The tin shed is up in the backyard; the doors worked a LOT better once I stuffed a rock under one corner of the foundation to torque it all into proper alignment. Bah! The big rain (previous to THIS big rain) made all my cinderblocks settle unevenly. Humbug!
I spread the lumps of dirt (most of 'em; Marla swears she'll move the rest this week or something; she wanted me to stop, 'cause I guess I looked liked was going to die out there in the humidity), and I laid most of the paving stones around it, and it's all kind of nice. It will be even prettier once the grapes grow back, or something, to fill in the stark nakedness of that corner. I'll post pics later.
Oh, the rain, I need to see how much water leaks in... may need to assault the whole thing with a caulk gun. Wheee! Or maybe glow-in-the-dark gluestick. That would be amusing
I just ordered from ABC fill-in-the-blank services a "full exclusion" rat service, for a tad over $500. Ouch. But then again, I just got a reimbursement on my property tax due to my finally getting off my ass and putting in for a homestead exemption, totalling a tad under $400. So that helps a lot.
July is ... tomorrow! Egads! And I have a lovely four-day weekend as part of it, during which I want to settle down a connect-the-dots design (and start the prototype implementation), and I want to get starting schematics and SPICE simulations on the new Tesla coil. And maybe some parts ordered.
I'm going to go wayyyy off into high-risk territory and put some International Rectifier IGBTs into parallel conduction -- a task fraught with negative feedback and runaway current loading, which can lead to some lovely pyrotechnics. However, with the soft-switching I have planned, and running them actually SLOWER than rated (for a complete turnabout from normal Tesla practice), I think it will be just fine.
Plus, these parts are (a) cheap and (b) accessible. The part I _wanted_ was (a) expensive, and (b) really hard to actually GET. In fact, I got a call from the corporate rep and I had to tell him my plan... to us IR's part. Because it's cheap. And I can buy it. He was all, "but it shows here that it's in stock in distribution!". I countered with the hard-to-refute knowledge that of the 2 (two!) distributors that claim stock, one doesn't have stock, and the other has a horrible and useless website without any ordering forms.
Sucks to be him.
Posted by Edwin at June 30, 2008 11:54 AM