Category: General

I think maybe it’s being used to the British approach to planning and building, but I seem to spend much of my time going in circles.

I want roof trusses. This, I would think would not be hard. But it seems that whoever I ask, I need to ask someone else first. Virtually every person has either directed us to a lumber yard (for a lumber package which will apparently include drawings) or an engineer (for drawings, for a lumber package).

However when I call lumber yards, truss manufacturers or engineers they all say no.

They recommend an architect. Which might work. Except one they recommended didn’t answer the phone, and the other will only discuss stuff with plans in front of him.

Which is a fair bit of hassle when he’s 45 minutes away – and closes in 45 minutes. He also won’t give me any idea of whether he will be able to do the plans this week, this month or even this year. Or what a rough idea of costs might be like.

It’s a fracking 38×24 box with a 6/12 roof. If it weren’t for the demand that the drawings were done by an engineer we’d f’kin do it. It would take a few hours, much of which would be spent researching the standards required.

Gah.

Which makes me very sad. They were a comedy music duo – and along with their disappearance their songs have disappeared into obscurity.

Since we were at a very nice party on Saturday night at which I was transiently tempted to sing one, I’m going to record the lyrics here for posterity.

Are We Havin’ Fun?
Jane, Michael, Jason,
Sit quiet in the back please,
[Mum]Your dad’s trying to drive,
We don’t want an accident,
[Mum]No we’re not there yet,
I don’t know when,
[But Mum]Give him back his gameboy
I won’t ask you again,
[Mum] We’re here at the camp site,
We’ve put up the tent,
[Mum] But your father has lost both the poles and the pegs,
See I thought [Mum.] he’d packed them,
[Mum] Oh bloody heck,
Yes okay Jane, Hang on, You can go in a sec,

Ohhh, Ohhh, Ohhh, our family holiday,
Are we having fun yet… [No]

[Mum] Boys, stop hitting those ducklings with sticks
[Mum] Jane, let’s find the loo,
Oh god the dog’s just been sick,
[Mum I’ve wee’d in the frizbee!],
That’s all that I need,
And now Jason’s eczema is starting to bleed,
Stay away from those people*
Their dog’s have got rabies,
[Mum, A dingo has taken all my jellybabies]
My head is splitting,
This holiday’s gone sour,
And Jason’s got verrucas from not wearing flip-flops in the shower,

Ohhh, Ohhh, Ohhh, our family holiday,
Are we having fun yet…. [No]

Get in the car kids,
Pack up your stuff,
We’re going home now,
I’ve had enough,
This holiday is shitty,
This camp site’s a farce,
Piss off the lot of you,
Shove your poles up your arse
[Your poles up your arse]

Jason’s inhaling the air from the bed,
Michael’s put a sleeping bag over the dog’s head,
[Mum, Jason won’t stop touching me with his warts!]
Next half-term book me a five-star resort,
I’ve set fire to the tent now I’m starting to crack,
I’ve tied up the children onto the roof rack, [whimpering]
[Mum] The dog’s in the boot,
[Mum] He’s gone cold and stiff,
I’m Thelma and Louise,
Show me the cliff,

Ohhh, Ohhh, Ohhh, our family holiday,
Ohhh, Ohhh, Ohhh, our family holiday,
Was shit.

* the original song uses a term which is now considered offensive by the group referenced.

While my time in this alternate universe filled with racist fuckheads has been interesting, I’d quite like to go back to the timeline where things were improving, if that’s okay.

Yeah, the house is on hold again. Waiting for a life-span guarantee on the roof. Apparently the mortgage company want a certificate that says it’ll last another 5 years. This is irritating, because we plan to pull the roof off anyhow. Regardless of whether we do the small-renovation of the inside, or the big project, the roof is on our list – but the thing is, we haven’t yet decided which way we’re going to jump.

So if we have to make that decision now, it may mean that we dump our plan to do a fairly wideranging reno, with significant structural mods, because having to put a roof on the place before we start would kinda stimie that. I don’t think either of us is up for paying for two roofs.

Still, to focus on good things, I spend this morning chilling with a friend in a park and watching the partial eclipse. Being disorganized and cheap I made myself a pin-hole viewer – unlike the idiot in the white house who, with his whole antiscience bent, decided to just stare at the damn sun. I’m kind of assuming the moment afterwards looked something like this:

Anyhow, the pinhole viewer actually worked remarkably well. Also, Sarah let me borrow her glasses so I ended up getting a pretty good view of it. While at 93% here it was cool, it wasn’t totality which I’ve seen once before and which is a different level of odd (although I didn’t really appreciate the oddness at the time).

As we wandered back we experienced a rather cool effect:

It seems, the leaves create a pseudo-pinhole effect, allowing the crescent of visible sun to be projected onto the ground.

…

In other news, I’ve bitten my lip. This has always been slightly problematic, in that I tend to promptly get an ulcer afterwards – but that wasn’t much of an issue, but about a year and a half ago I got some kind of infection after biting my lip, and then promptly felt utterly shit for a week. I’m feeling the same after this one, and it’s looking red and swollen again. This time I have health coverage, though, so I might need to visit a walk in center.

Last time, with no health coverage, I got to experience the joy of the US healthcare system, where I stayed at home and rode it out, drinking plenty, rinsing my mouth with salt and hoping my immune system could kill whatever it was. Thankfully, tomorrow I can’t go out anyhow, because we’ve got a package being delivered (with the standard, helpful FedEx / UPS delivery estimate of “tomorrow”), so I have an enforced rest day. Although I’ve spent much of today lying on the couch (having done the food shop), and reading the For Pros By Pros wiring book.

Still, there may be one trip out tomorrow. I’m suspecting the package is the tyres for the Rav (which have gained another nail, a super expensive nail this time, because it’s just in the sidewall).

Ah well.

After a bit of revision of ‘how to safely use a bandsaw without dying’ I spent a few hours today over at our friend’s house making the bits of wood I’d cut into large chunks of wood into smaller chunks of wood.

I both cut things into roughly the right shapes and also spent some time making them roughly the right thickness*. Now I need to start making templates so I can do the magic of pattern-cutting using the router.

One thing that’s interesting is that the wood has the blue-streaking from having sat unharvested once cut.

Apparently that’s a common problem with maple. I’d heard of it before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in person in raw wood. I’d seen it once before in some furniture where they’d chosen to make a feature of it. I debated whether to hack it off, but I’m unlikely to manage to get even close to all of it, so instead have decided it’s a feature, not a bug.

So where I could I’ve left it in. However, the dirty great water stain I trimmed off.

Anyhow, so things are progressing and my ornamental firewood is at least an interesting shape:

* One piece ended up unintentionally excitingly close to the right thickness. I was aiming to be almost 1/4 inch thicker than final thickness, but mid cutting one chunk of wood I realized I could split in half (more or less) and get two out of the same bit of wood. I passed it through the bandsaw without doing the careful measuring I’d done with all the other bits – because I was already resawing to the right thickness. Only for whatever reason, the second one ended up being actually about one mm thicker the required thickness (curiously, the other bit is the thickness I was aiming for).

So, I’ve spent today dinking. After getting myself onto the yoga mat this morning* I ran out to the shops for coffee and thence to our storage unit to retrieve the soldering iron. John pointed out that I was being an idiot. I’d assumed that just because the key tester arrived assembled with the keys in a particular orientation that the orientation they were in was correct.

And the irritating not-quite-rightness of it, and need to bend several of the other keys slightly to get them to fit (along with other people’s comments about the keys not fitting well) made me foolishly continue down this path of wrongitude. John pointed out that it might well fit if rotated through 90 degrees.

Which, with much less bending, it did.

So today with my iron in hand I did some of the neatest soldering I’ve done for years.

Which allowed me to produce my keytester/numpad:

At the moment I’m pretty settled on Gateron Brown. I’d like clicky, but I’m aware that beyond the fact it would probably drive Kathryn nuts, all the clickies are slightly stiffer. And I’m aware that my fingers are pretty knackered from years and years of computer abuse, and found the M eventually hurt to use for long periods. And while I know that’s 80g of pressure (or there abouts) vs 50g for the lightest of the clickys, the Gateron Brown is around 45g of pressure. This I know because having picked the key I liked I looked up my two favourites (Gateron Brown and Blue). And while the Gateron isn’t quite as highly rated as the Cherry Brown, it’s pretty close and the price is much better.

And honestly? I seemed to prefer it in my blind test.

So. I did that. I also fixed the surge protector that I picked up from goodwill last year, which when I finally got it apart (more brute force) turned out to be just a disconnected wire (it looked connected, but pulling on it revealed that it was just floating in the hole).

And then… my Pinebook arrived.

When they say it’s for tinkerers, they weren’t kidding. I ordered the larger 64G eMMC and did wonder whether it would come with it installed. It doesn’t. So my first act was to pull the back off (which requires a spudger, incidentally) to install the replacement eMMC.

It then booted into Android, which was confusing, because it said it would boot into Linux.

….so now I’m installing Linux.

It’s also playing music through its little tinny speakers. First thoughts – the screen is remarkably acceptable, the keyboard’s also remarkably good, the weight distribution is pretty terrible (everything’s at the back of the case, so it wants to tip over backwards), the touchpad is also pretty awful (whenever I try and click on something I end up clicking slightly below where I want to I realized that is true if I use the “clicky” on the touchpad, but if I just use the tap on the touchpad, that works fine). But I have to say, it’s pretty crazy – I mean, with shipping and everything it’s a usable laptop for $170.

It’s nice and light too. And while the screen’s no-where near as bright as my macbook, it’s perfectly usable.

Anyhow.

I’m also thinking that I need to disassemble my macbook and see if renewing the heatsink good and cleaning out the processor heatsink will make it happier. It’s been running at 70-80+ degrees pretty much continuously recently, which is “not ideal”. I realized that while I’ve cleaned out the fans and ducts many times, I don’t think I’ve ever pulled the processor heatsink off (since it requires unscrewing and replacing heatsink gunk)… so I think that might be a job I need to do.

Incidentally, my Pinebook came with *the best* sticker

Of course, all of this – this is one of the weird dichotomies of living here. I have ‘more’ disposable income, despite the health insurance costs being way higher, despite food being more expensive. I suspect that because heathcare costs are so insane here**, nurses are paid way more here than in the UK. And because of that I can buy toys that I’d not really be able to buy in the UK. However, all of that falls apart if either of us gets sick. And the healthcare costs are so astronomical that while it’s worth having a good chunk saved up – if one of us gets really sick, then it’d pretty much be curtains, because neither of us earns that much.

At any rate, I’m enjoying the toys while I can. Hell, my dad died before he got to enjoy any of the toys or perks of retirement (he died before retiring), so it is always hard for me to think “I’ll save for a long retirement”. Working in the ED probably doesn’t help with that.

Anyhow, I’ve spent a chunk of today thinking about the weirdness of it all. About how I miss the UK, but wouldn’t want to be there at the moment. About friends and family. About how lucky I am to be dinking on a laptop I bought because, well, I thought it might be interesting.

And it is***.

I wish there was a port of RISC OS for it though.

Then I could truly live my childhood dream of having an Acorn A4. Kinda.

*I’m pretty pleased with myself for both keeping up with doing yoga and for practicing Norwegian – I’m generally very poor at committing to activities long term, even if I enjoy them, so… for me to haul myself onto and off the mat at least 3 days a week is an oddity – and I’m up to about 600 words of Norwegian, which I suppose puts me somewhere around the a three year old.

** So, I checked, and nurses in various European countries are also paid way more than in the UK. I have no idea why then. Probably because the UK doesn’t really value nursing. They saythey value nursing, but clearly they actually value financial people.

*** I wrote about half of this post on it, now I’ve got it running, the VPN working, all sorts of fun and games it’s been. But for all that, running this lightweight version of Linux? It’s remarkably usable.

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.

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.

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 :)

Heh.

Sorry, puntastic title today.

Still needed some cheering up.

Today has been, in my own little personal realm, positive and pleasant. I spent the morning with a friend marking up the timber for the improbably difficult chair I’ve chosen to build. This 4 or so hours of escapism made me feel faintly human again. Because politically, things are pretty bad. So, let’s tell you about the chair before I start gently weeping.

Mid-century modern, and based on apparently a Brazilian design, I’ve chosen to make it from some maple which is… well, it’s a little close to heart wood, and will probably bend and warp as I cut it. It also has, essentially, no 90 degree angles – and I note, they’ve not put the fricking angles on the diagram of the pieces. Similarly, they’ve not actually put some of the thicknesses on some of the diagrams.

My current plan is to enlarge the diagram, measure the angles (I roughly measured them today, so I could sketch out where I think I’m cutting most of the parts from). I marked up one of the pieces of wood with the chunks I need to crosscut and the chunks to rip. Because it’s a longish board and the bits I need are mostly 20″ or so, but all different widths, it’s going to be a fairly complex job. I’m hoping that because I’m doing that now, the bits that are going to bend and warp and do horrid things might get that over and done with before I start trying to make complex shapes from them.

This incidentally, is the model of simplicity.

The advantage is I’ve chosen Western Maple, which is a pretty common wood around here. I also volunteer at a place where they get wood donations, and have a supply of very reasonably priced timber.

So that’s the good bit, the bit makes me feel like this move hasn’t been a terrible idea. Being near Kathryn’s family and near friends who have always been very distant (at the expense of being far from friends who were nearby). That and a work/life balance which at the moment feels pretty much perfect. I work just over half time, and that (theoretically) should provide enough money for us to live on (with Kathryn’s income, not by myself, obviously). That in turn means that I can engage in hobbies, work on stuff for Transport Evolved, and volunteer. I realise this is incredibly lucky.

What’s feeling terrifying is the othering by #45 of trans people. While, thanks to the work of decent reporters, we can call bullshit on the costs excuse, nervousness is starting to ripple into daily life. This othering, it makes it easier for the bigots to bring hatred down upon those of us being othered, and reminds me in a very unnerving way of the precursors to the destruction of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and its archives, and the treatment of both LGBTQ people and Jewish people in pre-war Germany. I note also that there’s action by the (in)justice department to strip LGBTQ employment protections. All of this makes me feel incredibly wary.

On the one hand I don’t want to equate what’s happening now with 1930’s Germany, but historians keep doing that. Which I think reduces the Godwin’s law possibility of me just assuming that.