No Wonder Apple is Doing Well

My computer has been driving me nuts. It used to boot in 30 seconds, and now it takes all day. I found one of the reasons, and I thought I’d share it with you.

Windows XP has a feature called “search indexing” or something similar. It makes your computer root through its hard drive all day, looking for stuff and recording in it in order to make searches faster.

I am finally ready to assert, without reservation, that Microsoft’s people are hopelessly incompetent. I used to think the bizarre problems with their products had to be justified by considerations lay people can’t understand, but that’s not true. These people are just second-rate. The search thing is proof. No one in his right mind would put a thing like this in an operating system. How many times per week do you search your computer? I probably do it twice. If it’s slow, I don’t care. What I do care about is having my CPU run at 99% for half an hour, slowing everything to a crawl, so searches will be faster. It’s just plain stupid. You don’t have to be a computer whiz to realize how dumb this is. It’s like paying a maid to dust your entire house five times a day. The benefit can’t begin to measure up to the cost.

The thing that really used to make me question their ability was the unbelievably bad and unreliable networking software, coupled with help files so weak it is completely pointless to try to use them. But this is even dumber. It’s like something GM or Chrysler would do. The people at Apple are bumblers of the first order, but they can’t top this.

Well, maybe they can. I’m sure an angry Mac user will chime in. They exist. The Kool-Aid doesn’t work on everyone.

If you open the “Run” window and type “services.msc” and hit the Enter key, you’ll get a long list of things your computer does without asking you. Go down to the search indexing entry, stop it, and disable it. Your computer will run like Bill Gates chasing somebody else’s money.

I wish I had Windows 3.1. It was much better.

For Fifty Cents You May Touch my Finger

The boatyard trip did not pan out, so I fiddled with the lathe. It’s actually running.

I know you’re amazed that I installed and programmed a VFD and got the lathe running so fast. I would be amazed, too. If that were true. But it isn’t. The lathe story has more kinks and turns than an Obama campaign promise.

The seller sold me a Clausing 5914. The photo he showed me was actually a 5936. The differences? The 5936 has no clutch, a smaller motor, and no variable speed drive. There is one more difference, which I’ll get to in a minute.

The lathe arrived, and I complained, and this guy insists I got a better lathe than the one I wanted, which may be true, but I spent money on a bigger VFD than I needed (sort of; you’ll understand in a minute), which cost me a lot of money. The seller will not take it back unless I pay shipping. He’s completely wrong on the law, but if this lathe can be made to do what I want, it would be a waste of time and money to take him to court.

I got the VFD out today and started reading the manual. The box had a sticker that said I couldn’t return the VFD if it had been opened. Fine. I had to open it, right? So I started reading up on it, and then I went to look at the lathe’s wiring and motor. I had to find out what size the motor really was; I had been hearing 1 HP and 1 1/2 HP. You need this information to make the VFD work.

I located the motor’s plate, and I removed a panel covering it, and I cleaned the grime off the plate, and lo and behold, it was a 1-phase motor. I am not kidding. You can’t use a VFD with this kind of motor. So instead of spending $125 more for a bigger VFD, I had spent $350 for a VFD I couldn’t use at all. Which is a lot worse.

The seller had offered to send a 2 HP motor for nothing. This was back when I was complaining to him about the small motor. We both thought everything was three-phase at that time. I emailed the seller today and told him to go ahead and ship it. His explanation for the 1-phase motor was that they had replaced the 3-phase job and wired the new 1-phase motor up so it would work with a 3-phase plug and socket. I figured I had a really worn-out lathe, because three-phase motors are very tough, and this lathe had buried one.

I emailed the seller again and suggested I return the lathe and we split the cost of shipping, since it wasn’t much more than what he would have to spend to make this right. He wasn’t having any of that. He claims he received the email after he shipped the motor, but I wouldn’t believe him if he said Barney Frank loved show tunes.

In the midst of all this, I emailed the manufacturer. They got right back to me. Guess what kind of motor this lathe originally shipped with? SINGLE-PHASE. I think you know what that means. This is the original motor. So I got this guy to send me a bigger three-phase motor, on the theory that the old motor had been replaced, when the lathe was actually stock.

Am I going to tell him? Of course not. He promised me a lathe with a 2 HP 3-phase motor, and I am entitled to it. I’ll keep the extra motor and see if I can use it on a mill or a bench grinder or something. Or I’ll sell it. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t know that this seller would be honest enough to admit that I’m entitled to the motor, so I’m not planning to help him find out it’s not what the lathe came with. For all I know, he’d get on the horn to UPS and beg them to bring it back to him. At this point, if he shipped me a gold Rolex by mistake, I’d sell it, make the deal right, and send him a nice note and the excess money. Minus the price of half a dozen expensive bird toys.

I think the odds that he reads this blog are about like the odds that I’m going to get a refund, so I’m not afraid to say this stuff here.

I tried to measure the runout on the spindle, and if the indicator is right, it’s very low, so I am hoping the lathe isn’t a basket case.

I don’t know where I’m going to get a four-conductor cord or a plug for the new motor, but it looks like I don’t have to worry about that right away.

Okay, I’m stupid. I don’t need a four-conductor cord, do I? The power to the VFD will be single-phase.

I’m turning into a real Fred Sanford/Tim Taylor. When I realized the existing cord was too short, I walked across the garage to the unnecessary forty-foot length of 50-amp 3-conductor cord I bought for my welder, sliced off a piece, put a Home Depot plug on it, and hooked it up. I actually have things like that lying around. Well, I didn’t have the plug. I had a receptacle, for some reason. I had it half wired up before I realized it was a receptacle and had to get in the car. Still, I think I’m pretty amazing. I had my cable cutters and Ideal wire strippers right there at hand. And I bought my first grease gun today.

Please don’t feel inferior.

I can tell I’m going to be a great machinist, because I have already nearly thrown a heavy workpiece across the garage (I dove for cover while the lathe spun down), and I also left the key in the chuck once. I didn’t turn the lathe on, but the sight of the key still in the chuck was enough to put the fear of God in me. And I turned the back gear on without disengaging the direct-drive thing, which didn’t make the drive belt very happy.

Time to eat some Costco chicken.

The Book of Jasher

Can’t write too much. My dad’s boat is in the yard, and I have to get up and go to the boatyard with him so we can run it back to the marina. It had oysters on the hull when we took it in. Oysters! I can’t convince him bottom paint isn’t permanent.

Mish Weiss is not enjoying radiation treatment, and some of her blood counts are not good. Keep her in your prayers.

Yesterday I read a big chunk of the book of Jasher. This is an old document which is supposedly a sort of companion to the Torah. Some people claim it’s a forgery, but I believe there are references to it in the Bible. After reading it, I have a very hard time believing it’s not genuine. It’s a long book, and it’s loaded with obscure details and “begots” and so on, and it seems very consistent with the style and message of the Bible. It’s not considered part of the canon, however, so I guess you have to be careful with it.

It’s full of fascinating stuff. For example, it describes the “images” Rachel stole from Laban. It says people used to kill firstborn males and preserve their heads, and they put metal tablets with “the name” inscribed on them under the tongues of the heads. Then they consulted the heads and asked them things, and the heads spoke. Creepy, to say the least. It says an image belonging to someone Laban knew (“Can I borrow your severed head for a minute?”) told Laban where Jacob went when he fled.

The Jews have a lot of stories about the power of “the name,” meaning the true name of God. Supposedly a person who knows it can work wonders, not all of them good. The Torah says something about testing an accused adulteress by making her a drink containing the dissolved name of God. If she’s innocent, no problem, but if not, she gets a disgusting disease reminiscent of the worst types of VD. Maybe Aaron will chime in on the subject.

I hate to say this, but it reminds me of the Coca-Cola formula. Supposedly only two people know it, and they’re not allowed to fly together.

Am I the only one who prefers the term “VD” to the more modern “STD”? It’s amazing how we’re rearranging the language to keep morality out of it. In the past, “whores” used to get “the pox” and “the clap.” Now “sex workers” get “STDs.” Calling it something clean-sounding doesn’t make it morally equivalent to an earache.

Prostitution isn’t “sex work.” It’s a degrading, sinful, disgusting, depraved lifestyle that leads to disease, drug addiction, self-hatred, social isolation, and early death. I guess those are “sexually transmitted adverse results.”

Some books that are not universally recognized as scripture seem silly when you read them, and it’s easy to dismiss them as bogus. For example, it’s hard to take the story of Bel and the Dragon seriously. The style doesn’t match the book of Daniel, and the story is a little cartoonish. But so far, the book of Jasher seems convincing.

I better go put my shoes on.

More

A book called Tree of Souls says the name mentioned in the story of the “images” was the name of a foul spirit, not God. In another place it says “spirits,” plural, and that incantations were also written on the object put in the head’s mouth.

Saturday Night, Redeemed

I’m not going to church today. I went last night. It’s much more convenient, and the services are smaller. The traffic is worse, probably because everyone in Miami rushes to South Beach to get drunk and stoned on the weekends. But it’s tolerable.

Back when I started keeping the sabbath, I truly looked forward to and enjoyed the day. When I started attending church regularly, that began to change. Not something I expected. The church has three services on Sunday, at 8:30, 10:30, and 12:30. My preference is to go at 8:30, but my sister insisted on 12:30, and we usually found ourselves leaving for that service between 12:45 and 1:00, which put us there at 1:00 or later. Then we usually ended up doing something after church, and I would often arrive home after 3 p.m. I always prepared to leave by 12:15, so if you add it all up, I was cutting at least four hours out of the middle of the day in order to go to church.

I found it hard to accomplish anything before going, and afterward, I was tired. So the sabbath was not what it had been.

On top of that, my early morning prayer sessions shrunk considerably. It wasn’t by choice. For one reason or another, I had trouble sleeping, and I’m worried about the effects of sleep deprivation, so I would add an hour or two to the alarm. And I was spending way too much time fooling with tools, so I was getting to bed an hour and a half later. Instead of getting up at 5:30, I’ve been getting up between 7:30 and 9:00.

I’m sorry to say that my sister and I have had considerable discord over family business, so she and I have not been to church together for two or three weeks. That’s bad. But when you’re a Christian, good always comes from bad. The good is that I can now get to church on time, and I can go to a service that doesn’t cut the sabbath in half.

“On time” is not completely right. I try to miss the first ten minutes, because that’s when the church concentrates its youth-oriented boombox worship music. I think it’s great that they’re reaching out with that stuff, but it makes my head hurt, and I would like to be able to hear when I’m 60.

I’m going to take Sunday back, starting today. You can’t expect a tree to grow if you don’t take care of the roots, and I have not been doing that. I want to continue to see our lives improve, and that will only happen if I get my routine back and start each day with God. It’s surprising how far off the path you can get in a few days or a week. Fortunately, I miss the sensation of being on track, so I am highly motivated to correct my course.

I haven’t written much lately about this part of my life–less than I wanted–because some mysterious person tried to come between me and my sister by sending her passages from my blog. Things that were intended to upset her. You have to wonder what motivates a person to do things like that. It didn’t benefit them at all, and it was intended to hurt two people who were trying to rebuild a family that was in ruins. And it caused me to deprive readers of material they found encouraging and uplifting. There was nothing positive about this person’s intentions. Whoever did it knew that harm would come of it, and they did it anyway, because that was the point. It was pure malice.

One of the bad things about blogging is that you develop enemies whose existence is completely concealed from you, and they never have the courage or integrity to identify themselves, explain why they tried to harm you, or offer you a chance to work things out with them. The Internet is a playground for the malicious people who are too weak to face their victims, and the rest of us pretty much have to depend on God to defend us. The alternative is to stoop to the level of those who abuse us. Who wants that? Who wants to be the kind of person who hides while distributing viruses, hacking into servers, committing identity theft, spreading inflammatory gossip, or trying to motivate people to harm others? A tick dangling from a dog has more dignity and justification. And a greater hope of success. What God puts in motion, you can’t successfully oppose. You can, however, bring condemnation and shame and misfortune on yourself.

This family has had so much unnecessary pain, and here we are, accepting God’s help and working our way into the light, and someone wants to put a stop to our recovery. Someone out there would draw pleasure from that. What kind of life can that person have? I can understand trying to fill an empty life by doing good for other people. But evil? Especially an ugly and cowardly type of evil? How can that make you happy? Obviously it can’t. Whoever did this has planted seeds of misery and self-loathing in their own field, and their abundant harvest is on the way. They need to repudiate what they did and learn to bless other people instead of attacking them without reason.

The one sure way to make good come of this is to forgive and pray for this person, so that’s what I’ll do. God didn’t bring us this far to be stopped by malevolent gossip.

I don’t care who it was. I don’t want an apology. Whoever you are, I hope you will take a moment and realize that when you make innocent people suffer just so you can draw pleasure from their pain, you do yourself more harm than you can ever hope to do them. As an enemy, you are weak, but the enemy you are making is not, and no one can protect you from him. You have already failed. You never had a chance. You might as well try to salvage something from the experience and protect yourself.

In the end, my sister and I will find blessings in this. You will not. Unless you change while there is time. If you want to make amends, don’t contact me. I don’t need to know your name. Find someone who needs a blessing and give it to them. Give something to the poor or the hungry or the sick. Pray for someone who needs help. Try to find pleasure in doing good, so you will stop bringing misery on yourself.

Never Pay by Check

My lathe troubles have abated to some extent.

I ordered a Clausing 5914 lathe from an out of state dealer. Every piece of email correspondence from the order onward had “Clausing 5914″ in it, as did the invoice. A Clausing 5936 is what I ended up with. It’s basically the same lathe, but it’s my understanding that it has a 1 HP motor instead of 2 HP, and it has step pulleys instead of a vari-speed drive. I spent $125 more than I had to on the VFD, because I didn’t know I was receiving a smaller motor.

The seller claims I knew I was getting a 5936 because he sent me a photo of the lathe. The photo doesn’t show the model number, and I wasn’t able to tell the difference between these two models by looking at a photo. It’s hard to see how he could be telling the truth, unless he has some kind of problem with his mind or his memory. He has health issues; maybe they interfere with his ability to keep up with orders.

He says this is a better lathe. Maybe that’s true, but it sure looks like he knew I wanted a 5914. He cut $400 off the price without telling me; the 5936 was more expensive, and I sent a check for the price of the 5914, and he never said anything about it.

I can go to small claims court and win. He’s subject to Florida jurisdiction because of his website. But suing people unnecessarily is not compatible with my beliefs. I believe God is real, and he makes things right better than any court could. I wouldn’t buy anything from this guy again, but I’m not planning to go on a crusade to get even. I would like to part with him on friendly terms and get on with my life.

Maybe he seriously believed what he did was ethical, and maybe I ended up getting something better than what I ordered, but this is not acceptable business practice. If this had happened with Grizzly, they would have sent a truck, picked up the machine, apologized profusely, and either refunded all my money or supplied a new machine. No expense to me.

He’s offering a replacement motor and a replacement for the broken casting. I should take him up on those.

I also bought a set of micrometers from him. They’re NSK carbide mikes. I got a set of 3, 0″-3”, new old stock. But they’re very old. The grease inside them has hardened into varnish, and only one of them is usable. I tried Kroil on the two frozen mikes, but so far, no luck. He says he’ll take them back. That’s good, but I wish they had worked. They would have been a great deal. I paid $45.

I’m trying to find other micrometers. It looks like I found something interesting. There is a company called Scherr that makes good measuring tools, and they don’t get the same prices big names get. I found some nice new Scherr micrometers on Ebay. I may get them to replace the NSKs. The biggest one is a left-hand mike. I’m not sure what difference that makes. I assume it means it’s a mirror opposite of a right-hand mike. Surely I can use a mike just as well with my left hand. I’ll end up paying twice as much, but these are better tools, and they may actually work.

I’ve been trying to get the grease off the lathe. I know a machine tool will always have a certain amount of grime on it, but I want it clean enough so I can touch it without blackening my hands and clothes. It has something resembling congealed cosmoline on it. Denatured alcohol seems to take it off.

The chuck is not great. It has one-piece jaws, and it’s not adjustable. I was going to see if the seller had any nice used chucks for the lathe, but I think you can guess what happened to that plan. God only knows what he would send me.

I’m somewhat discouraged, because I trusted this man’s reputation, and things went poorly. I’ve been talking to another dealer with a good reputation, about a couple of old milling machines, but now I wonder if a good reputation is worth anything. Everybody I checked said the lathe seller was a saint.

Caveat emptor. Every deal can’t be a good experience.

Life Can’t be Simple

Here’s weird news. The lathe I just received isn’t the one I ordered. The seller had two for sale; one was a Clausing 5914 with variable speed drive, and the other was a 5936 with step pulleys. For some reason, the step pulley model was more expensive. I paid the lower price, and I received the wrong lathe.

Now I can’t figure out what to do. This thing may be better than the other one for all I know. I emailed the seller.

More

Here’s what someone says about this lathe on Practical Machinist:

The 5936 doesn’t have the Vari-speed, but more importantly doesn’t have the traveling clutch/brake. The metric change gear sets sell for $750 – $1,000, but remember that you can’t cut imperial threads with the metric gearset installed, and the metric banjo doesn’t have the high/low compound gear selector, so you have half the number of change gears available.

More

More fun information: it has a 1 HP motor, and I just received an expensive 3 HP VFD which I can’t return without paying a restocking fee.

Tower of Pallets Yields Monstrous Machine

The lathe is here! The Rodeway truck arrived while I was trying to eat breakfast.

The palleting was terrifying. Like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. The seller put a pretty lame pallet under the lathe, and the Rodeway guy stuck a second pallet under one side of the first pallet, and when the lathe got here, it was wobbling around like one of those weighted Bozo punching bags.

It looks like I won’t be renting an engine hoist. The Rodeway guy kindly removed the lathe from the palleting and put it within inches of its final destination. He scared the crap out of me, rocking the lathe around and yanking things out from under it. On more than one occasion, it started to fall toward him–all 1000+ pounds of it–and he reached out and steadied it with his hand. I would have been fifty feet down the driveway before it hit the ground.

The minute he offered to get rid of the wood, I started calculating his tip. And every time he nearly got killed, the figure went up. I was terrified the whole time. I can’t believe it didn’t fall on its face.

It managed to hit the wall once, with the corner of the chip pan. But everything is okay.

I can’t say it’s in the condition I anticipated. It has obviously been used a good deal; there is wear around the spindle. There’s a big piece missing from the base of the headstock. But I have no reason to think it isn’t in good functioning condition. I couldn’t find any signs of wear on the ways, although they’re hardened, so I probably shouldn’t have expected to see wear.

I also ordered a set of new NSK mikes with it. It’s very odd. The box is beat-up on the outside, but the mikes are still packed in greasy bags. It’s as if someone had a bunch of boxes in a warehouse and forgot about them. I also got a test indicator. I was expecting some magnetic bases, but they’re not here.

Later today the VFD should arrive. Then I have to figure out how this thing works.

I had him leave it about fifteen inches from the wall, so I could get behind it to fix it up. Once I think I’m in the clear, I’ll back it up to where I can get my car in the garage. Believe it or not, it’s possible to scoot it short distances without too much effort, and without danger of tipping it over.

I guess there will be no need to bolt it down. But I should look into some decent feet for it, because I’ll have to level it before long.

It doesn’t take up as much room as I had thought. That’s a blessing. I guess I chose the right size.

Time to go sit quietly and be amazed at the crazy thing I’ve done.

Freep at Will

I can’t believe the lathe is arriving today. I can’t believe I did this. I have absolutely nothing on hand to put in the chuck! I got sidetracked by an idiotic lawsuit, and I’m also lazy. But I guess getting the lathe set up and getting the VFD attached will be more than enough work for one day.

Somebody sent me a link to an MSNBC poll this morning. The poll is about Ob*ma’s first 100 days, during which he has managed to outspend all of his predecessors, insure a socialist future, nationalize a big chunk of our banking industry, and assume partial control of our doomed automakers. I am trying to think of something worse he could do, but I’m drawing a blank. Oh, I forgot this: he plans to respond to increasing belligerence and military spending in Russia and China by gutting our armed services and killing the missile shield, and he’s not doing anything to counter Chinese infiltration of our computer systems and the onboard electronics of our military planes. And he’s hostile to Israel, as demonstrated by his refusal to meet with Netanyahu without formal notice and his Secretary of State’s unbelievable remarks about Iran.

Great President.

As usual, both sides are trying to Freep the poll. I voted twice already, in five minutes. This is much like Wizbang’s silly award polls. I made a few people mad a few years back by pointing out that there were no safeguards against multiple votes, and I was criticized roundly for not being a good do-bee and all-around team player. I’m not sure why I was obligated to muzzle myself to help someone else’s completely self-serving efforts to publicize his blog, but there you go. MSNBC is apparently a few years behind Wizbang, when it comes to Freep-proofing their polls. They don’t even check your IP. I voted once in Firefox and once in Explorer. I would guess that if I cleared my cookies, I could vote over and over, all day.

Go vote if you want. It’s fun, even if it serves no purpose whatsoever.

I just voted again. I restarted Internet Explorer, and the vote buttons came up. Can’t seem to vote a fourth time, though. How can anyone be sufficiently unenlightened to believe in Internet polls in 2009?

Here’s a new Internet poll.

I better have some oatmeal and get ready for the lathe.

And we Don’t Even Have the Holy Hand Grenade

Mish Weiss has been treated with steroids. I don’t really understand it. I think they help her maintain her appetite.

Once or twice, she has freaked out and started throwing things. This is supposedly related to the steroids, although that could just be her cover story. Since then, others have compared her to the Hulk.

Mish also likes Pop Tarts a whole lot, although that is not really related to steroids. Today someone sent her this photo:

I didn’t think it captured the Mish I knew, so I fixed it up. And you can see it here.

While you’re there, say hi to Mish.

No One is Safe

For several days, I’ve been noticing that my car smells like cat pee. It has been driving me crazy, because I park indoors at night. You don’t expect cat pee smell to get on a car that stays garaged.

Virtually all cats, nearly all homes where cats live, and even some cat owners smell like cat pee. It is not something I enjoy, and since I don’t have a cat, I never expected it to be a problem.

Today I went out to the car, and I saw a bunch of fibers on the roof. I thought they were from a tree or something, but I don’t park under a tree. Then it hit me: CAT HAIR. Somebody’s mangy cat has been sleeping on my car’s roof, so now the car stinks. Can you believe that?

I left the car outside a couple of times last week, and I guess I’m paying the price.

Help me With the Accommodations

Today I have a challenge. I have to figure out how to take this off a skid and turn it and put it up against a garage wall. It arrives tomorrow.

We are looking at about a thousand pounds here. I can’t lift it by the chip pan; it has to be moved using forks under the bed or some kind of strap.

A while back, I unexpectedly received an enormous used Genie Superlift, but it’s not well suited to this job. It only lifts 650 pounds, so picking up the entire lathe is not an option. And it would be awkward.

People have recommended a rented cherry-picker. That seems like the way to go. The manual has information on how to pick the lathe up, so I can probably rig a strap on the hoist and back the lathe against the wall.

I’ll have to run over to the rental place in a while and yammer at them.

People have recommended putting pipes under the lathe and using them as rollers. That would work, but it would still be tough getting the pallet out from under the lathe. One really pathetic solution some people use is to leave their machine tools on pallets. I really don’t want a giant motorized object rocking around on a bouncy wooden platform, waiting to fall over and crush me.

Maybe I should invest in a couple of HTC mobile bases; one for each end. I put one on my 700-pound table saw, and it works perfectly. But the lathe has leveling tabs that might cause problems.

And Jeff, I am not buying a forklift, so don’t even say it!

Leo will still tell me to get a Bobcat, however.

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.