New toys, long days

After work yesterday I made a couple stops on the way home, Autozone and Costco.  At Autozone I grabbed some fine grit sandpaper that is designed for wet sanding. I hope to use it to clean up the nasty clear coat at least somewhat on the Tacoma.

At Costco I grabbed an 8 channel 1080P DVR system that included 4 indoor/outdoor cameras.  It’s official use will be as race equipment, providing reviewable finish line video that can be a safety net.  I also am hoping to put it into use at the house as well, putting areas of the property under surveillance.  The challenge will be figuring out where we want to put the cameras and how to get the wires run there in a clean manner.

Last night I did the basic set up on the dvr, including mounting the two cameras that will be used for races on small blocks of composite lumber so they are easily moveable.  The higher resolution of the cameras will come in handy when it comes to clearly reading bib numbers on video.  The user interface on the Night Owl dvr actually seems a little more user friendly than what I am accustomed to with the Samsung DVR we have in the chicken coop.  Just for the heck of it I threw one of the spare Samsung 960 cameras I had in a box onto one of the channels.  I was pleased to see it fired right up, just running at it’s lower resolution.

The second toy I had arrived from Amazon, a portable power station.  This all in one device can jump start your car, blow up a tire, light up a room and power your USB, 12 volt DC, and 110 AC  devices.  It will surely be a great hurricane supply but once again it’s primary intention is race related, to serve as the power supply for my race clock, eliminating the need for on site power to run it. There was much less set up needed for the power station compared to the dvr.  I just plugged it in as instructed to make sure it has a full charge.

The next couple days will be long/busy ones.  Tonight instead of partaking in our normal pizza and dvr ritual I have to go to one of our branches to assist in upgrading some state drivers license equipment.  Then tomorrow morning I need to be at the Naples track early to assist in timing the large district track meet which will consume pretty much the entire day.  It will leave the remainder of the weekend at a large free time deficit.