What's going on...

Good news, the parts for the frame have arrived and this should allow me to get busy constructing R2 as soon as the skins arrive. I also received the lazy-Susan bearing to allow for dome rotation, and the dome for the build should hopefully be done in the next few weeks.

That's all I have for now, but if you want to see a great build that is in progress, check out this one: Bradon's Build.

Nothing new on R2...

Nothing new to report on the R2 front, so I thought I might share a little about my favorite droid in my life: Roomba

Over the years, I've had several Roomba that have worked without complaint. They have their faults, but for the most part they're great, especially for pet owners. When I used to have birds, the Roomba would dutifully go out every day and pick up bird seed and feathers and keep everything nice and tidy.

I have made some small software changes to make my Roomba more automated. First, I use a program called "EventGhost" to send out IR (infrared) commands to my Roomba. The hardware I use for this is a USB UIRT, this allows me to send and receive IR commands. With a combination of these two things, I have my Roomba automatically clean at 9AM every day.

Once I get home, I make a point to look to make sure Roomba has made it back to the docking station. If not, I look to find where it's gotten hung up and try to remedy the situation so that this doesn't happen again. It takes some time to make everything Roomba-proof, but it's usually very easy.

I also make sure to clean the hopper and filter every day or two. I used to do it every day, but since it cleans so well, there isn't much need to clean it every day.

So, that's my favorite droid, at the moment. I still have to sweep my hard wood floors from time to time by hand, but for daily cleaning and keeping dust down in your home, they're great.

And what is this?

Yesterday was a big day. The HPs arrived, as well as the frame. I guess it was trick or treat for me. The treat was the HPs, the trick was the frame.

The frame was a bit of a disappointment (no fault of Thomas - it was treated poorly during shipping). Thomas at The Droid Builder is working to replacing the parts I need for the frame. It's people like Thomas that give me faith in mankind as a whole. He didn't have to help me, but he didn't hesitate and instantly said he would help me out. I want to publicly say a big THANKS to Thomas for being a stand-up guy and a true credit to the astromech community.