Fun with Quarters and Epoxy…

July 26th, 2010 by joey | 1 Comment | Filed in Entertainment, funny, really cool

Growing up, I never got much exposure to glue’s. My Dad was a fastener and welding man. We used glue occasionaly where nessecary (like wood glue, and contact cement). But, I never really knew the capabilities of different glues. So I started buying random glues and trying them out a few years ago. The coolest stuff I have found, is epoxy putty

It is AWESOME stuff. Once it cures, it is incredibly strong, hard, water proof, withstands lots of pressure, impossible to break, etc… And it is SO SO easy to use. It comes in a roll (like a small pecan log, complete with white stuff inside). You cut off however much you need, and then kneed the stuff you cut off until it turns gray (The white inside stuff mixes with the blue outside stuff, and becomes gray). Then you stick it between two things, press hard, and wait about 20 minutes.

So… I used some mixed epoxy that was left over from a repair, and glued 3 quarters to the end of our driveway by the sidewalk… :)

Our street gets a lot of foot and bike traffic because it is very close to the first light rail stop in Mesa. Needless to say… We get a lot of people that pause at the end of the driveway, and try to pickup the quarters… Occasionaly when we are out, people talk to us about them, and tell us how it fooled them. Anyways, one day I want to setup a motion sensitive camera and start recording people trying to get them up.

The epoxy is REALLY strong, so I don’t think they are coming up anytime soon. Infact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the only way to get them up is to chip the concrete.

Aaron Allston

July 26th, 2010 by joey | 1 Comment | Filed in Books, Entertainment, Life

Aaron Allston is one of my two favorite Author’s. Orson Scott Card is my other.

I always laugh when I read Allston’s books. He is really good at doing un-expected things. I’ve read a LOT of Star Wars books, and a lot of them are boring. They just blend together, it’s the classic good vs evil, Han and Leia are in a tough spot, and get out, or substitute Han and Chewie, or Luke and Mara, etc… But Aaron’s books always break out of the mold and give you something fresh.

My absolute favorites are the Enemy Lines series including Rebel Dream in the New Jedi Order Series. I also LOVED Wraith Squadron… Especially the part where Piggy in-advertantly blasts the captain of a ship into crispy crunchies while blwoing his way into the bridge…

After reading the Enemy Lines series, I enjoyed it SO much that I found Aaron’s email address and sent him a note. Here’s what he sent back.

At 02:07 PM 9/30/2007, Joey Novak wrote:

> I just finished reading the second Enemy Lines book. It was fantastic! I laughed when Artoo altered the food database so that the Security droid would pass Han’s blaster and Lia’s Light Saber as food and then rescued Han and Lia, and when wedge flew under the legs of the Vaugh ground based weapons platform. (A Rankat?) It was awesome!

> Thanks for the entertainment,

I’m glad you liked it. Thanks for letting me know.

== Aaron Allston
== allston@AaronAllston.com
== http://www.AaronAllston.com/

What Motivates People (Specificaly technical people)

July 21st, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Business, Happy Living, Life, really cool
Here is an AWESOME video (with cool drawings) about how people are motivated.

SHO Truck Questions from Scott at Izzys Custom Cages

July 10th, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in SHOTruck

Scott from http://www.izzyscustomcages.com/ emailed me and asked some questions about what I did. He wants to build something very similar.

He asked some questions… So I took some more pictures, and here are his answers…

Do you have any detailed photo’s on how you mated the frames?

Yes! See the gallery Below. I have had several Nay Sayers, including a few engineers who have said it won’t work because you can’t weld on a frame… But, they are smoking crack… Frames are welded all the time! Anyways… I used 1/4″ steel for all the pieces between the two frames. The frames are actually mated in two seperate places to provide additional support. A note… My frame is shaped different than most, because I sectioned it a long time ago and removed 4 feet from the middle, brining the back wheels up to right behind the cab. Thus, where the frames mate, the truck frame is at the top of the arch over the rear axle… So, you’ll have to do somethings a little different. To keep things ultra simple (I had 1 month to do the initial graft and I had only a skill saw with an abrasive blade, and a wire fed welder…) I first welded a vertical piece of 6″ x 1/4″ x 12″ on each side of each frame rail at the end. I then welded another piece of 6″ x 1/4″ x 12″ to the end of these two pieces, creating a flat 6″ x 12″ surface that would butt up against the front of the sho frame. I then welded a some small pieces of 1/4″ plate from the 6×12 surface to the inside edges of the sho “frame” (even though the sho is unibody, there are two definite frame “rails” built into the body. These are made from between 1/8″ and 3/16″ steel, so it’s pretty tough I think.) I then welded some more 1/4″ plate pieces from the outside of the sho frame rail to the 6×12 surface. Then, I made the lower re-inforcements that go from the bottom of the truck frame, to the point on the sho “Frame” where the subframe bolts to the unibody / sho frame. These pieces aren’t finished, as I need to put corners back on the pieces so that they actually have some integrity.

How did you run the radiator and fuel?

Just like an MR2 / Fiero I used steel pipe to go from the front to the back. I placed these in the drive shaft tunnel (See pictures below). For the fuel, I used 3/8″ brake line (I had dreams of turboing the engine so I wanted to plan ahead and have enough flow for 300hp+, this is also why I used an F-150 fuel booster pump, good to like 300 HP). This I ran on the truck frame so that it would be seperated from the hot cooleant as much as possible, (since hotter fuel means earlier detonation)).

Any thoughts, experiances or pitfalls to watch out for would be greatly appreciated

Good question… If I had it to do over again, I would have left the radiator in the back, and run it like liquid cooled dune buggies do… See: http://www.duneguide.com/images/ExtremeExpo2007/ExtremeExpo2007-426.jpg

I ran into a problem at the end here, where the wires, cables, hoses, etc… look like a rats nest in the space between the car and the truck, this also makes maintenance difficult. I wish I had thought through this a little more, and made things neater.

Electrical… At first I thought this was going to be a big problem. But once I removed all the extra wires (lights, horn, ABS (ABS has LOTS and LOTS of wires), Wipers, Winshield wiper fluid pump, etc… I was down to just a handful of wires, a dozen or so sensor wires, an alternator wire, a “run” wire, a “start” wire, and an always on power wire to the ECU. (The “run” wire just turns a relay on in the ECU, most of the power for the ECU comes from the always on power wire to the ECU).

But definitly get a FSM. I have the Ford FSM on CD, I can’t seem to get it installed anymore, but I had it running on Windows XP fine at the time. This was invaluable for the electric work.

I left the power steering pump and computer in place, and just welded a bracket on to the steering shaft that has fixed it’s position, this was the easiest way to go, a better way to go would be to make up some arms, and replace the rack and pinion with some fixed arms. But, the rack and pinion is buried under there, and I wanted to keep the possibility of 4 wheel steering a possibility (a very very very slim possibility).

Shifting linkage isn’t quite right yet… I made a little lever that actuates the shifting cable just like the floor shifter did, but the length of the level needs to be longer, the reason being that the angle between the lever and the plastic ball joint changes too much, and the ball pops out of the joint when I go into P sometimes. I would have prefered to keep the original floor shifter, and just get a longer cable, but I didn’t know where to get one, or how to make the ends special, etc… So I just made the lever and created a floor shifter that actuates the lever.

Gas pedal linkage… I don’t like the way I did it, if I had more time / money I would have bought some cable, and made one cable from the pedal to the throttle instead of splicing the two existing cables together under the truck…

Pictures!

$50 Solar Pool Heater

June 27th, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Fun, Hacks, Ingenuity, Solar Energy

My wife and I have an in-ground pool in a large Arizona Room. (An Indoor pool). While having an indoor pool is nice, we haven’t gotten to use it yet, because IT IS COLD! Being indoors it receives almost no sunlight, and so it doesn’t warm. Enter the solar water heater.

We did something similar to this:

Total cost was about $50.

  • $35 -- 500′ roll of 1/2″ “funny pipe” hose.
  • $15 -- Misc Fittings to go from pool filter to the heater.

The final result is great! The flow isn’t very much (it has less than 10psi of pressure). The pool water enters the filter at about 80 degrees (the top layer of water in the pool is warm, but once you go down about 6″ it drops to below 60). And the water leaving the heater is 95 degrees when the heater is in the sunlight. If there is no sunlight, the heater effectively stops working, even though the ambient temperature is 90+.

We placed the output of the heater into the bottom of the pool so that the hot water goes into the bottom where the cold water is, we are hoping this helps to mix the water some.

Pictures:

We want to make this a permanent part of the pool, and mount it on the roof instead of just placing it on the grass. We aren’t sure yet how to do it in a way that looks professional yet. We’re still working on it. We have a few ideas, but we aren’t set on anything yet. Fortunately, in a few more weeks, the pool should be warm enough, and we can pack the heater away until winter.

At war with the pigeons!

June 27th, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Life

My wife and I have this palm tree that houses at least 2 dozen pigeons… (Seriously, it’s like a cheap hotel… I’ll post a pic). At first when we moved in, we were ok with them, because they didn’t seem to poop anywhere in our yard. Well… Something changed and now they do. A lot. And it’s gross.

So! Guess what’s for dinner!

See, I bagged at least 3 pigeons today, and just threw them away (Actually over the fence into an empty lot… shhhh….). I feel a little bad about just killing them, so I researched some alternative ways to dispel pigeons. Like hanging cd’s from strings around your yard, stringing up fishing line, fake snakes, etc… But shooting them is just so dang fun I decided I’ll just keep eradicating them but cook whatever I shoot. I never thought I’d be a hunter; killing things just isn’t in me, but shooting annoying birds that make a mess and taste good… I can do that!

When I think of it though, it seems pretty funny. I can just go into our backyard, point my bb-gun up in the palm tree, shoot a pigeon and eat it… A complete hunting trip with no hassle! I can even wear my slippers! Boy, do I feel like a red neck now… I almost can’t wait for Monday night!

AA-12 Shotgun

June 27th, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in really cool

I thought this was pretty cool, especially the 12Ga Gernades…

Wooden Dynosaur kits small enough to fit on a single key of your keyboard!

June 22nd, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Fun, Ingenuity, really cool

I saw this today, and thought it was AWESOME!

Woolly_keyboard_low

Enjoy Life – Wear Your Seatbelt

June 11th, 2010 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Life, really cool

This has got to be one of the most beautiful seat belt videos I’ve ever seen.  It’s awesome.

Check it out: http://putnik.blog.rs/blog/putnik/reklame/2010/03/09/reklama

The author of this blog maintains a project on Source Forge that I use and am becoming intimately familiar with: htmlcleaner

SHO Truck’s maiden voyage!

May 31st, 2010 by joey | 4 Comments | Filed in Fun, Ingenuity, Life, SHOTruck

After over 3 years (2 of which were in storage), the SHO Truck is finally ready for testing!!!

I finished up the basic electrical today, so that you can start and stop the engine using the truck’s ignition. I also finished the throttle linkage, and adjusted the stop block on the gas pedal so there wasn’t any stress on the cable when you are at WOT.

My buddy Austin was over and he filmed the first voyage…

And here it is!!!



The truck has bad gas in it at the moment, so the engine doesn’t respond very well, but it will! It wasn’t really terrible though, it drove great, but the engine performance is terrible with the bad gas. Stay tuned… Wheelie’s here I come!