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GRAFFITI -- March 30, 2009 thru April 05, 2009 >> Link to the Current Week << Last Week << Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun >> Next Week Search this site : 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.

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
March 30, 2009

1912 - Another Manic Monday, about three quarters in the can. No bills to write this week, the backup is almost done, I've roasted one batch of Guatamala San Jose Pinula - La Trinidad, and the trash is next on the list. There's more coffee to roast, and school work remaining. So I'll direct your attention to last weekend's posts that include some pictures of the forthcoming sewing table. Ciao!

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
March 31, 2009

2207 - Just finished another bout of remote administration and testing. Long day, g'night.

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Mon    Tues    WEDNESDAY    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
April 1, 2009

Sewing table in place

2107 - Well, it wasn't quite what I'd been planning on, but we decided to emplace the new sewing table this evening. I'd already hauled the new tabletop up to the hallway outside Marcia's sewing room, so why not keep going. Dismantling and moving the old table took a bit of doing - that 4' x 8' hunk of 3/4" MDF is freaking heavy. By comparison, the 2x4 construction frame is light as a feather. (I exaggerate more than slightly; it is lighter, though.) Holding the old table together were a handful of 1-1/4" screws tying the top to the frame, and half a small box (easily 50 or so) 3" deck screws used in the frame assembly. All in all, it took me about an hour to take down the old table and haul its components down as far as the library.

Sewing table crossbraces

Then I vacuumed the room, and placed the new tabletop in, face down. The legs were clamped in place, then screwed in through the edge brackets from both sides (but none from the outside, for cosmetic reasons - that can be changed in the future if the table goes wobbly). Then I used spacer blocks to support the short cross braces, while I screwed those into the legs. The short crossbraces were used to support the longitudinal crossbrace, which I then clamped and screwed into the two end legs. Not having legs at the corners makes the room a much more maneuverable place.

Crossbrace detail

Finally, I clamped in the stiffener blocks, created some countersinks for the screws there, and sunk two screws through each crossbrace and into the block. So, (38) 1/4" coarse drywall screws were used in the final assembly stages of this project. There's an access hole in the middle of the table for power and pedal cables. Marcia seems to like it.

This has been a fun project - cost of materials was around $150. The sheet of birch plywood alone was almost $50. But you can't buy a table like this anywhere. Yeah, there are things I could have purchased and modified to get close to meeting Marcia's needs. But then it would have been much more expensive, or it would have been cheap and too crappy to use. This should last for years and years.

Here's the rainfall table incorporating last month's data, including an estimated .6" of rainfall equivalent against our 8-10 inches of snow earlier last month.

Row 1 - Normal rainfall Glenn Dale Bell Station, 1921-1987
* Only nine months measured in 2008;
+ Mar-2009 includes low estimate from snowfall

Time to go. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
April 2, 2009

2101 - Tired. Exhausted, in fact. Between the sewing table teardown/setup last night, a less-than-stellar night's sleep, and a robust day of battling with systems and backup software, I'm all done in. But still slogging, more's the pity. Doing schoolwork, and making it as challenging as possible for myself by overdoing. Sigh. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
April 3, 2009

2155 - At the office for a straight 10 today, and still "working" at the moment, monitoring the new backup system I flipped the switch on, late this afternoon after reconfiguring the client software on every server. Whew! So, really, there isn't much to report, it's all I've been doing. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    SATURDAY    Sun   
April 4, 2009

House cleaning. Boring, sweaty, and necessary.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
April 5, 2009

1712 - And today? Yardwork. Butching the over-wintered tall grasses, and mowing the hay, front and back. Another week and Lucy would have disappeared in the back yard, in places. In the next few days, I need to get a small amount of fertilizer, and some grub suppression down onto the lawns. The daffodils are past their peak, and the tulips are just getting going. Pictures of those in a week or two. The to-do list sure grows in the spring... Fence repair, planting, weeding, a new box to build and fill. Sigh.

Sadly, two more deaths in service reported this week. The meagre upside is that they're both non-combat related ... meaning, I suppose that they could have as easily happened in training or on base here in the US as in the sandbox. Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.

• Lance Cpl. Nelson M. Lantigua, 20, of Miami, Florida, died March 31 as a result of a non-hostile incident in Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. Devin C. Poche, 25, of Jacksonville, North Carolina, died Mar. 31 at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, near Tikrit, Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

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