Blackout Revisited

I didn't make mention here of the famous L.A. blackout on Monday. It didn't affect me a whole lot, or so it seemed.... The power at work was only off for less than I minute I'd guess (as opposed to by my home, where it must have been out for 15 minutes or more. My youngest boy is potty training, and he enjoyed sitting in the bathroom with a candle going, I hear) I had my CNC on, but not running when the juice cut out, and just a bit after it came back on Tom (Sammy's dad) notices there's smoke coming out of the top of it!!! I bust ass over there and cut the power, and get a look at where its coming from. On the top of the back panel there's a punched metal enclosure, and it looks like a rod like a heating element in there. Its glowing red, and there's even a little fire burning on one end. After it burns itself out I look inside the panel, and there's only two wires going up there, and the closer I look the more it looks like a heating element!!! I was leery of turning it back on, so I called tech support and asked 'em what the heating element on the top of the thing is. Turns out its some kind of thing to dissipate the charge in the power inverter that does the speed control for the motor. They said to go ahead and turn it back on, and if it doesn't work I'm gonna need a new inverter. I turn it on, and everything seemed fine. I finished writing the proggie I was working on, and ended up running it yesterday (typical stupid shit at my work, this is a priority job, yet I didn't end up getting the metal to cut it into, ready since Monday morning, until after 4:00 yesterday!!! Don't come bitching to me....) Anyway, yesterday night I ended up cutting nearly half of the tool, the first actual milling that I've done on CNC, a big thrill for me!!! I was very pleased with the results. Got in today and finished the half I was working on today, moved my fixturing around and roughed the other half. I'd been thinking of a way to clean up the program and speed things up, so I stopped at this point and modified it. Afterwards I went to run it, but I ended up getting an error message:

INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR

Damit!!! Strange that would happen after working fine for more than a day...

I went over to my parent's house after work today to get sleeping bags. I'm planning on taking my firstborn camping this weekend. The street in front of their house has been tore up for a few weeks, because there was a low spot in front of their house that was always wet, and usually green and scummy. Perfect place for west nile mosquitos!!! Anyway, they're putting in all new curb and gutters. My dad had the driveway widened some time ago from 2 cars to 3 cars, but he didn't have the ramp widened, having to go through permits. Well, he kept asking them about it, and they ended up making it 3 feet wider each way!!! I tell you, that's a good looking driveway ramp!!!