Hernandez Family Blog

Catholic Leagues

Adam Hernandez — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:45:00 GMT

This weekend, the Catholic League Meet was held. My school (Catholic Central), Brother Rice, DeLaSalle, and UofD competed in 12 events for the league championship. Prelims were held on Friday, and today (Saturday) the final heats were conducted. My school did well, taking 2nd place, and I swam personal best times in several events. In the prelims I swam the 200yd freestyle, the 200yd freestyle relay (each swimmer in the relay swam 50yds), and the 100 breast. On Saturday, in the finals, I swapped relays and swam the backstroke leg of the 200yd medley relay (like the 200yd freestyle relay, each swimmer does 50yds, but they all swim different strokes as well). During the finals, Arianna made me a nice card for our team's trophy, with me swimming down to retrieve it (we didn't actually have to swim underwater to get the trophy, but it's a nice idea...).

Here's the inside of the card:

Yet another upgrade to my drumset....

Adam Hernandez — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:08:00 GMT

Here I am, with another purchase for my drum set: cymbals. Thanks to both sets of grandparents and Debbie for the Christmas cash I used to pay for these, along with Dad chipping in as a birthday gift. I chose to buy the ZBT series from Zildjian. It sounds much, much better than the cymbals my kit came with. Here are a few photos of the new cymbals:

Me with the cymbals still in-box

A picture of the new hi-hats

Mount Abstract

Aaron Hernandez — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:31:59 GMT

A couple weeks ago (or maybe it was just one week?) Arianna and I were home alone because Dad had to go to Adam's swim meet and didn't get back until 4 or 5 pm. He gave us limits on the computer and told me that I had to play with her some. So after lunch, I asked her what she wanted to do. At first, she "didn't know" (sounds familiar...) but after a while, she decided that she wanted to paint. So we got out a bunch of old newspapers and what-not, then we got out the acrylic paints we got for Christmas two years ago. I got out this really small canvas that I also got two years ago for Christmas, and started wondering what to even paint. So I started messing around with some techniques I had never tried before. I was just using brown, and soon the whole canvas was pretty much just brown. Don't ask me how, but at that point I saw a mountainside in the midst of the brown, so I went with that. After not being satisfied with the way it started to look, I broke out the pallet knives that I got for Christmas two years ago (what else, an easel?). I did this because you always see Bob Ross painting rocks with a pallet knife, and the mountain I was imagining was just rock; No trees or bushes or anything. The pallet knife worked. I was satisfied. The funny thing is, it doesn't really look much like a mountain at all. I like it.

Arianna says that the little "mountain" that's supposedly in the background looks like a tree stump. Can't really blame her, can you?

Dynamic Cooking Duo

Ed Hernandez — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:02:00 GMT

This afternoon, Adam went and volunteered to cook up some muffins and brownies with Arianna. She loves to cook, and so does Adam, and I thought it was very nice of them to do something together. Of course, Arianna wanted to put chocolate chips into the muffins. I don't have pictures of the finished brownies. Let's just say they didn't last long after they hatched...

Adam prepping the ingredients:

Arianna stirring things up:

Both of them pouring brownie embryo into the pan:

The muffins hatched:

Arianna: I love my muffin! See the face I put on it? Now I'm gonna rip it off and eat it:

I'm Gonna Hug It and Squeeze It and Stroke Its Feathers and Call It George

Ed Hernandez — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:34:00 GMT

Some time ago, we stumbled upon an article in Craftzine Magazine that showed how to make a simple iPOD dock with relatively few and cheap parts(Volume 7). Right before Thanksgiving, I got Arianna interested in building it. Aaron also helped out. Adam was the project chef. Here's a little picture progress book.

This is the little tiny circuit board we got, with the chip on it. The chip is shown on the wrong side of the board! Yes, we messed up the first time...

Arianna asked what all the colors on the resistors mean, so, naturally, I showed her. Every time we needed one, she insisted on selecting it with the color chart all by herself. Here she is deciphering the resistors with a nice color chart I found on the web.

I have a multimeter that we put to good use for this project. Arianna asked what that was for, so again, I showed her. Then she wanted to check to see if the resistors she picked out were the right ones. And you know what? She never got them wrong! I have a variety pack of resistors, and Arianna deciphered them and then measured them all, so now they are labeled for future use. But she developed this important ritual before using the multimeter: ALWAYS put the probes to your head and make a monster noise(and grimace) before putting the probes to the component:

Here's a shot of her and Aaron(note: no eyes were harmed in taking this picture) stripping a wire:

After learning how NOT to use the wrong side of a circuit board, I dug out a breadboard I bought, jeez, about 20 years ago. This turned out to be quite fun, as Arianna insisted on hooking all the wires up. In doing so, I taught her how to read the wiring diagram for this project, and how the breadboard works, so she could determine where to put the wires so components were connected properly. In this picture, you can also see the switch she picked out from Radio Shack. Know why she liked this one? Because it came with four different color covers for the lever! This she changed every five minutes, until she settled on red. Apple, tree...

After we bent a couple of leads and wires, she started using the needle nose pliers to push things into the breadboard. You can see a little bit of the wiring diagram, too:

Okay, this picture need some explanation. Once we knew that we had to put the parts on the bare side of the board, we needed to keep track of the copper traces on the other side of the board, which we kept face up. So, Arianna maneuvered herself under the board like an auto mechanic, and put the wires and parts through into the right places. On her back. Every time.

Usually, I held the soldering iron, and Arianna applied the solder. She became very good at it, making no blobs or short circuits. But since I couldn't do this and take a pictures, we staged one afterwards. She is holding the iron to a pin bent onto the copper trace, and applying solder. If it looks like she knows what she's doing, it's because SHE DOES!

She picked out this little black box to put the finished circuit in, but we had to make holes in it for The Switch and a couple other things that needed to poke out of it. Usually, we used the hand drill, but plastic tends to grab the bit, so we used the power drill that Grandpa Paul gave me for Christmas some years back. You can hear it coming, can't you? "I WANNA DO IT!!!"

Here is the inside of her work, showing the simple circuit and battery that takes to run the thing. And an adoring engineer/builder, inspiring the title of this blog entry:

The finished product! We designed the jack to stick out the side of the box, so you just have to impale your iPOD onto the box, no cables required. Instead of the wimpy tiny speakers that Craftzine recommended to use, I found some car speakers leftover from the Villager(when I upgraded to Pioneer three-ways). I was surprised at how good they sounded, and Arianna was certainly sold on them. Therefore, we put speaker connectors so the speakers and box can be moved around independently. We've got ideas about building a cabinet for the speakers(now Aaron wants one JUST for his idea, which we will write about later, if we build it), but we need to build a second amplifier circuit for the other channel. There's room in the box, and extra posts on the speaker terminals...

The project is a tiny amplifier built around the LM386 chip. We got all our parts from Radio Shack, but there are two problems with the Craftzine plans:

You cannot connect two 8 ohm speakers to a single LM386 chip
You need a 10uF capacitor across the 9V battery to prevent distortion

Aside from that, this thing CRANKS!

"I'm not as spritely as I was when I was 80!"

Ed Hernandez — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:11:00 GMT

While I was in Texas, one of my traditions is to sit with Grandpa and play guitar with him. Many, many years ago, we swapped guitars. I think my brother got Grandpa's, and Grandpa got my little tiny one that I think my Dad got for me in Mexico. It fit his hands better than the larger guitar he once had, and he still favors it over the conventional size guitars we sometimes bring over to his house.

Since then, my 97 year old Grandpa has played the snot out of that little guitar. He keeps it by the couch in the living room, and he picks it up often. He told me last week that he often plays along with the guitar Mass broadcast on one of the local radio stations. Now that Aaron is playing, he picks up that guitar when we visit and toodles around on it. Aaron noticed how worn out that little guitar is. You can pretty much tell which chords are played the most, because the neck is literally dented a few millimeters where Grandpa's fingers have flown. You guitarists out there will know that the frets themselves are only 1-2mm tall to begin with, so dents that deep pretty much double the string deflection. You can actually 'see' popular chords like D7, G, E, A and so on. Even the back of the neck is pretty worn, where his palm slides. Near the bridge, the strings are a little thin, too.

Last week, we were trying to figure out(me) or remember(Grandpa) how to play Sabor A Mi, which we finally did. But while we were fooling around, Grandpa tried playing one of the Mariachi runs on the frets, a kind of scale that moves quickly between chords of the song. But he stumbled a bit on the run, then took his hand and shook it and flexed it a bit. "Arthritis, Grandpa?" I asked.

"No," he laughed out loud, "I'm just OLD!"

PS: The title of this entry is a line is from a Disney movie. Can you name it?

Road trip math, Hernandi style

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:25:00 GMT

So, during the trip, we were listening to a story, and the reader mentioned 5 dozen things. Arianna asks what is five dozen, and I told her "It is five twelves." About six seconds later, she says "That's 60!" I said, "Wow, that was fast. Did you already know what five times twelve is?" And she says, "No, I just did five, ten, fifteen, twenty...sixty!" I thought about this, and I said, " Ah, so you turned it around and did twelve fives, eh?" She says, "Yeah(implying duh!), it's the same thing."

To which Aaron adds, "Yeah, Dad, it's the same thing, commutative property. Duh."

I love getting pwned by my kids.

Road trip!

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:09:00 GMT

We just finished a two day drive to my 'crib' in San Antonio, TX. It took a while, but I'm very glad to be here. Adam was old enough to help me drive, this time. The kids did well. Adam and I shared the front seats and driving/navigation duties. Therefore, Aaron and Arianna had back seat to themselves, and the little center section for drinks and things.

Here is Arianna with two of her guys, G.P.(for Guinea Pig) and Squirrel. As is her tradition, she never names her animals:

And here is a wonderful sunset, taken in North Texas:

I "stuck it" to the man, but all i got was a broken stick

Adam Hernandez — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:37:00 GMT

On Monday, I was playing intramural hockey when i had my goalie stick snapped in half. It was the third period, the opposing team was down by 2. A forward from Red Team charged down the ice on a breakaway, so i came out of the net to meet him. When he was about two feet away, I figured he would deke, so I shifted my weight to push off. He didn't deke. He plowed straight into me, knocking me backwards and breaking my stick at the paddle (the flat part). The puck bounced off of me, and the Red Team scored anyways. This is what was left of the stick:

Objects in Mirror are Hairier Than They Appear

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:38:00 GMT

For some reason, on a warm fall day, Aaron decided to try what it was like to be a dog and hang his head out the window. The picture doesn't do it justice, him having withdrawn from the slipstream a bit right when the shutter clicked. But you get the idea:

Another runner in the family

Ed Hernandez — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:24:00 GMT

Today, Aaron ran his first cross country meet, with the inaugural team at DHMC. The team is run by one of the teachers, coach John. They've been training for a couple of weeks, and this was their first competition, the Falcon Invitational. We had a rough start to the day, having trouble finding the park, then having trouble finding the entrance to the park, then having trouble finding the coach and team. But we found them, I let my blood pressure drop, and relaxed a bit before the meet.

I remembered to bring the camera, not just for me, but I thought perhaps coach John would be preoccupied with coaching, as opposed to picture taking. I took many photos, and tried to get as many kids and group shots as possible. But these are for you loyal readers. The first one, I got lucky and managed to align the stupid camera's own sense of timing with the starter's gun, and I got the kids right as they began to move. All the kids in black on the left are runners from Aaron's team. It's interesting that the boys have clearly begun to lunge across the starting line:

Here is the back of Aaron's coach and teacher, John, cheering Aaron on. BTW, coach John asked Aaron after the meet to design the team's logo!

Here is Aaron, crossing the finish line, flying hair and all. Even though we got it cut last week, it seems like he has a horse's mane here in this shot. Ok, I admit I think this looks kind of cool. He cut a 14:51.6 for the two miles in the cold rain, which gives him a 7:26 per mile pace. John was really impressed by this, and told Aaron so. Because I'm such a competitive person, I had to see how long it was until his next team mate crossed the line, about 2:30 later. I'm pretty sure both Aaron and Adam would smoke me if we went running together, but I can't wait to try, once my knee heals. I think it would be fun to run with them. They would try really hard to drop their Dad, and their Dad would try really hard not to get dropped. We be perfect training partners.

PS: when I last wrote about Adam's running last year, I mentioned that he was using my running shoes. Guess who's running in them now? Reuse, recycle...

General, take us to DEFCON 2

Ed Hernandez — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:57:00 GMT

Actually, it's not that bad. He seems conscientious, if not a little timid. But I'll fix that. And I am proud of him: he scored a 96 on the written exam, highest in his class. And in exchange for the inevitable 'help' he's gonna receive from me in the passenger seat, I've allowed and encouraged him to criticize MY driving. So far, he's busted me on a couple of things, so it works out. Him paying attention to me makes me feel better about his own driving. I've already promised him we're gonna find a parking lot and learn what it's like to stomp the brakes as hard as he can, feel the ABS(in this case), and not be afraid to do just that when necessary. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I hope to take him drag racing. Also, I hope to find an autocross somewhere, so he learns the limits of what the car can and cannot do. Not enough people know where the limits are, and are either afraid to approach them when necessary, or cross them altogether unintentionally. Mom, it's my kid, my house, my rules.

Oh, and before I forget, I want to thank my own father, who, years ago, simply handed me and my brothers the keys when it was our turn to take the wheel. I don't recall any backseat driving, or yelling, or panicking. I do remember one day, while Dad was working at the baseball fields at St Thomas Moore, he let me drive the Chevy around the parking lot, practicing braking, turning, using the signals with no other car in sight. I must have looked a fool, but I didn't care, and neither did my dad. I hope I can be as pleasant to Adam as my dad was to me. Alas, for those of you who know me, don't hold your breath. "General, take us..."

Crazy Harry Plays with Electricity...again

Ed Hernandez — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:30:00 GMT

Two days ago, Adam calls me to tell me a circuit breaker keeps tripping. So, figuring it's bad, I got a replacement on the way home. But when I got home, I decided to unplug everything on that circuit. Yet the circuit breaker keeps tripping, so I figure it's definitely bad. But before I ripped into the circuit breaker box, I decided to check the circuit for shorts, you know, the kind of thing the circuit breaker is designed to protect you from. We found a short.

I decided to get Adam involved and teach him more about electricity and house wiring while I was at it. My neighbor advised that we might have a bad outlet, so we set about disconnecting each outlet in the circuit to find the culprit. The first one yielded no luck, but Adam had the brilliant idea that before we disconnected the rest, we should at least check first. This turned out to be a good idea, because by disabling(and ruling out) the first outlet, we had the means of testing the rest of the circuit from the lines we disconnected to the first outlet. Sure enough, using this logic, we nailed the outlet that was the culprit. When we took it out, I saw at once what had happened.

About a year ago, when we were repainting the family room downstairs, I had Adam do the outlets to teach him how to handle things like this. Apparently, I didn't do a very good job supervising him, because what we saw tonight was this: when we stuffed the outlet back into the box last year, the bare ground wire was on the same side of the box as the hot wire. Two days ago, the ground wire contacted a screw on the hot side and shorted the circuit. You could see the scorch marks on the bare wire and the screw. Fortunately for us, the circuit breaker was doing its job after all! I learned my lesson(s), and it only cost me about $3.97 for the unnecessary circuit breaker, as opposed to, well, you can imagine.

So I'll leave you with this. Remember what Crazy Harry says near the end of the original Muppet Movie?

Arianna's 8th Birthday!

Ed Hernandez — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:46:00 GMT

Today was my 8th birthday. Last night, I had a sleepover party with 5 friends, some from school and some from church. We did a lot of dancing and swung our hips. Daddy took a video, and will try to post it later. Here we are after cake, opening presents. This is a Panda Bear necklace I got from Rory and Maeve. That's Maeve behind, saying "Oh, brother!"

Today, we went to Target to get my gift, a Polly Pockets Water Slide. I took some pictures after I put it together. You have to put real water into it. Here is the slide and the dolphin ride:

This is just the slide:

This is a dolphin in the dolphin ride:

Also today, I spied another yellow bird outside out house. We got the camera, and took a picture. It's a little blurry because we had to zoom in a lot. I looked it up in my Michigan bird book, and found out its' called a Common Yellowthroat. This one is the female, which looks puffier and not as bright as the male:

BTW, Arianna noticed that the date on these pictures says 2008, but that's because the camera batteries keep falling out and messing with the date. Daddy fixed it now.

Make Sure the Chocolate Chips Are OK

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:09:00 GMT

Yesterday, the boys went to Cedar Point. One of the people who volunteered to drive was Martha, who planned on taking her acolyte son, Jacob. As a measure of gratitude, I volunteered to take her daughter Elizabeth for the day and night. Martha was really glad, because she said she could now bring her husband Sean to Cedar Point, since he would no longer have to watch Elizabeth all day.

Arianna was delighted to have some company all day long, and a guest for the night as well. We managed to stay busy and positive most of the day, but we had a lull after dinner, and I suggested we bake cookies. Both the girls jumped for joy. And jumped and jumped. You know Arianna likes to cook, but I didn't know that Elizabeth did, too. She especially liked cracking eggs, and got to hand pack the brown sugar. Arianna got out all the ingredients, and they took turns measuring and hand mixing, but also got to use the power mixer when it came time to combine the dry ingredients with the wet ones. I showed them how important it was to sample the chocolate chips as we put them into the mixer, just to make sure they were good enough for cookies. I figure that's a cooking habit I can pass on, you know, chef's privilege. I took some pics of the process. I couldn't quite catch the huge smiles, but I guarantee they were there. Oh, and when the boys came home, they were ecstatic!

Dropping the dough

Yummy, nothing like home made!

Alice Cooper at Cedar Point?!

Ed Hernandez — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:42:00 GMT

Our church acolytes annually visit Cedar Point each year, very shortly after school starts, as an advance appreciation of their service and ministry to the church. Today, Aaron joined the acolytes as a guest. Adam sent me this picture of him with the simple description of 'Aaron after dinner'. I don't know what they're serving.

Oh, and why did Aaron let Adam take his picture? Because you still can't see his eyes...

What is this, some sort of Jedi mind trick?!

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:14:00 GMT

I was sorting through the family pictures looking for something, and I stumbled upon these pics, taken in 2006. Something similar happens to me when I'm looking up a word in the dictionary, and I stumble upon lots of other words to distract me. Anyway, it appears that Adam and Aaron were goofing around with making faces and taking pictures of themselves, then they tried it on mom. Although Cyndi makes some pretty goofy faces herself(which I think inspired this photo session in the first place), she wouldn't do it on command, despite Aaron doing his best Vincent Price Jedi intimidation technique.

Adam, Evil Eye face

Aaron, I Have to Sneeze but it's Stuck face

The two headed-dragon from Quest For Camelot imitation

Cyndi, I'm Amused or Just Oblivious face; Aaron, Where the Wild Things Are, Wild Rumpus pose

Cardboardie

Ed Hernandez — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Several days ago, after a flying lesson, Aaron commented he would like to make his own airplane. I went scrounging through my Model Aviation magazines, because they publish at least one plan per issue. Pretty soon, I found what I was looking for. In the July 2007 issue, Benny Lanterman writes about a very simple airplane made out of foam that I thought would serve as something to build and learn from. His design is called The Foamie, but the stuff it's made from is called Depron, a type of sheet foam insulation material that is hard to find.

So, while Grandpa Paul is visiting us, he and Aaron built the plane out of a large enough piece cardboard and some smaller pieces of foam. Here is Aaron checking out the plane before a test flight:

And Grandpa Paul about to launch it for me, after which he will totally run for cover:

As you can see, the plane is put together with what we had around, because when I order the right find of foam I'd need, we're gonna make it over again, and try some different things, shapes, colors, etc. This is how Mr. Lanterman developed the design: by making several versions and trying out different configurations. Grandpa did most of the construction, with some help from Aaron. Aaron and I set up the radio, especially how to mix the elevator channel and the aileron channels into a combination control surface called elevons. You see, the plan has no tail, so it's known as a flying wing design. This type of aircraft design dates back to the 1930s, but wasn't really successful until the B2 bomber was developed. This particular design has large fins(black things sticking up from the wing), but they are not rudders since there are not any movable control surfaces on them.

We decided not to put any dihedral into the design for our first prototype in order to keep it simple, but I knew that this would make the design less stable, ie, more challenging(and hopefully more fun) to fly. I was not disappointed. We made several flight attempts, including simple glide tests, in order to understand what the plane wanted for its center of gravity(see all the blue clay stuck to the plane above?) and how it would respond. After many rough 'landings,' we certainly found out how rugged and durable cardboard is! Anyhow, tonight we made what we thought qualified as a genuine flight, with the plane under my control for almost 12 seconds before I plowed it into the ground and damaged the mechanism that holds the propeller onto the motor(simple O-ring). My goal was to beat the Wright's first flight time, so we're not quite there, but we think we can do it tomorrow. Here's a picture of the last flight, courtesy of Aaron and good timing:

I'm in the Mood for Food

Ed Hernandez — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:08:00 GMT

We've been on a cooking frenzy lately, because Arianna has got cooking fever. The other day, after trying to make the move to ground turkey instead of ground beef, we remembered that we had Cyndi's recipe for Turkey Ring Meatloaf. Arianna ran to the cupboard to find it, then pulled out all the ingredients. We didn't have dried bread crumbs, so we toasted some bread and Arianna methodically ground them up with her hands. Then when it came time to mix everything together, I certainly didn't want to stick my hands in there, but Arianna was still gung ho and enthusiastically thrust her hands into it.

The Bread Crumbs

Ew!

Making the Ring

The Ring

SEE?

Ready, Set, Inhale!

Fun with the graphics tablet

Aaron Hernandez — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:14:00 GMT

After playing with GIMP2.4(GNU Image Manipulation Program) long enough for it to matter, my skill outdid the mouse i was using. Stupid mouse. So for $20 on amazon.com I ordered what we graphic designers call a "graphics tablet". Basically, just a pad and an electronic pen so that drawing on the computer is way more natural. So along with totally owning people on facebook with the "graffiti" application, I'm also constantly updating my album "GIMP 2.4"(also on facebook). Dad insists that I post this one here after seeing me work on it. Well, he saw me finishing it up.