CorneliusMurphy.ca

Welcome to CorneliusMurphy.ca! Browse to your heart's content.

Quick Bio

• I live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in the village of Manotick
• I'm a 44 year old electrical engineer
• I have a lovely wife and 4 fantastic kids
• I love developing new electronic gizmos (when I have time)
• I try to play the saxophone (again, when I have time)

Stuff

2 Aug 10
"Daddy, does the chipmunk chip humans too?"

  --Gillian, this morning

Adam calls the chipmunk "Chipmonkey"!!!

19 July 10
I'm back from Alert! Ellesmere Island was an experience few people get. I visited Eureka and Alert and seven mountaintops in the area doing maintenance and inspections of various facilities. In addition to giving me a fantastic opportunity to get a solid grounding in satellite communication systems, the exposure to what "harsh environment" means was valuable. Our North is unbelievable. Vast, rich, beautiful, desolate, unforgiving, it's no wonder Canada's governments have put such stress on Northern Sovereignty. I'd have to say that what made the greatest aesthetic impact on me were the psychedelic ice melt patterns. Here are some examples:

5 June 10
Ok, it's later. Here are some photos of the last entry's activities. Again, it's late and I'm tired, but hopefully I won't mess up these URL's...

4 June 10 - Fireworks!!!
Tonight marks the first time our kids have ever seen fireworks in real life! The four of them started the evening off by taking part in the Dickinson Days parade here in Manotick. They rode on a semi-trailer flatbed all decked out in sparkly tinsel and colourful cords and stuff with about 50 other little girls and boys from their dance studio.
After that, we gathered them up at the parking lot where everyone ended up after being squeezed through town and whisked them to clown show in a big tent down by the old mill. Tommy was hysterical at the screwed up balloon routine, where the clown pretends he's to silly to tie the end of a balloon and it deflates while he's looking the other way. I thought to myself "hmmm, I'm a bit concerned about this boy..." but then I looked over at Gillian and Hughie, and they were in stitches too. I needed to lighten up, I guess.
The clown routine ended and we all strolled down to the park to see the firefighter games and fireworks. There was a lot of time to kill, so the four of them played like it was the last bunch of slides and tubes in the world. It was non-stop motion! Even Adam was going down the big kid slide and enjoying it! Pretty soon, though, it was fireworks time, but it felt like waiting for the food to come and a classy restaurant: good food, takes too long, so the kids scream and you can't enjoy it now.
Finally, after rolling down the hill for what seemed like an hour, and enduring a full-out Adam I'm-pissed-off meltdown it all started and the day was saved. In fact it was more than saved; it was transformed! The display was stunning, breathtaking. The fireworks did things I'd never seen before, much less imagined.
I'm falling asleep right now, but I'll write more later.

2 June 10 - Septic Tank Adventure
Our septic system had problems on the May Two-Four weekend. The pump failed and, well, read about it all at this link: Septic System Story. The best part about it was opening the giant screw cap hatch and showing the kids the bowels of the pit!! They loved it!

9 May 10 - Mother's Day!!
Beth and I thought it would be nice to put up some of the kids' creations which they worked on today. They were quite wonderful today, helping me with pancakes (except when Adam tipped all of the "wet" on the counter and the gooey egg/milk/oil mixture ran into the cabinets beneath - soon cleaned and forgotten though) and playing well together. They even enjoyed a play in the back yard, though the temperature was down around 3°C this morning!! It was a short play. Anyway here they are. Click on them to see bigger versions.

3 May 10
The weeds won the weekend. But only because the family succumbed to rampant illness. I stayed home from work today and Tommy missed school because we were too sick to contemplate going in. Poor Beth dealt with the noise and poor humours of kids alternating their sicknesses - on the one hand a boy would be hacking up a lung, on the other hand someone would be screaming because their poor coordination caused them to stub their toe on a door corner - that it occurred to me that there ought to be a medal for the likes of her.

But there were high points. Tommy and I had a nap this afternoon while Gillian and Hugh were at school, and we slept soundly until 5 pm, Tommy at the wrong end of his bed, and me at the wrong end of Hugh's. An accidental nap, really, but it did us both good.

This evening, the kids painted pictures in waves of two. Adam and Gillian were first and they worked nicely, Gillian contemplating various green blue shadings for her sky scape and foliage, Adam splashing rinse water on his paper. But when the boys decided to check the scene upstairs (it was probably too quiet for their spidey-senses) they opened up a withering fire on the paint area: "when is it my turn, Daddy? That's too long. Gillian's going to take forever. Adam's stupid. You're fat, Daddy." etc... When the changeover happened, The pair of them hadn't the spirit to stay with it more than about 5 minutes before giving up in a torrent of whining and grumbling.

Bedtime was shortly thereafter.

And that's were I leave this report. I might be well enough to get off to work tomorrow, so I should hit the hay.

1 May 10
This weekend is Weed Weekend. I wish it meant I got to smoke a few fatties, but no, it really means that Beth and I had to work like dogs all day pulling out dandelions before they went to seed. The place was festooned with them, awash with yellow. My plan to coax the kids into pulling them all didn't work out. My offer of a penny each only lasted as long as they were interested in playing with coins. They hated it when I had to use silver to pay them out. All it meant to them was they got fewer coins. The fun evaporated. No, the weeds had to be beaten back in a frontal assault. I bought some gizmo called a Weed Hound Dog or something like that, and it worked great! But we had so many weeds that even after a full day of pulling, we've still got the far side of the house to pull. I'm amazed that these weird Ontario people banned herbicides and such. This is truly a pain in the ass.

27 Apr 10
Hughie staggers out of bed at 11 pm tonight. He notices me looking at him from down the stairs, just as he's about to bang on the door to our room, behind which Beth is snoozing soundly. His face is screwed up because the hallway is brighter than his bedroom, but not much. He staggers into the bathroom as I come upstairs, drops his britches and adopts the thinker's pose on the throne.

I sit on the bathtub, opposite.

"Dad. Remember when I was a toddler?"

"Yes, Hughie."

"That was a long time ago."

"Yes, my boy."

"I'm big now."

"Oh, yes, you are."

He is finished the business, hops off, shimmies out the door with his PJ's around his ankles, stops, pulls up his undies and pants, and walks back to bed.

I tuck him in and say goodnight, but he's already asleep again.

6 Mar 10
Sure, it's a little late, but better late than never, eh?

What a day! This morning, Tommy jumped in bed with us at 0659hrs, but - thank god - went back to sleep for about 10 minutes, snoring loudly. Eventually, I decided it was time to go to the junk yard and finally get the parts we needed to fix some small stuff on the vans. Side view mirrors and headlight bezels and such. Tommy came with me and it was a minor adventure. The junk yard reeked of character. The owner was a round gent, balding with long hair at the back, and the main building seemed like it was originally a house that kept growing. Addition after addition combined to make the interior a rabbit warren of small rooms with quarter-inch fake wood paneling. I got overcharged for the parts, to make a long story short, and Tommy had a great time getting very, very filthy. He took two bolts off the van I was working on and I couldn't have been more proud! How many 4 year olds do you know who know how to remove bolts with socket wrenches? He was everywhere! But he had the most fun when I let him "drive" the van I was dismantling. Oh, ok, maybe he had more fun sliding down the big snow hills I told him to stay off. Anyway, we just about missed dance class at 1115hrs, but made it just in time and the rest of the day was a whirlwind of kids shouting, running, and the like. Beth and I are too bagged to go to bed, so maybe we'll watch a minute of TV...

16 Feb 10
A quick pic - gotta run for supper:

Ok, back from supper, a walk to the park, pushing all the boys on the swings in the dark, retrieving Adams rubber boots which fell off into the snow from swinging, shouting at the boys to stop rolling down the hill and come home to mom, watching Hughie and Tommy squeeze into a snow cave made by a hot sewer grate and calling it a fishing pond full of sharks, and getting hit with a pink shovel by Tommy because I laughed at him falling off a snowbank. Whew. Oh yeah, and snacking them all and putting them to bed but not before watching Ms. Ricker or Ritter get a gold medal.

Now, I get to sit down to some nice, peaceful performance evaluations for my folks at work. Ah, bliss...

Oh, BTW, the big colourful blobs on Gillian's drawing which look like tulips (or bums, if you're not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt) are really hearts, because she is still quite smitten by the whole Valentine's Day thing and hearts feature big in all artwork these days.

Now, onto the PER's...

31 Jan 10
I cannot express just how much barf has flowed from this family's mouths this past weekend. It's downright astonishing. Thursday night was the start of the troubles, with Beth coming down hard with some sort of illness. She got taken out of commission at about 7 pm. Then at 1 am, Tommy started upchucking at nearly 20 minute intervals. He probably barfed 14 times until sun-up. Beth was a write off, poor gal, and I had to phone in and tell them I had to hold the fort at home. Thankfully, they were understanding and had no issues. (Some people think the army's a rough place to work, but in a pinch, the guys are solid and stick up for you.) Tommy kept it up most of the day, finishing his final heaves at around 2:40 pm, just before Gillian and Hughie got home from school. That evening, it was Hughie's turn, and by Saturday morning I was pretty tired. Thankfully, Beth had recovered enough to let me have a couple of hours of real rack, from 8-10 am. That pulled me through, and just in time too, because Beth relapsed somewhat to the point where I thought I'd be calling the paramedics if she didn't turn around. She did, but it was quite unnerving... Beth was ok until mid-afternoon. We managed to get Hughie and Gillian off to ballet on Saturday afternoon, but we left Tommy at home to gather a bit of strenght (and to avoid passing it on to others.) The rest of the day went delicately. Today, Sunday, Tommy barfed again, unexpectedly, on the way to skating, but I chalked it up to car sickness (silly me) and sent him out to skate anyway - no problem, he was fine - but later when he was nice and calm, he barfed again. Which brings us to this evening: Adam's up to bat now. He decided to refinish the boys' floor in puke by climbing onto the foot of Hughie's bed as story time was about to begin, coughing, and then exhaling a stream of KD and weiners which Niagara Falls would have been jealous of. Hughie's bed comforter was a write-off, along with 2 pillows and a sheet set, not to mention my jeans and Adam's PJ's. About 10 minutes after that load was all cleaned up, Adam's own floor and bed were next. It's shaping up to be quite the evening, and there's still Gillian and myself left for the chopping block. I've taped a bucket to the side of Adam's crib, hoping that he might use it in a pinch. He laughed pretty hard at my demo of a barfing 2 year old aiming for the duct taped bucket. I hope it works. If the boys were any indicator, I'm looking at half-hour intervals of pandemonium and snippets of sleep in between. Man. When it rain's it pours. Oddly enough, I'm in a great mood.

13 Jan 10
Gillian barfed the night before last. I'd just finished supervising Tommy's tinkle at about 1:30 a.m. and as I was creeping back to bed from putting him down, I heard a whimpering - not faint - coming from Gillian's room. I figured she'd heard us at work and wanted some attention. That happens, but usually a good shhhh is enough to restore quiet. Not this time. She cried out louder, so I went in to see what was going on, thinking she'd just need a bit of reassuring or a stern look or something daddy-like but there she was, lying flat on her back with her blankets tucked mummy-style around her, and she said "daddy, I don't feel well." Just as that sunk in, like Ol' Faithful in Jellystone Park, up she went - barf city. I tried to whip her out of bed and get her aimed for the floor, wanting to preserve what I could of the bedding, but only succeeded in making things worse. The bed was covered, the floor plastered, and the splash effect got onto the bedside table and several poor teddies and puppies assembled to watch out for monsters and such. Gillian, under my arm like a football now, was carried to the toilet and Beth came to the rescue. Thank God for Beth! While I the "hold the head in the toilet" routine, she did bedding triage and faster that I could believe, Gillian was down again, sheets bundled and garaged. I'll never get the image of Gillian standing only in her undies by the toilet trying to be glib about how much better she felt and starting to yammer on about happy stuff. I remember doing the very same thing 40 years ago, thinking how much better my parents must feel now that I now no longer felt barfy and was on the mend. Oh how things come around again. I hit the sack again with a smile on, not having been completely useless, but pretty damn happy I married who I did. In retrospect, except for putting on a blanket or helping tuck a bed corner, I think I was just about as helpless as Gillian, and if it wasn't for Beth, the floor might still be awash with stomach contents. Ah, parenthood...

10 Jan 10
A quick note: anyone who's emailed me lately - sorry. My computer blew up and I've been putting it back together. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be back up. Apologies.

2 Jan 10
Today was less odd. Actually, it was oddly enjoyable. It's the first day in a while that things started to seem a bit more normal. We took it easy, just "breathing in" the house. The kids and I went out and played snow forts and such in the back yard. Adam was in like a dirty old shirt, and the others - after a bit of whining - were in there too. I got the snowblower out after Adam and Hughie had begged (and received) permission to go inside and Gillian and Tommy ran for the hills. Actually, they ran for the septic field and tree fort, and then flanked me by going 'round front. Having gained the tactical advantage, me being bogged down 'round back with the heavy artillery, they pressed mom for access to the warmth of indoors and were successful. No harm done though - I consider an hour or more out of doors as time well spend and forcing the issue to be pressing my luck.

Gillian did a lovely picture of our stay in Great Wolf Lodge over the holidays. I thought I'd post it up as she positively sparkled as she described every component. I adore it. Here it is - click on it to see it bigger:

Gillian is the girl with orange hair holding a flower. Left of her is a brown springy diving board (there were none at GWL but that's what she remembers.) Below her is the rainbow pool with water in it. I think that's how she remembers the wave pool. At the very left edge, you see a waterslide - the zenith of all our kids' fun was the orange waterslide but could they have, they'd have given it all up for a slide down the blue one. Above her are the clouds, black and brown for some reason, and the sun is the big orange ball. The gray waves to the sun's left are the "brightnesses" - the rays shining from the sun. Funnily enough, the water park was indoors, so we never saw the sun, but it was very well lit, so it might easily have felt like the great outdoors to Gillian. How wonderful!! I hope you enjoy it.

1 Jan 10
Yesterday was an odd day, to say the very least. Some things were hysterical, others tragic. Why not start with the lows...

Cpl Zach McCormack, one of Beth's pals from her army Basic course, was blown up in Afghanistan. She was deeply saddened; she'd remembered him fondly, and as you do on your army Basic course, you develop a bond not easily severed. I won't say more about this except to say it prompted me to make the bedtime song for the kids our national anthem last night and I had to turn the lights off not to look like I was losing it in front of the little scamps.

Speaking of scamps... I was plodding up the stairs after arriving home from Toronto, just after doing some outside chores and my foot squelched into a fine puddle of liquid about 8 steps up. The carpet was sopping, wet through with some sort of juice. I wasn't in the mood to be upset, so I asked around affably and got no "owners" so I went about my business. About 5 minutes later I caught Gillian hovering upstairs, so I asked her if she knew what that stuff on the stairs was. No, she replied, she didn't do it. I could tell she didn't want to be blamed, so I said "I don't want to blame anyone, I just want to know what the stuff is so I know how to clean it up properly." "Daddy," she said, with a little apprehension in her face, "puppy tinkled." "Puppy tinkled?" I asked, "What did puppy tinkle?" "Juice," she said. "Oh! OK," I said, and I tried to suppress a hearty laugh. "You tell puppy not to tinkle on the stairs anymore," I said, and I gave her a quick poke in the belly. Man, kids are fun sometimes.

Ach. Gotta hit the sack. Tired out from staying up until 2 last night and taking the tykes tobogganing this afternoon and snowblowing and bathtime and ...

19 Dec 09
The two links below are video footage of the kids doing kid stuff. They're password protected. Email me if you want the password. I have no problem giving it out, but I don't want web-robots and wierdos to be able to see them.

Adam Doing Gingerbread Cookies

Kids' Xmas Concert

A quick note about Vimeo: You probably haven't heard about Vimeo. It's like a mini-YouTube where they host your videos for you. Vimeo, however, has a much more "clean" aspect to it: no vulgarity and general moral decrepitude allowed, and all videos get reviewed. Also, it's really HD centric, so I can upload high definition footage and you can see it. Note, however, that the best way to view it is as follows:

• Fill up the buffer: Quickly click the "play" triangle to start playing and then again to pause it. Then, while you're paused, the buffer fills up in the background and in a few moments (or minutes, if you jet for a coffee) you can come back and watch the footage without any hiccups.
• Expand the entire screen by clicking the "four-corner-arrows" icon.
• Ensure "scaling" is turned off, so you see the video in the original aspect ration and NOT expanded to fill the dimensions of your screen. (My vids won't be changed if you have a 15.4" screen because they're scaled for that in the first place, so this tip might not change anything when you view my vids.)

Vimeo is a fun site, and draws a range of contributors with some serious creativity. If I ever get a few moments to surf, I might choose to browse Vimeo and mindlessly view some interesting footage.

17 Dec 09
Tommy's daily biggest number: eighty-six-ninety-hundred. Used as in "How many M&M's did you take, Tommy?" Answer: "Eight-six-ninety-hundred." Tomorrow, it'll be entirely different. I love that!

Today was our office Xmas lunch. It was an odd choice, Vietnamese, but welcomed almost by all. It turned out to be a case of "you can't please all of the people all of the time" blended with what I think is probably not a new extension, but I'll coin it anyway: "...but those you can't please, you're better off without."

Picked up the turkey bird - an 8.77 kg monster - just about 20 lbs. Ok, not a monster, but big enough. Beth's been looking at cooking schools to send me to because I've asked to have that as a Christmas present. There's an Indian restaurant in town that offers cooking classes in their cuisine and that would be fun, but really, Thai would be where I want to start. I adore strong Thai curries and fragrant rices. Actually, I adore home fries and I haven't mastered that yet. Do you think there's a bit of a disconnect going on here? I sometimes wonder about myself...

15 Dec 09
I'm a bit miserable from not having much sleep. I recognized it, and thankfully was able to prevent myself from inventing a convenient excuse to get mad at Beth. I could tell I was irrationally peevish by becoming cranky at her answering the phone. How lame can a guy get? So I think I'll spend a few minutes putting some pics of the kids on the site. Beth says it's what people really want when they come to visit the site, and I think - for at least some part - she's right. So here are a few of the whippets clowning around and such. Enjoy.

Oh, and these pics are fairly low quality mix-downs for the web so they load faster. If you want one in high quality, I'll email it to you if you drop me a line.

14 Dec 09
Ah.... Snowblowing!! What a tonic for the soul. Just me, my snowblower, and the cold, deep evening. I've been out hacking at my driveway twice now, both times I'd consider "training runs." Really, not much more than about 3 or 4 inches was down and it was fluffy, not heavy, so I kept reminding myself that the passersby would be casting judgement on me without the knowledge that I was merely honing my manly snow removal skills. Normally, I'd be far too much a he-man to come out and attack a mere 4 inch snowfall. No, I'd be the type to wait until at least 18 inches fell, and even then I'd be that kind of Heracles which would wait until the grader ploughed us in and only true heroics could get the van out in time for work to start. Normally. But you see, even Heracles practiced mucking out the stables before he took on the Hydra, so I hold my head high. Rather, maybe, I feel a pang of pity that the judgment casters didn't sense the true mettle of the unassuming earthshaker they passed, thinking me just a whisp of a nutter, blowing at 3 inches, lurching to a halt every two feet, and not holding a line, but swaying randomly up and down the driveway. Ah. Sometimes I nauseate myself.

How about a pic of Adam and daddy, at bathtime yesterday evening, suitably cropped for respectable internet consumption. Is this guy going to be a bruiser, or what!?!

and of course, if I put a pic up of one, then I'm karmically out of balance until I put up a pic of the rest of them, so how about a nice pumpkin carving moment just prior to Hallowe'en this last October!

07 Dec 09
Snowfall! At last!! I've been waiting months to get my snowblower ready for a break-in session. On the way home, there was a car in the ditch and emergency crews on Bankfield trying to direct traffic; it was rush hour. When I got home, Tommy was chomping at the bit to get harnessed and out the starting gate. In a few moments, he was dressed in snow pants and parka and out the door, begging for his shovel. I had stowed the three kids shovels, gray, pink, and gray, just inside the garage door, so all was set. Gillian and Hughie were after him in short order and they set to shovelling the driveway. There was about 1 inch of snow, but that's enough for 4 year olds, and pretty soon, the driveway was a plate of gray spaghetti, curly 12" wide shovel streaks slithering everywhere. I had to shout at the boys as they'd push snow too close to the road as cars and trucks passed by. Gillian made a snow angel on the back yard patio and insisted I admire it. I did. It was wonderful!

30 Nov 09
Gillian made a picture I feel like showing off. Here it it, and if you click on it, you'll be able to see it in finer detail. I wrote, in pen, the things she explained when I asked her what all the parts were. Sorry my writing is such scrawl.

30 Nov 09
The new garage door opener is in!! It was fun putting it in and now that I hear how quiet it is, I'm pleased that it went on sale. When we bought the house, one of the GDO's was broken - gear case cracked right open. So I went on the hunt for a new one and discovered that they're more expensive than I like. But this weekend, at Canadian Tire, the Genie model called Exelerator, a screw-drive version with some whistles and bells, went on sale. Regular $350 - overpriced, yes - it was available for $200, so I picked one up on my way home from work on Friday. By Saturday evening, it was installed and, with Tommy helping me on the controls, it was tested too. After playing with it for a few minutes one thing was immediately obvious: it is damn quiet and reasonably intelligent. Plus, it has two sockets for very bright bulbs and the controls are abundant and useful. Beth went out today and picked up another one for the other side as it sounds like it's on its last legs, and lacks the safety aparatus: IR beam for reversing in case of blockage. With a brood like ours, that's required. Maybe I'll put it up next weekend.

7 Nov 09
My dad and brother drove up from Mississauga yesterday in a van full of furniture they weren't using anymore and it was like Christmas come early! We spent the morning off-loading, choosing, and carrying in the pieces Beth and I could agree on. The improvement in several rooms was dramatic and welcome. In quiet moments (if I'm ever updating this page it's because I have a quiet moment) I reflect on how lucky we are to have folks as dedicated and selfless as ours. Both sides of our families, Beth's and mine, have helped us immeasurably in these past few year and I hope they never have cause to feel we take that for granted.

24 Oct 09
We're moved in!! Ottawa is now home and we're eating and sleeping in new digs. Not that the Delta wasn't a fine hotel, but after a week, it was getting tired. If you asked the kids, it was getting unbearable. Waterslides are fun, but not for a whole week.
On Tuesday, the movers pulled up with a massive semi-trailer loaded with 24,000 lbs of our belongings (!!!) and the swampers spent all day carting it into our house. The following day, the unpackers showed up and ripped into the boxes, leaving behind what might have seemed a debris field from an interstellar colonization ship accident. Tools, dishes, bits of wood, furniture, foodstuffs, etc, etc. littered the house, but didn't fill it. The house is huge compared to our Edmonton home.
Ach! I'd write more, but Tommy's here and wants to write his puppy's name:

 
There! Sweater Puppy's name in Thomas' typing! 
Kids abound, time to sign off.

18 Oct 09
Lack of well established routine causes things to go awry. Yesterday morning, we received our "his and hers" cellphones via UPS and less than 20 hours later, I'd launched myself down the waterslide with it in my swim trunks pocket. Toast, I believed, but I was lucky. Today, after a day of drying out, it came back to life and functions well. Also luckily, I was able to call Rogers back to cancel the costly replacement. The waterslide was a real source of amusement yesterday. In addition to me soaking the cell, I took the kids for an hour-long romp on the thing and they squealed with delight for 55 minutes. At noon, however, the lady running the show closed it down, with a reopening time of 4:00 pm, and that really cooled the kids off. As I was toweling off Tommy and Gillian, Hughie made a break for it, heading up the curly-whirly staircase for a final slide down the big blue rocket. The little devil ignored my stern growlings to stop and shouts to halt and all the rest of it and headed up anyway. Launching himself down a waterslide sans running water, though, proved to be a "not so smart" thing to do. The friction had him hollering in no time. I think he got down about 20 feet. At that point, he must have realized that something was terribly wrong with the contraption, and the volume of his crying brought the lady running. She must have seen this kind of thing before because she vaulted up the slide out-end-first as I went topside and dangled a towel to the poor tyke. For some reason, he didn't cotton on to the "grip the towel" thing, prefering to try to claw his way up the glossy plastic trough. The lady snatched him up and in a jiffy, he was un-troughed. He wasn't very happy, and I realized that my boys learn just the same way I always did. Payback's a ...

16 Oct 09
Again, it's not really the 16th. I'm typing this late into the 15th, way late... What a day. The loaders were left to their devices loading the remainder of our garage this morning because we had to catch the plane. I have no idea if they cleaned out the garage. Maybe they left my lathe behind, or a huge pile of garbage, or a hundred little blocks of wood I'd meant to throw away or burn years ago. Oh well. We then dropped off the Camry to Adam and Jess, who promised to take good care of it while we were gone, and it was off to the airport. The kids were fantastic on the flight. Hughie discovered that he could wriggle his way underneath the seat in front of him and into the foot space of the passenger in front of him. Thankfully, this proved to be Tommy, so no harm done. Gillian was as good as gold, proving that Gravol is a travelling parent's best friend.

Man, I'm bagged. I'm going to finish this off tomorrow...

13 Oct 09
Packing day! Oh mama! Well, it's not quite packing day yet - that's tomorrow morning - but it's still mayhem here. We shuttled kids and cargo from this side of the galaxy to the other a few times, put paid to a bottle of my neighbor's fine homemade wine, sampled wares from a friend's kitchen, packed for eight, and dealt with a flat tire. It's been a day.

10 Oct 09
The movers dropped off a gent called Chuck at 9:30 in the morning, and after a brief introduction, he got to work packing our garage. All by himself, he packed and packed, wrapping and boxing stuff in the silence of our cold, snow strewn garage. At about 5 pm, he came out and said he'd been on the Mike phone to his crew and that one of the guys, the driver who'd dropped him off, had collapsed so his pals would be late collecting him. I drove him to MacDonalds and got him a bite to eat, and when he got back, he started up with the packing again. An hour later, he came in ashen-faced saying he'd heard over the Mike that his pal had actually dropped dead. We had him in for a while and some consoling converstation ensued: a wife, 4 daughters, a grandchild, and him a fit 47 years old. Wow! An hour later his crew had picked him up in stunned silence, the boss-man explaining that on Tuesday, the entire company would show up as jobs across the city finished up, because the lady who'd estimate the move had massively underestimated just how much stuff we have. He said it should have been a 3 day pack job, not just one with a single pre-pack date. Oh well.

09 Oct 09
Mortgage paper signing day! Whoa! That single hour in the lawyer's office was like riding the spinny-blue roller coaster in Galaxyland. When I'd thought we'd finished signing for the Potter property, I asked the gent if we could get on and finish the Edmonton property in quick style. He and Beth both laughed; we'd done those papers right before the Potter papers and I didn't have a clue! Like having my head pressed in a vise.

27 Sep 09
Last night, Beth and I were honoured with a Going-Away Party at the Jefferson Armouries! What a great send-off! Our close friend, Deb Hockett, doubtless with a healthy dose of help from her hubby, David, set the whole thing up and it was a blast. To all who came out, to a person, the people we have shared our most memorable occasions with, I send a huge THANK YOU!! It was so special to be surrounded with people I genuinely think of as extraordinary. You folks have, every one of you, been "glass-half-full" people, and I can't tell you how glad I am that you tolerate my company!

25 Sep 09
It occurs to me that Josh and I have developed a reasonably "usable" set of development skills. We can design circuits using a variety of components to do all sorts of sensing, processing, and communications tasks. We can design printed circuit boards to make those circuits "hard" - rather than a collection of breadboarded wires. We can do surface mounting of components to maximize our use of PCB space. We have developed skills in enclosure design enabling us to select and adapt project enclosures for many different short run applications. We have practiced coming up with testing techniques which run from direct instrument probing with common tools like counters and oscilloscopes to constucting complicated jigs supported by custom built electronic measuring gear. (For instance, we built a pendulum and bowling-ball ramp complete with delayed multi-strobed-exposure high speed photography aparatus to measure various velocities.)
I write this because I need to beat back discouragement. A project we've been working on (the Curling Stone Speedometer or Speedtrap)is coming along too slowly for our liking because life gets in the way: family, job, other stuff... So the gizmo we've been slaving away trying to get to market is crawling its way there, clawing its way there. And it's a shame, because at first, we were so enthusiastic about getting it going and making it work. It seemed like it would just take off and have a life of its own. But that didn't happen. No white knight company rode in and said "wow! what a product! and people are lining up to buy it?!? Let us buy the license from you!" Nope, we're still trying to get the perfect product: inexpensive, functional, easily producible, etc. But it's so hard... With a bit of luck, a company in Ontario will be able to offer us a good price for the manufacture of the system, but it's going to be hard. They have to make a profit too, and unless they have some tricks up their sleeve (entirely probably, really) that we couldn't come up with, then it's going to be hard to keep the price down.
For a larger run of this product, I had wanted to design and fabricate an injection molded plastic enclosure, but the cost is very steep, at first. And I have no skill in this field and the price of admission is steep! Maybe later...

18 Sep 09
My laptop's hdd crashed today, right after I checked my email at about 8:30 am. Consequently, I'm bereft of my contact lists, account login details, emails, programming code, course notes, etc. for the past 2 or 3 months. I did some backing up with my terabyte external hdd, but not as often as I suppose I should have. This is always the case with individuals who don't have policy to force themselves to back up. At least I haven't lost EVERYTHING. However, this affair is leaving me feeling a bit vulnerable. Many of my life's most valuable things are stored digitally: the video of the kids growing up, my wedding, audio of the boys laughing, emails from people I wanted to keep. The list is endless. I think I'll have to put a policy in place. I can't afford to lose this stuff. And right now, it resides in one place only: the terabyte hdd sitting 14 inches from my right cheek, perched atop this boat anchor desktop computer, resurrected from the boneyard by the sudden death of his younger, but less resilient, pal.

14 Sep 09
Round Two of our Edmonton House Sale began this evening with a call from our agent saying the fellow who'd toured our home this afternoon was placing an offer. It went back and forth a few times until I dug in my heels and stood firm. So again, we put showings and such on hold while an inspection is arranged and the buyer looks to secure financing. If all goes well, the sale will be finalized on Saturday, with closing on 28 October. That's not bad, really, as a sale at any reasonable date is good for our own financing of the Potter Drive home we bought last week. I had to laugh, because I was right in the middle of making a batch of oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies with the boys (yes, Adam too). The noise was ear-splitting, and I had to tell my agent that I'd phone her back after I'd rounded up them up and penned them downstairs. But I phoned back in a few minutes and managed to finish off more of the delicate bits of the cookie fabrication while we haggled over the final price. What fun!

I have to laugh: Beth and I just discovered one of the things which we overlooked in our examination of our new house in Manotick - no front closet!! Can you believe we'd completely overlooked this detail? I guess we can count on a whole bevvy of new "discoveries" when we finally get moved in.

Ok, neat video on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/3514904 Every engineer's Little Red Ridinghood!(Remember to enlarge it to full screen, turn scaling off, and ensure you see it in HD.)

9 Sep 09
Beth and I are currently in Ottawa on our House Hunting Trip. Today we trailed around after house and septic system inspectors, crawling through attics and digging holes in our back yard. It was a long day because we had to be tuned in throughout, but we needed to make sure all went well and the results were proper reflections of the conditions of the property. It appears as though there were no major problems to worry about, so that's a relief. This evening, until about 8 pm, we went through mortgage paperwork, pouring over details in payback options and comparing many different interest schemes. Anyway, if the pottable water analysis comes back OK, and we are good with the inspection reports after a review this evening, we'll waive the conditions sometime tomorrow afternoon. After that, we'll see about registering the kids in school, and other prep-work which will be important for when we make our move down here. Curious about what the place looks like? Have a look at some pics of the place used to advertise it on the House Pic Page

Sometime back in Aug 2009
Ottawa bound! We should arrive in Ottawa mid October 2009 and I'll be working in radio maintenance project management. Yeah!! Just up my alley. I toured Ottawa just last week and it was beautiful. It's going to be fun skating the Rideau Canal in winter. Hopefully, Napean will cough up a great house at a fantastic price... Keep your fingers crossed!

This video made me feel good: http://vimeo.com/3156959 after hours and hours of soul-less electrical engineering (going over basic MOSFET transistor design theory for a final on Friday. Ugh.)

I really need a new oscilloscope. I'd like a Tek 2465A because it's a solid scope, but in a pinch, I think it might be ok to go with some sort of digital scope like a TDS210. The only thing I like about the digital scope is that it allows me to capture and display triggered events, where the analog scope is a bit lacking in this department.

My new lathe is beautiful!! A pal recently sold me his metal lathe, a Busy Bee model exactly like the Grizzly G4000 you'll see here. I haven't had the time to get it flying yet, but soon, when things slow down a bit, I'm going to spin it up and get some little practice projects off the drawing board and onto reality.

My 4th year EE Capstone project presentation is finally finished. We presented on Saturday, 28 March, 20009, and it went well. Soon, I'll put it up on the site, but I'm actively pursuing "marketization" of the idea in partnership with my brother and my friend Josh, so it's a big "wait out" on that for now...

Injection molded plastic is interesting stuff. It seems that molds required to make parts run from between $1000 USD to over $10K. Home-style bench top models of injection molding machines do exist, but are limited to producing small parts, and will obviously require vast amounts of practice and production/set-up time. In other words, it ain't gonna happen! However, the time I've spent looking it over hasn't been wasted. If I need to get parts made, then I have at least a mildly informed idea on how to start. One site in particular was useful: Dragonjewel Inc. Another site has a gizmo which looks fun, reminding me of an ammo reloading station I once sold: http://www.injectionmolder.net/

My EE451 PCB is a low noise amplifier circuit which was supposed to operate nicely at 1.65 Ghz, but didn't. Instead, it weighed in at around 1.48 GHz, rather low. We designed it on Ansoft simulation software, and laid it out in Eagle. Matching was done using caps and coils on both sides, but I was hoping to do a stub. Sadly, stubs didn't fly in our class. I calculated one out anyway and ran the simulation in Ansoft, but it was a flop. I'm obviously missing something, and I think it's familiarity with Ansoft. Attach:ee451pcb1.png Δ Attach:ee451pcb2.png Δ Attach:ee451pcb3.png Δ

Pleasantries

Neat Harper's Index Canadian numbers