Busy much?

Stumbled across these two articles the other day.

Why psychologist say you should ban busy from your vocabulary.

and

Busy is a sickness.

If I had to pick one word to describe me, it would be busy.  When asked how I am, or whats been going on- my response:  Busy.

Very interesting read because the last couple of months I've been feeling a little overwhelmed with everything that goes on in life, and it seems like I keep throwing fuel on the fire trying to sneak in a few extra projects here and there.

Just recently, for the first time in a long time (ever?), I turned away some "extra" work.  I still feel bad about having to say no but on the other hand it sure feels nice to not have my To Do list expanding at 5 times the speed that I can check things off.  Since then, I've been able to bring myself to tell a few more people I just can't handle more projects right now.

Has it helped?  We'll see.  Still feel light years behind in trying to get our house sold, and have customer projects left over from last year, but I'm making headway.  The play ends this week and that will open up a lot of time to catch up on everything I feel behind in which will be nice.

The key here I think is to "just keep swimming".  It's like trying to fill a can with rocks, gravel, and sand.  If you put the sand in first, the rocks won't fit.  Stuff the rocks in first, then let the gravel and sand fill in the gaps and everything fits.  Spend time with the family, have some time to do things that keep you sane (i.e.- ride a motorcycle or build a Hot Wheel), and here's the tricky one because it seems so backwards- donate some of your time to help others, and THEN all of those required jobs and responsibilities seem to fit right in.

Is life BUSY?  No.  Its just... Full.  And that's a good thing!

Random "Invention" of the day...

Any guesses!?



Our school Resource Officer came down to my shop the other day and wondered if I could help him make something to wind up really loooonnnnnggggg rolls of paper he had to go through for some case. This is what we came up with.




You can see the roll in the last pic- he had dozens of them to go through.  I think it took less time to cut the bits out than it took for the glue gun to warm up and slap the pieces together!  It must have worked out, because he hasn't been back!

7th graders can break ANYTHING...

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a student... The woods teacher was using at the time!



Obviously the poor hammer has been through the wringer.  Looks like it had started cracking a long time ago- Thinking that this must be the weak spot and it has fatigued over years and years of constant (miss)use.







It's been sitting on my desk for a day or two- Every. Single. Student.  has to ask me how I broke the hammer.

"I got a little upset with (insert students name here)..."

Penny Engine! So small you can power it with your BREATH.

A couple of weeks ago I had kind of a wild hair and came up with this little guy.  Flywheel is made out of a penny, and it will run on air from your breath!



It started out as this pile of leftover parts from past Hot Wheels builds.


All of that got turned into these bits.



Gotta have some semi-unique tools to do all that though.  The jewelers saw and pin vice / jewelers drill are lotsa fun to play with.



Getting the rotating assembly put together.



Piston, cylinder, and associated bits.



This type of engine is commonly called a "Wobbler" or an Oscillating Steam Engine, because the entire cylinder wobbles back and forth.  As it does, one of these holes lines up with the hole in the cylinder, letting pressure in to push the piston down.  On the way back up, the other hole lines up and lets the pressure out.



 

 





And of course, some videos of it running.  First one shows me powering it with my lungs and then a longer run with the air compressor.  Second vid was the second time I had ever gotten it to run, using the air compressor on that one.






This was a lot of fun to make.  It was even more fun to watch the band teacher, who you would think has lung capacity to spare, turn red, then purple, then white trying to get it to go!

Also wrote an instructable on this one and entered it into a couple of contests over there.  Check it out here:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Penny-Engine-micro-air-powered-engine/

Random post for the day.

Go big or go home?



Sorry Slinky, I think that bird is a little out of your league.

Wow, I'm way behind...

So here's an abreviated version of the last half of our vacation...

Since my wife soooooo awesome, she loaded up the kids and drove the car out to Washington. I hopped on my bike and road down through Glacier Park and over Going to the Sun Highway again, and of course it was AWESOME.













We all arrived at our destination safe and sound. My brother in law had some time off of work for the get together, so we spent most of our first day puttering in his garage on our bikes. I finally got the fan switch wired in and finished mounting my side covers.



Went to watch the fireworks out at Cusick- the Tribes put on a HUGE display. It was great. Had a lot of fun watching a dozen or so little kids running around with glow sticks too.



Part of the reunion every year is a Motorbike ride. We did about 250 miles up and around the NE corner of Washington- some real pretty roads and sights up there. Makes me almost miss living up there...









'Course, theres also the BICYCLE ride too... We road about 14 miles along the Centennial trail in Spokane, WA. I even got 'Ole Paint again this year!



Then it was time for the loooong trip home. We road/drove to Helena, met Grandma and Grandpa and off-loaded our kids for a couple of weeks. We stayed at a bed and breakfast there, and did a little shopping. Helena sure is an interesting town. Has some GREAT thrift shops! Even scored a basketball hoop and backboard to put up in my classroom this year.



Saw a whole bunch of this on the way home...



The Silver Bullet. Been a great car, but I sure hope we can upgrade sometime soon.



So there you have it. A week of Canada, then a week of Washington. Now we are empty nesters for a couple of weeks, what are we going to do!?!?

Gettin my redneck on.

Figure 8 racing!  Missed the first couple of heats but the ones we made it to were pretty darn good. 


4 cylinder class last chance heat getting ready to go.





If you look real close, you can see a Fierro there in the front.










From the last race of the day for the grand prize- 9 4 bangers in a row... Some with some obvious issues, or maybe the smoke screen was intentional?  Quick multi shot sequence from the line to the first corner.  Keep your eye on the 'wagon.















As you can tell, it helps if you have an all wheel drive Subaru wagon...   He made it all the way around teh first corner without any problems.  Several of the others didn't... As you can tell by the backwards car there.  The 'Suby did great right up until the last lap- broke a tie rod and lost his steering. 

'Nuther set-  Things that go *boom*.





Tires, apparently, optional.


 
Pretty good races.  No rolled cars but lots of bumpin and exploding radiators and tires.  Lotsa fun, even with the glares from the neighbors every time we got with 3 feet of their muddy truck.  FYI- I'm pretty sure the car seat bouncing around in the bed was harder on your paint job than anyone resting their hand on the bedrail...

Anyone wanna donate a car?  I'd love to do this someday!