My Grandma and Father Joe

I am currently in western New York visiting family. I have seen over a dozen cousins (first cousins once removed and some second cousins), four great aunts/uncles, and some other assorted people.

However, the main part of the trip is to check on my grandma. She is 93 years old and having problems associated with getting older. Her memory is starting to fail. It seems like it is only short term things, but we are concerned it could become (or already is) more serious. We have to stop her from driving. A couple of weeks ago the priest at her church called us to say she almost ran someone over. My parents are trying to take her car away without directly saying "You can't drive." She lives alone, so we are telling her she needs to start wearing a medical alert pendent. This way, if she falls, she can use it to call for help. We set this up even before she told us that last month she fell and an ambulance had to take her to the emergency room. We want her to live in her house as long as possible. She has lived in the same house since she was 5 years old.

These are unfortunate things that happen as people get older. All we can do is deal with them.

However, during this trip I have seen something worse than getting older. It is being healthy and wasting your life. While my grandma is running around and doing as many things as her energy level and body will let her do, reasonably healthy and much younger people are sleeping the day away or spending it looking at little screens. There are people in the neighborhood who will sit on their porch and gossip all day.

My Grandpa Joe
Now I need a happier topic. I never knew my grandpa Joe. He died while my mom was a teenager. However, all accounts say he was a character. This is the story of how he got his nickname of "Father Joe."

One day my grandpa Joe and his friends went to a bar. The staff was not coming around to take their order. Since they were waiting a long time and were tired of being ignored, one of my grandpa's friends looked at him and said rather loudly "Father Joe, what will you be having?" When the staff overhead this, they thought he was a priest and immediately started paying attention to his group. After that the name stuck. Anytime he was with his friends, they called him Father Joe.

I recently saw the family of one my grandpa's best friends, Frank. His family would take trips with my grandpa and do a lot of things together. While Frank is deceased, his wife and all of his children knew my grandma, grandpa, and mom when they were growing up. All of these people think my grandpa is one of the greatest people ever. I heard more than once, "Father Joe was the best."

For example, Father Joe taught a couple of them how to drive. When they were old enough, their actual father Frank started to teach them how to drive. However, he did not have the patience to keep teaching them so he stopped. When Father Joe heard this, he took it upon himself to teach them. He did not give up until they could successfully drive.

Baseball, milling, and a form

In the last few weeks I have been to two baseball games. I have not been to a baseball game in two years, so I wanted to go to one at some point this summer.

For the first game I saw the Angeles play the Kansas City Royals. I was joined by James, who is a devoted fan of baseball. However, the Angeles lost.

The second game was on Friday. The Dodgers decisively beat the Cubs. It was also Star Trek night at Dodger Stadium. This involved William Shatner throwing out the first pitch and reading the Dodger's lineup. There were also fireworks after the game set to music from Star Trek. I sat in the free food pavilion. This is an area in the stadium where the price of the ticket includes as many Dodger Dogs, soda drinks, nachos, peanuts, and popcorn as you can get. While I ate three Dodger Dogs, it looked like most of the people around me ate even more food. I got the ticket and saw the game with my friend Andrew, who I know from a mutual friend from high school.

Friday was also an Andrew double play. Earlier that day I saw the Andrew I know from college who had just finished law school and the bar exam. He is currently living in Los Angeles, but will be moving home to Orange County at the end of the month. Since I was volunteering in the city, we met at Philippe's. Andrew explained that is the place he always ate at after he went to the shooting range nearby.

Earlier that day the excitement continued at my volunteer workplace. I wrote G-code to mill a box for a circuit board. I wrote the code from nothing and after some testing I had a complete program. I did not have time to run the final version, but I am confident it will produce a successful final product. My program even finds the exact position of the part to within a thousandth of an inch. It then calibrates its motions so the cutting is perfectly centered without any subsequent user adjustments.

The oddest thing I did last weekend was make changes to a health care form. My friend's wife works for an insurance company. Her boss asked her to make some changes to an application form. However, she has no experience with forms or with advanced features of Word. Since she knows I am good at computer stuff, she asked for my help. After trying to add features like drop down menus in Word, I decided it would be easier to migrate the form to pdf. In case you do not know, moving a file with boxes and a lot of formatting from Word to an Adobe format is a disaster. It rendered one straight line as a dozen distinct line segments that were not in a straight line. It also made one long shading box into many rectangles. It was a lot harder than it should have been and Adobe Designer does not have layers. I added fillable fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop down menus. After some feedback and several hours of work, it looked a lot better.

CNC Machining and Mold Making

Through my volunteer worker job with the City of Los Angeles I attended a class this week. It covered how to use a Haas CNC machine.

A computer numerical control (CNC) machine works by following user written code to machine a part. You put a block of metal into the machine and it will drill a pattern of holes, hollow out areas, engrave text or a design, and even smooth the piece's edges. Once you write the code and press start, the machine does everything and all you have to do is come back when it is finished. Then you can put another piece of material in, press start, and make another identical part. It is a great machine.

The class detailed the operation of a Haas brand CNC machine. It covered how the control interface worked, a few practical tips on some buttons, and how to program in G-code. The G-code tells the machine which tool to use, where to make cuts, and how fast to go. They had a control unit at my seat so I could practice inputting everything on the machine as I learned it.

I was able to attend this factory training for free because the city department where I volunteer bought a CNC machine. It is a big piece of equipment. It is the size of a small car and costs tens of thousands of dollars. A few months ago I tried to learn how the machine worked without the benefit of this training. I managed to crash the machine, which is very bad. A crash happens when the tool collides with something it is not supposed to like a vice that is holding a work piece in place. However, I am blessed to be working for understanding people who were not mad at me when I crashed the machine, broke a drill bit, and damaged the vice.

I enjoyed the class a lot. If I was not academically inclined, I would strongly consider making a career out of working with machines like that. If you want to know why I am doing electrical engineering instead, consider a more comfortable work environment, less physical exertion, safer working conditions, and a higher salary.

After my last CNC class on Thursday, I took and passed my third radio test. I now have an Extra class amateur radio license. Next week I will apply for a special vanity call sign to use when I talk on the radio.

Casting and Mold Making
While I am on the topic of training I got into because of my volunteer job, I have a few pictures from December. I took a class from Smooth-On (part of Reynolds Advanced Materials) on casting and mold making. It was a hands on class so I got to practice the process.

Here are a couple of terms from the process. Molding is the first step when a negative impression is taken of an original. Casting is the second step, when the material for the copy is poured into the mold.

First, an original item is placed in a container. Since the mold material is good at getting into things, the original has to be glued to the bottom of the container. Next, the mold material is prepared. Smooth-On makes user friendly products, so all you have to do is mix equal parts of what is in the blue container and the yellow container. The user then has around ten minutes to pour it into the container around the item before it hardens. For our training, they had small statues about three inches high for us to make molds for. They must have planned ahead for me; they had a statue of a pig for me to make a mold of.

After the mold had a few hours to sit, we removed the original and prepared the casting material. It had a similar two part mixture. I added some blue color and poured it into my mold. A couple of hours later, it was time to demold and I saw my pig.



The process even picked up the signature of the original artist on the pig. I was able to take home both the cast pig and the mold I made it from.



It was fun to learn how everything works. If I had any great ideas on how to make money with this knowledge I would give them a try.

Posts from the Past

I was looking through my draft posts and realized I have some great things that need to be shared. Today I have fragments of two posts I wrote in May and June of last year.

In the post from May, there was a recipe for a margarita. It is nothing revolutionary, but you can try it.

Margarita

1 1/2 oz tequila
1/2 oz triple sec
dash lime juice
3 oz sour mix

If you want to make a margarita presidente, just add a dash of brandy to the above.

One advantage of posting this recipe a year later is that I have since shared my recipe for sour mix.

Now a draft from 6/28/11:

Last week I went on a trip to Berkeley and the Bay Area. Over the trip I saw many of my regular and semi-regular readers. Every idea, comment, story, and future plan of mine I would blog about was heard by at least one person. In fact, I told some of the same stories multiple times.

While I was in San Francisco, I went bar hopping with Linda and my Associate. One of the places we ended up at was The Buena Vista. They are known for creating the first Irish Coffee in the United States. Making it is simple, pour coffee, stir in two sugar cubes, add a jigger (1.5 oz) of Irish whiskey, and top with whipping cream. It is something like this.

Irish Coffee

1.5 oz Irish Whiskey (rumor online is The Buena Vista uses Tullamore Dew)
4 oz Hot Coffee, or a little more or less depending on size of your glass
2 Sugar Cubes
Lightly Whipped Whipping Cream

Take a glass and preheat it. Do this by pouring hot water into the glass and letting it sit. After 20-30 seconds, dump out the water. Add the hot coffee and stir in two sugar cubes. After they are dissolved, add the Irish whiskey and top with the whipped cream. The idea is to layer the cream on top, so be gentle and consider pouring the cream onto the back of a spoon just over the coffee.

My favorite part of the Irish coffee story is how the creators were having a problem getting the cream to layer. They asked the mayor of San Francisco, who was a dairy farmer, for help. He suggested using cream that was aged for 48 hours and frothed up to the right consistency. This worked perfectly and the drink became a success. Those were the good old days, when elected officials knew useful things. Now too many people holding public office are career politicians.

The most striking feature of the day was the heat. When I was getting on BART at 11 that night it was still warm enough out I did not need a jacket. My conclusion is I bring the heat when I travel. When I visited Washington D.C. four months earlier it was over 70 degrees in February.

Since my last trip there, the Bear's Lair closed. However, I spent some time at Jupiter's, which is becoming my official post-graduation Berkeley hang out. While there I enjoyed beers such as a Red Spot, Quasar, Frances Drake, Prohibition, and another Francis Drake.

EDITOR'S NOTE: With my vantage point a year later, I am glad to say the Bear's Lair reopened. However, I also know Raleigh's burned down.

Reading all of the Bible

In January I started systematically reading through the Bible and Catechism of the Catholic Church. For this I have to thank Amanda. In January she made a blog post saying it would be great if she did this and then asking "Who's with me?!" I said, "I should do this as well." A couple of months later, we talked and discovered both of us were weeks behind schedule and had effectively stopped. So we decided to talk on a weekly basis to make sure both of us were staying on track.

The program we are following goes through the entire Bible (even those books our Protestant friends do not acknowledge) and Catechism in a year. However, since we are overachievers, we are on track to finish two months ahead of time.

There are a few parts of the Old Testament I do not recommend reading. The first eight chapters of First Chronicles are genealogy tables. A lot of Leviticus and Deuteronomy repeat the same procedures when relating laws.

The biggest thing that struck me about the Old Testament is that it could have used several good editors. Things are repeated, identical stories are told about different people, and the details of stories are contradicted in later retellings. There are also a few points where verses or chapters of one book would fit very nicely a few chapters earlier or later or even in a different book. The notes in my version even say sections are best read in a different order. However, there are some great names like Shamgar.

From my reading I am also disappointed. My parents paid good money to send me to 12 years of Catholic school and it never covered some good things in the Bible. Have you read the book of Tobit? It is a great story with a wonderful message. It has a demonic possession, an angel masquerading as a person, and some magical uses for a fish. Then at the end it rewards a person for his almsgiving and risking his life to selflessly help people. Joshua walking around Jericho with people blowing horns has nothing on the book of Tobit.

There is a second reason I am bringing this up. To talk to Amanda, I have been using Skype. If you have never used it, you should give it a try. You can video call people for free.

I would suggest any of you who would like to talk (especially my friend who hits the ignore button when I call) email me some times that you are available and we can plan a video call. I only sign in to Skype when I plan to talk to someone, so if I am signed in I am busy.

Fun activities and summer so far

Since I made going out, doing different things, and seeing people I want to see more one of my priorities for the summer, I should chronicle some of what I did. It feels like time is flying by, but there is so much I still want to do. This covers the last month and a half.

• Went to an end of year bonfire with the Long Beach Newman group. I was a little worried because I only knew some people vaguely from a retreat a couple of months earlier. However, it all worked out and was fun. At the end all of the extra items ended up in my cooler, including vegan hot dogs. I do not know what to do with them.
• Attended a graduation party. While I did not know Justin very well in Berkeley (my senior year was his freshman year), it was fun and everyone was glad to meet everyone. I also saw such exciting people as Juliette and Sidney. I ended up with some candy from a pinata and some avocados.
• Went to happy hour at the Lazy Dog with two of my friends from Long Beach. This was exciting because it was the first time I did something with friends I made at Long Beach. Well, it was the first time socializing with people from Long Beach did not turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.
• Saw Larry after he returned from graduate school in Arizona, only to find out he was leaving for Vietnam four days later. That night some of my friends tried to fly kites, which was amusing.
• Volunteered at a speaking even put on by the Orange County Cal Alumni. Executive vice chancellor and provost George Breslauer gave a great talk covering Russian politics and campus developments.
• Saw Terrance and played the zombie game Last Night on Earth. After I equipped one of my heroes with a chainsaw, I ripped through 8 zombies. Then I saw Prometheus with Eric and Peter. I expected something better than a remake of Alien.
• Donated platelets four times and went to an appreciation event that celebrated regular donors like me.
• Went to a BBQ at Brandon's house, which is still being built. Then we had a bonfire at the beach. It was the first full day of summer and one of Eric's processed pictures I stole from online is below.

• Watched Battleship with Eric and Peter. We waited until it was in the cheap theater, which was a good choice. A couple of the choices the main characters (who were supposed to be navy officers) made were incredibly stupid. How does a ship fire all of its ordnance on an enemy except for its most destructive weapons (cruise missiles)? Or, if firing missiles at an enemy will give away your location, why do you wait until you are being fired upon to change course instead of immediately changing after you fire missiles? Either the characters are stupid or I am a genius at naval warfare against aliens.
• Went to the Queen Mary with Aden and Ashley. The engine room and the propeller were fun to look at. We also went on the Ghosts and Legends tour that took us to the haunted parts of the ship such as the boiler room and main pool. The ship was nice to see once, but I do not envision myself going back there.
• Tried several different flavors of wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. My favorites were mango habanero and jalapeno. Afterwards I discovered people will just hop into my car when I am in the drive through at Sonic.
• Saw the fine motion picture Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
• Went a few places around town with my aunt and uncle who were visiting from Indiana.
• Saw Frank who is back from England and ate at Lucille's BBQ. We then saw Ted, which was like a long episode of Family Guy.

While many of these points could be expanded to full posts, that would be too long, detailed, and boring. Instead I will drop in extra random points here, such as my friend's uncle who kept offering everyone shots of tequila, or how Peter was instructed to get margarita mix at the store only to return with sour mix. There was the time I parked on a street with this ominous sign.



Now for one of the oddest things. I walked into an office and I saw a video playing in the next room. The video had me in it and was something I did in high school. Then I realized the video was redone with Spanish voiceovers. I do not know what this says about my life, but a video I was in has been dubbed into another language.

I still need to figure out what is next. Tomorrow I am going to Terrance's Mom's house for a BBQ and after that my mom, dad, and brother are leaving for San Diego. I will be home alone for three days and need to think of some exciting things to do.

Some Public Service Announcements

Two weekends ago I took a test to upgrade my ametuer radio license. After a 35 question multiple choice test, I passed. I now hold a general class license which means I can transmit on certain radio frequencies.

This is half way to finishing one of my goals for the summer. Next month I will take a longer test to expand my license to the highest level for this type of radio license.

Before I could send transmissions into the radio airwaves, I had to pass a license test. I had to prove I knew how radios worked, what the rules for radio use were, and what the accepted operating procedures were. I bring this up because I have a problem; people mass forward emails to me that sometimes have incorrect, bad, or even deadly advice. I wrote about a supposed health email a while ago. It would be nice if people demonstrated a level of competence and intelligence before sending emails to dozens of people.

The latest email I got was from my uncle. It was about the triangle of life. The main idea is when earthquakes happen roofs collapse and crush people. To avoid being crushed by falling roofs, people should immediately seek shelter next to a tall and sturdy object when an earthquake starts. This way, the big object will prevent the roof from completely falling to the floor and a triangle of life will be created where a person is safe.

There is one major problem with this; it was based on studies done in other countries where building codes and materials differ from what is used in the United States. While the triangle of life might be useful in some situations in developing countries, it is not applicable and definitely does not supersede drop, cover, and hold in places like California. The American Red Cross response to the triangle of life has some good comments and interesting facts.

I also got an email about cough CPR. The short version is coughing when you have a heart attack is similar to doing CPR on yourself. The real version is medical experts say don't try it.

I would say more about these emails of misinformation, but I do not want to deprive you of the practice of checking the facts online. Researching these claims is not only informative, but also fun. The conspiracy angle the triangle of life guy has would be amusing if lives were not at stake. Great claims require great proof, or at least a few minutes perusing Google search results.

If you ever receive an email that gives incorrect life-saving advice, you should immediately email the sender with correct information. If you ever send an email that you later discover had some misinformation in it, it is your responsibility to email everyone again and correct the earlier mistakes.

If a car will not start
One other thing came up a couple of weeks ago. It is what to do if you cannot start a parked car. Sometimes, it is possible to put the key in the ignition and turn it a little but not far enough to start the car. Sometimes this occurs because the steering wheel was turned to one side and then the car was turned off. The pressure of the turned steering wheel does not allow the ignition to turn to start the car.

If this happens to you, all you have to do is turn and hold the wheel to the other side while you start the ignition. The torque you exert on the steering wheel is enough to allow the key to make its full turn.