Categories
Misc

How to Fix a Leaky Faucet

As I was sitting here pondering a universe in which the Patriots are in yet another Championship game, the Wife come down the stairs and informs me that “The faucet has a steady stream and I can’t get it to stop. I tried turning the handle as far as I could and it still won’t shut off.” She doesn’t have to say the last part because it’s obvious, I need to fix it.

I’ve done this before and I know exactly what I’ll need: my pair of force grips and a set of allen wrenches. I got half-way up the steps and had a brilliant idea: I’ll blog it! Complete with pictures! It would be the my most tedious post yet!

Hey, I’ve been sniffing paint today, as opposed to pine, from the kid’s derby cars. I’ll get to those in another post.

Categories
Cub Scouts Woodworking

Pinewood Derby Cars

I’m tempted to say “normally”, but I think that conveys a longer time period than 2 years. Or, at least, it implies that I’ve participated in more than 2 Pinewood Derby’s, or is it “derbies?” To tell, you the truth in all the excitement I just forgot… Maybe it’s because I’ve been building 2 Derby cars each of the past 3 years and that makes it just seem longer. Then again, maybe I’m just strung out from sniffing pine all day. You can huff pine, right? Parents these days…

So today, I did not watch any playoff football. Rather, well, I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now.

HEY!! How ’bout a picture?

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If that looks like a coffin care and a bird car, pat yourself on the back. If it doesn’t, then what the hell is wrong with you? Of course it’s a coffin car and a bird car. Seriously, what else could they be? Wait, no. Don’t answer that. They just need a paint job and wheels is all. Hey, coffins are hard to carry. And birds get tired flying around. It can happen. Especially after huffing pine all day.

Here’s another angle…

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I should have taken a few pictures of the bird car during construction. More specifically, it’s supposedly going to become an African Grey Parrot car, but first it needs a lot of paint. Luckily, we have the lass.

The basic shape I cut out on the band saw, including a fair amount around the head and shoulder area. But the beak and neck shaping I accomplished with my chisels. Thank God it’s pine, because it smells sooooooo good. I could just sniff it all day. And it’s soft, but not like a baby’s bottom. After the rough shaping, the sandpaper smoothed everything out and improved the look. It took me most of Friday afternoon to get that much done.

Today, I spent working on the boy’s coffin car. He saw a picture on the web of a skeleton coming out of a coffin for a derby car design and decided that’s what he wanted. Because I’m a fool, I didn’t talk him out of it.

So to the point pictured so far, most of that is cut by hand. The coffin shape I managed with my dovetail saw, making the down cut first and then coming in from the side second. I clamped it in my bench vise for all these cuts. After that, I used the bandsaw to slice the top, which would eventually become the lid for the coffin. Those slots on the to-be-lid are the original axle slots that the blank has. I drill holes on the opposite side for the axles, so the original bottom becomes the top. In a normal car, those slots would get cut off and discarded.

This is not a normal car.

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So at this point I’ve hollowed out the coffin and also rabbeted the lid for a nice, custom fit. I actually accomplished the hollowing with a 1/2 inch upcutting spiral bit for my router that I mounted in my drill press. I hogged out the majority of the wood with that, then cleaned up the edges with a chisel. As for the lid, I scribed the rabbet depth with my marking gauge then used a 5/16 inch rabbeting plane. I just cut the rabbet down until those slots juuust disappeared when viewed from the edge.

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At this point, I added some hinges to the lid and then a chain on the at what would be the top I suppose though in the picture it’s the bottom. It’s all so confusing. Where’s some pine?

The hinges I found at Michael’s for a buck, the chain is a piece of a chain necklace I also found at Michael’s. I used a nail from a picture hanger since it was small enough to fit through the links of the chain. It gives it a nice look. I’ve also got some other decorations for the outside that will have to wait for the paint job.

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I think that’s Mini-Me. Or maybe a distant cousin…

Best moment of the day?

The boy is working on the axle nails, filing down the ribs near the head so the wheels won’t have something to bind up on- it’s one of those speed tricks you pick up on competing in Derby’s. Anyway, the nail is mounted in the chuck of my drill press, spinning away at roughly 600RPM and the boy is using a piece of that silicate wet sand paper with, like 1500 grit. He’s working on his 3rd or so nail and he says to me “Making a Derby car sure is a lot of work, huh Dad?”

I didn’t answer ’cause I was too busy sniffing pine.

Categories
Computers

A Lovely Way to Spend a Friday Evening

UPDATE: Well, after trying a bunch of stuff, I installed Spyhunter software and that did the trick. There were other things out there like rkill to try and stop the virus from running, but I had no success with it. If you want to kill the process, start up the Task Manager and look for a .exe process that has a name with 3 random letters. If you can kill that process, then you’ll gain the ability to use the browser again, at which point you can download SpyHunter, install it and run it. It costs $40, but it’s better than having the virus running on it.

To be honest, at this point I can’t even remember why I sat down at the Wife’s computer lo those many hours ago. All I know is that when I did, I was bombarded with dire warnings of security threats to my computer, spyware was infesting the machine, dogs and cats living together- MASS HYSTERIA!

But not to worry, because a “friendly” program call “Win 7 Ineternet Security 2013” was on the case and could fix all my problems. But in order to do that, I needed to purchase it and lo and behold up would pop a friendly screen asking me for all my credit card info.

That’s when the red flags went up. In fact, by that point, several flags had gone up and something seemed suspicious. I don’t want to get into it in too great a detail, since some malicious prick might happen across this and build a better mousetrap next time. Suffice it to say, I smelled a rat.

So I went to my LINUX computer, which doesn’t get infected with the nasties, and looked into it. I simply typed “Win 7 Internet Security” into the search bar, and, unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed. The good news is that it’s unlikely I’d done any real harm to myself. The bad news is I’ve got to figure out how to remove this little bugger.

For the moment, my one advantage is it seems to have victimized the boy’s account on the computer. Which means I can log on as the Wife and access the network without this virus blocking me. But as yet, I’ve been unable to remove it. Some software that could supposedly help, well, hasn’t and I’m currently trying another piece of software, while in Safe Mode.

Which, incidentally, seems to be completely pointless. The virus is alive and well while in safe mode, blocking me from normal internet access through the boy’s account. So what’s the point of a “Safe Mode” if it’s anything but?

Anyway, keep an eye out for this, it does a good job of looking like a legit piece of virus software. Just know if you see “Win 7 Internet Security” software suddenly come to life, it’s anything but that.

I’ll update when I successfully remove the damn thing.

Categories
Cub Scouts

BEHOLD! The Monkey’s Fist!

Alright, so the boy and his buddies weren’t the only ones bit by the knot tying bug the other night.

I first saw this knot during our trip to Battleship Cove last year. One of the other Dad’s pointed it out because of the name. It was just the sort of thing to stick with me.

So after the meeting the other night, one of the Dad’s mentioned that he had a book on knots and would be happy to lend it to me so I could learn some other interesting, useful knots. I figured he’d bring it along to the next meeting, or even forget about it. As it turned out, he dropped it off in my mailbox yesterday.

Naturally, the first thing I looked for was the monkey’s fist knot and to my delight, there it was. And to my surprise, it looked relatively easy form. The process is a 3 series of loops wrapped around each other with the sole trick being in the transition from on set of loops to the next. So I set about trying to accomplish it with a piece of shoelace I had, but had no success because the shoe lace is so soft and pliable.

Fortunately, I had the twine from the other night which was much better suited to the task. Turns out there are two difficulties with completing the monkey’s fist knot: the first is the knot has to be tightened, which requires drawing all the slack through all the loops in the knot; the second is trying to keep all of the loops neatly ordered during that tightening phase. Still, when it’s done there’s a nice sense of satisfaction. It’s an interesting looking knot.

Here’s the wiki page for it. I can confirm the weighting of the rope and being able to use it to aid in tossing. The book I used ends the section by noting that the monkey’s fist can consist of sets of loops of 3, 4 or even 5 and then suggesting that a fun pasttime might be to successfully embed a 3-looper inside a 4-looper inside a 5-looper. I don’t know how much rope that would take up, but it might indeed be an interesting way to spend some time…

Categories
Computers

Flipboard

So, apropos my issues with the Pulse Reader app I’ve been having, I decided to start looking into other possibilities. Really, this is the biggest problem any product- when things have degraded to the point where a customer decides to look elsewhere for solutions.

I’ve known about Tatptu and even tried it, but ultimately didn’t like it. The interface was similar, but different from Pulse in the wrong way for me. Plus, it seemed to have difficulties updating the various feeds I like to read.

As it turns out, a friend had shown me a slick little app called Flipboard and it just so happens to be available on the Barnes & Noble App Store. The interface was very different from Pulse, but still very intuitive. It also has a large selection of feeds and categories and also has some topical categories where multiple feeds are presented in through a single “board.”

The interface itself consists of a grid of tiles with the various feeds, be they RSS, Twitter or other. If there are enough feeds, then there will be multiple pages of these tiled layouts. To move through them, simply swipe like a book and the current page “flips” to the next one presenting the next set of feeds.

When a feed is selected, say National Geographic for instance, a summary view of the articles from the feed are then presented in a variety of layouts that can be paged through with the swiping and flipping. Touching an article allows for reading it. To exit from reading an article, simply use a two-finger touch and the interface returns to the summary view of articles.

In all, it’s a pleasant experience and, near as I can tell anyway, the program is very stable. I’ve yet to crash it in normal usage.

There are several other niceties which I’ve yet to take advantage of like “Read Later” services, the ability to filter out certain authors and a few other things. For those of you using Google Reader, there’s a way to configure it to access your Google Reader account and present that as a channel. It also can serve as a Twitter client, simply enter your Twitter account info and then your Twitter timeline will be presented just like any other feed; thus, potentially eliminating the need for a dedicated Twitter client. It also supports Facebook news feeds and status. Nice.

Another nice feature is the “Cover Story” feed which appears to present a sampling of the latest musings from all of configured feeds. Thus, it creates a quick way to see if there’s anything of interest. Looking into the help a bit, this appears to be some kind of “learning” feed that picks out thing you might like based on the articles you choose to read.

The hardest part, by far, is the setup. The builtin search for feeds is pretty good as long as they are of the mainstream variety. Unfortunately, I had a few favorites that just could not be found. Fortunately, it’s possible for Flipboard to find them by providing a full URL for the feed. Thus, I spent some time finding the RSS feeds with a browser, copying them to the clipboard, then pasting them into the Flipboard search.

Initially, my only hang-up was with some of the built-in feed search results- they seemed to get stuck and wouldn’t present updated information. Once I provided my own URL’s for those feeds, those problems went away. The only other complaint is that not all of the articles are presented in strict chronological fashion. The designers say that because they take article presentation issues into account. That said, I haven’t seen anything too egregious to complain about, nothing like articles from months ago being presented at the beginning of a feed.

All of the expected “social” functions appear to be available, though aside from configuring my Twitter timeline, I haven’t made use of them as yet.

So, in summary we’ve got a program that can be configured to present the information I’m interested in using an attractive presentation template with an intuitive UI. Configuration was the only PITA, but that’s a one time thing and gets easier as I become familiar with it. Plus, most importantly, it doesn’t crash during normal usage. I’ve found myself using it more and more and Pulse less and less as my confidence grows that I’m getting the most recent stuff.

Categories
Cub Scouts

Knots

I had my first den meeting of the New Year today, and I learned something: boys like ropes and knots.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised by this at all. I remember playing with ropes at various points. Either as part of some game or just sitting and tying knots in some kind of pattern or trying to figure out some knew way to make a knot. But I guess we forget some of these things, until present with such an occasion to remind us that, yes, we too were kids once.

For the record, I taught them the square knot, slip knot and bowline knot. I used a heavier twine because I figured it would be easier for them to manipulate than a floppy string or otherwise. I even showed them how to whip the ends of the rope with a piece of masking tape to keep it from fraying.

I really expected them to start tuning me out once I started demonstrating the knots- I just figured it would be the sort of thing they’d try, have trouble with and then get bored. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Every single one of them wanted to tie each knot themselves. I demonstrated the tying over and over and over again and in a few cases worked with the kids individually to help them figure out the process. Even more remarkable, they weren’t satisfied with their knot after I’d helped them- they still wanted to be able to do it without any help.

So for almost 45 minutes, we sat and tied knots together in the den meeting. Amusingly, I purposely waited until the end of the meeting to work on the knots because I was so sure they’d be over and done with it so quickly. My mistake meant some of the kids ended up staying almost 30 minutes later than I’d originally planned. Parent’s were showing up and waiting on their son because they insisted on finishing their knots.

So now, I’m thinking I’ll try teaching them a new knot at each remaining meeting. After today’s experience, why knot?

Categories
Computers

What’s Up With Pulse?

I’ve been using the Pulse reader for as long as I’ve had my Nook tablets. I installed it on my original Tablet and now my HD. For the reading I do, it’s better than a browser since all those sites already have RSS feeds that I can hook into. Overall, I’ve been very pleased with it.

But the recent update leaves something to be desired. For one, I don’t like the extra manipulations to switch between RSS categories. The previous version had a menu up top where a simple touch took me to whatever category I’d wanted. Now, I have to either push the button up top, which launches a side menu with a list of my categories for me to select from. Alternatively, I can swipe from the left edge to bring up this menu. That extra action is not appreciated. Also, the edge-swipe version is annoying because it can get confused with either refreshing a feed or scrolling through a feed’s articles.

The bigger problem, though, is that app is not stable. It constantly bails on me and the only reason I put up with it is because there isn’t any other option available to me. In particular, switching to and from a web view seems to be particularly difficult for it to manage.

A couple of other issues:

  1. When tapping on an article to read, it will frequently bring up an empty screen, causing me to go back to the tile view where I’ll have to reselect the article again and hope for the best.

  2. When bring up an article, there is a Read on Web button which, upon tapping, provides no feedback as to whether the press has registered. It’s annoying behavior since it will not infrequently result in nothing happening, so I’ll tap it again. And again. And again. There is no usual resolution to this “feature”: sometimes the app crashes, sometimes a press registers, sometimes I just give up.

  3. I like to use the Twitter functionality, but the tweet dialog box has a horrible font color which is only a shade darker than the background, meaning I have to strain my eyes, squint and use smoke and mirrors to compose a tweet.

  4. Tapping on web links frequently results in nothing happening or an app crash.

I’ve used the updated version on both my Tablet and my HD, with the same problems apparent in both so I don’t think this is a Android version issue per say. Looking at the reviews at the app site, I can see I’m not the only one. Hopefully they get some kind of improved version in the pipeline soon.

Categories
Family

Passing the Tongs

One thing the Wife and I both are proud of regarding the kids is their level of self-sufficiency, particularly where food is concerned. It’s not like they’re outside killing and cooking squirrels for snacks or anything, although the boy does have a bow and arrow. But they prepare their own lunches for school, prepare their own breakfasts and not infrequently help with dinners.

Tonight, the Wife decided on steaks for dinner, so I decided to let the boy do the bulk of the steak cooking. Grilling is one culinary area where the Wife has little to no interest in learning. Thus, I do all of the grilling so it was a simple matter to pull the boy in on the project.

A fortunate aspect of grilling steaks is it’s quick. From the time the grill comes up to temp, it takes maybe 10 minutes depending on how thick the steaks are. Thus, attention span is almost a non-issue- he does have to wait for the steaks to cook on each side.

I only had to give him a couple pointers regarding using the tongs. He wanted to hold them close to the grabbing end; kind of defeats the purpose of having the long tongs. Once he figured that out, and I realized that I had to hold the plate low enough for him to easily grab the meat off the plate, he was in good shape. We passed the time tossing snowballs for a bit then he flipped the steaks. I explained the basic idea for cooking steaks: getting the grill as hot as possible then cooking each side for a few minutes so that the steak is cooked but still tender in the middle.

Not to be outdone, the lass learned how to cook “mushroom rice.” This is a particularly tasty version of rice that uses beef consumme and butter along with sliced mushrooms when cooking the rice. It’s very tasty and one of the lass’ favorites. It’s also pretty easy for her to help with since it basically consists of dumping everything into a bowl. While she was at it, she also took care of setting the table.

When all was said and done, the Wife and I had a nice meal more or less prepared by the kids. Pretty good stuff. They aren’t ready to take over just yet, but they’re a step closer than they were.

Categories
Misc

Interesting Profile of a Pickpocket

Via Instapundit, an article about a performing pickpocket. Really interesting stuff and not the first time I’ve read about this connection between neuroscience and magic. Basically, scientists are breaking down magic routines to study how our attention can be manipulated, and thus theorize on how it actually works.

Here’s the best bit in the whole article:

“I been playing since I was knee-high to a shit-ball,” he said. “At first, I was a moll buzzer. I used to play in the ghetto. Then I started playing Skokie, then I started playing downtown in the Loop. They got Shot-Jims down there, and if you can play at that level and beat a chump, right there on the corner in front of they face- believe me, you can play.”

That’s a quote from another pickpocket mentioned in the article. You’ll have to go read the article for a translation.

Categories
Misc Notweet

3

As in degrees, right now. It was actually warmer an hour ago, a whopping 5. I think it might start warming from here, but it’s been awhile since its been this cold.

Cool stuff, er, literally.

Categories
Family

Persistence and Patience

When I was a wee lad, probably about the boy’s age come to think of it, I would get writing assignments. I remember enjoying writing even then. I don’t think I had any particular gift for it or anything, but I read a fair amount and I also tried to write and I… just enjoyed it. I remember once sitting and starting to copy a book of animal fables. I don’t really recall the reason. Perhaps I was thinking that I really was writing in that delusional way kids look at the world. What else was I going to do, play with a DS?

My Mom was an English teacher, as fate allowed. So when I got my writing assignments from school and brought them home, I always had a writing hurdle to overcome. Mom would mercilessly cut through the words on the paper. “This isn’t a sentence. This is misspelled. This is OK, but confusing. You’ve written the same thing 5 different ways in one paragraph. There’s no structure. What were you supposed to be writing here?” By the time she got done with my initial cut, the page would look more like a wiring diagram or a blue print, anything but the alleged text I initially put down. It’s what she’s not an editor here on the blog…

Naturally, being an immature know-it-all, I took it well and cried.

By the time I was done fixing all the mistakes she’d pointed out I never felt like the paper was mine. I felt like it was hers. This was, of course, a crock on my part. She never told me what to write. She just guided me in the art of writing something that was minimally readable. But at the time, I recall the frustration of having my work ripped up like that. Looking back, I’m certain there was a personal aspect to it as well. When effort is put into something, it can be hard to accept criticism without taking it personally. All those lines and circles and comments make you feel stupid. They aren’t just lines on a paper, they’re lines on you and how you think and how you express yourself.

Like I said, immature.

I thought of all this today when the Wife was describing how she helped the boy through another writing assignment. It was the classic “What Did I Do on my Christmas Vacation” assignment. It’s due in a couple of days and before I headed out for a little sparring training tonight, I told the boy, as nonchalantly as I could lest I wake the insecurity beast within, he should organize his thoughts on paper; then write a rough draft that his Mom or I could read through and help him with; then write his final paper.

When I got home, to my astonishment, he’d written a page-and-a-half of text about his Christmas vacation. I read through it quickly and immediately picked out a number of misspellings, some capitalization issues, some punctuation issues and a couple of sentence fragments. That might sound like a lot, but it didn’t require any real structural changes or major rewrites. To his credit, it was well organized and readable and pretty close to a finished product, with few corrections I mentioned.

The boy was (quelle suprise!) upset that I’d picked out all those mistakes. Particularly with the spelling errors. We decided he could finish the corrections tomorrow night. After he’d gone to bed, the Wife described how she’d worked with him to get the almost-finished-product I’d read: eliminating the run-on sentences and the “And then we…” phrases, helping him decided what stuff to put in the paper, helping him organize it. She showed me the marked up first draft.

Somewhere around then, I realized the importance of quiet persistence. His reaction to my comments was emotional, as were mine those many years ago. But Mom’s persistence paid off and I internalized many of those lessons. It wasn’t something that occurred in one lesson, it was the cumulative act of writing, then breaking down what I’d written and forcing myself to think about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to tell it over many years that got me to the point where I could sit down and structure a paper or essay. Reading didn’t hurt either.

Similarly, the boy won’t all of a sudden have a light switch come on and start churning out prose like Nora Roberts. Rather, it will be the steady drip-drip-drip of forcing him to confront what he’s done and improve upon it.

Patience. Persistence.

Categories
BBQ

Further Notes on Smoker

Alright, cooked my first batch of baby back ribs using the smoker today. They came out OK, but I think I can do better. More importantly, I learned a few more things about using the smoker.

  1. Cooking when it’s cold and windy is difficult. Trying to dial in a specific temperature is very difficult to almost impossible because of all the variables: fuel, wind, outside temp.

  2. I used the water bowl today for the first time and I’m not sure what it gained me other than a lot of steam. I’d read it helped to keep the temperature down, but that wasn’t entirely obvious to me. That might have more to do with the less than ideal barbecuing conditions though. It’s just too hard to tell at the moment.

  3. I’ve read that the fuel door on the side of the unit has been made bigger. Well, I’d like it to be bigger yet. Also, adding water to the bowl seemed almost impossible from the door. I had to lift the lid and poor the water down through the grills- this seemed less than ideal.

  4. The thermometer in the dome is nice, but would be a lot nicer if it was measuring the temps down at the grill level. Ideally, both grill levels. I don’t have any feel for how well the air is actually mixed in the grill- my assumption is the temps are higher at the grill level since they are so much closer to the heat source.

  5. Even though conditions weren’t optimal today, dialing in a specific temperature is not easy. Do I close the bottom vents to slow the burn, or do I close the top vent? Does opening the top one just allow heat to leave or does it mainly provide for the draft? How long do I wait to see how the temp is affected by a change in the vents?

  6. I got about 5 hours of heat on my initial load, and then an additional 3 hours after adding more briquettes. But, I wasn’t able to recover the heat level I wanted after refueling. Not sure what to do there.

  7. BE CAREFUL MIXING THE COALS. It kicks up the ash and will likely end up on the food. Bleck.

The ribs were still good. They cooked for about 7 1/2 hours or so. Getting things started was easy and I only lifted the lid to add water, so the overall operation was much nicer. I still was monitoring the temperature pretty frequently, but that pails by comparison to what I had to do with the Weber kettle style grill.

As for the ribs, I applied a rub to them last night and left them in the fridge overnight. The rub consisted of brown sugar(1 cup), onion powder(1 tsp), garlic powder(1 tsp), paprika(1/2 tsp), cumin(1/2 tsp), chipotle pepper(1/4 tsp), cayenne pepper(1/8 tsp), orange peel(1/2 tsp). I also salted the ribs prior to applying the rub. I cut each rack in half and then placed the ribs in a vertical stacker on the top rack. When done cooking, they were pretty tender and the meat came off the bone with little effort.

That said, I’ve done better. The meat can be more tender, but that will require me to get a better gauge of the temps inside the smoker and also to get better control of the smoker temps as well. Overall, not a bad first attempt- both kids ate them without complaint if that’s any measure. I’ve got more racks in the freezer to learn with.

Categories
Misc

Happy New Years!

Welcome to the new year, may it be full of good cheer, good friends and good times.