It's been the best long weekend evah. On Saturday, we went kayaking with Jeremy and Jennie. I miss Jeremy. It was nice to catch up, to take Caleb out on the water, to throw rocks, to spend family time on the water in a kayak and just generally chill in nature.
We made our way back down the mountain, put Caleb down for a nap and then got ready to head to a baptism, which was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I played the piano, and many people were very late, so I got to play about 30 minutes of prelude music. Or at least it felt that way. After that, we went shopping for outdoors equipment, which is my new hobby. We're taking the 11 year old scouts on a backpack in a mile and then camp trip at the end of the month, and so I need a pack. I may just borrow one from the in-laws, but it's fun to shop, anyway.
Sunday was sunday. The Shapiros came over and we broke out the wii, which reminded me how dang fun that thing is. We sort of took a wii hiatus during the olympics. Two new games are coming out or have already come out that I'm excited to play on it: Spore and Star Wars: the Force Unleashed. So, if I can play through some of my DS titles and trade them in for one or both of those in the near future, that'd be sweet.
Monday, today, has been awesome. We spent the rainy morning, walking through the mall. Then we took a 2 hour+ nap. It was _soooo_ nice. We finished the day with a hike to the top of the bottom layer of Bridal Veil Falls. The hike was a little scary at points, but it was way fun to hike with Caleb and Melissa. When that was done we played around at the bottom of the falls, which Caleb loved, though he got really cold feet. After that we went for a drive up South Fork Canyon, and found some sweet parks back there. We'll have to try hiking back there some time in the near future.
Lastly, I finished the old Rockmite tonight! I was really worried because I'm a total novice solderer, but I followed the guide provided by B. Scott Andersen. It was totally awesome for a total beginner like me. Anyway, last Saturday I spent like a gazillion hours soldering and tonight I spent about 2 or so hours soldering it. Then I had one 2-3 hour soldering session before that. So, all in all I think I've spent about 10-11 hours on the thing. I soldered some solder to the antenna jack and plugged in the iphone head phones, and plugged in my adjustable power adapter.... and heard nothing. Then after about a minute of feeling totally heart-broken, I reversed the power tip on the adapter and plugged it in and *bam* it worked!
So, all I heard was static, but I _did_ hear static, and the little keyer beeped, so I'm pretty sure things work. Next deal to do is to figure out how to squeeze the thing into an Altoids tin. And then I have to figure out what kind of antenna might actually let me receive a signal in these here intermountain parts. Then after I've started actually understanding real morse, I need to build paddles to see if I can actually send something out to somebody. We shall see, we shall see.
Tomorrow, work and thesis hours start. It's gonna be a long 4 months.
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- Paul Huff (
phuff) wrote,