23 May 2021

A long gap

Well, it’s been nearly two months since we last chatted, sorry for the inconvenience (as the Creator said to his Creation (in the fifth (I think) book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy)). A fair bit has happened in the interim.

  • I am no longer a callow youth. I’m now less than four years away from 0x40. Yes, that’s right, I turned 0x3C this year. Admittedly, people make a big deal of turning 0x3C, but I don’t know why. After all, The Beatles didn’t write a song about that, they wrote “When I’m 0x40”.
  • I am fully vaccinated against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (aka COVID-19), via a two shot Pfizer regimen. I’ll note that, unlike some other folks I know, my second shot was followed by 12 hours of sore shoulder, followed by 36 hours of feeling pretty lousy. Frankly, it’s as sick as I’d felt in 5 years or so, and that was just my immune system letting me know it learned an awful lot from the first vaccination, thank you very much.
  • I completed my 14th year of employment with my current $FIRM. Still learning new things, still having (some) fun. So I’ve got that going for me. That tenure of employment almost reaches the median tenure for the firm, if that tells you anything.
  • We did a road trip up to Maine one Friday to take care of important family business… then drove back home the next day, because I had work obligations on the Sunday. Twenty hours of driving in two days is a lot, but this was totally worth it.

Ladders

I have four ladders.

  1. A 6 foot step ladder.
  2. A 12 foot folding aluminum ladder.
  3. A 24 foot fiberglass/aluminum extension ladder.
  4. A pull-down garage attic ladder that has two hinge points.

This is a story about the fourth ladder. A couple of weeks ago, I was putting some items up in the garage attic. Two or three trips up and down the ladder. All done, I came down the ladder and it failed on me as I reached the third step. The wood broke away from the metal hinges on the bottom section at the left and the ladder torqued to the right, trying to pitch me off.

The ladder failed in it’s nefarious plot, as I always retain at least two points of contact on short ladders (and three on tall). So I merely executed a rapid, controlled vertical descent, and incurred just a slight scratch on my left arm for my troubles. The ladder was… less well. However, I had other things to do, and no time to deal with making the repair-or-replace decision. So I bent the hinged area back to moderately straight, folded the ladder up, and put it out of my mind for a couple of weeks.

Today, after the shopping, it was time. So I placed one of the garbage totes in position to support the busticated ladder, and had a look:

The failure point on the broken attic ladder

You can see where the wooden side of the ladder catastrophically failed. However, there was also a missing nut, and one missing metal ‘L’ strap (another one is shown above sitting in the place where it, and the missing nut, should have been). All that being so, upon examination, I felt that I had the materials, tools, and skills to repair this $300 US ladder, in less time that it would take me to unmount the broken one, and mount a new one. So overall, this would be a net win.

Dis-assembled and laid out on the table saw extension.

At the point shown in the picture above, I was actually well along in the repair process. But this was the point at which I laid out all the old parts to ensure I had everything I needed to re-assemble the ladder. Shown above is the slightly brighter ‘L’ bracket I fabricated from a bit of strapping I had laying about. You’ll note the extra chamfered hole in that strap, not needed in this application, but not critical for its presence, either.

The same layout, but with freshly fabricated ladder sides

Because I had one unbroken ladder side, and they’re mirror images of each other, it was easy to use the one side as a template to replace both.

Why both? Because the wood is old and if one side was brittle enough to fracture like that, I expect the other side is too.

What about the rest of the ladder? Another good question. I thought about it, and frankly, it wouldn’t be hard, just time consuming. And its the uprights on the lowest section of the ladder that take the greatest strain and beating. So I made a decision to just replace those.

Fabrication itself wasn’t hard. I find myself wishing I actually had a T-bevel gauge. I always end up cobbling something together that can do the job (as I did this time), but a bevel gauge would be a better choice. It’s on my list.

Here’s what I used/did:

  • Spare dry pine in 1×4, of sufficient length to make the parts, plus spare if I screwed one up.
  • Miter saw for the ends.
  • Mocked up bevel gauge to mark the boundaries of the step slots.
  • 3/4″ bit in the router to make the step slots.
  • Clearance holes drilled for the #10 bar that goes under each step, and for the 1/4-20 hardware for the hinges.
  • A bit of light sanding, and a few passes with the block plane to ease the corners on all the long edges.
Ladder re-assembled, sturdy, and safe.

Re-assembly tool less than 10 minutes. I also checked/tightened all the rest of the hardware. Then I executed a brief test climb, and a couple of well-braced bounces on the ladder to ensure it is once again sturdy. All good.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Christopher F. Pantos, 55, of Richmond, Virginia, who died on Apr. 26, 2021, at Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait, as the result of a non-combat related incident.

We also hope that all y’all are doing okay. It’s been a long string of stress-full years hereabouts, and the pandemic made it all worse. In this small part of the world, today things seem a bit better. The big deal now is to protect Democracy and throw and/or keep the Trumpublicans out of office. Seriously. Job One.

31 January 2021

Happy New Year, Belated

I’m counting from 20 January, with a tiny bit of hope in my heart.

Goings On

We’ve been staying busy, but some stuff has been going on.

Lexi being cute:
Lexi, the rescue dog, with her old stuffed bee (from our friend Linda Rose)
Lexi with her old stuffed bee (from Linda Rose)
I fabricated a new dog dish holder in the wood shop:
The new wooden dog dish holder I made in my woodshop for Lexi the rescue mutt.
The new dog dish holder I made for Lexi

The dog dish holder was a four day project. The actual cutting and assembly was a matter of a couple of hours. All the rest was staining, and coats of polyurethane, with drying and light sanding at intervals. It’s much nicer looking than the old one, and a couple of inches lower, which is good for a little dog.

I did the annual deep cleaning of the Behmor cofffee roaster:
Annual deep cleaning of the Behmor coffee roaster.

This is a two-to-three hour job, as I first do my normal inside-the-roaster cleaning that happens every 4-6 weeks. Then I dismantle a lot of panels and using a vacuum, compressed air, and a lot of cleaner, extract as much chaff dust and oily crap as I can, before reassembly. This isn’t much work to invest annually in a roaster that enters it’s twelfth year of service next month!

Winding down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Timothy Luke Manchester, 34, of Austin, Texas, who died on Jan. 20, 2021, in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, in a non-combat related incident.

13 December 2020

Friday the 13th falls on a Sunday this month

That said, we’ve not experienced a significant run of ill luck yet this day, but then neither of us suffer from triskaidekaphobia.

We are having intermittent warm and cold stretches, with a possibility of some icy precipitation on Wednesday upcoming – Marcia’s looking forward to that. Lexi can do without the heat of summer or the cold of winter, but she does look forward to curling up on the electric blanket in the mid evening on cold nights…

Lexi, the chipuggle mutt, curled up on the electric blanket
Lexi curled up on the electric blanket

Not much else to report yet. I’m waiting to see what happens come Monday.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Captain Kelliann Leli, 30, of Parlin, New Jersey, who died on November 27 in a non-combat related vehicle incident at Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates.

Meantime, please stay safe, mask when you need to be around people you don’t already live with, etc. The vaccinations are coming, but it’ll be months…

9 August 2020

Fishy Business

The fish jigsaw art piece featured recently is now done and on the wall. I put on a couple of coats of clear matte water-based polyurethane on the back to seal it, and four coats front and sides. After the first coats, I used some 220 grit on the wood surfaces to knock down the nibs, and gently with some single ought steel wool for the face of the puzzle, just to give a bit of bite for the ensuing coat. All the other coats were followed by a light pass with the steel wool. Here it is on the wall in the master…

A fishy jigsaw puzzle mounted on wood, on the wall.
A fishy puzzle on the wall

Gardens

In the front yard, everything remains green. That’s undoubtedly due to the unusually consistent and high amounts of mid-summer rainfall. A usual July and August pattern yields the occasional thunderstorm, which retains the power to terrify the dog, but drops just a couple of tenths of an inch, when it doesn’t miss us altogether. But we’ve had some good storms come through over the last month, for a total of 9″+ measured on the backyard meter here. And we haven’t had a week without at least one good soaking.

Two major effects there – first is that the lawns, which have usually gone a bit brownish and less enthusiastic in their growth have remained green and chugging right along generating requirements for mowage. Second, the tiger lillies, which usually are blooming in the first days of July, then done and gone by just past mid-July, were epic this year. We still had blossoms on the tops of the lilies in the last week.

Tiger lilies in the front yard

In the back yard, sadly, the news isn’t as good. After losing all of my first plantings to frost in late April, most of the second plantings have failed due to rust. So while tomatoes were produced, they are sickly and not really edible. Two exceptions to the rule – a pair of plants producing small roma tomatoes, planted in the other bed with the peppers, are thriving. I think they came from a different wholesale nursery than the others. Ah, well. So we have peppers and some tomatoes – so a bit of salsa, then.

Tomatoes and peppers harvested from the back garden

Other News

I’m waiting to hear back from La-Z-Boy, we have a broken mechanism in the Gibson recliner we bought a decade ago. They offer lifetime warranty on reclining mechanism parts, so it’s just a nominal shipping/handling charge to get parts. Good news: I have the tools and ability to repair it myself, given parts. Actually, had I a machine shop, rather than a wood shop, I probably could have bought some raw stock and made replacement parts myself. But I don’t.

Work continues busy, which is a good thing. I continue to shop for groceries sporadically, at 10-14 day intervals, as we try to minimize our outside contacts while we wait for Big Pharma to figure out how to overcharge us for the vaccine(s) we’re paying them (as taxpayers) to develop.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. Bryan Cooper Mount, 25, from St. George, Utah, who died as the result of a vehicle rollover accident while conducting reconnaissance operations on July 21, 2020, in Eastern Syria.

19 July 2020

Almost Caught Up

The last two weekends have been full of chores, catching up on the early summer yard suffering. Temperatures had been reasonable, and there’d been a fair bit of rain during our absence. That meant that lawns, weeds, everything was growing like gangbusters. But I’m almost caught up. Some of the tomato plants are starting to produce, as are most of the pepper plants. Others of the tomatoes don’t look entirely … enthusiastic about the ONE job they have this summer.

Work is ongoing for me. I’m still going into the office once a week for a weekly process related to backup that requires hands on site, as well as once a month for a printing process that has a bit of complexity, and tight deadlines. So, for me, that’s Monday and Tuesday of this week.

Additionally, I’ve got a full plate of online trainings and a couple of exams to knock out in the next month to keep my certifications in top form. So, there’s that.

Art Project

Today, after the bi-weekly shopping, I went down to the basement to work on our latest art installation. Months ago, Marcia assembled a fish jigsaw puzzle, and was entranced. She wanted it mounted in some way, to hang on the wall. She applied some form of mod podge to the puzzle itself, to make it robust enough to adhere to a backing. It was my job to come up with the backing.

Weeks ago, I assembled a collection of old southern pine boards into a backing, per Marcia’s specifications. Today, I did the masking:

The puzzle backing display, masked for adhesive

Once masked, I sprayed the clear area of the backing boards, and the back of the puzzle with 3M Type 77 spray adhesive, and waited a few minutes to let it set up to a high tack.

With a few dowels laid across the boards to suspend the puzzle near, but above the backing, I positioned the puzzle, and then started to adhere it to the backing, starting from the bottom, then moving towards the top, removing dowels as I went.

Finally the masking is removed, and the whole is revealed:

Puzzle firmly on board

Marcia’s happy with it, which means that I am, too. I’ll give the adhesives a couple of days to off-gas, then we’ll apply two or three coats of matte polyurethane. Finally, we’ll figure out where to hang it in the house.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors:

  • Spc. Vincent Sebastian Ibarria, 21, from San Antonio, Texas, died as the result of a vehicle rollover accident, on July 3, 2020, in Farah, Afghanistan.
  • Pfc. Alexander Blake Klass, 20, from Willamina, Oregon, died as the result of a non-combat related incident, on July 4, 2020, at Camp Novo Selo, Kosovo.
  • 1st Lt. Joseph Trent Allbaugh, 24, from Folsom, California, died as the result of a non-combat-related incident, on July 12, 2020, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

28 June 2020

A Month!!!

We hope that all of you are keeping well and in reasonable health.

Yes, yes, it’s been a month. Sorry to those of you who worry. We’re all okay here. And for a couple of weeks, we were okay up in Maine, too!

The view of the lake from the door of the camp, in the middle of Maine.
The view of the lake from the door of the camp

Three days before we left for Maine, we learned that they had updated the rules for out-of-state visitors. If we could show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days of arriving in Maine, we could forego the otherwise mandatory two week strict quarantine. We found a clinic, got a test each, and on Friday evening we got our negative test results. 12 hours later, we were on the road to Maine.

Lexi  (our chipuggle mutt) likes hanging out in Maine, too!
Lexi likes hanging out in Maine, too!

It was a lovely two weeks, the best run of weather we’ve had in our many trips up there. The fishing was fun, the catching was … sparce, at best. The best bit about not needing to quarantine is that we could spend time with Marcia’s sister. We didn’t do much in the way of tourist-ish stuff, out of an abundance of caution. But it was really quite relaxing.

The garden lives, that’s good, and I’ve weeded them out. The lawns are now mowed again. And I’m back to work, mostly remote as before, tomorrow morning.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Spc. Nick Bravo-Regules, 20, from Largo, Florida, who died on June 23, 2020, in Jordan while supporting operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, from a non-combat-related incident.

17 May 2020

Spring, huh?

So, since we last were here together, we had several more overnight freezes. Sadly, at least one of them was a surprise. So one night I didn’t tarp the garden beds, and everything died. Yup, all of it. So I started over. Rototilled again, raked it all out flat again, bought new plants again, and got ready to put them in the ground, again:

Two garden beds ready for planting... again. Tomatoes and peppers in ready for transplanting into the soil.
Two garden beds ready for planting… again.

We’re not due for anything below 48F in the next ten days, so I expect that we’re actually done with overnight frosts. (Famous last words). But the plants look good, and since I did that work yesterday, everything is still alive:

Plants in the ground
Plants in the ground

Right now I’ve just got a variety of tomatoes and peppers, since those are what I want most. I’ll probably pick up some herbs and some beans to go in, in the next few days.

Lexi the mutt at my office window (Lexi TV)
Lexi at my office window (Lexi TV)

While it remains spring-ish, Lexi likes watching “Lexi TV”, quivering and growling at the vicious bushy-tailed rats (squirrels) invading her back yard.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. Christopher Wesley Curry, 23, from Terre Haute, Indiana, who died on May 4, 2020 in Erbil, Iraq, from a non-combat-related incident.

Marcia has been baking up a storm, and, well, I love it. I’m ordering some double doors to install in all the door frames, and getting pricing information on the necessary permits…. but it’s all delicious!

We continue, reasonably healthy, mostly home-bound, wondering what the idiots are going to say next.

The bright spot is that our state, in the process of putting off the primary, did so to ensure that this was a vote-by-mail election. We received our ballots, and our instructions in Spanish, completed and mailed them. Yesterday, the instructions in English arrived. Ah, well. We were able to figure it out. Pleased that unlike some Republican-led states, ours was sane enough to ensure that people didn’t have to stand in close proximity to each other to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Yay, Maryland!

Be safe, stay home as much as possible, mask and socially distance when you must be out. Please. If not for yourself, then for the people who love you and will miss you when you die of covid-19, with complications of politics and lack of sanity.

5 April 2020

Spring Chores

Turns out that the seasons roll by regardless of stay at home orders… Late last fall, during the cleanup, it was clear that the spruce that adorned the left side of the front yard was just about done.

The failing spruce

By February this year, there was no green left to it. This weekend: last rites were administered. Using the pole saw and the small electric chainsaw, I took the tree and both small shrubberies out, along with doing a fair bit of other spring front yard cleanup.

Today, my big hope was that the odd angle of lean was indicative of a shallow, shoddy root system. My hopes were fulfilled.

Stump removal

I first weeded out the bed, preserving the tiger lilies. Then I dug out stumps, starting with the two shrubs, then attacking the spruce stump. I trenched around that with the pickaxe, to a depth of about a foot, then started undercutting it. After a couple of hours of work just on this stump, I got a long 2×4 underneath one edge and broke it free of the remaining roots. Then I worked it up on it’s side onto a couple of short lengths, and was ready to knock the dirt out before hauling that off. I filled in the shallow hole and called it a day.

Our schedule remains the same – mostly home. I’ll go to the office for half a day this week, and on Wednesday there are two outings – in the morning, we’ll take the dog for the rest of her annual shots, then in the afternoon, we’ll go to pick up the groceries that we ordered on Friday.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. 1st Class John David Randolph Hilty, 44, from Bowie, Maryland, who died on March 30, 2020 in Erbil, Iraq, of a non-combat related incident.

15 March 2020

Ides of March

Happy Birthday, Alex!

What’s new?

The good news is that we already practice social distancing a lot. Hope y’all can manage that, too! Wash your hands a lot, keep the people around you healthy by keeping yourself as isolated as is reasonable and possible.

We’re both healthy at this time, and we’ll do our best to keep it that way!

I did get the shopping done today, which took a while, since there were lines. I also roasted coffee.

Lexi

Relaxing:

Lexi the mutt relaxing on her back, on the sofa.
Lexi relaxing…

Winding Down

Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors:

  • Gunnery Sgt. Diego D. Pongo, 34, of Simi Valley, California died on March 8, 2020 while supporting Iraqi Security Forces in north central Iraq.
  • Capt. Moises A. Navas, 34, of Germantown, Maryland died on March 8, 2020 while supporting Iraqi Security Forces in north central Iraq.
  • Army Spc. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias, 27, of Hanford, California died March 11, 2020, when his unit was engaged by enemy indirect fire at Camp Taji, Iraq.
  • Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts, 28, of Owasso, Oklahoma, when his unit was engaged by enemy indirect fire at Camp Taji, Iraq.

17 February 2020

Catching Up

We had a lovely 3 day weekend hereabouts. We started a bit early with a pleasant evening at home for Valentine’s Day. This was followed by Marcia’s birthday. We relaxed, watched shows as she wanted, played a few games, and I “cooked” dinner, using some of the meatballs she’d made up earlier in the week. Then shopping and some chores on Sunday, and more relaxation today for the holiday. Tomorrow, back to work.

Not much else to report but for the seasonally inappropriate weather – it’s too damn warm. I’m going to have to start doing yardwork really soon unless we get back to some correctly freezing weather.

Winding Down

Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors:

  • Sgt. 1st Class Javier Jaguar Gutierrez, 28, of San Antonio, Texas, died on February 8, 2020 in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, as a result of wounds sustained while engaged in combat operations.
  • Sgt. 1st Class* Antonio Rey Rodriguez, 28, of Las Cruces, New Mexico, died on February 8, 2020 in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, as a result of wounds sustained while engaged in combat operations.
  • Spc. Branden Tyme Kimball, 21, from Central Point, Oregon, died on Feb. 12, 2020, at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, from a non-combat related incident.
  • Pfc. Walter Lewark, 26, from Mountainair, New Mexico, died on Feb. 13, 2020, at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, from a non-combat related incident.