Sunday @ 90+

I rose before 7; it was not easy. It was more of a debate of various disciplines and needs: sleep versus exercising. I finally rose, started the hot water, cleaned up, dressed, and made coffee. I skipped food and boarded Air Volvo before it got later. The forecast was 99F (37C), and the sun was already heating up everything.

I arrived at Reedville Creek Park before 8, and the tennis courts were full. Young folks were getting tennis lessons. Familiar walkers were on the track. I tipped my hat to them, but soon, I was struggling with my walking. My body was still looking for cheeseburgers and not walking. I just walked, and the struggle faded, but I decided to stop at three loops.

Air Volvo took me back to the house. I finished getting ready. My new pride tie was on the hook, ready to use (I actually wore out my first one). I got my eye protection (my Bell’s palsy requires protecting the left eye from dust) and summer hat and boarded Air Volvo again. I did eat a banana with liberal coffee to have something in my stomach.

Mister Lincoln flowered in the burning heat! I took a picture of that.

I was not too early for church. Pastor Ken had a family issue and arrived just as the service started. He had little sleep. As this was the service after July 4th, we sang America and America the Beautiful. As it was already 80+, we only sang some of the verses. Church, as I imagine all un-air conditioned churches, had light attendance. I did get some hot coffee to help me wake up in the heat. Yes, I must be fully indoctrinated in the Pacific West cult of coffee to be drinking it on a 99F day!

Pastor Ken addressed the wisdom passages in the New Testament in James’ letter. The pastor reminded us that James was known as The Just and was Jesus’s brother. James explains that Wisdom is real when it contains no trace of partiality or hypocrisy (from the New Revised Standard Version) in James 3. Pastor Ken suggested that justice is the goal (Justice: the way the world ought to be), and wisdom shows us the path to this goal.

Aside: I checked the translation and read some of the passages in Greek (with a lot of help from the Internet); I like the NRSV wording.

Pastor Ken, using words from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, said the deep magic is that helping people makes folks happy while serving selfish interests seems to always lead to dissatisfaction. The world seems, like Narnia’s deep magic, created this way. Wisdom, when pure, helps us find justice; this process makes us better people, the world gets better, and we live better. According to Ken, this is just how God made the world. As my friends in other faiths would tell you, this is not just a Christian teaching.

I had more coffee after the service. I took Air Volvo to the Volvo Cave, picked up my laptop, and headed to The 649. There, I had Crystal and Tyler as bartenders. I had a red ale and the fondo with brats (taking some of the bread home) for lunch. I spent much of the afternoon searching for flights, a house to rent, and car rentals in East Lansing. Linda, my sister, is on vacation in mid-July, and I might need to keep Barb Wild company and help with any needs. Mom fell today, recovered, and we are concerned. No plans are set, but I may be in Michigan starting the 18th and beyond the 26th.

After I finished my lunch, I had Amaretto coffee to relax. I worked on my Dungeons and Dragons writing for a while. Next, I paid my bill and headed back. Air Volvo was very hot. I took a drink of water from a bottle and actually burned my mouth. It was so hot. Yikes!

At the Volvo Cave, I read more Homer and reached the actual poem. After reading more than 70 pages about Homer, Greek history, the structure of the Odyssey, and the translator’s notes, I was happy to read Book 1 and the famous beginning. I found Emily Wilson’s transition easy to read and liked it. Excellent.

I took the rest of the leftover taco stuff, broke up the taco shells, heated the meat, chopped carrots and celery, and made a salad. A drop of sour cream finished it. I ate this while watching YouTube videos. A piece of taco shell choked me. I managed to cough it out, and I will (again!) be more careful. Yikes!

I also reached 240 pounds today, a setback on weight loss (a gain of ten pounds, f**k!), and obviously related to the holidays and too many cheeseburgers. I will resist cookies and cheeseburgers and holiday foods. A disappointment.

Next, I returned to my electronic project. I connected everything to a breadboard; this is the prototype, which uses a breadboard and large wires. I broke the power connection to the XAIO Sense and had to solder it again. This time, I made a stronger connection on the tiny pad. My finesse with a soldering iron has returned.

I cut open the old RadioShack package (a purchase from years ago for a related project), got out an old-style transistor, and plugged that into the breadboard. I then got out a few screenshots of a circuit to control a motor I found on the Internet and then tried to make the same circuit. It looks backward to me, but I reproduced it in hookup wires, and I found a diode from my collection and placed the component to match the diagram. I buy sets of all the usual diodes, capacitors, resistors, and so on. They are cheap. I tell people I have a RadiShack in my garage now.

I looked up an Arduino example on the Internet with a Google search, copied the code, and revised it to my pin-out. I selected D9, which is usually capable of pulse width modulation (PWM) in Arduino. It is impossible to generate a signal that is not 0, 1 (O being about 0V and 1 being about 3.3V) in this hardware. Instead, a pulse can be created, which is a square wave with variable width. Thus, to send out a 50% signal, the width of the signal is 50% 0 and 50% 1.

I turned it on, and the motor spun! I changed the code to vary the setting over time, and the motor stopped, got faster, and then stopped. It is alive! The first effort is a success. It was getting late, so I stopped there.

I did order surface mount versions on Amazon. These are tiny versions of the usual components that are soldered to the surface of a PC using various processes, including baking (yes, baking). It is very hard to do this with a soldering iron. I will expand my wizardry with a soldering iron and see if I can build a tiny circuit to replace the large one on the breadboard.

I did not see the reverse voltage issue, but I think the diode is taking care of that. Folks with electric vehicles and hybrids do see regenerative braking. The braking of an electric motor generates a reverse current as the coil passes through a magnetic field, and this current is harvested and saved. This happens in these PWM-control builds. The PWM turns the transistor on and off at high speed (following the square wave signal from the Arduino), and this causes the motor to spin, but actually, it is being powered and not powered. At a 50% setting, the motor produces a current for about a bit less than 1/2 the time.  Diodes are often used to route this away from the microcontrollers. I have not seen this very low voltage create anything that is a problem. I usually put an LED in reverse to see the reverse voltage. It can be quite weird to see this.

I took a shower and soon was in bed near midnight and asleep before midnight. The choking incident had caused violent coughing, and I took some painkillers as it was hard to sleep. I was out before 1 with plans to raise early again.