More delays. Sigh. I've come down with a nose-and-throat bug. The last one of these ended with a long course of levaquin that was draped over a course of prednisone. I haven't finished rehabbing the muscle damage in my legs. (The strong parts are mostly back. The weak parts are not.) I've been through a cycle thta might have closed it down, but didn't quite, and I'm in a state where even moderate physical exertion triggers a fever. I give it two days before I go to the doc again. I suspect we'll have to try amox/clavanulate again. It usually works for me, but not that last time. (I suspect the problem is that its serum half life is only a couple of hours ... Amy, have I got that right?) If that doesn't work and the levaquin family is out, it will be an expensive week. (I've had almost every antibiotic out there up to four years ago.)
Tonight I'm catching up on reviews and replies, then getting more notes cleaned up. I end up thinking them over, so it takes time.
Tomorrow I want to finish off that automobile-12v charger for my pocket USB battery packs (the battery-powered battery chargers). Since I'm replacing the N-channel in the ground line with a P-channel in the hot line, and adding another P-channel MOSFET, with an N-channel inverter-driver driven from a Seiko undervolt sensor, and also replacing one tantalum capacitor with another rated for a higher working voltage, I have to strip nearly everything off the board. I either have to cut and hack or else desolder (if I want to salvage stuff) but desoldering with the higher-temperature lead-free solders takes all the fun out of it, and more. (I'm using the lowest melting point Sn-Ag-Cu that can be had at a sane price, only about six times the price of the best tin-lead alloy.)
And when that is done, if I don't need to sleep the rest of the day, I have a series of other projects for which I now have the parts. I'm improving an adjustable-but-not-regulated battery-powered supply. I have to make a little gallery board to hold the binding posts. That will be a little fun measuring, marking, cutting, cutting, smoothing, drilling ... and assembling. But it should wait until I get the big changes made on the circuit board. I need to squeeze a second potentiometer in (coarse/fine arrangement) and rewire; I need to add two power switches to the existing one so I can switch three battery banks in separately. And I would like an undervolt indicator on each pack, which means I need (if I am careful) seven adjacent PC strips, with six adjacent center-strips. The LEDs won't be near the switches unless I play some games, but I can mark them instead.
(I ordered a bunch of polypropylene storage boxes to put my boxes and piles of capacitors in order, but forgot to order some for my diodes, which are at least as messy. Even on a small order, shipping is $20, so my second order included spares in sizes I'm running low on.)
There's a two-ended resistance box that I want to make for some tests I want to run on a circuit configuration. Even with help in the form of coarse/fine resistances, the tests may take three or four hours. (Without the help, it could take nine or ten.) And the 1MOhm potentiometers, though dual-ganged, are only guaranteed to track to 30%, so I'll have to go through the batch looking for the one that tracks best.
And every part I borrow from the box meant for general-purpose substitution boxes has to be replaced.
We'll see how far I get tomorrow, and maybe Friday. Then I have to turn back to Merran and Pausonallie. With luck, I'll see a few things more clearly. That part's getting just too long, ditto-ditto my song.
