Ted's Blog

Last year, I wound up in an eBay dispute with a seller who was eventually banned (read it here). This time I was looking for some heavy duty leads for my voltmeter (really a Digital Multimeter or DMM). The problem is I was getting bad readings of amps on my voltage meter while measuring the current draw of a flashlight. After comparing the result to a friend's DMM, I knew mine was off. His meter had thick leads and the wire said AWG18 on them. If I used his leads on my meter, I got more reasonable results. The leads on my other DMM (which doesn't measure current) say AWG26 and look similar to the ones on the DMM that measures amps. 18 gauge wire is 1.024mm thick while 26 gauge wire is only 0.405mm thick. But the area of the 18 gauge wire is 6 times greater. Therefore the resistance in the skinnier wire is 6 times more than in the thicker wire and that is what was messing up the readings.

So I went looking for leads. After doing some searching I found two sources: eBay and DealExtreme (the place I buy a lot of flashlights). Both sets looked identical, with gray probes described as 10 Amp leads.

Continue reading "eBay Dispute Avoided" »

Posted by Ted at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) |

I think Carol told me that some dogs like green beans. Austin has been eating grass lately, so I figured maybe some green vegetables would do him good. I was at the grocery store and they had Green Giant green beans on sale.They had "kitchen sliced" (1/2 inch cut) green beans, french style (kind of shredded, those French really know how to get the most of their canned green beans!), and eventually I found the regular old cut green beans. They are all the same vegetable! They are just cut differently. Why are so many types of green beans necessary? Then they also had low sodium green beans, but I'm thinking Austin would appreciate the salt.

It turns out Austin isn't crazy about green beans and Katie, of course, will have nothing to do with them. Austin still has a couple of favorite patches of crab grass that he will graze on during walks.

Posted by Ted at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

It had been a while since I have tried to upgrade the MyBB software for my bulletin board. They just released a major upgrade, so it was important to get up-to-date (I think). Here's what I needed to do:

First, shut the bulletin board down temporarily.

Second, backup all the files. There is a control panel that lets me download a backup file, but I can also do a backup to the server, which I think would work better. Best to do both. Also it is best to download copies of settings.php and config.php in the inc folder, just to be safe.

Download the software. I thought there was a way to do this through cPanel, but maybe not. Instead I just downloaded it to my hard drive and then uploaded to the forum folder. Fortunately, myBB is very, very small, only about a megabyte.

Using cPanel's File Manager, extract the installation file into a temp folder. Then, using File Manager again (my FTP software wouldn't do this because it won't overwrite directories with files in them), copy all of the files in the temp/upload folder into the mybb folder, overwriting just about everything.

Now set some of the file permissions per the instructions

Now, in a web browser, go to the forum URL /install/upgrade.php and follow the instructions.

Clean up. Delete the install folder, the zip file, and the temp folder. Reset permissions on config and settings to 666.

Posted by Ted at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

At work we use these really old programs written in the early 80's to take input and create drawings that we use on our plans. This was seriously cutting edge technology back in the day, using Fortran programs to create electronic files. Over the years the company that makes the drafting software has made a lot of changes and we kept paying consultants to update our programs so they would still work. The guy who originally wrote the programs went on to other things, not least of which was becoming second in charge of our agency before leaving to become a consultant.

Continue reading "I Made a Wiki" »

Posted by Ted at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) |

Last year when Jeb and I went to Six Flags we were able to ride most of the rides with fairly short lines until after lunch, but we still got in everything we wanted and maybe then some. This year Bob, Andrew, and David wanted to go. Figuring that it wouldn't be as crowded during the week, they picked Wednesday. I bought tickets online with Bob's credit card and printed them out and then met at one of my work's branch offices out that way so I wouldn't have to pay parking and they wouldn't have to come pick me up. The plan was to meet at 10:00 and we met that within a few minutes, which means Bob did a great job of getting the boys moving first thing in the morning. We got to the park and in the front gate at about 10:20, which was fine since the park wouldn't even open officially until 10:30. As we sweltered in the sun waiting to get entrance to the rest of the park, I said "Man, it's going to be hot today." I eventually said this so many times that Bob had to tell me "You're not helping." Everybody already had sunscreen on and I had drunk a big cup of water on the way out, so our first ride we took was to the bathroom (no line!).

Continue reading "Six Flags Strikes Back" »

Posted by Ted at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Saturday I went up to Big Canoe to visit Mom, Carol, Bob, David, and Andrew who are staying all week as well as Jeb, Kathy, Kelly, and Claire who were just staying the weekend. But first I went straight to the zoo where it was announced this week that a baby giraffe was born. At least that's when I heard about it in the AJC, but actually it happened on July 13. In the wild, giraffes have to be able to walk pretty quickly or they will be eaten. So they come out pretty big already, and this "baby" is already six feet tall. It's amazing they survive at all given the drop from the mother which is also six feet.

Continue reading "Giraffes and Big Canoe" »

Posted by Ted at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) |

This morning I went to the post office to get 2 stamps for my last two letters to Nicole before she leaves her site. My post office isn't open on Saturdays (they've never been open on Saturdays, but I'm sure they don't have the budget for it), so the only time I can get stamps is first thing in the morning on my way to work, though I have to be a little late to work since the post office doesn't open until 8:30. I went in this morning and spent 15 minutes in line, stuck behind one guy with 2 packages and then a woman signing up for a P.O. box. I was still third in line and they lady was still doing the paperwork for her P.O. box when I gave up. They only had one register open, probably because of budget cuts. I have been there before when they had more than one register open. To his credit, the guy at that register is one of the nicest people ever, but they need to open more registers or provide some kind of vending machine for basic stuff like stamps. But they did away with the vending machines years ago, no doubt to cut costs. I liked the vending machines because they were open any time and I could make a big dent in my supply of spare change buying $8 worth of stamps. But the post office has now cut their budget so much that they really are no longer effective, at least in terms of having a store front. Anyway, this is the second time out of the last few visits where the time I was spending in line made no sense relative to what I was getting and I wound up leaving. So I will just e-mail until she comes back. I can get regular stamps at the grocery store and otherwise can hopefully avoid the post office.

Posted by Ted at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) |

Some years ago, Susan asked me to get her a crème brûlée kit for her birthday or Christmas. It had some custard mix, four little ramekins, and a butane-powered kitchen torch along with a can of butane to refill the torch. The torch was very impressive and some of you may have seen it when I took it to Anna Maria one year to light cigars. It had all the menacing danger of a blowtorch, but smaller and cuter.

I don't know how I started looking for lighters at DealExtreme, the Chinese website where I get a lot of flashlight stuff, but I found out they have jet torches that are lighters. I don't smoke, so I didn't realize they also have those in stores here too. I found one that got positive reviews and was less than $3, including shipping. I figured I couldn't afford not to buy it. They include just enough butane to make sure it works, so when I got it, I got maybe 2 seconds of flame.

Continue reading "Jet Torch Lighter" »

Posted by Ted at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) |

This morning as we were getting back from our walk, Austin sniffed around in the thicket in my front yard that may have once been a pine island. There were these big fat blackberries and most of them were ripe. I've never seen such perfect wild blackberries. They were round spheres of fat individual drupelets (this is the correct term which I just learned from Wikipedia), like plump little soccer balls. I had about 10 or so and they tasted good (though I don't like the seeds in blackberries). I did not eat the lower growing ones in Austin's range.

Posted by Ted at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Reviewer's Overall Rating: ***

Summary:

Pros:

• Bright
• Cheap
• Mode memory works well
• Nice Low

Cons:

• Under-driven
• Dark donut hole in beam
• Current not well-regulated
• Whines on medium
• Host can't handle heat

Continue reading "Ultrafire WF-501B with MC-E Drop-in" »

Posted by Ted at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |