Jennifer's 365 Project

I had a half day of work today so that meant an afternoon of cuddling with my favorite sausage-y cat, Leki.

Ugh...

It's been a hot weekend. Really hot.

We spent a chunk of the afternoon playing games via the ipad and enjoying the air conditioning.
I spent some time in the evening working on the LCD Arduino setup. I now have all the buttons doing slightly different things!

Now to make a menu system.

I like to cook and I really like to grill, so what better excuse then when Chris's mom and brother are coming out to visit? As you can see, I went a little crazy with potatoes. I tried to make steak fries.
Like I usually do when cooking, I made a mess and had to change half way through the process. Then I remembered I had an apron and put it on.

I also managed to set some corn on fire. It was kind of awesome.
We had lunch out on the deck. We got to catch up on what is going on in each other's lives and talk about Scot's job. He's an engineer at Chrysler so he always has cool projects going on that he talks about.

In the shade it wasn't too hot (despite being in the high 80s), but after a few hours we went inside.

I love Brick Road Pizza so much. Tasty lunch!

We have two dog dishes that we put outside and fill with bread, corn, or other various treats for wildlife. At our old apartment we'd get quite a few squirrels and the occasional bird. The place I lived before that I'd get all sorts of wildlife, including geese.

So I didn't think anything of setting out the dog dishes and filling them once more. I love providing entertainment for the cat.
And what entertainment we attracted! I haven't seen a raccoon in years and certainly not since I've moved to the Grand Rapids area. Imagine my surprise when I heard the cat furious clawing at the slider one night and came down to see one chowing down on the deck. 
They aren't exactly what I was trying to lure toward the slider for the cat, but they are adorable and they are entertaining him.

We've cut back drastically on putting anything outside now but the cat still camps out every night waiting for them. And they come by almost every night - even no food has been left out. Just in case. 

I purchased a cheap Ethernet shield (essentially its a circuit board that you can plug on top of your arduino - kind of like legos) online awhile back and it came in the mail last Saturday. The ethernet shield lets you get your arduino on the internet. It has a small RJ45 jack on it that you plug the cord into and away you go!

So I've been playing on and off with it all week but I'm not having a whole lot of success. After a few minutes the arduino becomes unresponsive and needs to be reset. My dreams of having an internet enabled thermometer are being stopped by something...

I assumed it was the program I wrote but I'm having the same issue with the sample programs.

Sigh!

I beat Mass Effect 2 yesterday, so that means onto Mass Effect 3 today. One of the best things about being late to a trilogy of great games is that you can play them back to back.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect

It's pretty awesome when you can take a stroll on a path by your house and see deer grazing.

I never saw deer growing up. Ever. Unless you count the bodies on the side of I-75, but I don't.

I'm really enjoying having a grill and nice weather. Dinner on the deck is always fantastic.

In the afternoon Chris showed me how to use a rotary tool and a soldering gun. See, a few weeks ago I saw a mason jar solar light at the Artisan Market and decided I was going to try to make one. But the solar light I bought needed some plastic shaved off of it (to fit the jar better) and I broke one of the wires so that needed to be repaired.

So we set up a small work space in the basement and got working.
When it's all said and done, I think it looks nice outside, although I may still try to use modge podge and food color to tint the glass. Plus I need to find a way to more securely attach the lid to the jar. So it's a work in progress.


I also have a much smaller solar light that fits on the top of a jelly jar. I'm not quite sure how I want to fit that together since a lot of the plastic would need to be shaved off of it to make it look nice. 
Later in the evening I started to play with a few things that arrived in the mail today. Among them were a temperature sensor and an LCD keypad shield that plugs directly into an Arduino.

I put together a small sketch (program) to read the temperature and humidity from the sensor and print it to the LCD. This Ladyada sensor tutorial (complete with sensor library) was very helped. My sensor is soldered to a circuit board, but the basics were the same.

I'm exited about it, but I'm not really sure what to do with it yet. David (Aardvarksagus) had a great suggestion to track the readings over time, so I may make some changes to the code (and clean it up) to create a log of the readings.

I'm still plugging away with the Snail Mail notifier too trying to get that to send emails.

Yay for Friday!