I have become the official blogger for the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS). If you haven’t heard about PSAS, watch my five minute Ignite Portland 2 talk and follow along with the sides.
In this PSAS weekly episode, I talk about the rocket airframe and the software for the avionics sensor nodes.
Airframe
Tim showed off pictures of his setup for creating the light-weight fiberglass shell that goes around our rocket:
Last night we had “going away” dinner at Arabian Breeze because my friend Deepak is leaving Montavista Linux. Deepak isn’t actually moving away from Portland. He’ll be working from home and occasionally flying to Boston to meet with his coworkers at the “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) company. It sounds like OLPC still wants to work on the Sugar UI and Linux infrastructure, despite Nicholas Negroponte’s recent remarks about developing Sugar for Windows.
The dinner was good, but it got off to a harrowing start. When I arrived at the restaurant, I discovered that there was a giant warehouse fire across the street. The police had the entire block (including the restaurant) roped off with caution tape. They did let us through, once we explained where we wanted to go. I guess they just didn’t want a crowd of gawkers hanging near the fire.
Still, it was a little dumb of us to continue eating at the restaurant, considering there was a gas station next door.
In celebration of this sugary occasion, the Portland bike community arranged an Ice Cream cone ride. The idea was to ride to all four locations and get a cone at each one. We started at 5pm, and the free cones ended at 8pm.
I’ve been slightly side-tracked from my quest to host my own blog by the search for a good calendar and todo list application. It is still sort of relevant, because I’d like to embed my calendar in my blog. It’s really useful to point family members to a web calendar and say, “You pick a free night for us to have dinner.”
My current setup is just not working. I’ve been keeping my todo list and events in a plain text file in a git repository. I usually only check the file when I’m adding a new task or event. This means I’m suddenly faced with the
mountain of undone tasks during a (usually) stressful moment. It’s no wonder I’ve slowly started avoiding looking at that file at all. I need something pretty that I can bear to look at every morning.
My big presentation went well yesterday. I presented to all the managers in my group and Imad. (Imad runs the Open Source Technology Center (OTC) and is my manager’s manager’s boss.) My manager said that he didn’t think anyone was
bored, and it was the right level of technical detail. Go me! It was my first real exposure since I joined OTC in August. Now it’s over, and I can relax and get back to hacking.
Right now I’m sitting in the Tao of Tea, drinking wonderful organic tea and hacking. We really need to have a Linux Coffee Shop Day again.
I got sexy new reading glasses today. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve developed headaches after staring at my computer all day. I feel fine today, and I can tell that my eyes aren’t straining to focus. As an added bonus, I
can shrink the fonts on all my applications. Yay for more code per square inch!
I bought a new bike. 😀 I’m so excited because it’s my first new bike in 8 years. My previous new bike was a Target-special that my parents bought when I got too tall for the bike that had training wheels. My new bike is a Jamis
Coda, which is a hybrid with 24-speeds, a steel frame, quick releases on the tires, and holes in the frame for a front rack, back rack, and fenders. (Wow, I just rattled that off the top of my head. I’m becoming such a bike geek.)
My new bike should be great for commuting back and forth, and ok for biking trips this summer. I want to do a weekend trip to down the Columbia River Gorge, and a week-long trip down the Oregon Coast. I also want to participate in pedalpalooza this June and go on more bike rides with the Portland bike groups. Deepak wants to do a bike ride down to a penguin themed bar somewhere south. Should be
fun!
Today I decided to try a new bike route from Washington Park to Sunset Transit Center. I got really lost:
Details of my lovely morning…
The jagged circle was where I got lost in the cemetery. I remembered Keithp talking about his route home, and how it involved going through a cemetery and a gate that only bikes could fit through. I found a path through the cemetery, and a gate that I could take my bike around.
I walked my bike down the steep gravel road, only to discover that it ended at a chain link fence. I had to walk my bike up the hill, through the gravestones, to get back to the road. It was really creepy. Especially when I noticed the flock of crows, grazing on the grass, next to a huge patch of mushrooms. I shuddered at the thought of what the fungus found tasty.
I finally found the bike route again and zoomed down the hill. Along the way, I noticed that the route was marked by an orange spray-painted symbol. It was the letters “WC” in a circle with a line or two that pointed in the direction you
were supposed to go.
Or so I thought. Apparently the symbols actually lead to the path to Beaverton Transit Center. By the time I realized I had made a wrong turn, I was at the bottom of a hill at Cedar Hills Blvd, which is a very busy road. The bike lane
ended just before a big intersection.
I spotted a bus sign, and looked for a stop ID so I could call Trimet. I didn’t see one, so I called Jamey to ask him to look up the intersection.
“Hi, I’m really lost!”
Jamey goes, “Oh!”
“Can you look up the bus schedule for the intersection of Cedar Hills Blvd and Butler Rd? It’s bus 20 and — Jamey, are you there?” I looked down and discovered my cellphone screen was dark. Not surprising, since I hadn’t recharged it the night before.
I ended up biking across the scary intersection and heading up Barnes road to get to Sunset TC. I borrowed a cell phone and called Jamey to make sure he knew I was OK. The biker I borrowed the cellphone from was the one who told me the
WC marks point to Beaverton Transit Center.
I got to work about an hour later than I normally do. That isn’t too bad, considering webwalking.com says that my route was 11 miles long.
It was a tiring morning. On the bright side, the bike route from Washington Park Max Station to Sunset TC is pretty fun (now that I actually know where I’m going). It’s mostly downhill, or on low-traffic streets. I think I’ll try it
again on Monday.