Video: Driving Around Houston's East Side Part One

The video was taken with a helmet cam, to test the camera, my ability to do some very minor editing, as well as how the video looks on YouTube. This is only a test.

Troubleshoot: Failure to Solder

While attempting to solder three wires in the RJ45-DB25 connector, I found that the soldering tip was turning dark. Solder would not melt onto it, despite the iron being plugged in for over a half hour. I don't know why the tip went so fast, but I think tips are cheap. I hope replacing the tip will be the solution to that problem.

Read: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (to the finish)

The pace of the book continues to accelerate as one nears its end. Indeed, more happens in the last two chapters than in the first four. Best of all, there are no loose ends.

Remember Harry hearing voices that no one else could hear? He also speaks a language very few people can speak: Parseltongue. This leads Hermione to suspect that the creature freezing/stiffening people around school is a snake.

However, Hermione herself is frozen/stiffened, and Ron and Harry have no idea what do regarding the attacks at school. They visit her in the school's hospital ward, and find a note that she had written, which contains information leading them to the Chamber of Secrets.

A lot happens in a short time, but here's some things to consider regarding the big picture:

1) This child's book is a fresh addition to youth literature because unlike the books I read when I was 11 or 12, this one fits neatly between Morality Tales for Eight Year Olds and Horrific Stories Involving Murder for Sixteen Year Olds. Around age 11, I found books geared for people my age to fall into one of the two categories above. There was classic literature, but those books are invariably about some time before the present. Harry is, for the moment, close enough to the present in terms of speech and mannerisms to not be a distraction.

2) Harry and his friend break so many rules, in the context of their own school, that they fear expulsion much of the time. This is realistic, and the fact that the adults in the story are aware of it, disapprove, but realize the situation that they were in, is encouraging. Rules are not absolute.

3) A fascinating, almost science fiction concept is included in this story, that of the diary of Tom Riddle. Riddle was a student at Hogwarts many decades earlier, and wrote a diary that preserved him as "a memory". Essentially, a kind of mind uploading, and the diary possesses a form of artificial intelligence. I say "kind of" and "form of" because this is a story about magic, not technology.

4) Finally, Tom Riddle, in his fight against Harry, near the end, channels a stereotypical villain from a James Bond movie. "Hello, Harry. Welcome to my secret lair. Let me tell you my story, my methods and techniques, my plans for the future, and all details contained therein, and attempt to kill you unsuccessfully."

Overall, this second Harry book is better than the first, and I'm actually looking forward to it.

The current book I'm reading is neither military history, nor fantasy. It is The Mystery of Capital, by Hernando de Soto.

Read: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (up to Ch. 11)

Harry is in deep trouble. People at school are starting to think that he's the one that petrified a cat at the end of Chapter 8, and is also behind two more attacks. This time, a student and a ghost was petrified.

In the meantime, Ron, Hermione, and Harry have been using a derelict girls' restroom to concoct a potion that will transform them into anyone whose fingernail, hair strand, etc, is in the potion. The idea is expose another student as the real culprit. The reason that the bathroom is nearly abandoned is because a very whiny young girl ghost mopes about in there.

This novel has more ghosts than last time, and so far the ghosts don't seem to mature much beyond the point when they died. This grow older, but not maturer, was a factor in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom that didn't seem convincing. Would not a hundred years or more of fully cognitive experience lead to some self-restraint? I suppose if one's actions had few consequences, there would be little to learn from.

To complicate matters for Harry, the little house elf from many chapters ago, Dobby, has re-appeared. Dobby has powers of his own, his greatest one being annoying Harry. Harry finds out that Dobby somehow prevented him and Ron from entering platform 9 3/4, and later put a spell on a bludger. The bludger is an autonomic tool, in the quidditch game, whose sole purpose is to knock students off their flying brooms. Dobby's spell made the bludger charge after Harry to the exclusion of the other players. This eventually downs Harry, who falls and breaks his arm.

Enter Gilderoy Lockhart. He tries to mend Harry's arm with magic, but instead makes the broken bone disappear altogether. Lockhart's reputation as a master magician begins to falter, and accelerates downward in a disastrous dueling demonstration. During this demonstration, Harry's little-known talent is revealed to his friends and classmates: he can speak to snakes, and make them do things, like stop them from biting people.

If that's not creepy enough, he does so in a language known as Parseltongue, which is obvious to everyone but Harry. As far as Harry knew, he was speaking English to the snake. Take this skill, and Harry being present at all three victims' petrification, and his status as a suspect rises.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione are growing in their character roles. Hermione has an obvious crush on Lockhart, which Harry and Ron notice, but rarely comment on. Ron's sarcasm and ability to insult people is evolving, as well as Harry's ability to be mean. Yes, mean. Harry is downright nasty to Dobby, who doesn't beg much sympathy in the first place.

The three of them belong to a house of students known as Gryffindor. Their arch rival is the house of Slytherin, and its students. The Slytherin crowd are a nasty lot, but Harry and Ron are making their rebuttals more noticeable. What these kids can get away with is stunning, but their parents are not around, and teachers have a life, presumably. Their weekends, aside from quidditch, are essentially unsupervised.

Eleven-year-olds shouldn't require 24/7 supervision, but the level of misery and damage that they can inflict upon each other puts 6th grade gym class to shame.

The book is entertaining, and events are starting to accelerate nicely. Given the power that the students have now, at age 11, one wonders what they can do at age 16.

Test: The RJ45-DB9 Connector

Once you have successfully soldered your wires, and snapped the DB9 end onto the rest of the connector, test it. Incorrect wiring, or a short, can damage the hardware that you are using. You can test your connector with a multimeter. To make the testing easier, use an unconnected male DB9 end, that has metal tabs on the end for soldering. Plug the male end into the connector, leaving DB9 male soldering ends exposed. With the multimeter, set it to test for connectivity. If there is no connectivity setting, set the multimeter to test for resistance. Clearly, if you have a good connection, the multimeter will either beep (if you have a connectivity mode with beeper) or read zero (if you use the resistance mode).




Even with the solder male DB9 end, testing the device with the two probes can be challenge. You have to reference the chart on Ossmann's website, and make sure you stick the probes on the correct respective RJ45 and DB9 ends. That can be especially challenging, since DB9 end may not be numbered, and the RJ45 is most likely not numbered.

Start with the easy ends, like DB9 pin 1 to RJ45 pin 8. They are the first (and last) pins respectively. If you find the connection, you can then easily find the pin ordering, and test from there. The hardest part is keeping your hand still over the correct RJ45 pin, as test each connection one by one. Test both ends, by holding one probe over one pin, and making sure that only the correct pins on the other side connect.




Since the RJ45 side can be hard to test for rapidly, you might crimp another RJ45 plug, and leave the other end of wire uncrimped. Strip each skinny copper wire until there is enough exposed copper to allow simple contact with the probe.

Fortunately, this connector tested well, is ready to move onto a real hardware test.

Read: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (up to Chapter 8)

Harry and Ron are in deep trouble. After using Ron's father's flying car to fly to school, both get detention, and Ron gets a screaming letter from his mother. Harry's detention is to help Gilderoy Lockhart answer his fan mail.

Lockhart is an annoyingly self-obsessed professor, who has captured the hearts of a very large segment of the magic population. He is the author of many popular magic books and receives a lot of press. His intense superficial charm is balanced by his arrogance towards the people with whom he interacts directly. His professorship replaces that of Quirinus Quirrell, last seen in the previous book. Quirrel was possesed by Voldemort, and was thus the antagonist. Harry defeats Voldemort (sort of, read the first book to find out how), which causes Quirrel to die.

Later, Harry, Ron, and their overachieving friend Hermione go to the party of a dead person. Apparently, even the dead have parties, social cliques, popularity contests, and other tiresome attributes of life. The party turns out to be a bust, when crashed by a hunting party, who rubbed in their rejection of the host as being worthy of joining their party.

So it goes. The important theme by now is that Harry hears disturbing whispers that eventually lead him and his friends to the scene of one of the faculty's murdered cat. At the same time, they see words on the wall that warn the "enemies of the heir" [because] "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened" (pg 138). I am about half-way through the book, and aside from the bedroom elf scene, nothing in the story arc has gone beyond the minor scrapes that Harry and company get into. I'm expecting an acceleration in the timeline, since I'm half-way through, and the book says that is around Halloween, with November through May to still get through.

Thankfully, the book is a fast read, having spent maybe two hours to get this far into it.

Read: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (up to Chapter 5)

To prevent burn-out from reading, by reading too many similarly-themed books, one should read a diversity of books of at least two genres/fields. Since the last book I read was a history/military/aviation book, the next book should be at least not one of those topics. Harry Potter is none of those things, clearly.

I will not bounce back and forth between history books and fantasy, as there are science and science-fiction books to read, as well as monetary policy and classical literature. Being specialized, to a large extent, is very important in one's career or business focus, but being open to other specialties in one's non-profitable time is quite all right. Unless, of course, you are trying to make your otherwise non-profitable time profitable.

Harry Potter is the story of a boy whose parents were killed by Lord Voldemort. Voldemort is held in such fear by the wizards and witches of the magical world that they are afraid to speak his name. In fact, it is sociological traits like these that make these wizards and witches very much like the muggles (who are people who can't do magic), of whom they look down upon. The magic world has shopping, a bank, a school, government, bureaucracies, fads, cultures, and trends. It is more like an English-speaking foreign country with British qualities (to this American), but with magic that the muggle-populated Britain does not otherwise use or its people posses.

Orphaned after his parents' death, Harry is dropped off at his relatives' house. His aunt and uncle treat Harry with such contempt, fear, anger, and hate, that it is a wonder that the British version of Child Protective Services didn't take Harry away into foster care. It is this part of story that reminds me of a lot of English stories about people growing up. One might think that nobody in England had a happy childhood, especially if they were the main character. Everyone grew up, surrounded by nasty, evil parents, step-parents, relatives, neighbors, teachers, and so on, except for the shining heroic adults who come and save the kid's life, and the kid goes on to have a wonderfully sublime adventure with new, awesome friends. That sounds better than the foster system anyway.

Harry's escape comes courtesy of the aggressive methods that his assigned school, Hogwarts, uses to get Harry to come to school. Hogwarts is not an ordinary school, because it is located far into the countryside, accessible largely by train, and teaches magic. It is like a boarding school, because the students all live there, except for the summer and winter breaks. The description of Hogwarts is lush, with talking paintings, banquets, new and strange ceremonies, and a sport that is like polo, only on flying broomsticks. Other than all that, it is ordinary in that there are classes, labs, exams, and books.

The first book was about Harry's first year, and the plot slowly unravels to expose the problem. Were it not for the plot line about the Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone in the UK version) attempted theft by one of the teachers, the book would be a slice-of-life story. Thankfully, the thrilling plot balances the details of day-to-day at Hogwarts.

In the second book, Harry's civilian muggle life has improved. His rotten family promoted him from sleeping underneath the stairs to having a real bedroom, but conditions deteriorate to the point where he is essentially kidnapped-in-place by his family. Conditions become weird when a house elf displays masochistic tendencies while warning Harry to not go to Hogwarts when school begins.

Eventually, one of Harry's friends from last year, Ron, comes by with a flying Ford Anglia, piloted by his friend's brothers. They rescue him, and take him to live with Ron's family. Harry gets a feel for a relatively normal, wholesome family before school begins, and Harry, Ron, and most of Ron's siblings leave.

Things go awry when Harry and Ron are unable to enter platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station, and try to fly the car to school. They crash spectacularly, and the car flies off in a huff. Otherwise inanimate objects tend to have emotions in the magic world. After causing damage to a violent, but important and cherished tree, Ron and Harry are given detention. That's where I've reached so far.

The world that author J.K. Rowling has created is exquisite. There appears to be no aspect of magic life that is not accounted for and "translated" from the things and institutions that muggles use. Clearly, there is a lot more to these books than what I've written, including the mild soap opera rivalry that the school has ongoing, the amoral instructors, vicious, petty students, nervous overachievers, and the bonanza of odd things to buy on Diagon Alley.