Four years and a pandemic

It's been four years. Not exactly a great record, but it's… something?

Well, in December of 2017, we learned that Kyle had some major developmental delays. That started us down the path towards a full Autism diagnosis a month later. He's started very young with therapy, and has progressed quite a lot. He's still barely starting to talk, and he's definitely autistic. I was quite distraught at first… but eventually I came to realize he's still the same kid I love, and nothing's really changed.

So, he's been getting therapy to help him develop better social skills, and is otherwise a holy terror.

2020 was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I've been working from home for over a year now. I like the commute. I also took up an old hobby: Rocketry. I built a semi-scale AIM-54 Phoenix rocket. The difference versus the one I had as a child is that this one is over four feet long, and weighs about four kg. It's a much bigger rocket. I joined the local high power rocket club, (UROC), and we had a launch out in the Black Rock desert in September of 2020. Its first flight was poetic in a way: It came off the rail clean and straight, flew up to apogee, and then pitched over… and started heading back to the ground. About 200 feet above the ground, the ejection charge finally fired, and then the real fun began: I learned that I packed my 'chute incorrectly by forgetting to remove the tape that was reefing my 'chute.

Clunk! The rocket bounced. It was pretty much undamaged - there are some cracks in the body filler I need to fix. It survived because I had one overarching goal: The rocket has to be tough enough to survive my son playing with it. And it worked. I 'glassed the body tube, the fins, and did all I could to make the thing a tank.

As a result, a few minutes later, I put in a new (and bigger) motor, and the Phoenix rose from its crash, and flew perfectly. I got my Tripoli Level 1 certification with that flight. It was followed shortly after that with a flight which I certified as level 2.

So that's been fun.

Yup. One More Year

It's been another year… and what a year its' been. Read More...

And two years go by...

It's not that I haven't had much to do, just that I haven't had the time or inclination to blog. Read More...

SMD Stencils on the cheap

I ran across a method of making SMD stencils at home, for very little money. Neat trick. Read More...

Quenya Keyboard

I have a running tradition that when I move to a new job, I get a new keyboard. Sadly, that day has passed. It was clear it was time for me to move on, so I found a new place to work that suits me really well. In keeping with my tradition, I decided to get a new keyboard for my office computer. This time, I wanted something different. The all-blank keyboards have been done quite a bit, but I did want to have a mechanical keyboard - the mechanical switches feel a lot better, and they last longer too. So, what to do, what to do… then the thought popped into my head about making a keyboard in Quenya - Tolkien’s “High Elfish” language of Valinor. Read More...