesting response on my craigslist ad. This guy is actually looking for a similar space to restore his mid 90's Mazda Miata. He was wondering if we could look together and maybe go in on a two bay garage if we can find it. The guy sounds pretty cool and I'm totally up for going halves on a space if we can find one, at the very least it will be nice to have another set of eyes looking. Best case scenario, we find a sweet place and have awesome car restoration adventures. 

Finally Sharron (Mrs. Gerrish) is in the are for the next few days and she'll be stopping by for a tour of Pika tomorrow. Should be a good time, I'm looking forward to showing her the place. I'd like to cobble together a wind turbine from our old scrapped revisions eventually and throw it up at her place. We'll see if that ever actually becomes reality but maybe I can get her fired up about the idea tomorrow. 

Also been oddly fired up about Wednesday after watching this video...

Australia Beaches

Beer is expensive here!