Nick’s Blog

Hey everyone, I haven’t been blogging much for a few reasons.  First, we had a baby.  That takes time.  Second, I try to have a life of some sort.  Third, I’ve been working on a new website in all of my spare time. MyDeliveryList (it’s a working name presently)

I’ve been building it since late June when I conceived the idea in WA.  Take a look sometime and enter some deliveries.  It’s going to take a lot of work to get the site fully functional and as slick as it needs to be. I’d love to get as many constructive comments as possible, on looks, functionality, etc.

It’s been a heck of a lot of work that has evolved a bit along the way. It started with a desire in WA to get some food delivered. I didn’t know who delivered to my hotel, though. I looked around and didn’t see any website that shows where restaurants deliver. So I figured that a simple Google map mashup would be easy for someone to put together. After talking it over with a coworker, we figured that this was a concept that has potential. I did a bit of research and found out that the mashup thing was deprecated in favor of Google App Engine. I looked at that and found it fairly easy to use, but I didn’t see all of the features that I really wanted, but the HTML templates used something similar to Django. I made a switch to Django which seemed to give me a lower level access to the functionality I wanted.

Django has support for Java or Python. I’ve learned Java in the past…and didn’t like it at all. I knew nothing of Python, but I heard that it was popular for programmers who work on side projects. I decided to go with Python…and I’m glad I did. It’s a fun language and very easy to pick up. I learned the ropes by writing my basic map program which is the guts of the system.

Of course, in order to use Django properly, you really need to have a good database and some SQL understanding. I had no knowledge or experience in that. After some research, I picked up Postgresql, learned SQL and figured out how it interacts with Django. I’ve had to do some custom SQL code in order to expand beyond the built-in limits of Django.

At some point, I ran into problems with running the Apache web server on the windows platform, and I knew I needed to run it on something other than my laptop anyway, so I pulled an old computer out of my shop, installed linux and ported the required components over to it.

I’m in the process of figuring out how to set up SSL encryption for the registered portions of the website, then I plan to work some more on polishing the website and adding order form capability. There is a lot of room for improvement, but I’d like to end up with people all over the world entering delivery information in the website. I’ll be adding more features to draw people back, it’s just a matter of time and elbow grease.

So check out MyDeliveryList sometime and let me know what you think.

Life has been interesting since Owen showed up.  He’s had a few blow-outs, we’ve had some near misses (and near hits) with Owen’s built-in projectile weapon system.  We’ve been slimed and drooled upon and smell in general right now.  But Owen has been sleeping 6-7 hours/night and we are about to put him in his room for the second night in a row.  He went in for his 2 month check up last week. He now weighs 12 lbs and is 23.5 inches long. Owen got three shots and did really well…no fever. He also to sit up and stand up now. Owen did tolerate his Halloween costume long enough for us to get a couple of pictures, then he demanded it be taken off. Since our subdivision has built up a little more, we actually got 5 (3 separate groups) trick or treaters this year. Only one group actually said trick or treat when Nick answered the door…and only four were actually dressed up. When the last group came and simply said “hello”, Nick said “What, no ‘trick-or-treat’?” I thought it was funny…the two 15 year old girls (both dressed as cows) didn’t think it was too funny…but did say it.

Hi all.  Owen is doing well lately.  He’s been sleeping well, about 6 hours in a stretch each night.  He’s been smiling like crazy lately.  We’ve got a couple new pictures up in the gallery.  Haven’t heard him laugh outright, but it is coming.

(Clicky for Owen album)

Well, Erin had the baby.  Owen Jonathan was born on 8/21 and was 8lbs 3oz and 21.5 inches.  It has been 10 days now.  We have had a lot of sleep deprivation to deal with, but that’s getting better as we learn his quirks and the best way to do things.  If you haven’t seen the pictures yet, they prove that he’s just about the cutest kid there is.  I’ll post some pictures later to prove it.

Erin’s healing up well.  Unfortunately, she did get a spinal headache from the epidural that still has not gone away.  Hopefully it will go away on its own so that she doesn’t need to get seen for it.

I’ve had the last week off and will have the coming week through labor day, but that’s still not enough.  I’m going to have to take more 3 or 4 day weekends here and there. I think that by the time I get back to work I will know how to get a good enough night’s sleep while dealing with the ups and downs at night.

We had a couple of minor adventures this weekend.  Last night, Erin and I were watching a show and we both noticed a smell….kind of skunky.  I checked one of the AC registers and found that was the source.  I hurried to turn off the AC and went outside with a flashlight to check for any animals.  It smelled in the garage and out the front door.  Well, long story short, I never found anything and the smell had mostly dissipated by morning.

We went back out this morning to look around again and didn’t see anything.  However, Erin noticed several wasps coming out of our Rinnai water heater air intake.  In fact, we saw about 10 coming in and out.  That was a problem.  We got some Raid and sprayed the ones we could see, then, with gloves and a sweatshirt on, I pulled the cover off.  I found two wasp nests and quite a few hanging out in there.  I raided the nests, killed several more and knocked the nests off with a shovel.

Erin had a good idea.  We left to go get some mesh screen from Lowes and hot glued it on the inside of the cover.  With that back on, we’ve seen several wasps wandering around looking for somewhere else to nest.  Hopefully they will take off and find another place to hang out.  Until then, we’ve got the Raid in reach.

I’m back from WA for good now, and I decided that I’d put all the overtime to good use to purchase a riding mower.  Erin saw that Lowes had a nice deal for some of their mowers, so we went and checked them out. I ended up purchasing the John Deere L115 riding mower:

It’s got a 19.5 hp engine with 42″ cutting width and automatic transmission.  With the deal, we also got a cart that can be towed.  Here’s the cart amidst assembly:

All attached:

It is fun to cut now, and much faster than the push mower.  It only took about 30 minutes to cut the lawn, which I ought to be able to shorten as I develop cutting patterns.

So, as most of you know, Nick is back in Seattle for a while for work.  I did go out with him last week.  It was so much fun…although it was a very interesting trip.

We flew from Huntsville to Charlotte, North Carolina, (wrong direction I know).  After boarding the plane here, the pilot came on and said Charlotte had announced a ground stop for us and we would be delayed 20 minutes…great 20 minutes of sitting on a hot, stuffy plane.  We did arrive in Charlotte pretty close to on time.  I, however, did get a rather large amount of attention at the airport in Charlotte.  The people there were facinated by my boot (the roller boot I have to wear again for my left ankle).  They were all quite amazed at how easily I could move around in it…the moving walkways helped.  After boarding the plane in Charlotte we headed out to the runway.  Once again the pilot came on.  Apparently, we were the only plane out on that long runway (he said we needed it because we were going all the way to Seattle)…and there was a line of storms directly over us…so we would have to wait…again.  Shortly after this announcement I began to notice something pouring out the luggage bins and air jets.  I asked Nick what he thought it was and, after thinking for a minute he said…”it’s raining outside” duh…hot air and cold air.  Right about the time I went back to reading my magazine other people began to notice this strange mist.  So, the flight attendant came on the speaker and said “what you are seeing is the cold air meeting the hot air…smoke has a smell.”  You could tell, just by the tone of her voice, that she really wanted to say “duh” at the end of her sentence, but she held back.  Once it the air, we noticed that this was going to be a much bumpier flight than before.  Apparently not everyone realizes that when the flight attendents won’t walk around the plane you probably shouldn’t either.  There was one person standing in the aisle, just chatting away as she held on for dear life.  The flight attendant got on the intercom and told her to sit down…she didn’t…but the entire plane did stare at her for a really long time.  The landing in Seattle was less then smooth…we came in a little fast and had to use the brakes…and reverse thrust…a lot…even Nick thought it was a lot…and that is saying something.

After getting our luggage and car we got back to the hotel around 11:30pm.  The first thing we noticed: the room smelled.  Number two: the phone didn’t work.  So, Nick headed to the front desk to complain.  The person there told him it was a problem the entire hotel was having and it would be corrected in the morning.  The next day we went shopping and to a Mariner’s game.  After that, we headed back to the hotel to clean and see if the phone worked.  It didn’t and neither did the internet.  Well, this is the way things went with the hotel for the next several days.  Every night Nick would, and I mean this literally, hit the phone until it worked and then use it to spend an hour on the phone with the internet people getting it working again.  Both so I could use it the next day and he could try to get some work done.  Not a very productive way of doing things.  On Friday we switched hotels.  The new one is clean and has internet (and a phone) that acutally works.  It is amazing.

While Nick was working I did manage to keep myself busy.  I went into where I used to work one day for lunch and had a great time catching up with everyone.  Nick and I then met one of the girls for lunch on Friday. I also saw my doctor out there and got my ankle checked (the doctor here wanted me to follow up with my ob…yeah right) and a cortisone injection in my shoulder (the ortho here doesn’t treat pregnant women).

Overall, we had a good time.  We got back yesterday around 11pm and Nick left here again today around 3:30pm (he didn’t want me flying by myself).  He was supposed to be back in Seattle by 8pm, but now it is looking more like 9pm or later.  Well…I think that is about it.  I am sure I didn’t cover everything, I probably only touched on a little bit.  I would’ve stayed longer, but the ob insisted I come back now, he did want me to go, but he didn’t want me gone for too long.

After using our first kitchenaid for a while to make some breads and pizza dough, we found that it was unable to hold up under the larger batches we wanted to make.  So Erin got me a professional 600 series Kitchenaid series.  We figured that since it was bigger with a more powerful motor that it would be able to stand up to some of the bigger or tougher doughs.

Well, one day I was making a batch of pizza dough which uses 7 cups of flour.  It’s enough to choke the old mixer, but I’ve made it several times before and hadn’t had problems.  This time, the motor started choking on the dough after it had been mixing for a few minutes.  It slowed down and just would not move anymore.  I removed the dough and tried again…it wouldn’t move even with no load.

I figured that the temperature protection switch had flipped and it would just start working again in a bit, so I waited another hour and tried again.  Still nothing.  Well, I’d already finished the pizza dough, so I put the mixer away to work on another day.

I pulled the top of the mixer off.  I found that I was unable to move the rotor, so I figured the gears may have been messed up.  I pulled out the four screws from the gearbox and pulled the top off.

All of the gears looked fine.  When I later pulled the motor out, I found that I could move all of the gears smoothly.  It turned out that the motor wasn’t turning at all.  Something inside it appeared to have fused or otherwise started binding.

After doing some electrical testing to make sure that the motor didn’t appear to have any shorts or opens, I decided to pull the motor out.  I labeled the four wires that wrap around the motor and connect to the control board.  Two of the wires come from the plug, and two connect to the motor.  I unscrewed the motor and pulled it out.  The gearbox needs to be open to remove the motor.

After removing the motor, I found that I was unable to turn the motor shaft, even with pliers.  Looking into the motor, I couldn’t see anything wrong.  The bearings also looked ok from the outside.  So I kept digging.  The motor has a bridge piece that braces the shaft right as it enters the gearbox.  That piece can be unscrewed on either side, but doesn’t immediately come off.  In order to get further into the motor, I had to remove the fan from the back end of the motor and hammer the shaft from the back.  Using a screw driver and rubber mallet, I hammered the rotor out of the motor.

It was being difficult to get out, even after I freed the shaft from the rear bearing.  It became obvious after a little inspection what the problem was.  Some of the insulation from the rotor had actually melted and flowed out of the rotor and solidified on the outside of the rotor.  This melted insulation caused the binding between the rotor and stator.

Between a flat-head screwdriver and a piece of sandpaper, I was able to remove most of the melted insulation.  The rotor fits very tightly into the motor, so any amount of melted insulation can be a problem.

When reassembling the motor, the brushes were a bit of a pain to get out of the way.  I used Erin’s help to pin them back with some screw drivers pushed through the back end of the motor.  There’s probably a much easier way to do it, maybe using paperclips bent properly, but this worked.

I reassembled the mixer and it worked at all speeds.  I have yet to make more dough, but I’m hoping that it will continue to work under a load.  I guess that the moral of this story is that your kitchenaid may not trip the heat protection switch early enough.  If you are making multiple batches of dough, give the mixer a break.  Even though it is labeled as professional grade, that doesn’t mean it can be run like a professional might run it.  If the mixer is having trouble turning to the point that the dough hook stops for more than a moment or two, it is at risk of melting insulation.

Skype was actually useful for this, Doug was able to see the problem and together we were able to figure out how to get everything apart.

Hopefully this helps someone.  There is very little information out there for the professional kitchenaid series.  Maybe someone else can also revive their mixer instead of converting it to a paperweight.

Erin and I have spent the past couple of weeks organizing the house and cleaning up a bit.  I’m going to be traveling a bit, so we wanted to get a head start on cleaning and organizing the nursery and the house in general.  Another reason we decided to take on the cleaning is because after playing with the car seat, my hands smelled like burnt plastic….not too pleasant.

We’ve washed clothes, towels, toys, bath toys, stroller/bouncy seat/etc covers and everything else you can think of.  For a while, we had things hanging in two bathrooms and out on the patio railing to dry.  After putting several loads of clothing (thanks everyone), we made a decent attempt at putting outfits back together.  After the shower, the kid has more clothes than Erin and I put together.

Well, both of us are feeling more prepared now.

So, Erin tries to make it sound like she was graceful on her way to the ground, it was not.  I saw it all…actually I didn’t see any of it.  When I looked over, while I was cutting the grass, she was sitting on the ground.  At first glance I thought she was pulling weeds, then I realized she was not near any weeds.  I realized she was not near any weeds and was holding her ankle.  Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to keep her sitting down with the foot elevated.  I would really love for her to use the boot, she uses it…occassionally.  I just hope that is resolve quickly.

Also, Erin put up pictures of the birthday cake she made me.  It was awesome, it was an airplane.