indiboi.com

I’ve been ill, sore throat and congestion, since the day after Thanksgiving… thanks Layna.

I saw David when he was home last week.

I purchased a fancy new Calphalon Tri-ply Stainless 12″ Everyday pan just so I could cook French onion soup; turns out I really like the pan and later bought the fancy 3 quart chef’s pan too. It was nice to be able to finally deglaze properly. I’m now planning on upgrading all of my cookware to that particular line; like All-clad, but with glass lids and significant reduction in cost.

My 75 gallon aquarium has had water in it for a couple weeks now; no leaks, no crashing through the floor, no horrible states of unlevelness. Also, no gravel… That Pet Place was sold out, pretty much a wasted trip. I’ll try again next week, calling ahead to make sure it won’t be another wasted trip. Plus side is I’ll be able to get the lighting system on that trip too.

I’ve been cooking dinner nearly everynight since the end of October. With the exception of the last week, mostly, due to the whole sickness and the lethargy that made itself a sidedish. If you’re stuck in a painful dinner routine, I really do recommend trying some of the Kraft recipes available on their website… it’s a bit trailer-parkie, but damned tasty.

I’d been agonizing between asking for a Global hollow-ground Santoku knife or the same style as made by Kershaw in their Shun Classic line. Ultimately I decided that I preferred the classic look of the Shun Classic Santoku over the modernist cliche that is the Global knives. I really need to point out that I’d been interested in Globals long before Top Chef and all that… and didn’t have a clue who Anthony Bourdain is until I started more research into possible alternatives. I still don’t care about his opinion; although, Alton Brown, whose opinion carries a little bit of weight, endorses the Shun Classics. It’s a big deal because I do not intend to ever purchase knives again if I can help it, with each knife hovering around the $125 range, average or so, I’ll have a small fortune invested once I have all the ones I want. Yay for Japanese steel.

Due to reasons unknown to me the hallway outside of my bedroom started to smell quite badly. That musty cat pee smell, but I know Gabbie wouldn’t have ‘had an accident’ … nor on purpose. Perhaps moisture came up through the concrete slab, just enough to reactivate the horrible legacy of having so many cats (not on purpose) all those years ago. It turns out that Oxi-Clean does a pretty good job of, shock, oxidizing the nastiness. Forget those special enzymes… at least at first. Ultimately that carpet will be trashed and replaced with new, thankfully.

I really hope it warms up a bit between now and Christmas, I have projects to work on, but I just can’t imagine going to the workshop when it’s 21°F outside. If it doesn’t, well… I’ll have to do unplanned Christmas shopping… blegh.

I finally finished the cheapie gray scarf I’d started at the beginning of the year; my learning to Purl project. It’s not so bad, if you look past the incredibly low quality yarn.

I bought the cutest little tin at Walmart this morning. It has a penguin on it… and yay for benzocaine lozenges, the reason for the trip.

I finally settled on going with the cheapie laminate from Lowe’s. Including the underlayment and taxes it was $150. My brother David helped me put down the majority of it last week… spare a box and a strip against the wall with the current aquarium. I’ve decided that I would wait until the new one is up and running before finishing the floor so that the fish are only moved once. I strongly recommend to avoid frustration to go with something a bit more… expensive. Once I figured out the ‘right’ way to “click” the panels together it was okay, but that way didn’t resemble the instructions at all; the panels also never actually clicked… agh!

It’s quite weird though, which the new floor, how gigantic it made the room. I decided to get a few new pieces of furniture, an example of one thing leading to another. It was more of an upgrade in a sense. That giant blue table was getting to be a bit too worn out, plus the colour wasn’t so great. The bookcase was a bit worn and also a bit too small, and of course that blue little cart I’d put my computer on, well… it was nearly falling apart. So, I bought a new table top, new bookcase, and a new cart. This time they’re all the same colour, heh… they also fit rather nicely together. In a way, even though I have a much smaller table top, I have more room; I can now put the plants on the bookcase so that saves tons of space. I also gained roughly two square feet with the new little computer cart; it nicely holds my subwoofer, the computer, shredder… and on top the laser printer. I’m rather pleased with it.

I’m going to do away with the giant and ugly four drawer filing cabinet, moving it downstairs into the “storage room.” Once that and the smaller aquarium are out of the way I think I’ll be getting another bookcase, but this time a tall one.

Oh, I should say that the new office furniture purchases were mostly financed by converting my giant jar of pocket change into usable currency… so in a way it was free… but only in a way.

After I hit my head for the third or fourth time on the shelves near the door I finally took those down. I put the books on the bookcase (shock!), but I still haven’t found a place for the “stuff” that was on the other two shelves. I’m really working diligently on de-cluttering, and I’m getting there, but I still have a lot of “stuff” that needs to find a permanent place.

The last two or three nights I’ve been awaken multiple times by the server going haywire. I finally confirmed my suspicion, so hopefully my extra defenses will work, but if I ever get my hands on anyone that even remotely works with automated comment spam attacks I’ll slit their throats… or stab them in the eye with a pencil, probably both. I just also want to confirm that the commenting system of Movable Type is the worst software that has ever been written in the history of writing software.

Years ago I made a headboard, one of those padded types, for when my office was my bedroom. My improvised french cleat system didn’t quite work as well as hoped, so I just applied a bead of liquid nails to hold them together. At the time it seemed like a reasonable solution to the problem.

I removed the headboard lastnight… along with a few square feet of the drywall outer paper. Removing the paper was, of course, not intended.

I’ve only done minor drywall repairs, with the exception of that awful spot where the lounge door knob breaks through the wall… that spot looks pretty awful too, heh, but it was years and years ago that I fixed that.

My little “oh I’ll use liquid nails” idea has resulted in a pretty costly repair job. I needed to buy some tools, since this is much more of little putty knife and spackle sort of fix, this special “Gardz” sealer to keep the kraft paper stuff from blistering the joint compound. The Gardz might not be needed, but all the places online suggested it, fortunately Franklin Hardware carries nearly the complete line of Zinsser products, but unfortunately they only had a single gallon of it, no quarts, etc… so that alone was $25 of the cost. The paint will be another $20 (thankfully I already have one of the colours, otherwise it’d be $40!), the spackle and joint compound comes to about $10, the knives and mud box comes to $20… I couldn’t find my hand sander and the drywall screens that go along with it… so that’d be yet another $10. Ugh… at least I have most everything needed to fix any other drywall problem that might pop up, heh.

I’ve finally decided that I will indeed be putting down laminate floor in the office. I’ve flipped back and forth about it quite a bit, but I found a style at Lowe’s that fit into my nearly non-existant budget that was also nicely attractive. I absolutely adore this Pergo “global passage” one, Malaysian Kempas. It’s $3 a square foot… given the ~100 square feet of office, and the very low price of the alternative… the Pergo is just about thrice the price. I don’t think it’s worth it. Perhaps this weekend the budget will yield enough and I’ll be able to purchase it, but this drywall repair really bit into the funds, of course.

I think I want to extend the shelving along the wall in the office too, I have short two foot shelves on the wall, but I think going to full length would be a good idea. I need that sort of space for just random crap that seems to always build up on my side desk. That’ll be $100… roughly, probably ought to do it before I get the aquarium too; don’t want a shelving bracket to fall and crack it. .. or drywall dust to get into it. I’ll probably use the same heavy duty dual track standards and brackets like the shelving over my desk… being adjustable is rather nice. It isn’t horribly ugly either, but also not the most beautiful, heh.

I, of course, have plenty of projects, they’re mostly all held up due to lack of money – as always. I did say that I’d finally replace the wobbly metal railing in the foyer. It’s that same another $100 figure type project, heh… this time it’ll be a nice wood newel, railing, and all the jazz that goes with that. I don’t think that’ll be happening this month as planned though. Getting the floor in the office started is pretty important, because that must be done before I get the aquarium.

I did end up getting a pancake compressor, but one capable of delivering the cfm I need for painting, and oil lubed so it won’t poop out so quickly. I also bought a cheaper brad nailer last month, on sale even, whee! They seem to work quite nicely, so all good there, thus far.

One of these days I’ll feel like I’m actually making some progress on the mighty “to-do” list.

I’m not sure about the door hardware, part of me thinks it looks better without any knobs; I’ve not drilled the holes yet because I need another opinion.

I hate the doors. That whole idea that I could make the doors as “fancy” as I wanted without investing in the right tool was somewhat misguided. While I did managed to accomplish that task, it didn’t turn out as up to par as I’d hoped. That was okay though, because I didn’t particular feel like investing even more money into that part of the project.

Unfortunately I managed to screw up pretty heavily on the finishing. I did check the entire project for glue residue with denatured alchohol and mineral spirits before I applied stain. I must not know what I’m doing when it comes to that, because I definitely had glue residue. In the future I’ll switch to the glue that glows under blacklight. This was also the first time using my random orbit sander, and I have swirl marks all over the corners of the doors… granted I checked for those too, again must not know what I’m looking for.

So the doors are splotchy… must not have sanded the interiors correctly either… I managed to glop the finish at the panel edges too. I really should have pre-finished the panel before putting the door together… I thought it’d be okay.

All told this makes me want to trash those doors and start over. I could probably live with them, and granted I’ve not see the stand in the room yet, but… ugh, I think they detract from the overall look of the piece.

It actually looks better in person than in the photo, all those reflections don’t quite look right to the camera.

I’m halfway through refinishing the kitchen cabinets. It turns out the finish was tinted, versus the wood being stained, so it pretty much wipes off to bare wood with the proper chemicals. I have only four doors left to do, then it’ll be time to do the frames, given the relatively small surface area I think it’ll go quite quickly. I’ll need to stash the cat downstairs and mom needs to get her own respirator, but it should go well.

I really like the router bits I’d bought a while back, I used them to make mouldings for the aquarium stand. It is done, btw, well… except it needs to be sanded, stained, and a finish needs to be applied. I keep procrastinating on finishing it, but I’m not in a tremendous hurry. Once it’s done, it’ll still be quite a good while before I can afford all the other things that sit either on top of the stand, or go inside of it. I’m also fairly certain that I want to put down a laminate floor in the office, which will need to be done first anyway.

Lack of gobs of money is really a pain, of course anybody could tell you that… there’s just so much I’d like to do, so much that is dependent on other things to come before it. I suppose this is the problem with being interested in so many different things. I’d really like to get some more tools, in fact I have a drill press picked out and I’m almost ready to buy it, but I don’t know if that’s the best choice at the moment. There’s a certain level of convenience in that my brother is going up to where they’re sold, which would save me a long trip. I absolutely refuse to pay $70 shipping when I could drive up and get it myself. I’m not in dire need of a drill press, other things would take priority, it’s just… that convenience of someone already going up there. Bleh… I also really want an air compressor so I can power nail and paint guns… in a way that’s the most important thing, but it’s also one of the most expensive; as the compressor isn’t very useful without things to plug into it.

I think it’s more of a problem with making decisions and choosing priority. I also find it a little difficult to “decide to wait” for fear it is simply “waiting because I can’t make up my mind.” I think, ultimately, I should wait on the drill press. I can then get the compressor and finish nailer, get the laminate floor for the office, use the finish nailer to re-attach the baseboard, move the aquarium stand in, get the aquarium stuff, and by the time I’ve afforded to do all that, it’ll be this time again next year, haha. Sad thing is, the air compressor was on sale for the last month… I kept waiting trying to decide if it was the best thing to do… versus saving that money so I’m not totally broke all the time. I want to make a new candle thing, this time with router action, but drilling the holes is such a pain, I just won’t do it without a drill press. Same thing when it comes to finish nails… I bent about half of them while attaching the trim to the aquarium stand… argh, oak is hard! …if I can help it, I don’t want to ever hand nail one of those evil things again. Yes, I should have pre-drilled, but drilling for nails just isn’t something I can bring myself to do.

The triple cellphone bill this month certain doesn’t help matters… The new provider’s bill is doubled due to all the fun activation charges, and then of course there’s the final bill from the old provider. The triple visit to the dentist wasn’t very fun either… especially on the wallet. Oh, and lest we forget the getting paid difficulties… it varies, but pretty much every month there’s a problem there… I’m getting much more comfortable using the suspend function of WHM. All that combined really lends weight to the “don’t buy anything” mentality, doesn’t it?

A while back I was given an Amazon.com gift certificate, wasn’t quite sure what to do with it… Amazon doesn’t really appeal to me, I guess because most of the things I’d actually buy, well, I’d buy them locally; I’m also not one to buy media of any kind.

Anyway, since Petsmart has a link with Amazon I figured I’d buy the filter for my 75 gallon aquarium using that ‘gift’ …and just pay the extra out of pocket, sort of like a nice discount. An aquarium filter really isn’t much of a gift though, is it?

I won’t be needing that aquarium filter for quite a while, long past when the free shipping from Petsmart is available, but I do need tools…

I’m still working, slowly, on the aquarium stand. After more measurements and fiddling I’ve decided that it’s flat, level, etc, enough to not concern myself with making a second attempt. The bubble is still in the lines, it’s just not perfectly centered…

I also, while cleaning up the shed, found a sheet of 3/4″ plywood… nothing pretty, but definitely usable for the top & bottom plates of the aquarium stand. The big problem being that this sheet of plywood was, well, nearly a full sheet, much too large to cut on my table saw. Considering all the tools I have purchased over the last couple of years, a circular saw wasn’t one of them. Technically we had two of them, but for reasons I care not to determine neither of them actually work properly, something is wrong with them that prevents the saw blade from spinning… *shrug* and neither has spindle lock or any of the nice little features, convenience or safety related.

Saturday I bought myself a new circular saw… Hitachi, and it’s a pretty green, and of course you know that the color of the tool is all that matters… ;) I was only mildy terrified of cutting off hands and/or fingers.

I should have practiced, but it turns out I was only slightly off on the cuts… more a matter of not quite having a good grasp on how to setup the guide. When I say that I was only slightly off, I mean 1/16″ on either side, so 1/8″ in total. It’s odd, because this saw has a ‘thin kerf’ blade, so it’s 3/16″ wide, not 1/8″ so it’s not the kerf skewing the cut, directly anyway. Regardless, the cuts were close enough, so yay there. I didn’t have to buy a sheet of 3/4″ plywood, just a saw to cut it, haha. The requirement of 3/4″ plywood now lifted, I was able to buy 1/4″ bookmatched veneer plywood to skin the frame of the stand with, yay for that.

Last year I bought a router, and the table saw also works as a router table. This is brilliant, except I only ever bought two router bits and they’re basically the same… a 1/4″ straight bit and a 1/4″ plywood bit, as I soon discovered that 1/4″ plywood isn’t 1/4″ afterall.

I sat here tonight thinking “what do I need, that I won’t buy…” …which is actually a lot of things, lol, but when I took into consideration using the full amount of the gift certificate at Amazon I finally settled on getting router bits. With a nice assortment of bits I can make all sorts of little things. Yay… so I bought the Grizzly H5555 20 piece set, and the Grizzly H5559 3 piece “plywood” set. They’re a very pretty purple, lol. I was also able to completely use of the certificate, only having to pay out of pocket for the tax. I think router bits make a better ‘gift’ than a filter, don’t you? They’re still related, since I’ll use the bits to finish the aquarium stand.

I’m still unsure on how I’m going to make the frames for the doors… I really want to get a rail & stile router bit set and make ‘fancy’ doors… I could then also use them to make doors for the kitchen cabinets, but… ugh, so expensive! I suppose I have some time to figure it out.