It's a winter wonderland!

It's a winter wonderland!  A few photos from our yard, all taken just a few minutes ago...

The importance of accuracy on your Federal tax return...

The importance of accuracy on your Federal tax return...  Via my brother Scott, who made me smile even though it's (spit! hiss! creative cursing!) Tax Day:

The IRS has returned the Tax Return to a man in New York City
after he apparently answered one of the questions incorrectly.

In response to the question,... "Do you have anyone dependent on you ?" the man wrote: "2.1 million illegal immigrants, 1.1 million crackheads, 4.4 million unemployable scroungers, 80,000 criminals in over 85 prisons plus 450 idiots in Congress and a group that call themselves Politicians".

The IRS stated that the response he gave was unacceptable.

The man's response back to the IRS was, ... " Who did I leave out?"

Who indeed?

First turnings...

First turnings...  I've now finished sanding them, and have given them a good treatment with clear Watco.  The bowl has developed a few small cracks, but the goblet is still crack-free.  These cracks are to be expected, as I was turning wood that wasn't completely dried – about halfway between green and dry.  The bowl is more likely to crack because it's a larger diameter...

Strange weather yesterday...

Strange weather yesterday...  First it was wind – 60 MPH gusts, and steady winds of 40 MPH or more for several hours.  Our pines were bent into odd shapes, and lost a few small branches; our choke-cherries were bent over nearly sideways to the ground.  The flags were snapping like crazy, and of course standing straight out – even the small and heavy Gadsden flag.  I was surprised (and happy!) to see that the top of the flagpole didn't move around much.

Then later in the afternoon we got a few sprinkles, and then it started snowing.  In the high winds the snow swirled all around in the vortexes around the house, even though it was wet and heavy snow.  We got about two inches all together.  The driveway is well above freezing, so nothing stuck to that.  The trees and grass are all covered, though.  This is exactly what the local farmers were hoping for, to get a nice soak into the just-planted fields.  The 12 acre field south of our house is planted with alfalfa, after a nice dose of cow manure and careful mechanical preparation this year.  The 2.5 acre field northwest of our house has been mechanically prepared, and will be planted with a grass/alfalfa mix next week.

Around 6 pm we lost power, and it wasn't restored for almost three hours.  There was a downed power line a mile or so from our house that took out power to 391 homes, naturally including ours.  This reinforces our goal of getting a backup generator in place.  We'll probably do that later this spring...

Claire Berlinski is worried...

Claire Berlinski is worried ... and so am I...

I've been expecting this...

I've been expecting this...  But I didn't expect it to come from an (alleged) conservative.  Governor Awesome just became Governor CINO to me...

Before I retired, I paid hard-earned dollars into Social Security for 45 years.  For about 25 of those years, I paid the maximum amount.  If I live to be 100, my “benefits” won't even come close to matching what I contributed.  Had I invested that money even in something with really low yield, like CDs, I'd be far better off.  These days I'm considering that an absolutely best case scenario.  What I'm actually expecting is that before I can draw even a single dollar of my “benefits”, the progressives will find a way to deny them.  With, apparently, Chris Christie's encouragement and help...

I wonder...

I wonder ... what life insurance costs for this guy?  Full screen it...

A nice drive in the mountains...

A nice drive in the mountains...  We drove up past Hardware Ranch toward Ant Flats, just enjoying the signs of spring and watching for wildlife.  It was getting toward dusk, and the deer were coming out to forage – we saw lots of them, most especially along the road to Ant Flats.  We also saw a pair of peregrine falcons, several large hawks, and a multitude of ground squirrels.  The signs of spring are everywhere.

As we drove past the entrance to Hardware Ranch on the way back, we came across some horses enjoying themselves in the low sunlight:

Racer boo-boo...

Racer boo-boo...  Race's favorite entertainment is to chase a ball when I take him for a walk.  He doesn't do this like most dogs, because he's a border collie.  Instead, catching that ball becomes an existential challenge.  He accelerates toward it straining every muscle that could possibly help to the utter maximum.  He pays no attention to anything that might be in his way (which is how Debbie got injured a couple years ago while running him – she got in the way).  He pays no attention to his footing.  Consequently, with some degree of regularity he injures his foot – most commonly, by splitting a nail.  I think it happens when he's putting his foot down at supersonic speed and there happens to be a stone underneath. 

Those split nails bleed like a cheap horror movie, and they look like they must be painful.  He did it again yesterday, so we stopped by the Blacksmith Fork Veterinary clinic to see if they could patch him up.  Within two minutes Race was whisked back to see Dr. Russell, and just 8 minutes after we walked in, Dr. Russell walked out with a bandaged up Race (he had a nice pink foot) and all his front nails trimmed up.  I love this place!

Last night, we crated Race for the night (as usual).  This morning when I took him out for his morning walk, the bandage was gone.  There wasn't a trace of it anywhere in his crate.  He ate it.  He ate his bandage. 

I guess he doesn't like pink :)

So Debbie bandaged him back up with a purple bandage, and we put an Elizabethan collar on him to keep him from eating his bandage.  What a border collie!

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  The tile guys were here today, and they completed the grouting – their part is finished.  No photos, because I'm not allowed to walk on it until Thursday – the polyurethane grout takes that long to cure...

Turning some more hardwood...

Turning some more hardwood...  I found another log (box elder, I think), a little bigger, in my log pile.  I trimmed it up on the band saw, then mounted it on the lathe's face plate, and started turning a bowl.  You can see various stages below.  It's finished now, sanded down to 320 grit, and awaiting only some Watco finish.

This is quite a learning experience for me, as I've never tried my hand at turning wood before.  I've read a lot about it, but that's not at all the same thing actually as doing it!  On this bowl I experimented quite a bit with different lathe speeds, with and without the live center on the tailstock, and with all five of the carbide turning tools (a very basic set) that I've purchased.  I can now use the tools without digging into the wood, which is at least a very good first step.

I've also learned enough to understand the pro and con comments I've read about carbide turning tools.  Basically the carbide tools rip and tear more than high speed steel tools, because (amazingly!) they aren't as sharp as the steel tools.  I've ordered a set of high speed steel tools, which I think I'll be using for finish work – the carbide tools seem great for roughing out the shape.

Using the live center added a lot of stability to the process of roughing out the right side of the bowl (what is now its top).  On the other hand, I am kind of amazed at how little vibration I felt when turning the completely unfinished – and grossly unbalanced – log, even without the tailstock in use.  I think that's a result of the sheer mass of this lathe.

Yesterday afternoon I made a run to Home Depot, and they did have the Watco.  So today the bowl and goblet get finished.  Photos will follow, of course.  The Home Depot experience was frustrating yesterday.  I had a fairly long list of things to buy, all little things I need to finish off the hatch to the upstairs storage and mount the electric hoist up there.  At least half the things I needed were either very hard to find or were out of stock on the shelf, and I had to get help from one of the hard-to-find employees (it was busy, and they were all helping an endless stream of beseechers).  I finally managed to get everything I needed and headed home, stopping at Jamba Juice on the way home for a big mango smoothie.  When they called my name, a young man quickly walked up to the counter and took my smoothie and left.  I told the young lady serving what had happened, and she immediately called the police and started making my replacement smoothie.  Before she could finish my smoothie, a policeman walked in with the kid who had stolen my drink, verified that he had the right person, handcuffed him and left.  Wow!

That smoothie tasted wonderful :)

Springtime at my mom's house...

Springtime at my mom's house...  Near Charlottesville, Virginia.  Gorgeous!

She paints those rocks around the base of the flower vase – cute, aren't they?

Turning some hardwood...

Turning some hardwood...  Yesterday afternoon I just couldn't stand the idea of not trying out the lathe on some hardwood.  I have a small pile of logs, some of which we inherited when we bought this house.  Those logs are fairly dry, and the wood is fine-grained and hard.  I think they might be box elder (a kind of maple), which we have a lot of on our property.  I picked one of those logs, trimmed it up in my band saw, then sawed an 8 inch long piece of it off.  After mounting it to the lathe's face plate, I started turning it at low RPM and roughed it into the beginnings of a goblet (first photo below).

For the next hour I experimented with the five carbide turning tools I have, and figured out how to cut the shape I was after.  The only tool that gave me any trouble was a “hollower”, which has a large (about 1/4") circular carbide blade.  That tool kept getting jammed up and spun out of my hands.  The rest of them I had little trouble with.  By the time I was almost done (second photo), something recognizable as a goblet was appearing on the spindle.  I left the bottom inch or so of the goblet unfinished, as the screws that mount it to the face plate were in there.  In the third photo you can see the goblet after sanding.

The only step left at that point was “parting”, wherein I used a very thin tool (the “parting tool”) to cut a groove all the way through the wood to separate the goblet from the wasted wood (with the screws) against the face plate.  In the last photo, you can see that wasted wood still mounted to the lathe, and the large pile of shavings from the cup.  I'm going to pick up some Watco finish today (assuming the local Home Depot carries it!), and then I'll post some photos of the finished goblet.

One thing I can tell already: I'm really going to enjoy turning wood.  It's something I've wanted to do my entire life, and now I can finally do it...

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  The lathe is wired up to 240 volts, and it works beautifully.  As a test of sorts, I turned a simple bowl out of a leftover chunk of Douglas fir 4 x 6 – that gave me a medium-sized bowl about 5 inches in diameter and 3 inches high.  Softwoods in general don't turn very well, as chunks will break out when you're cutting across grain.  That happened to me with this piece; there are lots of places where the surface is deeply gouged.  But no matter – this piece worked great for trying out the lathe!

One feature of this lathe may interest those who are technically inclined: while it has a 3-phase 60 cycle 240V motor, it will run just fine on a single phase of anything between 105 and 250 volts, one or three phases, and 50 to 60 cycles.  How?  There is an inverter included as an integral part of the lathe.  Despite handling up to 2,500 watts, the inverter is quite small – the size of a small book.  As recently as 10 years ago, this was much harder problem than it is today.  Back in the '70s, the standard way to deal with power conversion issue like this was a motor-generator set (known colloquially as an “MG set”).  These were made from an electric motor on the same shaft as a generator.  The ship I was stationed on in the U.S. Navy used several of these – each the size and weight of a small car – to convert the ship's standard 3-phase 60 cycle 240V to single phase 400 cycle 110V power.  Our computers used 400 cycle mains to reduce the physical size of transformers and the size of filter capacitors for the linear power supplies.  Switching power supplies didn't exist.

Say what?

Say what?

Geek: funnies...

Geek: funnies...  Fifty cartoons along the same lines as these three samples.  I don't think I'd seen any of them before.  Quite a few of them had me laughing out loud :)

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  The lathe is finished (at right)!  Next steps: connect compressed air and electricity; those will be tomorrow's projects.  Below are some closeups of (left to right) the tailstock, the drive shaft (with faceplate), and the headstock.  It's a sweet machine!

I was only able to put it together by myself by using the engine crane (at left).  The lathe's bed is one massive chunk of cast iron, and weighs something like 500 lbs.  Using the crane I was able to (easily!) lift it, place it atop the cast iron legs, and then move the entire thing to the exact place I wanted it.  I also used the crane to lift and move the headstock, which weighs almost 200 lbs.  It's a handy gadget for an aging geek :)

My neighbors were on TV last night...

My neighbors were on TV last night...  KSL covered the Lawrence family and their “Wil Can Fly!” Kickstarter project.  You can watch the broadcast story at right...

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  The tile guys finished setting all the tile in my new office.  I'm still amazed by how closely this tile resembles real wood.  It's made by using a specialized ink jet printer to spray different colored glazes onto the blank tiles, “printing” a photograph of an actual piece of wood.  The surface of the tile has wood grain texture on it as well.  The tile guys will grout it on Monday, and later in the week a crew will show up to install baseboard and trim for the windows and door.

Yesterday my engine crane showed up, and I had it assembled within a couple of hours despite the lack of accurate directions.  There were directions included, but they were for a (substantially) different model.  Mostly I used the photo on the box as my guide :)

Once I had the crane assembled, I used it to move the components of my new lathe as I assembled them.  By the time I knocked off last night, I had the legs attached to the base, it was positioned in its place, and I had the headstock, tailstock, and tool rest base all installed.  I should easily finish assembling the lathe this weekend, including wiring it up.  Then it's on to testing!

You're messing with the radio astronomers! Stop it!

You're messing with the radio astronomers!  Stop it!  Researchers have discovered the source of the mysterious perytons that are plaguing radio astronomical research.  It's your microwave oven, when you open the door before it has finished cooking.  The oven emits a brief burst of 2.4 GHz microwave energy before the door interlock switch shuts it down.  Incidentally, that burst is also cooking you, just a tiny bit.

The solution is simple: don't open your microwave door until the timer has completed, or you have manually shut it down.  Now all we have to do is get 4 or 5 billion microwave owners to cooperate, and the peryton plague will be over...

Wil can fly...

Wil can fly...  The Lawrence family is one of our neighbors here in Paradise.  They have five kids.  Their youngest son is Wil, and he has Down syndrome.  Alan, the dad, is a photographer – and he's using his skills to create images of Wil doing something that he loves: flying.

The entire Lawrence family is hoping to raise awareness of Down syndrome, and they've got some great ideas on how to do it.  They need a little funding, though – so this being the twenty first century, they have of course started a Kickstarter project to raise the money.  We've signed up as backers.  If you've got a few bucks to spare, consider doing so yourself.

And please: spread the word about this project!

Ayatollah Khamenei on the Iran nuclear deal:

Ayatollah Khamenei on the Iran nuclear deal: Obama lies, and has devilish intentions.

That doesn't sound like a leader committed to making this deal.

That's fine by me!

Geek: random numbers are hard...

Geek: random numbers are hard...  I've discovered this the hard way (via subtle bugs) on a number of occasions over my career.  The most recent time involved creating GUIDs.  It wasn't my code, but it was my job to find the problem – and it was caused by a random number generator producing a (very) biased stream of (allegedly randomly distributed) numbers.  Here's someone else discovering a similar problem, this time in C++.

Morning smile...

Morning smile...

Water in my ear...

Water in my ear...  Tuesday evening, after I took a shower, I had water stuck in my right ear.  No matter what I did that water would just not come out.  Yesterday morning it was still there, and it was starting to hurt – just a little, but enough to make me worry about an infection.  My hearing was affected, too.  So around noon yesterday I headed for the Intermountain Instacare facility in downtown Logan, about 20 minutes from home.

This is the same place we went for Debbie's really bad cough about a week and a half ago.  We got amazingly fast and good service then, so I was hopeful the same might happen for me this time.  When I walked in, there were exactly zero people in the waiting room.  Three clerks at the desk were busy with paperwork and phone calls, but as I walked up to the desk one of them greeted me cheerfully and instructed me to fill out a little sticker (with my name, address, and complaint) and to hand it to one particular clerk.  I did that in about 30 seconds, and the clerk found me in their computer and had me all written up in about another 60 seconds.  I had to electronically sign a couple of forms (a liability release form included, of course), and then she told me to sit down and wait for my name to be called.  She said the wait would be no more than 15 minutes.

So I sat down, popped the top off my iPad, and tapped on “Kindle” to continue reading a book I'd started.  Before the Kindle app could even start up, a nurse stuck her head out a door and hollered my name.  Four minutes after I walked in the door, I was sitting down and having my vitals taken.  Two more minutes and a doctor was examining me.  It took him about 10 seconds to figure out what was wrong: a plug of ear wax had nestled deep within my ear canal, and it needed to be removed.

A pair of nurses went to work on me immediately.  They had me lay on my side, bad ear up, and then filled it to the brim with a chemical solution designed to soften the ear wax.  I had to lay there for about 15 minutes for the stuff to work.  Then they sat me up and squirted warm water in my ear to flush out the junk.  They had a gadget that was sort of like a water pistol with a short hose on it.  It worked – in short order all the bits of ear wax they'd espied had been removed, and I could hear normally again – the water that had been plugged up was gone, and the pain was also gone.

The doctor came back in to double check the results, and I was able to have a good discussion with him about why this might have occurred.  The entire experience was darned near optimal – fast, efficient, pleasant people at every step, and no problems at all getting all the information I wanted.  Thirty two minutes after I walked in the door, I walked out.  Back in San Diego, had I attempted the same thing, I'd still be at the filling-out-paperwork stage!

I love this place...

Mist on the field...

Mist on the field...  I took the photo at right (click to embiggen) just a few minutes ago, standing under our pine trees and looking to the southwest, over our south field.  We had a little bit of rain this morning (maybe a quarter inch), and it's 100% relative humidity.  When the rain stopped, the water that had soaked into the top inch or so of relatively warm soil started to evaporate – but in the high humidity and colder air just above the soil, it quickly condensed back out to make this “fog” swirling above the field.  We see this general thing quite often here...

“To infinity and beyond!”

“To infinity and beyond!”  Diane and Bill Oblock have retired – great for them, tragic for us.  Why?  Because they owned our favorite local bakery (Crumb Brothers), and now they're closed.  Here's the statement they left on their web site:

Dear Friends,

We have recently announced the closing of Crumb Brothers Artisan Bread and Cafe effective March 28.

With respect to the 13 wonderful years at Crumb Brothers, plus our great fortune to share our love of food and books with the community since 1988, we are ready to close our last chapter as business owners. We remain passionate about our love of good food, great books and fine company. But we are now committed to turning our passions toward a more private domain and relishing often-neglected relationships with friends and family.

We have bought the proverbial sailboat to set off on new adventures. Only our sailboat is a new (wonderful) SUV and our adventures largely land-based! Mostly we are retiring from business in order to: stay home, travel a bit, enjoy friends, relish this community and look for new ways to express our commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.

We cannot thank you all enough for supporting us in our business ventures. We love this community. Now onto the next chapter...

"To Infinity and Beyond."

Love,
Diane and Bill

We have no idea where we'll get our gluten fix from now on.  No more wonderful bread, nor pear Danish, or Croque Monsieur.  Pardon me while I resume my crying jag...

Drill press and table saw...

Drill press and table saw ... now with photos!  At right is my drill press, all assembled, placed, aligned, calibrated, and tested.  It's a variable speed machine (250 - 3,000 RPM) that uses a variable diameter pulley for speed adjustment.  On low speeds that means more torque, which is exactly what I'll need for large holes in hardwood.

The table saw (at left) is also a very nice piece of machinery.  It's a long, long way from the 10" Craftsman saw that a friend and I owned back in the '70s.  Note the very wide table (55" on the right) that lets me cut the full width of a sheet of plywood or MDF, the solid steel tubing to connect the dust collection vacuum hose to the blade guard, and the outfeed table to hold longer pieces of work cut lengthwise.  I've only made a few test cuts so far, but it's easy to tell that I'm going to enjoy using this thing.  It's got a 3 HP motor, which is quite large for such a relatively small saw – it's hard to imagine what I could do to stall the blade.

There are a couple of features that really stood out to me, aside from the generally good build and finish.  One is the fence (far right).  It moves smooth as silk when you raise the red handle, then locks solidly in place when you push the handle down – without moving at all.  None of that takes much force.  Then note the two magnified cursors (one for work to the left of the fence, one for work on the right).  The fence can be used on either side of the blade, thanks to the very long fence rails.  Then (at near right) there's the blade guard.  It's made from several pieces of molded polycarbonate (shatter resistant) all cleverly hinged to keep the blade area enclosed as much as possible – no matter what the thickness of the work or the height of the blade is.  It's ever so much better than the cheap single piece of soft plastic used on that old Craftsman...

Developer survey...

Developer survey...  Doug S. (friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything) sent me a pointer to an interesting survey by StackOverflow.  It's full of interesting tidbits.  The one shown at right was the biggest surprise for me: 42% of all developers responding said they were self-taught!  I've known quite a few developer who were, like myself, self-taught – but it's certainly not two fifths of them.  It's probably more like a tenth.  This makes me wonder what's going on here.  Is my personal experience at odds with norms?  Or is the StackOverflow site more used by self-educated developers?

Something I found amusing: the most dreaded language or technology was Salesforce.com...

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  Lot of stuff happening yesterday – I was busy all day, and very tired by the end of the day :)  The remaining parts for my table saw showed up, and I finished assembling it.  It's now all ready to go to work!  My drill press also was delivered yesterday, and I assembled that as well.  It came as a kit, but the head (the big part on top with the motor on it) was mostly assembled.  That thing weighs about 250 lbs, and was way too heavy for me to lift by myself – so I used the forklift on my tractor again.  I lashing it up to the forks with ropes, then just hoisted it up and dropped it onto the column.  I'm really starting to like hydraulics :)

When you need to bang on something, it's really hard to beat an old-fashioned anvil.  I got a 165 pound steel anvil (Ridgid) with a machined flat top, much like the one shown at left.  It came by truck on the smallest pallet I've ever seen – so small that I couldn't get both forks under it at the same time, even when they were adjusted to be touching each other!  I got it into the shop by balancing it delicately on one forklift fork.

Shortly after I set it down, some of my neighbor's kids came over, wanting to look at the barn.  They're fascinated by the machinery, and stop by two or three times a week to see how things are coming along.  Yesterday, though, it was the anvil that captured their attention.  I showed them how you can flatten a piece of copper wire on the anvil, and for the next two hours, three of them took turns flattening every piece of scrap copper wire they could find lying on my barn floor (this is all left over from the still-in-progress wiring work).  None of them could wield even my smallest hammer in one hand, even though the oldest boy looks plenty strong enough.  I think they just don't have much experience with hand tools...

IPv4 address market takes off...

IPv4 address market takes off...  It took a little longer than the IPv6 advocates predicted, but it looks like it's finally happening – unused IPv4 addresses are getting so scarce that companies are willing to pay good money for them.  Willing buyers, willing sellers, and a little exchange of cash ... and you've got a market!

This is exactly the sort of thing...

This is exactly the sort of thing ... that led to the NSA abuses that Snowden revealed.  This time it's in the area of computer security, and may well lead to less secure computers for all of us.

Government: is there anything it can't screw up?

Democrats hold a massive rally for Hillary...

Democrats hold a massive rally for Hillary...  Via my lovely bride :)

Obama: can he do anything right?

Obama: can he do anything right?  No.  But Romney can...

Taxes done...

Taxes done...  But I'm still mad, and I'll be madder yet next week when I have to post those damn big checks.  Grrrr!!!

tax and spend politicians
tar
feathers
high velocity lead
tree
rope
some assembly required!