Hey everyone! If you’ve been following this blog for long, you know its our annual tradition to head out to Bishop, CA for the Thanksgiving holiday. Tommy and I celebrated 10 years in September and we thought it would be nice to take a trip out to the boulders without the boys this year. I was super keen on it at first but after a couple days, I really started to miss them. Mom was nice enough to take them for a week and they had a wonderful time with her and Uncle Joe. The weather out in CA was great (a little cold for my blood) but we had a wonderful time. We were super excited to come home, however, because we are going to break ground on a wood wall in our back yard this weekend. That’s right, we’re finally building our woody! Tommy has been designing it for the last year and he’s come up with a concept that is going to be pretty amazing. I’ll keep you all updated with photos for sure! In the meantime, here are pictures from our trip. We definitely have some scores to settle next year that will be made easier by our new wall. =) Can’t wait! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well – stay tuned. =)
First day out…Tommy working a hard 5This was our first year out to a place called the Druid Stones. W. T. H. The hike is 45 minutes long and with a ginormous pad on your back, it’s absolutely miserable.Tommy on a boulder called Arch Druid. This rock was really cool…Making it all the way to the top…Yay Tommy!My turn to flail around on it…I don’t know if it was because of the hike or because I was totally weak but this thing kicked my butt…Another cool rock up in the Druids – the Sky Stone. The problem we’re working is called Sky Dance V6 and it’s really fun! This would be the only reason we’d make that God awful hike again…Making my way out of it…Here’s Tommy giving it a go…Picture of the town from the stones…In the Buttermilks!Me and LizTravers working High Plains Drifter V7Now Tommy giving it a go…Me working the climb next door, Change of Heart V6A different angle with Liz…Another shot of the Milks…you can’t take a bad photo hereMe and Travers having pad difficultyMe and the infamous Andy Lui! Tommy and I watch his climbing videos all the time – he is such a nice guy and it was a hilarious celebrity moment! =)Working a ridiculously hard problem – the Buttermilk Stem which is only a V1 but it’s so frickin’ hard to get off the damn groundTravers doing his betaLiz giving it a goHere’s a better angle of it…It’s a good problem but it does tear the hell out of your palmsHere’s the gang watching some beta videos in the trailerTommy’s Nemesis…Morning Dove White v7I hate looking at these pictures. On the 5th day of our trip Tommy messed up his feet and came off from the top of this thing. He didn’t have the gas to get back on and do it again. We came back on our last day to try again and he couldn’t do it. I was more crushed than he was but it’s definitely going down next year!!!!This is a cool picAfter 4 years of trying this stupid thing, I finally got it! Solarium V4 – It’s all about the beta babyGrabbing the lipOne of our buddies came in late Tuesday and we met him and started working on this problem…Rave V hardTravers making his way on Every Color You Are V6Great job!A painful, pockety problem…Mr. Happy V5This thing ripped the crap outta my handsGetting on the amazing Atari V6 on Thanksgiving night. So fun…Jason almost making it to the top!A send in the dark…Wilson making it look easy…
So last night Tommy and I headed downtown to watch the Day of the Dead procession. We’ve never been but after having a lady in the fabric store tell me how amazing it was, I decided we’d better check it out. I knew taking the boys would have been disastrous, so we dropped them off with Grandpa (yes, he’s a total Saint) and headed down to watch it. What I learned is that this is not like a parade and you shouldn’t expect to go there to see amazing stuff…but you do. The idea of this procession is obviously to pay homage to the dead and the people that participate dress up, make floats, play music and make the couple mile walk to do just that. The whole thing starts at 6:30 and ends 2 hours later in a big field where they have a show and then light a huge urn on fire. It’s cool…people write letters to the ones they love who are dead and those are collected and put in a huge urn that is later set on fire. They believe the words you write turn to smoke and fly up to heaven…so I wrote a letter to my dad and gave it to them. Just for the record, I am very spiritual and don’t think I have to write a letter to communicate with him. He already knows how much I love and miss him because I tell him everyday. But anyway, it was awesome to see the costumes people came up with. I decided I wanted to dress up, so my girlfriends daughter came over and did my make up. Wow! She did such an amazing job! It was hilarious to be walking around with Tommy because we DID NOT match. He was wearing a white polo shirt with blue shorts. HAHAHA! Talk about opposites.
I’ve decided that in order for us to really experience this though, we would have to actually be in the procession. So, if we go again next year, we’re all going. We’ll take the boys too and dress them up. I think that would be great and I know they would love it. But anyway, here are the pictures that turned out. It was so hard to get decent ones because it was dark and people were moving. Tommy was having a meltdown trying to get the camera to work. =) We left before they burned the Urn because it was a total fiasco and there were SO many people…and we were starving. Haha! Enjoy!
Here’s my get up…Pretty cool huh?Ok, here’s the Urn that they burn…It’s hugeSeveral people were on stilts…Dancing girls…Big elaborate costume…Skellies…Ah, this one was SO cool!!
I’ve been doing some volunteering at Henry’s school lately so Grandpa’s been coming up to babysit Will. The most recent time I came home and found Will destroying Grandpa’s hair. Little turd.
After our Disneyland trip this year, I decided that we were all going to dress up as characters from the movie “UP” for Halloween. This movie came out back in 2009, and the story parallels Grandpa’s life in many ways. In fact, he looks exactly like the main character, Mr. Fredrickson, although he’s definitely not as grouchy. =) We saw the first 15 minutes of the movie in Grandpa’s living room when it first came out on DVD and I couldn’t quit crying. I was sobbing in fact. The girl in the movie reminded me so much of Anne, his late wife, I was overwhelmed. So ever since then, we think of Grandpa and Granny Annie every time we watch that movie.
We’ve never spent a Halloween with Grandpa – we’ve always trick or treated at his house, but that’s it. I knew this year it needed to be different…especially if we were going to honor this movie. So I told him he was dressing up as Mr. Fredrickson and coming out with us. The characters were easy to designate – myself as Ellie when she was a little girl, William would be Russell, Henry would be Kevin and of course Grandpa as Mr. Fredrickson. We had a hard time deciding what Tommy would be but in the end, we went with him being the house. Haha! So we got to work about a month ago and everything came together perfect. Our costumes were so good that we were stopped last night by a girl who wanted to take a picture with us! In the words of Grandpa, “We did good!”
The boys did good, except for the fact that they kept asking for MORE candy from people and if they could get to the candy bowls, they stuck their hands in and tried to grab stuff!! Ugggghhhh! I had to tell them every single time NOT to ask for more candy and just hold their buckets up! So embarrassing. I can just imagine what people thought of this crazy toothless lady barking at a boy scout and a bird. Hahaha! Anyway, it was a great time and I’m looking forward to next Halloween to see what we come up with. Hope everyone else had a good one as well. Love you all! xoxo
For those of you who haven’t see the movie, here are the characters:
RussellKevinEllieThe house!And last but not least, Mr. Fredrickson!
And here are our interpretations! =)
God, he looked adorable…I made the feather costume…it took forever and I was ready to set it on fire at the end. But…it did turn out pretty good.Tommy made his head. It was awesome!! He used one of Henry’s hats and made this masterpiece. The beak is made out of foam and I couldn’t believe how well he captured Kevin. So good.The whole fam-damily!! Hilarious!Running over to Mama Missy’sThey of course got showered with candy from her…Mr. Fredrickson!!! OMG, I was dying…All of us…
This is a better shot of Tommy. So, he made this house from scratch. He cut up a bunch of old boxes and put this together and then painted it by hand. Talk about amazing!!!We stopped by Uncle Mike’s house to trick or treat and of course the boys wanted to play with stuff…
Me and Grandpa. He put flour on his eyebrows and in his hair to make it look whiter! Hahaha!Taking a pic with Uncle Mike…Look how adorable he is!! I LOVE it. Happy Halloween!! See you next year!
It’s been a long time since I’ve put anything up in this category. Not because I haven’t had my little projects, but because over the last couple years, I’ve been focusing my time and effort more into metal working. It started with a small hobby mill from Harbor Freight, and then developed into something more advanced. Like a lot of mechanical engineers, one of my main jobs is to design complex parts for various things. These parts are usually made from metals such as aluminum and steel and are fabricated using advanced machines that operate under computer control.
Well, a few years back, I stumbled across some information on the web that talked about how you could convert a standard bench milling machine into a computer controlled (CNC) machine. Since then, this has been my obsession…to build my own CNC machine that will allow me to make some really neat stuff out of both wood and metal. In a way, I’m bringing what I do at work into my own garage, only now I’m the one doing everything from the design to the fabrication.
The only catch to all of this, and the reason why this has been over two years in the making, is because it’s expensive!! But I’ve been able to piece-meal it a little at a time, and now have finally got it up and running!!!
This is the stock mill that I bought as an upgrade to my little Harbor Freight version. It’s a good size and has a ton of good info on the net on how to convert it to CNC.Here’s a shot of it now…converted over to CNC and complete with a custom-made coolant/chip tray to catch all the debris from the machining process.A look at the milling head and column. I had to custom-machine an adapter (big black rectangular part between the head and column) that extended the head away from the column to provide more machining travel and capability.Here’s a shot of the custom mount for the lateral axis motor. It’s a belt drive version that allows me to mount the motor in more of a compact manner.Here’s the beefy Z-Axis motor, resting atop the column. Each motor is mounted to a corresponding ball screw that when rotating, moves either the table or the head.In addition to making mechanical modifications to my mill, I had to build a set of electronics to actually drive everything via computer. This is a custom circuit card that I designed and built based on some info I found on the web. It acts as a safety interface between the computer and mill such that if it detects an error, it cuts power to the mill. I made the CCA using stencils created from our vinyl cutter and etching away the un-needed copper…leaving the traces you see here behind.Here’s a shot of the custom electronics enclosure I built to house the computer, power supplies, CNC electronics, and custom circuit card. It’s a major rats nest, but allows me to have a single box to house everything.This is the front panel of the control box. It has an old LCD monitor, a small keyboard, a touch pad mouse from an old laptop, and a series of industrial buttons and indicators to help run the machine.
So given all that, it took me a few months to get everything wired up and working. I even got it set up to run manually using an old joystick that I didn’t need anymore. Maria about sh*t herself when I showed her how it worked for the first time!
To help motivate me to finish this project in a timely manner, as well as repay my wife for her patience as I spent hours and hours in the garage, I came up with an idea for the CNC’s maiden project: a 10 year anniversary gift for Maria. I didn’t want to do something too complex, as I wasn’t sure if the rig would work that well, so I decided upon a custom set of wood grips for her little Kimber 1911.
I based the design off of some grim reaper grips I had got for her a long time ago for a different pistol, and found some really cool graphics to engrave into the grips after they were carved out of the wood. I found a beautiful piece of tropical Bocote hardwood to use and decided to go for a white inlay on the engravings. All in all, they turned out pretty good, but being the perfectionist I am, I plan on redoing them again some time in the future…maybe for our 20th anniversary :)!
Here’s a time-lapse video of a test piece I did. The first step was a roughing-out of the general shape, followed by a fine cut of the rounded profile. Next, the mounting holes were drilled, followed by the engraving of the graphics.
Here’s a look at the freshly milled grips lying on top of the raw piece of Bocote.Here’s the finished product! It turned out pretty well, though the graphics could be a bit more crisp. The wood is gorgeous though, and goes great with the stainless steel of her 1911.
So all and all, it was a good project, and the CNC did great! I’m really excited about this rig and can’t wait to dive into some metal projects…stay tuned!!!
