Cabinets for our computer room are stained

I got all the cabinets stained...

... but I killed the dining room

Minion Grace didn't stop with just her PC!

So it ends up that Grandma's PC is quite slow.  It also just happens that we bought three MX100 128GB SSDs.  Minion Grace would like to help Grandma with her computer woes and Grace just happens to be a trained computer technician!

We benchmark her PC and it clocks in a boot at 1 minute and 30 seconds (3 times of course).  Grace got right in there, screwed the SSD into the bracket adapter, and was jumping up and down waiting for the Steam login box again.

Mounting the SSD into the adapter bracket

We were working with a slower internet connection so there was a lengthy delay between installing the hardware, downloading/installing the software, and cloning the drive. The day was dreary, gray, and wet.  That was perfect for Minion 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to go out and play in the mud!  I therefore finished up the last benchmark once the SSD got cloned.  It now boots in 1 minute and feels much more responsive!  I am not sure Team Ffreeze is 100% satisfied as of yet.  Are we all out of options or could we do more?

Stay Tuned!

Minion Grace Upgrades Her Computer

Minion Grace got a Crucial SSD from Papa Ffreeze to upgrade her computer.  Her computer was purchased late in 2013 as a Christmas present and it was a refurbished HP DC7900 (Intel Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM (now 8GB) 160GB HDD).  It works great for the kids... er Minions, but I know it is slow.  Mommy and I got her a Crucial MX100 128GB for only $67 to breath new life into the PC but we had a problem.  How could we get her a $67 "gift" just because and expect her to appreciate it?

/ponder

I know, we will make her work for it!  She could do chores for it but I like to be creative and kill as many birds with one stone as possible.  

To get the drive she will have to:

1. Benchmark her system before and after the upgrade
1. Teach her about performance testing (never too young)
2. Do the physical install herself
1. Loose the fear of "hurting" a computer
3. Spend time learning from Papa
1. OK, that one was for me!  =)

3 Birds with 1 stone, not too bad!

Minion Grace and I got it opened up and then realized we had not benchmarked the baseline yet because we were to eager to get going.   

She doesn't seem too upset

Without getting too complicated we have to find a way to quantify the performance increase (if there is one).  (160GB HDD to a 128GB SSD as if there wouldn't be!)  We decide to boot the PC and time it until Steam service pops up a login screen.  Most, if not all, of the booting is done by that time.  While this method is not terribly precise I think it will work for a preschooler that doesn't know how to read yet.  =)

Turn on the PC and start the timer

Jump up ...

 ...and down while waiting for the Steam black box to show
(this is SOOO exciting!)

As she doesn't know her numbers or letters yet I had to help her a bit.  She was able to copy down the raw data though.  We of course took data from 3 runs each benchmark so we could note the standard deviation (HDD 0.57735 vs. SDD 0.57735).  That is not a typo, you do it!

Recording performance data

Now we get to get back into the case and let the REAL fun begin!

Picking it up after unplugging everything

This thing is not light

Can't drop it

Just get the corner ...

Almost got it

There!

Next up is to put the SSD in the computer.  As it was Minion Grace's PC she did all the work.

Screw in the SSD into a 2.5" to 3.5" converter

Make sure all 4 screws are in but not too tight

It FITS, I am so happy!

Running a Windows Experience Benchmark

The completed HDD to SSD upgrade report

Minion Grace's PC is a new PC for everything except rendering graphics for games.  It went from taking over 3 minutes to boot to booting in 32 seconds!  Wow, what a change.  You click on a program and it loads, get this, this year!  =)  I am waiting to see what the Nvidia 950 Ti is like.  We made save some money and stuff a full height video card into a Small Form Factor (SFF) case but that is another project.

What a great experience for Papa!  I got about 30 or so hugs.  That works out to be about $2 for a genuine hug.  If only the rest of the world worked like that.  The exciting thing is that it didn't stop there!

To be continued...

Minion Dax says, "Arrrgh" and "Ow, I got hurt"

Minion Dax gets in a fight with a solid wooden step. I ask him if he wants to get his picture taken and say, "Arrgh" to show how tough he is.  He says, "Yes."  See below:

Arrgh!

Minion Dax then asks if he can take a second picture and show how much it hurts.  I say, "Yes."  See below:

Ow, I got hurt!

The Weapons Commander was sweet!

So here we are, heading into Idaho City to go to the dump.  We had some cardboard to drop off but little did we know the trouble we would get into.

As the Captain I was leading the motley bunch on an easy recycling run.  The Transformer Commander (Minion Jocelyn), Weapons Commander (Minion Grace), and Cannon Commander (Minion Dax) were all in good spirits for an easy milk run.  Wow, were we surprised!  Weapons Commander sees that we were being chased by a Mist Dragon and she informed the Transformer Commander.  The Cannon Commander started blasting away to little effect while the Transformer Commander converted our ship into a jet straight away.

http://wandererlink.deviantart.com/

I continued to pilot the craft towards our final destination and let the troops take care of business, after all that is why they are apart of my crew.  They are quite talented.  The Transformer Commander had the idea of Ice Shot(TM) and informed the Weapons Commander to reconfigure the cannon's ordnance.

http://wandererlink.deviantart.com/

The Cannon Commander was unfased by the weapon's non-effect and had been blasting away unperturbed for the last 10 minuets.  He was a real trooper!  Once the Ice Shot(TM) was configured for every other shot he started to do some real damage.  Once the Myst Dragon was frozen and become solid, the very next round shot shattered him to pieces.  As the shattered Myst Dragon melted away we all sighed for relief.  Well, all except the Cannon Commander as now he didn't have anything to shoot.

http://athril-caine.deviantart.com/

Guess an Animal

Logan was sick today.  When I got home he had a bad fever and was resting on Mommy's chest.  We switched and he rested on my chest while she finished up a great Western Beef and Corn Pie dinner.  His fever broke and he was in a much better disposition the rest of the night.

At the end of the night we played Guess an Animal and it was a blast.  Dax's animal was a hammer head shark; Grace's was a cheetah; Jocelyn's was a blue jay; Lance's was flying lizard; Mommy's was a seahorse, and mine was a snake.  It really helps the kids develop good questioning skills besides being loads of fun.

Minion Code Warriors

Lab based teach by example

Minion Lance and Minion Jocelyn learned coding for the first time in their lives today in preparation for Hour of Code on Monday.  We have already gone over a lot of the parts and pieces of the Arduino kits we bought a few months ago so all was left was to download the IDE and start working on their first project.

Helping debug code (low != LOW)

They first installed the Arduino IDE and set it up.  They set the correct COM port and selected the correct Arduino MEGA 2560.  They then hooked up their MEGA to their PC via USB.  This was all new to them and it was fun to watch their troubleshooting skills.  We had a brief talk again about electricity and how it was trying to get from a high potential to a low potential, kinda like water running down a mountain to get to sea level.  If you put a water wheel in the running water you could get the water to do work for you (see below picture).

A bit of theory

We worked though the picture schematic and they each wired up their breadboard.  I then printed off the code and had them type it in.  Lance was a quick one and said, "If you have it there you could just send it to us."  "No, I want you to type it in", I said.  They did and it was a great learning experience for them.  I was also able to help cook dinner a bit.  =)  After that they had to find all of their errors because their code would not verify.  Code has a very strict syntax, ledPin does not equal ledpin and they found this out.

What the heck is code anyway?

Once it compiled they uploaded it to their microcontroller and low and behold it worked!  Where they, and I, got really excited is when they started to change the code to try change how the LED turned off and on.  Tonight is the first time they have every coded, the first time they have ever even heard of a variable, or let alone seen what a loop does.  Their single LED blinked faster, slower, or stayed on all the time depending on how they changed the code.  I think the next session will be to remove ledPin and replace it with redPin, greenPin, and yellowPin.  I will explain how they can modify their current code to blink the other lights and help them understand variables, delays, and loops better.

All in all it was great.  I would highly suggest anyone interested in electronics to share their passion with their children.  I will leave you with a few more pictures of the Minions at work.

Battery tester extrodanar

Super excited Minion Lance (stealth mode)

Minion Jocelyn's 1st project

 

Dr. Ffreeze's blinky LED

Crazy Minion Zomie Monsters (in the dark no less)

I have nothing really to add...

Minion Grace as a Zombie

Minion Grace, Minion Dax, and Minion Logan as a Zombie

Introduction: Minion Logan

Minion Logan

Alter Ego: Logan

Minion Logan is a fun, lovable, great little guy.  He has lots to say and can somehow get it all said by just saying, "Hi".  He loves to play with cars and is spending quite a bit of time with Minion Dax.  That could end up being dangerous...

Introduction: Minion Dax

Minion Dax

Alter Ego: Dax the Pirate

Minion Dax is made up of the proverbial puppy dog tails and jet fuel.  He loves to sit and play with cars and he is currently fascinated with ships of all kinds.

And then it snowed 1 day ...

Our 1st day of snow.

Nice snow

Outside Work

I am a bit behind on things I would like to blog, but I have been a bit busy.  I will try and catch up.  

As a family we worked outside a few weeks back.  It was raining but stuff needed to get done.   After we got the van working again we started on the fence.  We had 3 posts rotted out so we had to replace them.  We also cleaned up some brush in the burn pile.  Everyone had a blast.

Here is the cleanup crew -Mommy

Setting the posts

  

Post setting up

Tibby, our German Shepard / Alaskan Malamute

We got a bit of snow

Introduction: Minion Grace

Minion Grace

Alter Ego: Grace

Minion Grace is a fun loving sweetheart.  She likes to draw people and be read too.  Although she admits she is unable to draw in the lines well, she feels she can draw eyes really well.

Van Brakes, Again

Well, I was a bit under the weather this weekend so I didn't get much of anything done.  I felt somewhat better on Monday so I took the day off and did some projects around that house.  Well, that was the plan.  I was only able to work on one project but I did get that done.

I just did a brake job on the Caravan's front brakes.  When I got done, they were still very spongy and didn't really stop the van.  I decided to buy a brake bleed kit and change out the brake fluid to see if that fixed it.  (Sometimes air can get in the line and cause just such a problem.)  Once I got out to work on them Monday morning I realized I have four wheel disk brakes and I only changed the fronts.  The back breaks needed changed too.  That is what happens when you finish a brake job in the dark and you go from memory.  =)

Tonya and I went into town and got some brakes and rotors ($115 for the rear.  It is not hard.  Do it yourself and save quite a bit of money).  I replaced the rear brakes and changed out the old brake fluid with new synthetic brake fluid.  The kit worked well but it was faster to use the kit while having Mrs. Ffreeze pump the brakes to get all of the fluid out.  It works much better now and the Caravan is clear to cart the Dr. Ffreeze family around.

Lots of work this weekend

This weekend was a busy one but not on many things terribly fun.  Saturday we went to town and got Winter gear for the kids.  I think we are all ready for the snow to fall as far as the kids are concerned.

Saturday night the four oldest in the house played Pathfinder.  We had a blast.  The kids are figuring out roll playing games more.  You can just see their eyes light up as they get sucked into the story fighting to protect each other from the bad guys.

We bought tall cabinets for each of the kids' rooms.  We put one together so far but I am thinking I will "improve" them a bit when I have the time.  I plan to make them their toy box so we can keep the rest of the house cleaner.

We bought quite a bit of car stuff.  I need to do the front breaks on the Caravan, add some coolant to the Caravan and Suburban, and do an oil change on the Caravan, Suburban, Kawasaki Mule.

I started on the breaks first.

Opps

Tonya was in town so I had her pick up a lugs and a few lug nuts.  We kept working...

Car repair crew

Teamwork

Teamwork

And More Teamwork

Just a bit more...

I then realized they gave me the wrong break pads.  I just put brake quiet all over them.  Opps.  I called Tonya and had her pick up a few more car things.  I got all of the car stuff done and cleaned up in the dark, but at least it is done.

I am a bit bummed that I didn't get to work on our desk as it is a gatekeeper for us delving into our electronics stuff.  I have a few more "get done before Winter" projects and then I expect to have more time for the electronics stuff.

All in all, it was a GREAT weekend!