StansWeather.Net » Gadgets

August 16, 2009 – Morning bike ride

Stan Olson — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:05:43 +0000

Bike LogAfter yesterday’s 6 mile walk, I figured I’d dust off the bike and take it for a spin this morning along the same route. It’s due for a check-up this week so I wanted to make note of any issues or strange noises to share with the local bike shop. One of the great things about the bike is the storage bag on the bike where I can stash a few goodies. I brought along my Canon A590 point and shoot camera so I could take a few pictures. (wished I’d had it on my walk yesterday morning) No bike ride for Stan is complete without a GPS and ham radio and today’s ride was no exception. Last month I bought a new handheld radio and bike mount so I was anxious to try that out as well.

I departed my apartment at 6:21am and headed through the path at Kaufman Lake. I quickly got a chance to see how my bike would handle on gravel and bumpy terrain. (suspension might need a little adjusting?) I made my way towards Parkland College and stopped near one of the softball fields to grab some water from the fountain. Even this early into the ride my legs were showing me just how out of shape they are so I took it easy for a bit. As I approached the main entrance of Parkland, I noticed dozens of geese roaming around which definitely warranted a photo shoot. I pulled over and snapped several pictures and the geese really didn’t seem spooked by me at all.

I continued my way to the northeast and found a few flowers that wanted their picture taken. Despite the sun not yet making its way to this part of the complex, the pictures didn’t turn out too bad. After that I headed over to the tennis courts to take a few shots. Then I found a soccer field that called my name, so had to get a few shots of the nets which were pretty cool. As I walked back to my bike, I heard what I thought was a lawnmower in the distance. Suddenly I saw this flying contraption coming towards me which definitely required some picture taking. I’m not sure what it was, but it was a one-person machine with what looked like a giant fan behind him and a wing above him. He flew on by so I went on my merry way.

I made my way around Parkland and headed back towards home. I stopped at Heritage Park and took a few pictures of the lake and tried (failed) some macro shots of a bug. I continued on the path home and took a detour to avoid spooking a rather large dog being walked by their owner. I made another stop on Country Fair drive to take a few more flower pictures and then headed home.

Final Thoughts
Yeah, I know I really didn’t ride very far compared to what normal people do but it was fun. I just need to ride more often to get my legs conditioned. It was very comfortable out this morning and the breeze was welcomed. I need to figure out why my ham radio did not transmit my location to the internet, not sure what happened there. Some other lessons learned this morning:

My legs are really out of shape
My ham radio was unsuccessful at getting my location transmitted.
You burn more calories riding a bike than walking the same path.
Always have spare batteries for your camera (which I luckily had!)

StatsTotal Mileage: 5.79 miles
Total Time: 69 minutes

Photos

Dell Inspiron laptop disassembly

Stan Olson — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 23:40:24 +0000

A friend of mine recently brought me their laptop to revive from the dead. It needed a new hard drive, more memory, Windows XP reinstall, and a new CPU fan. The first 3 items I took care of as soon as the parts arrived and had everything running great. I ordered the CPU fan off eBay which took quite some time to receive. (thanks USPS!) I had never replaced a CPU fan on a laptop before, so I consulted Dell’s service manual for further instructions. The removal of the CPU fan was pretty simple as it required just removing 2 screws and unplugging the power connector. However, to get to it you pretty much had to remove everything else in the laptop:

-Remove Battery
-Remove Memory
-Remove Hard Drive
-Remove Wireless card
-Remove Keyboard
-Remove Display
-Remove Palm Rest
-Remove Microprocessor Thermal-Cooling assembly

The first 4 items were simple to remove as all were located on the bottom of the system. I won’t go into great length on each step of the process, but it was very time consuming as I didn’t want to break anything. Once I got everything removed, I installed the new fan and carefully reassembled the laptop. I booted it up into Windows and ran my system fan utility which lets me control the speed of the fan. When I cranked it up to max speed, it made a horrendous noise. This wasn’t good as now I’d have to repeat the process and remove everything again. (doh!) Once I got to the fan, I removed it and compared it with the old fan. Everything looked the same except the new fan had a slightly higher top that the other. I’m guessing this was making contact with the bottom side of the keyboard or side of the case to make the horrendous noise. I decided to clean and oil the old fan to see if it would work again. I got a little lazy which almost ended up screwing up the whole system. I plugged the old fan back in and powered the system on without putting everything back together first. I wanted to see if the thing would spin up at all. It seemed to work fine, but the system decided to lock up on me while booting up. I figured at this point I’d go ahead and put everything back together and see if that fixed the problem.

I booted it up and got a bunch of errors on the screen. (good job Stan, good job…) It was spewing out numerous memory errors which lead me to believe I’d zapped one or both of my memory chips. To make matters worse, the screen was flickering and had static all over it. (oh holy crap!) Seeing this made me think I’d tightened a screw too tight and nicked the cable going to the display. I thought for sure I’d fried the system, but I didn’t panic and started troubleshooting. I took the system apart yet again and reseated the display connector and made sure I wasn’t squashing the cable. I also reseated both memory cards to see if that was the problem.

The moment of truth was now here as I powered up the system. The BIOS beeped at me telling me that the memory size had changed. (oh no) Luckily, it was a good thing as it was seeing both memory sticks this time. (whew!) I booted up into Windows and the display was normal again. (double whew!)Â I tested the fan with my program and it powered up to full speed with no problem and no loud noise. Not wanting to push my luck anymore, I called it a success and packed it away in the case.

It was a good learning experience for me as I’d never gone that deep into a laptop before. Thanks to Dell for providing a service manual on their website, I couldn’t have done it without them. (well I probably could have but would have broken something for sure)

My first iPod!

Stan Olson — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 01:46:22 +0000

I bit the bullet and decided I wanted an iPod shuffle last night. Why? Well at first I stumbled across a great deal on a refurbished 1st gen 512mb shuffle for $19 + s/h from Outpost.com. Things were going well, order was confirmed, credit card was charged, and I got the confirmation email. About 20 minutes after I placed the order, I received a 2nd email stating the order had been canceled. (apparently they haven’t figured out real time inventory yet) This bummed me out as I was wanting to get this as an early birthday present for myself. I’ve been wanting some form of iPod that I could sync up with iTunes and put podcasts on. I didn’t want to spend hundreds on a Nano or Video iPod.

So this morning I get up early and head out the door about 30 minutes before my normal departure time. I figured I’d head to Wal-Mart and pick one up there since they’re $1 cheaper than everyone else. Well I got there and they were out of stock, at least on the floor. There were no employees around to look in the back, so I gave up and went to work. I should have expected this from Wal-Mart since there was no help to be found last year when my parents were shopping for an HDTV. Anywho…

I went to work and got online to see who else in town sold iPod’s. Good ol’ Circuit City had them and luckily my store was the only one in a 50 mile radius that had them in stock. So I ordered one online and scheduled an in-store pickup. During my lunch hour, I went and picked it up. Quick and easy, $79.99 plus tax and I was on my way.

The first thing I noticed is just how small it is. It measures about an inch high and just over 1.5 inches wide. The clip is pretty nifty, it will fit on just about anything. The dock hooks up to the USB port on your computer and has a headphone jack for the connector on the iPod. (I’m guessing there wasn’t room for a mini-USB port) Installation was automatic, Windows XP figured out that it was an iPod Shuffle and iTunes found it as well. I copied my podcasts over to it and it seems to do the job just fine. Who needs a display? Maybe for music it’d be nice, but for me I’m good without one. I’ve got my MyFi that plays my music and it has a nice display on it, so I don’t need one for my ‘podcast’ player. I’ve included a few pics I took on my horrible camera phone but I think you’ll get the idea. I’ll take some better ones later on.

So it took me until 2006, but I’m finally an iPod owner. Never thought that would happen, but it did. I can see this being a big Christmas hit and folks who are into the jogging/walking thing would enjoy this too. Now I just need more podcasts to listen to.