I was doing some simple woodworking recently, and I found myself pondering power tools. In my humble opinion, the greatest power tool (for woodworking) is the power sander.

Saws? Modern hand saws are excellent, with high-quality steel that remains sharp. At my sister's timbersports competitions, they sometimes show off for the crowd that a quality crosscut saw will cut substantially faster than an off-the-shelf chainsaw.

Drills? While an electric drill is great for tight quarters, those generally only occur when you're modifying existing things. For new work, two of the three hand-powered drills work fine. The bit and brace gives power for even big bits, the reciprocating plunge drill does fine for quick small holes, and the eggbeater drill is kind of a counterexample, but whatever.

Hammers? Yes, you can get power nailers. They're faster for doing things where you have to put in lots of identically-angled nails, like flooring, but they have only a small speed advantage over a traditional hammer, and a substantial cost penalty both up-front and per nail.

But the sander. Ah, the sander. Sanding by hand is a boring, tedious, laborious task. It takes hours to do it right. But an orbital sander or belt sander will cut 95% or more of the time required for that tedious task. Hooray for power sanders!

(P.S. The lathe probably deserves an honorable mention, because treadle lathes are also much slower than power lathes. But it's a specialized tool not found in the typical workshop- even professionals often don't need one.)

Posted by: Boviate at 05:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 257 words, total size 2 kb.

As heating season started, our furnace did not. It wasn't completely nonfunctional, but it would only fire up once or twice a day. It would run until the thermostat turned it off again, and then it wouldn't start again for anywhere from ten to forty hours.

I did some poking at it, but as a matter of Operational Risk Management, I didn't want to actually take apart a device that could very easily burn the house down and/or cause the house to explode. So we called a local HVAC contractor.

It took a while to get him over to visit, what with it being the start of heating season. Once he was here, it took about an hour of diagnosis to discover that the fan motor for the secondary heat exchanger was sticking, probably from bad bearings. It could be replaced, for $400, but the furnace itself dated from the early 1980s. So we decided to spend about $3000 on getting a new, high-efficiency model installed. The old one was also high-efficiency, but the new one nevertheless promised additional energy savings. The gas efficiency is about the same for both models, but the new one's fan motors are better, and for a forced-air heating system the fans use a surprisingly large chunk of electricity.

Anyway, it took another two weeks or so for them to free up two technicians to spend all day installing the new furnace. They also sprayed expanding foam into a number of passages from the basement to the first floor, around plumbing and whatnot, and then spread some sealing gunk over every joint it the ductwork in the basement. The solvent stunk up the house for a couple of days, but the effect was quite noticeable: our basement is now at least five degrees colder, because less heated air is leaking into it.

As long as we were having the furnace replaced, I wanted to get another project done. The front of the second story had a sash window that was single pane and terribly drafty. I hired a carpenter/handyman that had done some good work for my future sister-in-law to install a new, double-pane window up there. He did a fine job, and I ended up paying him $15 less than the estimate because the window opening was perfectly square, meaning he didn't need to spend any time shimming. Finding anything perfectly square in a new house is unusual enough, let along in a house that's in the neighborhood of 110 years old, and was built cheap in the first place!

So anyway, the house is better heated now, and the upstairs is less drafty. I'm pleased going into this winter.

Future projects, some for me, some for professionals:

• Add insulation
• Replace front and back doors
• Repair cracks in concrete driveway and walkway
• Add bookshelves. Many bookshelves. Many many bookshelves
• Remove disused gas heater in basement & re-route gas lines
• Replace two-conductor wiring with three-conductor wiring
  
• Upgrade house service power from 100amps to 150amps
  
• Cat door in bathroom [I'm joking. Somewhat.]
• Second bathroom, probably in the basement
• Exterior outlet on the front of the house
  

Posted by: Boviate at 09:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 545 words, total size 3 kb.

As noted in the comments, both kittens have found new homes. The vet estimated they were about nine weeks old when we acquired them, which means my guess was quite respectably close– I went with ten weeks.

Annoyingly, although I inspected the kittens when they arrived at our house, I apparently didn't do so well enough. The vet also noticed that one of the kittens had fleas. This has led to a frenzy of vacuuming, and poor Aria (our "keeper" adult cat) is going to be stuck with a flea collar for a while. She hates collars, but I suspect she'd hate fleas even more.

Posted by: Boviate at 10:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 107 words, total size 1 kb.

Yesterday I had to be at work at 0700. I left at 1900 with the expectation that I would have to rush home, change clothing, then attend a community theater production with my fiancée. She's been looking forward to it. We originally were going to see it last week, but my boss called and asked if I could work instead, so we rescheduled.

Anyway, as I was leaving work, I got a call from the aforementioned fiancée. She wanted to warn me that when I got home, the number of cats in the house was different.

Her aunt Beverly had found two kittens meowing on her porch earlier in the day, and knowing that we already had a cat, sent the two little ones over packed in Bev's dog's crate. (I do not know if the dog was consulted.) So now we've got two kittens in a crate for the weekend, because the ASPCA is closed for the weekend.

I inspected and determined that we've got one male and one female, age somewhere in the vicinity of eight or ten weeks, i.e. shortly post-weaning. They appear to be siblings, and comfortable with humans. My hypothesis is that they're siblings that were kicked out of the house once they were old enough to have a vague chance at survival. I could be wrong and they are friendly ferals, but I would think if they were old enough to get kicked out by their mother, then they would have split up as well.

So anyway, I got home, met two kittens, changed clothing, and we went to the Ghostlight Theatre. Tonight's show was "The Deep End of the Dark", a horror story for five characters camping on an island. It was written by the theater company's manager/creative director, who was also playing one of the parts.

I found myself terribly bored. Part of the problem was that I was hungry and tired. But also the whole thing was terribly predictable- I knew who the killer was and why he did it at about the ten minute mark, and I knew how the killings were going to be accomplished by the twenty minute mark. Plus the writing was just not good, with much of the dialog sounding quite unnatural.

After the show we went home and socialized with the kittens. My future sister-in-law came over to coo at them, and despite our intention to merely foster the kittens for the weekend, my fiancée and her sister named them Sophie and Marcus. That's not a good sign.

Our existing cat, Aria, is not at all pleased with these interlopers. We're keeping them separated, so she keeps hissing, growling, nipping at people trying to pet her, and occasionally retreating to high shelves and glaring at all and sundry. I'm sympathetic, as I would be quite irate if two strangers moved into my house without so much as a by-your-leave, and I was prevented from ejecting them.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:35 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 492 words, total size 3 kb.

I've rejoined the ranks of the gainfully employed. I'm not exactly in my dream job, but it'll hold body and soul together.

I'm working for Command Security, which is a security guard provider. Due to my education and military background, I'm not the kind of guard that stands in a bank to deter robbers.

Rather, I'm the kind of guard that sits in a multinational bank's security headquarters. I'm a "console operator" which means I have a computer and a telephone with a disturbing number of incoming lines. When a security alarm is tripped at any of this bank's hundreds of North American branches or ATMs, the phone rings and it shows up on my computer. I then check to see if other alarms are activating at that location and remotely view the location's cameras. If something untoward seems to be occurring, I can call the local fuzz. I've been doing it for two weeks so far and the only thing that's legitimately tripped multiple alarms is a pair of cats that got locked into a branch overnight. We figure they snuck in the doors with a customer and hid out from the staff. Either that or a staff member brought them to work and they got loose.

While that work's full-time for now, Command Security may mix-and-match my 40 hours per week with work at the local airport. I'd be manning the service vehicle gate. Which is to say, when the Cinnabon in the airport concourse needs a resupply of that white slime that they claim is frosting, a delivery truck has to pull up to an airport loading dock. My job will to be to ensure that the truck is loading with disgusting white slime and not with explosives, terrorists, or thieves. The latter is the biggest concern, as stuff worth shipping by air is almost always very valuable, and there have been some multimillion-dollar airport heists in the past.

I haven't started that yet because we're waiting on the TSA to finish my background checks. (The bank checked me too, but being a business they were a lot faster about it. They're probably more thorough too.) For the TSA security check I had to fill out a long and hilarious form, upon which I averred that I had not been convicted of the following crimes:

• Treason
• Sedition
• Murder committed on an aircraft or at an airport
  
• False construction of an aircraft

Posted by: Boviate at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 615 words, total size 4 kb.

About twenty-five of my friends and acquaintances went on a trip to Allegheny State Park last weekend. Most of them stayed in some amazingly cushy cabins, but three of us decided to show them how it's done and went tent camping.

We're kind of hyper-competitive, too. So the goal was to be visibly and obviously better off. Now, we couldn't beat them on sleeping comfort, what with the cabins having electric heaters and mattresses on beds. So we went with cuisine as our plan, and brought about triple the food necessary, then proceeded to cook it over an amazing twenty-first century camping stove, the Biolite CampStove. It's an eight-inch tall bundle of wizardry- it's a stove that burns twigs. The heat generates electricity, which it uses to power a fan to give you amazing heat from said twigs, plus spare electricity to power up electronic devices via a USB port. I'm sure the original intent was hiking GPSes, but they're not dumb, and all the advertising materials show it charging smartphones.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.

Prepping for my upcoming camping trip, I pulled out the family Whisperlite and gave it a try. The Whisperlite is a backpacking stove made by the good folks at MSR; it's ultra-light and built to last. It can be completely disassembled in the field if need be.

However, the particular Whisperlite I was using is old enough to drive. And to vote. And to drink. It won't be long until it can serve in the US House of Representatives. Which is to say, it needs a few replacement parts— the pressurization pump's leather gasket is not doing well, and there are a few other bits that look iffy. I serviced it according to the manual, and managed to get it to start, but it wouldn't maintain a burn.

This isn't a huge deal, because the trip this weekend is car camping, and I'll just take a Coleman propane burner stove. But it'd be nice if I could get the Whisperlite working for an upcoming backpacking trip that we've been contemplating.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 171 words, total size 1 kb.

I try hard not to anthropomorphize our cat too much, but just now I was in the basement, building some wooden shelves that I'm going to give to a friend. As I was working, Aria sat on a piece of carpet and watched with intense concentration. I can only imagine that was how I looked when I was six years old and watching my father in his workshop.

Also, on a barely related note, when I picked up the wood from Lowes I had neglected to bring my measuring tape, but I took their word for it that a 60" trim piece was, in fact, 60" long. Alas, I am too trusting. Also, alas, the opening sentence to this paragraph reminds me that I have a tendency to write overly long sentences with an excessive number of clauses, with this terminal sentence being another example, although undoubtedly an unnecessary one for a reader of your evident perspicacity.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 167 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm going camping this upcoming weekend, so I stopped by my father's house to collect some of my camping gear from out of the basement. (I borrowed some of his stuff too.) I wondered aloud what had happened to the old "camp kitchen" that my father had made many years ago; I figured it had been discarded during some change of vehicles, as we'd owned a station wagon when it was made, and perhaps it didn't fit into a minvan.

Backing up a little, a "camp kitchen" is a box. The front folds down flat to provide a working surface, the top folds up to provide access, and the inside of the box is filled with shelves for plates, silverware, drinkware, cookware, utensils, paper towels, etc. The bigger the box, the more stuff can be put inside.

My father was surprised that I thought the old camp kitchen was gone, as it was right in front of me on the shelf as we were talking. Perhaps I'd overlooked it?

No, that wasn't it. I'd seen that box perfectly well, but it was obviously too small to be the old camp kitchen. The one I remembered was so big I couldn't get my arms around it! The box my father was pointing out was only a few cubic feet, I could carry it under one arm.

Reading this, perhaps you are chuckling in the same way my father was. I guess my memories of the box's size were formed when I was six years old or so, and never updated.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 263 words, total size 1 kb.

One of my buddies reminded me that today is the ten-year anniversary of my arrival at Parris Island. It somehow seems both more recent and more distant. Memories are strange like that.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.