Happy new year!
Last night i took out my super-awesome amplifier kit and started assembling it. Basically, there's a little plastic circuit board thing with copper traces running all over, and you have to solder capacitors and resistors and stuff to the circuit board. It was extremely fiddly work, like, the tiniest devices were, um, the size of the broken-off end of a piece of rice. Little rice. If i dropped a piece, i would probably not have found it.I put it together, and even with the biggest magnifying glass we have in the house, i couldn't find any bridged contacts or cold solders or anything wrong. So i powered it up, and one of the diodes burned up. Rats rats. But it was still fun. And i think i can fix it?
So today while Karen was sick (poor Karen got out of bed, like, three times today) i put together a cheap, far inferior amplifier kit i've had lying around the house since before Houston was born. It uses "hole mount devices" instead of "surface mount devices", which makes it about six thousand times easier to get perfect, and it works flawlessly. Except it's based on a cheap car audio amplifier chip (four, actually), and not the Astonishing Thing of Beauty which is the chip on the amp i burned up. I wish wish i'd used a fuse.
In other news, it's the last day of the year. In fact, there's two hours left, and i'm sitting here writing about amplifiers. Good grief. But our happy fun plans were canceled due to Karen being flu ridden, and after thirty-five new year'ses, it's just not a big deal unless there's a "kickdonkey awesomepants" party to attend or throw. This year it just didn't work out.
So, new year's resolutions: I'll shoot really low this year and resolve to keep my irreplaceable data backed up. And submit a book to more than one publisher. And finish the roof and get tan while doing it.
Juanito, Karen, Houston, Katrina and Zane… Happy NEW YEAR!!! Just got off one job and on my way to the next! Wanted to check in and see how ye be! I sure am bummed to hear about the burnt circuit… mega whopper of a bummer there. POO!
I love you guys, you are a beautiful family!
Your Brother/brother in law/uncle Josh
-- jj - 01 January '08 - 15:38