rustyredrock.com

All,

This will be my last RustyRedRock post.  I will leave the site up for a little while longer before I tear it down entirely.

As I have said, my wife and I are expecting our first child soon and I have a lot of projects to take care of before, during, and after the happy event.  Maintaining a website is not really that big of a task, but maintaining one to the level of care that I would like to give is a little tougher.  It’s sort of a “How many grains of sand are needed to make a pile?” sort of thing. I am just trying to reduce the size of the pile…  For now, anyway.

I have removed the Puzzle for Charity and halted work on Puzzle 05: The Chalice.  Don’t worry… They will be back when the new site is posted in a few months.  The Prize Pool and Charity Pool will retain (at minimum) the values they had when I took them down.  I will, however, be writing a $60 check to the current charity (Blue Ridge Food Bank Area Network) after I post this… No reason not to, really, and it’s only fair.  That will make a total of $247.25 (and three huge blankets) donated to charity since the start of this site.  Thanks again to Agmorion and Siun-Kelan for making Puzzle 03 possible.
 
When the site comes back up, I hope to have a few steady contributing writers to help me out.  I have tried that with extremely limited success in the past, but maybe next time will be different .  Also, I think I might switch from Wordpress/Yahoo to Blogger.  Easier for a number of reasons, it seems.  We will see.

Even better would be to write for someone else’s site, which is ultimately what I would like to do.  If you know anyone that is looking for a contributor for puzzle creation or the style of writing you see in the Unexpected Segue or World News sections of this site, let me know.  My contact info can be found in the Contact and FAQ link in the sidebar on the right.

Some final stuff:

I have started on a video project that I may or may not post in the future… The project was designed to be more of a historical archive rather than something for mass consumption so it depends on how the individual episodes turn out.  If they turn out decent enough, you will hear more about them.   If not, you won’t.  Either way, it will be a while before I find my feet and have a few finished episodes, as any of you that have done any sort of video editing will completely understand. 

Speaking of projects, I have finished building my scrap wood holder and nearly finished my firepit.  I built both with (mostly) leftover items from previous projects. The irony of the wood holder project is that I used a lot of my scrap wood to build it, so the problem it was designed to solve sort of dispappeared…  The design was taken from the book The Complete Book of Woodworking.  It is very, very good with lot’s of step-by-step pics.  Here is my (modified) version, front and back. 

Thanks to jimmydunes who provided many, many hours of unpaid labor to help me create a firepit in my backyard.  The exterior was made from the leftover bricks from the elevated garden project and the overall design was based on one at the DIY Network site.  If jimmydunes and I were able to do this, anyone can. Important Project Scheduling Note:  Brickyards (where you will get the fire clay and the fire bricks) typically have banker’s hours for some unfathomable reason, so plan accordingly.  Below is a pic of the first “test fire”, and the other picture is the mold for the capstones that will finish up the project this week. 

I have hung the curtains and ceiling fan in my new den, so the finishing touches of that project are done, at least.

The final sticks of furniture have been added to the baby’s room.  We are looking to add a border, hang some more art, and add a clock.   And some shelves for the closet… Hmm.  It looks like we aren’t done after all… I had better get a move on…  Here are some pics, though.

What else?  Oh, yeah.  I hate my Treo with all of the hate that it is possible to generate toward an inanimate object.  It locks up constantly, stays latched in “roaming” mode whenever I go inside and then leave a certain building at work, I can’t send pictures easily, I can’t convert the video with any tools I have, the Bluetooth connectivity is random… The list goes on and on but it is really no different than any other piece of 2008 technology: something claims to do a million things, but does none of them well. 

So what am I going to do about mine?  The only action that makes really makes sense is this: It’s just a phone, man. Don’t worry about it.  Unplug.  “The only winning move is not to play“, style of thing… Sort of Zen, dontcha think? But, as God as my witness, my next phone will not be Windows-based. 
 
After a rough start, it looks like the tobacco plants are going to make it.  I have started picking the smaller leaves off the bottoms of the plants and the top leaves are starting to grow faster.  I am storing the leaves I pick in a mason jar in my very hot garage to see what happens to them there.  I will use these initial clippings to make my own insecticide, I think.  The soy is also doing well, but the peanuts were a total failure.  Everything else is doing just fine.  Here is a photo of the garden and a close-up of one of the tobacco plants.

That’s about it.  Thanks to all of the readers of this site.  I had a lot of fun doing this and look forward to re-starting it when I can. 

Cheers!

 unplugnow

I have gotten some feedback that my hints… umm… draw vacuum.  Do I need to post another hint for the Puzzle for Charity or should I let you enjoy the challenge?

Answer using the poll in the sidebar.  I will leave it up for a week.

Also, I am thinking of ditching this site altogether… at least temporarily - baby on the way, you know.   I think I would rather focus on building the Puzzles for Charity and write for someone else’s site.  I am not sure yet what I will do.  If you know someone looking for a news/humor writer and has a like minded attitude regarding the power and potential of small charities, let me know.

I will put up a poll regarding that as well.

Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately.  As you may have guessed, getting stuff ready for a new baby has sort of been trumping my perceived importance of telling you all what I think about Christmas decorations, reviewing bad local restaurants, and mocking people who go to my gym.

Go figure. I doubt you are heartbroken, though.  :)

But here is the Cliff’s Notes version of stuff I would have written about in the past week in a less busy alternative timeline:

• There are now over one million Priuses on the road.  I have been getting 53MPG lately, and expect even higher as the weather warms up.
• Over 50% of our Incentive Check will be spent offsetting over-the-top gas prices.  Check out my previous post on the topic here.
• GTA4 has the best co-op version of any game I have ever played. The noticeably smarter and tougher cops are now sort of a cross between low grade Terminators and 007-School dropouts.    
• I believe that forests aid in randomizing weather patterns.  By chopping down huge (and not-so-huge) areas to make room for housing developments, the now chaotically smooth areas allow for stronger straight-line winds and weird hurricane-like weather patterns to develop over land.
• I don’t watch soap operas, but I am really getting tired of listening to Spinelli.  No one talks like that outside of a Renaissance Faire.
• The news angries up my blood.  The world is doomed, celebrity news, the world is doomed, puppy dials 911 to save master, the world is doomed… Etc, etc, etc.  Do what you can to fix stuff locally, and the bigger stuff falls into place a little easier.
• My tobacco plants are coming in nicely.  I hope to be able to use some of the crop as insecticide for next year.
• Today is Bike-to-Work day.  It got me thinking of all the places between my house and work (about 25 miles) where bike and/or pedestrian traffic is prohibited by law (bridges, tunnels, certain Interstate portions, and whatnot).  Is it actually illegal for some people to get to work without involving a car? Wow, if true.

I got my tobacco plants, and I didn’t have to commit a crime or have to threaten anyone with violence or anything (as in: I hope you can tell me where to get tobacco seeds or slips. [nervous laughter] I’d hate for this to turn into a hostage situation…).  As a matter of fact, the farmer I got them from was polite and knowledgeable, and was eager to help me out.  Sweet!

I planted the seven slips he gave me of yesterday before some storms came through.  I hope at least a couple of them make it - we will see.  I will take pictures as time goes by and, if all goes well, I will start building a small curing shed in the next month or so.

The Puzzle for Charity is now up to $55.00!  You can get to it by clicking the corkboard image in the sidebar on the right.  Good Luck!

Also, a new poll has been added.  Every vote counts - this topic: Who would you least like to see own a real, working Light Saber?

Congrats to jimmydunes on the purchase of his new motorcycle.  Enjoy, dude, and may you find all the Sweet Jumps you desire.

Even more beyond the OFNOGs… 

The Towel Princess

On a feminine beauty scale from one to ten, this gym employee rates a 5.1 and is obviously tired of being hit on by every single guy who walks into or within one quarter mile of the place.  It has gotten so bad (in her 0.1 focused mind, anyway) that the only way to deal with the constant threat of having to turn down spontaneous marriage proposals and throne abdications is via pre-emptive strike: hyper-rudeness to everyone at all times.  After all, you can’t spell “customer service” without a “what the hell is your problem, pal, can’t you see the extra towels are over there?”  

The Clustering Chucklers

Nothing gives these old gents greater delight than a non-stop exchange of cliche-rific one-liners first thing in the morning, each more rip-roaring than the last.  Nothing, that is, except to do it in front of your locker, effectively blocking you from doing anything but enjoying their wacky routine.  Side-splitting, time-consuming topics include church cookouts, baldness, and “where Barney’s gotten to these days, haven’t seen him around much, probably got sick of his wife’s cookin’ an’ took off a-hur-hur-hur”.

We - my wife and I, that is - have begun to plant things in our food garden.  Well, I use words like “we” and “our” but I am the one doing all the work tilling, weeding, planting, etc, etc, etc.  She does nothing but dictate which crops go where and does not contribute even a little bit to the labor effort.

Why not, you may ask? Why is she so damn lazy - too many soap operas and bon-bons? Hasn’t she ever read the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper? 

The truth is she is 7+ months pregnant, and her ogre of a husband refuses to let her deal with fertilizer, come near insect poison, or dig in the hot sun.  I figure she’ll have ‘labor effort’ enough later. In the meantime she can just focus on building us a little dude and let me tend to the crops.  Personally, I couldn’t be happier to do it.

Since this is “my” garden this year I got to add a few plants that normally would not have been there.  For instance I will be planting some soy, some peanuts, and even a couple of tobacco plants.

Why those? The wife and I like tofu occasionally and, as with the peanuts, I think it’s cool to get protein without having to raise and kill farm animals.  Not that I am a vegetarian -  there is nothing I like more than a huge medium-rare steak, and, statistically speaking, at the time you are reading this I probably have a #1 combo from Wendy’s somewhere in my digestive tract.  I also know that growing only a few plants might sustain a small family for a week at the outside, but no longer than that, that’s for sure.

So call this a very tiny experiment in self-sufficiency.  I will post pics and descriptions as I go.  Sort of like Agmorion has been promising to send me for well over a year now to post on this site.  I mean, would it kill him to send a few descriptive paragraphs of the work he has done on his basement greenhouse?  But, noooo, he can barely fire off a zero-text email with “a bunch of pictures attached” and remember to actually attach them… But let’s get back to the tobacco.

I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get someone in this tobacco-growing region to give me a straight answer to the question “Where can I get a small number of tobacco seeds or slips?”  50% of the people I have asked, at both large and small gardening centers have haughtily rebuffed me for even asking such a stupid question. They even seemed angry, as if this was my 50th time calling in this “prank” and they had had just about enough of my shenanigans.

49% of the respondents, while non-rude have been less than useless with their answers, trading in the perfectly acceptable reply of “I don’t know” with “I don’t know, so instead let me while away the hours telling you everything I do know about tobacco from the establishment of Jamestown Colony to modern federal regulatory actions…”  I have even gotten responses that, if true, prove the existence of time travel - “The plants are grown from seed in greenhouses in February but you can’t get seeds because the plants are grown from slips starting in May…”

It’s almost like I have stumbled onto the existence of a secret society of some kind, one whose pass phrase is “Where can I get tobacco seeds or slips around here?”.  The correct response on their end is “Tobacco plants draw worms away from tomatoes” or similar.  The correct response on my end then is probably something like “The pearl is in the river” or “John has a long mustache” at which point we would show each other our secret tattoos and they would lead me to some tastefully decorated underground lair…

But, since all I actually want are two damn tobacco plants all I get are trivia of suspicious value and strange looks.  You know, I might actually have to follow the advice of the other 1% of the people I have asked (Siun-Kelan). She said all I need are three things to get them: a shovel, the cover of night, and a moral compass that doesn’t point True North.  Check, check, and check. 

I will let you know how it turns out.   Who knows?  You might see it on the news.

At least one tornado ripped through this area today damaging a hospital, destroying dozens of homes, injuring hundreds, and killing at least one.

No damage to this neighborhood - electricity was not even interrupted.  The nearest serious damage was 3 miles from here.

Please say a prayer for those who were not so lucky.

One of the few benefits to living in our house is the huge amount of storage space.  I understand it is also one of the most dangerous things to have.  Much like a goldfish will grow to fit its bowl, some people have the habit of accumulating useless knick-knacks until every closet, crawlspace, basement, attic, and “spare” room are absolutely crammed until bursting with stuff they will never, ever use in a million years.

And, man, I mean freaking never. 

As a matter of fact a lot of the stuff people collect have no possible use other than to act as a great disservice to archeologists of the future.  Think about it. Wildly inaccurate claims will be made on the life and leisure of people of the 21st century based on the items that are found in your ex-house.  “It was considered a symbol of high status amongst these primitive peoples to gather and store as many irreparable gas-powered Weed Eater engines as they could, possibly for religious rituals…”

Fortunately, I have been cursed with a low tolerance for clutter and blessed with a like-minded wife. We recognize the difference between a memento worth saving and a shoebox full of broken cell phone chargers.  We don’t measure a room’s potential value by trying to imagine it packed to the rafters with cardboard boxes filled with broken exercise bicycle parts and half-used PAAS Easter Egg coloring kits that we will sort though “some day, we swear”.

I know, I know… You are thinking the geegaws that comprise your little hoard “might be collector’s items some day”.  I will let you in on a little secret: it’s 2008.  That means absolutely everything is a Limited One of a Kind Platinum Edition Director’s Cut in the Special Metal Box with the Shiny Foil Trading Cards and Cheat Codes Inside.  Everything is amazing, everything is garbage, everything is useful and necessary, and everything is just taking up space.  Everything, in short, is the Tom Waits’ song ‘Step Right Up’. 

(Steps gingerly down from soap box. Looks around. Blushes) But we have been slipping lately.  Over the past decade we have accumulated enough worthless stuff to mandate having a yard sale.  Actually, that’s not true.  We have about half of what is needed so we are sharing happy-fun-time-crap-fest with some friends of ours this Saturday.  They live in a more populated area and I don’t think even the most ardent connoisseurs of other-people’s-very-used-stuff will drive 30 miles to paw through our collection of maybe-all-there jigsaw puzzles. 

(Places one foot tentatively back on soap box) Or maybe they would.  But be ye warned: Oh, I will take your money as you successfully haggle a functional TI-85 calculator with no battery cover out from under me for $3 instead of the suggested $3.50.  But know that I would have been just as happy with $2.00, $1.00, or even 50 cents just to get the dust-collecting thing out of my dang house.  And, when you leave with your treasure, I will mock you for it relentlessly, trash-boy.

Weather permitting, of course.

The Prize Pool is now up to $50.00 (and the corkboard).  Give it a go!  The link is in the sidebar on the right.  Good Luck!

Beyond the OFNOGS…

Whistler’s Great-Grandfather
Whether he emits his high-pitched atonal renditions of 1940’s pop hits for echolocation or merely to block out the voices in his head, this guy just won’t shut up with the mindless whistling.   His complete lack of awareness of the musical scale dovetails nicely with his complete lack of volume control. From the entrance to the locker room all the way to the showers, no one amongst the early morning crowd is spared his daily, relentless performance.

The Screaming Peacocks
A small tight-knit group of balding, oddly-shaped-but-muscular male humanoids dominates the free weight benches in the afternoon.  Completely lacking “indoor voices” and a sense of “no means no”, they terrify every woman they attempt to pick up.  Repeated rejection only seems to exacerbate their preening and strutting behavior, and dropping 60-pound dumbbells from chest height onto the rubber matted floor is just their subtle way of saying “Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me!”

More to come (unfortunately)!

I have writer’s block.  I am not getting any inspiration from recent non-political news, other than this:

The Puzzle for Charity Prize Pool is now $48.50 (and the corkboard).  There are 3 hints posted.  The puzzle is in the sidebar on the right.  Good Luck!

I have re-started attempting to solve the Khan’s Cons puzzle at PuzzleMonster.com.  Still no luck, but I nearly accidentally ordered “pink wine” at the drive-through at Wendy’s recently…

Over the past week I have managed to drag my lazy carcass out of bed and get to the gym before work. Some of you may be thinking “For the love of God, why?” or “Hey, haven’t you written several times on the awesomeness of sleep?” or even “Whoop-de-doo.  Whaddayawant, a medal?”

The third comment notwithstanding, I am doing this for two reasons.  The first is because my job mostly involves me sitting virtually motionless in front of a computer all day and I need more than the usual 30 minutes/day of cardio I had been getting.  The second is that I have a number of projects I am juggling at home so I can’t simply tack on another half hour to my workout at night.  Something had to give to make these mandatory yet seemingly incompatible targets reachable, and that something is two hours of sleep in the morning.  So I have been getting to the gym early, doing a 30 minute treadmill workout followed by a quick upper body rotation, then getting to work early.  I love the extra energy and I am trickle-charging my comp time pool.  Pretty sweet.

But all is not happy…  The OFNOGs are there in much greater numbers in the mornings than in the evenings.  That was to be expected, though.  I have updated the counter in the sidebar to include this week’s count.  I won’t go into details.

Ok, just one detail.  One OFNOG was standing at the urinal taking care of business in a pose that can only be described as “slouchy orangutan at parade rest”.  Yep, both hands clasped loosely behind his back.  Freaking weird.

Hmmm… Since this is getting a little longer than I expected it to be, I will break this down into several articles instead of writing one giant one.

Although I talk about them a lot, the OFNOGs are not the only creatures of interest at my gym, you know.  Look for future articles describing the other fascinating life forms that inhabit the building such as: Whistler’s Great-Grandfather, The Screaming Peacocks, The Clustering Chucklers, The Towel Princess, and many more!

Stay Tuned!

Dear Bird,

Aww, c’mon… What the hell is your problem, anyway, little dude?  Like this is exactly what I need when I’m trying to leave for work – I reach for my car keys and I’m halfway out the door and what do I hear? The all-too-familiar tap-tap-tapping at the window of the wood burning stove.

We go through this exercise about three times a year… You or one of your buddies decides to spelunk my 40-foot tall, 10-inch wide stove pipe.  Why?  What’s the draw?  I used to think that maybe the light from the living room could be seen from up above but the flue is shut.  Well, obviously not shut too well since there you are hopping around like the very sooty doofus you are.  But, still, I don’t think it’s the light.

The pipe is capped pretty well, and there is no nest that I can see.  It really must take an effort to squeeze in there before realizing there is no inside ledge to grab onto, and then to drop all the way to the bottom.  Absolutely brilliant.  Well thought out, my friend.

Calm down, calm down, of course I am going to rescue you.  I am only trying to take your picture for my blog.  There, was that so bad?

I assume you know the drill. I am going to shut all the inside doors of the house, open one upstairs window, open the garage door, and try to gently grab you with a towel. Easy, easy, spazmo, I’m not trying to crush you.  You should be pretty tired from your ordeal.  One of your pals was so out of it he hopped right into my hand and let my carry him outside.  I hope you are like him.

Oh, great, you little [many expletives deleted]!!  Right in the face!  Very nice.  So your plan was to blind me with soot before slamming yourself into the skylights over and over again?  No, no, go ahead.  I’ll wait.  Good luck with that.  Twentieth time’s the charm, you know.  Just watch out for the ceiling fans.

Ok, you made it to the bookcase.  If you just look a little to your right you will see an open window in the loft.  Nice and inviting.  But feel free to slam yourself fifty times into the closed one literally less than two feet from freedom, idiot! The right… THE RIGHT!! 

There you go.  Please spread the word that the chimney is not a toy… or a tree.  Well, time to wash up and change and tell the boss I’m gonna be a little late.  Thanks a lot.

Sincerely,

The Owner of That One House

The entertainment center for the den is done! 

I was able to salvage a majority of the top of an abandoned-by-the-side-of-the-road (1940’s-era according to my neighbor) dining room table and, using nothing more than a scrap two-by-four, create a TV stand for my den.  Total cost: $1.99 for a new paintbrush.  Well, that really oversimplifies things, doesn’t it.  I mean, obviously nails, screws, and glue were used.  And paint and stain.  And tools, of course.  It’s not like I drilled one-and-one-quarter inch diameter holes into the supports with my mind and the surfaces didn’t plane and sand themselves.   And let’s not forget the cost of labor.

So I guess what I mean to say is that I built a hundred-dollar entertainment center using nothing more than 30 hours labor, a drill press, a set of spade bits, a set of drill bits, a radial arm saw, a cordless drill, a belt sander, an orbital sander, nails, paint, stain, furniture clamps, wood glue, two different types of t-squares, three types of sandpaper, a Dremmel and bit set, a hammer, and an electric hand planer.  Total adjusted cost: well over $2,000.   Less romantic of a story, but more honest, I feel.

This was a fun project with the exception of the removal of the table-top’s veneer.  That was a real hassle but the electric planer really helped out, there.  It also helped remove the heavily stained surfaces  below where the veneer had peeled up and let in water and mildew for God knows how long.  Unfortunately, the blade is a little tilted which resulted in slightly uneven smoothing passes.  The resulting gouges needed to be sanded out with a belt sander.  “Isn’t the blade adjustable?”, you may ask.  “Yep,” I answer, “but look at  this:”

This scan of the instructions from my Hitachi P20SB planer shows my problem with adjusting the blades.  “There must be something I’m missing,” I thought.  I felt like I was in a dentist’s office looking at a Highlights magazine, trying - and failing - to find “which clown is different from the others”, or whatever.  I stared at that diagram for a very long time…  Once something like that is wrong, nothing else written (by the same authors) about a device that has razor-sharp cutting surfaces spinning at hundreds of RPM can be trusted.  I dealt with the gouges and belt-sanded out what I could.  Inelegant, but safe.

A Dremmel was used to get the old varnish off the curvy edge bits without completely destroying them (thanks for the advice, Agmorion).  The supports were made from scrap two-by-four.  I drilled one-and-a-quarter inch diameter holes in them and painted them gloss black.  This made them look less like scrap two-by-fours and made them look more like gloss black scrap two-by-fours with holes in them.  Hey, I don’t have a wood lathe.  What do you want me to do, whittle me up some some nice elegant fussy tea-table legs with my hunting knife?  Get off my back, man.

Scrap trim pieces were glued and screwed to the underside of the shelves to prevent the maple surfaces from splitting along the joints over time.  The legs are four square two-by-four hunks, also painted gloss black.  The unpainted surfaces were stained using that combination poly/stain I spoke about in the past.  Like I mentioned, I don’t like using it because I don’t get the control from doing the two steps separately, but I still have plenty of the stuff left over from other projects and I want to use it up.

Final assembly was easy.  The top is held on with only five finishing nails and the piece is very solid.  It looks great in my den and I am looking forward to putting together the dining-room table from the remaining parts still in my garage.  I will sell the table on craigslist to get some cash to keep the site running.  Stay tuned.