Well, that’s some progress

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Well, things are moving along in a more positive direction. No chicken counting yet, but we’ve had an offer on the land, so we may be able to shift that albatross from around our neck which’d be nice. We’re both rather sad to sell it, especially because we suspect from what we know of the buyers that the tree we loved will be coming down. But we can’t have a tree that’s holding that much of our limited funds.

On our purchase, we’re waiting on an appraisal on the house we’re trying to buy – and we’ve arranged to have another chat with the contractor about our construction needs.

That’s because we spent yesterday having a very nice chat with some engineers who gave us a rough calculation of the extra footings we need under our current foundation (~3ft square/deep) which apparently we can dig out without supporting the existing foundation (and then just fill it the hole with concrete), then explained that we could probably draw the modifications we want to make to our house to a standard that is sufficient for the city to pass them. If not, please come back, but if we have any questions, they’re very much able to help.

This is good news, we think. They also pointed out a much cheaper way for us to do what we wanted to do. Cheaper and more cunning, and with less resource use. All things we like.

Today I spent making firewood.

Yesterday I created a rough template for the chair I’m trying to build (or firewood I’m making) – this allows me to run the bits I want to cut through a band-saw, then I can use my (not yet in existence) accurate template to mark up exactly what I want to cut and trim.

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Today though, with Bill’s kind help, I took the circular saw to some of the larger board, and then I took the chop-saw to the smaller board. And that was it for the day. Much of the time was spent mulling and checking and doing recounts to make sure I really had drawn all the bits I needed (I hadn’t the first time, despite the note to myself on the board and in the book).

Still, it’s moving in the direction I’d like, and if it’s a disaster it’s firewood and the time I’ve spent has been very soothing. Also, I am learning, and that is definitely a good thing.

I then did a bunch of errandy things before looking at the key tester that I got from Massdrop. This is much more of an irritating thing.

Described as being made from cast aluminium (it’s not, it’s cut/bent aly); the circuit board that was extra to turn it into a number pad doesn’t actually fit. The holes in the board for two of the key switches are way out of line.

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I hoped it would be “close enough” that I could just bend the pins, but much exploration of the situation leads me to believe that isn’t going to happen. I’m going to have to drill out the pin holes to make them large enough, then run some mod wire along. On the plus side I think I’m fairly settled on gateron brown switches. Also, slightly irritatingly, the supplied keycaps actually make it impossible to see which switch is which, so you have to pull the cap to work out which one you like. Mind, that does make it a better test, I suppose.

I shall probably play a bit more. On the one hand I’d like an actual clicky keyboard, I really rather miss having one, but for the sake of everyone else’s sanity, it might be better to have a non-clicky board :)

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.