No Roast Beast This Year

Christmas has not been bad. It’s just me and my dad now, but life is peaceful, and my relationship with God is rewarding.

I don’t hear from my other relatives much. My sister is not really part of the picture now, and the others just don’t contact me often. It’s always about business when they do. I guess I offended them in some way, but I don’t know what I did. My grandfather left a screwed-up estate, and that tends to create alienation among relatives, but I have never taken a dime or a single article I wasn’t entitled to, and the only time I offered to work for the estate, I refused to charge. Oddly, they chose a cousin who took 33 percent of the proceeds of his work.

Could have saved each one of them thousands of dollars. Whatever their reason for turning me down was, it must have been compelling. Or maybe they just didn’t think it through.

I did hear from one aunt. Her relationship with the others is not great, but I don’t have any problems with her. She was upset because Obama jabbed Israel in the eye, refusing to oppose an anti-Israel UN resolution. She believes God will punish the US because of it, and history appears to show that she had good reason to be concerned.

For years, Democrats ridiculed people who said Obama had problems with Israel, but at some point during his administration, the gloves came off, and now people admit he’s Israel’s enemy. No apologies from the apologists, however. No admission of error.

The Bible predicts that God will start defending God personally when all the nations of the world turn against it. Has that happened, with the UN resolution? I’m not sure. We elected Trump, and he appears to be a rabid Israel fan. Ordinarily, you would think that would count for something. But he got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, an enemy of God from the word “go.” That counts for something, too.

I am not worried, because worry is wrong. Besides, my relationship with God is going very well, so I don’t expect to suffer as badly as other Americans. I’m not all over the web calling the Israelis Nazis and comparing the Jewish state to South Africa. I hope as many people as possible get it together and stop provoking God, but I’m glad I’m withdrawing from the mass of ignorant people who are doing their best to bring on disaster.

The day was productive for me, by my standards. I spent a lot of time organizing and moving useless items into places where they will not be in the way as much. I spent some time reading an old quantum mechanics text, and I watched a quantum mechanics lecture on Youtube. I did a couple of simple problems. I am trying to pick up bits of the knowledge that leaked out of my head after I quit graduate school.

I also spent time with my handy-dandy Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab. I have been going through the projects and writing up lab reports, because reports help you learn things, but the more I got into it, the more I felt it was counterproductive to write things up. The material in the workbook does not lend itself all that well to report writing, and writing slows the process down by a factor of maybe ten. I started going through the book assembling and dismantling the projects one after the other, without writing anything. It seems to be the right way to do it. If I really feel the need, I can write about certain subjects, but I believe writing about everything will keep me busy until I’m 70.

It’s nice to do things right, but if you overthink and do them TOO right, you fall behind and never get anywhere. I wish I had understood that when I was in grad school. I felt like I had to understand everything, backward and forward.

I’ve been fiddling with the test equipment I own. I found out I don’t have a cord for my ancient HP signal generator. The resulting kerfuffle is really something. A thousand years ago, when it was made, they used a connector called the PH-163 or Belkin 17952. It’s sort of like a modern computer power cord connector, but it has oval pins. In 2016, a PH-163 cord will run you thirty bucks, not including shipping. Forget that. I ordered a male PC connector, and I’m going to rip the old connector out of the box, carve up the sheet metal, and put the new one in. I don’t even know if the signal generator works, so I’m not going to Sotheby’s to bid on a priceless antique cord for it.

My old Hitachi oscilloscope has a messed-up volts/division knob on one channel. It’s very hard to turn, as if someone put glue in it. I tried running Kroil into it, but it didn’t loosen it up completely, so I guess I’ll have to dismantle the scope and take a look at the pot/rotary switch/whatever behind the panel. I have no idea whether it can be fixed.

I’m also getting a funny display when I check the square-wave calibration function, and from what I’ve read, that means parts on the PCB have to be replaced. Fun, fun, fun. I don’t know how much effort I want to put into a scope that cost 50 bucks, but I plan to see what I can do.

It’s time to get a real scope. That means digital. I thought I might try to get an old Tektronix or HP, but people seem to agree that you’re better off getting a new Chinese job. I may splurge for a Rigol DS1054Z. They get raves. It would be nice to work WITH a scope instead of working ON it.

When people talk about the old scopes, they say they do most of what the new ones do, and the quality is better, but they also say this part burns out and that part quits working, and then you either have to become an oscilloscope technician or buy another one.

I don’t know much about it, but it looks like you can hit Ebay and pick up a 20-year-old scope that does what a modern Chinese one does, for maybe 40% less than Chinese. But is that a good idea? I saw a technical guy tear down the Rigol, and it’s no Alibaba toy. It’s built like Kim Jong-Un’s armor-plated underground end-game outhouse.

The Hitachi was fine when I was basically using it to see if I was getting any AC signal at all, without worrying whether the display was correct. I was working on tube amps, and that doesn’t require a lot of precision. I can’t get by with grossly distorted waveforms for the rest of my life. Sooner or later I’ll need to know what a signal really looks like.

I dread opening the box up and looking for problems. I’ll probably have to remove and store thirty knobs to get the front panel off, and they’re attached with microscopic set screws.

One of the big down sides to fooling with electronics is that you have to join forums frequented by guys who have never, ever, for very solid reasons, gotten a date. Some of the people are nice and helpful, but others think that because they’ve spent their entire lives staring at circuit boards and watching Japanese cartoons instead of engaging with human beings, the rest of us should crawl to them on our faces and shower them with offerings of Jolt cola and Skittles before begging their forgiveness for existing.

You really have to finesse them to get what you want without falling into the mud-wrestling pit. You have to know when to say, “Great. Thanks for the information,” when you have received no useful information at all and simply want to end the interaction.

I guess it’s insulting to humor and cajole people you could never respect, in order to get answers out of them, but you can only treat people as well as they let you.

Anyway, it was a pleasant, peaceful day. It would be nice if I woke up tomorrow and the half of my family that died from old age and cancer was still here, and we were all in Kentucky sitting around a Christmas tree, but things are good, and they’re getting better.