Teeny Weeny Gerbil Beanies

My moms blog, see side bar has some info about this. I purchased two male gerbils circa 02/2009, Tesla (Black fur) and Edison(Blonde fur). Very sadly Edison died recently prematurely. My mom and I had grown quite attached to Edison.

Life goes on though… Gerbils are social pack animals and cannot live alone. So I got two new young gerbils to be buddies for Tesla. Marconi (Blonde fur) and Faraday (Black fur).
Hopefully the gallery below will show that the group are doing well.

Tesla, Marconi, and Faraday snoozing together

Left-to-right Tesla, Marconi, Faraday

Tesla says do you have press clearance? (marconi in wheel)

New Job & Cross country child trailer conversion

It’s been a while since I’ve posted….

I’ve just gotten a new job this week working full-time for Analex(QinetiQ) – a NASA subcontractor! The job will be at the NASA Glenn campus in cleveland, and the work will be very exciting for me – aerospace embedded software development of a payload that will become part of the international space station!

In other news alice and I (mostly alice) have used my machine shop(AJ Tool & Die) in my basement to fabricate a conversion for Jozsi’s bike trailer for children to become a cross country ski trailer. We used (from my shop) oxy/acetylene welding, milling machine, drill press, bandsaw, grinder, large stationary disc sander, as well a few other tools to complete the job. Tomorrow alice is taking the trailer on it’s way to their “expedition” in Algonquin park in Canada. I anticipate a good run from the trailer.

Overview:

Some Details:

Trying to be trendy…

My attempt at the *new age* of websites….

But I usually like to keep the text limited and instead show you pictures. (Worth 1000 words each!)

Here is my solar array on my roof. 104 Watts total, 8 8W Photon8 panels in a frame I made (64W) plus a 40W Kyorcera panel. I use it to bank to my 85 Amp Hour deep cycle crown battery. Then I use the 12V system to power fans, a halogen track light, and my 2meter band ham radio…

104 Watts of sun grabbers

Here is the original antenna I bought with the new ham radio about a month ago. It is magnetically mounted MFC Ultralight which I put on a saw blade. (The rust is ok, doesn’t matter for what I’m doing…)

Bought MFJ Antenna magnet mounted ham 2m antenna on a saw blade.

And here is the 2meter ham halfwave dipole antenna I made from scratch with no plans other then those in my head and some tips from a friend who deals with antennas and radios for a living. [Reception and Transmission are both significantly better - so seems like I didn't do a bad job after all.]

New homemade ham 2m half wave dipole

That’s all for now folks….