Paradise ponders: another chaotic day edition...

Paradise ponders: another chaotic day edition...  When I last posted, I was anticipating getting more work done on the window frames for the cattery.  Guess how much I got done?  Nothing.  Nada.  Bumpkiss...

It's always something...  :)

Early in the morning I took our little girl field spaniel (Cabo) down to the vet for her appointment to get spayed.  We've been worried about her and her brother Mako (who hasn't been neutered).  Sometimes their play looks more like ... doggie foreplay.  We wouldn't want her to get pregnant by her brother, and we wouldn't really want her to get pregnant by some neighborhood dog who jumped the fence when she went into heat – which could have happened at any moment (she's 14 months old).  So off to the vet she went.

In the afternoon I went and picked her up.  She was the very image of a totally miserable dog.  She whimpered piteously all the way home, and I could do nothing to comfort her (I was alone in the car, driving).  When I got her home, she was obviously frightened and we think still feeling the effects of the anesthesia.  We did our best to comfort her before we went to bed, but then her miserable, piteous whimpering tore us up.  I went out and got some pain meds into her, got her to drink a bit, then tried going back to bed again.  More whimpering, and she sounded very frightened.  Probably was, as this is the first time anything like sustained pain has happened to her, and she couldn't do anything about it.  So I went out and got her, and we brought her up on the bed between us.  She was trembling, panic breathing, and very upset.  About 15 minutes later she was calm, nodding off, and breathing normally.  A little while later she showed signs of engaging with Jahar, our Savanna cat (who was extremely unhappy about this canine in the bedroom, which so far as he is concerned is his territory).  So I took Cabo back out to the kitchen and let her stay outside her crate all night.  She was fine after that.  I got up around 3:30 this morning, and when I went out to our kitchen she scampered over to see me, all cheerful, tail wagging, and looking like her normal happy self.  She was excited when I got the leash to take her for a walk.  I'll be doing that for the next week, as we don't want her to start roughhousing with Mako, which is her normal daily activity.

This morning I put together a tool cart I'd ordered that had been delivered yesterday afternoon.  It went together easily, all the parts were there, and the end result looks quite nice.  It's made in China, and the quality is very good.  But ... while I was assembling it, I kept running into stickers saying things like “The wheel treads contain chemicals known by the State of California to cause cancer” or “Do not eat” printed on a bag of nuts and bolts.  That got me to thinking ... the workers in China who put these notices on things ... if any of them can read English, they must be rolling around on the floor laughing at the stupid Americans (most especially the Californians).  What kind of idiot has to be told not to eat a bolt?  And really, if such idiots actually exist, could they read?  Wouldn't it really be better in the long run to let such people eat bolts and let nature take its course?

As scheduled, a two-man tech team (Dustin and Justin) from Comcast showed up to install our gigabit Internet service.  Turns out we're one of the very first people in Cache County to get this service installed, and we are the first on the particular distribution amplifier our home is fed by.  They warned me they were likely to be here a while, because the signal had to be perfect for the gigabit Internet to work, and in their experience nobody's installation was perfect.  So they did their testing for signal levels, and ... our installation was perfect.  That's because, of course, we've had two recent visits from other Comcast techs to fix the intermittent problems we'd been having, and in the course of doing that they replaced (literally) every coaxial connector between the tap on the utility pole and our modem.  They also bonded our cable ground to the power ground.  Some combination of this fixed our intermittent problem – we haven't had a single outage (not even for a few seconds) since the last part of that effort.

So the gigabit Internet modem worked on the first go.  We thought we had a kind of weird problem with the web management interface, but that turned out to be a browser compatibility issue: it worked fine on Chrome, but not on Firefox or Safari.  With Dustin's test equipment we got 1020 mbps download and 44 mbps upload.  On Debbie's iMac (the most modern piece of gear we own), she gets 818 mbps download and 43 mbps upload.  Awesome!  Our iPads are getting 200 mbps download over WiFi, which we've never seen before.  Out in my office I'm still limited to 100 mbps down because of my underground backhaul being limited to that speed, but I am getting 40 mbps upload.

But my favorite part of getting the new gigabit Internet has nothing to do with the speed.  It's a privilege derived from being one of the first.  I now have in my position the cell phone numbers of Dustin and his supervisor – and an invitation to call for help directly should I need it.  They'd also like feedback of any kind.  They'll probably regret giving me these numbers.  Or maybe they'll change their numbers after a while.  But I'm cherishing the thought that I won't have to go through the automated voice messaging system to get to a tech the next time I have an issue...

Yesterday's UPS brought the components for my new 1,400 mbps radio backhaul link to my office.  Another project! :)  The antennae are larger than I'd imagined, over a foot in diameter.  Once I get those puppies up, I'll have super-duper high speed Internet in my office, too.  Woo hoo!

These days my attention to politics is mainly limited to trying to anticipate what the government might do that I need to react to in some manner (change investment strategy, buy more guns and ammo, change insurance, move to Mars or Estonia, etc.).  I can't help but learn about some “Trump stuff” along the way, and as always, it's a seriously mixed bag from my perspective.  Some things I really, really like (such as his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court).  Some things make me cringe (like inviting the evil Duterte to the White House).  Others demonstrate an ignorance of policy or politics that make me think he really is the blithering idiot the progressives make him out to be (like the timing of the Comey firing, or his tweets on trade policy).  What throws me the most, I think, is that he doesn't seem to have any of the motivations of the “normal” politicians I detest.  You'd think that might be a good thing.  But I can't figure out what his motivations are, either.  I've pretty much given up on trying to predict how he might decide to come down on any particular issue.  I've also pretty much concluded that he has no more power to get Congress to take action than Obama did (both came into office promising they'd change the way Washington worked, and neither were able to do so).  I won't be very surprised if he resigns tomorrow, nor will I be surprised if he declares martial law and sequesters Congress without food or water until they pass a budget, tax reform, and health care (I might actually support that move!).  Bottom line: planning in the age of Trump is even harder than in the age of Obama.  At least with Obama I could be fairly certain that he'd come down on the wrong side of every issue I cared about, from my perspective.  I have no idea at all what Trump is going to do!

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday with Mark T., who's starting the installation of a pop-up sprinkler system for our lawns and landscaping.  The first step is for him to plan where all the sprinkler heads will go, and to figure out what kind of head is needed for each spot.  I'd never really considered this before, but it's actually fairly complicated.  First there's the question of flow rate: the water laid down per square foot needs to be the same for all the sprinkler heads in any given zone (because they'll all be turned on-and-off simultaneously, and therefore need to complete their job in the same amount of time).  Then there's the “throw” needed for each sprinkler.  Our yard is very oddly shaped, so the sprinklers can't be placed in a regular pattern.  Another consideration for placement is to keep as much water off paved surfaces as possible – and that also means controlling how broad the pattern is (360°, 180°, etc.).  Yesterday, after lots of questions for me, he finished laying out all the sprinklers for our front yard and the “golf course”.  Those areas will take 141 sprinkler heads.  I'd have guessed perhaps a third of that!  He'll be laying out the back yard this morning, and there will likely be another 50 or so sprinkler heads back there. 

The booster pump, filters, and controllers for the irrigation system are all going to be mounted near our fuel tanks, on a concrete pad behind our outbuilding.  These need to be protected from the weather, so I've ordered an 8' x 10' cedar shed to contain them.  Assembling that will be yet another project, once it arrives!

I posted a few days ago about the scary escape of Cabo and Mako when a construction worker accidentally left one of our gates open.  Debbie had a brilliant (and simple!) idea the next day: to put signs up on all five of our gates asking people to keep them closed.  I ordered the signs the next day, and they arrived yesterday afternoon.  I put them up as my last work of the day.  They're painted cast iron, and should last longer than we do (though they may need painting every few years)...

Paradise ponders: 99 year old generator plant edition...

Paradise ponders: 99 year old generator plant edition...  Yesterday evening we had our celebratory dinner at Le Nonne's – a shared caprese for an appetizer, then I had chicken-and-ricotta ravioli in marinara, and Debbie had a pork chop special (three boneless chops with a lovely sauce that had butter, garlic, rosemary, lemon, and some other things we couldn't identify).  That was a very yummy meal, every bit of it.  We left nothing behind. :)

Earlier in the day, in between what felt like five dozen interruptions, I managed to cut the cedar boards and route the dovetails for one of the two frames I'm making for the basement cattery windows that open into our sun room.  To do that, I used the elevated dovetail jig that I finished preparing yesterday.  I did a trial fit of the boards, without glue, and they all fit snugly.  It looks like I had the router just a tad (maybe 1/50th inch) too high when routing the pin boards, but for this application (where the exterior joints won't be visible), that's not an issue at all – just something to remember for the next time I do it.  The snugness was good enough that I could carry the trial-fitted frame over to our house to test its fit into the window – and it was perfect.  I had measured the boards with the goal of 1/8" free space around the frame, to allow for some glue – and that's exactly what I have.  Yay!  Today I'll be cutting and routing the second frame and applying a light gray stain...

After our dinner last night we stopped at the Hyrum generating plant, six miles east of town up Blacksmith Fork Canyon.  We've driven past the generating plant many times, but last night they had the generator down for maintenance and they held an open house for curious locals.  Perfect for me!

When we arrived, we saw that there was a relatively small line outside – perhaps 20 people (mostly kids!).  We could also see that the inside was crowded and appeared to be on multiple levels.  All of this would be challenging for Debbie at the moment, so she decided to wait in the car while I took the little tour.  I waited outside with a happy, friendly crowd of locals for about 20 minutes and then the group inside came pouring out.  Among them were some people we know: Lizzie H., her husband, and her little brother A.J.  Lizzie's the daughter of our friend Michelle H., and she's pregnant with Michelle's first grandchild.  Lizzie told me, very excitedly, that they found out her baby is a girl. :)

The power plant was built in 1918, so it's 99 years old this year.  Walking inside this plant was like going back in time.  What's most amazing to me is that this generator is still in use after all this time!  It's owned by Hyrum city, and operated as a co-op.  When running, it produces 500kw, about 1/40th of the entire city's power consumption.  Mostly it provides power for all the municipal buildings, thereby saving the city's citizens the expense of the electrical power bill.  Yesterday was the first day it's been down for maintenance since we moved here three years ago, and I forced myself to stay up late (past 7:30 pm!) to go see it.

For the geeks, here's a brief explanation of what you're seeing in my photos below (in order):

1. A view of the generator's rotor and stator (both painted with red electrical insulating compound).  In normal operation it is uncovered like this.  The gray cylinder in the foreground is part of the casing for the commutator/brush assembly.
2. The commutator/brush assembly.  Again, the red is electrical insulation compound, and in normal operation it's uncovered like this.  I'm guessing that at night there's a nice sparky presentation here, and that the air in here is full of ozone.  
3. One side of the water turbine casing (the side toward the generator).
4. The water turbine governor.  This device, in particular, made me smile at it's construction.  All the electrical parts are open; no safety casings around anything.  Ditto with the rotating mechanical parts.  The job of the governor is to keep the turbine rotating at just the right speed so that the generator produces AC at 60 Hertz.  This means allowing more or less water into the turbine as the load on the generator changes.  I'm guessing that the load is basically constant at max these days, since the generator's capacity is such a small fraction of the city's need.  Nevertheless, this is a key component; the power produced really must be held steady at 60 Hertz, or all sorts of problems for customers will occur (not least of which is all their AC powered clocks will be wrong!).
5. A view of the turbine blades, through a maintenance port that was temporarily removed.  They're only a few inches wide, which surprised me – I was expecting something much larger.  Also, I was expecting the shaft to be vertical, as all the other water turbines I've seen were built that way (with the generator on top).  
6. The giant gate valve that controls the water entering the turbine.  The valve itself is the assembly below the large vertical cylinder.  That cylinder is a double-action piston that uses water to raise and lower the gate valve.  There's a hoist up there now because the valve “needs a little help” to be opened.  I believe this valve is used only for turning the turbine on and off, and not for speed control.  I'm not certain, though, because I couldn't get the attention of the busy (and all talked out!) host.  I suspect there are control louvers of some sort inside the turbine housing that can quickly change the turbine's speed and are more amenable to governor control than this very slow-acting gate valve would be.

In a little while I'm taking poor little Cabo to our vet.  Today is the day she gets spayed.  We can't give her any food or water this morning, so she's crated and whining piteously for her normal morning routine of deep drinking, bananas, and her morning kibble.  She's very confused, as this is the first day of her entire life when all three elements are missing...

Later this morning we're scheduled to have a new Internet connection installed.  While Clinton (the second tech to come visit us, to repair our intermittent connection) was here, he very casually mentioned that he believed gigabit Internet was now available in our area and being quietly rolled out.  I was skeptical, as we're pretty far out in the country, but on Monday I called Comcast to find out.  Lo and behold, it is available here!  Amazing!  The advertised speeds are 1000 mbps download and 35 mbps upload, both rather large improvements over our already good 230 mbps download and 12 mbps upload.  I ordered it, and it will be installed today.  That got me moving on another networking improvement I've been noodling about.  Two and a half years ago, when we built our barn, I put Ethernet in the ground between the house and the barn so I'd have Internet access in my barn loft office.  Because the barn and the house are on separate electrical systems, I had to install an isolater in that connection – and those are only available at speeds up to 100 mbps (at a reasonable price).  So I've been limited to that speed in my office.  With gigabit Internet to the house, that now looks crippling. :)  So I ordered a pair of Mimosa Networks radio backhaul links.  They'll give me an over-the-air link that can move 1,400 mbps, so I should be able to take full advantage of our gigabit Internet even in my office.  That pair of radio links is about half the cost of a gigabit isolater, which gets me to pondering about what a crazy world we live in these days.  Radio links cheaper than wired links – who knew?

Paradise ponders: an eventful 24 hours edition...

Paradise ponders: an eventful 24 hours edition...  Well, I didn't get far on my plans yesterday to start the cattery window frames.  Not far at all.  Events conspired...

First, I'm finding myself swamped with paperwork and phone calls of various kinds.  All just routine stuff, but I've been neglecting it and now there are starting to be consequences. :)  So I started catching up with all that, both yesterday and today.

Right in the middle of that paperwork, I got an unexpected text message from our mason, Randy Bingham.  He asked if I was home.  I replied that I was.  He said “We have your cap!”, meaning the rock slab that would form the roof of our little filling station.  I asked if he wanted to deliver it, and he said “We’re here right now!”  So I ran out to greet him and his partner Jeffrey.  The big chunk of rock weighs about 1,100 pounds, so they used their handy-dandy loader to put it in place.  Jeffrey's running the loader, and that's Randy with his back to me.  It's going to be a few weeks before they have time to put the rock veneer on the sides, but now we've got a roof!

The filling station presented me with a new challenge.  I've discovered that the height of the tanks doesn't provide enough pressure to operate the nice auto-closing nozzles I bought.  So now I've ordered a couple of fuel pumps that we'll mount in the block structure – which means the plumbers will have to re-do part of the plumbing.  It's always something...

While I was out with Randy and Jeffrey, I noticed some workers alongside the irrigation canal that runs along the east side of our property.  They were cleaning up the big piles of brush that had been left there by the canal cleaners a month or so ago.  I've been after them for three years now to clean up the mess they made, and finally they did it.  The workers did an especially nice job, too – right down to cleaning up the twigs with a leaf rake.  I've been planning to get a burn permit to burn those piles myself, as I'd given up on them cleaning it up.  Good thing I procrastinated: they did even better, picking it all up instead of burning it.  Nice!

Then we went to lunch at Los Primos with our friend Michelle H.  A most pleasant (and delicious!) lunch that was.  We tend to go on Tuesdays because that's the day they have our favorite menu item: vegetable beef soup.  Yesterday they had just one bowl left, which Michelle and I decided Debbie should have.  Our waiter saw our disappointment, and he told us the soup often runs out early in the day.  But ... he also said that if we called in the morning and told him we were coming in the afternoon (normally our big meal for the day), he'd reserve as many portions as we'd like.  Woo hoo!

I had a nice long (literally at the fence) conversation with my friend and neighbor Tim D.  He's recovering from back surgery, and doing very well, but his physical activity is strictly limited and he really hates that.  It's hard for him to stick to the guidelines his doctor gave him.

Debbie and I took a drive in the afternoon to see if we could spot a local bird that we really like: the yellow-headed blackbird.  We struck gold, and got several nice, long viewings of males – including one doing the full-on mating call and display behavior.  Nice!  We also saw large numbers of Canadian geese and white-faced ibis with their beautiful iridescent breeding plumage.  The photo at right (you'll have to click to embiggen it) shows one scene full of geese and ibis.  My finger is there to shield the lens from direct sunlight, as I was shooting straight into the evening sun.  We also saw a couple of other interesting things: a herd of buffalo, apparently being raised for the meat, and a young lady practicing steer roping.  Just driving through the bottoms of the Little Bear River is beautiful right now, with green everywhere and lots of flowers (especially around houses).

This morning we got an especially good piece of news for Debbie's recovery.  She just finished the third trial run (month-long) using a drug called Forteo that helps build back new bone for people with osteoporosis.   Her endocrinologist recommended it as the best drug for her situation.  After the two previous trial runs, she had to stop using it because her blood calcium levels got too high, which increases the risk of a heart attack.  Not good!  But after this trial (which we'd all agreed would be her last), her blood calcium levels were normal!  Yay!  This is mostly because she stopped taking calcium supplements and also stopped getting too much calcium in her diet.  She's now carefully monitoring her calcium intake to keep it within normal range, neither too high nor too low.  And apparently that was all it took to let her respond normally to Forteo.  So now she's going on it for the next two years, to get her bones built back up faster and stronger.  We were all primed for another round of bad news on this, so it was one of those very pleasant surprises for us to hear the good news.  Debbie is over-the-moon, and demanded a celebratory dinner tonight.  So we're headed to Le Nonne's at 5:30. :)

Paradise ponders: giant redwood boxes, ancient eyeballs, errant puppies, and bloody confusion edition...

Paradise ponders: giant redwood boxes, ancient eyeballs, errant puppies, and bloody confusion edition...  Well, we had quite a confused and stressful day yesterday.  Despite that, I managed to finish my giant redwood “box”, and I'm very pleased with how it came out.

The first step yesterday was to route a large groove on the inside of each of the pin boards and tail boards.  This groove would accept the “bottom” I made earlier from tongue-and-groove redwood 2x8s.  The groove needed to be 1.5" across and 0.55" deep.  In the first photo below, you can see my jig on the router table to make the groove in the tail boards (the short sides).  I fixed the fence so that the edge of the router bit toward me was 2.5" from the fence.  Then I clamped a long board very carefully so that there was exactly the width of the tail board plus 3/4" between it and the fence.  I'm using a 3/4" straight bit, so being able to move the tail board in-and-out 3/4" means I could cut a 1.5" wide groove.  Then I clamped a couple of “stopper boards” to the long board, in the right place so that the groove would be cut in all but the last 3/4" of each side of the tail board (so the groove would be “blind” - not visible from outside the box).  Finally, I raised the bit to exactly 0.55" high.  I'd never done anything like this before, so I spent considerable time triple-checking everything I did before I started removing wood.  Once I was happy with it, I lit off the router and carefully lowered a tailboard onto the bit.  After that I just moved the board around to route out everything within range of the stops I'd set up with the boards.  It was harder than I expected to move that board around, as the vacuum created by the dust collection system tried very hard to keep the board in one place. :)  When I stopped the router and pulled the tail board out, I miked the groove – and it was exactly right.  Amazing how well measuring works!

After cutting the grooves in all four sides (I had to move the stopper boards to do the pin boards), I was ready for a trial fit (right hand photo above).  This went very well.  The only real problem was that the two pin boards (the longer sides) and bowed slightly along their long axis, but I figured I could take that out in clamps.  And that's what you see in the first photo below – after slopping glue on as fast as I could, I assembled it all just as in the trial fit, and then clamped the crap out of it.  Twelve clamps later, all the bowing had been taken out, and I had a good fit all the way around.  This morning I took it out of the clamps, spent a couple of minutes with my belt sander smoothing out the finger joints, and voila! – my jig “elevator” is complete.  The last photo shows it all set up and ready to use, clamped to my bench and with the dovetail jig clamped on top.  Now I can easily handle the long boards I need for my next project, which I'll be starting today: cedar frames for the basement windows that are opened to the sun room.

When I was a much younger man, I was a co-founder of a business that made and marketed practice management software to optometrists and ophthalmologists.  As you can likely imagine, I met some interesting people during those eight years, people who knew an awful lot about human vision.  Some of them had instruments to measure all sorts of things about vision, and I had the opportunity to have my eyeballs measured in ways that most people never do.  I discovered several things about my eyes that I'd not previously known:

• My retinas had about 25% more photoreceptors in the macula of my eyes than the average person.  That meant my visual resolution, assuming my focus was optically corrected, was a bit better than average.
• My sensitivity to blue colors is about 55% better than average, mainly because the reason I have more photoreceptors in my macula is because I have many more blue receptors than most people do.  Not only is my sensitivity to blue higher, but I can see blue objects more sharply (for the same reason).  One interesting result of this, to me at least, is that I see certain colors – particularly those that most people call pink – as containing more blue.  That leads me to see shades of lavender and purple where others see pink.  It also lets me distinguish between more shades of green than most people can.
• My pupils can shrink to about 50% of the area that most people's pupils can.  I don't think anyone has ever noticed this when looking at me, but it has a pleasant consequence for me: I only feel the need for sunglasses when I'm in white-out conditions.  Bright sunny days I can easily handle.

Now at the same time I'm myopic (near-sighted) and I have moderately bad astigmatism.  That means I'm dependent on corrective lenses (eyeglasses for me) to get clear vision.  I've been wearing glasses since I was a wee lad; this is not at new phenomenon. :)  Now that I'm approaching being ancient (I'm almost 65), I've developed presbyopia (which nearly everyone does, eventually).  That means my eyes can't “accommodate” to focus at various distances like they used to be able to.  Consequently I've been wearing progressive lenses (“no-line bifocals”) for 15 years or so.  Presbyopia generally gets continually worse as you age, and mine has followed that pattern.  In the last few years it's gotten to the point where even with my progressive lenses I have difficulty with computer screens.  I work with my screens about 30" from my face, which is right in the middle of the transition between near and far vision on the progressive lenses.  At that point the field of clear vision is at it's narrowest.  The two screens I normally use occupy about a 90° field of view, so what I really need is the widest possible clear vision, not the narrowest.

So I finally caved in and bought myself a pair of single vision (that is, no bifocal) glasses with the prescription set for vision at about 30".  To get that prescription, I took the near “add” my eye doctor measured and halved it, which is approximately right.  I ordered the glasses from Zinni Optical (a Chinese company) on the advice of a friend who'd tried them and was happy with the results.  For $50 I got a pair of titanium frames with wide rectangular lenses, perfect for my application.  Yesterday I received them, and today I'm using them – and they are great.  They weigh next-to-nothing, the lenses work wonderfully, and I have relaxed, clear vision at my computer for the first time in a couple of years.  I wish I'd done this a long time ago...

The thing that stressed us the most yesterday was that both of our puppies (Cabo and Mako) escaped our back yard and disappeared from view.  This is our nightmare scenario: two incredibly athletic little puppies with absolutely no experience of the big bad world, out there somewhere on their own.  What happened is a construction worker left one of our gates open, and when I let the puppies out they discovered that very quickly.  We figured out that they were gone about 60 seconds after I let them out, but still in a walk around the house we could see nothing – nor did they respond to our agonized and frantic calls.  I got on my ATV and started driving around to places where I knew they had shown prior interest, but they weren't anywhere in sight.  Debbie called from our doorways.  Nothing.  Despondent, we were.

Then, a small miracle.  I spotted one of the puppies about a quarter mile away, running down a back road.  I hopped back on the ATV and intercepted him – it was Mako.  He came right to me; I leashed him and brought him home.  I called for Cabo, too, hoping she'd be nearby, but nothing.  After dropping off Mako I headed back out on a broader circuit of the general area where Mako was.  After a couple minutes of fruitless searching, Debbie called with wonderful news: Cabo had come to her as she called from our garage.

Bullet dodged.  Nightmare ended.  But our equanimity wasn't restored for quite some time...  This morning Debbie had a great idea: to get signs for all five of our gates, asking people to keep them shut.  That worker had no idea we had dogs in the back yard, so one can hardly blame him for not knowing that he should close it.  Furthermore, keeping dogs in a fenced yard is ... slightly unusual in these parts.  Most dogs run free, despite the risk to them from cars on roads – nearly incomprehensible to us, but nevertheless true.

Debbie was due to get blood drawn yesterday for some routine tests.  We drove the 12 miles up to the hospital lab around noon, only to find that the lab had no “orders” for blood work on her.  Argh!  We tried calling her doctor's office to get those orders re-transmitted (for we were certain that had already been done), but nobody was answering and we didn't get a call back after waiting a bit.  So back home we went.  Later, the doctor's office called us back, verified that the orders had already been sent, but they went ahead and re-transmitted them anyway.  Shortly later, the lab called us to let us know that they'd found the order – but it was the wrong one (an older “standing” order for quarterly checks).  Sheesh.  So we drove up to the hospital again, just after finding Mako and Cabo, and now we'd found that they had both orders.  Finally, they drew blood and got the tests underway...

So of course we had an ice cream cone at Aggie's Creamery. :)  Yummy, they were!

Fingers done!

Fingers done!  And they fit together very nicely.  After I was completely finished and feeling good about the result, I had another brainstorm – a way to accomplish the same thing using the router table.  That would have been substantially easier, with no chiseling required.  I think the capabilities of the router table have not yet been integrated into my woodworking “database”!  :)

Working on the big box...

Working on the big box...  It's really a way to elevate my dovetail jig, but it will look like a big box, anyway.  I ran into a slight problem with my box-building plans yesterday.  My original notion was to cut dovetails into the sides of the big box using the dovetail jig itself.  That would have the dovetail jig “bootstrapping” itself into a more capable tool.  'Twas an excellent idea, but sadly there's a limitation of the dovetail jig that makes that plan impossible: it's limited to wood that's 7/8" thick, and I'd already bought the redwood to build it out of 2x8s (and those are roughly 1 1/2" thick).  Dang it!

Dovetails or fingers are really the “right” way to build this thing – they're by far the strongest kind of joint I could make.  The fallback would be to buy corner braces and install them on the inside corners of the box – doable, but much less interesting than a real joint.  So I decided to make a fool of myself and make finger joints by hand.  I chose 7/8" wide fingers (only because the math worked out nicely) and started with my tail boards (the two short sides of the box).  The first step was to use my bandsaw to cut the sides of the fingers (first photo below).  That was easy enough for these boards, but it will be considerably trickier when I go to saw the pin boards – those pins will have to fit tightly between the tail board fingers.

The next step was to chisel out the holes where the pins will go, between the fingers of the tail boards.  In the second photo you can see the beginnings of the first one I chiseled out, and the third photo shows it finished.  That was a lot of work!  After putting my thinking cap on, I came up with the idea of drilling 3/4" holes right at the ends of the notches I was chiseling out (fourth photo).  I theorized that I'd have much less material to remove via chisel, and it would be easier.  It was (see fifth photo for the results of five hammer blows on the chisel).  Much easier – so easy that I finished the remaining three notches in less time than it took me to chisel just the first one (in the sixth photo)!

The last photo shows my working setup for the chiseling.  I'm using a 3/4" chisel and a dead fall hammer (love those things!).  Just below the chisel in the photo is a diamond sharpening stone; I hone that chisel frequently as sharp is very much better than dull when you're cutting directly across grain as I am here.  The tail board I'm working on is clamped to my workbench, but there's a spoil board under it so I don't gouge my bench when chiseling.

The finished C-clamp rack...

The finished C-clamp rack...  Per a reader's request, here it is (at right).  The photo is a bit of an optical illusion: the rack is actually perfectly level, though it looks like the right side is slanted sharply downward.  What's really going on is that it's mounted on the wall encasing a set of stairs (to my loft and office), and the bottom of that wall is slanted sharply up!

Paradise ponders: spraying, cable connectors, dovetails, flowering trees, and weird parts edition...

Paradise ponders: spraying, cable connectors, dovetails, flowering trees, and weird parts edition...  Yesterday I sprayed our yard with 2,4-D to knock down the dandelions and a few other noxious weeds.  Later this year the fellow working on my sprinklers is planning to spray something that kills a broader range of weeds in an attempt to recover the south two acres of our lawn.  I also sprayed the yard of one of my neighbors (Alan and Nikki L.) for the same reason.  My 60 gallon sprayer (with an eight foot wide boom) that I tow behind my ATV really makes this easy.

Yesterday and today we spent most of the day sans Internet – our intermittent problem seemed to have come back.  I had another pleasant experience with a Comcast tech online, and we quickly determined that we needed another tech to come visit us and do some more troubleshooting.  At the time we made the appointment our service was completely knocked out.  Of course, just one hour before the tech made it here it all came back up just fine.  However, that tech had monitored the signal strength coming from the router back to Comcast, and he noted that it was far too low.  So when Clint (the tech) got here, he went straight to work replacing every old connector in the line, as in his experience that is the major cause of such problems.  He also noted that the ground of our line wasn't “bonded” (connected) to the house's power ground, which can cause problems – so he bonded it at the power pole.  Result: we're now getting 230 mbps downstream and 12 mbps upstream.  The downstream speed is faster than we've ever seen here.  I'm hopeful this means that Clint actually found the problem.  If not, he says the next step is to run new wire from the pole to the house, as that's about the last thing left that could be intermittent...

Today I was actually able to build a pair of dovetail joints.  The part I needed (at right) came in on Thursday night, so I finally had everything needed to make my dovetail jig work.  That weird little gadget fits onto my Bosch router to let it follow the templates on the jig.  It's a Bosch adapter that allows quick changes of the bushing (the little part with the circular writing on it).

My first dovetail joint with setup is at left.  Rather than just throw away the test boards, I made them into a pair of brackets to be wall mounted and holding a piece of 1/2" galvanized pipe to hang my C-clamps on.  They're being glued in the photo; tomorrow I'll sand the joints a bit and I'm done.  That jig worked a treat – by far the easiest and best dovetails I've ever made...

There are trees in bloom all over the valley right now.  Some of them right in our neighborhood are below.  The first two photos are of the same tree.  It had so many bees in it that the ground below it was vibrating from the sound of their wings.  The third photo is of my neighbor's tree, one of two right in front of his house – gorgeous, they are.  The last photo is one of four in our yard, right next to our barn.  Their smell will knock you off your feet, so sweet and strong, especially early in the morning...

Paradise ponders: first mowing edition...

Paradise ponders: first mowing edition...  Yesterday I fought the battle of the lawnmower.  Successfully, too – not long before dark I actually finished mowing our yard.  But it was not easy getting to that point!

First, all four tires were flat.  I lugged my little air compressor out to the shed where I kept the lawnmower over winter, and soon that problem was fixed.  It must be a slow leak, because this morning they all still look good.  Then I tried to start the mower, but the battery was dead.  So I jump-started the mower with Debbie's car and some jumper cables, and it started right up.  Ran it for fifteen minutes, turned it off, and tried to start it again.  It was deader than a door-nail.  Sigh.  Dead battery (two and a half years old, and frozen over winter – so fair enough).  Ran to NAPA and bought a new battery (and had fun with the staff there who wanted to see the Model X).  Ran back home, threw in the battery, and zoom – off we went.

Engaged the mower blade and there was a horrendous bang! and the sound of an unloaded gas engine.  Some quick inspection and I found that the main drive belt had broken.  Off to the local hardware store, where I found – amazingly! – precisely the belt I needed.  Back home, disassemble half the mower, install the new belt, put the mower back together, discover two parts left over.  Disassemble the mower again, find the place for those two parts, put it all back together, and off we go.

About half the yard later, I notice that the grass is no longer being mowed on the left side of my path with the mower.  The mower has two blades under the deck, so the left blade must have a problem.  Start investigating, and in the process I put my right index finger on the drive pulley for that left blade.  I hear a loud ssssss and I smell cooking meat.  My finger!  The pulley is so hot it almost glows.  A little more investigation – very carefully! – and I discover that the pulley is slightly loose on it's shaft.  It's held on by a simple nut, so I just need to tighten it, I think.  No problem!  I dig through my socket wrenches (the only kind of wrench that would work on this recessed nut) and discover that the nut is bigger than the biggest socket I own.  I mike it, and find that it's 7/8".  My biggest socket is 3/4".  Sigh.  Off to the hardware store I go, to buy a bigger socket.  They don't sell 7/8" sockets for 3/8" drive wrenches, which is what I have.  Sigh.  So I buy a Craftsman 1/2" drive socket set, and now I have sockets from 3/4" to 1 1/2".  Back home I go.  One quarter turn of the wrench later, the pulley is tight again.

Back out to the lawn, and I finished the rest of it without incident.  But now I wonder what will happen to me when I try to mow next week!

Afterwards Debbie and I wandered up to Aggie's Creamery to get an ice cream cone.  When I came back to the car with our cones, a young man (who had been lounging with another young man) ran over and asked me how I open the door.  I explained to him that the car sensed my fob and opened itself as I approached, but what he really wanted to know was how the door handle worked.  So I explained how you just push it to open the door.  The two young men were clearly delighted by seeing a Tesla, and Debbie was laughing about that.  Then she started opening the falcon wing doors and the trunk just to get a reaction from them, which she most certainly did.  Lots of fun!  :)

It's not just American history we don't know...

It's not just American history we don't know...  We're just as ignorant about Mexican history!  Click image at right to embiggen.  Hint: the tiny sliver of yellow is the correct answer.

Paradise ponders, gluey spray edition...

Paradise ponders, gluey spray edition...  I'll be working out in our yard most of today.  The weather is gorgeous, and I've got a backlog of things to do – starting with mowing.  If I have time, I'll also be spraying our yard and that of two of our neighbors.

But I did get a bit done this morning in the wood shop.  First I pulled the three boards I glued up yesterday out of the clamps and checked it out (first photo).  The assembly came out beautifully, with the homemade tongue-and-groove keeping the boards in perfect alignment.  Then I continued a project I've been working on intermittently: installing brackets to hold my clamp collection.  I have one more bracket to go, then this effort will be done.  Call it the “wall o’clamps!”

Awesome...

Awesome...  I'm sad to know that Cassini's mission is over in September.  I've been following it closely for so long now that it's become part of my daily routine.  At least it's going out with a bang, a big one!

“First chips” on the router table...

“First chips” on the router table...  After several hours of careful assembly, lining up, and tests on scraps, I decided I was ready for the first real use of the router table.  I'm building an add-on for my dovetail jig: basically a sturdy wooden box, 40" wide by 24" deep, and about 7" tall.  This will be clamped on one long side to the top of my workbench, and then the dovetail jig will be clamped on the other long side, about 24" higher than the workbench.  This will let me make dovetails on longer boards, up to about 63" long.  The first dovetail project I've planned has some 54" boards, so I'll need this.

In the process of testing and aligning the router table, I connected my dust collection system for the first time.  When I ran a piece of wood through, I thought there was something wrong – there were zero chips flying around the room.  Turns out that the suction from the dust collection system gets sort of concentrated by the relatively small diameter hole around the router bit (about 2.5" diameter).  This creates a very high speed air flow, so high that no chips at all escape.  That's very sweet compared with a hand-held router that spews chips at supersonic velocities in all directions!  After all the routing I did today you'd never even know I was woodworking – not a bit of sawdust or wood chips on me.

The “bottom” of this box (which will actually be vertical when it's in use) I'm making from 3 lengths of 2x8 redwood.  Ordinarily I would use dowels to align them, just as I did on my recent stairs project.  Now that I have a router table, though, another possibility arises: homemade tongue-and-groove.  First I used a straight 3/4" bit to route the tongue into two boards, with the board down flat on the table (result in first photo below).  That worked great – when I used a micrometer to measure the tongue's width (the critical bit), it was between 0.47" and 0.49" – and I was aiming for 0.48".  Yay!  Then I used a straight 1/2" bit to route the grooves in two boards (second photo), this time with the board up on edge.  The bit held the width to between 0.50" and 0.54" (again, with the micrometer).  I suspect the larger widths are due to my errors in holding the board flat against the fence.  Still, those are actually very small errors.  Then I slopped some glue on them and clamped them up (third photo).  The bags you see are 25 pound bags of lead shot; they're keeping the boards against the pipes to prevent any bowing.

The edges of the three boards are perfectly aligned, notably better than dowel pinning would be when done by hand (I no longer have a dowel pinning jig, though I think I'll end up getting one.  The process of routing the tongue-and-groove was almost effortless by comparison with dowel pinning.  I like... :)

Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy...

Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy ... and default on $73 billion in “municipal debt”.  The financial situation in Puerto Rico is complicated, not least because of its status as a U.S. Territory.  However, the fundamental cause of their problem is actually closely akin to the problems faced by many American cities: decades of spending beyond their most optimistic means.  I expect to see a dozen or more American cities taking the same route over the next decade, especially as the underfunded pension funds run out of money to pay their pensioners.

I have stayed away from municipal bonds as an investment for over 15 years now.  As my mother-in-law might say, they look worser every day...

Lindzen on climate alarmism...

Lindzen on climate alarmism...  If you're not familiar with him, Richard Lindzen is a well-known atmospheric scientist at MIT who's long been cautious about global warming (or climate change) claims.  I just ran across a detailed article he wrote a few days ago.  Here's one sample paragraph:

Sea level rise:

Globally averaged sea level appears to have been rising at the rate of about 6 inches a century for thousands of years. Until the advent of satellites, sea level was essentially measured with tide gauges which measure the sea level relative to the land level. Unfortunately, the land level is also changing, and as Emery and Aubrey note, tectonics are the major source of change at many locations. Beginning in 1979 we began to use satellites to measure actual sea level. The results were surprisingly close to the previous tide gauge estimates, but slightly higher, but one sees from Wunsch et al (DOI: 10.1175/2007JCLI1840.1) that one is in no position to argue that small differences from changing methodologies represents acceleration. Regardless, the changes are small compared to the claims that suggest disastrous changes. However, even in the early 1980’s advocates of warming alarm like S. Schneider argued that sea level would be an easily appreciated scare tactic. The fact that people like Al Gore and Susan Solomon (former head of the IPCC’s Scientific Assessment) have invested heavily in ocean front property supports the notion that the issue is propagandistic rather than scientific.

The whole thing is an excellent and sober summary of the problems with climate alarmism.  No matter what your position or beliefs on climate change are, you'll learn something by reading this piece...

Paradise ponders, joinery jig jollies and vampire doctors edition...

Paradise ponders, joinery jig jollies and vampire doctors edition...  The past couple of days I've been assembling and learning to use two joinery jigs that I purchased.  I'm still working on them; they're fairly complicated, both to put together and to use.  One of the jigs is for dovetail and finger joints, the other for mortise and tenon joints. The photo on the left is my new dovetail and finger joint jig, before I assembled it.  On the right is the mortise-and-tenon jig, mostly assembled.  Both of these came with large bags of parts, some of which had to be assembled, and some of which are needed for certain modes of use.  Both also came with thick manuals, well-written and illustrated, showing you how to do all sorts of different things using the jigs.  It will be a while before I feel competent with these. :)  Fortunately, basic sorts of joints look pretty easy to do.

Building these jigs involves a little woodworking, which I wasn't expecting at all.  The most involved thing I have to do is to build a sturdy wooden box that can lift the jigs a couple of feet above the 35" high surface of my bench.  That will let me put joints in boards that are up to 5' long, which I actually need for the very first set of dovetail joints I'm making.

Yesterday Debbie and I had a joint doctor's appointment with our general practitioner.  I had a few things to talk with her about, including my desire to check on my blood B12 levels after adjusting the dose of injected B12 this year.  So the vampire lady there came after me with four vials of blood to fill.  First she stabbed me in the inside right elbow, and got three and a half vials when that vein gave out.  So then she stabbed me in the left inside elbow and got the remaining vial.  Truthfully I barely felt the needle; she was very good.  But I walked out looking like I'd been in a battle, with black wrap over big wads of cotton on both elbows.  Got a big bruise on the right one, too.

Another SpaceX success...

Another SpaceX success...  They launched an NRO classified payload today, and recovered the first stage by a landing at Cape Canaveral.

Simply amazing.  If I were a young man right now, I'd be doing everything I could to get a job at SpaceX.  If I were at NASA, I'd be wondering why.

Webcast of today's launch.  I never get tired of watching these things...

Walking down memory lane again...

Walking down memory lane again...  Just saw the latest Ken Shirriff post on reverse-engineering the 76477 audio chip.  Oh, man, did that bring back some memories!  I ran into that chip when doing a consulting gig to design electronic pinball machines in the late '70s.  Back then the idea of an electronic pinball machine was pretty radical, and in many parts, heretical.  One of the biggest complaints players had about the few electronic machines in existence was the horrible audio (and it really was horrible!).  The fellow I was consulting for was willing to spend some money to solve that problem, and we quickly focused on the 76477 as a practical solution.  We ended up with four of them in our design, all being controlled by a Z80 and a board full of analog electronics to supplement the 76477.  We got it to the point of slightly less than horrible, but certainly nowhere near the mechanical noise nirvana of an old fashioned solenoid-and-relay pinball machine...

Paradise ponders: router table and sushi edition...

Paradise ponders: router table and sushi edition...  Per a reader's request, a photo (at right) of our new oven, installed.  Above it is the microwave I installed a couple months ago.  Note the walnut trim strip between the microwave and the oven – to our surprise, I didn't need to modify that strip to accommodate the new oven.  The old oven and the new oven are less than 1/16" different in height!

Well, the remaining parts for the router table were delivered on Friday afternoon, as planned.  Yesterday morning I used them to completely finish the router table (at left).  Most of this work was trivially easy, but one part was ridiculously hard.  In the photo you can see a rectangular shaped plate with a circular hole in the middle through which the router spindle projects.  That plate is cast iron (same as the rest of the table), but it sits on four bolts in the corners that are used to adjust its height.  The idea is that you need to match – exactly – the height of the surrounding table.  Well, that's easier said than done!  I found myself making adjustments of as small as a tenth turn on those bolts.  They're extremely awkward to reach, from through a small door in the enclosure underneath the table top.  It took me nearly two hours to get them perfect enough to make me happy.  Those bolts have jam nuts on them, but I hope they don't move!  The crank handle at the left top engages with a nut visible just to the right of the router spindle.  Turning that nut slowly raises and lowers the router assembly.  This is a very nice way of setting the height of the bit.  Overall I'm very pleased with this router table: it's solid, has an absolutely flat and smooth table, the fence is very nicely done, and the router lifter is definitely the cat's meow.  I've only used it on a few test pieces so far, but worked beautifully on those...

Yesterday afternoon we went out to celebrate two things: me finishing the router table (what a kit that was!) and Debbie doing her first day of good exercise since her most recent surgery.  Debbie had a small beer and a noodle dish she managed to eat entirely.  There was a lot of happy noises and smiles from her side of the table.  I had the sashimi at right (hamachi, sake, maguro, and white "tuna" (escolar).  All delicious!  I also had a rainbow roll with the same four fish.  I am so glad we found out about sushi at Black Pearl, as it's by far the best in our area (at least, the best of all those I've discovered!).

A wall around California...

A wall around California...  I suspect the majority of the population of the Mountain States would think this was a very good idea!