Stereo!

Things are getting worse in the garage, AKA the site of my future intervention.

Yesterday I installed a TV on a shelf. But it had no working remote, and it wasn’t hooked up to cable or a DVD player, and I needed to add a radio tuner. So today I was forced to go to Home Depot and get a universal remote (eight dollars more than I budgeted, but it looked cooler than the cheap one), six shelf brackets, and a bunch of screws. I’m going to take my mom’s old JVC shelf system (what remains after I gutted the CD part in order to rescue Mahalia Jackson), stick it on the wall, and add my much-loathed Panasonic DVD changer.

I looked at stereo receivers online, figuring I should be able to find something I could get delivered for fifty bucks, but the cheapest new ones were all at or above a hundred bucks. Then I realized I hadn’t checked the old modular shelf system for inputs. Praise be, it has RCA sockets for a VCR. I am cooking with gas.

I dread the installation. I have to cut and install three shelves in a very congested area, and I get to breathe lots of concrete and wood dust, for which I’ll pay the price later. Respirators may keep you from overloading your lungs, but they’ll let you get enough crap into your body to make you congested.

I also scored two jugs of kosher Coke from the grocery beside Home Depot. So I have that going for me.

Life will suck for the remainder of the day, but at least I’ll get that miserable DVD changer out of my bedroom and get the old stereo off the garage floor. I don’t know who designed that changer, but the remote is one hundred percent counterintuitive, and you actually have to keep the manual nearby in order to use it. It’s a horror for regular use, but it will be acceptable in the garage.

The Coke is chilling. It’s time to go out there and suffer.

I Shake my Cane at You

I have an edict, and it goes out to every McDonald’s manager on earth.

Henceforth, five times a week, you are to gather your employees and tell them to STOP INTERRUPTING PEOPLE WHILE THEY ORDER. Of course, you’ll have to tell them seven times, because they’ll interrupt.

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“You’ll have two Egg McMuffins?”

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“Three Egg McMuffins and eight hash browns?”

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“What do you want to drink?”

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“Nineteen hash browns and one McGriddle?”

Thanks to the amazing people who man the drive-thru, I have now become the Old Guy Everyone Dreads Waiting On. I ask them when they’re ready to listen. I tell them to quit interrupting. I say, “I already told you that.” Next, I’ll be carrying one of those ridiculous change purses that you squeeze to open, and I’ll pay them in pennies while the people behind me lose their minds, and I’ll demand to know why the manager won’t force the cashiers to honor coupons from other restaurants.

At least I’m not a woman. They’re the worst. “What kind of pesticide do you use on the lettuce?” “Were the tomatoes picked by union workers?” “I need to write a check for my McNuggets.” “Which is better for me? Three salads or one Big Mac?” “Please go find me a nutritional information sheet so I can memorize it to protect my yammering larvae.” “I need you to put the onions in a separate bag, make sure the lettuce is above the tomatoes, see that the amount of pickles is a prime number, and if it’s not too much trouble, I want to come inside and watch so I can make sure you don’t apply too much mustard. And I want to open my sandwich and inspect it before I leave the window.”

Here’s how to run the cash register at McDonald’s. I’ve never done it, but I think I have it figured out. When the customer orders something, you push the button with that item’s picture on it. Then when they order something else, you push that item’s button. When they’re FINISHED, you tell them the total, and you wait for them to look at the video list a foot and a half from the car window, so they can make sure you got it right. And you don’t argue with them about what they ordered. If you think about it, this is a subject they know more about than you do.

If you can’t do this, keep voting for Democrats, because you are eventually going to be considered absolutely unemployable, even with affirmative action, and even if you work for the government. But I repeat myself.

Here’s another tip. When a customer says “thank you,” it’s not okay to snub him just because you’re furious that you ended up flipping burgers for a living. If you think about it long enough, and you won’t, you may eventually realize your status in life is not entirely the customer’s fault. It’s completely possible that you, yourself, may deserve some of the blame. Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

There’s a kid who works the register at the nearest breakfast joint, and he is so professional, I feel like he shows me up as a customer. This kid is going to end up owning the whole strip mall. He looks me in the eye and says, “Thank you for your business, sir. Come back soon.” At this point I usually drop my squeeze change purse and my handful of expired Arby’s coupons, and I shuffle out feeling completely outclassed. Why can’t McDonald’s find people like that? Actually, they did have one. The middle-aged German lady who always smiled and called me sir and ordered me to have a nice day whether I felt like it or not. She’s gone. She probably saved her money and bought a private island. Now I have to deal with her successor, Unpredictable Hypersensitive Interruption Girl.

The breakfast kid is black. I hope the entitlement pimps don’t get ahold of him and corrupt him before he becomes a self-made millionaire and starts sponsoring conservative candidates.

I think I’ll pull my white socks up and go find some kids to glare at.

Another Piece of Mediocre Carpentry Finished

I have a few pointers for people who want to challenge my greatness by putting TVs on shelves in their garages.

1. Do not assume your garage walls are square to each other or even close to it.

2. When you have to use a hole saw to drill UP through plywood, the time you spend looking for the face shield will not be regretted.

3. When Home Depot puts $5.00 brackets on sale for half price, there is probably an excellent reason.

4. Never mount a television 80″ above the floor in a crowded corner if the remote “ON” button has gone dead.

More advice as it dawns on me.

Also, Glenn Beckside has a vital Twitter update.

Except Maybe for Al Franken

Okay, I have a new Glenn Beck theory, and it’s starting to worry me. I hate to think my idol may be a total fraud, but I have to go where the evidence leads me.

1. He started the 912 project.

2. Half of 912 is 456.

3. The number 456 is divisible by 3.

4. If you divide the devil’s number, 666, by 3, you get 222.

5. Room 222 was a popular TV show back in the Seventies.

6. The star of Room 222 was Michael Constantine.

7. Constantine was the leader of the Holy Roman Empire.

8. Roman Polanski is a pedophile.

Don’t shoot the messenger. All I did was connect the dots. Let me know if you can help me with the last leg of the puzzle. I’m trying to connect this to Kevin Bacon.

I really hope Keith Olbermann doesn’t take credit for this.

By the way, I’d appreciate it if someone could identify the lube Olbermann uses to coat his hair, face, and eyeglasses. It looks like it would be great for machine tools.

More

I have an alternate theory.

8a. New York is the Empire State.

9a. The French word for “state” is “etat.”

10a. Louis XIV said, “L’etat, c’est moi.”

11a. In the opening run of Camelot, the song “C’est Moi” was sung by Robert Goulet.

12a. Robert Goulet once locked his wife in a car trunk.

Man, this one gives me chills.

Only for the Chosen

People, this is amazing. I think Glenn Beck is trying to send us secret messages. Using knowledge I learned from hearing Madonna talk to Whoopi Goldberg about kabbalah, I have extracted vital information from a blurb on his webpage! Begin at “START” and read in the direction of the arrows. Just the circled stuff. The spelling is a little off, but he was probably in a hurry.

Start decoding the messages now, before the IMF and Skull and Bones create an artificial aluminum foil shortage so we can’t protect ourselves from Rachel Maddow’s lesbo-fascist mind control beam!

More

Readers say they’re fed up, they just can’t take it any more, they can’t stand any more of the lies, and they’re going to take back my blog, if I don’t blow the photo up and make it easier to read.

For Liberals, it Started in November

Here’s a funny question. Has anyone noticed how American troops stopped dying in Iraq after Obama was elected?

Seriously, when was the last time you read about “mounting death tolls”? When was the last time you saw a journalist quote the latest figure? We know journalists are honest and fair, so the only possible explanation is that Americans aren’t being killed any more.

I’ve also noticed that global warming has slowed down, the planet is no longer running out of oil, and crazy government spending is no longer a bad thing. When Bush spent billions, it was very, very bad! Bush was a bad man! Now Obama spends trillions, and we all realize it just makes life better for kitties and puppies and flowers and baby ducks, which is what government is supposed to do.

Hold it, I have to throw up.

I’m back.

Here’s another question. Has it ever occurred to anyone but me that if Bob Seger had turned his music five degrees in another direction, he’d be in the same genre as Christopher Cross and the Captain and Tennille? Just wondering. Same goes for Jimmy Buffett. Will I get in trouble if I say I think it’s weird that people compare him to Hemingway?

Not that this is a flattering comparison.

Yesterday I was bummed out because my lathe tools arrived, and the plastic case was mashed. But the guy gave me a partial refund, and now I’ve realized I have an excuse to make a box for them out of my garbage-pile mahogany. You’re supposed to season wood for a year before you use it, at least, but I think you can bend the rules when you’re making a crappy box to hold tools in your garage.

I’d appreciate it if everyone would shut up about Joe Biden lying. Yes, he lied. But it’s not a big deal. First of all, he’s a Democrat, and Democrats think morality is stupid, so in a way, he’s actually being consistent with the ideals he preaches. Second, we already knew he lied all the time. He had to bail out of a Presidential bid because he stole Neil Kinnock’s patronizing, maudlin ramblings about coal miners playing football. Hello? Earth to electorate: this is not news.

Finally, Glenn Beckside has posted an important update. Read it before “Them” sabotages the server!

It Shoots Itself

Last year for Father’s Day, I decided to give my dad a concealed weapons class. And we put it off until today. I took him to Ace’s Indoor Gun Range in Hialeah and got him fixed up. This is probably a better present than cigars or brandy.

While he was taking the two-hour class, I put in some range time. Trail Glades is where I usually shoot, and they won’t let you use buckshot, and I needed to try out the Saiga 12 and laser with my new police loads.

In a word, this gun is fantastic. The recoil is negligible compared to a high-powered rifle. And sighting the laser in took about three shots. At 50 feet, the pellets go right where the green dot is, and they make a pattern you can cover with your fist. How can you top that? This has to be the ultimate in semi-automatic home protection. A halfway decent shot will put all nine pellets inside your burglar, and after that, they all go in different directions. And you have eight shots in the magazine, plus one in the pipe. And you can replace a magazine in three seconds! Once you get it fitted right, I mean. The magazines are plastic, and sometimes they need a little filing.

I only shot it 9 times. I apparently dropped a shell into the bag I took with me, and I didn’t see it until later. You don’t really need to practice with this gun. At household distances, missing is nearly impossible. I just needed to be sure it cycled okay, and I had to adjust the laser. Now I’m ready to cut it up and turn it back into an AK.

The Vz 58 is hard to discount. It has the same easy short-range accuracy, the recoil is even lower, and it holds 30 rounds. Maybe when you add in all the factors, it’s the better choice. You can shoot it folded; that’s a big deal. It will also shoot through both sides of a car, and it will defeat some bulletproof vests. Although those qualities probably won’t be required in a home invasion defense.

Either gun will make your house one of the worst places a criminal can imagine being.

I don’t know which is best. I’m just glad my biggest home defense problem is deciding which gun to grab.

My next project should be a nice safe.

I’m glad my dad will have a permit. The biggest benefit for him, in my opinion, will be having to worry less about being hassled by the cops for violating Florida’s bizarre firearms laws. We have strange rules about how you can carry in your car and so on. You can’t leave it on the seat, the way you can in Kentucky. You can put it in your glove compartment, but only if you do it a certain way. It’s a pain. Once you have a permit, all you have to remember is concealment plus the list of places where you’re not allowed to take a gun.

Rasmussen Proves It

My Chinese (of course) carbide indexed cutting tools arrived yesterday. The price was great. But the lid on the little plastic case was smashed. The seller took the whole mess and shoved it in a Priority Mail envelope instead of a box, and naturally, something got crushed. He didn’t even sandwich it in bubble wrap.

I complained. Carbide tools are brittle, and you’re supposed to store them in a way that keeps them from touching other tools. One way to do that might be…a plastic case! It’s important. Granted, I can throw out the case lid and rig something up. But I shouldn’t have to.

What do you think? Am I being too picky? This guy could just as easily have used a box. Priority Mail boxes exist.

No response to my complaint yet. I can’t see giving someone a negative over this, but a neutral might be in order. If you’re going to ship people things, you should make some effort to pack them correctly.

Yesterday, unfortunately, I found something interesting on Craigslist. Another lathe. Wait! It’s not as bad as you think. It’s a little bitty lathe. Like Otisburg. The company that makes it goes as small as 4″ by 8″, and I think their biggest model has a 10″ swing. I’m not sure which model it is, but the description makes it sound really small. It’s a good lathe, too; not Chinese. And it has tooling. And the price is too good to pass up. Dang it.

It would be pretty cool to have a tiny lathe I could store in the closet, for very small parts. I could teach Marv to run it.

He’d make a lot of bells, I suppose. Bells are his bag.

Two disturbing items in the news today. First, only 53% of Americans told the Rasmussen pollsters that capitalism is better than socialism. And 30% of Democrats think socialism is better. Big surprise there.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

This is how the killing fields in Cambodia happened. People didn’t know, or ignored, the clear and obvious lessons of history. They thought they could take something that had never worked anywhere and somehow make it succeed. And they ended up rounding up educated people, lining them up beside big holes, and machine-gunning them to death.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

The poisonous harvest of our most toxic decade, the Sixties, is a bizarre notion that the young are smart. In truth, the young are generally fools. I certainly was. But back in the Sixties, the left managed to seize on one or two things the old had been wrong about–things like racism and reckless pollution–and convince the young that the old were wrong about EVERYTHING. Since then we have been producing insolent, unprincipled, overconfident, weak children who think their tiny brains hold the keys to a bright and happy future where everyone eats tofu and and smokes free dope and has sex with no consequences.

It’s amazing; a human being will generally get smarter with age. But our nation, composed entirely of human beings, has gotten dumber. And we’re going to pay. Stupidity is an extremely expensive luxury.

I wasn’t raised very well. To some extent, I am part of the problem. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents, and I don’t blame them for my failings, but they made mistakes. When you have kids, you should give them the same kind of effort you put into your job, at the very least. There should be a plan. There should be discipline and oversight. I didn’t get everything I needed. Thank God, I am able to perceive the existence of the problem, so I can work to improve myself. But many people are not as lucky as I am. They think the neglect they experienced as kids was freedom. They’re grateful for it. They think it allowed them to grow up without the “backward” ideas that made their grandparents so silly. They don’t understand that restrictions can be great blessings. Rules aren’t like shackles, intended purely to deprive you of liberty. They’re like frames that guide tomato plants and help them produce more fruit.

Presumably, every book of the Bible has a purpose. I believe that one purpose of the book of Proverbs is to help people like me. There are lessons my parents failed to teach me. And I’ve absorbed a lot of counterproductive ideas throughout my life. Where do people like me go for guidance? Pastors don’t have the time to provide it. You can’t expect your friends to fill the need. You can’t just think it up on your own. The book of Proverbs can be very helpful. It’s like a frozen bone marrow transplant, waiting to be infused into lost generations, to heal them of the cancer of savagery. Wisdom is supposed to reside in human beings, but sometimes it misses generations, and it has to be stored somewhere so people raised without exposure to it can be reinoculated.

I went through this book systematically. I found that I already believed and applied a lot of it, so I deleted those portions. I put the rest in a Word file. Now I have it to use as a reference. The deletions left me with a targeted version that focuses on my specific gaps. I don’t look at it often enough, but I keep a printout handy. You might give this a try. Wisdom really is power, and it will take care of you.

Sometimes I look at that printout and alight on passages I wish I had read twenty years ago. I think of specific mistakes I have made, and the pain they have caused me, and I wince. That’s the kind of experience parents are trying to spare you when they tell you to pull up your pants, get a real haircut, stop watching MTV, and get your butt to church.

In case any kids are reading this, let me say this. Socialism is a horror, and it will bring only misery and death. And there is no such thing as safe sex. And piercings are generally disgusting.

The other thing that disturbed me today was a ridiculous essay by Juan Williams. Someone sent me a link to it. He comes out and admits he thinks gun ownership should be banned. Like it was in Washington D.C., that peaceful haven where crime is unknown. Unbelievable.

Here’s an incredible quotation:

In fact, in Nebraska there is a big argument in the legislature about guns. It is not about banning them. The debate is whether to allow security guards to bring guns into churches. To my mind the debate should be about how to keep all guns out of churches.

If Mr. Williams had had his way, Jean Assam would not have been able to shoot the man who murdered two people in the parking lot of New Life Church. If, on the other hand, Ted Nugent had had his way, that murderer would probably have been killed much earlier in the day, when he opened fire at another church. A churchgoer packing heat would have laid him out on the pavement. Whose way do you prefer? I prefer Ted’s. When I go to church, I keep a switchblade in my pocket and a pistol in my glove compartment. I’d carry inside, if I had the clothes for it.

Why is there any doubt about a church’s right to have armed guards? We don’t prevent stores and banks from using guns to assure security. Explain why churches should be different. Provide the basis for the state’s right to discriminate against any institution in this matter, based purely on that institution’s status as a religious entity. The disciples would not have been allowed inside a church run by Mr. Williams. They carried swords, on orders from Jesus himself. If Juan Williams ran the Vatican, the Swiss Guard would be ejected from the premises. They carry MACHINE GUNS. Not semi-automatic. Automatic. Most people in the Williams faction don’t know the difference. Their writings prove it every day.

Quite frankly, I find it odd that the Pope isn’t armed. If you require other people to bear arms for you, you are fully responsible for what they do, and you should be willing to do the same thing. If you’re not willing to do that, how are you different from Rosie O’Donnell, who preaches against guns yet pays armed bodyguards? If John Paul II had been armed when Mehmet Ali Agca attacked, he might have spared himself some surgery and prolonged his life.

Says Mr. Williams:

The roll call of death and suffering from guns continued earlier this month with the tragic mass shooting in Binghamton, N.Y. That followed one man killing ten people in Alabama before taking his own life. And that preceded the murders of eight people in a North Carolina nursing home, as well as one parolee shooting four policemen to death in Oakland, Calif.

Excuse me, but how is that “suffering from guns”? Isn’t it actually “suffering from criminals”? And which of these murderers would have obeyed a law banning gun ownership? The laws against murder, which have steeper penalties, didn’t bother them at all. And what do you think would have happened had the first three killers encountered armed civilians? Same thing that happened in New Life Church.

Reading this column, I learn two things. First, Juan Williams is never going to make it as a professional logician. Second, he’s a great target for violent crime. He chooses to be defenseless, and he makes good money. I think that if I were opposed to allowing civilians the means to defend themselves, I’d be smart enough to avoid bragging about it on national television, while working in a city known for street crime. It’s like begging to be mugged.

Williams says no change is in sight. I sure hope that’s true. Barack Obama and his awful Attorney General have done more to arm Americans in the last six months than the NRA could have done in ten years. I’d hate to see that wonderful progress reversed.

Proven Idiot Supposedly Deserves Chance Bush Never Got

I am sad to report a setback in the quest for the ultimate pillow. Night before last I tried a memory foam pillow and slept extremely well, and all day yesterday I felt almost as though I were on speed. It made a big difference. Yesterday I got a second pillow–a fake down product called Indulgence–and I thought my joy would be complete. But I had a little congestion anyway, and on top of that, I couldn’t get to sleep on time. It’s as if the extra energy from sleeping well made me more sensitive to caffeine. So today, no coffee, and I’m drinking my daily ration of revolting green tea as early as possible, to give the caffeine time to wear off.

I still feel much better than I used to.

I just skimmed Camille Paglia’s latest. I never read anything she has written in its entirety. She has not mastered the humane tool known as the paragraph, and she seems to write defensively, the way a lot of self-proclaimed intellectuals do. They’re used to hanging around with people who correct each other and whose big thrill in life is pretending to be much smarter than they really are. They always end up using bigger words than they need and giving unhelpful references to show you how much they’ve read. They do this to discourage other pretentious effetes from finding opportunities to show them up. Yes, Camille, we know you own four tons of books and actually made it through Ulysses. Just write like a human being, okay? Be like Billy Joel, who said he never wanted to work that hard. There’s a reference for you. I’m sorry it couldn’t be Krishnamurti or Ezra Pound.

Sooner or later, she’s going to snap and admit she’s conservative. She’s like Dennis Miller and Ron Silver. She keeps saying the same things about liberals that conservatives say. This is why a lot of liberals hate her. Eventually she’s going to break down and say, “Okay, I’m a lesbian, but I can’t take these hippies any more, and I am just not stupid enough to think socialism works.”

She’s secure enough to get herself in trouble by criticizing the left, but she’s not secure enough to abandon it. Which is all right, I guess, since we already seem to have enough conservatives who want nothing to do with God or morality. I refer to the actual God, not the one Joseph Smith made up.

Today she admits that Barack Obama is an embarassment. Hello? Where was she when he was using a childish gesture to give Hillary Clinton the finger on camera? Where was she when we learned that he belonged to an anti-Semitic church, and that the pastor was one of his closest associates? Where was she when we found out one of his buddies was a terrorist who belongs on death row?

Wake up, lady. Barack Obama has been an embarassment for a long time. And his wife is downright disgusting. You don’t grab the Queen of England with your big Amazon paws and wool her around like a puppy. You don’t go on TV and tell America you’ve been ashamed of it for virtually all of the four decades of your pampered life, which was made possible by America’s misguided generosity and bizarre notions of collective guilt.

Michelle Obama is like the relative you pray won’t show up at your wedding. And now she is the face our womanhood presents to the world.

Paglia says the “major” media has been remiss in not howling over Obama’s horrific bow the to the despotic ruler of Saudi Arabia. No duh. Thanks for pointing out the obvious and expecting people to applaud your remarkable insight. And where have you been, woman? How could you not expect this kind of thing, from a guy who spent most of his life as a glorified bagman for the chicago machine? He’s been kissing the rings of corrupt tyrants for decades; he probably bowed out of habit.

It’s revealing that Paglia admits that the mainstream press is unfair in Obama’s favor, but notice she won’t go the whole distance. She won’t call them “the liberal media.” She’s thinking it, people. This woman has only made it out of one closet. The other one is yet to burst open.

Too funny. Free thinking is good when it gets you attention and lands you book deals, but when it threatens your social life, suddenly it’s SCARY. Ann Coulter appears to be mentally ill, but give her credit. She isn’t afraid to say what she feels like saying, and as a result, she has probably lost more friends and eaten more gay-waiter boogers than anyone in history.

I will never be able to make the kind of clever references Camille Paglia makes, because I pretty much abandoned literature over twenty years ago. I realized that literature was unrealistic; it was written from the point of view of people who had great faith in despair and none in God. The world of literature is distorted, because God doesn’t exist there. Henry Miller said the first thing you scratch down when you start to write is “the cry of the wounded angel: pain.” How right he was. But here’s an equally accurate way to put it. To a large degree, literature is an elaborate form of whining. I don’t think that would have pleased Miller’s readers as much as the angel thing.

Ahab ends up tied to the whale, sort of like a big dead suction-cup Garfield on a white minivan. The savage hangs himself because he can’t find his place in man’s squeaky clean, genetically engineered world. The smelly old Italian guy who hangs out at the whorehouse says, “It’s better to live on your feet than die on your knees,” because there is no divine mathematician up there, balancing the moral equations. My world isn’t like that. Is yours? Why should I read books in which my views will be shaped by unfortunate fictional people who DON’T GET IT? If I want to be pelted with wrongness, I don’t need a book. I can turn on Air America. Assuming it still exists.

Did I get the references wrong? If so, good for me. It shows I haven’t been wasting my time.

Speaking of ways to spend time, I’ve been thinking about the amazing tools I saw over at Practical Machinist. I linked to a thread started by a guy who says he’s a starting machinist. He made his own quick-change tool post set, plus other helpful machining items you would ordinarily have to buy. It makes me wonder if I should try to make a few tools for myself. Example: a Criterion boring head costs hundreds of dollars. The metal used it in can probably be had for two figures. Some people make their own boring heads with little mills and lathes. Maybe I could do that.

I wish I could make a milling attachment for the lathe, but that appears to be a milling job, so like I said in an earlier post, I think you need a milling attachment in order to make a milling attachment.

Someone posted a question here about small lathes, like Sherlines and Taigs. I’d recommend looking at W.R. Smith’s video about tooling up for clockmaking. He says Sherline now provides so much milling paraphernalia for lathes, you can do a ton of stuff without springing for a second machine.

I bought some lathe DVDs. Smartflix is useful, but they’re very slow. I can’t wait two months. Besides, I like to support the people who create educational materials when I can. Some video sets, like the ones from ATI, are obscenely expensive. Others cost a little over twice as much as Smartflix charges to rent them. I can swing that.

I hope more junk arrives today. I can sit in the garage and fondle it until the lathe gets here.

Oh Rapture

I have a knurling tool!

Actually, I have a whole quick change toolpost set. It arrived today. But to me, the knurling tool is the coolest part. You mash it into a part as it turns, and you get checkering all the way around!

But I still have no lathe.

Come on, freight truck.

Me, I Buy

I don’t know what to make of the way the new pillow has affected me. I must have slept really well last night, because I’ve felt like Buddy Love all day. So energetic I’m almost obnoxious.

I ran over to Bed, Bath & Beyond and got a second synthetic pillow and a mite-proof cover. This pillow is pleasantly mushy, and it some kind of down substitute other than the dreaded polyester fill. I think the most disgusting thing I saw over there was a tag that read “recycled polyester.” Great. A pillow made from old couch cushions sick kids have peed all over. No thanks.

Hey, you know that expensive lathe I ordered, and the toolpost set I had to get? And you remember how I wanted to get a Bridgeport? Look what this guy did with a couple of crappy benchtop machine tools. CLICK. He made his own toolpost set, and it’s magnificent. He refers to a Japanese site where he got the plans. The Japanese site is also a major humiliation. Some guy over there has a mill and a lathe in a 25-square-foot closet, and he makes amazing things.

Maybe the Millrite is not such a bad idea. Maybe you don’t need a big mill to be a metalworking superhero.

Of course, the toolpost set has already arrived.

The obvious question is, why would any hobbyist buy a toolpost set if you can make better ones in your garage?

I think I’ll go feel insignificant for a while.

Short

Today someone whose English is not completely up to speed informed me that there was a turkey in my yard.

Here’s what I saw when I looked:

I wondered if it would poop on the beautiful sheet of painted 3/4″ plywood I recovered from my dad’s abandoned warehouse. I had left it lying out there after moving it to get to a different sheet.

See if you can guess the answer.

When my dad and I went to breakfast today, this was parked next to us. I accidentally cropped the corner of the car off.

This phone takes pretty bad photos.

That’s one of my all-time favorite cars. You have to love a car that has a 500-plus cubic-inch engine and only two doors. It’s the perfect thing for offending liberals.

Synthetic Pillow Works

It looks like the foam pillow experiment was a howling success. I used it last night. I not only feel rested; I feel somewhat wired. I suspect that my sleep was seriously inadequate before I got rid of the down. I hoped I would feel better after beating the congestion that made me snore and woke me up, but I didn’t expect to feel this good.

For years I’ve had congestion at night, and I got up most days and coughed up fairly interesting things throughout the morning. I thought the second problem was normal for me. But last night, I was able to breathe, and today all the tubes seem clear.

I’m not sure who makes this thing, but I’ll review it. It’s the only ordinary-looking memory foam pillow they sell at the local Costco.

The pillow is heavy, almost as though it were damp inside. When I took it out of the box, it had what appeared to be small oil spots on the cover. I ran the cover through the washer, and they disappeared. The box said the pillow would smell at first, and that the smell would go away after one or two days. I put the pillow under a ceiling fan without the cover. When I went to bed, it still smelled sort of like house paint.

By my standards, this pillow is pretty firm. You can’t scrunch it up much or fold it. It keeps your head fairly high off the mattress, but not quite high enough to strain your neck. It’s not as comfortable as a feather or down pillow when you first put your head on it, but I found that it didn’t get less comfortable with time. When I use traditional pillows, I have to change position once in a while because the filling compresses and the pillows become less comfortable. With the memory foam job, that doesn’t happen. You can lie in one position for a very long time. You just don’t feel like moving.

The box said the pillow would not warm up like a down pillow, and that is true. It stayed at a comfortable temperature. It didn’t heat up and make me sweat, which is a pleasant change. Nothing bums me out more than waking up and finding that one side of my pillow is wet. And I’m sure that contributes to allergies by encouraging things to grow on and in the pillow.

Because the pillow is hard, I’m going to run over to the mall and see what else is available. There is probably some sort of non-feather pillow that is easier to mash. I figure I can combine the foam pillow with something else–maybe buckwheat hulls–and get a system that works.

I wonder if this is going to improve my life. Poor sleep makes you fat, raises your blood pressure, and wrecks your memory and concentration. I had to quit playing the piano because I couldn’t remember pieces from one month to the next, and it was a very unpleasant disappointment. Maybe I can give it another whack now.

This morning I felt sharp as a tack. I had my usual Tuesday breakfast with my father, and in conversation, I felt like I was right on top of things. I didn’t hunt for words, and in my mind, I stayed ahead of the discussion. Maybe my brain isn’t turning into Jell-O after all.

We’ll see what happens. I’ll miss my down pillows, but I missed my brain more.

I do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell

I think I know what I want to make with my machine tools. Remember how I wrote about my sad efforts to create a crab-claw cracking tool that would wow the masses and replace things like hammers and pliers? I think I should go back and finish the job. Get a little closure. Perhaps literally.

I’m thinking stainless. Maybe tool steel; I don’t think it rusts much. And my requirements for the machine are that it has to crack anything a person can eat, except maybe coconuts, and it has to be fun to use, and people have to go “WOW” when they see it on your coffee table.

I already have an idea for a cam-action sort of thing, with the camming motion provided by a round cam with an off-center axis of rotation. And I want to put ball bearings in it so it will last forever.

It’s hard to describe because I haven’t actually designed it yet. But I’m positive it will work.

Why aren’t more people making cracking machines? This is a real problem. Nutcrackers, without exception, suck. They’re too small for walnuts. Half the time the nuts squirt out the side and shoot under the couch. They’re too small for crab claws. They’re worthless for Brazil nuts. Think how great it would be to have snazzy looking universal cracking machine, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I’m not totally sure how you go about designing things like this with no knowledge of drafting and zero CAD skills. I guess I can get a pencil and wing it.

By the way, and this is not really related to tools, did you read about how the French are giving someone a face and hands transplant? Drudge linked it today. They’re doing amazing things over there. What you may not realize is that they worked their way up from a simpler procedure. A lady in Marseilles had an armpit transplant. Apparently she could not face the world after a rare viral infection left her own armpits bald.

“Mon dieu,” she exclaimed, “my automobile has been eaten by rats!”

Wait, I’m confusing two different stories. Or obscure Seventies cartoons, as the case may be.

Here’s something interesting.

New Calipers!

I’m beside myself. My new dial caliper has arrived.

I guess it’s stupid. I already have two vernier calipers (is “vernier” supposed to be capitalized?) plus a Chicom dial caliper, but vernier calipers are a pain to read, and everyone says not to trust Chinese instruments for really precise work, so here I am with caliper #4.

I found a guy selling Mitutoyos for half price on Ebay, all fresh and new in the box. I already snatched it from the package and measured the only precisely made object within ten feet, which (because I was in the dining room) was a Cor-Bon .38 Super round. I got 0.356″, right on the button. As it should be. I guess I should compare the Chicom job and the vernier calipers.

Stuff I had to get in order to run a lathe is beginning to come in, and I am experiencing a form of glee I have not felt since I was finishing up my physics degree and I finally reached the point where I did not have to put any basket-weaving (liberal arts) courses on my schedule. I loaded up with quantum mechanics, optics, partial differential equations…I think that’s right. I can’t remember everything. I couldn’t believe I was free to do what I wanted, instead of babbling about whether we exist in philosophy class. I took five courses, and some were graduate courses, and others were top-level undergraduate courses. I found myself sitting in class beside the teaching assistant who taught my first year lab section.

I’ll never understand why physics didn’t work out. I just burned out, I think. You can’t do all that in three years, starting from scratch, without spraining your brains.

Now I’m about to start machining things! How on earth did I get here? How did this happen? I’ll bet I’m the only person in my law school class who is learning to use machine tools. If not, I’m the only one who is doing it by choice.

I love it. I feel like pouring assorted tools out on my bed and rolling around on them.

I’ll leave out the scribers and the scratch awl.

Yes, I have a scratch awl now. Sometimes I’ll be at a hardware store for something important, and I’ll look around, and I’ll say, “Oh, that looks useful.” And I’ll buy something. That’s how the scratch awl ended up in the car with me.

I need it! You don’t understand! My first machinist scribe is only steel–I’m pretty sure–and the other one, that goes in a shirt pocket, doesn’t have a cool wooden handle! I have to have all my bases covered. And it was only like six bucks.

Last night I watched the last ATI milling machine video. When Darrell Holland showed how the rotary table worked, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I have to have one of those things. Even if I never get a milling machine. I’ll put Marvin on it and rotate him to very precise angles, for no good reason at all. Chucking him may be a challenge, but there’s always duct tape.

I better go write up some notes on that video.