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GRAFFITI -- February 23, 2004 thru February 29, 2004>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
 
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February 23, 2004
0648 - Good morning. Yesterday was a very productive day. We finished with the shopping by 1030, and I started in on the projects. First I worked outside. On the fence at the left side of the house (stage left, on the right when viewed from the street), there were some vine-like things that had been weaving their way through the boards and decorative topper. This isn't a fence designed to support such things, and the vines were destroying the fence. So I cut them all out, then rebuilt the bits of fence that had been pulled out of alignment. Then I moved into the backyard and went on poop patrol. I hadn't really done anything in the backyard since moving in. It's been too cold, and covered with snow most of the time. So there was an accumulation of about three months worth. Good workout for the legs and back. Finally for the outside chores, I staked out the place where the garden is going to be. I've set aside an area 10 feet wide by 48 feet long. Next weekend I'll get out there, take up the sod and rototill in some soil amendments. I'll probably box it in with some pressure-treated pine, and put up a low fence to keep dogs and un-ambitious animals out. I've also got to figure out a watering scheme that doesn't bankrupt us. I'll probably put in a couple of banks of weeper hose, and some automatic timers. That took me up to 1300 hours.
Then I went down to the basement. Actually I went into the garage, and took the table saw and workbench into parts small enough to transport down the stairs. Then I ferried everything down and started framing in the new wall. Unfortunately, I don't have a hammer drill, so bolting the plate down to the floor took an inordinate amount of time. There was also a modicum of cursing and other inventive invective. But I'd rather work hard to do it right once, rather than have to do it over, later. And this way, there's no way I'll ever want to take that up. Really. The other fun bit is that so far, I've estimated my materials pretty precisely. I used all of the allotted 2x4 and 1x2 lumber, as planned. Next up is putting up sheet rock on the outside of the wall. Then I'll pick up some insulation and put it in the wall, more for noise absorption than any other reason. With the insulation in place, then I'll line the inside of the wall with masonite pegboard. Then I'll set the door. That should be a nice week's worth of evenings, don't you think?
Of course, there's not much computer time with projects like this, but soon, soon. In the meantime, there will be pictures, of course. Oh, hey, I forgot to mention. Most of the seeds from the first lot have germinated. I'll try for a snap of that tomorrow. Today I'm off to Gaithersburg, with a late-afternoon stop back in Silver Spring for another client, to take care of a browser issue on my way home. I guess I'd best be about it. Have a great day!
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February 24, 2004
0721 - Good morning. Yesterday was a fairly successful day. In the morning and early afternoon, I managed to help patch up a couple of dangling items left from the busy time last week. One of those items was a batch of servers that needed static routes to see a specific subnet and exchange information with their counterparts. That's easy (from a Windows command prompt - it's one of the few things I've ever seen that didn't appear to have a GUI counterpart): route add destination mask netmask gateway [metric n]. Well, that's great, and everything worked fine last week. But there's the problem of reboots. Yes, yes, I know... Sometimes you even have to reboot a Windows box. And when you do, that route isn't there anymore. Hmmm. Mike found that the MS KnowledgeBase reminds us of something missing from the printed documentation. Use the -p flag to indicate persistence. So the command now reads like this: route -p add destination mask netmask gateway [metric n], and when listing the routes via this command: route add, it's listed up in the active routes, as well as below, in a list of persistent routes. The KB article said that adding -p sets a registry key, which accounts for the persistence, eh? Then we fuddled about with some confusing Sonicwall conundrums. The problem there isn't fixed, as such. But it is functional and fully effective. We'll fret with that one again this afternoon, I think.
On the way home, I stopped by Lowes to pick up some insulation and a faucet adapter. Once home, I fed the mutts, much to their joy. Then I toddled up here, and paid bills. After a light supper of cheese and veggies, I went back down to the basement. Look how well those peas and broccoli are doing!!! 8 days is the low end of germination according to the seed packets, but these are three days up and going strong. I've removed the cover, as they're pressing against it, and that's what's recommended.
Then I pressed on with the downstairs workshop project. I put up all of the sheetrock, and found my first major error in estimating materials. I had thought I would need two full pieces and part of a third, but instead I needed only two pieces, with bits left over. So I have two sheets spare. Hmmm. So that's done. The next phase is going to be a three-parter, with first coat of putty on the screws outside, insulation and pegboard on the wall inside. I wonder if I'll get to that tonight. I dunno - I'm pretty whacked right now. It might be a good idea to take the evening off, at least from physical labor.
I'd best be going. This late start is primarily due to Lucy having a dream of her inner wolf self in the middle of the night. Now that's not an entirely bad thing, as even Gaspode knows. But a full-throat howl at 0330 is not good for either the sleep or nerves of any nearby humans like us. Plus I've got half a day at each of two sites up Gaithersburg way, and that's a hike even when the traffic is good. Have a fun day!
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February 25, 2004
0711 - Good morning. A successful day yesterday, all around. In the morning I sanitized old (by old, I mean from the P2 era) computers for disbursement, donation or disposal, as appropriate to condition. In the afternoon, Mike and I worked on ensuring that the new backup scheme we're using is catching everything we need. In the evening, I did nearly nothing. We had supper then watched a couple of hours worth of mystery discs. No, really, mystery - as in Lord Peter Wimsey stuff. The other night I was listening to some classical music and a harpsichord piece reminded me of the intro music for the TV editions of the Dorothy L. Sayers series. So Marcia and I went looking, and found the 10 disc set that has five shows in it, of four episodes each or thereabouts. We watched the first two bits of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Fun and relaxing. No construction work at all last night.
Now I must fly. Lots to do today. Happy hump day!
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February 26, 2004
0636 - Good morning. No post until later. A good day yesterday and a busy day ahead today.
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February 27, 2004
0743 - And it was a busy day. Good morning. It was a reasonably successful day up in Gaithersburg. By the time evening rolled around, I was all done in. I spent some time monitoring a heavily loaded mail server that I watch over, caught a bit of CSI, and called it a night.
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The basement workshop saw more progress, night before last. It was Wednesday evening when I did the work in the pictures above. First I put in insulation, to quiet the wall and hopefully cut down on noise transmission through the house. My initial plan was to simply put pegboard right over the top of the insulation, but then I remembered that I double estimated my sheetrock needs anyway. So I rocked in the inside, and started a bit of finish mudding work. Then I stopped and thought about it. Why finish the inside wall where it'll be covered by pegboard anyway. So I stopped on that bit, and put up more 1x2 battens as spacers, then started putting up the rest of the pegboard.
It's a gardening weekend coming up, so I'll return to the workshop next week, put up the rest of the pegboard, and start getting the wall finished enough to set the door. That's as far ahead as I'm willing to plan, right now.
Happy Friday, have a lovely day.
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February 28, 2004
0755 - Good morning. A busy day ahead. I picked up the rototiller last night. This morning I'm off to get soil amendments, and by 9 I should be making dirt fly. Pictures and updates later.
1654 - Howdy. I think my arms may fall off. Yeah, yeah, the people who took care of this house for us until we bought it told me that there was a fair bit of red clay in the soil. That's partly the explanation for not even trying the manual method. But even with a gas-powered assistant, it took me about six hours to prep 500 square feet of prospective garden.
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I headed down to the garden centre a few minutes past eight, and picked up some sacks of soil additives for clay-ridden ground. I backed right into the yard through the gate and staged those up along with sacks and piles of lightly mulched yard trimmings from last fall. By shortly after nine, I was ready to get to work. The first pass, to break up the thin grass, was pretty hard, or so I thought. After all, cutting through the roots and such. But when I was done with the first pass, I decided to just leave that stuff there and cut it into the soil. I could rake off any clumpy bits at the end. But the ensuing three passes, getting down to 7 inches or more , was pretty hellish. Damp clay soil is astonishingly hard going. Finally I was down to the final bit - cut in the sacks of soil amendments. I laid them out, slit and dumped each one, then raked it out even to the edges. The last pass with the rototiller wasn't too bad, really. After all, I wasn't trying to go any deeper into the ground. I put away the gas powered gear and raked out the patch one last time, pulling out clumps of sod that survived the abattoir. Why am I in such a rush to prep the garden patch? Look and see:
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I won't be lifting my arms above my waist by tomorrow morning, I figure. And it must be spring, as I've raised a healthy crop of blisters. But that's okay. With continued yardwork, they'll callus over nicely.
I think it's time for some Python. Have a lovely evening.
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February 29, 2004
0342 - Let there be Pain. And there was pain. Mostly in the hands and shoulders, although I shouldn't slight the mid-back by omission, either. So I've gotten up, had some food and ibuprofen, and random surfed for a while. No point doing anything useful, I probably won't even remember being here in the (later) morning, excepting this micro-post, of course. See you later.
1812 - Hullo. I think I was talking about pain earlier. Apparently the brain doesn't properly hear the body's message. I've been busy.
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We got out to the morning shopping promptly at 0845, and we were done by 10. Then I went back out to find something not too ugly looking to use as a dog-deterrent for our new garden that I turned out yesterday. First, I found some little picket fence things, but they were about $4 per section. Per three foot section. I have 116 linear feet of garden to guard. That comes pretty close to $160. Surely I could do better than that. And I did.
I bought four panels of 4' x 8' lattice, and a bundle of pressure-treated 1x2x8'. The lattice I ripped into 1 foot high segments. The 1x2 became 2' long stakes. I measured and set stakes into the corners of the plot, and ran mason's twine from stake to stake, marking the boundaries of the little fence. Then I marked and set two stakes per section of lattice, and screwed the lattice to the stakes. Finally I bridged some of the lattice junctions with another slat to bring things into alignment better. This won't really keep anything out that wants to be in, but we'll make sure that Lucy doesn't want that. And Sally's too old/lazy to jump even that little thing.
Lucy did protect us vociferously from the people using the playground in the common area several hundred feet away from our back fence. You can see her in the shot above left, standing near the haystack of over-winter grass trimmings that I also took care of today. I'll use that to mulch in some of the plants in the garden come summertime.
Tonight I have to review our tax stuff before going to see the accountant. I guess I'd best be showering and then about my business. See you tomorrow.
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