Milestone reached, Christmas 2009

Yesterday I completed all of the “B” parts for the Christmas gifts, 30 in all. So far there are 22 “A” parts done, so only 8 to go. One of those is ready for the lathe, and for the others I need to mill up the wood and glue into blocks. All should be done some time next week. Still needing pennies. If you have corks and 2009 pennies for me, how about dropping them in the mail for me. I know Mom has 7 pennies and Duane and Cheryl usually have a decent supply of corks.

There are still a few other things to make, as well, before I close up shop for the cold winter. I think I will be doing work on the piano keys and hammers during the cold months.

To Everything (turn turn turn)...

In previous posts (July and October) I mentioned the “things" I am making for Christmas.

To read those posts:
Click Here

and Here.

At first I wanted to make 20 complete “things” which was 40 turnings. Then it was up to 25 (50 turnings). Now the estimate is up to 30 (60 turnings). I gave myself a break from the lathe for a few weeks but am back at it. So far, I’ve completed 23 part A’s and 20 part B’s, which means only 17 more parts to go. The B’s are simpler…I turned out 4 of them yesterday alone. If I keep at it, I should have it all done in time for Christmas.

Stay turned…I mean tuned.

How many will I need?

Hi all,

As most of you know, I have been making the things I give out for Christmas for a few years. Sometimes these have been “1 per family” and sometimes “1 per person”. Last year was oval boxes which were 1 per person. This year I would also like to do a 1 per person, but would like to get a count of everyone who will be present at the Christmas gathering.

Send me an email on behalf of yourself and your family members so that I can get an accurate count.

Everything I am making this year will be similar, but each will be unique. My plan is for everything to be “laid out” and each person just picks whichever appeals to them the most (like we did with the pens a few years ago). I may find myself in a situation where I don’t have enough ready, so if you happen to get an “IOU”, don’t take it personally. Sean, Ryan, and Danny got IOUs a couple of years ago and I eventually made good on them. (Did you guys like the clipboards? Were or are they useful?)

I’m making a guess that I will need 25 or more “things” for this Christmas. I’ve finished 7 of them, and am almost done with another 7. As you may know, I sometimes like to include a penny with the current year and it has been a big challenge in collecting 2009 pennies. If I had about 20 more 2009 pennies I could knock these out much quicker. If you’ve been saving corks for me, why not send them, and if you have some 2009 pennies, drop those in the package as well? 2009 pennies are easy to distinguish because they are very shiny and do NOT have the Lincoln Memorial on the back.

Poison Ivory…remember?

If you have followed my blog for a long time you may remember “poison ivory”…that’s Poison Ivy to you and me, but pronounced by my less than literate neighbor.
Click here
and here.

I had this dead tree in the backyard that was FULL of foliage...all of which was poison ivy. I went out and cut through the vine, which was about as big around at the base as an elephant’s leg. The ivy all died back and I was pleased, although I had to continue to be careful around it, as there were several tendrils hanging that could still come in contact with me. The chemical inside stays active a LONG time as I understand, so dead poison ivy is still to be avoided.

Recently that tree fell down. It’s root structure was consumed enough to allow a wind and soggy ground to topple it. It fell mostly on my backyard, but the top was a little into the neighbor’s. I wanted to get it removed because I did not want to come into contact with any of it.

So I contacted a tree service. They came and looked and pronounced that it would be $585 to remove it and dump it in the woods next door. Yikes! This job would take me about an hour if it weren’t for the ivy. I declined. Then I went to the “sand and stone” seller about 2 miles from the house and explained what was there. The guy said “I can come out tonight with my bulldozer and push it into the woods for $30. Fantastic...and SOLD !

I assumed that I would have to get home before him and cut the trunk into about 3 pieces, but by the time I got home he was done and leaving! There is a little bit of cleanup left to do, but should not be bad at all with rakes and a tarp. I gave him $50 and thumbed my nose at the professional tree service people. He did a nice enough job and stayed off the area of yard that has septic lines. The pushing made a line/trail of red dirt, but that will disappear next spring. Couldn't be more pleased, and I didn't get a rash.

Just something to keep in mind, should you ever have a similar circumstance...don’t settle for the first price.

CDs and MP3s

When CDs were first being developed, it was a design requirement that they be able to play at least 72 minutes of music. Why? Because some big-wig knew that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was that long and he desired to hear it uninterrupted...not having to flip over a cassette or record album.

There was no MP3 compression format at the time. One could not “burn” one’s own CDs.

Today, I put a CD into my computer here at work. It contains ALL NINE Beethoven symphonies. I “ripped” them from the originals that I purchased many years ago, and “burned” them in MP3 format to the single CD.

Later I may add up the total play time of all 9, but don’t have the stats right now. But I looked at the CD using “My Computer” and “Properties”. The disc is not even HALF full. Close...335MB used, 345MB free. This CD will last for several HOURS of music at work without needing to change the CD.

The guy in the office next to me listens to an iPod every day. I know that they can store a TON of music, however, once filled up you’re stuck. What if you want to hear something that isn’t in your iPod memory? You need to make room by getting rid of something else.

I love classical music and have gotten spoiled by the CD. I rarely play them anymore because they run out too quickly (not all are 72 minutes) and I need to go change CDs. Yes, I know they make CD changers that hold many CDs, but I am somewhat of a cheapskate.

What I need to do is start making my own compilation CDs, in MP3 format, of favorite music so that I can listen for many hours without needing to change out a CD. Rip and Burn on my newly upgraded home PC will be speedy. In fact, I can use the PC to play the CDs, my office laptop PC can play them, and the car can play them. No need to buy anything! More to come.

"Hansel and Gretel" was so-so

Well, I went to see “Hansel and Gretel” last night. It was enjoyable, but I will not be in a hurry to see it again, so I rank it a “so-so”. I agree with Mr. Peter Perret, who reviewed it at this link but he says it much more eloquently.

An almost perfect weekend.

Last Friday was taken as a vacation day. The plan was to go spend the 3 day weekend in Raleigh, taking in an opera on Friday night and seeing the local sites for the remainder of the weekend. It was almost perfect. The only thing wrong was that I booked a room at a Motel 6, sight unseen, and it was in a part of town that was a little seedy. It was along a highway, so there was road noise. There were some less than desirable folks staying there. And for some reason the air conditioner went through phases of working and not working. If and when there is another opportunity, I will choose a Red Roof Inn nearby but looking to be in a slightly nicer area.

It takes about 2 hours to drive from my house to Raleigh. We got there a little after noon, checked in, and went out to tour around. We walked around the Governor’s Mansion (beautiful and wonderful gardens) and then went to an administration building for a little bit. Susan once lived and worked in Raleigh, nearly 20 years ago, and thought she may still know some people that worked there. However, she found that everyone that she knew had retired.

We then went to an area that is across from a park. It had shops and small restaurants. I forget the name of the area, but it is very close to a bus station, a Children’s museum, and an IMAX theater. We found an Irish pub that had been recommended called “Tir Na No’g”, and had sandwiches and beer. It was very good, although my beer was a little more hoppy than I like…still, it was just fine.

We drove back to the Taj Mahal, I mean Motel 6, cleaned up and changed, and went to the opera, “Rigoletto”. The performance was nice, however, we were sitting a little too far away from the stage. I was not familiar with that theater when I bought tickets…next time I will try to get closer, or even just get a couple pairs of opera glasses. I have seen Rigoletto before and enjoy it very much. Before the show the conductor came onstage and apologized ahead of time for a sinus problem with the female lead of “Gilda”. However, I couldn’t find anything wrong with her…she sounded great.

After the show we drove back to the area of the Motel and found a great place to eat called “Jack Astor’s”. Our waiter told us it was a Canadian chain and that there are only 2 in the states…Cary NC being one of them. The other in Buffalo NY ?? Anyway, it was fun. Like a sports bar with good food, and a flair for fun decorating. They had an Elvis shrine corner table. I will post pictures later.

On Saturday we toured. Lots of time spent at the Natural History museum. We saw a show about Tornados and a live demonstration on Tropical areas, given by a fabulous speaker. Lots of geological history info and displays pertaining to NC. Across the way was the NC History Museum. Both of these were free, by the way, and reminded me of the Smithsonian. We didn’t get to spend as much time in the second one but may go back some day and do that and more.

Breakfast that day was at a Bob Evans restaurant (my first time ever). Dinner was at a mall with “Crabtree” in the name, and we ate at a “Cheesecake Factory” restaurant. WOW, what great food and nice service. The place was crowded, attesting to how good it is.

On Sunday, after checking out, we had a lighter breakfast at Bob Evans, and then we drove to a food store Susan wanted to see, called “Trader Joe’s”. She had been before and said that they are more well known in California. Nice place. Good fresh food. Then we went to Chapel Hill to walk around the campus of UNC. By the way, every day was just beautiful. Sunny but nice temperatures…no rain even though it was forecast. The campus is very nice and I found out later that it was “parent’s weekend.” And yes, I did see a lot of people who would be parents, but didn’t think anything of it at the time. There was also a street fair going on with many arts and crafts tents up and down the road.

We ate dinner at the "Mellow Mushroom" in Greensboro. The MM had closed down from a different place, and reopened in their present location. Very nicely decorated inside. The pizzas were wonderful.

Alas, all good things must come to an end and Monday came just a little too quickly. However, I got a decent night’s sleep at home after 2 not so good nights at the Motel 6.

I will have JP for the next 2 weekends, and after that perhaps we may go…..CAMPING! (which would be my first time ever) Stay tuned!

Rainy Days and Mondays

It was a good weekend, despite the rain. On Friday Susan and I drove up to Roanoke Va. We had a few things on the list for Saturday. However, the weather was not very cooperative. It rained Friday night, all day Saturday, and all night.

We did quite a bit of walking and looking into small shops downtown. We went to see the “O. Winston Link” exhibit at what used to be the major train station. “OWL” was an innovative photographer and was commissioned by the Norfolk and Western railroad to photograph it’s trains and lines at the end of the steam era. Over the course of 5 years he took a ton of photographs. They are tastefully displayed in the “museum”. There were a few that really stood out, but one that struck me as really cool was a picture of people in their cars at a drive-in theater, an airplane on the movie screen, and a train screaming past on the tracks right next to the theater. The picture can be seen at this link:
o-winston-link-hot-shot-eastbound

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We visited “The Hotel”. A gorgeous hotel that you just have to see to believe. We sat on rocking chairs out front and watched the rain.

We later had a fabulous dinner at a restaurant called “Red Clay”. This restaurant was 2 or 3 doors down from the theater where we took in a play called “Elvis Blossom.” The story was about a woman, who apparently had some mental illness, and her fascination with Elvis. She believed that her child (conceived 10 years after Elvis’ death, by one of many unknown Elvis impersonators) was the child of Elvis. The story was told in flash backs and forwards. It was enjoyable, but I really thought there was going to be more humor. In the end it left one hanging as to how she was going to survive, after her child won an International Elvis contest and decided that he wanted to be his own person, not what his mother expected him to be. Also, her husband Jerry, decided to cast off his lifestyle of Elvis impersonator, to be his own person, yet vowed to take care of her (he only continued in the Elvis persona because it was her wish to be surrounded by all things Elvis).

After that we drove back to Winston.
By the way, lodging was scarce in Roanoke because Virginia Tech was hosting University of Miami. That may not have been a very fun game for the spectators because of the rain.

On Sunday, having no local plans, we decided to go to Linville Caverns. That is about a 2.5 hour drive, yet still shy of going to Asheville. It was a beautiful day and the cavern was fun. At one point we were asked to stand still and they turned off the lighting. TOTAL darkness! You could not see your hand in front of your face…really amazing. When I was much younger, my family went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky…now I would LOVE to go back there.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. It is now Monday and I am already looking forward to the NEXT weekend.

PC Upgrade

So I decided it was time to upgrade my computer. A long time ago this was a straightforward process…way before Windows. Now, Windows really binds itself to your hardware and has all these internal hidden files. The process is tougher today, but supposedly still doable.

I bought a new motherboard, CPU, hard disk, and memory. 2 Gig of Ram as opposed to 512Meg before. The hard disk is twice the storage of the old one. There is a process called “cloning” which allows you to copy all the data from an old drive onto a new one, byte by byte so that the contents are identical, except that the bigger one will have a lot of free storage when done. That software was a download from the manufacturer’s site.

The new hard drive is a “SATA” and the old is “IDE”. My old motherboard does not have connections for SATA, though the new one has connections for both. Unfortunately the cloning needed to be done using the old motherboard. So I bought an adapter that converts SATA or IDE to a USB port. Nice, but slow. The cloning process was kicked off at about 8:30 PM Thursday and finished about 11:30 pm Friday. Yes, you read that right…27 hours I did not have to sit and watch this process.

On the weekend I set to installing the hardware. When all hooked up nothing happened. Double checked and found that I forgot to plug the power cable into the new drive. Did that and the computer still didn’t boot into Windows, though it was close. There was some hardware error. With a few hours of checking, trial and error, I decided to “punt” and install Windows fresh. That required reformatting the drive, wiping out the 27 hours of cloning. At least I still had all my old data on the old drive AND that wonderful adapter that I could hook up when everything was done.

Still had a little trouble but finally got a good install when I disabled the second processor on the CPU chip. I think I can re-enable that now, but it took me awhile to figure it out. In hind sight, that was probably what caused me to punt and reformat.

Oh well, now I have reinstalled and downloaded all the latest and greatest patches and service packs. The machine flies compared to the old. And that is running only on one core. Would like to see it with the second enabled.

My next problem was in getting to my old data. I hooked up the IDE drive to the USB adapter and found that the folders with my data were “locked up”. I had set up a user account on my old system and that protects the files. A little searching and about a half hour of doing a fix and waiting for it to be applied and now I have “taken ownership” of all the files on that drive. Thank you Microsoft Knowledge Base!!!

So, now I can leisurely copy files from the old drive to the new. Everything works and is a joy. The system is faster, quieter, and boots in 1/10th the time.

And to answer the inevitable question from my dad…no, I did not record the amount of time that I took to do this and calculate how much it would have cost due to my time being worth money. This was just hobby work.

Wireless Mouse

After weeks of working overtime and having my wired mouse get hooked once again on the pull out keyboard drawer, I just got a cordless mouse. It’s nice because the receiver plugs into a USB port and clips into the bottom of the mouse when travelling. I can use it at home and at the office. At home I placed a little 4 port USB hub at the base of the monitor and routed that to the USB connector in back with an extension cable. That is where I plug in the mouse receiver and a Jump drive. At the office there is a convenient USB port on the side of the place where I drop in the laptop PC. The package says that the mouse will work for about 6 months on one AA battery (included).

Already using it at home and it is wonderful. I don’t see the need at this time for a wireless keyboard. I would highly recommend a cordless mouse if anything about your mouse has been bothering you. This one cost $23 but I have seen them for $20.

Annual Enrollment

Our company has gotten to a period called "Annual Enrollment". We handle the enrollment process for employee benefits for a number of clients. For the client that I work with, there are many changes. For example, all of the medical plans are being changed, the dental, the vision, group life insurance, and others.

People are currently enrolled in a 2009 plan. When Jan 1 comes around we have to "map" them to a new plan so that they do not lose coverage, AND allow them to select what they want as well. This means that all the new plans and maps need to be set up way ahead of Jan 1. Along with all the plan changes are rate changes. And rates are sometimes based on geographic location and smoker/nonsmoker status. The list of details goes on and on.

There are 3 of us working on this client setup. We have been working like dogs to meet a Friday morning deadline for some stuff. I have been putting in 12 hour days setting up and debugging a number of things. If all goes well I will have my piece done late today. Unless I fall over first.

Since I am still new to the company, this is the first time that I am going through AE. Next year I will have experienced it and will have a lot more knowledge. Hopefully the client won't change so much next year.

I hope to be able to eat and sleep better this weekend.

Turning and Turning

In a previous post I mentioned that I had started working on this year’s Christmas gifts. I don’t want to say WHAT they are because recipients read my blog and I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Perhaps my first blog post of 2010 will be pictures of these gifts.

But I will say that I am making 20 of these things. Each thing is 2 parts, so that is 40 parts total. Each part is made on the lathe. Because of the size requirements, I need to glue up wood to make the raw material to mount on the lathe. That requires a lot of machining of flat boards, which involves several steps of cutting, planning, sanding, gluing, and clamping.

The A parts, once the blocks are cut to size, require 4 holes to be drilled before mounting on the lathe. To do that I need to measure and make several pencil marks. The pencil lines come right off when the tool touches the wood on the lathe. The A parts are a pain in the butt to turn because they need to be “mostly” shaped, removed from the lathe, turned around and re-mounted in a special way, and finished.

The B parts are MUCH simpler, just 2 holes to drill and no special mounting on the lathe. Although sometimes, the holes strip out and I have to plug them with glue and dowels, then redrill.

When all the parts are made, there are still several things involved, such as gluing the parts together and adding 3 different embellishments. A little sanding may be required so that part A fits into part B. A “tenon” on part A fits into the bigger hole of part B. These final assembly details are much easier and most can be done sitting at the dining room table.

So, where am I, you ask? In the past 2 days I was able to complete 7 parts. That makes 25 parts complete and 15 to go. 5 parts are ready to go on the lathe and then I will have to make up more raw material.

I wish I had kept all the sawdust, for pictures. There is actually more sawdust than there is finished material, but that is the nature of working with a lathe.

Anyway, I am pretty tired of lathe work and am looking forward to finishing these and moving on to another project. For those of you that are recipients, you will get a unique gift that took a lot of time and patience. I hope you like it, use it, and one day hand it down to your kids or grandkids.

Adirondack Chairs 5

Very near completion now.

I had my son over the weekend, and putting 1 of the chairs together was on our list. We started by assembling the angled legs with the two crosspieces, one in front and one in back. Then we added the vertical legs, and the decorative arm supports. At this point we paused because it was a VERY hot day.


A little later I added the arms and the upper rear crosspiece.


I clamped on a scrap of plywood under the rear crosspiece, so that the back slats could be temporarily set in place.


Once I made reference marks the back slats were screwed and nailed into place, then the seat slats were nailed in as well. This completed chair 1.


I'm pleased. It looks and feels very nice. JP posed for the picture because he had a hand in milling the wood and helping with the assembly.


Assembly of the second chair will begin tonight, but may not be completed.

Adirondack Chairs 4

Here are all the chair parts drying after 2 coats of Thompson's Water Seal has been applied to all sides. Note the clever stacking of two 2x4 frames that I had sitting around, as well as the modified grill cart work table.



All that's left is about 48 hours for them to completely dry and then assembly. They will be put together and in use by early next week.