Woodworking ⁽⁹¹⁾

Brian Bilbrey August 9, 2020

9 August 2020

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…

Brian Bilbrey July 19, 2020

19 July 2020

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…

Brian Bilbrey November 17, 2019

17 November 2019

As we wind our way through open enrollment season and clarifying what things are still eligible for reimbursement, I'm have such fun with sorting through the paperwork and ensuring that we're getting back all the pennies on the dollar that we have coming. It's one of those things I should do with more regularity, but since interest rates suck so hard, it really doesn't make sense to do the dance too often. Anyway, I'm almost done, having figured out we should spend a bit more on vision care in the next two weeks, to maximize our return. In advance of…

Brian Bilbrey May 28, 2018

28 May 2018

Memorial Day for those in the US. All respect and honor to those who gave their lives in service to our Country and Constitution. * * * A busy week last week, building new systems for new services, retiring old systems, and generally doing modern system administration stuff. Continuing to build out the configuration management system to improve system repeatability, reliability, security, and availability. So there's that. The three day weekend had a bit of lawn work, a bit of garden work, coffee roaster maintenance and roasting, etc. Oh, and a bit of old-school wood working to make a cutting…

Brian Bilbrey March 26, 2018

26 March 2018

Busy week and weekend past. The week brought us our heaviest snow of the season, on the first day of Spring. Here's a shot from my drive home last Wednesday, midday: Much of the weekend went to house cleaning and associated chores - we have a house guest arriving shortly. I also roasted some more of the Guatemala Pico Mayor Gesha from Sweet Maria's. Lovely stuff, and it wouldn't do to run out because I'll be brewing more than usual, perhaps. I also did some more glue-ups on the new jig I built last weekend: We march in spirit with…