Load Dropped

I feel like I got my life back today.

My family has been sued. It has to do with a small lot sold by an LLC related to my family. The buyers sued the realtor, and now they’re suing the LLC and all the members. The plaintiffs attempted (unsuccessfully) to serve me this week. Really annoying. It seems fairly clear that the case will die a quick death, and even if we lose, no one will have a large loss, but it has to be tended to, and it has caused no end of strife and division. My dad offered to handle it for nothing, with me as his dashing sidekick, but the family turned that down. I thought I would still have to represent myself as an individual defendant, but yesterday I learned that the family had voted to hire someone, and I decided to cast my lot with the new guy.

Today I had to prepare a document and fax crap to the lawyer, and I’m finished, so I feel like I can relax. There is still some anger and dissatisfaction, to put it mildly, but the person experiencing that is not me. Finally, I can get back to studying machining, fixing up my woodworking stuff, and preparing for the lathe to arrive.

While Mike was here, he got all excited about a mahogany board I had made from scratch, and he wanted to check out the tools. We BSed our way through a mahogany mousepad for his desk. The piece of wood we used was really garbage; it was warped, and the sides were far from parallel. I had saved it, figuring I might be able to use a small piece of it. We put it on the planing sled and took it down from over an inch in thickness to about 0.33″. That’s how much wood had to be removed to get two flat, parallel sides. Mike sanded it with the Dynabrade, and then he used the table saw to bevel the upper edges. He did the sawing while I was in the house, with no safety training. Scary. He put both Danish oil and stain on it. Weird. I suggested he get five rubber feet for it, with adhesive backing. That will keep it from sliding around his desk.

We tried to use the router, but it became obvious that my lack of a real router fence was an impenetrable obstacle. So I am making a router fence. I figure I’ll make a long bottomless box about six inches wide and clamp it to the back side of the table saw fence. I’ll be able to use the table saw measuring scale (or a table saw DRO) for both the table saw and the router. I’ll put a hole in it for the shop-vac.

I’ll need about eight feet of wood, a little over an inch in thickness and five inches in width. I’m not sure what to use. Something stable. I’ll have to buy it. Scrap has its limits.

Day before yesterday I saw a gorgeous pile of logs, beckoning to me from the side of the road. If they still exist, I may get them tonight. Some of them. How am I supposed to resist? The local mahogany seems wonderful. It’s too bad the tree people cut it in such short pieces.

I have to get a few router bits. The collection I have is sad.

It’s wonderful, knowing I won’t have to do this litigation, and it’s great having the fighting over with, even if not everyone is happy. You can’t always please people. When you please everyone, it often means you’ve done something you’ll really regret. Sometimes you have to settle for the knowledge that if you trust God, you’ll get peace eventually.

I do Not Have Graphs, and I Will Not Point at Them

According to Yellow Freight, my metal lathe is on its way to Charlotte, North Carolina. It hasn’t gone very far since leaving Vermont on Monday. They estimate a Friday arrival, but I have my doubts.

I can’t believe it’s almost here. I’m still trying to come up with things to make with it.

You know what occurred to me last night? I should design a garlic press. There are NO good ones. The Good Grips cheap one snaps if you squeeze too hard. The aluminum Zyliss jobs shed grey aluminum oxide into your garlic. The Good Grips expensive ones have handles that eventually slip off. Frustrating. Is tool steel food safe? I should be able to make something that will last forever and pulverize garlic effortlessly. And I think I should make a stainless mallet to use in the kitchen. It would be swell for peeling garlic cloves. I hate reaching into the garlic press to pull out the peels.

I also realized I am not limited to metal. I find myself looking around at round or nearly round objects made from plastic, wondering what warped things I can do to them. I need to get some end cutters and come up with a way to do some milling. I have to make the most of this tool.

I saw something really depressing today. I was changing the birds’ newspapers, and I saw an article about hopeful kids training to do “green” jobs. Can you believe that? None of that nonsense is going anywhere. Sooner or later everyone is going to get out of denial and admit global warming is a fantasy, and the harder times get, the less people care about the environment. Meanwhile these poor deluded children are being trained to be fecal recovery technicians and hygiene discouragement activists. It’s like it’s 1980 and people are choosing to dedicate their lives to disco music. The Environmental Boogie Nights aren’t going to last.

I’ve enjoyed global warming tremendously this winter and spring. Last night it got down to 67 degrees, in late April! That’s magnificent. Summer will be much easier to tolerate this year, because winter and spring were so cool and pleasant. Thanks, Uncle Al. I know a lot of semi-aquatic polar bears–animals which spend half of their lives swimming–have been drowning for my benefit, but I didn’t sweat much this winter, so it was worth it. Keep on drowning, guys. And grow nice and fat so the rugs we make out of you will cover large areas.

I wonder what other semi-aquatic or fully aquatic species will start drowning as things get worse. Penguins, maybe. Walruses. Fish. You may think fish can’t drown, but remember, Uncle Al uses computer animation to make phony videos of animals drowning, so the fact that it never actually happens is no obstacle. I’ll bet he also had his stooges make up a video of him winning the 2000 election. Zaphod Beeblebrox meets World of Warcraft meets Vanilla Sky.

His Nobel Prize win seemed fictional but oddly, wasn’t. His whining about a nonexistent crisis beat out a lady who risked her life saving actual, non-CGI Jewish kids from Hitler. You know what? She should have saved polar bears. That would have been gold. Or maybe Coca-Cola should make warm fuzzy CGI videos of Polish Jews sharing a Coke and a smile on a big iceberg. Then the Nobel Committee might have thought they were cute and therefore worth saving.

Actually, Uncle Al doesn’t make CGI polar bear videos. According to news accounts, he just steals them without authorization and passes them off as his own. If he hadn’t chosen his videos carefully, his audience might have seen polar bears drowning one minute and having a Coke the next.

Coke is a great beverage for polar bears, because it goes great with their favorite meal: raw human being. A polar bear will actually spend a day trying to bash its way into your house to eat you. My guess? They know we cause global warming, so they’re trying to get a square meal and do Mother Gaia a solid, all in one shot.

Here is wisdom for you. Given the choice, avoid green vocational training and learn to drive the big rigs. You’ll be choosing a field which has the benefit of not being based on an imaginary demand.

How to Make Oatmeal Last Half an Hour

I have some great advice for men. Never shop online for underwear while you’re trying to eat.

It turns out that the most amazing underwear in the universe is made by a Colombian company called Mundo Unico. But 98% of their styles are like something Perez Hilton would wear. Horrifying. I don’t know if this stuff is designed expressly for gays or what, but you really wouldn’t believe it. I had to scour the web to find something that looked relatively normal.

Now it’s over. At least I’ll be able to enjoy lunch.

More Prayer

Mish Weiss has this to say about Leah Friedman:

Leah needs prayer. ?? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ?? ???? Leah Meira bat Rina. She went in for tests and a minor procedure and there are some serious complications today. My hands are shaking so hard right now it’s all I can do to type this.

I apologize if the Hebrew (which may or may not display correctly here) contains profanity; with Mish, you never know.

Seriously, remember Leah today. If you go to her blog, you can find out just how delicate her situation is.

Mish also says:

Infected central line CVC. Not fun. Fever has an origin now. Their debating removing my CVC and placing this one in my internal jugular vein. Will know more later tonight. Antibiotics are on board. Fever is up and down, I have intense pain around the CVC line.

For what it’s worth, not all of Mish’s signs are bad; her hemoglobin is at 6, whatever that means, and for her, that suggests an arrested decline.

VFD

I’m still scrounging around, trying to get things ready for the lathe’s arrival. I didn’t want to order a VFD until I knew the lathe was on the way and that all systems were “go,” so I had to do my shopping today.

The issue of VFDs and motor derating is complicated. VFDs are rated in horsepower; this refers to the horsepower of the motors they are intended to drive. For motors over 5 HP with single-phase input–check this yourself, because I may be wrong, and I am almost certainly missing some of the nuances–you have to double the rated horsepower. So for a 5 HP motor, you need a 10 HP VFD. I’m not exactly sure how this works; it may only apply when the VFD is made for three-phase input and you are forced to use single-phase. For smaller motors, there may be no derating at all. I called Hitachi (914-333-2900), and they told me that I didn’t need a giant VFD for a 2 HP motor. I got a 3 HP job; that’s what they recommended.

Had to pay a little extra to get it here on time, but I think that was better than taking a chance on shipping it back and paying a restocking fee. The lathe had not been thoroughly checked out when I ordered it, so there was no guarantee that it would be okay to ship. It would be no fun at all to have a VFD here in a box, with no lathe on the way.

I considered getting a Chinese VFD, and maybe I should have, but this is my first VFD, and everyone says the Hitachis are easier to work with. The instructions are better, and the tech support is very good. I’m going to have enough headaches without having to decipher instructions that still contain literal translations of Mandarin idioms, as well as odd cultural references. “Esteemed customer are to find these VFD having all of Chairman Mao’s Thirteen Industrial Virtues. Death to the Gang of Four.” No, thanks.

I may have screwed myself out of a hundred bucks, but I’m a little fatigued from dealing with tech puzzles. Especially those which commence on Fridays; if you’ve been there, you know what I mean. I’m fairly sure all integrated chips are programmed to fail between Friday afternoon and Sunday night. When you can’t get support. The lathe will probably be here Friday, so I am trying to prepare wisely and avoid being bitten in the rear end by George Santayana.

One great thing about a VFD is that it will stop a machine tool quickly. You don’t have to sit there and wait for the tool to spin down. Bridgeport mills have brakes on them, but not all tools do. It’s my understanding that for heavy braking, you have to get additional resistors or circuit boards, and boy, are they expensive. Luckily for me, the Hitachi folks recommend seeing how the VFD does without the extra stuff, before making the added investment. I think braking would be a great convenience and a nice safety feature. It’s always tempting to grab a moving tool while it takes forever to stop. And a lathe can roll up an operator’s arm like an old sock. You can find photos of this on the web, but I recommend you avoid it.

Pray that Yellow Freight doesn’t mash my prize.

UPS Brings Obama-Era Treasure

Want to hear some unbelievable news? I have small pistol primers! I guess Midway USA found some under a desk or something, because for a while they were advertising them as “in stock,” and I just happened to be using their site at the time! Some creeps are selling these for $50 per box, because of the Obama gun craze. Midway was charging the usual price, and I got a discount on top of that.

I didn’t go crazy, like some people have. I got enough primers to keep me going for a few months; that’s all.

Oh, this is wonderful. This is just what a wannabe far-right possible kook terrorist needs. I think I’m going to make some ammunition, go to the gun range, shoot at paper targets, and pretend they were made by union workers!

Fulfill Them, Hippies, or You Will Rue the Day

As a potential possibly likely could-be right-wing terrorist, I felt it was necessary to come up with some demands. Here they are.

1. From now on, Nancy Pelosi has to wear a mask or ring a bell before she approaches a camera.

2. I want to be able to deduct the money I spend on ice cream on my tax returns.

3. I want Glenn Beck to do a special show where he cries just for me.

4. O’Reilly and Olbermann have to settle things the old-fashioned way. Mud wrestling. With the Fox girls of my choice as cheerleaders. Color commentators: J.R. and Jerry “The King” Lawler. Either them or Danny Bonaduce and Johnny Fairplay (or his remains). Wait…is J.R. still alive?

5. Glenn Reynolds has to take a photography class.

6. NO MORE LOLCATS.

I only had about four minutes to come up with these, but that’s okay, because I reserve the right to alter them capriciously, retroactively, and without notice, much as if I had given 800 billion dollars of someone else’s money to a bunch of banks and then attached the strings later. “Hello? Citibank? Today the Anointed One says Wednesday is All Pink Shirts Day.”

My lathe has shipped. Now I get to spend at least a week on my knees, praying no forklift drivers will decide to use it as a puck in a game of forklift hockey. I worry most about what will happen on the in-town leg. Miami is a place where things get done fast, but it’s also a place where things get done in a very sloppy way, by morons who only care about getting your money as fast as possible and can’t be bothered with things like training.

I haven’t decided on which acts of terrorism I should do first. I was thinking I might mail a letter with the stamp attached UPSIDE-DOWN. Would that be crazy or what? That would drive “The Man” nuts! To warm up, I keep calling Senator Burris’s office, burping into the receiver, and hanging up. He probably thinks it’s Jesse Jackson, Jr.

Forget Al Qaeda; Stop the Serial Worshipers!

Last night I had the strangest dream. For some reason, I was forced to move to South America. I had a little house there, and it was built in such a way that you could be inside it and still have a clear view of what was going on in the yard. As if some of the walls had been left out. The place was a mess; my junk was everywhere, because I hadn’t gotten the house together yet. And because I am a slob.

While I was in the living room, I saw some clown in the yard aiming a gun at me. I don’t mean he was dressed like a clown. I just mean he was a stupid person. I drew my Glock and shot him in the forehead. Then it turned out he had friends. They kept showing up, and I kept popping them. I thought, “Wow, this really works.” I was so glad I had put in time at the range.

I shot several of them, and I realized I still had enough ammunition in the Glock to take care of a few more, but I thought I ought to look around for other options. Due to my housekeeping style, which was fairly true to life in the dream, guns and bullets were not hard to find. The main problem was that I didn’t keep them together, so I found myself dumping .38 Super rounds into my pocket and then looking for the gun, and I located my .45 and then had to look for bullets.

I don’t know what these idiots wanted. Maybe they were mad at me for defacing an Obama poster. Turning the “H” in “HOPE” to a “D.”

It was very enjoyable. And it drove a comforting point home: this house is one of the most dangerous places in Miami! IF you’re a criminal. I feel great about that.

This dream clearly confirms the worst fears of Janet Napolitano and her left-leaning thoughtcrime squad. My terrorist inclinations are beyond question. I read the Bible, I go to church (like that other terrorist, Jean Assam), and I am willing to use force, in my home, to defend myself from violent criminals (terrorism of the worst kind!). I should be taken to Gitmo and gently interrogated by sensitive vegan operatives trained by the late Leo Buscaglia. We don’t waterboard now, supposedly. Maybe they could threaten to withhold Joni Mitchell music until I snapped. They could deprive me of bad leftist music, altogether. “IF YOU DON’T SPILL THE BEANS [SOY], IT WILL BE A LONG TIME BEFORE YOU HEAR MIDNIGHT OIL AGAIN!”

It has occurred to me that maybe the thoughtcrime squad has a point. Granted, almost all terrorists in the US are Muslims; they dropped the ball on that. But most of the rest are probably far-right nuts. And why is that? Because the left-wing nuts got what they wanted. They have nothing to terrorize for. Hey, maybe appeasement works. All you have to do is let the kooks choose your President. That means we can get rid of right-wing terror by electing Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter.

If we want to see left-wing terrorism rise again, all we have to do is pass laws making bathing mandatory and forcing the cops to take marijuana laws seriously. Cut off their dope and deprive them of their soothing layer of grime, and in no time, the hippies will be bombing Colgate-Palmolive factories.

In case the Ministress of Propaganda or whatever she is still has doubts, let me give her probable cause to haul me in. I’M GLAD I HAVE A SEPTIC TANK, BECAUSE IT SAYS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT MOTHER GAIA! I SET MY THERMOSTAT TO 68 DEGREES…IN AUGUST! I BUY MEAT AND THEN THROW IT OUT, JUST TO INCREASE GLOBAL WARMING AND KEEP THE SLAUGHTERHOUSES IN BUSINESS! I FILLED MY BATHTUB WITH AMMUNITION, STRIPPED COMPLETELY NAKED EXCEPT FOR AN NRA CAP, AND TOOK A “BULLET BATH”!

Oh, I am bad. The Angel of Change passed over my house! I didn’t cook a lamb, but there are usually a lot of pig bones in the trash.

Incidentally, rural Southerners use the verb “change” as a euphemism for castrating livestock.

I can’t believe I postulated the existence of sensitive vegans. Have you ever known a vegetarian who wasn’t consumed with rage? They’re the angriest people on earth. They make the Taliban seem laid back. When are we right-wing terrorists going to start setting fire to SUV dealerships and throwing fake blood on people? I have not received my orders yet, and the vegans are getting way ahead of us.

Why are vegans so peeved all the time? Maybe it’s the gas and bloating. If we really want to protect the atmosphere, we should make hippies eat more meat and lay off the legumes.

I saw an interesting Perry Stone video last night. He seems to think God is going to deliver a beating to areas of the world that displease him. Isn’t that happening already? Miami is a fairly evil place, and we got mashed by a whole bunch of hurricanes. New Orleans has an economy based mostly on sin, and it’s the voodoo capital of the US, and look what happened. Remember the tsunami? Thailand is famous for child prostitution. Indonesia is the biggest Muslim nation, and they persecute the daylights out of everyone else. Burma has an official state policy of eradicating Christianity, and they ran off all of their Jews, and a typhoon wrecked the whole country.

And think of the most sinful places on earth, and consider their vulnerability to natural disasters. It’s interesting. San Francisco could disappear in about ten minutes, and Manhattan has two faults under it.

Stone thinks God is going to help Christians relocate, so we don’t end up like Lot’s wife. I find that fascinating, because this is something I pray about every day. I want out of this place. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a city where half of the population worships Santeria demons and another twenty percent practices other types of voodoo. They have “churches” where they sacrifice goats and chickens here! Seriously, look it up. Doctors and accountants and schoolteachers and all sorts of seemingly normal people are caught up in this filth. Oh, yeah. That will end well. For them and their kids.

I guess I’ll close. I have all sorts of potential-terrorist things to do. Grocery shopping. Straightening up the garage. No end of subversive activities. I may actually pray! They can’t stop me! I may get in the car so I can deliberately pray WITHIN A THOUSAND FEET OF A SCHOOL!

I’m not joking, here! I am totally capable of doing this. If my demands are not met.

That reminds me. I have no demands. I better write some up.

Pounds of Cheese, Discarded

Mike has taken off. Which is good, because I feel sure I gained 15 pounds during the time he was here. I just threw out what had to be six pounds of pizza cheese, because I could not face the danger of having it in the house. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a whole bunch of fresh vegetables to eat at lunchtime. I have to detox.

Here’s the great thing about Mike’s time here: we went to church together. At last. I can’t remember when I started praying for his family; it must have been a couple of years ago. Every time he came to Florida, we talked about religion, and I shared my experiences with him. Somehow I was still surprised when he said he was interested in going to church; as far as I know, he’s the only person I’ve ever convinced to attend a service. I can’t say it was a challenge. God has been on his mind for a long time, and he was already an occasional churchgoer.

Yesterday we decided to go to the 6:00 service at Trinity Church. During the afternoon, I checked their website, and although I was sure I had heard them mention 6:00 over and over, the site said 7:00 p.m. So we showed up a little bit after seven, and naturally, Pastor Wilkerson was nearly at the end of his sermon. The site was wrong. This has happened twice this month, but last time, I was able to get the right information in time to avoid missing the service.

When we arrived, he was teaching about signs of the Rapture. He was on the tenth of ten signs. That sign was the blossoming of the fig tree (somewhere in Matthew 24). He explained how the fig tree symbolized Israel, and he said the blossoming was the restoration of the Jewish homeland, which occurred in 1948.

He gave an altar call and blessed the crowd, and that was it. We started walking out. Mike said he wanted to talk, so we met up at a Dunkin’ Donuts a few blocks away (we were driving separate cars). I was frustrated. I was hoping he had gotten something of the feel of the church, but what can you get in fifteen minutes?

We got a couple of totally unneeded doughnuts and some coffee and sat down, and he told me he was glad he had heard about the fig tree, because it was something he had been wondering about! On Thursday, mother of one of his employees died suddenly, and Mike had to go to the funeral the next day. The deceased was Jewish, so the funeral had to be fast, as dictated by Jewish law. At the funeral, the rabbi said something about fig trees. I can’t recall. Maybe a Jewish reader can guess for me. Mike had wondered about that for two days.

Many established denominations think the Old Testament is nearly worthless. “Obsolete” would be a better term. It’s hard for me to relate to that, because when I first became serious about Christianity, it was in an Assemblies of God church, and they realized that the Old Testament was just as important as the rest of the Bible. I don’t think Mike came from that kind of background. I’m used to thinking of my religion as something that grew from Judaism, so I was able to talk to him a little bit about the validity and importance of the Torah and the prophets and the psalms.

He said he had always had an interest in prophecy. As it happened, I was very well prepared to talk about that with him. I’m much more concerned about things that are directly applicable to my daily life, but prophecy is very entertaining, and it contains all sorts of evidence proving the existence of God and the validity of Jesus, so I’ve learned a good deal about it. I was able to direct him to Perry Stone; I can’t imagine a more engrossing teacher.

So the small amount of preaching Mike heard (which didn’t seem exciting to me) turned out to be relevant to a recent experience of his, as well as an interest I didn’t know about. And the prophecy videos I had been watching (in spite of not being an eschatology buff) turned out to be the ideal thing to recommend to him.

Funny how those coincidences keep happening.

He said he wanted to go again, so we met for the 10:30 service today, and we heard the whole sermon. On the way out, we stopped near the entrance to try to decide where we should go to sit down and talk about the service, and while we were there, we caught Rich Wilkerson’s eye, and he yelled to us and shook our hands and started talking to us. I thought, “Hey, this would be a good time to ask him to recommend a church near Mike.” And before I could get it out, he had found out Mike lived near D.C., and he had recommended Mark Batterson’s church.

Okay, I guess you could say that worked out well.

Now Mike is up in Delray with some other friends, and tomorrow he’ll go back to D.C. I have to wonder what his situation will be a year or two from now. Mike is an extremely sincere and open person; my guess is that he’ll make progress in a hurry.

The strangest thing happened last night, as I was driving home. I felt the presence of God sweep over me. Not as powerfully as it did on the two occasions when I could actually pinpoint its location, but still, it was very strong. I felt almost as though the car were flying above the road; it almost seemed to drive itself. I don’t mean it literally steered itself, but I felt as though guiding it took almost no effort.

I thought of a story someone told me about ten years ago. This person claimed she was driving to her mother’s home, and she said a light filled her windshield so she couldn’t see the road, and she sat back while the car literally drove itself. I think that story was probably a ridiculous lie told in order to manipulate me, but last night I could not help thinking about it.

Are we really in the times the prophet Joel described? A lot of people think so. The things I’ve seen lately make it hard to dispute.

Church was nearly unbearable when I was a kid. The churches I was dragged to were lifeless and faithless. Churches are so different now. Some are, anyway. I wonder how many Christians realize that. I’m thrilled with the things I see happening, but sometimes I think the vast majority of Christians have no idea what God is up to.

Lie Down With Dogs…

Washington sources added that the Obama Administration would not be continuing the tradition that had developed during the Bush years of hosting Israeli prime ministers whenever they showed up in town, sometimes with just a phone call’s notice.

That’s a fun little quotation, isn’t it? It comes from a Drudgebart-linked story about Israeli anxiety over the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel.

It seems like Jews are starting to realize they made a big mistake. I don’t know how the average Israeli viewed Obama before the election, but I know that American Jews in Israel do not like him; they were overwhelmingly against him. Jews in the US supported him by a wide margin, but a few are starting to think MAYBE a far-left nut who spent twenty years warming a pew in an anti-Semitic church MIGHT not be a great ally to Israel.

WHO’D HAVE THUNK IT?

Honestly, sometimes I think the best thing that could happen to the world’s Jews would be if Jews were not allowed to vote. They constitute the single biggest anti-Israel, anti-Jewish faction in the US. Black anti-Semitism is at an all-time high, and no one has the guts to say anything about it. Hispanic anti-Semitism has always been very bad. Plain old vanilla American anti-Semitism is nothing to sneeze at. But Jews themselves do more damage than their enemies. They were instrumental in putting this idiot over the top in the general election. How could they be so blind? It’s astounding!

THE LEFT OWNS ANTI-SEMITISM. How many times do we have to point it out? Sure, there are right-wing anti-Semites. But the best friends Jews have are conservative, and the left is almost uniformly anti-Semitic, and it’s getting to the point where they think it’s something to be proud of! Can you believe a dirtbag like Jeremiah Wright can show his face on the street, let alone on national television, without being driven out of the pulpit? Man, how this country has changed! So much for Jewish control of the media.

Obama thinks we have shown partiality to Israel. Of course we have! They’re our only real allies in the Middle East, and Israel is the only civilized nation in the region! Why wouldn’t we show them partiality? The Saudis finance Al Qaeda, and they just sentenced an old woman to be flogged because two young men brought her groceries! They’re utter savages! What possible reason could we have for according them the same respect we give Israel? And as partiality goes, ours has been pretty weak. Basically, it amounts to insisting that Israel be permitted to exist. Cutting parts out of it…that, we have no problem with. And we arm Israel’s enemies. Some friends, we are.

America’s support for Israel is finished. At least until 2012. I think it’s finished, period. Liberals are getting bolder and bolder in their attacks on Israel, and I think it’s likely to get worse, until people think it’s open season. Oddly, the large number of Jews on the left seems to exacerbate the problem. People feel free to attack their own kind, and Jewish liberals can be very hard on Israel, and that gives other liberals the idea that permission has been given to air out their own dark, twisted notions. I don’t think self-hating Jews realize this: criticizing Jews and Israel does not cause people to think favorably of them. It merely makes them feel justified in spewing hate. Now that I think about it, Obama’s sick, treacherous habit of apologizing for America is going to work the same way, fanning the flames of blind, moronic rage. If our President says America is evil, who can contradict Hamas and Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad?

I think our support for Israel is going to dry up, and I think anti-Semitism is going to get worse here, and I am positive that American Jews will handle it the wrong way, because that is their curse and their habit. They’ll apologize and curry favor, and to show how sorry they are, they’ll vote for leftists who hate the Jewish homeland. And that will be great news for leftists everywhere, because without America behind her, Israel–the world’s tumor–will wither and die, right? Wrong. That’s what her enemies are hoping, but that’s because they don’t believe in God. If our government abandons Israel, God will support her some other way. Probably through the financial help of Christians. Perhaps more directly. I don’t know how he’ll do it, but I know that America is not what keeps Israel going. It has been our privilege and blessing to be used for this purpose, but our participation has not been necessary. And once we stop helping as a nation, we will stop being blessed as a nation. We thought we were so smart and so powerful and so special. It was all a pathetic, bigoted, nationalist illusion. We are exactly like other human beings. When we give up on Israel, we’ll be like Samson without his hair. Ordinary and vulnerable.

Like a lot of Gentiles, I believe that many Jews blame themselves for the Holocaust. Somewhere deep inside, they think, “We were too proud and too successful in Europe, and look what happened. We’ll be safe in America if we vote for handouts and high taxes and we never miss a chance to criticize ourselves.” They’re wrong on both counts. The Holocaust was wholly irrational; Jewish behavior had nothing to do with it. The problem wasn’t how Jews lived their lives as Jews; it is that they were Jewish at all. And if the same spirit seizes America, no one will care what Jews have done for us or how much they’ve castigated themselves. No Jew or perceived Jew will be spared. The Germans and Austrians didn’t spare decorated Jewish veterans. They didn’t spare Jews who had become Catholics. Americans would behave the same way.

The more time passes, the surer I am that Obama is a punishment. We brought him on ourselves. How else can you explain the election of an obvious fool with no qualifications, no experience, and no political clout? We’re finding out how stupid we are. This is how we vote when God doesn’t save us from our own ignorance. The incredible photos of Obama bowing to the Saudi king and sharing a warm handshake with Hugo Chavez are like something you rub a puppy’s nose in. Our ineptitude is constantly shoved in our faces. I can’t wait to see him on TV, hugging Fidel Castro. Obama is just that dumb.

God is not looking out for America the way he used to. It used to be possible to gain protection by living within this protected nation. Now you have to get it on your own. Directly from the source. I am glad I’m going to church these days.

Notice his Hostility Toward Government Employees!

Today Mike and I got to help my dad run his boat up the Miami River to the yard. It was a pleasant ride, tarnished–as usual–by the people who open and close the bridges. The fine person who has the incredibly demanding job of raising and lowering the South Miami Avenue bridge–working a total of perhaps forty minutes per shift–refused to even answer our hail. While I wait for these characters to get it in gear, I often think of the old story about Ted Turner, climbing his own mast just to punch a bridgetender in the face. I don’t know if it’s true. But I would certainly understand.

When we got to the Brickell Avenue bridge, which had a prominent sign saying morning openings were only restricted before 9 a.m., we were told we had to wait until 11. And we had arrived at 10:45. The bridgetender seemed very nice on the radio; maybe the insane unannounced restrictions weren’t her idea.

Anyway, we made it to the yard without incident.

Tonight Mike and I made pizza. I mean we BOTH made pizza. I picked up cheese and sauce during our Gordon Food Service mission yesterday, and tonight we put on a tour de force. I made a pie, and Mike made a second pie plus garlic rolls swimming in Costco olive oil. The cheese was GFS mozzarella/provolone blend. It was excellent. The pizzas were slightly different, but each was sublime in its own way. I felt pretty good about it, because Mike had had to attend a funeral during the afternoon, so I had to make all the dough on my own.

I bought an interesting product this week. Sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. I created a bigger batch of starter from it, and today I put it in the dough. I only had about three hours for the pizza dough and one hour for the roll dough. It made the pizza dough noticeably better. From now on, it will be standard. I have read that it makes dough’s texture better, and that seems to be true.

I was relieved, because the last two pizzas I made were a little off. I still got it. You can’t touch this stuff at any Miami pizzeria I’ve been to. They’re nowhere near as good. Now that I think about it, even though I lived in New York, the best pizzerias I’ve known were in the northern half of this city. Weird. But I lived near Columbia University, and there were only two pizzerias in my area. I’m sure there were better offerings all over town. And on average, New York wins, hands down.

Mike and I will be going to church either tomorrow or Sunday. I’m all excited. As much as I’ve gotten from my renewed relationship with God, I have been utterly unable to pass that success on to anyone else. Maybe to some extent through my blog, and maybe through prayer, but not directly. Now I have someone who is completely open to it and eager to take a closer look.

I have the funniest idea about my machine tools. Remember how I developed an interesting in machining because I wanted to make a device to crack stone crab claws? I’m thinking I may manufacture a bunch of different cracking devices. All sorts of different designs. They run through my head at night. Electric ones. Ones with gears. Some with cams. I may do it. Although putting them on the web might make it impossible to patent them. I might come up with something that was so much fun to use, it would have commercial value. Let’s face it. Virtually all nutcrackers are garbage. I’m sure it’s fun building weird one-cylinder engines, which seems to be what every home machinist does, but that doesn’t appeal to me.

What am I going to do with that gallon can of hot fudge sauce?

Great Day

Mike and I spent the day running around. The mother of one of his employees died, and she’s Jewish, so you know what that means. A very prompt funeral. We had to run up to Delray to get Mike’s suit. We visited the Fort Lauderdale Gordon Food Supply, which beats the daylights out of the one here on Flagler Street. I took photos of some interesting goodies, and I’ll upload them eventually. After that we hit Sonny’s barbecue.

We talked a lot about our dysfunctional families, and I told him something that occurred to me this morning in the shower. As far as I can tell, families do not work without God, period. You may have some pieces of the puzzle: wealth, fame, looks, or maybe brains. Your kids may be healthy, and they may be achievers. Your marriage may last. But it won’t really work as a whole. There will be significant failure somewhere in the picture. There will be important problems you absolutely have no chance of fixing. I think the reason for this is the same reason we have physical pain. When you have physical pain, it tells you something is wrong. It tells you that you need to fix something. It can prevent you from making a problem worse. Maybe you need to have a tumor removed or a bone set. Without pain, you might not do what you need to do. The failures we experience here on earth tell us we need to turn to God. They tell us our lives do not work properly without him. And as you turn to him, the pain abates or disappears entirely or, very often, turns to joy and peace.

What kind of God would let you and your spouse and your kids and your siblings have peaceful, prosperous lives without him? It would be a disservice. It would prove he didn’t care.

Mike had a lot of insights into my family’s troubles, and I was glad to have his input. He seemed to benefit from what I had to say, too. We’re going to try to attend the Saturday evening service at my church. I told him God has been fixing my family, and I’m hoping he can see the same kind of healing in his own life.

In other news, the guy who sold me my lathe emailed. He’s been looking it over and running and cleaning it and getting it ready for shipping. He says it appears it has “seen very little use.” That’s exciting. I was puzzled at first, because it had sat in a prison for over forty years. I had assumed it had been used a lot in vocational training. Then I realized it might be difficult to get backward, hardheaded criminals to take advantage of a great opportunity to learn a lucrative trade. So maybe their stubbornness will cause me to receive a substantial benefit intended for them. The Bible says “the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” The lathe sale would be a pretty blatant example of unteachable people ignoring a blessing, leaving it to pass into the hands of someone more open to God’s instruction. Not that I am calling myself just. I do think I’m trying harder than most convicts.

I bought a gallon can of hot fudge today, just because I could. Sometimes I think I have a very big screw loose.

Look Out

Mike is in town, so the overeating started last night. Someone please intervene.

Today we have a number of options. Costco. Gordon Food Supply. And he was so impressed with my trash pile mahogany boards, he wants to make one. Go figure. He also wants to bust out the motorcycles.

I’m trying to get him to hang out long enough to visit church.

With a reader’s help, I think I figured out what I need to do about my router fence. All I need is something that extends out from the back side of the Biesemeyer. The parallelism is outstanding, and the precision is hard to beat. I could add a DRO to the Biesemeyer system, too, or I could must mount a dial indicator and some sort of screw adjustment on the router part. Anyway, this should be very easy compared to the harder solutions I found, and it should be much cheaper than the expensive ones.

I also have 3,000 pistol primers on the way! Do you care? Probably not. But I’m ecstatic. These things have been hard to find. And these are Federals, which may solve the problems I’ve had with .357 ammunition failing to fire properly. Federals are soft, and the new spring in my 27-2 is weak, so this should be a good combination. I also broke down and got a chronograph. There is just no way to avoid it. I can’t keep putzing around, taking a face shield to the range and praying the first shot doesn’t blow my 1911 apart. That is not the right way to work up a load. And I would very much like to create loads for Wolf primers, because they’re dirt, DIRT cheap.

Mike wants to make a video teaching people how to make 10-minute pizza. We ought to do it. I’d pay ten bucks for something like that, wouldn’t you?

Life is sweet

The Router is Going DOWN

I have seen the bacon AK-47 and the heavy girl on American Idol. Thanks for sending the links.

I think I have the router problem beat. Yesterday someone at Sawmill Creek suggested a fence made by Pinnacle. It’s mounted on a ram that sits on a platform you clamp to the table. The ram is moved by a screw. You can make an adjustment of 0.001″, and the depth adjusts by up to a foot.

Hard to top that.

Because I’m getting into both woodworking and machining, I have noticed that there are a lot of machining ideas that woodworkers ought to try. The gadget mentioned above is similar to the y-travel on a milling machine table. It seems very obvious when you’ve seen a mill. Day before yesterday, I put a DRO on my planer. I can’t even describe how great it is. I never even glance at the old tape-measure scale; I can’t, because it’s covered up now. The DRO gives me thousandths, and an adjustment of 0.002″-0.003″ is no problem. I was doing it without thinking, the first time I used the DRO.

It turns out Wixey makes a DRO for my router lift. Gee, do you think that might be better than making crappy “gauges” out of scrap and counting turns on the router lift crank? It just might.

Mike will be in town tonight. I must prepare to grapple with my appetite. He’s in the mood for Cuban food. This is very bad.

Board I made from garbage pile mahogany:

It is now dead flat.

I am Considering an Exorcism

I got my box parts all ready to go today, and then I turned to the most dreaded machine in the garage. The router. This thing is possessed. And I knew I had to make it behave, in order to produce a decent box and avoid ruining all the preceding work.

I learned a lot. Mostly, I learned that anyone who tells you a stick with a screw through one end and a clamp on the other is a good router fence has been smoking too much pressure-treated sawdust.

One of the things that sets great tools apart from good tools is the ability to do repetitious jobs without driving you insane. The stick with a clamp is a good tool. To make ONE router cut. If you have to make the same cut over and over, at different intervals in the same piece of work, you might as well kill yourself. When you move the stick, the angle to the table changes, and if you’re using stop blocks, each one MOVES relative to the router bit.

If you’ve used a router, you know exactly what I mean. If not, go look at Lolcats.

The best kind of router fence moves at both ends, and it remains parallel to the front of the table when you move it. And you can adjust it with screws and dials, not rulers and tape measures and bits of wood that you use to bang it into place.

There’s a guy named Pat Warner who makes incredible router fences. He can adjust cuts to within a few thousandths, I think. I used to think he was nuts. Maybe he is, but he can do things with a router that I can’t, and there are things that would take me half an hour that he can do in three minutes.

I made LOTS of mistakes routing the compartments for the lathe tools. I can sort of cover them up in the final assembly, but the truth is, it’s time to man up and look for a decent router fence. This fumbling around is just idiotic. And I need to get a Harbor Freight digital caliper and cut it up and turn it into a depth gauge.

Today I wondered why they don’t make milling machines for wood. A router is just a crappy version of a milling machine. Why not go whole hog and hang it from a ram over a table? Then I realized…nobody wants a five-thousand-dollar router. Except maybe Pat Warner.

They make something similar to a milling machine. I think it’s called an overhand router. You can find it on the Grizzly site.

The table saw is the greatest invention in history. It does exactly what I want, and it does it easily. The router is vicious and unpredictable, and the only way I’m going to subdue it is through superior technology. The clamp and stick are not working out.