Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 08:46:09 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: got board back in
X-UID: 83
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Took four hours sleep, woke at 2 am, and worked until about 8:30 am. Lost 
some time to buy food after work yesterday. The apartment complex also has 
been tardy and inconsiderate with a simple job that I was easygoing about 
to make their lives easier. Just hassles and delays.

Have to rush this email so I can shower and get to work. I really don't 
care about being dirty but in a white collar job, you're supposed to be 
clean. I have this project in which I'm supposed to do a ridiculous amount 
of stuff by this time next week - when the user interface will be final. 
The next day after that, everything is going to QA. That gives me seven 
work days or nominally, 56 hours. I'm depending on at least two other 
pieces that are not done yet? I don't even know.

And that's why I decided to get this done. I don't want to let anything 
get in the robot's way. And I've changed the name again. It is "Alphabot". 
That is "Alpha" as in the alpha-version.

The pictures show pretty much how I do electronics work - on my lap while 
sitting in a steel folding chair. I'll sit there for hours and get up only 
when necessary. My laptop is a few feet away running in the mil-std case 
so I can check datasheets. Trivia - I was watching the trailer to the 
action movie "Transporter 2" (I pretty much don't go to movies anymore) 
and saw that a bunch of guys in an improvised operations center also left 
their laptops running while sitting in these mil-std cases. So what I'm 
doing is probably standard operating procedure. But the big thing for the 
movie is that it looks cool.

It takes less than an hour to take the electronics board out but two to 
three hours to get it back in. I can live with this. I've become better 
with the hemostats and have learned something about using them. Hemostats 
and probably other surgical tools are made for the left and right hands. 
Just try using a right handed one in the left hand and you'll see the 
problem. Also, you can use a "forward" and "reverse" grip. Both are useful 
depending on how the angles work out. The picture shows one of the 
hemostats with a spring hooked on it. That spring came from the dumpster 
found microwave oven door latch.