Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

I successfully completed getting my MakerBot Cupcake built, and after doing a little calibration work I created my first real object. The total process took 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete and looked a little bit like this:

And finally…

With a little cleanup, minor sanding, and we have the finished product!

I finally received my TI LaunchPad after waiting three months for delivery. I popped onto the TI Wiki after getting the device installed, and then installed Code Composer Studio 4.1.3.0038. Since that point I followed the “LaunchPadSimpleProject.pdf” step-by-step to create my first MP430G2231 application with blinky LEDs. It was all going well until Code Composer Studio decided not to allow debugging.

Unfortunately it seems Code Composer Studio can’t seem to decide whether it is licensed or unlicensed. Working on the code the studio is licensed, but the moment I go to debug It brings up the license dialog. I browse to the license file, and the dialog closes to pop up an error dialog of no feature found for CCS_CONNECTION_ALL. Inspecting the license file there is no definition for the CCS_CONNECTION_ALL, but at the same point in time none of this was specified in the simple project nor license installation.

Until I get a solution for this my launch is aborted.

I’m finally doing it. I’ve been dreaming of one day driving a motorcycle but have absolutely no idea how. What’s worse is I don’t know anyone with a motorcycle, and going to test-drive one is just out of the question. I have been drooling over a Honda Shadow VT750 for a while, but I need to know how to drive before I can decide on a make/model.

That is where the Great Oaks comes in. They have a motorcycle safety program offering basic rider courses. Just sign up, get a temporary motorcycle license, and they provide the rest. So come June 9th I’ll be spending three weekends cruising a parking lot no doubt.

I finished helping my cousin do an engine swap at 1am last night. The F100 has had it’s carbureted 360 v8 swapped with an early 90’s straight six fuel injected engine with self managed EFI system. What was hilarious it the v8 was huge in dimension but the straight six completely surpassed the old engine in height. There is about a quarter of an inch or less of room between the engine and firewall. It’s insane, but man it’s in and rocking.  

Haven’t posted anything for a while, and my excuse is I’ve been pretty busy. Things are going well over on my side. The new job is proving to be a rush experience, but nothing unmanageable. Things are fast paced, but the environment is very friendly. I work with some nice equipment, and the only complaint so far, other than working with Clarence again, is that my desk faces the corner of the room. I think, given a dunce hat, I’d probably look like a scolded child nestled with my face in the corner, but at least I have two monitors and a computer looking back at me. I need one of those 180 degree mirrors to attach to my monitor so I can see what is going on behind me. I’m totally oblivious to people entering, or exiting the room.

On the personal front a lot of things are happening. Planning for a wedding, my mom had a skin cancer scare, my dad has a problem with his last remaining kidney not to mention just was diagnosed with diabetes, my aunt was in the hospital with a kidney stone, my cousin is building a new engine, and I’m just doing the new job thing.

I started on a new ambitious weight loss regiment that exceeds my haphazard approach previously. It seems to be paying off as I’ve lost 10 pounds this past week and a half. I just changed to diet pop, and I run 1.5 miles per day. My right leg that I had surgery on seems to be hanging in there but it’s still swollen for some reason. Saturday morning was the worst I’ve had to deal with it in a while as I woke up with leg pain. I go up and walked around and found my entire right leg felt like it had no power, and when I stepped down the knee felt like it was draining all of my energy from my body. It was the weirdest and somewhat painful experience I’ve had with it.

The Frisbee golf enthusiasm I’ve shared with others has netted the addition of at least one additional player and another joining next week. I may have even talked my cousin into joining the fun. So our group may be ever increasing, which is great since it’s a lot of fun to whoop their butts. Just kidding, but still I think I’m doing pretty good. I need to get my putting down and my mid range shots to stop overshooting the area.

I’ve been reading a lot of great books recently. Two robotics books, the new ASP.Net 3.5 books, work-flow books, communication foundation, Perl (learning it over), Unix administration (learning my new server), and odds and ends IEEE publications when they come in. I should probably lump the MAKE controller documentation and project into the mix since I’ve been toying with it the last week when I’m not sleeping/running.

I got the MAKE controller recently and it’s pretty neat. It’s not what I expected. No documentation was sent with the board whatsoever, and instructions on setup were hard to find on the community site. There was no step 1, step 2 documents and I didn’t realize you needed to install a ‘helper’ app to actually use it with the system. As a result I was confused and felt like the board was a cheapo pile until I started to get looking deeper into the community pages. It’s a pretty powerful little sucker, and it’s about the same size as my PIC Explorer board minus the more low-level capabilities. It’s worth getting if you ask me and it’s a bit easier to use as an intro to robotics than PIC programming boards, which you basically need a flashlight and PhD to get running right away.

Things are going well other than a few hiccups. The last two weeks working for Lucrum were a giant pain in the ass. Yes, I can freely say that. There was nobody to replace me, and when he was there we got only about 8 hours of actual hands-on training in before I left. My company wanted me to work extra hours to stay after to train him. The guy was in no mood to do anything after hours as he was still just coming off another project that was failing due to unaccounted requirements that slipped under the radar of the guy he had to replace because they too bailed from the company. Wow, what a cluster that had to be for him to come flying into the situation/client I was working at while still having to complete the other. All I can say was he was thrilled to take my spot since the client was one of the few he’s worked for that actually thought we were doing a great job, and was happy to have him coming in. So I’m thankful for that since he’s actually a very nice guy. However I turned down the additional side contract they offered because of the addendum of the 3-year non-compete clause that also included stipulation that if I work for a client/future client within the first year I owe them 30% of my first years total compensation within 30 days of violating the agreement. The agreement didn’t even really guarantee any actual additional work so I felt awfully dumb for almost signing it. I was approached after the company figured out I wasn’t responding to internal emails because my access was denied due to employment termination and I’ve promptly cut all ties. There were some unscrupulous activities by several of the higher-ups that have always left me uncomfortable and it feels good to be with a new company whose direction and leadership seems legitimate and earnest. I won’t go into detail about my points but needless to say I provided a brief overview to management before I left the previous company. I left on good terms, I got the client to accept the new guy replacing me, they were able to place additional work because of the reputation we built there, and I’ll just leave knowing I was very much appreciated by the client with the wonderful send off I received.

That’s about all I’ve got tonight. I’m going to hit the hay and start a new day that’s sure to be full of new problems and hopefully expedite solutions.

Tonight is big ambiguously gay outing with my step brother tonight, and tonight’s venue will be a nice play at the playhouse in the park. It’s a lot of fun going out with my ex-step brother because every time, and I mean every time we go out people think we’re gay. We went to the movies, and then to a really nice Italian restraint the waitress thought we were ‘together’. It didn’t help there was an actual gay couple behind us, and that I still look strikingly like I’m 17.

So we play around with peoples minds when they start to think that. My ex-step brother, whose back on the market, will play with the waitresses saying he’s not gay, and then I’ll thwart his attempt to make them believe otherwise by acting offended that he’s ashamed of me. It’s fantastic fun, but still kind of disheartening to think that I’m instantly pegged as being gay. I need to start keeping my fiancé around when I go out so people don’t get the wrong impression, but again who really cares? I enjoy hanging out with my ex-step brother and becoming more cultured.

Tonight the play is about a woman who becomes so sleep deprived she risks it all by traveling to Venice in search of a world renowned sleep therapist, and the adventures along the way. I’m anxiously looking forward to it. Plays are interesting, they get you out of your house, and you get to watch adults pretend to be other people. I imagine this, during the renaissance period, was very similar to going into a chat-room in today’s age pretending to be someone else.

Anyway, it’s still rainy as hell outside. I left my coat in my fiancés car when I went out for her birthday dinner, so needless to say I’ve been getting soaked going into work every morning. Unfortunately, it’s seemed to have caught up to me as I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather.

In interesting news I got an email from my long time estranged ex-fiancé, who is going through a divorce, and started to ask me about my life once more. The sad thing was she also mentioned she’s been giving elusions to the movie with Julia Roberts called ‘My best friends wedding’, and I’m assuming this can only mean she is trying to come back in her own weird way. She’s now a mother of three, from two different men, and now a divorcée who is pregnant with her fourth child. No thanks. I’ve only recently started to manage a normal life and I really am not interested in going back to an emotionally chaotic relationship with someone whose loyalty is only as strong as the inverse ration to her own libido. Not to mention someone who’s vindictive, manipulating, and did I mention the kids? I’ve got nothing against her now, but really have a hard time believing I lived in Las Vegas near her for all that hassle. I had to rant about it.

Today is another interesting day because here at my client site two long term IT professionals have decided to leave. They’ve been working here upwards of eighteen years and are leaving the company. There is a lot of that going on around here with layoffs, early retirements, and the influx of new contractors. They’re in a state of turmoil with the industry going south, economy, and the general lack of stability in the company as a whole. I wish everyone here luck. I can easily say this is the most fantastic group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. I feel like I’ve been here a long time, and almost feel at home among everyone who works here.

On another front I have surgery in t-minus four days. We’ll see how that turns out.

On a sports note my target practice skills are becoming more tuned. This past weekend after going to the Bill Goodman’s Gun and Knife show my girlfriend, and another friend of mine went down to the local target range. I should note that there were actually more interesting knives there this time. Really, most of the knives there are just your generic pocket knife displayed for a solid isle. I’m not sure I’d consider them the most interesting, or even really the attraction of the show.

At the show you’ve got your main varieties of hand guns, naturally overpriced, or only about ten dollars cheaper than retail. That’s cheaper before you take into account the two to four percent charge on credit card/debit purchases, and tax. So really you end up losing out on a good price when you can’t even factor that the gun is probably used, well really, is used. The attraction, at least for me, is the assault rifles, and variety of old time weapons. I particularly love the M1 rifles, the selection of very nice gas powered shot guns, or my favorite the AK/SKS/AR selections. Let us not forget the mounds and mounds, and boxes and boxes of ammo that they’re selling there. I picked up over 440 rounds of silver tipped 7.62x54mm rounds for 90$. The cheapest they have at the stores is about 13$ for 32 pack. So do the math on that one, and you’ll see I did indeed get a deal. Now only if I could figure out how to open the sealed case of ammo. Hrm.

Anyway, the point is I went down to the target range with my friends. While there I finally figured out exactly where the bullets are lining up against. I’ve had problems with them going low and to the left. By left I mean I’d aim dead center of the targets head, and they’d carry over to the ear. I’d have a consistent grouping at the ear, but I’ve finally got the hang of where, and how to move the gun to get the bullets where I want them to be. I’m consistently hitting the same areas, with a few exceptions for hasty shots, or of course the gangster rapid fire side ways firing. That’s just fun for giggles. For anyone who hasn’t tried it I’d recommend going out to the target range and try firing down range for a while. You may think you’d get bored easily but an hour just whips by like nobodies business.

In other news my Microchip.com Explorer 16 board arrived this past Friday. I’ve been anxiously awaiting its arrival since early part of January. Dang delays, but it’s finally here. It’s pretty nice too, has some LED’s on it, and to my surprise a fairly large LCD display on it. I was even more excited when I saw that because a friend of mine has a similar more dated version and it does not have previously mentioned LCD display.

I’ve been reading the manuals that came with the board, shoot I’ve spent more time reading the manuals than I have doing anything with it. I figure at this point I’ve got the idea behind the timer controls, and could probably finagle a rudimentarily timing mechanism for say, a clock, a cooking timer, or bomb. You know, whatever I feel like cooking up. Bomb was a joke people… (Looks around for FBI) There is so much to learn, and I’ve been cracking open the books on machine learning. I’m not sure where my end goal is going to be but I’m trying to absorb as much knowledge on these subjects as possible with the intention of playing with some robot ideas we’ve been tinkering with. I wish I had more spare time to actually realize these ideas in a more solid foundation of learning than having to spend what moments I have available looking through books from 11pm till 1am each night. Makes getting up in the morning that much more difficult.

I saw a report on CNN the other day bout a sentry bot, well remote controlled bot that they’re sending into dark alleys. The bot itself contains a loud speaker, spot light, and water canon that it sprays individuals with. Other than being remote controlled the idea is pretty fascinating. I think it’d be neat to build a radio controlled car that can be remotely controlled from say, my room, through my computer, with camera mounted equipment. Perhaps build something like the UAV’s for the military but on a civilian scale, and build up from there.

May be a pipe dream but I’ve always been fascinated by the concept, well that and space, but the idea still remains that I should be able to build something reasonably cheat to fill my shoots and giggles.

I’ll keep everyone posted, maybe with pictures of things to come.

Yesterday was pretty darn eventful. I woke up pretty early considering it was a Saturday, and was up at 8:30. After a quick shower I found myself hanging around the PC playing with Visual Studio 2008, and caught my eye of my free movie tickets. I decided that it was a good time to check out the movies playing, and wow, nothing good playing at all. That’s when my eye caught “Juno”, and I’ve been wanting to see that movie for a long time. Shoot, I was glad it was still playing. I called a friend of mine and suggested that we both go see the movie since my girlfriend was off at work. Since the movie was still a few hours off we decided to hang out for a little while.

Ended up sitting in his room chatting about a screen play that he’s writing, and I gave some feedback regarding one of the characters that’s loosely based on me. Then for some reason we decided to see who could extend the tape measure the longest before the tape snapped and dropped to the floor. My buddy got 106” and I unfortunately only managed to get it out 104” before it snapped falling to the floor.

My buddy showed me a new trick he had with his pistol with how he can flip a bullet from the chamber into the air catching it. That’s when I remembered overhearing that the Bill Goodman’s gun and knife show was that day and today from 9 to 5. My girlfriend just happened to call at that exact same moment, and when I mentioned it to her both my buddy and her said we were definnitly going. An hour later we were at the show ogling the guns, ammo, and the knives. Honestly the place was not exactly what I thought it would be. A little small, not many interesting knives (they need swords), and the guns were pretty good for the offerings. I’ve been wanting an AK-47, or an AK-74 for the longest time. They really didn’t have much other than a few SKS, shot guns, and some MR rifles.

That’s when I saw it. Sitting there at the booth farthest towards the back of the show, the gun of my dreams. The rifle was sitting there with bright wood hand grips, long range rifle barrel, and very much resembling an AK rifle. There sat the FPK Dragunov Romanian sniper rifle. I tried to make myself walk away, actually did a few times, circled the place, but ended up coming back half an hour before the show ended. Long story short I picked up the rifle as an extremely reasonable price, and today it sits in my room waiting to be taken out to a friend’s farm. I am now the happy owner of my very own sniper rifle, and I plan to take full advantage of it’s ability to pick off targets long range. You can see a picture of it from the link below.

http://www.dragunov.net/romanian_psl.html

Yes indeed I got me one of them PIC boards. I bought a book recently to get myself up to par with a friend whom is deeply engaged in embedded programming. I’m going to work with my friend off and on for the next undetermined period of time on a robotics project. So in order to get my knowledge level up to his I’ve been trying to train myself programming in C, and programming embedded systems. I’ve actually found myself giggling while reading the C programming books because they were written (most of them) well before I was born. The one I was reading last night was published in 83’ and referred to the ANSI standard as the assumed standard that may or may not be adopted in 87’. It’s like a mini trip back in time with these books, but it seems anymore I’ve started very high level then started moving backwards.

Anyway, got off topic there, but I bought a PIC programming board, two microprocessors, and the devices required to flash the software to the MCU. Using my UC email address I secured myself a nice little 25% off instant discount, and am expecting the device to arrive sometime in the next three weeks.

On a personal note it’s getting closer to Valentines day the corporate day of the year that men (and maybe lesbians) are forced to bestow gifts upon their loved ones. Should we fail in this bestowment of goodies to the womenfolk there is often a swift and unjust punishment. Both that and they cry, and if they cry you don’t want that model because her seals are cracked (not to mention her brain.)

So again, this year like all the rest, I’m stuck trying to figure out what to get her. I think last year she got me things, and I got her a strange look on my face. I’m never a good person to ask about when important dates happen. I forget my own birthday most years.

Ugh, I’m very stressed out at work. I have one application I’ve been re-writing for the last month. It’s take a long time to get it to work well. Yesterday was the point to which I’ve completely gutted and re-wrote the entire application. I deleted the last comment/code piece written by the previous developer. I’ve had to do that with a lot of his programs. I was originally brought on in order to finish these projects with a final debug. Ha, final debug in that the thing was finally put to rest and a new one born from my code. New programmers have a lot to learn, and unfortunately companies not properly training them just lets them learn on their own through trial and error. Usually the error is what happens when they run these programs, and when the people leave the company is left to suffer through. I’ve had to re-write five applications thus far with more coming. I’m still working on the project I was brought on to finish before January, but due to in-development on the full blown system I’m stuck in the holding line. We’re working hard to get this pushed out. The other four apps build on top of the output generated from the main application, which the business actually runs on. So for the moment I generate output from the main app, hand off the data files, another guy takes them into Excel, and formats the output. From there it goes off for use in production assembly. So we’re trying to get the main app published, and I’m building the four other applications that present the data to users instead of Excel sheets. These other programs facilitate change in the business flow, and allow the user to make on the fly changes to the information instead of submitting a mocked up Excel document. Anyway, still working so I’d better get back because my test case is just about finished.