I know from the server logs that quite a few more people visit this site than just those whom I know personally and it’s always quite interesting for me to follow things from my side of these pages. Although this has been a great way to communicate with family & friends and attract readers from around the globe, when you look at the format in addition to the content, you might think that the posts all these years have just been an excuse for being able to make a website in the first place.

About the same time we were running FlyingMelons.com out of our NJ basement (see: Welcome message), I was working as a Facilities Operations Scheduler for South Jersey Hospital System using Datastreams proprietary CMMS, MP2. The computer at work was just another tool for a job as far as I was concerned, a usable extension of the mind & hands for the person using it, and the licensed software product fit the bill as well as any other canned, off-the-shelf product would… more or less. (Less and less, if you’re into what you’re doing.)

We all have a learning curve and MP2 was really my first exposure to Database Management Systems (DBMS). Since it was the late 80′s / early ’90s, all of my server pages on the home machine were still static coded html. I really learned a lot because of what that program couldn’t do for me on the job.

The problems started to surface as we corporately merged and grew from a single hospital with a couple of O.R.’s and an ER; to two facilities with Maternity, various secured lock-down units and separate physicians offices; to three with out-reach clinics and more buildings; to, at the time of my employment, a four hospital, full-blown, Regional Healthcare System. What fit us early on, just wasn’t keeping pace with our growth.

We’d pay to add user licenses after user licenses and when we needed something not off-the-rack, we could either “wait for the next update” or call the company to have someone “customize” their product for us  – for T&M + travel + per diem of course. But the customization repeatedly amounted to little more than a guy trying to tweak some boiler-plated addon from a job they did somewhere else – always with the problems, delays, and “We’ll have someone get back to you” excuses.

All the time I had been working on my stuff at home, little things like getting “persistence” commands to keep me connected to the ‘net after my welcome was wore out or creating our own email domain, and developing a DBMS from open source (read: free) materials that – in my vision – anyone with authorized access would be able to adapt to suit the corporation’s growing needs long after I was gone.

I soon had my regular departmental duties down to a routine and was also able to implement a system-wide Asset Management System that anyone with access to the company’s intranet could access with any browser – all run on a “stolen” I.P. from a single retired server converted to a Linux box on the floor alongside my desk. Ultimately it was the stolen IP address that enabled me to spend half of my time at work alongside some really great people in the IT department, but that’s another story.

The Work Order Request part of the system was immediately effective since previously, only Maintenance & Plant Operations personnel were granted access to this Work Order System. Nursing had their own system. Radiology, usually being contracted, had their own. Everyone was their own entity and as you can imagine, people in each facility were still vehemently clutching to the system they had grown accustomed to before mergers. But now, anyone could easily log on and have a database backed, time-stamped & logged Work Order Request literally within minutes – all with no EULA, travel fees, or the headaches.

Things were really starting to take off with this and I was spending more and more of my time collaborating with I.T. to seamlessly incorporate the Linux box with the Novell NetWare, expand to full corporate asset management instead of just the equipment I.D.’s I had previously been assigned and generally brain-storming with them on other improvements and to phase-out the proprietary system; all while completely fulfilling my previously agreed-to obligations within our department.

It was ultimately the short-sightedness of my immediate and 2nd level superiors, their need for control and a major motivation to “not make waves” by changing things that severed interdepartmental budgetary negotiations and is one of the reasons that I actively started looking for work elsewhere. That “elsewhere” eventually became Colorado.

No one can pay me enough to do little with my life and now I’m in a place where computers are used to control processes. It’s the coolest thing!   Read about that move here…

I had originally diagnosed Exhaust Valve #2 as not opening so I set out to replace the cam in the ’58. Good thing, because it was worse than I thought. You can enlarge the side-by-side, old vs. new photos below to see for yourself:

Working on a 350 Chevy in an old truck’s engine bay is really about as easy as it gets. It’s usually just time consuming, but when the over-priced Snap-On junk breaks yet one more time, the process takes longer than it should.

I don’t really give two bits about the life-time replacement warranty and with the mobile tool vendors you’re really paying, in a large way, for that replacement service. It costs money to run those trucks, print those hats & calendars… and the dealer needs to make a living too. No harm in that.

It was all well and good when I worked at Salem County Harley Davidson and Larry Flintcraft would come by or be readily available by phone to repair whatever got broke. That guy had a phone in his truck before cell phones were in. But now that I’m home I’ve got to run out myself whenever something breaks… and it shouldn’t. I want my investment to be into the quality of the merchandise, not the service and the promo goods.

All I was doing with my 1/2″ drive wrench was taking off the driver’s side head-bolts (no cheater involved) when “Bang!” little pieces of The Amazing Exploding Wrench go flying all over my garage! They should list these things in the backs of comic books.

Be the First One on Your Block
Own
The Amazing Exploding Wrench
Fool Your Friends!

All I want is quality that will last. Funny thing, after the stars from my mashed thumbnail went away, I reached for the Craftsman that’s older than I am and finished pulling it apart.

Snap-On may have invented the little ball that snaps the socket onto the wrench (hence the name), but they haven’t done much good since then but build a decent tool box and collect payments. I’m done with ‘em.

I’ll get the valve seals replaced and put the rest of it back together tomorrow.

Ciao.

From the simple, self-taught beginnings of a using the outputs from a PC to drive stepper motors and receive positional feedback through the LPT (what a printer does in 2 dimensions) even an early-90′s hack was able to control three gear-motor drivers to within .001″ by translating an image into G code and then doing little more but sitting back.

We all know that .001 inch isn’t “all that” in the machine industry. The three motors were intended for a gantry table for cutting and welding, but unfortunately, the machine side of that project was never completed due to our unplanned transition to Colorado life almost 8 years ago; but it’s no accident that we’re in the perfect environment to employ that same capacity in our current vocation on a much larger scale.

It’s easily conceivable that certain triggers can be placed into a digital process for specific equipment, taking multiple – seemingly simultaneous – corrective actions quicker than any human individual could process & then physically react. It has become a common practice, whether in aerospace, aviation, your automobile, or processing plants.

I was talking with someone the other day and a statement was made to the effect of,

Whatever the process, computers don’t care what they’re controlling.

That couldn’t be more true. Sending little packets of one’s and zero’s from this server for your computer’s browser to interpret into ciphers and images is the same to a computer as sending them to a valve controller or conveyor belt servo-motor. The end result is different, but the process isn’t.

All that being said, I still enjoy hammering out the code necessary to do these pages. If you don’t already know, this entire site is a database backed – not static html. Your browser interprets what it retrieves and you get the html markup, but it’s all retrieved on my end from a series of databases.

On my end for example, the beginning of this page looks like:

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id=”content_box”>

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/l_sidebar.php’); ?>

<div id=”content”>

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

and so on. I don’t see the actual layout unless I want to. Even without knowing PHP, you can pretty-much interpret it by reading through it. It’s easier than French, “Laissez le bon temps rouler!”

<?php get_header(); ?>
Get the Page Header

<div id=”content_box”>
Everything in the following division of the page should use the criteria listed under the “content box” I.D. section of my separate (and unseen by you) style sheet.

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/l_sidebar.php’); ?>
Then include the left sidebar using the selected template (or “theme”).

<div id=”content”>
Now use the “Content” section of the style sheet for anything from font size and color, to image alignment, etc.

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
“IF” there’s a post, do the following – later on there’s an “Else” in case “If” criteria is not met. Since we obviously “have posts”, we continue through in this loop with:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
While we have posts: Post them!

and so on down the page to the “get footer” php statement. All in milliseconds from me to wherever you are… and the server doesn’t know or care what we do with it and whether someone else sees the back end or not, its there. It’s the foundation and like anything else, should be done to the best of ones ability whether anyone is looking or not. Poorly written code wastes resources in the same way as does you’re inefficient hot-water heater or poorly tuned automobile.

For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
~Samuel Richardson

Regarding the Template/Theme:

The “header” will come from whatever “template” is being used and can be changed accordingly, but the “content” will remain the same throughout. I had taken the Theme Switcher out for a while because it was causing some issues with other aspects I’d been working on.

If the layout I’ve been using in the interim has been acting funky with your particular browser or you just like one of the previous ones better, you’ll find that you can again choose one that might suit you better in the sidebar.

Thanks for visiting.

If the video doesn’t play or to see it a little larger, Click Here.

We headed to Lakewood this morning to pick up a pickup. The previous owner, Bob, gave us great directions to his house and after talking about his nineteen year ownership of the vehicle – evident from the way he spoke about the details of the truck – and having a few laughs, he cranked the engine over to prove it would crank.

As he tells it, the truck started giving him some trouble on the way back from a Christmas trip but he was able to get it home. We he cranked it over for me in his driveway, it would pop and spit through the intake as if out of time and Bob said from the way it was running but now wouldn’t start that he thought the timing chain may have jumped a tooth. It’s all speculation at this point, but we’ll systematically eliminate probable causes one-by-one, as usual, until we get our desired result.

Soon Leigh was behind the wheel and  we were pushing the a 4X4 extended cab S-10 out of his driveway to hook it to the back of the Trailblazer. After a few more laughs and a few more “almost forgot” parts, we were on our uneventful trip back home.

Since I’m right in the middle of insulating and sheetrocking the unheated & already over-crowded garage, I had to leave the truck sit in the driveway to clear out enough space to push it into. That’s when I snapped these first photos.

Meanwhile the boys came home from school and Jack yells out “Cool truck!”
I yell back, “Your Mom and I just picked it up.”
“No.” he replies, “Rex.” referring to the ’58 Chevy I was using as a push vehicle, the only vehicle I own that my wife doesn’t want me to sell. She actually chided me the other day with, “You make money on every vehicle you own” but does not want me to get rid of that one because of the work I have in it. But when someone wants it more than I do I’ll be okay with it.

So I push the S-10 into the garage, Leigh now officially having driven it more than me, and I start digging into the engine. It’s an ’85 so it’s got the 2.8 and there really wasn’t much exciting tearing it down except a couple of bolts through the aluminum waterpump that were too tight from the electrolysis between the dissimilar metals. I worked them back and forth enough that they came out, albeit with some of the aluminum from the pump, but it would’ve been quicker and easier to use the torch for a little heat.

I’d also advise anyone who does their own maintenance to coat the contact surfaces between hoses and their connections with a little anti-seize to prevent the hose from baking itself onto the fitting over time. It makes removal much simpler even after long periods and doesn’t affect the seal at all.

You can see the slack on the left side of the chain in the picture above and how much tighter the chain is on the right (since that’s the way I rolled the crank to get it at TDC), but the picture below shows the timing marks between the gears really lined up well. The mark on the crank gear is not at the key way, it is on the face of the tooth that is straight up:

There may have been enough slop in the chain when the engine was cranking to prevent it from running, but I’m not convinced this is the problem. I’ll change it for good measure after the boys’ basketball games tomorrow since it’s obviously stretched and since I’m in here, but won’t be surprised if things still aren’t right when I button them back up.

The red-dyed alcohol in the garage thermometer (government says mercury is bad now unless it’s in light bulbs) was reading 33F when I stopped, so I can’t say it was “freezing” out there, but I thought I’d come inside where it’s warmer to write a little. Besides, the parts places are all closed.

Stay tooned.

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