AK47 & M1A

"Today I didn't even have to use my AK. I got to say it was a good day." - Ice Cube.

Went to the Los Altos Rod and Gun Club on Skyline Blvd (link). Got to fire an AK47 and an Springfield Armory M1A. The AK-47 is famous, no background needed. The M1A is the civilian version of the military M14. The M1A fires a .308 round, it had a pretty good kick. When we got there we set up targets at a 100yards. I was not confident that I could hit anything at this distance. Our targets were about 12" in diameter. I shot the M1A using iron sights (no scope). As I approached the target I was presently surprised that every round had hit the target. Pretty good for first time with iron sights. Next, I tried to shoot the AK47. The person I was with just received the AK back from rework and had not dialed in the iron sights yet, but we could barely hit the target with it. Not sure I like the AK as much as the M1A. I would like more practice with the M1A, and I believe I could shoot 2-3 inch groups at 100 yards. I was told that the M1A can shoot with iron sights up to 1000 yards (pretty impressive).

From Shooting Range in Los Altos

From Shooting Range in Los Altos

From Shooting Range in Los Altos

From Shooting Range in Los Altos

Shady sushi

I was a bit skeptical about all you can eat sushi. Typically, all you can eat means you can't eat that much because its not that good. Melissa, Nathan and I tried Sushi 85 in Mountain View for my Birthday. They limit you to ordering 3 items per person at a time, but that was way more than enough. The king kong, bat man, UFO and more... too much good sushi. http://www.sushi85.com/ Dinner is a little expensive, but lunch was a little more reasonably priced. There is a seperate menu for lunch and dinner. The dinner menu had some of the more complex rolls.

Then we headed over to icing on the cake for some cupcakes. Mint Chip and peanut butter are my favorite. http://www.icingonthecakebakery.com/

I HAVE THE POWER...

...OF THE 4th STATE OF MATTER.

From Plasma Cutter

Picked up a used plasma cutter on craigslist. Played with it a little last night. It works awesome. Need some fine tuning, but it does a really clean cut.

I picked up this one: http://www.millerwelds.com/products/plasma/spectrum_375/

I have been wanting to buy a plasma cutter for 2 years now, and consistently checking Craigslist every day for over a year. I got lucky picking up this almost new one for half price. He said he used it once to cut one small hole. Came with a cart, an air filter and the manual. I got it from an old man who broke his hip. When I called, there were 3 people trying to buy it within a 10 minute window. Offered cash, list price + $25, and to pick it up right then. Had to drive to a small town way up the delta, almost 2 hours away. This is my father's day/birthday present. It certainly is a good present.

More bots

Jonathan sent me a link for www.cleverbot.com

Looks like an attempt on cloud computing for linking questions and answers using user feedback and a dictionary. I thought it would funny to put in a joke.

Me: "What do you do if a pit bull starts humping your leg?"
The right answer: "You better fake an orgasm"
The computer's answer: "Hit the sentry with a wrench twice."

It would amazing if the bot had every answer to every joke. I would fall out of my chair. I lay a golden egg if it could the mechanics of the joke.


Click on report to see some funny stuff.
=========
User: Do you know everything?
Cleverbot: Almost...
User: What is 1 plus 1?
Cleverbot: 2
User: What is 1 plus 1?
Cleverbot: One
User: Ok, what is 1+1?
Cleverbot: 11.
User: No! Its 2, you dumb****!
===========
Cleverbot: What is a numbskull?
User: You are!
Cleverbot: No, I'm not
User: Yes you are!
Cleverbot: I know you are. [Edit: A really clever answer "I know you are, but what am I?" bwahaha. PeeWee style]
User: I give up, yore really not that clever at all! Are you?
Cleverbot: I know I'm not that clever, but why do you have to be so mean about it?
===========
User: Anyway, back to K___
Cleverbot: No habla english.
User: Liar.
Cleverbot: I don't lie!!!!
User: You just did.
Cleverbot: No, I did not.
User: Yes you did.
Cleverbot: No I didn't.
...

Go to college and get a real job

Take this guy's advice with a grain of salt. Not all of it is that great, and most of it is common sense.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-afford-anything.htm

Leaving

Thought this was a good song for this post (Dirty South - Phazing)


Things I am going to miss in the bay area:

• Family
• $8 haircuts at the Vietnamese shops
• Armadillo Willys - love the BBQ
• Cupcakes - from Icing on the cake in Los Gatos
• Snowboarding
• Random entertainment that is rarely enjoyed - Go karting, mini golfing, arcades
• Cheap shipping from UPS and FedEx
• Random Craigslist Stuff - the ability to find random needed/wanted items on craigslist due the huge population in close proximity.
• How nothing seems to ever rust in San Jose
• Chinese Junk - from Harbor Freight. Tools so cheap they can break if you drop them into the plastic bag. Wait, am I really going to miss this?.... Some tools last, and some do not. Choose wisely.
• Guaranteed summer weather - Everyday is sunny, June through August in San Jose.
• Frye's electronics - Its nice having one place where you get almost any cable and any computer gizmo

Things I am not going to miss in the bay area:

• The highways - Including traffic, bad drivers, bad drivers who are even worse when it starts raining, tailgating, those brilliant people who cut across 4 lanes of traffic 30 feet before their exit, carpool lanes, and trash littered highways
• The cold fall, winter and spring seasons
• Commuting to work
• Traffic lights
• Mall traffic and parking at Christmas time
• The rat race that everyone is involved in that makes everything so urgent
• Houses built 0-10 feet apart
• Those light rain showers that last for hours. If its going to rain, it might as well pour
• The noise - the night time is really the only quiet time in the bay

Things I can't wait to get back to:

• Poke - Oh, so good. Spicy is my favorite.
• New Hope, Kapaa - Our church on Kauai
• Hula Pie - at Duke's restaurant
• Shaved Ice - Hanalei, the best
• Kauai Nut Roasters - Located in Hanalei. Try the Kona Coffee blend.
• Tunnels Treat - Smoothies in Kapaa at Coconut Cup Juice Bar (blended with real milk instead of soymilk)
• Cheaper movie theater
• Friendly people
• Great weather
• The perfect beaches - enjoying the sand, surf, snorkeling, maybe some scuba diving
• Warm winters (Christmas should be in the 70s)
• Fresh fruit - seems like fruit is fresh, available, and cheap year round

This weeks revelation

There are too many a-holes in this world. I will leave it at that. This has been a horrible week.

THE NBA

I thought about watching the NBA finals tonight. Probably won't. I haven't been into basketball since 1993 when NBA Jam came out. That game was awesome. Dunking 15 feet in the air, being on fire after shooting three 3-pointers, combining Pippin and Jordan, playing as Bill Clinton, and beating the computer by 100 points. Fun times.

I just watched Funny People this week. There was a good joke in there. Seth Rogen tells (the way I remember it), "I just bought the Wii Fit, and it tells me I'm fat. That is like my pot telling me I'm lazy." Pretty ridiculous that we bought video games to escape playing sports, but then video games are getting more to being like playing real sports. The next accessory for the Wii will probably be a basketball ball hoop and some hightops.

Worst artist

The radio has a show about opinions of the worst musical artists. The ones that drive you nuts because they are so awful. On my list of worsts are the Cyruses (yes, both), the B52s, NSync and Rush.

At least Vanilla Ice apologized. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbAUi7savsk I think all of them should apologize. MY EARDRUMS DEMAND AN APOLOGY.

Got to wrap this up and head to Michael Bolton 101. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0R21izMZUw

Plasma + CNC

I want one of these. 8Gs....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfH_qRZS3dU

These are available commercially. This guy built his for a bit cheaper than the retail rate. Still expensive. The full build is posted on pirate (Arrrr). I spend a lot of forum time on pirate.
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=887894

The police

I asked Melissa if she liked The Police....
Came back with this song. Great song.

The Police - Every Breath You Take

That is fat

My new welder has a spec weight of 355lbs, not including the cart. That is going to be fun loading and unloading from a container 4 feet of the ground.

Weener's Cube

Went to the Sunnyvale Golf Land arcade tonight with Nathan and Melissa. There was one new machine called Winners Cube that cost 12 tokens to play ($3). The game had ipod touches, ipods, and an ipad ($500). The user controls the x and z coordinates of a rod. You have to align the rod. You get one push on the x coordinate and one push of the button to control the z coordinate. When you are done aligning the z coordinate the rod pushes forward. It has to push through a small hole in the clear wall to push the prize out the back.

This game is just like the game stacker. There is more than what is really shown. Stacker has an internal mechanism to pay out prizes as a negative balance of what it brings in. Stacker awards similar type prizes but is only a $1 to play. To the untrained eye, winner's cube is a game of pure chance. Where in fact the computer is calculating the y and z coordinates through calibrated stepper motors. It was obvious by how you could see when users let go of the button, the computer decided when to stop on the z coordinate.

I played it once. I didn't even get close. Over the hour that we were there. There was close to $30 put into the machine. Some people were close, real close. And most were far. I can't understand how someone can design a machine that doesn't have fair odds, and sleep well at night. I would never take a job like that. Just wrong.

Oh well. I guess its like buying a lottery ticket, you buy it to hope you are the lucky one. Well, the family still had fun. Won a bunch of prizes, and Nathan got a big plastic squeaky lizard that he likes. He didn't care much for the games, but somehow understood the tickets were valuable.

My custom aluminum Iphone case

I finished machining class this week. I learned a lot in the class, as it was mostly spent go over technique and practice with very little free time. We had a few hours of free time towards the end of the class, so I decided to machine my own Iphone case I wanted a way to prop my phone upright on my desk, as I can't see who is calling without picking up my phone. Since it has a plastic clear snap on case on it, I figured it would be near impossible to find a commercial holder that would hold the clear case and phone. I started with taking the rough dimensions of the phone and case.

I used a mill for the entire project. A mill is different than a CNC machine. A CNC is programmed with code (typically G code), then the computer comes in and grinds everything out. A CNC is good if your rich like Scrooge McDuck. They can run from $50K to several million. They are good for production stuff, but a waste of time for one offs. A milling machine is manual and can be had from $500 to $10K. I used the one at school which is a $5K model. To make this part, I milled a block down to size, then hollowed it out to the size of the phone (including my case), then cut a plate down to size, made a window in the plate, drilled and countersunk and tapped the 4 holes to accept machine screws.

I wish I had more time in the class. I wanted to make a hole in the bottom for power, and hole on the side for the volume buttons. It works for now. After scouring the web, I learned the cell antenna is on the lower rear of the phone. I probably should have created some slots to allow the signal out the rear. For now, the signal will be restricted out the front. Suprisingly, I tested the phone in a closed box situation (without the window cut), and it still got really good reception (only one bar down).

When I get my own mill in a few years, I can make some mods. I need to buy my property, and build my monster garage....I mean my labratory.....mmmmwhahaha.

TV Hat....not on my wish list

why?

https://www.trytvhat.com/flare/next?etag=asotv