Once again I find myself at the end of the day with no post, and a very uncertain schedule for the evening because Colleen is in the hospital again. But I ran across this intriguing piece of furniture elsenet:
( image under cut )
I may have found my next woodworking project.
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NaBloPoMo stats:
12558 words in 21 posts this month (average 598/post)
101 words in 1 post today
Productive week. Very. Also a very bad week. Let me explain.
On the productive side, we -- mostly I, actually -- did some final clearing-out and organizing in the garage, and Kat and Glenn got their piles of stuff out. The maypole's cross-section went from a square with rounded corners to an actual circle, and it looks remarkably Polish now. Colleen got her catheter and bag, so we have a greatly-reduced laundry and garbage load. A lot of the framing in the addition has been done, and the garage portion is a couple of feet bigger than I expected it to be. It was also a pretty productive week at work.
On the bad side, I got into a fender-bender -- my own stupid fault -- so we don't have the Honda right now. And I could have used it yesterday. And Colleen's new prosthetic bladder means that she can't take baths. Which means no walk-in tub. And a screw vibrated loose on the router, which could have been drasticaly bad but wasn't. And my back was hurting for much of the week.
On the in side (where every silver lining has a cloud around it), not getting a walk-in tub means saving tens of thousands on the upstairs remodeling. And it's practically impossible to be depressed while wielding a jointer plane. Found that out last night.
Links in the notes as usual.
( raw notes, with links )As often happens, I managed to end the week feeling frustrated and unproductive despite getting, actually, quite a lot done. Past failings have the most to do with it, as in I didn't restart working on taxes until Saturday evening, at which point I got around to noticing that the printed returns from the last two tax years have gone missing. And I couldn't find the final sale documents from the Starport, either, so made do with the estimates. Doesn't matter because everything but the depreciation I took last year was excluded. And of course I hadn't yet gone through my charity and business receipts. AAARGH!
Clearly, my record-keeping sucks. And I haven't been practicing. And things are somewhat behind at work. I need to work on these things.
On the plus side, though, I did make progress on my work project, and even got one of my more questionable design decisions validated (so that's work I *don't* have to redo). And I made a phone call I've been putting off for months, and got the thing done, and it wasn't as bad or as embarrassing as I expected it to be. And I've gotten a lot done on house projects (because anything is more than fun than taxes, including shifting boxes around and taking out the garbage).
And my laptop is fixed. Also in the computer area, I'm getting pretty good at configuring new Ubuntu installs. :/ And I found a ThinkPad USB Keyboard w Integrated Touchpad on eBay, at a price way too good to pass up. (I've been seeing them going for over $400!) Unlike more recent versions, this one has a built-in 2-port USB hub, and a small touchpad that recognizes 2-finger scrolling. (But not, ironically, on a Mac. Though since it doesn't have a logo key, it's useless on a Mac anyway.) I'm not expecting to get the leather carrying case, since this is a used item.
And my family is, as usual, awesome. Including the four-footed members. My health is holding out pretty well. Physical health, anyway. (Notice how I resisted the temptation to add a string of qualifications that amount to me not taking as good care of myself as I could.) (Notice how I used "could" in that sentence instead of "should".) That's progress, of a sort. I'll take it.
On the whole, looking at the above, I think this has been a pretty decent week, even with the taxes unfinished. Links in the notes, as usual.
( raw notes, with links )So it wasn't a terrible day, just kinda blah, with no walk, my weight still up, and a main dish for dinner that didn't work at all (though at least it was edible and not a total loss).
But I got the healthcare receipts filed! And the 2010 box up to the attic! And some other decluttering done around the house. That's a major accomplishment. And it did feel good, and I noticed that (which is probably even more of an accomplishment). And I got the 1900x1080 monitor and USB-powered optical drive I've been wanting for months.
So maybe it's just a King Gama kind of morning.
For the woodworkers out there, here's a 100% Wooden Bike.
... doesn't mean that it's going to be easy to take apart. A little over three decades ago I bolted a few pieces of maple lumber together with 1/4" machine screws to make a frame for a pair of triple-folded foam cushions. When the foam disintegrated after some 20 years I added a back and bottom of maple plywood, and some 6" legs to raise it to a more comfortable height for a now-very-arthritic Colleen.
It's taken me some three-and-a-half hours to take it apart into manageable pieces. If seven-foot-long chunks of hardwood can be considered manageable. The cushions are now in the sewing room/guest room, waiting for enough floor space to lay them down and turn them into a bed. Since there are now only two cushions and not three, the resulting bed will be a few inches narrower than queen-sized, but longer.
There is cyclobenzaprine in my near future. Um... no there isn't.
It's a tricyclic antidepressant and shouldn't be
mixed with an SSRI. Grumble. And a hot bath. Definitely a hot
bath.
It's been a moderately productive weekend, though not in the ways I'd originally had in mind. The bedroom computer workstation is up and running. I found an old but mostly-servicable office chair in the garage yesterday (it had been sitting under a box of old lighting fixtures and swing-arm lamps for a decade or two), and audio is up and running as well. Kat's kitchen-gadget box is done except for the latches. She put on the hinges yesterday
Our drive yesterday took us about halfway to Gilroy (some 40 miles south along US101), so Colleen decided to go the rest of the way and hit the outlet mall. Didn't find everything we needed, but got some additional Corelle bowls in the Corning store to replace the ones that have gotten broken over the years, plus a couple more of the medium and large serving bowls. We opted for plain white 20 years ago (when we remodeled the kitchen and discovered that our stoneware didn't fit the new cabinets) figuring that plain white would never go out of style. I'm glad we did. They're elegant enough for company, practically indestructable (though it can be done), and light enough that Colleen can easily handle them even when feeling arthritic.
In addition, I've finally gotten around to fixing my daily mirroring
script so that it works even if, as in the current setup, the mirror drive
is on another machine from the fileserver. This requires calling it from
a login session with ssh-agent running; since I usually stay
permanently logged-in on one workstation or the other, that's rarely a
problem. I'll add the upload to my hosting service later today, since
it's easy now.
This time two weeks from now my little girl will have been someone's wife for about four hours. Gleep! I'm happy, proud, and all that, but I'm also feeling old.
There were a couple of times this morning where, if I had timed it right, I could have gone out for a walk and not gotten wet. I didn't. I did manage to go out to Office Max and Staples and get a box of printer paper, new ink cartridges for the HP inkjet, and a little rolling computer cart for the bedroom.
The printer cartridges didn't fix the problem. In fact, there appears to have been nothing wrong with the old ones. It's still sitting there with a flashing red exclamation mark and a little line on the LCD that keeps going round and round. I am a grumpy bear. I should know better: eventually everything HP makes just mysteriously stops working and turns into an inert pile of crap.
The computer cart is a win, though. It just fits on the short wall to the left of the bathroom door, which means that my chair will be right next to the bookshelves instead of pulled out into the room. And I'll be able to turn my head only 90 degrees to see Colleen. Win.
I still haven't worked out where I'm going to move the junk that was piled in that corner, or exactly where the rest of the recording gear is going. But it'll be a big improvement, and I'm not complaining.
I've also been woodworking with the Wolfling to build her a simple pine box for her to put kitchen gadgets in. Just butt joints and screws, but she wants a sort of rough look, and it'll match the big box of Penzey's spices that we gave her as a wedding present.
Two weeks! Gleep!
Eighteenth-century woodworking tools. This 20"-wide piece of mahogany will make a great tabletop when I get it flattened. My long try plane may not be the fastest tool for the job, but I sure am glad I have it. I could never justify purchasing a 24" stationary power planer because I come across stock like this infrequently. This plane allowed me to buy a piece of wood I probably couldn't work otherwise. Eighteenth-century woodworking tools can be restrictive in some ways. In this case, however, my try plane has opened up opportunities I wouldn't have had without it.(From this post by
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gmcdavid.)
