Sunday

Events
And so it is, I am blogging one week to the day of my last post. We are still ridiculously broke. HOWEVER the good news is that the bills are indeed paid, so we have breathing room. Money is tight but we are getting by. Normally this would be a big concern of mine but there is no use in bitching about something you really cannot change at the moment. We have food, we have shelter, everyone is healthy and I am warm. No complaints.

This past week has been pretty tough on me mentally though. What, with all the chaos going on at work, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the malaise of confusion. Especially, if you’re not sure you are wanted by your employer. Add to that, the fact that I have a dying skill set that is valuable to have only if you know someone who needs it. This conversion to SAP has some folks scared including me.

I’m not the type of person that will gradually fade into oblivion. Instead, I am the type that makes a lot of noise and makes people feel uncomfortable with the questions I ask. I have been doing this with my superiors as of late and I need to be careful about this.

I suppose so long as I do a good job, and remain a hard worker, I can only hope that people see this as a value to them and maybe they would be willing to retrain me. But alas I am only a lowly branch employee and not one of the corporate elite. I would feel better about all of this if I had originally worked for the corporate office, but I don’t.

Rumor has it that I do indeed have a place in this new epoch of corporate organization. This makes me feel a little better. I’ve also just recently learned that a potential new manager has to have all of his ducks in a row before he can even approach me about a position. Let’s hope for the best. I’ve converted companies to other systems for five straight years, I know what’s to be involved. A lot of the heartache I can see coming a mile away. This is both a blessing to the company in the long run and a curse to me as I sit and wait to be included.

These are the things that have for the most part been keeping me up at night, making me drink more beer then I usually do, in addition to becoming lazy in my diet and exercise. I guess I really shouldn’t let such things get me down. You only get one life and it makes no sense to waste it on worrying.

On the good news side of things, I finally got around to updating the software on our Xbox and am now able to watch Netflix movies on it. This is pretty cool since Sharon and I were discussing a way to stream video to the plasma TV downstairs. Now we have a way of doing this.

But for every positive action in my household there is an equal but opposite action that takes place. Might I add that nothing spells a relaxing weekend like having to rip apart a wall to fix a leaky shower.


This is the wall I had to rip apart to get to the plumbing. Luckily for me it was in a closet, and I had some leftover subfloor that I used to cover things back up. It makes for one hell of an access panel.


And here is the troublesome leak. To say the least, I suck at sweating pipes. I wasn’t about to get in there and sweat the pipes back together. I instead used press on fittings to fix this. In the end it all worked but I also had to fix the area where the shower pipe screwed into the pipe in the wall. I also had to use my drill to convert my water saving shower head to the normal type. This reduced the pressure in the pipe and helps stop the leaking. Out of it all that was the toughest part.

I’m keeping my fingered crossed that there will be no more leaks.


Mmmmm fall.


What the? Winter?!?!

Tinkering
So it is safe to say that I have had arc welders on the brain. I don’t know why I want to play with these things, I just feel compelled to, and that’s all.

Seeing as how I have no money to actually buy an arc welder, I’m left to my own devices to cobble something together and hope that it will work.

I know that arc welders require quite a bit of current to operate properly so the first order of business was to insure that I had a receptacle in the garage beefy enough to handle my experimenting.


I have a small fuse panel in my garage with a service set up for 240 volts. Here we see a 20 amp receptacle. I felt that 20 amp service would not cut it so I decided to upgrade this.


This is a 50 amp receptacle. This should be able to handle the beefier currents I need.


The next problem I faced was how to isolate and convert the high voltage from the 240 volt outlet into a lower voltage with more current. A few months back I was fortunate enough to inherit six transformers from a group of spent battery backup units. My employer was throwing these away and I told them that I would give them a good home.


Since I knew virtually nothing about these transformers I would have to test them and measure their outputs. I had no idea what was the output and what was an input so I needed to use a variac and a multi meter to figure some things out. A variac is a tool that allows you to vary the amount of A/C voltage you apply to something. For the purposes of this test I would apply around 4 volts to what I thought were inputs. As it turned out, when I applied roughly 12 volts to these wires I would read around 120 volts on the another set of wires. I was fairly confident that those sets of wires were designed for line voltage. I then applied line voltage to these wires and sure enough I received 12 volts on the beefier wires. This made sense since I could see how the line voltage was needed to be stepped down and use the excessive current to charge a bank of lead acid batteries.


I was now fairly sure that I could phase the transformers together to work collectively in giving me a decent voltage and be able to deliver a real punch in the current department. Here we see four transformers phased together. I have two transformers hooked up serially across the 240 volt line in parallel with two more transformers in series.


I had no way to switch the power on or off so I had to improvise and put something together. This is the fruit of my labor. It looks ugly, and is dangerous as all hell but it does function. I used pieces from and old metal shelf bracket to mount a 30 amp circuit breaker to a few scraps of wood. Live wires were heavily exposed and I had to use extreme caution when testing this setup.

Sure enough when I had everything wired, I snapped the breaker into the on position and there was a big click followed by a low hum coming from the transformers. IT WORKED!


The switching arrangement had me a bit scared of the whole apparatus so I dropped 15 bux into getting a circuit breaker box for an air conditioning unit. It’s a 60 amp breaker which is a bit more then I need but it also allows me the room to expand into higher currents if I ever upgrade my main box.


This is the entire test setup, with power applied. You can see that the meter read 61.4 volts. I think this might be enough voltage to get a small arc going. It should at least work with a 3/32 welding stick.

All looks well with the setup. Now I just need to insulate everything, and place it all in a box with at least half a dozen fans on the transformers to keep them cool. I can use a small oven thermometer with an alarm to warn me if things get too hot.

Updates will follow as I get them.

Entertainment
I took the reading section out of my journal and replaced it with an entertainment one. I’ve been listening to a lot of audio books and watching a lot of educational material and in my mind this is as equally important as reading a book. I’m sure some would disagree with this, but under the circumstances of having a 45 minute drive to and from work it just allows me to pack more in my day.

I finished the autobiography of Barak Obama “Dreams from my Father” It was pretty good stuff. I liked it and I recommend it to others. I have a sneaky feeling though that a lot of people will sample this audio book since he is the one reading it. In the 12th chapter he says “Nigger” and “Mother Fucker” quite a bit. Oh yeah and he also admits to smoking his share of “Reefer” in his day.

I moved onto his second book, “The Audacity of Hope” It’s not as good and is a bit boring since he talks about his Senate days. It was kind of funny to hear him describe his meeting with Senator Robert Byrd. Ya know that guy that was in the KKK?

Also I have been chewing my way through the series “The Secret Life of Machines”. This is one of my all time favorite programs from the past. It was a series created by the BBC in the late 80’s and it was basically two special effects guys showing people how everyday appliances work. Sort of a pre-cursor to the Myth Busters without all the excessive attitude and egotism. These guys were also much more creative since they had absolutely no budget to work with.

Other then that I have been thumbing through some of the material that Forrest Mims wrote. This was the guy that authored all the Radio Shack Engineering Mini-Notebooks. Its good cheap way to achieve results with electrical components a person might have on hand. I’ve taken a particular shine to his ideas on simple seismographs. I have a train not more then a mile down the road that I wouldn’t mind seeing the vibrations of.

Health
My diet and exercise have been suffering. The cold has kept me from walking, and the fast approach of the holiday season has kept a steady flow of bad foods into my system. I’m starting to feel the effects in my energy levels and I need to get back up on the wagon.

Dream
Had a dream that I worked in a strip mall fixing cars out of an AutoZone type store. All the cars I worked on were classic cars and I had the opportunity to drive each one of them. A few guys were committing armed robbery a few stores over and I can remember standing outside wait for the police to come.

I really cannot remember too much else.

Weather
On Thursday and Friday we had snow. Not enough to lie on the ground but certainly enough to look out the window and say “It’s snowing”. The past two days it’s been nice and sunny and bitter cold. It’s the kind of weather where a person can leave their beer outside to keep it cold.

Mindless Banter
The other day I had an old thought pop into my head. Does anyone out there remember the Eveready battery commercials where Robert Conrad DARED you to knock a battery off his shoulder? For those that do and some that don’t I present this to you.



Daily Good News
Only two real days of work this week, and Thanksgiving is around the corner.

Quote
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.”
Michael Faraday