April 2004 Archives

So today i made it to all of my classes which is a good thing. The past three days have been a lovely stay in the EE senior design lab. so the project is to make a stopwatch with display. Extra credit for pedometer and cool case. This is how it went......

Day 1 Monday:
The group decides to finally put it together and let me know what pins do what and get me the right data sheets for the LCD. So i go in at 3ish to hammer out this code. I stay there all day and get nothing done as try as I might I cannot get the LCD to do anything. 2AM rolls around, it has gotten cold outside and i call dave and ask for pants as shorts no longer cut it. Dave leaves, I stay at the lab some more. 4 AM rolls around and we are practically no further for 13 hours worth of work. I did ask at a few points if the whole thing was wired correctly and I always got back the same response, oh sure of course it is wired up right........

Day 2 Tuesday (Demo at 430):
I go back into the lab at 1230 start working again. Instructor stops by the lab and says that given so many groups have had problems with the display we can use LED to flash for seconds and minutes. So the group wires it in and I do a rewrite of the code. 430 rolls around circuit still isn't responding correctly and so we go into the demo and she says that given that we have put a lot of work into it and we had a cool case and it seemed like some minor bugs that were holding us back all we had to do was bring it in by 630 on Thursday evening. continue to work on it till 11PM run some small software type tests on the hardware, decide it is NOT wired together properly put the whole thing away for the evening and say fuck it the rest of the group left at 6pm anyway.

Day 3 Wednesday/Thursday:
Go into the lab at 6PM reset the burn counter on the IC software. when group arrives tell them sternly and with threats of violence that they will test every connection on that board and make the whole thing is perfect. 45 min pass..... and then I hear the phrase "Oh maybe we should have wired that to ground...." they are talking about the LCD and low and behold once they wired that in and removed a short that was somewhere else the LCD powers on and I can get it to turn on with the software. First I fix the led lights so that they flash properly and with accuracy down to the millisecond (tested with an oscilloscope) and then for shits and grins I decide to see what I can do with the LCD this is 9PM. I find that wow it works just the way the data sheets said it would and just the way I had tried 2 days before. so going for more points i decide to make the LCD work and make it a real stopwatch. I setup the print functions and retime the delays in the code so that again it is accurate to the millisecond. This is when I find out this 8x2 display is crap and if you try to display stuff in the same column on both rows the display doesn't manage the power well enough to be able to show both lines so I could only use the upper line. So i deal with only showing the clock. Now the extra credit my group and already decided on..... they decided they wanted to put the whole assembly into a 4 D-cell Maglight. Sounds really cool looks really cool but mounting buttons that had to already be soldered to wires coming from the board halfway down the light from the inside was an experience, but we got the start/stop button and the reset button in and screwed down. Coiled up the rest of the wires and crammed it all into the case in the space of about 1 D-cell battery as there were already 3 D-cells in the light to power the circuit board and IC chip. so it all goes together and low and behold the damn thing actually works and works right. This is 530AM this morning. The switch in the pedometer really just measures swings at is a simple mercury switch. so I have thought about it today, as I turned over the code and gave directions on how to present it to the teacher. it is a 4 D-cell Maglight with 3 batteries in it and a stopwatch timer and something that measures swings.......

I don't think i helped designed and build a stopwatch so much as a performance beating stick that measure the time you spent beating someone and how many swings you used......

And now finally the weekend has started........

Poorly documented LCD's are the bane of my existence, group members that don't do their part are going to kill me. And all I want to do is graduate. I don't know if I will anymore with the way this bloody project has happened. And still, STILL sick I am going to have to go home to see the family doctor and then probably shipped off to STL for more extensive probing. I think I may just take all my stuff and go to DeSoto for the summer at least. I may continue school somewhere else I may just take a break as I am truly tired folks. I know that I have to get out of rolla this semester, as I just can't go to school here anymore. All you people who wouldn't mind a temporary extra body at your place for whatever length of time this summer should let me know as I don't plan on working, just traveling a bit and trying to visit those people who have been a little more neglected due to my lack of time these past couple of years. I'll catch everyone on AIM if I get enough wifi to get on.

So I get up this morning and I look out the window and what do I see, but a very yellow very much restored chevy. I decent way to wake up in the morning, seen other things that were nicer but still a very good looking car.

It was good, I enjoyed it a lot and being the type of individual that I am I would have to say that I also got a few laughs out of the film as well. There is a section of the film where they bring in "The Russian" I would dub this part of the film "the beating of your life". I would recommend catching this at a matinée as its a pretty good story and it does of course lean towards the action junkie.

So yesterday i watched Timeline, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Kill Bill Volume 1(again) last night and Id have to say that Timeline was was a good movie, but pales in comparison to the book, the new version of TCM is much better telling of the story then the original movie, and i thought it was actually a pretty decent screamer flick, and of course Kill Bill volume 1 still kicks much ass and I highly recommend seeing that and catching volume 2 in the theaters while you still can. I think this afternoon i will go to see The Punisher as there isn't too much going on in Rolla and thats the best thing playing is probably the Punisher followed by Man on Fire, might go see that one tomorrow..... oh well hope all who read are having a good weekend and I'll post again when I feel the need.

In class still sick, but somehow this feeling is vaguely appropriate for sitting in class. The Doctors at phelps simply went take your Zantac and go home and if you get worse by the end of two weeks then come back and see if we can take your money rrrrr help you again. Needless to say i am not impressed with the lack of help i got considering no sleepy no eaty make Matt an exhausted child. Going to get better going to find work going to get the hell out of rolla, going to do it or die trying, time to change things for myself and make them better.

I am not compatible with my shiny...... ;P

QUOTE: "It was cold, she didn't move around a lot.....much like my ex-wife."

(By the way this pic was taken while Dan was driving at 70 Mph)

OMG it is way too early and this is way too boring somebody save me now. This has been a post from your local P800.

I know i haven't posted in a few days but i am most ill. I don't think dying is in the immediate future but you never know we will just see what the next few days brings. I would like to say massive props to Blizzard for making every game of theirs I own on hybrid disks so that was some nice gaming news. For the folks out there that liked the mastermind game this is kinda interesting...... Enigma thats all for now back to may apple juice for a while