My own perspective

Vanishing Point, on a nice fall day

Just before post number six is placed in the ground.

Over halfway done.

Stay tuned...

Safari Sams, just like Chuck E. Cheese?

A local place called Safari Sams is much like Chuck E Cheese. If you have kids less than 10 - you've probably been to a place like this more than once for a birthday party. Or maybe you just like the cheap tokens at Chuck E Cheese - and enjoy the cheap video games or the photo booth.

Brian and Connor on his 5th birthday

Safari Sams is a little more expensive thant Chuck's place. Most of the video games are more than one token, and there are probably less of them. There is indoor minature golf and a huge climbing, tunnel, play, obstacle course area. You do have to be a little bit older to get over the first obstacle in the 'Black Diamond' course - but you'll have fun. Even if you are a bit older than 9 years old....

Connor counts his tickets at his 6th birthday party

This looks easy - but don't be fooled

What kind of magnet is doing that?

What do you think? Would you rather play with a mouse, or a lion?

Or would you rather clean up the chocolate cake footprints from your whole house?

Yard Work 2008 #15

I had a spare hour on Friday, October 17th - so I thought - 'Why not cut the lawn?' That idea sure beat 'Why not dig a hole for a fence post?' or 'Why not check the 401K account and see what we lost today?' Or ask your own question here. As it turns out - it wasn't the simple ten minute chore as was looking for...

The weather here in Oregon is still quite nice - the rain hasn't started the continual drizzle, the sun is bright in the sky, and the temps are still making it into the upper 60s. The lawnmower started right up...and then died. I primed it again and it started up. And it died.

This same thing happened two years ago. I really didn't know what was happening, I just knew that the mower was stalling due to lack of gasoline. So I traced the gas flow from the tank to the engine, looking for anyplace that might be plugged or gummed up - hoping to see a nice metallic part labels 'fuel filter'. No luck with the easy solution. I did manage to solve the problem then - and I even had a few photos of my engine disassemble-ment. Here is one of them, after removing a few of the plastic covering parts.

This time around - I couldn't remember what I did to fix the problem two years ago. I did have a feel of where I should look - so I got out my tools and started to take the mower apart. After half an hour or so of cleaning the dirt and grime off - I took off what I think is the fuel reservoir.

Here is is - the gold colored cylinder below the air intake

(Yahoo Answers had an answer to this problem that called the part a float bowl). This is a small cylinder maybe 2 inches in diameter by 1 1/2 inches in height. This is held onto the carburetor by a threaded nut with a very small hole/passageway in it.

Here it is - all cleaned up
Notice the hole in the nut?

When I saw this - I remembered that this was the choke point for the gasoline flow last time around. So - I got a pin and cleared it out. I didn't find any debris in there... (when looking for the cause of a problem, don't you like to eventually find something?)

This is a float of some kind....not sure how it works!

The next steps in engine disassembly looked much more difficult so I decided to put it all back together and see if it worked. Five minutes later I was cutting the grass.

Now - since I put this all down in a web posting - I can find my own answer in Google the next time my 'lawn mower stalls', 'seems like it isn't getting enough gas flow', 'continues to run as long as the primer button is pushed continuously.' I think my memory is getting worse as Google continues to provide a way to remember stuff...even stuff I never knew in the first place!

Is it time to vote yet?

Are you tired of the phone calls, junk mail, and ads on TV? No - I don't mean the credit card offers....those will continue. With election day just over two weeks away - everything will soon switch to Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping.

Voters in Oregon get to vote today - or at least those of us who got our ballots. Our vote-by-mail ballots arrived today. Voting in Oregon no longer takes place at polls - every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail. They have to be turned in by 8pm on election day - and that doesn't mean in the mail box. If they are sent in the mail, you need to mail them early enough to arrive at the official counting office by election day.

Time to turn on the heaters!

Today the temperatures in our part of the world did not reach 55°. Since I had been paying attention to weather forecasts - I prepared for this event by cleaning all the heaters in our house. We don't have a central heating system (NW Natural keeps the junk mail coming, trying to get us hooked up to their clean natural gas....). In each of the rooms in our house we have Cadet wall heaters.

This is nice in that we can turn off the heaters in rooms we are not using - like our bedrooms during the day, and then all the rooms besides the bedrooms at night. At the same time. this is not nice. Because - programmable thermostats are difficult to find, since these heaters run at 120V and not the 24V of a normal furnace thermostat. There are a lot of neat programmable thermostats out there and they are widely available. Last time I looked - Loews did not have an 120V models, and Home Depot was out of stock. Time to take a trip to the store again, I guess.

The other pain of these heaters is that you have to take them apart every six months and clean them. There are no filters on them, and so the dust collects. Turning them on in fall without cleaning them gives your house that nice, burning smell. The design doesn't make it too easy to take apart, though it is not too difficult. Just removing three screws is all it takes - but putting two of the three back in is a little tricky.

I got all the heaters (almost all - still have three more to clean, but they don't get used much) cleaned last night. Tonight they will get a workout. First time since last May that we have had to heat the house. Winter is coming!

Another interesting thing about Cadet, the maker of the heaters. This company is based in Vancouver, Washington - and I know the location very well. At some point in the past - solvent got into the groundwater at the site (and many of the surrounding business properties as well) and it is currently being cleaned up. My company, AMEC Earth & Environmental, was involved from the start when the contamination was discovered. Back then - I even analyzed some of the soil and water samples in our analytical laboratory. Later, I was in charge of managing all the environmental data from monitoring wells, soil borings, and air sample data and using GIS to create maps of the contamination, groundwater contours, and cleanup progress. AMEC did such a good job of defending Cadet against the Port of Vancouver in a lawsuit and actually getting the cleanup going -that we worked our way out of a job. Cadet sold the property to the Port, and the Port has their own environmental consultants working on the project now... No links to them here...but you know how to use Google, don't ya?

Ready, set, search!

Free, Fun, Physics games!

Not sure if you are a gamer. I like to play computer games, but the time available for this is a lot less these days than it was in the days of Space Eggs, Sneakers, Castle_Wolfenstein, Olympic Decathlon, The Oregon Trail...and don't forget all the Infocom cames like Zork I, II, III, etc!

A side note - did you know that many of the Apple ][ classics can be played online in your web browser! Go to Virtual Apple - and find the disk you want to load. Castle Wolfenstein - ah - hear the amazing sounds again coming from that 2" speaker inside that Apple ][ plus computer case: - "Halt! Comandant!" Or - Apple Adventure - return to the Colossal Cave! These text and early 280x192 pixels screens had tons of great game play. Games today may look incredibly realistic - but without the gameplay - there is no fun.

Back to the main story - Physics games. These games may not have a detailed storyline - in fact the most enjoyable games are where you can create things and watch them interact. The first game I found in this genre was Crayon Physics.



This program was developed by Petri Purho. He has quite a few free games he develops in a week's time. Check him out at Kloonigames.

Another fun physics game I found is called Phun! This program was developed by Emil Ernerfeldt. It takes Crayon Physics type play to a new level. There is no goal in this game - you just create shapes, springs, wheels, hinges, water....and let the physics of the objects do the rest. I think the little boys in all of us (you know - who like to destoy things) love this game.


I think there were a few other games in this category that I have tried - but these two stand out. If you want to try - but don't want to download anything - a Crayon Physics look-a-like is available to play online. Find it here - at Magic Pen. Have fun playing with physics in the computer... Or maybe just get out the Legos or Erector Set and watch live physics in action.

Yard Work 2008 #14

The last day of September included a lawn mowing. With the approaching fall rains - I figured I better get out there and trim it up. It is supposed to start raining on Thursday and continue through the weekend. Looks like our soccer games will be quite wet. We've been lucky so far this season.

The lawn itself does need a little more attention beyond a cutting before the growth slows down this winter. There are a few weeds I got with broad leaf weed killer today, but the edges on the driveway and in the back yard need to be visited by the edger. If I had the energy - there does appear to be a lot of thatch that needs dethatching. Not sure I'm up for that amount of effort.

I have also noticed that the ground in getting quite hard packed down. If I see a neighbor down the street with a coring machine...I should slip them a few bucks to let me borrow it for an hour. Even if I owned a coring tool - I really don't have the energy to go around and drill all those soil plugs up by hand.