Kurt Leucht’s Blog

I’m a pretty busy guy, so I don’t really have the time nor the energy to implement every single great idea for a new invention that I think of.  So I’m going to just release any idea trademarks that I might have enjoyed and put my invention ideas out to the general public for implementation.  If you do actually end up getting filthy rich off of any of my invention ideas, I won’t sue you but please feel free to send me a little of your filthy money just to make certain that you are able to sleep soundly at night. 

[image from http://bestbarberchairs.com/]

As I sat in the barber chair recently with that annoying plastic apron tied around my neck with sweat running down my face, I realized there was a simple solution to my discomfort.  Just add some air conditioning vents coming out of the armrests of the barber chair.  That will pump cool air under that hot plastic apron during the haircut and will keep the patron from overheating.

The chair doesn’t have to create it’s own cold air.  The salon employee could simply just hook up a hose to pump in the cold air … or even room temperature air would even help the situation.

Please invent this.  Thanks,
Kurt

At home I have DSL Internet service with a very large phone company.  Recently my DSL modem has been giving me a little trouble, but I haven’t done anything about it because the problems always corrected themselves simply by power cycling the modem.

But last week the modem started rebooting all by itself and according to the front panel lights it had lots of trouble reconnecting to the Internet.  I noticed it would run fine for a while and then start acting up.  Once it started acting up, no amount of power cycling would seem to fix the darn thing.

So I finally called the very large phone company to complain and the very polite offshore phone support lady quickly realized that I was an extremely intelligent and technically savvy customer and she immediately said she would overnight me a new modem.  Nice.  Only one catch, though.  It was the beginning of a long holiday weekend and the modem shipped overnight would probably take three days to arrive at my doorstep.  Hmmm.  Three days without Internet service?  This was gonna hurt.

So I did what any self respecting engineer would do … I got a screwdriver and took the thing apart.

No obvious burnt or charred areas were found.  But static shock or lightning could have internally messed up some of these components without showing any external damage.  Hmmmm.  One or two of the capacitors appears to be a little bulged at the top.  That might be a problem.

I felt the circuit board components just out of curiosity and holy cow, the DSL system on a chip (TI AR7 7100) was so hot I couldn’t keep my finger on it for more than about one second.  That can’t be right.  That chip is totally overheating.

I tested my theory by getting a small glass bowl from the kitchen and putting some ice cubes in it and placing it on top of the overheating chip.  And it seemed to fix the problem!

All weekend long, my wife and I would put the chip on ice every time we wanted to use the Internet and this solution always kept the DSL modem in operating condition for an hour or two until the ice completely melted and the water started to lose its cool.

Turns out that the replacement modem that was “overnight” shipped actually took four days to arrive at my doorstep!  Figures.

At least now we can keep our ice away from our computers and keep it in our sweet tea where it belongs! 

Kurt

I did this weekend project a long long time ago, but just recently cleaned out my messy garage, got the Ranger back in and finally took some photos of the project.

I built a pool lift for the toddler swimming pool. This pool is too big to deflate and blow up every other day or even every other week, so we keep it inflated all the time. But we had no place to store it when it was fully inflated. So I built the pool lift.

It has pulleys and a block-and-tackle and you just tie the rope off at the wall anchors. I tried it without the b&t, and it was way too hard to lift. It’s light as a feather with the b&t, though. My wife gets the pool down all the time while I’m at work and puts it back up. When the kids outgrow the toddler pool I can think of all kinds of things that I can store up there.

One word of warning, though: the bottoms of your garage ceiling joists are not designed to hold the weight of heavy objects! Attic joists are designed to carry a heavy roof load only on the topmost spans. The lower spans are only designed for compression or tension.

Kurt

A few years ago my dad transferred some of my grandfather’s old silent films that he and his friends from the Peoria Cinema Club had made from the original edited films onto VHS format. I recently transferred them onto DVD and then stumbled across a website called CreateSpace where you can publish and sell your own DVDs. They do a nice job of printing the packaging and also printing onto the DVD itself, and they also set you up a store to sell your DVD. They even let you upload a 30 second trailer that they stream to potential customers. That’s a nice touch.

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So if you’re interested in watching some historic 1950′s Peoria Cinema Club films, just go to the below link and order yourself a copy. It will only cost you $9.50 plus shipping. What a bargain! https://www.createspace.com/243975

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2/17/2008 Addendum: As if CreateSpace wasn’t cool enough, they are also affiliated with Amazon, one of the largest online stores in the world! So you can buy this 1950′s Peoria Cinema Club DVD from either the CreateSpace store linked above or you can purchase it from Amazon.com! (http://www.amazon.com/1950s-Peoria-Cinema-Club-Films/dp/B0013TPGE2/)

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According to recent website statistics, my Yard Shed Plans web page (http://www.leucht.com/kurt/shed/) is pretty much the most popular web page on my whole website. This is very cool to me because this is exactly the sort of content that I had most hoped to be able to provide with this website back in the late 90′s when I first created it. Sadly, that Yard Shed Plans page never even got completely finished. Mostly because the 3D models and images were difficult and time consuming to create. Also because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, which makes them even more time consuming to make.

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So busy-ness has kept me from finishing that particular page and also it has kept me from providing more content like this on my site. But the invention of the blog in the past few years (and my subsequent use of it here) has allowed me to quickly and easily create simple web pages, or blog posts, about even the most simple and small projects. So far the traffic on my blog is no where near the amount of traffic on the Yard Shed Plans page, though. Maybe most people that find my Yard Shed Plans page are searching specifically for “plans”. And it’s hard work and time consuming to put together actual “plans” for a project. So maybe I’ll have to go back and add “plans” to all my other projects that are on this site. In my spare time, of course.
Kurt