Archive for February, 2010
Epiphanies
Posted by MarlenaG in Parenting, Personal Expressions, Quincy on February 27, 2010
I have been having a whole lot of epiphanies of late. Be it about the new chores I have to take care of, I’m still figuring all that out but to be honest I am really getting the hang of them. I am still learning to change with Q’s wants and needs. I’m sure all these years of learning and growing with the hubs has helped me a great deal. I’m still trying to figure out life and the meaning of it for me and my role as mother, wife, friend, sister, daughter and grand daughter. I’m thinking that I may have to continue to experiment.
I’m starting to realize all over again that I know nothing at all. I keep learning more and more and feeling like maybe I have a handle on life and then again I find myself surprised and feeling clueless all over again.
What brought all this on? I’m at a new cross roads. In the not too distant future we will be welcoming a new family member to our home and I’m still trying to figure out just how we will approach this change. The first question everyone has is how am I going to go about my recover from delivery. I am sure that this time I will do all I can not to try to jump back into full swing of things until a couple weeks postpartum. I’m simply determined to focus on my new beautiful addition and my beautiful big boy and my incredible husband.
The other question that keeps coming up is will I be working after having our newest bundle of joy and I have yet to figure out the answer to that one. The hubs has made his decision and though I think it is sweet I’m not sure if that works best for our family. We shall see.
I guess it all goes back to the entire stay at home mom vs. the working mom debate. I love contributing financially to my family. I love my job. Don’t get me wrong, my job is tough, even stressful but I do get something out of my job that is really satisfying. On the other hand, the idea of staying home with my babies, keeping a home and leaving the money making to the hubs is exciting. There is so much I fee like I am missing from the day to day with my toddler. I can only imagine what I would miss from his relationship with his newest sibling. I enjoyed my 10 weeks home with Q and I am excited about having at least as much time with our newest baby. I’m already dreading leaving my boys for work. But there is still the question if I will be as good of a mom without work. I am able to drop everything quickly to play with or cuddle my son. Will I be so quick to do that without my working? Do I get some kind of down time or selfish time when at work when all I have to think about is work and the goal directly in front of me?
The epiphany here is that maybe just maybe things in this aspect of life aren’t so straight forward. If you asked me five years ago I would have told you that I had every intention of being a stay at home mom from the moment I found out that I was pregnant. That I just couldn’t ever imagine working once I had my first child. Now, shockingly, I have no idea what the plan is while I am expecting my second child. I just want what is best for my family and I am still trying to figure out just what that means to our family.
I’m still trying to figure out what is best for me. With my myriad of health problems I know that pushing too hard is a huge detriment to myself. I’m starting to really take the time to stop and rest. I’m figuring out what my body needs and how to meet those needs. I’m learning to put myself as a priority, which is incredibly hard as a mother.
The big epiphany is there is just so much to figure out and that I may NEVER figure it all out and that is ok. That is half the fun of this ride we call life. Don’t worry, in time you will hear me spout lots of stories about my boobies again. What did you think I would post without mentioning my boobs? LOL! Yeah, no, not going to happen, after all I’m a mom. 
Fitting Grails in an Active Directory and NTLM SSO Groove
Posted by RyanG in Grails/Groovy, Reviews on February 10, 2010
This is my first installment in the What Grooves You? series of posts, and it deals with the first thing you’re going to need to consider if you are deploying your Grails/Groovy applications in the average corporate IT infrastructure, Single Sign On with Active Directory and NTLM. Like it or not, because all of our existing applications are based on Microsoft technologies our users have gotten used to just going to the URL for the application they intend to use and being instantly recognized and authenticated. Forcing them to sign in again, or worse still forcing them to setup a new username and password for your system would be completely unacceptable! Below, I’ll take you through the steps I took to solve this problem, including the detours that cost me time!
What Grooves You?
Posted by RyanG in Grails/Groovy, Reviews on February 5, 2010
In my "Day Job", we design and build our applications using Microsoft technologies. In particular, we’re using C#, Silverlight, and IIS to build and deploy our web applications. This makes good sense because the vendors we use are well versed in the Microsoft technology, and like the IT infrastructure of a lot of medium and large companies Microsoft solutions are at the forefront. It’s becoming apparent though that we’re going to have to consider our options and possibly embrace a different technology stack to properly scale and support the applications we’re building.
While I knew that Java servlets and the Spring Framework were the answers, credit goes to my boss Scott Ellis for really doing a deep dive into what technologies are on offer, and coming up with using Grails and Groovy as the best solution for us. Which brings me to the reason for this blog post. I’ve been spending some time playing around with Grails and Groovy, and familiarizing myself with the technology and what is on offer. I intend to do a series of posts here about my discovery process, what problems I encounter, and how I resolve them.
From the searching I’ve had to do in order to get answers or better understanding about the challenges I’ve faced, I think I have a chance to be a real resource to others who are just starting out with Grails and Groovy. What’s more I’m writing from the perspective of a relative newbie to the Java world. Stay tuned as you follow my journey into Grails and Groovy. *Spoiler alert* – I like it, a LOT!
Mystery Solved!
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on February 2, 2010
Well there she is, the source of my clunk! And, the way it’s sitting in there explains why the engine wouldn’t turn past TDC as well since that thing woulda been right in the way. So far as I can tell it’s a small(ish) washer that got folded in half. You can see a few more shots of it over in my Flickr set. What remains a bit of a mystery is how it got there. I’m guessing it entered through the intake, and it’s possible it was sitting on top of the throttle blades of the carb. Tough to say if it was there when I got it, or if I managed to drop it there while I was working.
All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much (maybe any?) damage from the whole debacle. The you can see both the cylinder wall and the combustion chamber for that cylinder, and they both appear unharmed!
Remember back when I described that one of the cylinders had a spark plug that had 0 gap and appeared damaged? Yup, you guessed it, that plug came from this cylinder. Makes sense, all of the steel for the cylinder wall, piston, and head are harder than the washer would have been, and the spark plug would have been a softer metal as well. Soft enough to sustain some damage from that thing flinging around in the cylinder. This also explains why it seemed fairly inconsistent, when that cylinder was not on it’s power stroke the washer would have happily just moved up and down the cylinder wall in place. Then when there was ignition in that cylinder, the pressure probably sent it flying around!
I also made another discovery while I was working. The bolt on the front of the crank that I’d been using to turn the motor over, doesn’t actually belong there! The balancer is simply pressed onto the crank with no big bolt to hold it on like you find on many other motors. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that one or more people who’ve worked on this thing haven’t been terribly methodical, and clearly didn’t have a service manual to reference. In spite of that, the motor appears to be fairly low mileage and it quite good condition.
The plan now is to do some more inspection and measure things to see if they match the tolerances set out in the service manual. If everything checks out, I think I may just put her all back together and run her. Going to keep my fingers crossed that everything is as tight as it appears to be so I can get some miles outta this thing!
Engine Autopsy
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on February 1, 2010
I got the engine out of the Caddy this weekend! The first lesson I learned is that I should have either removed all of the pulleys and water pump, or removed the front clip of the car. I had a TON of trouble getting the motor out past the radiator core support! In fact, I wound up yanking the water pump off while the motor was in limbo just to buy myself a few more inches of clearance.
Once it was finally out, and safely on an engine stand, I started my investigation and search for the source of my “clunk” sound.
First, I yanked the intake manifold and the cover for the lifter valley. I found nothing particularly interesting there, certainly no obvious foreign object which would account for the noise I’ve been hearing. So, I tipped the thing over and started pulling out oil pan bolts and upon removing the pan I was greeted with what you see on the left.
Now I expected to find chunks of oil dipstick in the engine, since I’d previously reported that the dipstick appeared broken. What I did not expect though was that the dipstick would be so completely mismatched! The photo on the right shows the engraving of “Ford” on the dipstick. Apparently the previous owner just decided to toss whatever dipstick he had handy into the tube, and call it a day.
Not knowing what the original design of the Cadillac dipstick is, I can’t be sure, but it feels like this is a bit of a poor design.
If the dipstick is straight, and goes down the dipstick tube straight, it appears as though it’ll run right smack dab into the rotating assembly as you can see on the left.
As satisfied as I was with my discovery, I realized pretty quickly that this couldn’t be the source of the “clunk” I was chasing down. The bits of dipstick were simply too small and light weight to account for the sound I was experiencing. Plus, when I pulled the oil pan off, all of the bits were sitting right inside the oil pickup which means they were likely “stuck” there by suction from the oil pump any time the engine was running. So I kept inspecting, looking for any other foreign object big enough to account for what I’d heard.
After several minutes of looking around with a flashlight, I figured I’d start turning the motor and seeing if anything seemed out of place. I pulled all the plugs so that compression wasn’t an issue, and started turning the motor over. It turned nice and easy until it neared top dead center (TDC), where it halted and I couldn’t seem to continue turning it no matter how much (reasonable) force I applied. Perplexed, I went ahead and turned the engine the opposite direction. Again it turned smoothly until I had reached a full rotation in the opposite direction and it again stopped dead in it’s tracks. Hrrmnnn..
So that’s the current mystery, the engine doesn’t seem to turn over freely any more now that I’ve pulled it out, and turned it upside down! I knew it couldn’t be piston to valve contact, since it’s a hydraulic lifter motor and almost all of the lifters had lost pressure allowing all the valves to stay closed. So, more likely it’s piston to head contact. I didn’t notice any obvious signs of bent connecting rods or loose connecting rod caps so the cause isn’t readily apparent. Next step will be to yank the heads off and see if there is any obvious damage which might indicate which cylinder is causing the problem. The title to this post may be a bit premature, but I don’t suspect I’m going to find anything minor. Stay tuned as I continue to tear it down to find the problem!
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