Lee.org

I’ve been talking about lighting the Projeti for Burning Man in my regular journal. I found a bunch of sources for wire. Well, I found the source I’m going to use: http://www.coolneon.com. This from the Coolneon gallery:

Run potential spams through a grammar checker…. like MS Word’s grammar checker. That will surely differentiate the gibberish spammers insert into their emails from legitimate emails that use real sentences. It might be computationally expensive but not THAT expensive…

It’s together. :-) Last night, I reved it up to full power, pointing the nose up toward the ceiling. I could feel it pushing up against my hand. If I had let go, it would have shot straight through the ceiling. Well, not really… it would have hit the ceiling and then shattered into maybe five or ten pieces… but you get the idea; vertical performance :-)And now the bad news: I was getting ready for my outing today and the prop wouldn’t turn. When I gave it throttle, the prop would do this unhappy buzzing thing. The prop doesn’t turn, it just vibrates! Waah! But today was the day! Wahhh!

I called NESail at 5pm and Carolyn said I’ll get a call back by the end of their work day… which is at 6pm…  in 5 minutes. :-( I don’t think I’m going to get that call. :-(

Maybe I changed an important setting on the ESC when I tried to program it. It’s a Phoenix 25 brushless ESC. It took me a while to figure out an important aspect of programming: go slow. If you try to program it too fast, it drops out of programming mode unexpectedly. I’ll go try to program it AGAIN…

——————-

NESail called me back at about 6:05 6 :-) The guy at NESail, Sal talked me though some diagnostics but couldn’t help. He thought it was most likely a busted ESC, though such problems are rare. He motioned me toward Castle Creations. He says that if it’s busted, I could exchange it though either NESail or Castle Creations. Of course I’m unhappy that I’m having trouble with it but NESail has been pretty sand-up-ish. I left a message at Castle Creations after hours. Hopefully they’ll call me back shortly!

The email I sent Chansonette Connolly on the 22nd bounced. I’m going to send a paper letter shortly…. and start pirating Symantec software as prolifically as I can.

At the request of a client, I contacted Symantec about some suspected pirated software I bought on Amazon zShops. I sent the Symantec legal department a juicy info packet on my purchase.

From: Chansonette Connolly [mailto:ccon.don't spam her.nolly@symantec.com]
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 4:03 PM
To: [Lee]
Subject: Re: Report of Suspected Piracy of Norton AntiVirus 2003 from a Third Party on Amazon.com 4/21/04 - [removed] (zShop)

Dear Mr. Sonko,

Thank you for submitting to us the CD you purchased from [removed] (zShop) marked �Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2003� for evaluation, together with your documentation. We have examined the CD you submitted and believe it to be counterfeit. Therefore, and as I am sure you can understand, we will not be returning the CD to you. Our records show that this entity is not an affiliate or authorized partner of Symantec.

You may wish to contact your credit card / financial organization and find out what options you may have in a situation like this. We appreciate your taking the time to send us documentation relating to your purchase, which will assist us in continuing to investigate this matter further.

We appreciate the faith you have shown in Symantec�s products by purchasing legitimate software to replace any counterfeit software you might have had. Please be assured, you have made the right decision given the risks associated with counterfeit software, be it faulty operation, leaving your computer open to cyber attack or possible damage to your computer. Furthermore, legitimate software gives you the right to obtain updates generated by Symantec for that software. Updates are necessary to help protect your system from cyber attacks, which evolve on a daily basis.

We look forward to serving you as one of our valued customers and hope to make your cyber experience as safe and enjoyable as possible.

Sincerely,

——————————————————————————–
Chansonette Connolly
Manager, Worldwide Brand Protection
Legal Department
Symantec Corporation
Office: (408) 517-8045
Interoffice: 6 [408] 8045
Fax: (408) 517-8121

Email:
chanso.don’t spam poor Chansonette.nette_connolly@symantec.com

www.symantec.com

Any my response

When I wrote to Drakes (the company that makes Devil Dogs, Ring Dings and Yodels supermarket pastries) telling them about some bad Yodels I bought last year, they at least gave me a coupon for some free Yodels. When I wrote to them, all I included was a photo of some sorry-looking Yodels and a short explanation. When I wrote to you, I included a lengthy description that puts me on the spot vs. Amazon and vs. an Amazon seller, packaging material, and the actual product. You now have all the incriminating evidence you need to stop a major American pirate of your software.

For my trouble, all I got was a pat on the back. You can be sure that I won�t ever be bringing potentially pirated software to your attention again. You could learn a lot from a Yodel.

As I was driving around Marlboro 2 weeks ago, I ran across the weirdest thing… Some of the OFFICIAL signs in this town read “Marlboro” and some read “Marlborough”. I thought that spelling differences like this had been done away with in the seventeen hundreds!

Last weekend, Noni, Bamfa, Julia and I went to the Cole Brothers Circus in Hackettstown (just across the way from where the Merry Go Round picture was taken). It was a pretty darn good show! On our way out, Julia got a mermaid balloon. When we were in the car on the way to dinner, I noticed that the mermaid wasn’t the ubiquitous Ariel. I asked Julia what the mermaid’s name was. She eyed the blow-up fish and promptly declared, “Her name is Lola Paralyze!” I think that rolls off the tongue pretty well, don’t you?

Hear it

The Pocket PC I ordered on eBay came in. I opened up the box, reset the device, set it in the cradle, followed the on-screen prompts to register it with my computer, and it instantly replaced my ailing Pocket PC. I love it when a plan comes together.

[grin] something “just worked”!

Submitted for your approval

from http://naturesplatform.com/

Arrival

The Projeti arrived today with all it’s parts. That was fast :-)

Notables:

• The $80 Mega brushless motor is virtually indistinguishable visually from the $10 brushed motor. Weird… cool…
• The 2100 Mah 11.1 V lipoly battery is considerably smaller and lighter than my 1700 Mah 9.6 V Zagi pack. I’m still worried that I’ll be drawing too much juice from it, burning out this $80 battery prematurely. I’m especially worried about the temperature constraints of the pack. The Nevada desert will be 100 degrees during the day and the max recommended charging temperature of the battery is…. 100 degrees. The max recommended discharge temp is 160… only 60 degrees above ambient temp, and with the sun beating down on it. We’ll see what happens. Maybe I won’t fly it during the day.
• The Projeti looks to be made from EPS foam. I was told that it was “a bit stronger than EPS”. It would have been nice if it were EPP or a foam-composite or something. But no, it’s just EPS. Of course I realized this issue before purchasing, but I’m still worried about its resiliency compared to the Zagi.
• I wonder what 70 mph alkali dust storms do to r/c equipment?
• I’m thinking of getting flexible lighting wire and creating the silhouette of a hawk on the bottom of the plane, then covering the bottom with doculam clear plastic sheeting. That could be cool.
• The Triton charger is 1/2 the size of the Astroflight 110D charger. Tech. Cool.
• If I can get the twin tails to fold down (or something), the whole suitcase I’ll need to haul the plane and equipment will only be about 34″ x 24″ x 5″. Cool.

Zagi News

My second motor is on its way out. I lost another $1 prop to overheating. I’m a bit surprised at that because this second motor is a 7.2V motor… IE, it spins slower at WOT. I had figured that the first motor, a 6V motor was burning itself out extra quick because I was pushing it waaay too hard. And I was only pushing the 7.2V way to hard.

The 2 NiMH 1100 battery packs are having some trouble. I pretty much figured when I got them that I was drawing too much power from them. But I got a whole year of flying out of them, so I’m not unhappy. I tried strapping both to the plane and flying them in parallel. It worked reasonably well. The plane was heavy like a dog but it flew fine enough. I was a bit surprised when I landed the dual-pack arrangement and both batteries were very hot. Shouldn’t I have been drawing 1/2 the normal amperage? Well, as I said, the packs are on their way out… But if they’re on their way out (loosing full power after only about 5 minutes), shouldn’t just 1 or 2 cells per pack be getting really hot? Eh. Whatever.

I ripped off a winglet Monday afternoon when I landed a little hard in some tall grass. So I tried flying winglet-free. YOW, bad idea! When I went into any kind of high-banked turn, the nose would turn toward the earth and I’d lose altitude like it was going out of style. I tried doing a roll without winglets and, YIPE! I had reasonably good form but midway through the roll, the plane started fluttering down to the ground like a piece of paper, flipping nose-over-tail and such. Just zooping about, it was hard to keep it flying straight. Any sudden shift on the controls or in the wind and the plane wouldn’t know which way was forward. Bleh! Conclusion: The Zagi 400X cannot fly without winglets. I’m glad I did the experiment.