Whirl Wind Weeks

It's been a really busy couple of weeks, and it will probably continue to be until we are out on the playa. No time to blog!

My friends Mari, Nathan, Dora and Amelia arrived on Thursday the 7th and stayed through Wed the 13th. They are a really cool family! They were making the rounds visiting friends and family. They arrived early because they were passing around sickness and didn't want to infect some of the older folks at one of retirement communities that was their previous stop. It's tough being a kid and being sick, but they seemed to handle it pretty well. They're really sweet girls!

Yesterday I went to our new Colo and helped rack a bunch of our new servers. It was lots of fun. I really enjoy hands on stuff besides the programming that I do. It was also really cool and interesting to see all the parts of the Colo on the tour that I did. They have 9 generators that each generate 2.2 Mega Watts each. And there's a 50,000 gallon tank of diesel underneath the building. It's pretty crazy, indeed. I think that place could power a small city. I'll try to get some pictures up when I get them. They're trapped on a co-workers iPhone currently. Here's a tour of a Colo I found online - they're probably all the same.

Next up is trying frantically to finish up all the projects I want to do for Burning Man. We're leaving in 8 days and I'm going to be working for 5 of them. Tick Tock.

I finally got to start drinking my last brew batch last week. It's good. I'm happy with it.

Prototype Done

I finished it. I only have a really sore thumb and small spot bleeding on the tip of my finger. A small sacrifice for an led hoop.

Top picture is a 2 second time lapse of me hooping. The bottom one is without time lapse.

Half Way There

So after much learning, and thinking it would work when I turned it on (and it didn't)....

It Works!! (Well, half of it, so far)
The wiring of one set of colors, the blue LEDs are working!
The other color is going to be yellow for this prototype and there will be a total of 30 LEDs.
It was probably better that it didn't work on the first try - or I would have gotten too much confidence and possibly been sloppy for the next set. The wiring was a simple swap of some leads on the chip, and presto! It worked.

I actually shouted will glee when they lit up!
On to the other set, and then putting them all in the hoop and securing them in place.

LED Hoola Hoop Prototype

111 posts is somehow lucky.

Tonight, after weeks of gathering together the supplies and thoughts on the LED hoola hoop, I started construction. I realized I was missing some things, so tomorrow I'll have to go to Lasher's or this place as a last resort. I think it's pretty much going to work the first time, but I have plans to make even better ones later. This is going to be a hoola hoop year for me.

Hippy Skirt!

I have this skirt that I completely love (No, not that one pictured.)
It influenced me to make a similar one out of cotton (using fabric I already had!). The final product is pictured on the left.
In the process I learned how to correctly do shirring (pix). I only had to tear out the top shirred part 4 times before I figured out how to do it right. I was quite frustrated until I remembered that I have this sewing book - purchased for me in the 80's when I was just starting my sewing interest. It's an artifact from the past, much like my Betty Crocker cookbook that's in the 3 ring binder.
The steps for making this skirt was 1-serger the tiers, 2-gather each tier onto the one above it, 3-then add the rows of shirring to the part that sits on your waist or hips. When I was done sewing it, I dyed it some fun colors. This was a fun project. It brought back memories of my tie-dying days. (Did you know there was a time when I was making around 3 thousand t-shirts [and other items] a summer? - I basically made all the tie-dyes that this relatively large craft/fair vendor sold. As a result, I'm a pretty good tie-dyer - I have lots of experience, though it's starting to get a bit rusty now.)


This first picture is after I was done sewing it - and about to dye it.
Here's what it looked like after dying it, but before it was finished fixing.
And here's the back of the finished skirt. The first picture in this post is the front.

Snow, Travel and More Crafts

We were up at Squaw Valley this weekend playing in the snow. My company had its yearly planning session up there during the week and then we got to stay up there through the weekend. What an excellent fringe benefit! My honeypot came up on Thursday night and we skied on Saturday. It was the most perfect conditions because it basically snowed the entire time I was up there, but amazingly enough, it stopped snowing for the entire day of Saturday and was relatively warm. Perfect!

Something I realized on our way home from there is that I leave for India on Thursday. Whoa, I haven't even begun to plan for this trip at all. Besides not having prepared my materials for what I'm teaching while I'm there, I haven't even begun to research where I'll be going and what I'll be doing with my 5 days off at the end. I'll be back on Feb 19th.

My honeypot lost the last hat I made him, so I've been working on this new hat design. I've never crocheted a hat from the center out radially before. I'm following the pattern in this new book my mother-in-law gave me for xmas. It's been a pretty great gift. I'll let you know how it comes out.

Projects and Grand Theft Auto

Have you seen this game? It's been out a while and it got quite a bit of attention when it did come out. My honeypot was playing it for a long time tonight. It's so bizarre.

There was one time when we couldn't tell if there was really a couple screaming at each other outside or it was part of the game. (Yes, these things happen more than you would think around our neighborhood.) Truthfully, I think certain cultures are just louder than others. But beyond that, we do have our moments here in the neighborhood.

We've had this extremely long wonderful vacation! I love it. It's been so mellow and amazingly relaxing.

It's given me time to do a bunch of projects; like buying a bed frame, setting it up, and swapping our yoga room with our bedroom. I also wrote a script to automate some of the organization of my digital images. It's pretty cool. I also cleaned out part of our basement. It's still a little chaotic down there but I made some room and progress.

My honeypot built some juggle club holders for the wall and a skateboard holder.