I really don’t like computers

Note: No pictures this week.

When I started at CASA, Phyllis had a computer that didn’t work. She was using her personal laptop. Nobody seemed to anxious about it. By Thursday (I work there 4 hours Thursday morning and 4 hours Friday morning), I was still finding my way around the IT stuff. They have two networked printers, and I hadn’t figured out how to install drivers for either one. They use a custom application I didn’t know how to install. And they use Quick Books, which I don’t know much about, but only two people use Quick Books. I figured I would get Phyllis her computer Thursday. But Thursday morning, Sarah’s computer suddenly stopped. She had a court hearing Monday and needed to have some documents prepared. I discussed this with the office manager. We decided to give Sarah the computer. This made Phyllis feel pushed aside, and led to lots of office conversation. Friday, Sarah decided her keyboard needed to be replaced, and somehow managed to get her computer to announce that it needed an administrator password to install the keyboard. It was impossible to type a password, because the keyboard didn’t work. This might be the most bizarre computer failure I had ever seen. I told Sarah she would have to wait until Phyllis got her computer. Unfortunately, Phyllis wanted the custom application, and I still haven’t figured that out yet. when I left Friday there were 5 unhappy people at CASA. Phyllis because she was pushed aside and ended up not having her application. Sarah because her computer doesn’t work. The office manager, because she has to deal with Phyllis and Sarah. The director, because people are unhappy. And me, because I don’t like computers in the first place and why did I take this stupid job? I’m sure it will all work itself out eventually. But 8 hours a week isn’t very much time to work on stuff,  no matter how efficiently the time is used.

The clubhouse office is in good shape. I should finish their document with a few hours of work. That will be the end of that little project.

I suggested changes to the network for Habitat that I think will help them quite a bit. It requires spending a little money. They said they are scheduling a meeting for later on this week, but so far nobody has told me when.

I found the squirrel on the bird feeder again. I started to go after him. He jumped off the bird house onto the ground. I guess it’s a 30 foot drop. I don’t know whether he got hurt in the fall, but I haven’t seen him since then. I read that squirrels can fall 100 feet, using their tails as a parachute.

I had a story from Valentine’s day that I didn’t tell. Danita likes ice cream. A lot. I came across an easy recipe for ice cream that was supposed to be delicious. I didn’t like it because it used exotic (expensive) flavoring ingredients. I quickly found another recipe that was basically the same, but with common ingredients. For both recipes, people had replied stating how good the ice cream tasted. So I made some for Valentine’s day. It was horrid. It was so bad that Danita made a face and said I should do whatever I want with it. But she said I shouldn’t be discouraged, because even a great chef has a disaster once in a while. I replied that was true, but not everybody who has a disaster is a great chef.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Gamera

You may recall Gamera, the human powered helicopter project Joe Schmaus works on. They did some test flights in Carroll County this week. I went up for the last day of flight on Thursday. They were flying in the Ag building. It’s very large, but has a low ceiling, so they wouldn’t be able to win the Sikorsky Prize. Their purpose was to test a flight control system. The copter met the sustained 60-seconds of flight requirement and came close to the height requirement of 3 meters. But the craft kept on drifting to one side or the other, so adding a control system was their next step. You can see a video of a flight at the Gamera Web Site.

GeneratorA control system needs power. Batteries are not allowed (it has to be completely human powered). The system starts with a generator designed for use with bicycles. This unit would normally have a rubber wheel riding against the front tire to power a headlight. It generates 6 or 7 watts.

 

Controller and MotorsOf course there has to be a computer. They selected an Arduino computer. They modified it so that it would “boot up” in 3 seconds. The control system becomes active while the pilot is warming up. You can also see the two motors, each controlling a pulley. The Gamera is a quad-copter. It has 4 propellers, each on the outside corner of a box. The pilot pedals, which pulls a string, which rotates the propellers. The pulley changes the length of the string path. A longer path means the blade rotates faster and generates a little more lift. A shorter path means the blade rotates slower and generates a little less lift. One pulley changes the amount of lift in the left / right direction. The other changes the front to back lift ratio. To save power, they don’t run both motors at the same time.

SwitchesTo control the craft, the pilot has switches mounted to his hand cranks. You can see the wires from the left hand switch and the aircraft wires. To connect the two sets of wires, the pilot wears a wiring harness under his shirt. Wires follow the pilot’s arms, go up his shoulders, and come out his back.

 

BustedWingUnfortunately, the team only got one short flight on Thursday. One of the propellers broke off and landed upside down. Here’s a picture of the test crew sitting under the broken propeller, exactly as it landed. The failure happened early in the day, but there wasn’t time to repair the craft and try another flight. They have to have time for the epoxy glue to cure, and the cure time was very long because the building was a chilly 45 degrees. Fortunately, Joe warned me. I wore 3 layers of clothes.

MoonRockThey had difficulty getting the crew between College Park and Carroll County. It’s a 1-hour ride and most students don’t have cars. They had a skeleton crew for these tests. I was able to lend a hand by taking some of the team members back so they could attend class. I picked up a souvenir — a piece of truss and a carbon fiber strut that broke off the craft. I think of these as my own personal “Moon  Rock”. A piece of aviation history.

The rest of the week was busy. I went to the audiologist Monday. She said I had moderate loss in my right ear. My left ear is good enough that only one hearing aid would be recommended. The problem in my right ear is the three bones on the inside of the ear drum. I don’t plan to pursue the ear surgery. I decided that since only one ear had hearing loss and that was moderate, I will postpone hearing aids.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday I worked on the clubhouse network. I got everything hooked up except for the copy machine. Copy machines are amazing beasts these days. They can be used as printers, scanners, and fax machines. We had to order a long Ethernet cable before connecting the copy machine to the network. The association needs to mail out new credentials for the front gate. I used the residents data base to generate a list of who will receive the new credentials, then did a mail merge so they can print mailing labels for the 400 units.

I got the urgent clubhouse work done just in time. Habitat for Humanity contacted me because they need to replace a router. I advised them to hold on until next week. I’m going to propose a range of possible improvements. Based on their decisions, they might want to move up to a more advanced router.

Wednesday and Friday I was at CASA. I turned out to be a profit center for them. When I came, I told them their Windows XP computers were at the end of their life and need to be replaced. It’s one of those things that they knew was true, but had been ignoring. They’ve been in a panic looking for computer money. They have $3,000 in a joint account with the University of Maryland School of Social Work. CASA’s Executive Director went over there to see what the restrictions were on the money. She thought they would have to spend it on some kind of joint activity, such as a training session. You may remember I got this placement through an organization called ReServe. ReServe is sponsored by the School of Social Work. They’ve had a tough time getting up and running. When they heard that I was placed at CASA through ReServe, they were delighted. That went a long way towards their decision that the funds can be spent on CASA’s computer needs. I was surprised that CASA decided to buy 6 Dell laptops that run Windows 8 (Microsoft’s brand new and somewhat controversial new operating system). With four computers they had donated from T. Rowe Price that can run Windows 7, we’ll get them out of the hole.

I even found time for a couple of short bike rides. We had some decent weather, with temperature up around 50 and even sunshine one day. Don (who I met at dinner last week) came on one of the rides with me. We were daydreaming out loud about riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. It runs about 450 miles from Front Royal, VA to Ashland, NC. Some of the mountains are absolute killers, and there aren’t a lot of hotels or 7-11s.

Such is the exciting life of retirement these days. I hope everybody is doing well.

Too much all at once

Note: There are no pictures this week.

This has been quite a week. For a long time, I felt I would like to have something to do on a part time or voluntary basis. All of a sudden, the dam broke. Monday I visited my doctor for a physical. I did OK, but left with recommendations for physical therapy (for my left shoulder), audiology, and neurology (for a memory check). It’s hard to keep healthy when all the ancillary systems are falling apart.

Tuesday I finished Michner’s book Alaska. I was disappointed. I learned a lot about the Aleutian Islands but only a little about the rest of Alaska.

Wednesday I went to work. I had been talking to Habitat for Humanity to volunteer. Chesapeake Habitat is an affiliate of the international Habitat for Humanity organization. It covers Baltimore County,  Baltimore City, Anne Arundel County, and Howard County; and is one of the largest affiliates in the world. Chesapeake Habitat has two parts. The “Affiliate” is the office that coordinates building or rehabbing houses to create decent affordable housing for the poor. The “ReStores”, act as a kind of a Good Will for building supplies (kitchen cabinets, doors, windows, etc.), furniture, and tools. Chesapeake Habitat has three ReStores — in Halethorpe (southern Baltimore, adjacent to the affiliate offices), Pasadena (Anne Arundel County), and Dundalk. They will open a ReStore in Columbia soon, and have plans for two more after that.

I had a quick tour of the networks Wednesday.From an IT perspective, Habitat has a fairly standard server and computer setup for the Affiliate. They have VOIP phones (phones that run on the computer network). Each ReStore has a small network with a couple of computers and VOIP phones. Somehow, all of the phones work together, but the computer networks do not. They have no IT staff. They have done all this with a hodgepodge of vendors and consultants. Every employee and volunteer has their own idea of what’s best. They have pretty much built a digital tower of babble.I need to go back for a closer look. So far, I haven’t found the router in two locations, so I know for sure I’m missing some big pieces of the puzzle.

About the same time I got into Habitat, I got an opportunity with CASA of Baltimore. This is a short-term opportunity ending on June 30. CASA is an organization that recruits and trains advocates. When social services wants to remove a child from their home, an advocate may be used to help represent a child’s interest. Advocates are also mentors for the children. I don’t know a lot about the CASA organization, but I know there is a state office and that several counties in Maryland have local offices. Each office seems to run as an independent business unit. CASA Baltimore has a dozen very old computers and a network of sorts. They are set up more like somebody’s home than a business network. They have allocated too little money to IT for too long. They have a basic idea of the important IT concepts (like backing up data), but in many ways each person in the office is their own IT manager.

I work at CASA two 4-hour days a week. This week it was Thursday and Friday. CASA is downtown and they have a small budget, so parking is an issue. Street parking is limited to 2 hours. I thought the garages charged $14 a day. I was wrong. They charge a lot more. But they have much lower rates for those who arrive before 9 (Early Bird Special). CASA has $5 discount vouchers if I park in the right garage. Thursday I arrived at 10:00 and parked on one of the wrong garages. Friday I arrived before 9:00 and parked in the correct garage. My parking Friday was $20 less than it was Thursday.

Normally, I could handle CASA and Habitat at the same time, but our club house has gone nuts. I wrote earlier about how we got a new floor in the office, and how as a result none of their computers worked. Nobody could figure out how to put Humpty together again. In fixing things, I found we have two internet providers. One is a personal DSL service from Verizon. The other is a Xfinity (Comcast) cable service set up by WPM (the property management company). In discussing how we want to organize IT for our office, WPM decided they wanted to pull their network out, which they did. I met their IT guy just as he got started working. He asked me to leave him alone until he was done, so he could focus on his task and get it done right. When he left, one office worker had lost her Internet access and also many of her files. A printer/scanner printed but no longer scanned. The video security cameras worked, but weren’t available from the network. When I tried to start hooking things up, I found out that Xfinity uses brain-dead routers that  don’t let us configure a stable office network. I recommended a small business router. It arrived Friday. I spent a good amount of time Saturday learning how to configure services I never had to worry about before. We’ll see how much I learned tomorrow, when I go over to hook it up.

At the same time, my community decided the electronic gate reader doesn’t work and needs to be replaced with a new one. The new one must be twice as good, because it offers two credentials for access, neither of which is anything at all like the credentials used by the old one. There are new databases, old databases, modified databases, and of course a whole pile of data entry. There is the issuance of new credentials which involves envelopes, letters, and maybe signatures. It’s not hard work, but it takes time and it’s the other thing I spent most of my Saturday figuring out.

If all this had to happen at once, this was a good week for it. It’s been too cold for bike riding. I rode indoors one day, but it’s not fun and my heart’s not in it.

This was also a busy week socially. We usually eat dinner out Thursdays. This Thursday one of the women Danita works with invited us to her house. It turns out her husband Don has become interested in riding a bike to Maine. He knows somebody who lives close to Bangor. He wants to get together for a follow-up, but I put him off for a while. Our neighborhood had a Bingo Friday evening. Danita went to that by herself. Saturday we met the Chaprnkas for dinner at an Italian restaurant near Reisterstown. The restaurant has upscale ambitions, offering excellent food and mediocre service. Today we’re going to a World Wide Marriage Day Mass at the cathedral downtown, followed by dinner with our Circle friends.

That was a lot of words for one week. I hope nobody got eye strain and that this finds everybody doing well.

Gazebo!

We had some very cold weather last weekend. But by Monday, the weather started to permit cycling. Temperatures were above freezing. It was wet, but there was no rain. I rode around doing chores. Tuesday it was beautiful, sunny with temperatures up in the 60s. I did my first 40-mile ride this year. It felt great. Wednesday temperatures approached 70. It was wet, but there was no rain in the morning. I was able to ride some of my favorite hills around Ellicott City. I’m glad I went out in the morning, because the rain started in the afternoon. By evening, the winds were ferocious and the rain got quite heavy. Several streets in Ellicott City flooded. I never realized before moving here how often that happens. I never heard about it living in Baltimore County, because it happens so frequently it’s not news.

Unfortunately, winter returned by Thursday. It was sunny but 30 degrees colder. In addition, winds down a little to around 20 MPH, with gusts of 40 MPH. I was sitting in the house, reading in “Alaska” about a man who rode from Dawson, Canada to Nome, Alaska on a bicycle in the middle of the winter in 1900. (That’s about the same distance as Baltimore to Bangor.) He rode on the frozen Yukon River, carried his bike over a mountain, and then rode down the frozen bay. He enjoyed “mild” winter temperatures of 20 degrees below. Certainly if he could do that, I could ride 10 miles to Harris Teeter to pick up some groceries. I decided to start with a test trip to Target (1 mile away) to pick up some milk. By the time I got to Target, I knew I could do the 50 minute ride to Harris Teeter, and also the 50 minute ride back. But I chose buy everything I really needed at Target and go home. That was the end of outdoor cycling for the week. It was nice to have those few days.

BirdFeeder2

Gazebo Bird Feeder

I finally got my gazebo! But first I have to back track a little bit. Brian and Elizabeth made pine cone bird feeders and brought them for Christmas. Danita got some string and hung them from our deck railing. By last weekend, birds were getting desperate and found the pine cones. It was terrible. Birds would fly up to a pine cone and take a quick peck. This would make the pine cone rock back and forth. The bird would have to land on the deck and wait for it to stop swinging, and then fly up for another quick peck. This is not a way to be kind to animals. Danita cut the pine cones down and laid them on the deck. Then she added some bread crumbs. That worked well and got the birds through some very cold days. No good turn goes unpunished, as they say. The birds left behind their very special “poopy presents” on our deck floor. I took care of those with a bucket and a brush early Tuesday afternoon. The rain came in handy for washing the residue off.

BirdFeeder1

Cool pic captured a bird in flight. (Click the pic to see a blow-up)

That problem solved, we decided to order a proper bird feeder from Amazon, along with some proper bird food. When I saw the gazebo bird feeder, I couldn’t resist. I know it’s only 6-sided, but it *is* a gazebo! It even has plastic sides to make it a 4-season structure! I found a hanger that I could clamp to the deck railing to hold the bird feeder over the grass behind the deck. Now we can sit in the living room and watch the birds. All is well for the birds. Alas, all is not well for me. Most of the day, birds form themselves into 3 groups. the smallest group is on the bird feeder eating. The second group is in a near by tree waiting to get the the bird feeder. The third group is on the deck porch or railing, pooping away. The feeder is definitely coming down when winter’s over.

The big excitement this weekend is the Super Bowl. You may remember that after the AFC Championship game two weeks ago, I went outside to celebrate and found a completely dead neighborhood. Other neighborhoods had people outside honking their horns and having a good time. Not ours. Today we’re having a neighborhood Super Bowl party. They’re renting a big-screen TV. We will have chicken, chili, pizza, chips, salad, and open bar. Win or lose, I’m pretty sure that after the game everybody will go home and go to bed. Baltimore City has made plans to close streets and have the police out in force after the game. Nobody’s planning to station police in our neighborhood. But it’s hard to turn down a free party. This will be our cheapest Super Bowl ever.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.