Copasetic Flow

 I came across the Logitech-G shopping site this morning, which was kind of like getting the Christmas Sears Catalog way-back-when: Soooooooo much stuff I don't Need with so much giggling and imaging that yes, I really do need a glowing keyboard. Anyway.  Is anyone using one of these as a bench-top soldering light? They seem like a great form factor for the desk the kid and I share between gaming, work, and radio assembly, but maybe they're not? I've hit the point in my eyes where I need more light, and yes I could get a desklamp from a garage sale... maybe, but this little guy just looks kinda cool.

TouCans is back up and running! The culprit did in fact lie in the path between the power supply and ground in the PA chain. I didn’t see it coming though. Here’s the problem: There was a cold solder joint on one side of the inductor. When KO6BTY and I measured the resistance across the inductor, it was infinite. When we remarked about this, 9 year-old Tawnse immediately said, that’s not what inductors are supposed to do. And yeah, she’ right. They’ supposed to conduct at DC. Anyway, a few minutes later, we’d gone from this Notice the magnet wire tint to the two wires whose solder joints are completely in the picture? To this      Which, in turn, led to this later that evening. The moral of the story for me? Always check the two terminal component first because they’re the easiest to fix.     

Lots of people ask how unschoolers learn without classrooms or teachers.  The perhaps paradoxical answer is that they have classrooms and teachers, just not in the traditional sense.  The kids' (7 y.o. No. 1, 5 y.o. No. 2, and 3 y.o. No. 3), teachers are whoever they happen to be around when they're curious about something.  Their classrooms tend to be anywhere but our house, where we all typically decompress for a few hours around dinnertime before we head off to bed.  We do have haunts form time to time where we spend more time learning.  When the kids were younger, we had a favorite coffee shop with a grass lawn and an upstairs.  We'd hang out upstairs practicing numbers and division.  Since we've come to San Francisco, our favorite learning haunt has changed.  Google came the closest to what we use for a classroom when they implemented rolling study halls: More times that not, the gang and I find ourselves discussing 'school' subjects...