Coffee Shop XXXIX-9/21/2013

[Bill Tidler Jr.]

Good Morning! from Tipton IN.

It's Fri 10/18/13

Temperature in TIPTON IN

High temperatures will range from 57 to 60 degrees with mostly clear skies. Winds will range between 10 and 16 miles per hour from the southwest. No precipitation is expected.

 

[kbkchooch]

Happy Friday everyone!
The sun is shining, the coffee is hot, and the 90mg fiber bars are chocolate & peanut butter today!!
Woo Hoo!!

 

[Boris]

Good Morning, and Happy Friday!!!!

The sun IS shining - yeah! It's a tad cooler than it was, and I have chores to do! Life is good!

Joe

 

[IronBeltKen]

TGIF to all!

It's home-baked granola for me this morning (I avoid the store-bought stuff, way too much sugar), with apple cider to wash down my 'maintenance' pills.

Apparently I was a tad overconfident last night. I ASSumed I'd be able to get halfway done on a Fastracks turnout in ~ an hour, since I know all the steps from having done the first one. Unfortunately I overlooked that little pearl of wisdom: "Never solder when your tired or in a hurry." I was both, and I tried to do things to speed up the [Step 2] process of filing the frog points and soldering them together. My left hand was shaking like crazy holding the solder while I used my right hand to press on the track in the jig with the soldering iron. In spite of my best efforts, the two joined rail halves were not parallel - i.e. one side was roughly 2 scale inches higher than the other. I ended up clipping off the defective point, filing two new rail halves and repeating step #2 - this time at least, the joined rails appeared to be even with each other. At this point [10:30pm] I decided I better stop for the night.

The guy doing FT demos at the train show was able to build a complete turnout in 30 minutes. If I can ever learn to do that in <=2 hours I'll be satisfied...

 

[DairyStateDad]

And glad to see that our representative from Tipton, IN, is back to pour the coffee!

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Good morning. It's 54° with 100% humidity. The high will be 75°.

with a

Well this morning I tallied up the amount of work I've put into part two of the game already and the result was surprising. So far I've done nineteen blocks with an average of seven lines of code for each block. A functional line of code can be as short as three characters or numerals or combinations thereof and can be as long as the maximum line length allows. I've never counted exactly how many letters/numbers/etc can fit on one line but it's a pretty good number ans sometimes still not long enough for my needs. Most times I find they average from twenty to somewhere around one hundred fifty letters. Some are longer but that's just an average. And then there's the IF, THEN, GOTO, INPUT, PRINT functions that go into things like this simple line 880 IF NA1 = 1 THEN PRINT "YOU'RE IN BIG TROUBLE. YOU JUST ACTIVATED A TRIGGER ON A 5-POUND BLOCK OF C4!":INPUT "WOULD YOU LIKE TO KISS YOUR BUTT GOODBYE NOW? Y/N";E$: NA = 0: PRINT "HAVE A NICE DAY.": GOSUB 52000: GOTO 5000.

Below is a rough map of Part II of Native Fury. The area circled in red is the area I coded in yesterday. You can see how much there is yet to go.

As for my plans today, I have none.

 

[GarryCBQ]

Garry - Love that photo of the GN geeps, it brings back the memory of the very first HO scale geep I ever owned, when I was 13yrs of age: An Athearn blue-box GP "9" (as they labeled it) in Great Northern colors, similar to yours. I remember my dad driving me to Corr's Hobby Shop in downtown Washington DC after I had saved up a few weeks' worth of allowance to get it. It didn't stay GN very long though - I slopped-on a coat of dark blue paint and some B&O decals. I'm not sure whatever became of it, the last time I saw it was in the attic of my father's house sometime before I enlisted in the Navy...

Ken... That's interesting. I still have a few Athearn Blue Box Geeps..... This one is detailed and painted for Northern Pacific.

 

[Cjcrescent]

TGIF to all!

...
The guy doing FT demos at the train show was able to build a complete turnout in 30 minutes. If I can ever learn to do that in <=2 hours I'll be satisfied...

Hang in there Ken, the more you do it the faster you get.

 

[kbkchooch]

Hang in there Ken, the more you do it the faster you get.

Ken, If ya need practice, I'm gonna need some 25 or so. I'll buy the parts, you can be the expert.
I'll fix your wonky engines and decoders,,,might work out huh??

 

[IronBeltKen]

Ken, If ya need practice, I'm gonna need some 25 or so. I'll buy the parts, you can be the expert.
I'll fix your wonky engines and decoders,,,might work out huh??

It'll definitely get me plenty of practice LOL

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I been a busy old Indian today. I don't know what happened but I really got locked in on a binge with Native Fury.

Those areas marked in blue in the photo are what I coded in today alone, thirty some-odd blocks. One of them a two-story stainless-steel house. I kid you not. There's one of those in this neighborhood, built back in the 50's I think. It's unoccupied now. I've only been in it once in my entire life so I don't remember all of the layout so I took a guess at some of it. The real house doesn't have any hidden areas that I'm aware of but I wrote one into my version of the house in Native Fury. I decided to have some fun and gave it sort of an Ali-Baba flavor. If the character goes up the stairs to the bedroom up there and chants 'Open Sesame' a part of the stairwell wall will open revealing the entrance to the secret room. Thus far I haven't put anything in the room yet. Any suggestions?

 

[IronBeltKen]

... Thus far I haven't put anything in the room yet. Any suggestions?

How about some type of weapon that would still be functional after sitting neglected for fifty years, like a scimitar [in line with the middle-eastern theme] or a bow&arrow? It could be laced with gold, ivory, whatever...maybe have a secret compartment somewhere containing some type of clue. Or maybe it could be cursed.

 

[railfan]

The first of two used Kato U.P. C44-9W locomotives snagged this week from auctions arrived today. No defects noticed......every detail seems perfect. I quickly put it on the layout for a test drive and like Carey says.......this one is a ghoster! Even more quiet and smooth than a normal Kato. I hope the other one coming on monday is nearly this fine. In my view Kato is the Rolls Royce of N scale locomotives.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Time for me to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

 

[GPwrangler]

been playing around with the GP-4m today.

 

[tootnkumin]

Is this a NS specific loco? Appears to have a similar nose and cab roof to a GP20 (nose slopes down and round cab roof) but a very short hood which seems to lack the high fan shrouds of the GP20. Where did you get it, or is it a kit-bash?

 

[Bill Tidler Jr.]

Good Morning! from Tipton IN.

It's Sat 10/19/13

Temperature in TIPTON IN

High temperatures will range from 43 to 49 degrees with clear skies. Winds will range between 8 and 13 miles per hour from the west. No precipitation is expected.

 

[Boris]

Good Morning:

Lots of football and Hockey on tap for today ! It's also a good day for gathering material to rebuild my reverse loop. Chores are pushed back to Monday.

Enjoy your weekend!

BTW: Love the GP4 Great concept!

Joe

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Good morning. It's cool and wet here. The temp is 57 and the humidity is 100%. The high will be 72°.

with a

No plans for today. Think I'll take a day's break from programming.

 

[GarryCBQ]

Bill T .... Thanks for the coffee. Goes well with my doughnut.

GPwrangler: .... Neat little engine ... A GP4m. I bet nobody else has one.

Joe ... You reminded me about football. ..... Here is a Football Special taking fans to an away game.

Happy Model Railroading, everybody