Friday December 29, 2006 5:50 am Lethbridge Sunrise 8:28 Sunset 16:38 Hours of daylight: 8:10

A. Morning Musings

5:50 am It is -17 C at the moment with a high of -2 C forecast. I am feeling much better this morning. There is still a lingering cough but I had a good night's sleep and feel that the worst is over.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at 2:00 PM

B. Plan

Immediate
Health	Walk & exercise	1 hr
Science	Make notes for "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity"	1 hr
History	Read Watson "Ideas"	1 hr
Philosophy	Read & make notes for "Breaking the Spell"	1 hr
GO	Complete reading "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go" Volume 1	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "Virginia Woolf: The Inner Life" by Julia Briggs	1 hr
	Continue reading "Selected Works of Virginia Woolf" - Jacob's Room	1 hr
	Begin reading "The View From Castle Rock" by Alice Munro	1 hr
Model Trains	Continue assembly of coaling tower	1 hr
Later
Chores	Investigate water softeners for home
Technology	Read manual for cell phone
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Begin reading "iPhoto"
	digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings
Philosophy	Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus
Mathematics	Read "Fearless Symmetry" chap 9: Elliptic Curves
	Make notes on the beginnings of number theory
	Larson "Calculus"
	Read "Symmetry" by Hermann Weyl
	Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3
	Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles"
Model Trains	Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover
	Assemble second oil platform kit
	Assembly of CN 5930, an SD40-2 with a NAFTA logo
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9

C. Actual/Notes

10:00 am My cough is still fairly strong and annoying but I am feeling ready to tackle something. Model trains seems like a good candidate.

	Model Trains 60 December 29
Model Trains Chronology
10:10 am While in Edmonton for Christmas I was able to visit a hobby shop where I bought the following materials: Pack of 20 pair of Kadee #5 couplers 2 packs of 2 pair of Kadee #38 couplers (I need these for the diesel locomotives) 1 coupler plyer (for bending the Kadee coupler hoses to the correct height) 2 Caboose Industries manual throw switch stands (#204S) I am now in a position to work on the following activities: complete laying of track on foam roadbed adding ballast to track replacing couplers on SD40-2 diesel unit CN5930 rechecking all rolling stock for proper coupler height adding groundcover to oil refinery ballast assemble coaling tower structure. While at the hobby shop I noticed a diesel unit in the black, green and gold color scheme for CN. The box said it was DCC ready and had DCC sound. The box said it was a TrueLine Gold model. I have not been able to find this on the web. I will give this one more try, right now. Total success! And I now have a new web site to monitor: http://www.modeltrains.com/ . This looks like an excellent source of information on Canadian National modeling. Here are a couple of other valuable web sites: http://cnlines.ca/ http://www.nmracanada.ca/index2_en.htm http://www.caorm.org/Pages/frameset.html I have decided to purchase the diesel unit from the shop in Edmonton. For some reason which I hope to understand soon, they are referred to as 5-axle C-liners. The 5-axle is easy enough, but the C-liner in not yet in my vocabulary. The main reason for the purchase is that I feel I need (not want) one locomotive that is DCC ready. Then when I purchase and install my DCC system on the layout and begin to test it with a locomotive, and if it doesn't seem to work properly, then I will assume the difficulty is with the layout installation rather than the decoder in the locomotive. I am beginning to get antzy about finally getting my layout DCC operational.

D. Reflection