rustyredrock.com

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.

The Puzzle for Charity Prize Pool is now at $45.00 (and the corkboard).  Three hints are available and the puzzle in in the sidebar on the right.  Good Luck!

A new poll has been posted.  Every vote counts (consider it practice for this November).  It, too, is in the sidebar on the right.

My brother and I are currently involved in a very serious text message discussion, one that has taken much time away from our busy schedules.  It started with a simple question: Who would win in a fight, Grape Ape or Jabberjaw?

My brother thinks that a 40-foot gorilla would destroy that effete great white shark, no question, but I think that’s unfair.  I think my brother is only considering land based duels.  In the water, I reckon the ape gets dusted pretty quickly.  Oh, I know he is huge and can swim but he requires goggles and a snorkel underwater… Plus the shark would have way more maneuverability. So, split decision, there.

We agree that Grape Ape would be killed by Apache Chief from the Superfriends, since he can “Inyuk-chuk” himself to the size of a mountain or more.  (This assumes his mass grows with his size, and that he isn’t just some micron-thick hollow shell).

Most other “Laff-A-Lympics meets Thunderdome” battles involving Grape Ape would be lopsided as hell due to sheer size ratios.  How to even the odds?

How about Grape Ape versus his weight in Smurfs?  Assuming his mass goes as the cube of his height, a normal gorilla is 400 pounds and about 5′ 8″ tall, the Go-rill-ill-ill-a would weigh about 60 tons.  So, if a Smurf (three apples high) weighs a pound, it would take 120,000 of them to equal the weight of the ape.  My brother and I agree that, although the feral Smurfs would take heavy casualties, they would eventually eat him alive.  It would be like a human trying to fight a huge colony of fire ants bare handed. You are going down, my friend.

In conclusion, although I am swamped with projects both at home and at work, I still find time to blow off those projects and slip further behind schedule by engaging in meaningless jibber jabber with my brother.  That’s the American way.