You want to improve this country? Let’s re-introduce a concept that seems to have disappeared: Competence.

I’m not talking about Above Average. I’m not talking Rock Star. I’m not talking Genius. I just want simple competence.

• I get my medicines in the mail. Every piece of paper has my new address, which is the only address I put on the paperwork, EXCEPT the refill order form, which has my old address. (Weeks after I updated my address with the insurance carrier.) How is this possible?
• Of course, Mrs Nelson, we cancelled the cable for the old address. You won’t get any more bills. What do I get? A charge on my credit card and a new bill — still going to the old address.
• The postal service which seems to believe that they only have to forward about 20% of my mail. First class letter? Maybe it will be forwarded, maybe not. Magazines? About 30% forwarded, the rest in limbo.
• Speaking of addresses, I did 90% of my changes on 12/6. I’m still getting magazines to the old place. Do they really have this stuff bound and labeled 45 days in advance? Why does it take “8 to 10 weeks” for the change to take effect? Why does the USPS stop forwarding magazines after 8 weeks when the magazines themselves can’t switch over that fast?
• Updated equipment insurance policy with new address. Get new policy at old address.
• Get refund check for homeowners policy. No reason attached. Did they cancel instead of changing address? Another call to make.
• My insurance login for my Illinois policy goes to my old Texas policy. Another call. And because of HIPAA, I’ve got to sit on the phone so that a male voice can recite my birthdate. That’s security! (HIPAA, like SOX, is nothing but make-work and time-wasting.)
• After three years I finally change one of my unused credit cards from my parent’s address to our new one. I spend, literally, a half hour setting up the online account. A week later I get a letter in the mail that the account has been closed due to inactivity.
• I sign up for paperless auto-deductions for a charity. Every month I get a statement thanking me for my donation, a letter, and an envelope. So much for my funds being used well.
• We need to swap out your power meter, but will give you no notice at all. Need to schedule a time? Well, that will put you on a three month waiting list, and even then we can only tell you that it will happen “within two days” — no time, just “it will happen sometime”.

The really scary thing? This isn’t a collection of things over a long period of time. This is a collection of fuckups from the last month alone! And I’m sure I’m leaving out a bunch that I’ve tried to forget.

Update: Evelyn is at the cable company now, and they swear up and down that they didn’t charge us, even though Evelyn is holding a printout from the AMEX site showing the charge.

I give up.

Does anyone realize how much work this is going to take?

Speeches are fine and all. Having a black president is a refreshing change. And not having a leader who stumbles over three-syllable words will take a little getting used to.

The galas are over. The inauguration is done. Now we have to take those whispy ideas of “change” and “hope” and actually DO something about them. That’s the very hard part, and that’s the part where we risk utter failure. Strategy is all well and good, but tactical execution is what gets things done, and I’ve yet to see any tactics which would prove workable and successful.

I hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I hope we turn from a society of consumers into a society of makers — that’s what Evelyn and I are trying to do.

But I’m not optimistic. Big government works as well as big business — it doesn’t.

We talk about “fostering small business” on one hand, and on the other make the paperwork almost insurmountable. We talk about people “making things” and on the other hand inact laws making it impossible for a small business to create childrens toys and clothes. (If you haven’t been following it, take a look at the Handmade Toy Alliance.)

That fucking lead law is a death knell for all but the biggest businesses and yet another example of how knee-jerk reactions are always, always, always wrong. It’s also a major reason why Evelyn and I can not longer target any of our projects to children — which is exactly the group whom we wanted to help — who need the help! As a small business we can’t afford to certify that our products are lead free, especially when so many electronics (even a simple switch) contain lead. I don’t want kids getting sick, but come on, we can’t live in a bubble. Because when you live in a bubble you never learn.

You want to build up this country again? Exempt small businesses from a wide range of reporting requirements. This means annual tax payments instead of monthly–or no taxes at all for profits under $100K. This means a streamlined business startup process. This means realizing that a million lead-lined toys from China is fundamentally different from a dozen handmade wooden blocks made in someones basement.

Isn’t it ironic that we are always touting the “guys who started in their garage” — and yet make it nearly impossible for a new startup to exist in the current environment.

I was up in Chicago this past week for work (quarterly meeting) and was able to re-affirm, yet again, why I no longer live there. The foot of snow on the ground was bad enough, but the temperatures are what made it quite delightful. The high on Friday was about zero.

Other than the awful weather, which really didn’t bother me all that much (knowing that I’d be gone in a couple of days), things went fine. Work was especially busy, with meetings, emergency code pushes, and other assorted fun.

The ‘highlight’ of my trip was when I fell at the train station on Thursday evening. I slipped on a nice section of unsalted parking lot. There was enough time for me to say “Oh, Fuck!” but that’s about it. I landed on my right wrist and elbow and was close to dislocating my right shoulder (my bag helped cushion my fall, but a side effect was that it pushed my arm up in a weird way). For those of you who don’t know, I’ve had surgery on my right wrist before, and I’ve a couple of pins in my right shoulder, so falling on that side risked ripping out a lot of surgeries.

I stayed home the next day, and found that I’d screwed up my left leg in a bad way. I don’t recall landing on it; maybe my leg twisted back or something. Anyhow, I’ve got some killer pain in my left thigh and was getting a series of charley horses in my entire left leg. (I’ve had them in my calves before, but never my thigh.) Still have them today, so I’ll probably need to go to the doc and have them check it out. All in all, I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train. My wrist seems fine, and my arm is sore, but my leg is killing me.

The flight back went okay. There was no one at the curbside check-in and two people ahead of me in the security lines. Probably the fastest I’ve ever gone through at Midway; about 15 minutes total. It would have been faster if the doofus couple in front of me read the signs and stayed the hell out of the “Experienced Passenger” line. I scowled enough, so they got out of the way eventually. Do us all a favor: If you don’t know what the fuck you are doing, stay the hell out of the line that’s dedicated for people who do know what the fuck they are doing. Just because you have a $500 piece of luggage does not make you experienced.

Anyhow, while security went like a breeze, the gates were a nightmare. Delayed flight after delayed flight. People sitting on the floors, people yelling, a lot of anger. In other words, a typical Chicago day. My gate, fortunately, is nearly always at the far end, so there was plenty of seating. On the dowside, the previous flight using our gate was delayed, and our aircraft was delayed, so we ended up being about 45 minutes late on departure. Not all that bad, I guess. 

Once in the air, the flight was fine. About 1/2 full, so I was able to take my customary seat all the way in the back and had the row to myself. I always sit all the way back because (a) people hate sitting in the back, and (b) I hate people. Also, since I check luggage, there’s no point in rushing out anyway. You’ll just end up sitting at the baggage area. Call me crazy, but I’d rather wait a little longer to get off the plane, and have an empty row, than be stuffed in the front next to a gazillion other coughing, yabbering, people.

Austin is fine. A little overcast today, but it’s in the fifties. “Cool” for Austin, but 50 degrees warmer than Chicago was yesterday. And it will be in the 70s next week.

Today I’ll mainly be resting and hoping that my leg gets better. Maybe do a little puttering around the house. We’ll see.

Look to the skys, if you have a clear night. Another big full moon tonight.

Biggest Full Moon Of 2009

While making a new recipe today (Carne Adovada — a New Mexican Pork Chili), I was again reminded of how much I love Immersion Blenders.

Now, those of you who know me know that I hate having one-hit-wonders in the kitchen. Only a very very few electric appliances get into my kitchen, and the Immersion (or “stick”) Blender is one of them. I’m also very very demanding of my tools, meaning I don’t tolerate cheap shit, and the stuff I buy is in it for the long haul.

Back to the Carne Adovada: This is chunks of browned pork shoulder put into a chili-based sauce. You make the sauce with onions, spices, broth, chipotle, garlic, etc. Here’s the part of the recipe that pissed me off:

Working in 2 batches, transfer mixture to blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Return sauce to pot.

So, here you are: You have a cast iron dutch oven with 3 cups of boiling liquid and veggies and spices. They want you to pour half of that into a fucking blender, and then retun it to the pot. But you have to do two batches (too much liquid for the blender), so you have to get another bowl, too.

I get pissed by that because tasks like pouring boiling liquids into a tippy blender is exactly the thing that will stop a home cook from making something. Heck, it stops me, and I’ve followed that technique many times in the past. But no more.

Enter the Immersion Blender. Fuck the regular blender (can you tell I don’t like blenders?). Fuck scalding yourself and dirtying even more equipment. Pull out your Immersion Blender, stick it in the hot pot on the stove, and blend until smooth. Simplicity itself, and so much safer. It took me all of two minutes to do what would have been a dangerous 10 minute ordeal. I do the same thing for my Coquito (Puerto Rican Egg Nog) recipe — it’s SO much easier and less messy.

I’ve had a couple of these gadgets in the past. I think a Braun and maybe a Cuisinart (love their food processors, not quite so sure about their other stuff). One never worked properly and the other died after one fall on the kitchen floor. Unacceptable. So, I went back to a brand that does a pretty darn good job of making things: KitchenAid.

My current (red in color, on clearance) KitchenAid Immersion Blender is, by far, the best one I’ve owned. It’s rock solid, has 9 speeds, detachable tip, and so on. It’s just built right, and has never, ever, bogged down. (There are battery powered devices out there, but I prefer dealing with the cord and having the power.) Like my 20 year old Pro Line Mixer, this one will be around for a while (and yes, it’s been dropped).

It makes purees easy. Stick the damn thing in the pot, turn it on, move it around, unclip the blade end, rinse to clean, and you are done. Except for making margaritas, which I don’t drink, this kind of device can handle just about everything that a regular blender would. If you cook seriously, you need one right next to your stand mixer and your food processor.

Evelyn finished up the Peggy yesterday. All 625 LEDs are in and soldered — that’s 1250 solder joints.

The method of gluing them to the board with the construction adhesive worked out pretty well. Here’s Evelyn checking on the final board.

All of those LEDs are really remarkably heavy. We’re going to have to mount the PCB to a piece of wood, otherwise it risks flexing too much and cracking. That’s okay, though, since we were planning on mounting it under a glass-topped table, and having the wood will make it easier to mount.

Next up, programming all those LEDs.

On Saturday afternoon I started working on the Meggy Jr RGB kit. When assembled it turns into a portable game platform which you can code to. It’s about the same size as the original Game Boy Advance and uses an 8×8 RGB LED matrix. Here is the final assembly, with optional acrylic cover.

It will take about two hours for an experienced kit builder to put together. What you don’t see, under the LED matrix, are a handful of transistors, the two LED driver chips, and some other components (caps, resistors, etc). Those parts probably take the most amount of time, due to the number of pins involved, and the fact that you have to bend back the transistors (like the one in the upper left of the photo).

Toward the upper right is the Atmel ATMEGA168, with an Arduino bootloader (I believe). This allows you to program the system just like any other Arduino board, which is really cool. They even provide some libraries for making interaction with the RGB matrix easier. I haven’t tried coding anything yet, but it’s a big plus for this system. (That header to the upper-right is where you connect your programming cable.)

A couple of hints for those considering this kit:

• Get the acrylic cover kit. It makes for a much more usable final product. If you don’t have a cover you’ll be poking yourself on the solder points. The cover does both the front and back (the 3 AAA battery pack velcros to center back of kit).
• Be careful when installing the upper yellow LEDs. They must be perfectly aligned to fit into the cover. I had to desolder many of them, fit the cover, and then resolder. It’s probably a good idea to test-fit the cover over those LEDs while you are installing them. (While you still have the protective paper on the acrylic.
• There is a big fat electrolytic capacitor under the LED matix, right below the left yellow LEDs at the top. It is a huge pain the in ass, as it butts into the bottom of the matix, making it harder to install. It’s also right near another cap, making it harder to shift around. Do yourself a favor and give it some “slack” when installing it; or don’t solder both leads until the matix is in place. It’s a very tight fit and I hope that V2 uses either a different cap, or a different placement. Away from the edge would be better.

Again, the matix is RGB, so you can get almost any color you want, per LED. Here is what the POST looks like:

Hopefully I’ll have some time in the near future to write some games or other programs for it.

On the Peggy front, 200 LEDs installed … 400 to go.

My recommendation on this one is get some construction adhesive (I use Loctite PowerGrab, in the pressurized can) and put a dab on each LED, then seat the LED. Let a batch dry, flip, solder, and repeat. Some of them will fall out (if you don’t use enough adhesive) but it’s easier than trying to hold onto the LED while soldering it. If you insert, bend leads, solder, repeat, it will take forever. Try to do big batches at once.

You want to know the best way to help get our country out of a funk? Spend money on small businesses. Small businesses create an inordinate number of jobs in this country. Plus, they foster innovation. Take the folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Among a lot of other stuff, they produce some really really cool kits. They are the people who created the gigantic Peggy. After some back and forth, Evelyn and I decided to populate our Peggy with a bunch of white LEDs. So, here comes project #1:

That bag you see is 640 white LEDs. All those suckers will need to be soldered into the Peggy below. Once ‘she’ is populated, we can program Peggy to do all sorts of stuff. Static signs, animation, games, or whatever. We’re going to mount Peggy into a glass-topped table that Evelyn garbage picked. What people will throw away!

At the 2008 Maker Faire in Austin Evelyn met Wendell, who heads up the Evil deeds. He was showing off their newest kit, the Meggy Jr RGB. This is a DIY game system, in a Game Boy Advance form-factor. Here is the box containing the kit:

Now keep in mind, these are people with no staff, creating kits and projects. I’m always impressed by how well done their stuff is. A nice box, cool labels, and so on. Very professional.

Opening the box you see the kit itself.

Look at this work! The parts are in carefully labeled bags. The PCB looks fantastic. This kit even includes a laser cut (?) acrylic faceplate. Even the printed manual looks cool, with a nice little binder clip. 

What many people don’t realize is how much time and energy it takes to produce such a well presented kit. These aren’t people who have a $700 billion bailout to do their work. These are hard working people,  like all of us, who are trying to create a business. 

If you are looking for cool electronics kits that support hard working people, then take a look at the stuff the Lady Ada, Evil Mad Science, and so many more.

Say hello to my stove, which I have called Diablo, along with a batch of low-cal Oatmeal Cookies.

Why Diablo? Because I learned very quickly that this crazy Tappan has burners linked to HELL ITSELF.

They look like normal burners. Not sealed. Not big. Not fancy. But hot as Hell itself. Boiling water is a joy. Stir frys? Simplicity. Cooking? Not for amateurs. You have three settings: Hell, Hot, and Simmer. I love it.

In addition, it has a griddle in the middle, which is great for pancakes, keeping things warm, etc. The oven, which we used today, seems pretty solid, too. (Thank you Evelyn for giving it a well deserved cleaning.)

It also has my Favorite Timer. It has the “one minute warning” like many, but when it does go off it doesn’t pester you. Beep, beep beep. Wait 15 seconds, Beep. And repeat. Exactly how timers should behave.

God knows what my gas bill is going to be, but I love this stove.