DAN’S BLOG

Well today was the last day of Maker Faire and our last day in San Francisco. We have had a blast, literally! The faire was so much fun. I hope to go again next year. Today we didn’t rush over there as early as we did on Friday. We had already seen most everything on Saturday and used today to see the few that we hadn’t as well as go back to some of the more interesting booths. We saw the giant metal hand in action. It is a massive hydraulic hand that is controlled by a special glove to operator wears. When the day was nearly up, we went out to dinner and then Scott dropped us off at the airport. The flight back to San Diego was faster. Virgin America rocks!

Today we woke up real early to go to the first day of Maker Faire. We say way too much stuff to even begin to talk about right now. I’ve added some photos below so you can just see. Some notable events were Adam Savage giving a talk about failure and how there can be no success without it. We also say the EepyBirds doing their famous diet Coke and Mentos trick. There were all sorts of insane and brilliant inventions and gizmos. Some with fire spewing out of them! Well, bed time. It’s been a long day.

Well today was Day 1, Ken, John, and I flew from San Diego to San Francisco this morning. We flew Virgin and it ROCKS! They have amazing toys on their planes. You can listen to radio, watch TV, play movies, watch the live Google map showing your location and speed, as well as chat with other passengers. It has a real nifty chat client built in. I did manage to crash it however, oops. It runs on Linux so I was shocked. They rebooted my seat for me to fix it. Once in San Francisco, we met up with Scott and did some touristy stuff like Fisherman’s Warf, Metreon Mall, and an old coin operated arcade. I even saw the San Francisco SAIC location! LOL. I should have stopped in to fix their T1. haha. Tomorrow is the first day of Maker Faire!

That’s right, Ken, John, and I are off to San Francisco today to meed up with Scott. We will be attending Maker Faire this weekend. I will be playing with Google Attitude so you can see where I am usign the GPS on my phone! See below. Check back for hopefully daily updates with pictures!

Maker Faire website: http://makerfaire.com/

Yesterday and today we all helped Robyn pack her stuff up into a big truck. Tomorrow she leaves for Texas where a new apartment and a new job await her. She will be living about 20 minutes away from Steve and Sudi which will be cool. She will be missed at all the Friday and Saturday gatherings. See you later Robyn.

Here’s a link to the Gliebe Family Solar Status page. Here you can witness electrons being born! This is a LIVE (30 second refresh) view of how much power the solar panels (PV System) at my parents house are producing. The system is a 42 panel setup with two Xantrex SPR-4000x GT Series (Grid Tie Solar Inverters).

Gliebe Family Solar Status Page

As a sort of Mother’s Day present, I moved the server equipment at my parents’ house yesterday. It has been over a year since I moved out but have not moved my server equipment out of the way. Now mom is free to take over that room for other uses. I used to have a 7ft rack in that spot when I was living there. When I moved out I downgraded it to a smaller rack. The problem is it was still hanging out into the room. Now it is tucked neatly in the freshly gutted closet. This equipment is responsible for the house’s CATV distribution, Internet, File server, print server, TigerCam/Webcams, WiFi, and supporting the encrypted VPN tunnel to my house through COX. I upgraded their switch from a stinky old 24 port 10Mbps Compaq switch to a 24 port 100Mbps +2 port 1Gbps managed switch. That should make printing a bit faster.

I have future plans to add new features to the video cameras as well as add remote access to physically powercycle hardware that has crashed, via the network. Also I would like to once again monitor the solar inverters on the house and provide live stats on the Internet.