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       Stardate: 20190125.10h02
       Location: SBUX
       Input Device: Gemini PDA + USB folding keyboard
       Software: nano
       Audio: Unrecognized SBUX music, arguing hipsters
       Visual: Coffee house patio, freeway interchange and mountains
       in the distance
       Energy: 75%
       Mental: 75%
       Emotional state:  No worries
       
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       Finally off call!  And I get a comp day to boot!  So I am not 
       working today...wait, lemme take that back.  I\m not working 
       anymore today.  I had some pr3evious issues that I had to 
       attend to prior to me officially ceasing the monitoring of 
       the shackles of my leash.  FREEDOM!  Now I can get some real 
       REMs instead of this half asleep, half listening for my phone 
       thing.  I don\t think I really hit REMs when I\m on call.  
       I\m on 24/7 for a week every two months.  It used to be a lot 
       worse when my team was smaller, like 1 week every 2 weeks.  
       That was the total suck!  This round was quite busy and I\m a 
       little worse for the wear, but I\m done so I\m happy.  BTW, 
       I\m ignoring the mispunctuations since I cannot seem to
       get the keyboard mapping right and I\m being lazy.
       
       So today I plan on geekin out.  No, not biting heads offa 
       chickens, but playing around in the lab.  About a year or so 
       ago, Radio Shack had their fire sale in my area before 
       closing shop so I went crazy with the discounted purchases.  
       I really hate that they are gone, but I got a lot of 
       electronic tools and components to keep me busy for some 
       time.  Some of the things I was able to acquire were some 
       arduino components and kits, as well as other microcontroller 
       related stuff.  It makes me sad that they have been unused 
       over the past year so I want to start digging in and putting 
       more of these components to use.  Maybe I\ll tinker with one 
       of the Circuit Playground boards or maybe the Arduino 
       Esplora.  They had a bunch of Adafruit stuff on the cheap as 
       well.  I should go through the inventory and piece some 
       things together to tinker with and learn from.
       
       There was this robot kit that I built during my last session 
       with my stash.  It used an arduino and I put it together 
       successfully.  I was able to find the original arduino files 
       for the kit that someone had archived on their website.  I 
       should archive them in gopherspace so they will still be 
       available should the web versions disappear.  I think Radio 
       Shack already removed them from their site.
       
       The robot kit came with instructions to build different 
       configurations with most of the same parts  The one I had 
       built was the line-following robot.  I was able to get this 
       to work, but not too successfully as instructed since the 
       line sensor was positioned too high up on the chassis.  
       Modifications needed to be done for it to work properly.  I 
       have no functional need for a line-following robot, but I was 
       able to learn a bunch.  Nice thing about the kit is that the 
       parts seem pretty standard, as far as robot kits go, so I can 
       repurpose them for other projects if I get tired of playing 
       with the robot kit.
       
       Well, that\s enough introversion for now.  Time to go do 
       something else.
       
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