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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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Monday, March 23 2015
This afternoon I did some more work on my wind-measuring barometric array (WMBA). Now that I'm pretty sure that an Arduino's I2C bus can be successfully multiplexed with a single ADG508A, I added a four by eight grid of pins (on 0.1 inch pitch) designed to accept eight separate four-pin single-row female Dupont connectors, each of which will go to a separate BMP180 barometric sensor. The WMBA I intend to build will only need five or six sensors, but since the ADG508A can switch the I2C bus to eight separate places, I've made provisions for eight. In a better world, I'd be able to configure the addresses of the BMP180 and not need a ADG508A, but there is no way to do that. Since they all have the same unchangeable address, I am forced to multiplex.
The four by eight pin grid was unusual in that three of the four rows all were common (that is, all eight pins were soldered together and fed by a single wire). Only one of the rows was not common; it was the one representing the I2C SCL pin, which is the one I am multiplexing. (I had been multiplexing the SDA pin, but something I read made me change that.) Because the SCL row was between two rows that were all soldered together as common, it was a tricky matter to run a single wire to each, since in all directions 0.1 inch away was a pad that needed not to be bridged to it. It's rare that I have such exacting soldering requirements when working at the 0.1 inch pitch, and at first I thought I wasn't up to the task, especially with decreasing ability of my eyes to focus on nearby objects. But I put on my bifocals and braved through it, keeping my soldering tip clean with wet toilet paper (a precaution I never normally follow) as I worked. Working suprisingly rapidly, I was able to connect up all eight of the multiplexed pins without any serious soldering disasters. You can see the results in this photograph; the multiplexed pins in the pin grid are the group of solders in the lower left with wires all leaving from between long, narrow blobs of solder (the common pins) in a wide swath, held down by single copper wire strain relief.

This evening, Gretchen and I drove down to Ray and Nancy's place, and we carpooled from there with Nancy to "the Blowjob Spot" (a parking lot near the intersection of State Route 32 and State Route 199 just west of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge), where we picked up Sarah the Vegan (who lives a short distance from there). We continued on across the Hudson to Rhinecliff, where we met Ray, Ray's friend Eric (the guy who painted our rental house back in October), and Eric's on-again/off-again girlfriend Jenny at the China Rose. Gretchen and I used to love the China Rose, but then we had a few bad meals there and stopped going. Being that as it may, China Rose was where Nancy wanted to celebrate her recent birthday, so that was where we went. On the drive there, she'd given it some of her trademark weak praise, "[the last time I ate there] I didn't get sick."
The day had been just as wintery as a typical one in late January, so Gretchen was concerned when she saw a little designer dog languishing by itself in Cooper Mini. True, it was a long-haired Pomeranian, but Gretchen was still concerned. On learning that the dog was Aiyo and belonged to Eric's on-again/off-again girlfriend Jenny, Gretchen decided to see if the China Rose would let her bring the dog inside. [REDACTED]
The China Rose people let Jenny bring Aiyo into the restaurant, and she spent most of her time with her head sticking out of a backpack hanging from the back of a chair.
We orderd our food family style, all of us sharing the cornucopia of vegan dishes, which included a noodle dish, a fried eggplant dish, at least one tofu dish, and an order of delicious (if somewhat sweetly greasy) mushrooms. During the course of the meal, I had the two bottled IPAs available on the menu. Ithaca Flower Power was much better than the Lake Placid that followed, something I already knew. But IFP hasn't been sitting as well with me as it used to.
Eventually we got around to cutting the cake that Sarah had made and then giving the presents. Gretchen and Sarah had gone in on a pair of new shows (Gretchen claimed that the left one was from her), and I had that little painting of Jack and Bruce I'd made the other day. I also gave Nancy a five ounce bottle of Sontava Habañero Sauce, the only Belizian-style hotsauce I can buy in the area (it's at ShopRite). The gift of hotsauce was more of a selfish act than anything else; I just want it to be there the next time I eat a meal at their place.
Overall, dinner was better than expected at the China Rose, so perhaps we'll be going back again soon.


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