It has been an interesting 12 months. Not to get into too much personal detail, it all started on 4/8/19. That was the day my 90 yer old Father passed away unexpectedly and began a 5 month adventure to take care of 96 year old Mother, which ended with her moving to my brother's house in VA. Along the way, my wife and I decided it was time to move on from CA and in 2020 we sold the house and moved to NV. Then this little virus thing came along and slowed us down for the last few months, preventing me from completing the move. Enough of the past 12 months.
Where are we headed. The following projects are slowly restarting
1. Improved Brick Controller
2. Improved USB based power sources
3. We signed up for Bricks by the Bay in July, hopefully it will still happen.
4. New Lego builds as I attempt to expand the MOC from the 2018 Bricks by the Bay.
5. Vanity build of my COSMAC 1802 system from the early 1980s.
More on all of this will be coming in the near future.
Rebuilding Infrastructure
Well before I can get to this list, I needed to setup the software and hardware infrastructure we had developed in 30 years of living in one place. While our clients in CA are still consuming some time, fortunately it is all virtual and not too demanding. In the process of moving we decided to move into a place temporarily, while we determine exactly where and in what we want to settle into. Once we found this place, it took me several weeks to get the computer infrastructure (network, servers, printers, build environments, billing, buying, inventory, etc etc) in place and working. That was the initial limiting factor.
The hardware development/production is more challenging. While I was careful about what went immediately to NV and what went to long term storage, I am sure some things ended up in the wrong POD. With all of the closures and the reduction is space, acquiring the material to rebuild is requiring that I be inventive on how the development lab will be rebuilt. I would also like it to be transferable to the final destination, where ever that is.
The softwear development/production setup was also challenging. Reduced space was the main challenge along with making sure the needed material did not go to long term storage. The virus thing did highlight that without prior knowledge of what is needed, it is difficult to plan. Case in point, for the last few weeks we have been making masks for the local community first responders. It would have been easier with elastic instead of ties, but all of the elastic was sent to long term storage. Here is a sample of what we have been doing.
Bricks by the Bay 2020
Our original plan from over a year ago was to introduced a new Brick Controller at Bricks by the Bay 2019. I don't want to reveal all the details right now, but there were some very useful added features. However as explained in an earlier Blog post, that fell by the wayside and we just managed to attend. We did quite well with what we had, but there were no new things. In Jan and Feb at the last of the BayLUG meetings, (the remainder to date have been cancelled), I had a long talk with the Bricks by the Bay vendor coordinator. (Note: this was long before the virus came to dominate our lives.) For the 2020 convention, the committee wanted to alter the mix of vendors. There have been complaints in the past that there are too many minifigs and old/discontinued kits vendors. So they were encouraging vendors with other offerings to attend this year. We fit into that category quite nicely. With the USB based power, a unique Brick Controller and our various softwear, we are very different from the normal minifig/discontinued Lego set vendor.
Will Bricks by the Bay happen. While I am hoping for an early return to normalcy, given the current state of CA, I tend to say it won't happen. What will the organizer do, not sure, but delaying a few months is probably not an option. It will be sad if it doesn't happen, but we are prepared for it.
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