revchris

The garden is going well so far this year. We weeded yesterday, so that's done for a while.

We also just bought a flag for the house. Then I discovered that the bracket from the previous owners is screwed into the corner trim, and one of the screws is completely stripped, and another is mostly stripped. The question, then, is Where do I have something solid enough to put up the flag?

If you attach the flag bracket to the frame that holds the screen up around one of the planting beds, do you then have a Victory Garden? (teeka gets all the credit for this question)

(here is a closeup of how the frames are built)

Can somebody build me one of these kits?

Anybody good at welding stainless, or know anyone who is, and is willing to work for homebrew?

Todd (neighbor across the street) has a line on 1 gallon stainless kegs (that take a standard tapper).

The problem is that they've got burst disks milled into the body of the keg, and the disks were milled too deep, so they rupture really easily. He figures that if he can find someone to over-weld the milled area, he can use them for homebrew, but right now, they seem to burst the disk at only a couple PSI.

His only concern is that the weld be fairly smooth on the inside, as a rough weld will be too difficult to keep clean.

Yesterday for dinner we had the first BLTs of the season. Eventually, we'll have the first BLTs with home-grown tomatoes.

Today, teeka thinks it is the first time she's riced potatoes (for certain, it's the first time she's done it at our house). And then she did it a second time, to the same potatoes. We're trying to make lefse from scratch for the first time (her Mom made lefse a while ago, and then Maggs found a lefse stick at the hardware store, so now we're trying it).

Other than that, today I mowed the law and sprayed the yard for mosquitoes.

Tonight I have some work to do on a consulting project.

Some days, technology doesn't seem as helpful as it should be.

Yesterday I had to buy a USB to RS-232 adapter for my notebook so that I could reconfigure a brand new temperature monitor.

Yesterday I also got a new PDA. There really is no good way to switch from PalmOS to Windows Mobile. The easy way would be to change palm conduits (did that), and sync to Outlook (did that), but that doesn't help if your WM PDA has Office Mobile without Outlook.

I found a freeware tool that will restore a .CSV database to the new PDA and have transferred the contact list, but I've got to wait until I get home, because I don't have the Palm Desktop add-on at work that will let me export the calendar to a .CSV.

Mobipocket and HandyShopper were easy (there's WM versions of both, and HS uses the original Palm .pdb file with no changes), and the rest is minor accessories and games.

Next I need to figure out how to get all the passwords out of that database.

teeka pointed out why the weather is so rainy this weekend.

It's the weekend of the Port Washington Pirate Festival.

We're waiting to see if they have another tornado, like the last two years (which, really, is why we skipped it this year).

First, here's a picture of the cages over teeka garden beds:


Second, I've got Dreamwidth invite codes if anyone wants to check it out.

Finally, today's project:

I built more shelving in the basement. It's anchored on one end by the wall I'm working on to separate the finished section from the rest of the basement - you can see the drop ceiling in the upper right corner. I also discovered that, in a pinch, it'll sleep up to 4 people - the shelves are 75" x 24", but the top two shelves have only about 18" of vertical space (and the top one has the I-beam in the way, too), unlike the bottom two which have 23", which is tight, but doable, unless you flail around a lot. I figured this out because the only way to anchor the left end is from laying on the shelf below because it's got to be done from the inside, as I didn't feel like moving the shelving unit to the left out of the way. This replaces the shelves that came with the house - 1x12 pine boards hanging from perforated steel strapping so that they were free-swinging if you leaned on them. I'm putting the leftovers from that out on the curb on Friday.

The next part of the project is going to be to finish filling the shelves with everything that's accumulated on the floor around where I'm doing the wall, just to get it out of the way. I've got the wall one up to the ductwork that runs along the basement ceiling. I'm gong to leave a 40" opening there to fit the door (which will be a little short, but that's life in the basement), and then continue the framing around to the stairs. I think I'm going to run plywood along the sides of the stairs so that I can panel it later so that it'll have nice looking walls and you won't be able to see the utility spaces on either side of the stairs.

After that, the humidifier that's currently on the furnace goes. We haven't used it, and it sticks out into the stairwell, so it's going to be in the way if I leave it there. I'm not sure how I'm framing in around the furnace, other than that at least parts of the wall will be easily removable in case the furnace needs major work (or replacement), and the section of the wall that runs parallel to the stairs is probably going to be a series of doors hanging on slide track so that the space can be easily opened up for furnace or water heater work.

I've got two things half done:
1) Maggs is at Farmer's Market, but will need to be picked up later; and
2) Frames are up on the garden beds, but now I need to find my staple gun so I can start screening them in.

If you receive an email from the Department of Health telling you not to eat tinned pork products because of swine flu, ignore it . . .



It's just Spam.

I left the building around 11:30 to run an errand.

On the way out, I noticed that there was a car up against the front of the building, and people standing around it talking on cell phones. I continued on, as there was a good chance that it was somebody related to the construction going on out front (two street projects, a gas main project, building construction, and a water main leak).

A few minutes later, when I came back, there were two UWPD squads and two MPD squads parked around the area, and several officers were talking to the woman in the car, which is tight against the building.

I finished what I was doing and went back out to look, as one of the UW's bike officers rode up (she recognized me, so I could wander in closer to see what's up).

The woman driving the car had borrowed it from somebody at the hospital, and it completely lost brakes coming around the curve on Johnson, so she had the presence of mind to drop the transmission into first gear and then jump the curve to use terrain to slow the car down to where it would stop. In the process, one of our trees lost some bark, and the shrubs that the contractors messed up got run over, and there appears to be a scrape of paint on the front of the building.

The officers present were looking under the hood: All the evap canisters are cut off, the battery is sitting loose under the hood (and is too big for the brackets, and has extra long wires to let it connect), the A/C compressor had been removed, and, most inportantly in this case, the master cylinder has completely fallen apart. I'm guessing that, when this is all over, somebody is going to have words with somebody else about the quality of their automotive repair skills.