Spring Break Day 1

Saturday, JP, the boys, and the dog headed east to Illinois for spring break.  I stayed behind due to a lack of vacation this year.  What is someone like me supposed to do without a family for a few days?

By 10:00 (am), I had my PIC microcontroller reading and writing to a FAT-16 SD card.  This has been my project for the last week.  I now know how and basically understand how to interface a $5 computer-on-a-chip to a 2-GB SD memory card.  This opens up a whole new world for me at work.  We will be able to build our own data loggers to attach to mowers that go into the real world (instead of paying $1,000 each, we will be able to build them for $50).

OK, now my weekend project is done, now what?  Clean the garage, of course.

Today was absolutely beautiful.  I still have more to do on the microcontroller project, but I could not sit in front of the computer any longer.  The sun was out and the wind was not.  I started to sweep out the salt & gravel that accumulated in the garage over the winter, when GT stopped by.  He offered his pressure washer to do the floor, and I gladly accepted.  After emptying the entire garage, I spent an hour pressure-washing the floor.  Sadly, the oil stains under the mower did not come up, but everything else looks great.

OK, so now everything in the garage is sitting out on the driveway, like one out of three houses today, so what next?  

Time to paint the bare drywall.

JP is notorious about single-using painting equipment.  I searched for an hour for a paint brush.  I could have gone to Home Depot, but I didn't want to leave the entire garage outside by itself.  I finally found a brush and dipped into the remains of a 5-gallon bucket of the beautiful beige paint that our builder used when the house was built 4 years ago.  It looks, smells like, and even tastes like paint, so it must still be OK.  By the time I finished trimming, the floor had dried enough to bring everything back in.  I hit the Home Depot for a $2.27 paint roller and tray combo (made in the USA) and finished up the walls.  Niiiice.

After painting, I hit up JO'N to go to Riverside, IA, for James T. Kirk's future birthday tomorrow, but he claimed that he needed more notice.  Maybe next year...

I had the dinner of the gods: fish sticks & beer and watched two of the best movies ever made: TCM 1 & 2.  What lies ahead for Day 2?

Spring equinox:  nice sunset.