My third book is released! Learn what you'll need to know in order to become an embedded engineer.

Check out my second book; learn practical stuff about building robots and control systems around Linux PCs and the Atmel AVR.

My first book gives you all the intro you need on developing 32-bit embedded systems on a hobbyist budget.

Diary Segment: 2007, June 01-15

Entries are shown in chronological order; scroll down to see later material.

June 2, 2007

Lots of Scout work is going on, or at least ought to be going on. The problem is, it's so damn hot here in New York that I can't spend more than an hour or so working outside without feeling weak and sick. This is not helped by an extremely stressful workload at my day job right now; there are many interesting and in fact quite exciting projects going on there, and I have a large role in several of them, but it has left me exhausted and suffering from acid reflux [hopefully not an ulcer]. Anyway, today I got the intake manifold off my parts Scout, and disconnected/unbolted the clutch master cylinder; that was pretty much all I had energy to do. The intake manifold is a bit of a beast to remove; one of the bolts (on the #2 side of the boss between cylinders 2 and 1) is quite inaccessible. I eventually had to file down a sixteenth of an inch off a wrench to remove this fastener. I've also received almost all the parts I need to rebuild my transmission, but I can't start putting it back together until I find an oil collector. This part is VERY hard to find. Everybody claims to have it in their catalog, but nobody actually has it in stock - which is a big problem, because it's discontinued. So right now I'm begging around for bits out of a junked T90. In the meantime, the engine on my parter Scout is slowly shrinking as I pull bits off it.

In better news, yesterday was Cole's birthday. He got a steak; the pictures below show Wilbur doing quality control, then Cole sitting for his steak (in the middle of our clean laundry, I might add), then grabbing the steak.

Of course, Wilbur needed to have a treat as well, so he got a small lamb chop. These photos don't give you a very good idea of scale, but it's roughly a third the size of Cole's beefsteak:

In other news, THE SONY PLAYSTATION 3 IS A FAULTY RUSH-RELEASED PRODUCT. I was hoping to get the last bugs licked for my next IBM developerWorks article today, but I find my PS3 is now overheating and won't power on for more than a minute or so. Searching the Internet I find this is almost as common as the "ring of death" symptom on the XBox 360. Sony should recall these defective consoles; $650 is a lot of money for a lemon like this. Yes, I am getting it replaced under warranty, but I am not happy - this delays my payday for the article.