Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 22nd, 2012 in Food, Star WarsThirty-nine years old. Who would have ever thought. My Mom baked every one of my birthday cakes that I can remember. Thirty years ago today, she made this one for me: “Happy Birthday, Robbie.” (That’s me.) By the nine candles on the cake I can tell you this was in 1982. The action figure on top of the cake is a Twin Pod Cloud Car Pilot from The Empire Strikes Back. The vehicle is a CAP-2 Captivator, a Star Wars “Mini Rig” — one of Kenner’s many “extended universe” (things that never appeared in the movies) items. As you can… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 21st, 2012 in AdventuresOver the weekend, Susan, the kids and I had lunch at Grandy’s off of 39th and MacArthur. While eating, the kids mentioned geocaching again and we decided to check our new geocachine phone app to see if there were any geocaches hidden nearby. Much to our surprise, there was one hiding right across the parking lot! The cache was called “The City that Bites,” an obvious reference to the City Bites restaurant next door. (The rest of this post contains spoilers as to the location of a geocache.)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 19th, 2012 in AdventuresAugust 18th is International Geocacher’s Day (who knew, right?) and in honor of this, our local Community Center put on a small presentation covering the introduction of geocaching, followed by a small geocache hunt of our own. Geocaching is an activity (a game? a sport?) where people hide things all over the United States that people can find using GPS coordinates. Actually there are two parts to the “hunt” — a GPS will get you close, and then you’ll have to do some searching (sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours) to actually find the hidden object. Every geocache has a… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 16th, 2012 in AdventuresI think for the first week in three months now, we haven’t had any 100+ degree days. The constant, unrelenting heat keeps more than just people inside; it moves the bugs there too. Around the rear of our house, we’ve had an ant problem for a solid month. Repeatedly setting down traps and spraying spray doesn’t seem to keep them from coming inside. Usually (my experience, anyway) ants come inside looking for food; this year, I suspect it’s water. Outside the house you can see them, trying to work their way underneath doors or through even the smallest cracks. I… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 11th, 2012 in MainSusan’s Mom found this water fountain for us and delivered it over the weekend. It’s deceptively light — it’s plastic, but still looks cool. For now, Susan set it up in the corner of the kitchen. There’s only one issue with the fountain. As you can see in this picture, there’s a large scratch on the front of the black plastic, showing white underneath. And, as you can see in this picture, here’s how you fix something like that. You can still slightly see the spot, but as the Sharpie dried, it really blended well with the rest of the… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 10th, 2012 in Apple II, MainThe CFFA3000 is a new card for vintage Apple II computers that allows users to load Apple II .DSK files directly from Compact Flash or USB storage. It also allows for the dumping of physical Apple II media to .DSK files. In spirit, it is the Apple II version of the 1541 Ultimate for the Commodore 64. I got mine earlier this week. Here are my initial thoughts, with much more testing, playing and writing to come over the next few weeks. Here is the card installed in one of my Apple IIe computers. Between the garage and my computer… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 9th, 2012 in Computers/Tech/GamesOver the past week I’ve been working on two different tech-related projects. The first of which was, I’ve been working on setting up a BBS. It’s telnet, not dial-up based, and it’s pretty much working although there’s still lots of little tweaks I need to do to it. The other was, last night my CFFA3000 arrived. It’s a new card that allows Apple II .DSK files to be run via a USB stick on real Apple II hardware. While working on both projects I have run into technical issues. The BBS software I picked has limited documentation available, and the… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 7th, 2012 in MainWhen I got my new phone a few months ago I spent a few hours scouring the internet looking for some new backgrounds to use. I have since decided that it’s more fun to make my own. Here are three that I recently added to my phone. The first one is a picture that Morgan drew for me last week at daycare. It looks suspiciously like 8-bit pixel art, although Morgan wouldn’t have any idea what that is. It reminded me of the old school days when I would plot out sprites and graphics on graph paper. The second and… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 4th, 2012 in IBM PCA few years ago when I decided to build my first data storage RAID for the house, I didn’t have enough room in my server’s case to add four additional hard drives … so I went out to the garage, pulled one of my old computer cases off the shelf, and added four hard drives to it. I then bought some 3′ SATA cables, ran them out the back of my server and into the back of this tower to the drives, created a software RAID5, and began filling it with movies and music. I give you … Mr. Moonpie.… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 1st, 2012 in AdventuresLast week it was hot in Oklahoma. Sunday, I snapped this picture of the temperature inside my truck. 106 is hot. It’s miserable hot. It’s the kind of hot that saps your will to live, or at least move. Yesterday, I took this picture. It’s tough to explain the difference between those two temperatures. At 112, stepping outside feels like there’s a hair dryer pointed at your face. It’s like when you lean in over the grill to flip over a hamburger and that wave of heat hits your face and for just a moment you know what that hamburger… (read more)
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