Burgers’ Thanksgiving 2023

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever. —Psalm 107:1

John

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. —Philippians 2:3

  • Laugh a lot. Learn a lot. A good balance is healthy. Dad continually points out the ridiculous things in life, then laughs. If we didn’t find humor in the mistakes of life, we would easily be pulled down and would probably have trouble getting back up. Congratulations, you just experienced what a poorly written introductory paragraph feels like. I apologize to all the writing and Institute for Excellence in Writing teachers.
  • If you couldn’t already tell, this year has taught me an Ever Given-sized boatload of new information. Just as the Ever Given was lodged in the muck of the Suez Canal, it is easy to get stuck looking at your mistakes. But we must move past our embarrassing times, as Thomas Edison said, Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. To keep making these steps forward, I have enlisted the help of my trusty checklists. Making a checklist enabled me to write down all the tasks I must complete so I can forget the irrelevant things and focus on the task at hand. Thomas Edison agreed with this idea when he said, Discontent is the first necessity of progress. So next time you feel overwhelmed, make a checklist!
  • I was so happy this year when I unboxed a 3D printer for Christmas. The box contained two handfuls of 3D printer parts. I finished putting it together in 40 minutes. Most people print a boat or something else special as their first print. However, I did not plan to waste any of the filament that came in the box on toys or other aesthetics. I am an engineer, so the first thing I did was print a calibration cube that was 20 mm in every axis. Once it printed, I could be at peace knowing the printer was calibrated correctly, printing the pieces at the right scale. It was so satisfying to watch the 3D printer extrude plastic one layer onto the next. I quickly removed the print from the bed of the printer and admired the piece of art printed at 0.4 mm detail. Yep, the cube had a depth, width, and height of exactly 20 mm. I admired the calibration cube on the car ride to the Christmas service. I securely placed it in my pocket that conveniently had the perfect sized hole in it. I noticed that I could feel the cube sliding down my leg. Thankfully my other pocket didn’t have a hole in it.
  • Towards the beginning of the year, my eyes started to see the different projects I could create with my 3D printer. I tried to 3D-print parts that would enable my LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 robot to climb down the stairs, but the parts broke. This project forced me to learn the basics of 3D design in Blender and Fusion 360. (Blender is free and open source, while Fusion 360 requires a license. I was able to get a free license for Fusion 360.) With the gained experience, I decided to create an automatic gerbil feeder. The idea was to have an Arduino Nano spin a motor connected to an auger that would slowly dispense food. This proved quite a challenge to design, since despite my measuring, the pieces looked bigger on the computer than in real life. I adapted the design and printed it in 4 pieces. I then wrote an Arduino script that would spin the stepper motor forwards 1/5 of a rotation and then back 1/5 of a rotation. I loaded the gerbil feeder with this program, and some gerbil food came out. However, there were occasions when the feeder would get jammed. Thankfully, it would normally unjam quickly, dispensing the jammed food. At this point I decided to test the reliability of the automatic gerbil feeder. I decided to add two buttons to control the gerbil feeder. Now I only had to press the button when I wanted it to dispense food, instead of reloading the whole script. To test the machine, I put in two days worth of gerbil food. Then I took the dispensed food and poured it back into the gerbil feeder. I did this at least 50 times and found that on average 7.2 g of food was dispensed. Sadly, I found that my sample of food lacked donuts (gerbil food in the shape of a donut). The donut would jam the machine, stopping all flow of food. I redesigned the part by expanding the opening of the slot that dispensed food. Once I printed this update, the food no longer jammed the machine. I also added an infrared (IR) sensor. I programmed the feeder to do different tasks when it receives certain IR signals from our TV’s remote. You can select the desired amount of food dispensed with the remote. I am afraid to let it sit in the gerbil’s cage in case they chew on it. I plan to make a second design that will rest horizontally at the top of the cage rather than vertically hanging the feeder from the edge of the cage. More functionality will come to the feeder once I design the updated enclosure. A photo of the current design is at the top of this page.
  • Video editing is so much fun! I have added to the collection of videos on my YouTube channel. I have to admit the videos I have made leading up to this year haven’t been Oscar worthy. I do have one video that I am at least mostly proud of. You can view it by clicking here.
  • Uncle John is my favorite title. I truly must thank Evie, Charlotte, Steven, and Angie for giving me such joy. While completing math I often hear a knock at my door. Evie will then say something like: “John… do you want to chase me?” or “Let’s play with cars.” or “John, do you want to draw with me?” I struggle gaining the ability to say no even though I am aware I have 13 math problems to do in the next 30 minutes. I love being an uncle.
  • From 19:35.7 to 17:50.2, I improved 105.5 seconds this cross-country season. Despite being a high school freshman, I achieved third place in the Wisdom Builders (WB) fastest 5 km times. To surpass Jason Elmore’s 5 km WB record, I need to run 9 seconds faster than my current personal record of 17:50. Jason Elmore also holds the fastest 3 km time in middle school. Last year I was just 5 seconds off his time, and now I will be chasing his high school record. Well, you might be asking for my secret to speed at this point. First, have great parents who give you good genetics. Second, grow up as an active child who plays outside. My crazy strategy in cops and robbers also kept me on my toes and taught my body endurance. Third, work hard, pray hard, practice hard. Fourth, develop a good race strategy. I am constantly refining my race strategy and testing new ones. In my first year, my strategy was to start slow then get faster. Reflecting on race videos, I realized I used to start too slow, even with the slowest runner on our team. In my second year, I aimed to start faster among the top 10–15 runners, but fatigue forced me to slow down, leading to others passing me. At the first race this year, I aimed to hold a 6:25–6:30 mile pace for the first 2 miles and adjust based on energy. This strategy worked fairly well as I improved from 20:12 to 19:35. Ultimately, I’ve learned that either maintaining a consistent pace or attempting to speed up every mile works best for me, with the latter being more challenging.
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