This has me interested. This Saturday’s full moon will also be a “supermoon”. The moon will be at its perigee just as it peaks as a full moon, between 11:35pm and midnight tomorrow night. The moon is suppose to be at its largest size in appearance.
Hopefully the clouds will dissipate tomorrow night so I can at least get a glimpse of it.
Two weeks ago I finished installing the second garage door. Since the first garage door came out really good, I decided to have some fun with the GoPro camera. The total job took just under 8 hours. I edited the video, speeding up the action 50 times, so the total video length is just over 4 minutes.
Yesterday was bring you child to work day. My daughter was so excited to be a part of the day. She is the one standing up on the left. The other two girls are the daughter’s of my two co-workers.
Dow Jones has an awesome program for the kids. The employees volunteer their time to put together a really great day. Through the day there are five different events where the kids get to see different aspects of how Dow Jones operates and the South Brunswick campus. The kids receive a T-Shirt, a Dow Jones Badge and a bag with pens, pads and other trinkets.
My daughter had such a great time yesterday that this morning she asked if she could come back to work with me today. I told her that she could right after she completed college.
We all know the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, but is it really? The Winter Solstice is when the earth’s axis is tilted the farthest away from the sun. The actual solstice occurs just for a moment. For 2010 the Winter Solstice is occurring on December 21st at 23:38 UTC. so for those of us on the east coast of the US it is occurring at 18:38ET. So the shortest day for us is December 21st. However if you lived in Frankfurt Germany, the winter solstice occurs on December 22 at 00:38 so at shortest day is actually December 22nd. For Germany the 22nd is shorter than the 21st by less than 1 second.
Did you also know that the winter solstice changes each year? The date actually flips between December 21st and the 22nd. This change is due to the irregular rotation of the earth. Next year the winter solstice occurs on December 22nd at 05:30UTC. So in 2011, if you live on the west coast of the US, your shortest day will be December 21st, even though the winter solstice is on the 22nd. On the west coast the exact time the winter solstice will occur is December 21, 2011 at 21:30PT.
So when is the shortest day of the year? It depends upon where in the world you are when the Winter Solstice occurs.
I would like to give a special thanks to Andy Szarko for making me think about this on the Friday morning.
This summer was a blur.
From June 26th to July 12th I was with the scouts in Philmont, New Mexico. We hiked 70 miles in the 10 we were in back country. We did white water rafting, rock climbing, rappelling, spar pole climbing, black powered rifle shooting. We hiked up Baldy mountain, 12,441 feet. For 2 days we had 2 mules with us. One morning we woke up to a black bear trying to get at our food.
I ended up in India for 2 weeks on a business trip followed by a family vacation for 5 days in Maryland on the Chesapeake.
Here I am realizing that Thanksgiving is 5 weeks away.
Can someone please press the pause key?
One of the jet skis has been having engine problems. Initially the engine was very hard to start. It would turnover easy enough, but wouldn’t fire. After cleaning the carbs, the engine would start, but then it would backfire and stall. After backfiring and stalling twice I though I would pull the top end apart to see if something was wrong.
Well, it turned out that one piston threw a ring. The piston and cylinder walls were torn apart pretty bad. As you can see the left piston is a total wreck versus the new piston that is replacing it. Fortunately the crank shaft was in great shape. So I m now rebuilding the top end of the engine. The engines in the skis, because of the beating they take, are designed to make top end rebuilds pretty easy. I bought the top end kit from SBT. Their kit includes the cylinders, pistons, rings, wrist pins, bearings and gaskets. While I was replacing a good portion of the engine I decided to rebuild the rest of the ski. I’ve replaced all the fuel and water lines. Putting in a new starter. Installing new wear ring and impeller on the jet pump.
I also had a seized engine that came from my “parts” ski. Since I was pulling one engine apart, I decided to take a shot at pulling the seized engine apart. The one cylinder / piston came apart easily enough. The seized piston one ended up coming out in pieces. Once I had 1/2 of the piston removed, the rest finally pulled away from the cylinder wall and fell apart. In the photo I have both engines with the top end off each. With a little effort I think I can get the seized engine back together working.
Of course it is little bothersome to see one of your favorite toys in pieces on the garage floor. But with a little luck it’ll be back in the water shortly.
I was not ready to see Jill in a white dress for her First Holy Communion. My little girl is not so little anymore! The Communion was really nice. Our new pastor led the service. It was great to see the excitement in the kids.
Afterwards we had an afternoon party at with the family and some very close friends. The DJ was the same person we used for Jill’s 2 year old birthday. I got to have a Father Daughter dance, which was really nice. I think I enjoyed the dance more than Jill!
Saturday it was beautiful here on the Jersey Shore. The temp was in the 70’s with blue sky. I decided to work on the one Jetski. I still have the engine apart because of the cracked water jacket. I have two new water jackets with the exhaust manifold all ready to go on. Cylinders are all honed. I cut the rave exhaust valves to clear the pistons. Everything was all set.
As I was setting the water jackets on the lower half of the engine, I let one piston slip and hit the exhaust baffle. Boop went a piece of the ring on the one piston. Damn. Now I’m waiting until March 20th when the new rings should arrive. After the incident I decided to replace all the rings in the engine.
After I messed up the piston ring, I decided to replace the VTS motor. This is a small electric motor that raises and lowers the angle of the jet pump. The old motor had died and the case was corroded. It was easy to replace. Now I have to wait to finish getting the engine back together before I can test the VTS motor.
I fully expect to have both machines back into the water before this month is over. I’m just very frustrated with myself for being a damn klutz.
Lately I’ve been on a kick upgrading the computers in the house. Most of the machines are dual Xeons with 4Gb or 8Gb of ram. I just added a 1.5Tb drive to one machine that was running out of space. It had a 40gb drive in it and it was full. I went through looking to dump what ever I could, but it only amounted to a few Gb free.
I also had to add a 8-port switch. I have a 16-port switch downstairs where I have the server gear, but I need more ports in the den. I’m wondering if it was a good idea to go with the 8-port switch and not the 16-port switch. At the time the store I was in only had the 8-port switch and I didn’t feel like driving around.
The one purchase that I made that has just proven itself to be so valuable was a D-Link print server. It can handle up to 4 printers. I know, it was a simply thing to add, but what a difference to be able to print from anywhere. I’ve got the laser printer and the Epson photo printer attach to it. The only bummer is that I have to go into the den to turn the printers on if I want to print. A lot of the times I’m in the family room with the laptop and have to walk to the other end of the house. Yes, on occasion I get lazy and yell for one of the kids to turn on the printer or retrieve the printouts for me.
The one box that I haven’t upgrade is the Apple G4. I did add some ram to bump it to 4Gb. That box has found some new life with my daughter. She likes to play her games on it. She likes the idea of having a machine that is basically only used by her.
That leads me to another thought. I am amazed at the kids. I have XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Fedora Linux in the house on various machines. Majority of the boxes run Linux, from Fedora Core 5 to Fedora 10. But it doesn’t matter to them. They jump from box to box without thinking about the operating system. Most adults I know have issues running a single operating system. Not them. Its seamless to them. I cant help but wonder what the technology will be like when they are adults and start having difficulty adopting to it.
Christmas Eve dinner was extra special this year. We had shrimp scampi in a white wine sauce over linguine. What made it extra special was that MJ cooked the entire meal by himself. Every time Cathy or I tried to enter the kitchen to help, we were shoo’d out. He did a fantastic job. The shrimp were cooked just the right amount. The white wine sauce and linguine were perfect.