Tuesday, January 26, 2016

January 26th

I've taken the rest of the week off work to kill off some vacation time and get the flying test done.  Well, I went to Lincoln and went up for the flying test - we did a bunch of things, and after a landing, the engine spluttered, so we gave up.  I've come to the conclusion that it was carb icing, but want to get Vince to check it out - the plane's due for its annual anyway.  So, another damn continuation to do maybe 30 minutes of pattern work.

January 25th

We watched "Godzilla".  Not that "Godzilla".  No, not that "Godzilla" either.  It was hard not to see it as a comedy.

January 24th

I went to the airfield and managed to get up for 45 minutes - it was strangely bumpy, so I gave up early.

January 22nd

After work, I managed to drive home in 3.5 hours.  Joy.

January 20th

I got up disgustingly early and headed to San Francisco for work.

In the evening we went to a karaoke bar, where I managed to only get dragged up to sing "Don't Stop Believing".

January 18th

Today was Martin Luther King day, when Americans celebrate the gains in the civil rights movement by going shopping.

We played Warcraft.

January 17th

It was a crappy day, so we both wasted it playing Warcraft.

The battery on the DRZ seemed to drop off quickly, but they'll do that when you take the charger off it, so I'll keep an eye on it and see whether I can keep it plugged in.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

January 16th

I plugged the RFID system into the DRZ, and tested everything - it works!  The only thing I'm worried about now is the power usage, So I've charged the battery up and we'll see how quickly it loses charge.

In the evening, we watched "Ant Man".

January 15th

The new tuner card showed up for the HTPC, so I got that installed and can now put the PC into S3 sleep without losing the tuner.  Yay.

January 14th

I put all the bodywork back on the DRZ, and we moved it back out into the garage.

January 13th

Having run the wiring for the kickstand switch in, I find that it doesn't work how I though it did.  Great.  Still, the ignition system works OK, and I've got all the wiring tidied up and ready to go.

January 12th

The bike's smelling of petrol, so I took all the bodywork off and moved the tank out into the garage.  This also makes it a lot easier to track the wiring for the kickstand switch.

January 10th

I worked on the RFID ignition system on the DRZ, and it looks like it'll work.  Now I just need to get it sorted out so it earths through the kickstand switch, and tidy everything up.

January 9th

I've been putting off some work on the wiring on the DRZ, as I don't feel like working on it in the garage, so we moved it into the house :o)  It's sitting in the hallway, so it's on cardboard on the tile, rather than on a rug.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

January 6th

I went to the first EAA board meeting of the year.  Lots to see and do.

January 5th

Checking the logs of the HTPC, I found that the Simpsons didn't record because there was no tuner present.  Sure enough, in Device Manager, there isn't.  Digging around, it seems that the Avermedia tuner card I have disappears in S3 sleep, and then you have to unplug the PC for a few minutes to reset it.  Jeez.  The new motherboard doesn't support S2, so I've set everything to go to S4 hibernation, and it seems to be working now.  It just takes longer to start up, and I'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure it's pulling the guide data down when we're watching TV (as it won't start itself to do this overnight).  I'm also going to look for a good deal on a better tuner card, as I now have 2 PCIx1 slots I can use.

We also went out and met Jen for dinner.

January 4th

Back at work.  Boo...

I went to watch the Simpsons on the new HTPC, only to find it hadn't recorded.  WTF?

Christina stopped in to crash the night on her way back to Portland.  She went out to see a movie in Sacramento, so we watched "The Battle of the Five Armies".

January 3rd

I tinkered with the new PC some more, as it's been hanging on resuming from sleep, and I'm not sure what that's about.

I went out to the airfield, and took the plane out for the first flight of the year.  I strapped the new camera on, and when I got home I threw together this timelapse.

In the evening, we watched "The Desolation of Smaug".  No crash :o)

Saturday, January 2, 2016

January 2nd

I finished copying everything and upgrading the new PC, and most stuff worked.  I had to set the motherboard to PCI gen 1 to have it see the TV tuner card (auto didn't work), and I had to set the default audio output to be the SPDIF rather than the TV.  I then had to set our zip code to 95668 rather than 95757 to get it to download the guide data, and it's all set up and working.  I left it to turn itself on and record a program, and took Tilly for a long walk, where she got to run and run and run, found and lost a baseball, paddled in puddles and then got a ride home in the Jeep when Vic met us. Everything on the new PC continues to work, but I'll probably look at something like Kodi so I can upgrade to Windows 10 at some point.

As a test of the BluRay software, we watched "An Unexpected Journey".  It worked out just fine, but we got a Blue Screen of Death when I pressed "stop" when it had finished.  Hmmm...

January 1st

I got all the hacks to run Media Centre on Windows 10 installed on the new PC, and put in the new graphics card and the old tuner card.  While the case was open, I patched the old PC's hard drive in and copied across all the old media files.  I then plugged it all in and hooked it up to the TV antenna so I could run the setup for that.  Every time I moved the mouse, it was switching the resolution, as the TV runs at 3840x2160, and I have it set up for 1920x1080.  Well, this wasn't going to work.  I tried backing out of the Windows 10 upgrade, and it didn't want to know, so I ended up reinstalling Windows 7 and starting again.  I left it downloading OS updates and copying media and we went out to dinner with Vince.

When we got back, the copying was still going on, as it had stalled asking if I wanted to merge 2 folders with the same name - of course I did, one of then was empty, and the other had some 20,000 files in it. Geez...

Friday, January 1, 2016

December 31st

I found an application to build a patched Windows 7 install with the USB drivers I need for the new PC, so I installed that while playing Warcraft (there's a lot of waiting involved).

I ended up leaving it installing upgrades and went to the airport, where I went out for an hour.  It was pretty cold, but I didn't find it too bad.  The plane, of course, likes the cold weather - the density altitude is lower, so it flies better, and the denser air makes the engine run better.

When I got home, I figured I'd try an upgrade to Windows 10 on the new PC, so kicked that off and played Warcraft for a while.

In the late evening, we met Jen for the last playing of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", in 3D as an affront to a caring and loving god.  We were stuck with 3D as Jen was coming from work.  The movie's pretty good, and I wasn't expecting Luke and Chewie to hook up at all.

Tilly was really happy to see us when we got home (around 02:00), and we were lying in bed when some doucheknuckle started setting fireworks off, so Tilly ended up in bed behind my knees so she'd feel safe.

December 30th

I tinkered around with the new PC, and the problem is that the Skylake processor / motherboard combo doesn't support EHCI USB ports.  Doy.  I decided to just give up and install Windows 10, as you're supposed to be able to do that with a Windows 7 key.  That didn't work, so I ended up in a chat session with a Microsoft muppet, hoping for a new key to use.  He wanted to remotely connect to my PC, so I told him that wasn't going to happen and I'd figure out Windows 7.

December 29th

Finally all the parts for the new PC that I'm going to build to replace the home theatre PC have arrived, so I put them together:

A Silverstone ML-04 case...
without the lid...
with a Corsair power supply...
and an MSI Mortar motherboard...
and an i3-6100...
and an LG Blu-Ray drive...
And a Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB drive...










































I took the hard drive out of an old USB 2.0 external drive I wasn't using (as come on, USB 2.0?).  I cloned it from the current HTPC (it took 4 hours to copy 400Gb via USB 2.0, that'll teach me to open the case and use SATA), but nothing seems to work, so I'll look into that tomorrow.