Haven't watched any of the Super Bowl except for occasional score checks, but I did catch Pete and Roger do the CSI trifecta at halftime in honor of their corporate masters. Instead I did my federal taxes, which have been filed. Tomorrow I'll do my state taxes.

Just checked the score. Wow! The Saints seem to have taken command. WHO DAT!

Back in the mid-sixties, my father flew for Aer Lingus on the New York to Shannon route. Shannon was the first duty-free airport, and my father took advantage of this by bringing us home various Irish and British foodstuffs, like Cadbury's chocolate (long before it became available here) and this weird rose hip syrup that was supposedly high in vitamin C*.

* I hated the stuff, myself. Every time one of us had a cold, a big spoonful got shoved in our mouth, and I always had to suppress a gag reflex. It was like when one of the Little Rascals was given a spoonful of castor oil. Somehow the subject came up during Christmas dinner, and I discovered that everyone else in my family loved the stuff, even to the point of occasionally sneaking a spoonful. Crazy, all of them.

One of the other things he used to bring home were these big ol' jars of Bovril, which was a thick, dark beef extract that looked and flowed a lot like molasses. It was basically concentrated cow. My mother used it for gravies and soups and anything else that needed beefiness, and we loved the stuff. Of course, when my father stopped flying to Ireland, the supply became restricted to tiny, ridiculously priced jars at gourmet shops, so that ended that.

I do a lot of my shopping at Dave's Market, a small local chain that has a somewhat higher ratio of esoteric products than, say, Stop and Shop, and the other day I noticed one of those tiny jars of Bovril. So I bought one. Tonight I decided to make beef stew, so it was the perfect time to crack it open.

I put a good dollop of the stuff into the Dutch oven with the rest of the ingredients, and then tried to puzzle out whether it now had to be refrigerated or not. Now I don't think we did back in the day, but I wanted to make sure. Lots of things have a "refrigerate after opening" warning on them now that didn't used to (ketchup, for example). The first problem is that being a tiny jar, the type face is, like, 3 pt. Even with my reading glasses I could barely make out the type. I actually had to get a magnifying glass. Ah, store in a cool dark place. Perfect. Then I looked at the front of the jar.

Suitable for vegetarians

Say what? How can concentrated cow possibly be suitable for vegetarians? I pulled out my trusty magnifying glass again to peruse the list of ingredients. There are lots of them, but none of them contain the word beef in them. Or cow. Or any other kind of dead animal. Huh.

Wikipedia clued me in. During the dark days of the mad cow scare, the manufacturer replaced the beef extract with yeast extract to "allow vegetarians to enjoy the rich taste" which is apparently code for "the European Union won't let us sell it otherwise." People complained (think New Coke), so once the ban on beef exports was lifted, they apparently reintroduced classic Bovril as "Beef Bovril." Dave's, unfortunately, carries plain old (New) Bovril. $3.49 for 125 grams of yeasty goodness. Sigh.

It smells about the same as I remember it did. I will see how it tastes in about an hour or so.

So, I started coming down with a cold last Saturday, which by Sunday was full blown and nasty, so further work on the bench got postponed. I managed not to miss any days at work, but I was miserable all week, even more so than when I had the flu in November. The symptoms finally started easing Friday, so yesterday I finally felt good enough to head back down into the basement. It was also mild outside, almost into the fifties, so it wasn't quite so cold down there, definitely good news.

( Measure once, cut twice... )

It's 50°F down in the basement, which means I actually have to bundle up some to work down there. It also means that my tenoning jig no longer works properly. Lemme 'splain.

When last we left our hero, the nerd hole bench project seemed a bit nearer to completion. Since then, all the drawer slides were installed, the drawers were built, and the facings for the drawers were cut to size, moulded, and sanded smooth. This all happened in the week of vacation I took between Christmas and New Years. What's left to be built are the benchtop, two sliding shelves (basically two very shallow drawers) for the cupboard, and the cupboard door.

I started working on the door this morning. It is to be a floating panel door. I picked up some nice 1 x 2" maple at the Depot for the stiles and rails, measured the door opening on the cabinet, cut the maple into four pieces of the proper length, and hunted up the moulding cutter for the table saw. I have a set of cutters for the moulding head that cut both the grooves for the panel and round over the inside edge of the frame. I also have a corresponding set of cutters that cut the ends of the rails to match the profile of the stiles so that everything fits nicely together with little extra work. Theoretically.

In order to cut the ends of the rails, they must be clamped into a tenoning jig, which holds them tight and vertical as the pass over the moulding head. A runner on the bottom of the jig slides back and forth in the miter slot on the top of the table saw, and it's supposed to be a tight fit. I wanted to do a test pass on some scrap wood, but when I went to slide the jig down into the slot, it turned out to be too tight of a fit. It wouldn't go. I checked both the runner and the slot for corrosion, and polished the edges of the runner and the slot. Still no joy. As near I can figure the cast iron slab table top on the table saw had contracted enough from the change in temperature that the slot was no longer quite wide enough to hold the steel runner on the jig. Only that particular tool, though. The crosscut guide that also uses the slot fit fine. Very odd.

I didn't need the jig to cut the profiles along the insides of the stiles and rails, so I did those. Now I need to figure out an alternate method the cut the rail ends. Thinking about it, the tenoning jig is not the ideal tool anyway, at least the one that I have. It only has a single clamp to fix the piece into the jig, and I'll need to have a second sacrificial piece of wood behind each piece to prevent tearout. I saw a homemade jig in a magazine recently that runs along the rip fence instead of in the table slot, so perhaps I can build something similar that would work.

There was no coffee in the house this morning, so I drove down to Dunkie's to get some.

The year in books.

( Parading's better... )

Reading is fun-damental; writing about it is harder...

---
( When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back. )

Now to work on the rest of the list...

The annual ritual

January - This should make for a nice meta reference next year.

February - I just went the entire month of January without ever seeing even a bit of my lawn.

March - It's snowing.

April - Alvin is working in his store when he hears a booming voice from above that says, "Alvin, sell your business!"

May - Got an email from my mother this morning to tell me that sister #1 had emergency surgery to remove a burst appendix last night.

June - Ah, circadian rhythms, you are a cruel master.

July - Previously in the Plentiful Vintage: It rained for forty days and forty nights, and our hero had to shell out a lot of (fairly moldy) dough to get new tires and a battery for the Machinamobile.

August - Catching up on the first three of a long list...

September - It's been a busy couple three weekends project-wise.

October - Monstrous Regiment — Terry Pratchett: Pratchett's take on the military and on gender politics.

November - Gonna be a long day, even apart from the time change.

December - Now that the flight sim desk is done, I'm back at work on the nerd hole bench.

Man, there's a lot of snow on the ground. Hard to tell because of driftage due to high winds, but in the flat areas it seems to be around 15" or so. Note that my little electric snowblower is rated to a depth of about 6" or so. Ahem.

Actually, it worked pretty well, all things considered. The snow was very light and fluffy, so I was able to take about a 4" wide slice out of the sides of the banks on each pass. It took awhile, but it got the job done. I did need to use a shovel to lower the bank left by the plow a couple of feet before switching back to the blower. It also reminded me to not park the truck all the way up at the top of the driveway next time so that I don't have to clean out the entire frelling driveway.

( Snowpocalypse 2009 Photos... )

Meanwhile, across the street, the father of the young lady who lives there showed up in a Bobcat to dig her out. Must be nice.

Bing Crosby and Danny F. Kaye can bite me...

After more than two years worth of delays, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, finally flew for the first time yesterday. The plane is notable as being the first airliner built from carbon composites instead of the usual aluminum. What I found kind of neat about the event was that the chase plane flying alongside the 787 is a T-33, an aircraft that first flew in 1948 and that hasn't even been manufactured in more than fifty years. I didn't realize there were any still flying, apart from private collections (one of which, Wikipedia tells me, is owned by Michael Dorn).

I had some extra vacation days I needed to burn before New Year's, so I took one Friday. I was hoping to maybe get a couple of rides in, but it was too damn cold Friday and Saturday, and it poured all day today. Instead I pulled the bike from the truck and brought it inside, probably for the winter. Feh.

---
I attached the face frames to the carcases, officially turning them into cabinets. I also added a pair of cleats to the back of each to support the back ends of the drawer slides, and even installed a couple of those.*

* I spent a good chunk of this morning fabricating a jig just to drill the holes for the drawer slide mounting screws in the face frames. Apparently they have to be placed just so or everything goes to hell in a hurry. One of the required measurements was 5/64ths of an inch (which is how far the slide needs to be positioned back from the front of the frame). Bozhe moi! I didn't even realize until today that I had a ruler marked in 64ths. OTOH, I made it from hardwood scraps left over from other projects, a piece of maple here, a piece of bubinga there, and some brass screws, so it's a thing of beauty.

---
The kitchen is clean, so there is now room to make some holiday goodies.

---
I was out doing some shopping Friday and spent way to much dough at Harbor Freight, home of the world's cheapest tools. Experience has taught me that it's usually better to pay a little more for well-made tools as opposed the the cheapest tools possible, but for things like clamps and such, where precision isn't really an issue, there is a lot of money to be saved by using the cheap stuff. Mostly I bought gadgets, but I did get a couple of 60" bar clamps for $11 apiece, with similar going for $30 at the Depot. I also got the world's cheapest double action air brush, on sale for $15. I'm treating it as a learner's brush, as I don't expect the quality to be very good. The thing is that a well mad air brush is anywhere from five to ten times what I paid for this one. And who knows, it could surprise me.

So, it's time to start making some Christmas truffles. When I was out and about at various stores this morning I was thinking about laying in some raw materials, but I also remembered that I still had some of the materials left over from last year. I also wasn't exactly sure how many batches I would need to make. Still, I knew that I had none of one essential ingredient, cream cheese, in the house, and by happy coincidence Stop and Shop is running a buy one get one free special on Philly. That works out to a buck a package, so I picked up four. I also got a bag of shredded coconut and couple of bags of white chocolate chips at Wal-Mart. Now to figure out how much I actually need.

( Planny Stuff... )

Of course the other thing that must needs be done before anything else is cleaning the kitchen. Sigh...

Finished the face frames over the weekend, and they look great. I also drilled out the pocket holes in the carcases that will be used for attaching the frames to the cases. I haven't done the final attachment yet, though, partly because it'll be easier to varnish the frames while they're still separate, but also because of the vague worry that I'll screw something up (e.g., misaligning the frame with the case) whilst doing the job, thus ruining almost two years worth now of work. I felt the same thing while putting the frames themselves together, having never worked with pocket screws before. Pocket hole joinery turns out to be pretty foolproof, but being no ordinary fool, I did manage to put one of the holes in the wrong place. Fortunately, once the frame is attached, no one will ever see the misguided hole again.*

* Though now that I think of it, if it had, in fact, been somewhere where it would show, I could buy a plug to fill it such that it would be less obvious. Actually, I may do that anyway for the holes I drilled in the case, which will show, at least in one of them.

Adding to my sense of unease was the fact that I also added some plastic glides to the bottom of the cases, such that now they don't sit level on the floor unless I stick some sort of shim under one of them.** They seemed fine before, but now I wonder why they aren't as level or plumb as I thought they were. Maybe I should get some adjustable ones.

** If these were to be built-ins, I wouldn't bother with the glides. I'd just use strategically placed shims to get everything plumb and level, but since these are to be free-standing, they ought to have them.

Now that the flight sim desk is done, I'm back at work on the nerd hole bench. Over the weekend I attached the mouldings to the sides of the carcases, then drilled the holes for the pocket screws in the already cut parts of the face frames. Figuring that it would be easier to finish the individual rails and stiles while they're still detached from each other, I started staining them tonight. If they behave like the mouldings, it's going to take four applications of the stain to get the color depth I want. One down, three to go.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's kind of a crummy day out, but it's not pouring or snowing, so small blessings. I managed to fulfill my major Thanksgiving related task last night with a lightning quick raid on Schartner's pie counter not ten minutes before closing, securing a package full of fresh pumpkiny goodness. (I was worried because I didn't get out of work until 5:35 because I volunteered to wait for the FedEx man to arrive. Schartner's closes at 6:00 during the winter, so it was a near thing indeed.)

Today it's off to Jersey for dinner with the family, then a visit with Al and Durrah, with side orders of hobby shopping and pie eating.

---
Meanwhile, I finished my nerd hole desk project, aka, the flight sim station. Details to still come, but here's a couple of photos.

( Photos behinds the cut... )

Slowly recovering from whichever version of the flu I had. I went into work briefly on Wednesday to pick up some folders, then worked from home. Thursday and Friday I worked full days, and although I was nowhere near a hundred percent, I did okay. Yesterday, just to prove to myself exactly how weak I still am, I went for a very short, very easy bike ride. Broke 1400 miles for the year, albeit very slowly.

---
The bike ride was to celebrate at long last having the replacement wheel BikeShopGuy has been promising since September 2008. That was when I actually managed to break a piece off of the hub. BSG assured me he could fix it, and gave me a loaner wheel to use in the interim. Some months went by before he got around to repairing my original wheel, and when he did, it turned out the new hub he used didn't fit my gear set. So he loaned me an even better wheel and decided to try again. The new loaner was from his own bike, which he figured would provide added incentive to complete the job. Still, by the end of the summer he hadn't done anything further, so he decided to just order me a replacement. It finally arrived a couple of weeks ago, but we'd been playing phone tag in the interim, plus there was the whole flu thing. Yesterday I finally managed to catch him at the shop, and we swapped things around.

The new wheel is from the same manufacturer, but has a better quality (Shimano) hub than the OEM original, which given what happened is a probably good thing. The best part is that it didn't cost me a cent. The cost was mostly covered by the sale of my original wheel to someone who only needed to fit eight gears, and the rest was gratis for my patience. Cool beans. And as long as we were removing one tire anyway, I had him rotate the tires front and back to even out the wear a bit (the rear tire always seems to wear quicker than the front).

So... I slept until 7:30 and got a reasonably good night's sleep, 9 hours in bed all told, although I was in and out for the last three hours or so. When I went to bed, it was still pretty mild out, and it was till pretty warm in the house, so I replaced my heavy blanket with a lightweight one. When first I woke up at 4:30 I was chilly, I I switched them back. As I was doing this I started shivering like crazy. Got under the covers and was snug. Half an hour later I was up again and sweating because it was still, like 65° in the house and I had the heavy blanket on. This kept up for the rest of the night.

No fever when I woke up and I felt much better. I still called into work to make sure I didn't infect anyone, but it did sort of feel like I was playing hooky, at least at first. I even logged in to my work machine to complete a task I'd planned to get done today. As the day wore on I started feeling crappy again, but still no fever, and I vaguely thought about taking a quick bike ride (although good sense prevailed there). Now the fever's back, although I suspect it's mostly the bump from having dinner (starve a fever, remember), because it's already dropping. Still, I guess I'm not as over it as I thought.

Which sucks.

I toted up the symptoms, and it's definitely one flu or another. I have or have had muscle aches, fever, mild wooziness, chills, and dry cough. No sore throat or nasal congestion. Of course, since I felt better for most of the day I never bothered to call the doctor. Will do so first thing tomorrow... unless I feel better in the morning.

I tried to take a nap, but apparently I missed my nap window. I was really tired around 3:30, but when I finally lay down around 5, nothing. The sun had set, so it was dark, and it was quiet. I lay there for half an hour with my eyes closed, but nothing. Nap insomnia, which needs its own word, you know. Nappish disfunction. Disnappthia.

Have been feeling crappy since last night, muscle aches and feeling off. Last night I figured that it was because I was on my feet most of the day working on a project, running up and down stairs, breathing saw dust. Plus my body once again shifted into weekend mode, so I'd been up since quarter to five. Went to sleep at 10:30 and woke up around 5:15 or so feeling even worse. By this time I was thinking flu, but there wasn't any nasal congestion and I didn't have a fever. I just felt frelling lousy. I was coughing some, but there was the whole sawdust thing.

Then just before dinner things apparently took a turn, and I started shivering like crazy with a mild fever. Had some soup — now the fever is 100.4°. Bother. Nose still isn't clogged (knock wood), and the cough isn't much more than usual, but I've got something. Will call the doctor in the AM for advice. Really don't need either type of flu. Bother.

What's really pissing me off is that I tried to get my annual seasonal flu shot, but RIDoH ran out of vaccine, and no clinics have been scheduled since mid-October. H1N1 vaccine is still in short supply, too, with all they have going to schools and pregnant women. At least it doesn't appear that it's been going to bankers, like in New York City, but jumpin' Jesus...

Gonna be a long day, even apart from the time change. I woke up at 3:30 (EDT) and never did fall back to sleep. Finally got up around 4:15 or so. Flipped on the computer, and then remembered the time change and that I hadn't changed the clocks, and that it was actually 3:15. It's now approaching 6 AM (EST), and I've already had breakfast and have been fiddling on the computer for two and a half hours or so. Sigh. The one day of the year designed for sleeping in, and my body decides to have none of it.

---
Life has been sporadic around here. Posting has been sporadic because there hasn't been much to talk about, so I haven't. I've been working on one project that wound up being way more complicated than I intended, but it is now in the home stretch... I think...

---
Yesterday was kind of a weird day. Very warm for October, in the seventies, and wicked windy. I had the windows open all day. Fortunately for the event, the rain held off until after 10 PM or so.

---
The first batch of trick-or-treaters showed up around 5:45. What was odd was that usually the kids who show up that early are the really little ones. These girls were all 10-11 or so. Then nothing till almost 6:30. Between 6:30 and 7:00 I got six or seven clumps, then nothing after that. I kept the porch lights on till 7:30, then went and made dinner. Got 26 kids overall, which I thought was light, until I read last year's entry. Last year I got 27, and several of those were older kids around 8:00. There was really only one clump of older kids this year, and they asked for canned goods for the food pantry.

---
My end of the street was kind of barren for the kids last night. Of my immediate neighbors, only the neighbor to the left was giving out treats. My neighbor to the right wasn't home. Neither was anyone at home directly across the street (which is another story, as it may or may not be vacant), and of the two houses on either side of that one, one had the lights on but no one home in a major breach of Halloween etiquette, and the other folks were home, but with the lights out.

---
I am not quite sure what the deal is with the house across the street. It was sold around six years ago, and a college-age woman moved in. A bit later, a guy about the same age moved in as well, but it became pretty clear that he was more likely her brother than a boyfriend. Then she apparently moved out, and he continued to live there, and eventually a couple of other guys moved in. Then one night a U-Haul truck pulled up, they all moved out, and the house was vacant for a few months. Then the people who actually owned the house showed up (because clearly the kids didn't) and started either finishing or renovating the basement (it's a raised ranch). Then the young woman moved back in for awhile (by this time I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that the kids must be the children of the actual owners) then moved out, then back in again, and occasionally the brother would be there, too, although now he was living downstairs while the sister lived upstairs. This has gone on for six years, with little rhyme or reason to the schedule that I can deduce. Meanwhile, the father (who apparently is a contractor) and brother refurbished the exterior, and did other improvements. The last iteration had both sister and brother living there, along with the brother's girlfriend/SO/spouse?. Then a few months ago the sister was gone, with the brother and now pregnant SO still living in the basement. Then about a month and a half ago they moved out, too. The house was vacant again until last weekend, when I noticed the sister's Jeep in the driveway. It was in and out all week, but it's gone again this weekend.

I'm living across the street from a guest house. Must be nice.

---
My riding schedule was sporadic all summer. Thanks especially to all the rain we had this year, I never did get a good schedule. It wasn't until the first week of October that I managed to string rides on three consecutive days together. Still, I've managed to get past 1300 miles for the year, and with another 23 miles or so I'll have my second best total ever. It's nowhere near what I did last year, but there's still a couple of months left.

Richard Castle dressing as a "space cowboy" (i.e., Mal Reynolds) in the teaser for tonight's Castle, and his daughter commenting that there are no cows in space.

Behind the bag, gets through Buckner Holliday...

The Dodgers and Cardinals have played two pretty exciting games in the Divisional Series to this point. The first game, while hardly an artistic triumph, was exciting just because so many men from both teams were on base at any point in the game (30 men left on base between the two teams), so that either team could have broken the game wide open with a well-timed hit. But the kaboom never came, and the Dodgers managed to push across two more runs than the Cards.

In contrast, last night's game was a true white knuckler, as Adam Wainwright and Clayton Kershaw mowed down the opposing batters. Each team had singleton homers, and the Cards managed to push across a second run against Kershaw in the seventh to take a thin lead that held up into the bottom of the ninth with the heart of the Dodger batting order due up. But both Andre Ethier and Manny flied out, leaving things looking mighty dismal for the LA nine. James Loney stepped to the plate and rocketed a line drive to left field, but it was right at Matt Holliday who charged in to make what should have been a game-ending catch. But somehow he misjudged the ball, missing it with his glove completely. He got caught in the transition between holding the glove palm up or palm forward. Instead, the ball hit him in the groin* and caromed away while Loney chugged into second base.

* As Vin Scully noted on the radio broadcast, it was a painful error in more ways than one.

Still, no harm done, except to Holliday's pride, and perhaps his plans for future progeny. The Cards still lead by one with two out. Speedy Juan Pierre was sent out to second to pinch run for the lumbering Loney, and Casey Blake stepped up to the plate.

Has there ever been a better baseball name than Casey Blake? It could only be better if his middle name was Flynn. He's not a great player, but he's a good one, one who never seems to have a bad at bat. After nine pitches and several foul balls, he managed to work a walk to keep the inning going. Men on first and second, still two outs.

Rafael Belliard stepped to the plate. Belliard is sometimes called Mini-Manny because he is short, pudgy, and grew up idolizing Manny Ramirez. Unlike Manny and Blake, he often has bad looking at bats, but he'd been hot since joining the Dodgers in August. He smacked the first pitch into center field, bring home Pierre to tie the game.

Russell Martin was up next. Martin, an all-star in 2007 and 2008 had a terrible year this year. That said, he is adept at drawing walks, and did so, loading the bases for pinch hitter Mark Loretta. There was some trepidation when Loretta was named to the post-season roster. He started the year hot in his role as a bench player/pinch hitter, but as the season wore on the 37 year-old seemed to wear out. He didn't hit at all well down the stretch. It didn't matter, though. Loretta hit a soft flair into short center field, scoring Blake and ending the game in a totally unlikely Dodger victory.

I watch the game on TBS, but I had the sound muted so I could listen to Vin Scully's radio call of the action instead of TBS's lesser announcers. Some smart person at MLB mashed up the TBS video with Scully's call of the final five at bats, which is a terrific idea. There is also the shorter, good parts version, with all three announcer feeds contributing.

Monstrous Regiment — Terry Pratchett

Pratchett's take on the military and on gender politics. A young woman disguises herself as a man and joins the army. Hilarity ensues as she discovers that she's not the only one in the unit keeping secrets. Very funny stuff. Vimes shows up, too, so that's good, and there's also this:

'You'll have noticed, sergeant, that the men were wearing the dark-green uniform of the First Battalion the Zlobenian Fifty-ninth Bowmen. A skirmishing battalion,' said Blouse, with cold politeness. 'That is not the uniform of a spy, sergeant.'
Heh.

---
The Battle of Britain — Quentin Reynolds
The Men Who Bombed the Reich — Bernard C. Nalty and Carl Berger

Two finds from a terrific used book store I visited while at Readercon.

( Never in the field of human conflict... )

Star Trek: New Frontier — Peter David
Martyr — Peter David (reread)
Fire on High — Peter David (reread)

I used to read the occasional mainstream Trek novel, but I gave them up a long time ago. I got tired of the penchant most of the authors had for trying to squeeze in as many side characters and references to things that happened in various episodes per page as possible. Plus it's not like anything truly noteworthy can happen in the novels. Franchise canon can be a bitch.

Then several years back the SF Bookclub offered me an omnibus edition of Martyr and Fire on High by Peter David. David is considered one of the better Trek novelists, but the real hook was that these were "New Frontier" novels, a totally new series of books with a new captain, Mackenzie Calhoun, a new ship, and very few ties to any of the TV series. It had been awhile since I first read them, but I remembered them as being better than the average Trek novel.

I hadn't read the first book in the series, though. That one I picked up recently as an e-book, so I read it, and then reread the other two. I suspect that if I had read Star Trek: New Frontier first I never would have bothered with the rest. The book is one long shaggy dog story leading up to a climatic inside joke. And the basic plot was better when it was used in the Next Generation pilot. The other two books are a little better, but nowhere near as good as I remembered.

It's been a busy couple three weekends project-wise. Having finally managed to get the mouldings stained and the face frame pieces cut for the nerd hole bench, I haven't done much else on it. I got sidetracked by another nerd hole project, a flight simulator friendly desk for the super-duper gaming computer that I bought six months ago but have barely used since. That's really turned into a saga worthy of its own post once it's finished, so more at a later date. But there have also been some smaller things, especially this last weekend.

( Velcro, Windows 7, and Smoke... )

---
I planted a tree last night, a little 7' tall crabapple I picked up at Lowe's. It's in the front yard in a such position to eventually block the direct rays of the setting summer sun from blinding me whilst I sit at this here computer. I may name it Edna, after Edna Krabappel. My grandmother was also named Edna, so there's that, too.

Yesterday I had a long (24+) and speedy (14+) ride. I figured tonight my legs would be tired and achy, but despite their protestations, the legs were still pretty strong (14.7 for 16). I broke 1000 miles for the year. The only fly in the ointment is that the sun was setting as I drove home. I hate earlier sunsets.

I should probably mow the lawn tomorrow, and I have a ticket for a Pawsox game Wednesday, the first time there in more than three years, so the legs will get some time to recover.

---
I finally harvested a ripe, non-rotten tomato over the weekend. I picked some small tomatoes about a week ago, but they had rotted while they were turning red, and were thus inedible. Fortunately, Schartner's has had plenty.

---
I've been slowly making some progress on the workbench for the nerd hole. After a lot of experimentation and overthinking, I finally hit upon a stain for the mouldings that I liked, and a protocol for applying it. It took awhile, and I now have a boxful of little cans of different stain shades for my trouble. I was trying for a warm, dark reddish-brown. The last time I wrote about this, I tried Minwax's Red Mahogany, but it wasn't reddish at all. Red Chestnut was better, but not very dark. I tried mixing the two, but that didn't look good, either. A second application of the Red Chestnut looked better from certain angles, but I still wasn't satisfied.

For my next set of experiments, I went to Lowes to see if they had anything different from what the Depot had. Turns out they did. Where the Depot only carries the full Minwax line, Lowes has several brands, but with fewer choices per brand.They had some Cabot stains, one of which was Red Mahogany, so I got some of that to see it was redder than Minwax's version. It was, but it sets up very quickly, so you can't leave it on the wood for more than three minutes or so, or it gets very sticky and hard to wipe off. I'd been leaving the Minwax stains on the wood for 15 minutes or so. The shade was okay, but it was even less dark than the Minwax. I tried a couple of Minwax shades, but nothing really satisfied me.

I was once again haunting the stain aisle at the Depot when I decided to take another approach. I'd been using oil-based stains, but Minwax also makes some water-based stains. I'd skipped past them earlier because there were way fewer shades, and they didn't have a mahogany, but on looking at them again, they did have a Rosewood stain. I have a couple of Rosewood-handled tools that are very pretty, so I figured it was worth a shot.

The water-based stains set up fairly quickly, although not as fast as the Cabot stains did. I did a three minute application, and the color had the qualities I wanted. Still not very dark, though, so I did another application, and another. That finally got the color about where I wanted it. Time at last to stain the mouldings. One problem that crops up with water based stains is that they raise the grain of the wood some, so you have to sand the pieces after they dry, which removes a little of the color. In the end, I did four applications, and they look great. Or at least as good as a light, not very porous wood can look when attempting to make it look dark.

After that each piece got three coats of polyurethane. I used a spray can instead of brushing. I don't usually like to spray, but it was a lot easier and quicker when dealing with a bucnh of long thin strips.

That done, this weekend I cut to length the rails and stiles for the face frames. Now I need to stain those...

So, between all the bad weather early in the year, and my recent back problems, I'm about 130 miles behind last year's pace. Still, that has me just short of a thousand miles on the year, and way ahead of 2007, or for that matter, any other year besides '08.

I mentioned awhile back that I've been trying to ride harder to make up for the lower weekly distances. At the time I was quite proud of myself for having averaged 14 mph for a ride for the first time since since 1993. The best ride I had in '93 had averaged 14.5 mph. I finally managed to break that record last month with a 14.6 mph ride.

Tonight I did sixteen miles at 15.1 mph! Way to go leg muscles!

Of course, in the midst of my ride I was passed by a guy on road bike who went by me like he was Lance Armstrong. It's all a matter of perspective.

It is marginally less humid today than it was yesterday. By marginally I mean that the buckets of sweat didn't start falling off the brim of my hat into my face until I was three quarters of the way through my ride, as opposed to halfway through like yesterday. Got so bad that I turned the cap around, catcher's style.

As I approached an intersection of the path with a very sparsely traveled side road, there was a mom walking alongside her 4-ish year-old daughter who was riding a bicycle with training wheels. They were stopped at the intersection, and mom was telling daughter to stop and look both ways before crossing, etc., etc. Meanwhile, I did what any other bicycling adult not overseeing a child at that moment would do. I slowed down just enough to make sure there actually was no traffic coming, and cruised on through the stop sign. Then from behind me I heard, with the absolute indignation that only a 4 year-old can muster, "He didn't stop!"

Heh. Another good reason why it's probably best I was never a parent.

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Meanwhile, I tried maneuvering the bike back into the truck left-handed, to protect my ailing back muscles. It was awkward, but I got it in there, although the bike settled in with a pretty loud thud.

Hot... Hazy... Humid... I spent most of the weekend inside with the a/c. I did venture out for a couple of rides, though. Yesterday's ride was miserable. I had no energy, and it showed in my time. It was my worst average mph since early June. Dunno why I felt so burnt. I hadn't ridden since Wednesday. Shrug.

Today it was even hotter. I rode the three-speed today. The odd thing was that I felt much stronger. My speed was almost what it was yesterday, despite riding the slower bike.

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I used to be able to ride no-handed when I was younger, even to the point of being able to steer the bike just by shifting my weight. I don't remember when I stopped being able to do it, but in the last couple of decades, whenever I tried it I never felt comfortable doing it for more than a few seconds at a time. It was downright scary how unstable the bike felt, if you want to know the truth. Very frustrating, because I remembered it as being easy. I sort of chalked it up to weighing a lot more than I did back in the day, which would move the center of mass of the bike-DX system somewhat higher from the ground, destabilizing the whole thing. Either that, or I had forgotten how to ride a bike. Well, no-handed, anyway.

( Caution - Mathiness behind the cut... )
 

Lots o' humidity yesterday and today, with added heat today, but the three days preceding were fabulous, especially Saturday. Good thing, too, because it made for a splendid day for vw's graduation party.

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Yesterday I gutted the grill and replaced all the internal organs with replacements from the Depot. New burner, new drip pan, new grill surface, and new igniter, although the last doesn't seem to work. That was the one part I didn't buy. It's been sitting on a shelf in the basement for years. I bought it for my previous grill, but it was the wrong one, so I never installed it. It wasn't the proper part for the current grill, either, but I adapted it. Or so I thought. Shrug.

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A couple of tomatoes have started to turn yellowish, and the spaghetti squashes are growing so fast you can almost see them expanding. At this rate maybe in a couple more weeks I can hollow one out to use as a garden shed.

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I've had a Facebook account for a while now, but I never did anything with it until Saturday. The impetus mostly was because I was apparently collateral damage in the DDOS attacks on LiveJournal last week. It seems that at least one of the attacking machines must've been nearby, because even for most of Saturday I couldn't get to the site. They later explained that some of the steps they took to mitigate the damage might cut off folks on the same local nets as the attackers. Just to make sure I wasn't one of them, I ran a packet sniffer on my home network for a little while, and came up clean.

Anyway, in the meantime I decided to have a look at Facebook. I friended a few people, and was in turn friended by a bunch more, which is kind of neat. Previously, the only person who'd ever tried to friend me was a retired school teacher from the south somewhere who seemed like a nice lady but was a total stranger, so I passed. Probably a misidentification.

I don't know how much I'll use it. The people who I've friended and been friended by are all folks who I can see on LJ anyway, and the interface is strange and offputting to me. One odd thing about me is that it appears that none of my immediate family nor any of my meatspace friends are on Facebook (or LJ, for that matter). They all use the net, but apart from some of my nieces and nephews, none are into any kind social networking. Well, except my mother, but she hangs out over on the MSN WebTV boards. This was one of the reasons Friendster seemed so useless to me. I brought nothing to the table in terms of connections.

Garden update based upon a quick inspection whilst waiting for the chicken breasts on the grill to cook. Still no tomatoes anywhere close to being edible. At least Schartners has them now. Finally have a couple of teensy spaghetti squash in process, with at least one other female flower noticed. Up until tonight I hadn't noticed any female flowers, but I guess there were at least two.

Note to self: Need to go to the Depot or Lowes and see about replacing the grill burner and drip plate, both of which succumbed to dat ol' demon rust this weekend.

I will also note that today is the hottest day of the year so far, the first time it's gotten up into the upper eighties. The recent weather has been annoying. Pleasant afternoons in the vicinity of eighty with wicked humidity and not much of a cool down at night. Makes trying to sleep miserable, leading to the absurdity of having to run the a/c at night while not needing it at all during the day. Feh.

Catching up on a the first three of a long list...

Passage at Arms — Glen Cook

( The vastness of space can neither be described nor overstated. )

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Moving Pictures — Terry Pratchett

( . . . there they kept the rogue books, the books whose behaviour or mere contents demanded a whole shelf, a whole room to themselves. Cannibal books, books which, if left on a shelf with their weaker brethren, would be found looking considerably fatter and more smug in the smoking ashes next morning. )

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100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die — Jon Weisman

( From beginning to end we root for greatness... ...The pinnacle of what we can root for is Jackie Robinson. )

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Summer reading to follow.

Eventually...

...for once again showing me something that I did not know.

This time it's that the lead singer of the Buggles was Trevor Horn, who later produced most of the BritPop that showed up on MTV in the eighties. Fitting for the man whose "Video Killed the Radio Star" launched MTV in the first place. I found this out only after stumbling across a video on Youtube of a Prince's Trust concert honoring him.

Now, I'd heard of Trevor Horn plenty of times, but until I saw the video, I had no idea he was the guy with the funny glasses. A quick check of wikipedia also adds something else I never knew. After achieving fame with VKtRS, the Buggles merged with Yes, with Horn taking over for Jon Anderson and Geoff Downe replacing Rick Wakeman. When Anderson returned to the band, Horn became the producer. Huh.

And now I remember where the last place I saw his name was. He produced Dear Catastrophe Waitress for Belle & Sebastian.

After spending a couple hours down in the basement after work with the wet vac, it's mostly dry down there this morning, which means it still a little wet, but the dehumidifier seems to have things in hand. The laundry rug and some floor mats are draped over the clothesline outside. There was some damage, although the worst bit was more collateral damage, as I knocked my workshop clock off it's hanger while initially lifting one of the bench carcases out of the water. Both its glass face and plastic body shattered when it hit the floor, so it's totally destroyed. It wasn't an expensive clock, but I liked it. There was also a cardboard box full of bed linens on the floor that got soaked through, along with my hiking boots, and some clothes I had piled on the ironing board awaiting transport to the Salvation Army that got wet, including a suit jacket. I'm not sure how that happened. The ironing board is directly below the window, so it may have been spray from there, or else some of the water ran along a pipe or joist and dripped down. Shrug.

I discovered far worse damage later on when I went to get the big fan from the attic. Turns out I had flooding up there, too. Bozhe moi! I've mentioned before how cheaply made the windows on my house were. The windows at either end of the attic are in especially bad shape. If they aren't latched properly, a good gust of wind can actually blow them them out of their rails, and this is what happened. In anticipation of the storm, I'd taken the fan out of the one window, but forgot to latch it, and it blew in at some point during the night. The rain came in, soaked the rug I have on the floor up there, which drew the water to a couple of boxes of paperbacks I had on the floor. A bunch of books got soaked, along with some old magazines (classic issues of The National Lampoon). Bother. There may be other damage, but I was too discouraged to look further. I opened up the other window to let air circulate, and spread out the books to dry.

Of course, just to put the cherry on top of the sundae that is my life, I was awakened at 2:30 this morning by thunder, so I had to go running about closing the attic windows again in the middle of the night to avoid taking on any more water. Meanwhile, the rug and mats hanging out on the clothesline were getting resoaked. Why in god's name did I ever buy a house?

And to make things perfect, MLB has yet to put up the archive of last night's Dodger game for me to listen to with my morning coffee. Feh!

Despite going to sleep at a reasonable hour, I slept badly due to the combination constant pouring rain rattling off the case of the a/c and the stuffiness/humidity of the room with the window closed. I turned on the overhead fan to move air around, but it didn't help much. I got up at the usual hour, and went down to the basement to get some clean clothes from the laundry area only to discover that a good portion of the downpour was covering the floor of the basement. Feh.

At first I thought that the rain trap I installed under the one known leak had overflowed, but it worked as it was supposed to. Actually, there was very little water in it at all. There were two wet trails leading down to the floor from either side of the window by the laundry, so it may be that the force of the wind just drove the rain through the seals around the window. I'll have to remember to check the caulking there. There seems to be an awful lot of water on the floor just to be from that, though. I wonder if the water table has risen enough with all the rain so that the water is coming up through cracks in the floor.

The water was about a ¼ - ½" deep on the laundry side of basement, and the indoor/outdoor rug I have down on the floor in the laundry is completely soggy. Fortunately I didn't notice any real water damage on that side, since I've made it a point to keep things off the floor for the most part. Well, except for the bag of charcoal whose bottom fell out when I tried to lift it out of the water. Sigh.

Since I had to get ready for work, I left things as they were figuring to give it a good wet vaccing tonight. I headed for the stairs and looked at the other side of the basement for the first time, i.e., the workshop. That was underwater, too, and one of my nerd hole bench carcases was sitting right smack in the middle of it. Frell. Fortunately, I'd stacked the other carcase on top this one. I picked up both carcases and placed them on top of my rolling workbench, then dried off the bottom of the wet one as much as possible. Fortunately, it doesn't look like it was in the water for very long. The water stain only goes up a half inch or so, and the varnished surfaces didn't show any staining at all. I think I got lucky there.

So the plan is still the same. After work I'll be bailing with the wet vac, then hauling the fan down from the attic to get the air moving in the direction of the dehumidifier. If it's nice tomorrow maybe I'll hang the rug from the clothesline.

So, supposing there had been a baseball diamond on the moon, right where Armstrong wanted to land the Eagle. NASA has a picture of what the moonwalk would've looked like. Lars at Wezen-Ball discusses this further.


Man, I remember the landing like it was yesterday. The History Channel is currently rebroadcasting CBS's coverage of the event, which is just neat. And speaking of "Just neat...", next up is Moonshot, with James Marsters as Aldrin.

Walter Cronkite was such a tech geek.

As I noted last time, the first order of business on Saturday was to install the air conditioners. Last year I finally solved the problem of providing fresh air to a room whose sole window was being used to house an air conditioner. To do this I fashioned a retainer to hold the a/c in place while allowing me to raise the window. Unfortunately, the lovely hardwood faced interior grade plywood I used to fashion the retainer didn't stand up well to four months exposure to the great outdoors. As you can see in the photo, the outer veneer is cracked and peeling, and the piece had bowed outward from the pressure exerted by the weight of the a/c. Clearly I needed something better suited to the task.

I replaced it with a new retainer made from 3/4" square aluminum channel, the remnant of which is sitting atop the old support. Took about ten minutes of work with a hack saw and a miter box. Aluminum is very easy to cut. I cleaned up the sharp edges with a file it was all set. Not only should it be much more structurally sound stronger than the original, but it's also an inch shorter, making it much easier to fit and adjust the screen that goes on top of it when the window is open.

And since today was much nicer and less muggy than yesterday, the a/c got turned off again first thing in the morning, and the window was opened.

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( Getting stains IN... )

It's 5:30 in the A.M., it's 78° in the house, and it's unbelievably muggy, so it's finally time to put "install air conditioners" on the to do list. Did not sleep well at all last night despite running both the ceiling and floor fans. It doesn't help on nights like these that my beloved memory foam mattress topper tends to trap body heat. I am well braised this morning.

I shouldn't complain. This is probably the latest I've ever put the a/c in. Even last weekend at the hotel I was sleeping with the window open and the a/c off.

The hotel I stayed in over the weekend had every cable channel known to man except for SciFi, or even Syfy, so I missed the season premiere of Eureka. So I downloaded it when I got back. Finally remembered to watch it tonight and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was fun watching them pay homage to whole "Mayberry if everyone was really, really smart" thing with Sheriff Andy.

Of course, when I finished watching I realized that I had just missed the season premiere of Leverage, so now I'm gonna have to download that. I also need to watch the season finale of Kingdom, which I downloaded alongside Eureka. (If you're not familiar, Kingdom is a British series starring Stephen Fry as a small town lawyer.) This internet thing is a godsend for us absent-minded types.

Because my current laptop was unable to show me this, Matt Kemp's terrific, Willie Mays reminiscent catch to end the Dodgers-Brewers game Friday night:

( Behind the curtain... )

...thinking about the countryside and sunny days in June. Or July. Whatever.

I am actually sitting in a hotel room, a very nice efficiency at a Candlewood Suites in Burlington, MA. Only $50 per night, which is a terrific deal around these parts. The place is very new, and has all sorts of amenities included in the price, like the full kitchen in the room, free washers and dryers, and free DVDs available for checkout from the desk. The only sort of normal thing that isn't available is wireless internet, but they hand you an ethernet cable when you check in. How do they do it? The one obvious thing is that housecleaning only cleans your room once a week, which is fine with me. That's still way more often than I clean at home. If you need clean towels, you can get more at the desk. The only negative in the whole experience so far is that the desk/table is a bit too high, maybe 36" or so versus a more normal 30", which makes typing or writing a bit uncomfortable. Some one shorter than me might need to sit on a phone book to make it work.

I am here on a little two-night mini-vacation while I attend Readercon 20. I could've just driven up each day, but while it wouldn't quite cost me $50 a day in gas, it wouldn't be a lot less, and I certainly wouldn't have to deal with the bumper-to-bumper on Rt. 128 like I did Friday morning. I did this last year, too, although just for one night. That was in a much shabbier hotel in Bedford, the next town over. The main reason I stayed there was that it was within easy riding distance of the north end of the Minuteman bike path.

Friday was spent at the con, which went well into the evening, so there wasn't much in the way of side travel. Saturday morning I was up bright an early, so I drove to Bedford to get in a ride on the Minuteman path. I rode as far as Arlington Center, where the path disappears for a bit. To get to where it starts up again for the rest of the trip to Alewife one has to ride along Mass Ave through an incredibly busy intersection (being the center of town and all). Been there, done that, experienced the terror, so I decided to skip that part.

Spent more time at the con, but apart for some special evening events (a rock concert, for one) I found myself with nothing to do after 4:00. This was the point last year when I took my ride, but since that was already done, I just drove around for awhile, and shopped. Got a 1 TB portable hard drive at BJ's for $80, which is amazing to me. Stopped in at the local Barnes and
Noble, and the local Borders for awhile. I also found a place called the "Used Book Superstore," where I picked up a copy of the Landmark Books edition of The Battle of Britain to add to my small collection of other Landmark Books I had when I was a boy. I also looked at netbooks and laptops at Staples. I'm typing this on Slick, a ten year-old laptop running Win98, and it's about time for a replacement. Slick has soldiered on for more years than I had a right to expect when I bought it, but it just can't handle a lot of modern web sites.

After that it was dinner in the bar at the Outback while watching the Royals play one of the worst innings of baseball I've ever seen versus the Sawx. The shortstop chucked a ball into right field, the catcher chucked one into center, and the left fielder, after actually catching a ball, began running in to the dugout with it thinking it was the third out. But it wasn't. Oops.

We had a rainstorm last night, but it seems to have cleared out. I will look at the con schedule again, but last I looked there was nothing there to interest me this morning. I may head over to Concord to visit the bridge and take a few photos, then perhaps stop on the way home at Blackstone Valley for a ride.

Previously in the Plentiful Vintage: It rained for forty days and forty nights, and our hero had to shell out a lot of (fairly moldy) dough to get new tires and a battery for the Machinamobile. Also, it was air show week.

( Two weeks... )