Yellow-bellied marmot pup...

Yellow-bellied marmot pup...  Yesterday afternoon Debbie and I took a drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon, toward Ant Flats, for our usual wildlife spotting.  We saw very little on most of the trip, except for the splashing of something large in the creek.  The splashing reminded me of otters playing, though we didn't ever sight the actual cause of the splashing.

But just as we were about to exit the canyon on the way into Hyrum, Debbie spotted the little guy at right on the road.  I'm pretty sure he's a yellow-bellied marmot (aka “rock chuck”), even though they're not normally found this low (we were at about 5,500' altitude, and they're normally above 6,500').  I drove right past it without ever seeing it, even though he was in the middle of the other (uphill) lane.  Yikes!  I backed up next to him, got my four-way flashers on, and jumped out to scoot him off the road.  Shortly after I got out, another car approached, headed uphill, but fortunately saw me and the flashers and proceeded with caution – and smiles when they saw what I was doing.

We had a bit of work getting him off the road, as he was feisty and uninterested in being told what to do.  His front teeth are already about 3/4" long, and sharp as scalpels (which they resemble!).  I didn't dare try to pick him up, as every time I got near him he made angry noises and attacked.  When I tried to scoot him sideways with my (nice, thick, strong) boots, he immediately attacked my boot – and sunk his front teeth so far into my sole that he had trouble removing them!  Finally Debbie came up with the lid of a cardboard box, and I managed to get him into that so that I could take him off to a safer place.  As soon as I lifted him in the box lid, he started making very loud alarm whistles, clearly distressed.

Finally we got him onto a steep slope that led down to the creek, near where I could see what looked like a marmot burrow under a big rock.  In the photo at left, he's on his back because I approached him with my iPhone, and he's preparing to attack me.  This little fellow couldn't have weighed more than 8 ounces or so, yet he was fully prepared to take me on.  If the adults are just as feisty, I don't think I'd care to approach them even if I was wearing armor!

As we left him alone, hoping he would calm down, I could see him right himself and very slowly amble downhill – and away from the road.  Here's hoping he stays off the road!  More photos from the intertubes...

I finally have a good place...

I finally have a good place ... for my lava lamp!

Dilbert nails it again...

Dilbert nails it again...  I ran into this so many times in the bad old days when I was managing.  It was common enough even in the '90s to be irritating; I'm told by managers that I know that now it is so common that it almost feels like the norm.

After living here for a couple years, I feel pretty safe in saying that this would not be the experience of managers in northern Utah.  That may well be a big part of the reason why we have so many companies moving here: an educated, hard-working population.

A most unexpected find...

A most unexpected find...  Longtime readers with unusual patience will know that I have a substantial collection of slide rules and other antique mechanical computing instruments.  Once, years ago, I wrote of my regret for not having kept the slide rules I purchased new, when they were still in use (that's BC – Before Calculators).  The first one I bought in high school; the last one while in the U.S. Navy in about 1972 or 1973 – right at the end of the slide rule era.

For years my dad would occasionally send me a box of stuff – very random stuff, including photos, letters, notes, and mementos of various kinds.  The first of these boxes arrived in the early '90s, then intermittently over the next 15 years or so.  Usually my dad would call me to talk about the potential contents of the boxes; he wanted to be sure I'd be interested in them.  Nearly all of these boxes, along with their contents, I taped back up and stored after receiving them – simply because in previous homes we had no room to display the items.

Well, that's a tad different now that we have a house that seems big enough to house the entire state of Utah, with room left over for some Idahoans.  Also different, much more recently: I now have a 600 sq. ft. office, with lots of room.  As I was moving into my new office, I had occasion for the first time in many years to open and look into those boxes my dad had sent me over the years.  In one of those boxes, which dates back to the mid-90s, I found the four slide rules I had purchased as a youth.  I know for sure that they're mine, because the cases have my name, phone numbers, etc.  My dad must have had them squirreled away somewhere, together with a few other youthful possessions of mine, and sent them in that box.  I had opened that box, probably when I received it, then taped it up and left it unopened ever since.

How could I not know I had those slide rules? 

Most likely it was because I didn't start collecting slide rules until about 2002 – which would have been about 8 years after my dad sent that box.  Those slide rules, in the '90s, apparently did not make a big impression on me.  I have no memory of having received them.  I was totally shocked when I opened that box and saw them a few days ago!

All of those slide rules were common, ordinary types; none of them have any particular value.  They're all in great shape, even though I used them every day for years – I took good care of them.  They aren't valuable, but they were mine, and that counts for something in my book :)

Photo of the day...

Photo of the day...  This is the town of Sakrisoy, in the Lofoten Islands of Norway.  The photographer is Pawel Klarecki.  I'd sure love to see this in person!

Video of the day...

Video of the day...  Via my pistol-packing, hysterically laughing mama – who isn't sure it's safe for her to take credit for referring this to me :)

Excellent customer service alert!

Excellent customer service alert!  Last year we bought two products from Enclume for the fireplace in our house: a fireplace tool set and a log rack.  Both were beautifully made, sturdy, and attractive.  Furthermore, they were well-packed and easy to assemble.  So when the time came a month or so ago to buy accessories for my new office's wood stove, I bought the same two again.  This time, however, the fireplace tools were missing one of the six very special decorative button-head screws that hold it all together.

One stupid screw.  This would be a great test of customer service.

I called their number, easily found on documentation that came with the product.  A very pleasant woman picked up on the second ring.  Not “Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish...” or “Press 1 for new orders, 2 for payments...”.  Nope.  A real person, and nice to boot.  She asked what I needed – and proceeded right then and there to work with me to identify the right part and take my shipping information.  She assured me that the part would go out in that day's mail (that was Monday).  Well, yesterday the part showed up as promised.  The right part.

Awesome customer service, Enclume!  Thank you, from a happy customer...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  I'm sitting in my “new” office, contemplating the enormity of the remaining work to do here :)  I'm going to do a bit of unpacking first, just so I can function in my office – the shredder needs to be plugged in, some paperwork needs to be found, etc.  That's the easy stuff.  Probably the next thing I'm going to do is to mount all the acoustic panels that are now just sitting on the floor, yet making my office sound great (I've got Aretha Franklin cranking with Respect right now).  Sometimes it sucks to think mathematically: I have a total of 14 panels to mount, each with four Z-clips, each of them with four screws – and I can't help but figure that that means 112 careful measurements, 112 holes, 112 plastic inserts, and 224 screws to drive.  Yikes!

One thing that's going to take me a while to get used to is walking outside to go to my office.  For over two years now, going to the office has meant a short walk upstairs.  Now it means getting my shoes on, walking 150' or so outside, and then up a long flight of stairs (the second floor is 14' above ground level) to my office.  It felt pretty weird making that walk this morning.  Debbie's having mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, she's got me and my mess out of the house.  On the other hand, now she can't just holler at me when she needs something :) 

First thing I did this morning was to refill the bird feeders.  Yesterday afternoon I watched a woodpecker open the suet feeder (which was nearly empty) and dump the remaining contents on the ground.  Between the woodpecker and the magpies, that remainder didn't last long :)  I filled that this morning with my patented mixture of lard and peanut butter; the woodpecker will be back soon.  Every other feeder was also empty, or nearly so.  The birds were hungry yesterday :)  I suspect many bird parents are feeding many bird babies...

And now I stagger off to work...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  It was a long, hard day's work today, with my brother Scott helping.  We moved tons (literally, I think!) of stuff from the house to my new office in the shed.  That huge pile in the middle of the photo at right, along with some more stuff that I couldn't fit into the camera, all got moved today.  The items we moved came from all three levels of our house, so there were a lot of stair traversals involved.  In the shed we used my electric hoist to haul all this stuff the 14 feet up into the second story.  I was very grateful for that hoist during all this work, as the only thing we had to hump up the stairs was our own decrepit bodies.  There were several individual pieces we moved that were heavy and awkward (my big printer and our shredder, especially) that Scott's muscles came in very handy for!

After we finished moving all this stuff, Scott and I worked together to get Debbie's exercise bicycle out of our first floor living room, and placed next to her treadmill upstairs.  She was quite happy about that :)

After that we had a magnificent “lupper” made from scratch by Debbie: angel's hair pasta with a veggie-rich tomato sauce and shrimp.  Scott ate enough for several people, but unfortunately something about it (probably the acidic tomatoes) didn't agree with him.  His digestive system was complaining loudly.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that we kept all the leftovers, instead of sending a truckload home with him.  Yum!

We finished off our day with a lovely drive down to Porcupine Reservoir, which Scott had never seen before.  We all enjoyed that drive, which is very pretty this time of year.  We took Miki and Race with us, and Race got to swim in the reservoir – boy was he happy!

I'm going to do something a bit less strenuous tomorrow, assuming I don't sleep through the day...

Office in Paradise...

Office in Paradise...  A long, hard day's work here – but with good results!  My main computer (the MacBook Pro) is up and running in its new environment.  In the second photo below you can see the current setup, just on folding tables.  Later I'll be building some work surfaces with cable runs, etc. to neaten all this up.  But for now, that's my (computer) work environment.

Even better, from my point of view, is that now my new office sounds good, too.  Previously there were major resonances and echo effects, basically because all four walls, the floor, and the ceiling are all nearly perfect acoustic reflectors.  I got some acoustic absorption panels (the wine-colored panels) and two quadratic-residue diffusers (the wooden panels with vertical slats), and the difference it makes in the sound quality of the room is dramatic.  As I write this, I'm listening to an Eagles album, and it sounds great!  Earlier today when I lit off my music, it was painful to listen – I had to shut it off, because I was reacting the same way one does to fingernails on a chalkboard.

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Oh, we had such a good day yesterday!

For starters, the weather was just about perfect.  We had wall-to-wall blue sky, and the temperatures were in the high 50s or low 60s all day long.  I worked inside most of the day (on my new office), but every time I went outside I reveled in the beautiful weather.  A fine day in Paradise!

First job yesterday on the new office was cleanup time, and the result is at right.  You'd hardly recognize that as the same space that looked like a bomb went off yesterday :)  It was quite a bit of work to get all that mess cleaned up.  I must have bent over 1,000 times as I picked up trash and threw it in a big plastic bag.  Then I vacuumed with a Shop-Vac, using a narrow tool to maximize the suction.  That took a couple hours, including periodic unclogging of the nozzle as I tried to pick up something that was too big.  Finally I mopped the whole floor with a sponge mop, using two buckets and a Pine-Sol solution.  The result looks great, especially in relative terms :)

The next step was to move the networking kit from a shelf just outside my new office to a table inside.  That doesn't sound like much, perhaps, but it involves quite a bit of new network wiring and lots of unplugging and replugging.  Past experience with such moves suggested to me that success would come only after a bunch of debugging, but such pessimism was unwarranted yesterday: everything worked on the very first try.  This was not what I expected!  The photo at left shows the networking kit happily humming along in its new location.

The last thing I did on the office last night was to move our Mac Mini server from the house to the shed.  I set it up, reassigned its IP address (it's on a new range out in the shed), and fired it up – and it all just worked.  First try.  At that point it was late afternoon, and I was tired – so I figured I'd better quite while I was ahead :)  This was also the last thing I had been hoping to get done yesterday, so I was on my self-imposed schedule.

Today I am moving my MacBook Pro and its associated paraphernalia.   That will take a while, just because there are a lot of pieces – but it should go easily.  Just a lot of walking and carrying :)  Tomorrow my brother Scott will be here to help me with the heavy bits – most especially the monster of a printer I have (an HP CP4025).

I walked between the house and the shed many times yesterday, and each time I got to enjoy the yard in springtime.  Toward the front of our house, the air was full of bird song.  The birds feeding on our feeders are starting to get used to my presence.  They used to all fly away simultaneously if they spotted me 100 feet away.  Now they fly away only when individual birds get alarmed, and some of them will let me get quite close.  The boldest of all is a (yet unidentified) woodpecker, who will feed on the suet feeder until I'm within about 6 feet.  Second boldest are the American goldfinches, some of which will keep feeding until I get about 10 feet away.  The pines above our feeders are full of perching birds waiting for their turn on the feeders, and those birds are singing their hearts out all day long.  A lovely serenade on my transits between house and shed, it is.

Then there are the flowers.  I'm not sure what the tree in the first photo is, but we have a row of five of them along the south side of the shed.  The biggest of them is close to 30' tall.  Right at the moment they are in full bloom, and their perfume fills the air near them, as sweet as any lilac.  Just like the lilacs, their scent is so powerful that if you inhale through your mouth, you can taste the smell.  This and the lilacs are the only two flowers I've ever been able to do that with.  The second photo is a few of our red tulips, then there's a columbine (that won't bloom for a while yet), and finally the lilac that we inherited with the house.  It looks much happier this spring than it did last spring.  The seven lilacs that I planted last fall are out in leaf now, but I don't see any hint of flower buds on them.

Late yesterday afternoon we took a drive up the road that leads to Liberty.  This is a dirt road, parts of it rough enough to warrant using a 4WD vehicle, so we took the FJ Cruiser.  Of course we also took Miki and Race with us.  When we let them out the front door to “load up” in the FJ, their excitement was fun to watch :)

It was a relaxing and beautiful drive.  It's hard to beat springtime in the mountains.  The second and third photos I took from the FJ's window – look closely and you'll see a nice, fat skunk waddling around.  Just prior to this spotting we had been talking about letting Race out to swim in the stream.  You would have heard no such talk after this sighting :)  The three photos of the little blue flowers were all taken in the same tiny patch.  For about a mile in the lower elevations, these flowers were scattered amongst other stuff on a north-facing road bank.  I have no idea what they are.  The last photo was my poor attempt to capture something that was very striking looking in person: a valley completely in shadow except for one solitary tree that was brightly lit up.

Poster of the day...

Poster of the day...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  It was such a beautiful day here yesterday!  We had a few clouds, and lots of wind – but the temperatures were in the high 50s, and there was lots of blue sky.  Birds were chirping, flowers were flowering (like our 3/4 dead flowering plum at right), and spring was in the air.  Just lovely!

Most of my day was consumed by wiring and cutting holes for heating registers (second photo below) in my new office in the shed.  I finished both, and now the office is ready for cleanup.  It's in rather desperate need of cleanup, as you can tell by the first photo below.  The detritus of construction is everywhere, there are tools scattered hither and yon, and the entire room is blanketed by a layer of gray dust.  I'll be spending this morning (and maybe beyond!) just cleaning all that up.  Then I start moving in!

My moving has to follow a careful sequence in order to keep me from being cut off from the Internet.  The first step will be to install the router, switch, and WiFi access point that will “run” my office.  That equipment is already up and running, just outside my office door.  I've already installed (and tested!) the through-wall wiring.  So ... theoretically all I have to do is to move that equipment 3 feet or so into the office.  I've never had any sort of network reconfiguration work that easily, though :)  I'm fulling expecting some unanticipated glitch.

Once the networking gear is up and running, I'm going to move my little Mac Mini server from the house to the new office.  Theoretically that should only involve a change in its IP address, but once again, I'm expecting the unexpected on that front.  Finally, once all that is up and running, it will be time to move my personal computer (a MacBook Pro and associated monitors, keyboards, etc.) over.  That, at least, should go easily, as its IP address is obtained through DHCP.

I have quite a bit of “stuff” currently scattered all over the second floor of our house that needs to be moved into my new office (where I have plenty of room!).  Much of this is not computer-related at all: a microscope, electronics, etc.  For the moment, this will all go onto the same set of folding tables that we've been using for office furniture in the house.  Later I plan to start building out my own furniture, making good use of the cabinet shop I have downstairs.  I'm really looking forward to that – should be lots of fun for me!

The “infrastructure” of my office still has some ways to go besides furniture, too.  I have a little refrigerator coming in a week.  I'm planning on installing a small sink and counter-top, so I can have tea and snacks without having to come back into the house.  There's the heating system to finish, too.  And most likely (after I see what summer is like) I'll be installing a little split-system air conditioner as well.  Something tells me I won't be done this year :)

Alcohol in Utah...

Alcohol in Utah...  This is the last post in my series that's aimed at the attendees of the National Field Spaniel Association, which is in Logan, Utah (12 miles north of us) starting in late May.  People will be coming from all over the country to attend this, so many of them will not be familiar with Utah's ... somewhat odd ... laws and customs regarding the consumption of alcohol.

Buying and drinking alcoholic beverages in Utah is a bit different than in most other U.S. states.  First thing to know: you must be 21 years old to legally imbibe (or purchase) any alcoholic beverage.  Though Debbie and I are so ancient we can't even remember being 21, we're told that this law is quite strictly enforced.  Retail sales of any drink containing more than 3.2% alcohol is restricted to the state liquor stores.  These stores are actually owned by the state, and the selection in them is decent, but limited (especially for nicer wines and liquors).  The only state liquor store in Cache County is located at 75 W 400 N in Logan, about 8 blocks away from the fairgrounds (see the green pin on this map).  It's open from 11 am to 10 pm, Monday through Saturday (and of course it's closed on Sunday).

A high proportion of Cache County's residents are members of the LDS (Mormon) Church, and the church's Health Laws prohibit the consumption of alcohol (along with tobacco, coffee, tea, and illegal drugs – but not caffeinated sodas or chocolate).  The proportion of LDS members in Logan is a bit lower (around 80%) than the rest of the county, but still very high.  Not all LDS members obey the Health Laws, as seems evident from the rather brisk business the state liquor store does.  Nevertheless, the general community attitude toward alcohol consumption is disapproving.  Probably because of this, it is extremely unusual to see any public consumption (outside of approved venues) or even the slightest indication of public inebriation.  We've lived here for over two years now, and we have yet to see a public drunk – or smelled stale urine in the alleyways.  This isn't all bad :)

You can also drink in many restaurants, because Utah's liquor laws (and more) allow alcohol only when served with food (with a few exceptions).  Some of these restaurants have licenses for just beer, just wine and beer, and some for full-service bars.  Debbie and I do most of our drinking at home :), so we have limited experience with the drinks at restaurants.  Cafe Sabor and Elements both have full-service bars (and Cafe Sabor is known locally for their margaritas).  Jack's Wood-Fired Oven, Callaway's, and Le Nonne all have beer and wine (and Le Nonne has a decent wine list compared with most local joints).

As far as the more, er, traditional sort of alcohol-fueled night life, the only place around here we've even heard of is Mulligan's (see the yellow pin on the map).  The two people who have mentioned it to me did so disparagingly, and their 2.5 star review on Yelp isn't encouraging.  Logan is most definitely not known for its nightlife :)

The complete list of liquor licenses in Cache County (Smithfield and Richmond are towns just north of Logan):

BLACK PEARL ASIAN BISTRO & SUSHI BAR	2095 N MAIN BLDG A UNIT C	LOGAN
BUFFALO WILD WINGS (LOGAN)	43 E 1400 N	LOGAN
CAFE SABOR (LOGAN)	600 W CTR ST	LOGAN
CALLAWAY'S	54 N MAIN	SMITHFIELD
CHILI'S SOUTHWEST GRILL (LOGAN)	1427 N MAIN BLDG C	LOGAN
CRUMB BROTHERS	291 S 300 W	LOGAN
EAGLES 3114 (LOGAN)	170 W 900 N	LOGAN
EL TORO VIEJO	1111 N MAIN STREET	LOGAN
ELEMENT RESTAURANT	35 E 640 S	LOGAN
FIREHOUSE PIZZERIA	682 S MAIN ST	LOGAN
GALLERY CAFE @ BIRCH CREEK G.C.	550 E 100 N	SMITHFIELD
GAUCHO GRILL OF LOGAN	633 S MAIN	LOGAN
GIA'S RESTAURANT & FACTORY PIZZERIA	119 S MAIN	LOGAN
HUHOT OF LOGAN	660 S MAIN ST	LOGAN
IRON GATE CONCESSIONS	550 W 1000 S	LOGAN
JACKS WOOD-FIRED OVEN	256 N MAIN ST	LOGAN
JIM'S GRILL	101 N MAIN ST STE A	SMITHFIELD
KABUKI JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE	461 N MAIN ST	LOGAN
LD'S CAFE	39 W MAIN	RICHMOND
LE NONNE	129 N 100 EAST	LOGAN
LOGAN GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB	710 N 1500 E	LOGAN
LOGAN STEAKHOUSE	2427 N MAIN ST	LOGAN
MULLIGAN'S	33 FEDERAL AVE	LOGAN
NOODLES & CO. (LOGAN)	1430 N MAIN ST	LOGAN
OASIS RESTAURANT	235 S MAIN	LOGAN
OLIVE GARDEN (LOGAN)	1220 N MAIN ST	LOGAN
RIVERWOODS CONFERENCE CENTER	615 S 80 E	LOGAN
SIZZLER # 439 (LOGAN)	1165 N MAIN	LOGAN
SULTAN'S TAVERN	205 S MAIN	LOGAN
TAKARA SUSHI JAPANESE RESTAURANT	55 W 1000 N	LOGAN
TANDOORI OVEN	720 E 1000 N	LOGAN
TEXAS ROADHOUSE (LOGAN)	42 E 1400 N	LOGAN
THE BEEHIVE GRILL	255 S MAIN	LOGAN
THE BULL'S HEAD	1111 N 800 E	LOGAN
WHITE OWL	36 W CENTER	LOGAN

Paradise ponders, cont'd...

Paradise ponders, cont'd...  I ended up not working all that much on my office today – lots of other things intervened.  But I do have a photo of the ceiling fan, installed :)

My tutoring session with Abby S. went exceptionally well.  She is picking up the concepts behind programming quickly, and with great enthusiasm.  Today she and I worked together to build a little web page using the Web Audio API to play a single musical note that could be either a pure tone or a chord with an arbitrary number of component tones.  Her homework is to turn that into a program that can play two notes.  We'll be expanding this into a program that can play a tune.

I thought we'd spend most of today working on her understanding of a two-dimensional lookup table, where one dimension was indexed by the musical note name and the other by an octave number.  The result would be the frequency of the note.  Instead of spending an hour or so on it, she had it nailed in less than five minutes – and passed all my tests of her understanding easily.  This is a reasonably complex data structure for such a novice programmer, but she picked it up very easily.  As an experiment, I showed her how (in the debugger) to drill down into the “document” variable (which is a very complex data structure that contains the entirety of the currently displayed web page).  She got the general idea of that sort of nested tree structure immediately.

It's fun teaching someone so bright and motivated!  And Debbie loves to feed her treats, so we got a lemon pie out of this, too :)

My brother Scott came to visit a little later, and we went to my neighbor Tim D.'s house to pick up a load of firewood that Tim gave me.  While there, Scott got to meet Tim's wife Jeannie – and her new puppy Gus.  That little guy had just been brought home from the breeder, at age 6 weeks.  He looked terrified when we first saw him – it was his first time out of the crate he was born in.  By the time we left, about a half hour later, little Gus was running around playing with their other two dogs (Lexy and Marley), along with any human who happened to be standing nearby.  This little fellow is going to be just fine, I think.  Debbie came over to see Gus, too, and I think she's going to end up helping Jeannie train him.  That is one cute little puppy!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  What a busy day here yesterday!  It started around 4:30 am, when the milkman drove in and set off the dogs.  Sleepily we realized that we'd forgotten to set out the empty jugs.  Oops!  No matter, they left our two and a half gallons anyway :)

I filled the bird feeders after our morning caffeiniation.  We're using about 10 pounds of black oil sunflower seed per week right now, along with around 6 pounds of “high value” food (nuts, dried fruit, shelled sunflowers) and 4 pounds of Nijer thistle.  All the sunflower seed and thistle feeders have to be refilled daily.  Our feeders attract huge numbers of American goldfinches (often more than 50 at a time), Lesser's goldfinches, house finches, and red-winged blackbirds.  We also get chickadees and nuthatches in smaller numbers, and a couple of (so far unidentified) woodpeckers that love to hang on our suet feeder (which is loaded with a mixture of lard and peanut butter).  The occasional magpie comes in and tries to figure out how to get to the seeds, but all our feeders are magpie-proof.  We also get Asian pigeons that like to hunt on the ground for misplaced seeds.  The sound from all these birds is something I greatly enjoy: if you open our front door it can be quite overwhelming.  Our UPS deliveryman commented on the sound yesterday, amazed that it was always like this...

I started working on my office in the shed in the morning, finishing up the wiring of the outlet strips.  Then I decided to get ready for the ceiling fan that was scheduled for delivery in the afternoon.  On Thursday I had purchased an “old work” (retrofit) ceiling fan box that could be installed through a 4" diameter hole.  I marked the center of the room, offset a few inches to avoid a truss (detected by knocking on the ceiling), and then cut my hole with the oscillating saw (love that thing!).  Next step was initially a stumper: how do I get the wire from the hole in the ceiling to the wall where I had power available? 

The ceiling hole is 13' from the exposed wall with power, and the intervening space was filled with trusses and blown-in insulation.  There's no way that I could squeeze into that space – and even if I could, I'd wreck the 18" thick blanket of insulation.  My first thought was that I'd poke the 14 gauge Romex up through the hole while Debbie watched from outside and gave me some guidance.  That plan fell apart when I discovered that Debbie was not comfortable climbing the ladder (all these years and I never knew she had a fear of ladders!).  My second plan worked much better.  I have a “fish” – a fiberglass rod in screw-together sections – that's designed for fishing wires through walls.  That rod is quite flexible, about like a wire coat-hanger.  I screwed together enough sections to make a 15' “pole”, then wiggled it so that the far end was roughly over the hole in the ceiling (I had to guess about that, as the hole was covered by all that insulation and I couldn't actually see where it was).  Then I got on a ladder inside my office, stuck my arm up through that hole, and felt around until I felt the fish.  Success!  Then all I had to do was to tie the Romex onto the end of the fish, go outside and pull the fish out.  That worked great.

The fan ceiling box turned out to be trivially easy to install.  I'd expected that job to take a few hours, but instead it was under a half hour, beginning to end.  When the fan came in the afternoon, I had it installed onto the new box in under an hour – and it all worked on the first try (even the snazzy remote control that came with the fan).  Now my office has a fan to circulate the air warmed by the wood stove, and some lights.  Yay!

This morning my student Abby S. should be here for a lesson, and then my brother Scott is going to be here to help out a bit.  I'm hoping to be able to finish up that last bit of outlet strip wiring, and I also need to install the fan's remote control into a hole in the wall.  Once that's complete, it's cleanup time – and then I'll be moving my stuff over to the office...

One of my favorite bloggers...

One of my favorite bloggers ... writing about another of my favorite bloggers: Megan McArdle on Warren Meyer.  It's hard to get better than that :)

Wow!

Wow!

Some detail on the office wiring project...

Some detail on the office wiring project...  As requested by reader John L., who wondered how I was wiring up those power strips.  The power strips came with a 6 foot long 14 gauge power cord, terminated in a molded plug.  When I took the cover off of one, I discovered that the power cord was machine-crimped solidly into internal bus bars.  Since I needed longer (much longer!) power cords, I cut the power cords off, leaving a short stub.  Then I used crimp butt connectors (first photo) to patch in a piece of 12 gauge service cable (heavy duty, flexible power cord) cut to the right length to plug into the outlets I installed (third photo).  I covered the connection with a piece of heat shrink (second photo).  The outlets are fed from the circuit breaker panel with 10 gauge solid Romex in plastic conduit.  The last photo shows the result along one wall; the others are made the same way.

All of the outlet strips are mounted 24" off the floor, where they'll be completely hidden under the workbenches, tables, and desks I'll be putting up. 

The ceiling fan will be in the very center of the room.  This afternoon I bought a special electrical box designed for installation through an existing ceiling, through a hole just big enough to fit the box.  It uses a pair of extensible brackets to fasten itself into to adjacent joists in the ceiling.  In the case of my office, those will actually be the bottoms of factory-made roof trusses, mounted on 16" centers.  The ceiling of my office has about 18" of blown-in insulation on top of it, so I'll be poking a piece of Romex through the ceiling hole and threading it through nine trusses to get it to a wall where I can supply power.  That oughtta be fun!  I think I'll enlist Debbie's help to guide me on that one :)

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  It was a busy day today, with lots of different things competing for attention.  In between other things I managed to get some work done on my office wiring, but I didn't finish today as I expected to.

One of the interruptions today was from Amazon, telling me that the ceiling fan I'd ordered for my office will be here tomorrow, instead of the end of next week.  Woo hoo!  More wiring!  There is good news there, though: now I can do all the really messy work before I start actually moving my stuff into the new office.  But I also had to make a run to Lowe's, to get the parts I'd need to wire up that ceiling fan :)

Another interruption today was very welcome: our builder (Jim J., the same fellow who built my shed) came over to go over the plans for the changes we're making to the house.  He's getting ready to pull a permit, and once he has that he's going to start working.  It's going to be a mess around the house for a while once that starts!  Demolition of old concrete, on all three construction areas (mud room, sun room, and patio), is the first step.  Big mess!

Then came a call from Darren N., who works for Thomas Petroleum.  I'd told him last year of my interest in getting a tank for diesel and for gasoline.  He called to let me know that they've just gotten a bunch of used 500 gallon tanks in, rugged outdoor tanks with high stands – perfect for gravity fed fueling of my tractor, our cars, etc.  These things were being used in the oil industry to support field operations, but with the tumble in oil prices the oil companies cut way back on field operations and sold off a bunch of stuff – including these tanks.  They're a steal at the price on offer: $500 refurbished, delivered, and installed – including a hose and filler nozzle.  I ordered two for us.  That means that we'll be able to have a supply of tax-free diesel on hand for my tractor, and regular gasoline for all our vehicles and other equipment.  One more little piece of self-sufficiency!

Early this afternoon Gerald (the fellow who does annual maintenance for Golden Spike Electric) came out to do the annual maintenance on our backup generators.  As we're starting to expect out here, he's a really nice fellow – and competent, vastly experienced, and conscientious about his work.  I had an enjoyable conversation with him about his experiences, especially as a Mormon missionary in Barcelona, Spain.  That was about 40 years ago, but it's still fresh in his mind; a formative experience for him.

While working in my new office this morning, I got kind of cold, as it was only in the low 40s.  So I started a fire in the wood stove I had installed last fall – that's the first time I'd tried it out.  All was fine until the stove started to get hot, and then all of a sudden the new paint on the exterior started giving off some really obnoxious fumes.  They warn you about these fumes in the manual, saying that some people might find them unpleasant.  That's about like saying that some people might find having their legs run over by a bulldozer unpleasant!  Those fumes had me running from the room in fear for my life from poisonous fumes.  I held my breath and went back in to open all the windows wide, then evacuated for an hour until the fumes had cleared.  Oh, they were awful!  I hope that phase of this stove's life is over quickly!  It did warm up the room nicely, though :)

Debbie and I went out to Angie's for a nice late lunch.  We both had the cod fish fry, and chicken noodle soup.  Wonderful, as always, it was...