Bolted to Workbench!

Even though I went to Home Depot, where everything is hidden or out of stock, I found some lag shields and a two-by-six, and I came home and got to work sticking them in my workbench. At the store, I looked at the package, and it called for 5/8" holes. I figured I had to have a 5/8" spade bit at home, so I didn't buy one.

Guess what? It turns out a foot-long 5/8" masonry bit makes a fine spade bit in a pinch. I already had half-inch holes opened up, and the masonry bit did a swell job of enlarging them.

The lag shields worked like a charm. Thanks, Ed. The press is firmly attached to the table. I'm a little concerned about how they'll hold up when I move the press on and off the bench, but I got some spares, so I don't care.

Incidentally, let's have a round of applause for Ridgid power tools. They have a lifetime warranty on a bunch of their stuff. Unfortunately, if you throw out the box before applying, you lose the UPC code you're supposed to send in, in order to qualify. I lost one or both of the UPC labels for my tools (miter saw and table saw), and I contacted Ridgid to see if I could work something out. Today they emailed me and said they had upgraded me to lifetime warranty status on both tools.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:54 PM | Permalink  

I'm on a Roll

I ruined a supporting two-by-six on my workbench last night, implementing a clever scheme to enable me to drill straight down through seven inches of wood without a drill press. It works like this: you make marks at the far end of the workpiece, so that when you sight along the side of the bit, you can keep it aligned with them. The theory is that if the bit tilts either way, it won't be vertical any more. And it works. Just not well enough to be worth doing. In other words, it works about as well as guessing. Which, I guess, means it DOESN'T work.

Oh well. Seven dollars down the toilet.

I should have bought me a drill guide. But unbelievably, Home Depot didn't have them. A trip to Sears is in order.

I knew a day would come when the lack of a drill press would bite me in the ass pretty hard. And here it is. But I think I would rather blow forty bucks on a drill guide than nearly five hundred on a press. And it would be a good thing to have, press or no press.

When I finally buy, it looks like Steel City is the best choice for a drill press I will never outgrow. Out of the stuff available at the prices I can stand to pay, this one has the longest stroke, plus a few other features I forget. This job, all by itself, is a good argument for a long stroke. It would be a pain, drilling these 7" holes with a short stroke. If the prices start to creep up, I'm going to get one. Sooner or later, it has to happen. Oil is high, the dollar is low, and the Chinese will eventually get spoiled.

There are a lot of neat old commercial drill presses on Ebay. But even if you eliminate the 220 and 440 machines, plus the machines that are just too big, you're looking at worn-out items over a thousand miles away, with no warranty. For this risk, you save about a hundred bucks.

I'm going to go ahead and get .45 bullets in the Hornady promotion. I guess it's the best choice. Now I have to worry about primers and powder, which means I need a manual. The ABCs of Handloading has a chapter where a guy who makes match ammunition for pistols recommends a bunch of stuff, but I've gotten so paranoid from warnings to read the manual, I am afraid to listen to him. He recommends something called Bullseye powder. I would like to go ahead and order it with the manual and save money (can't get the manual in local stores), but I guess I'm screwed.

The guy in the book says you don't have to sort or trim cartridges for pistols, so that's good. But he likes very slow loads (under 800 fps), which is a bummer. I would like to learn to shoot, using loads that feel similar to defensive ammunition. But I guess it doesn't matter. An inch or two of difference at fifty feet probably won't make me lose a gunfight. One comforting thing about self-defense is that if you can shoot at all, and you have done any preparation worth mentioning, you are miles ahead of a typical moron criminal. I suppose you don't need pinpoint accuracy, if you can reliably pump someone's torso full of lead at distances from which a generic criminal can't hit a house.

Posted by Steve H. at 9:51 AM | Permalink  

More Tool Woes

Once again I must call on the tool gurus for help.

I have to mount my reloading press on my workbench. The best way to do it is to drill holes and use hex bolts. But the holes have to be over 7" deep, and they have to go vertically through a two-by-six. And obviously, it will be bad if they aren't straight, because they will come out of the side of the wood.

So, what's the deal? I have a foot-long bit already.

Posted by Steve H. at 4:50 PM | Permalink  

Saw Now Functional

Had some fun with tools yesterday. I am trying to get my table saw in working condition. It came with a serviceable but non-ideal blade guard, so I decided to replace it. That meant replacing the splitting mechanism which prevents kickback. That meant adding a zero clearance insert. Actually, TWO inserts, since I have to have one for my current blade and one for the thin-kerf blade I'll be getting one of these days.

I wasn't sure what to do, because all the ads for inserts looked less than promising. My saw, a Ridgid TS2400L, is not high on the list for aftermarket parts makers. I kept reading that the inserts that were available didn't really fit and had to be worked. I finally decided to try a couple from Peachtree something or other. You can look it up.

It turned out the insert did not have to be altered, which was a relief. But it wouldn't fit in the table with my 10" blade. You're supposed to mount the insert with the blade all the way down and then raise the blade through it while the saw is running. The instructions said to put in a smaller blade, in order to accomodate the uncut insert, and then move to the bigger blade. Unfortunately, the only smaller blade I had was a thinner blade from a circular saw. It would never work, because the kerf would be too small. So I spent like 45 minutes clamping the insert in place above the existing throatplate and cutting a groove in it to allow the blade to go into it when it was installed.

What a pain. But it worked. I'm writing about it mainly in case anyone else has the same problem. I'll pop up on Google to help.

The GRRripper is going to be interesting to use. You have to have a lot of faith in the product, because it requires you to move your hand directly over the saw blade. That scares me. I keep reading posts on the web from guys who say they lost fingers on a table saw, and I can't believe they're all complete idiots. Maybe they are, though.

Anyway, I finally have a saw that works.

More

Oh my God. I managed to put the Grrripper together.

I am invincible.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:49 PM | Permalink  

At Least I Didn't Have to Hire a Slackjaw

I resolved a major quandary today.

As longtime readers and Nowlive listeners know, I am a big fan of Winn-Dixie supermarkets because they stock a nice variety of white trash/ghetto pork treats. And they have "reward cards" that allow you to get huge breaks on weekly specials.

I want that cheap pork. Oh, how I want it. But I don't want Big Brother tracking my purchases through a computerized card. What to do?

I found out that Winn-Dixie will give you a card if you apply online. With no ID check. So I applied using my favorite Internet alias: Mr. Red Butz. And I gave them the phone number for the Miami time of day recording.

Soon I'll be ass-deep in delicious, inexpensive pork. And I won't have to worry about Skynet keeping a list of my purchases. Instead they'll be keeping tabs on Mr. Butz. They'll get the marketing info they want. It just won't be traceable to me.

This thing is worth it. I'm looking at this week's ad. Boston Butt, $1.49/lb. Spare ribs, $1.79/lb. Usually they have better bargains than this, but these aren't bad. Hey, if you buy country-style ribs or steak, you get another item of equal or lesser value free. Not too shabby.

What else is going on? Let's see. I decided to record a PSA for my Nowlive show. What the hell. Thousands of people hear it every day, so it can't hurt. I'm going to mention four charities that are honest and effective. I like World Vision, World Relief, Care Net, and the International Federation of Christians and Jews. Can't hurt to do something useful while I'm blabbering about midgets and pork.

I'm keeping up with my tools, believe it or not. My father needed a hard-to-describe thing to keep his closet doors on track, so I replicated the old one using the table saw, the miter saw, the router, and my Wecheer rotary tool.

I had to start by making myself a 3/8"-thick red oak board. The board I had was more like 5/8". I stood it up on its side on the table saw, put a two-by-eight beside it as a guide, and pushed it through with a makeshift push stick. I was on the verge of incontinence the whole time. I knew I was jury-rigging it, but I didn't have a week to wait for featherboards and so on. It worked perfectly. Table saws rock.

I then cut the board to length with the miter saw, routed out two grooves (which, I learned later, were totally unnecessary), and used the Wecheer to carve out holes for three plastic guide thingamajigs. Tools are great. It was a miserable job (due to my lack of a drill press, which is what I needed to make the holes), but it was ten times less miserable than using the tools I had five years ago.

Jesus. I may as well buy a damn drill press. On the other hand, maybe I could get by with one of those jigs that attach to hand drills. Or a drill press rig for my Proxxon. That might actually be more useful, since most of the things I want to work on are very small. On the other hand, it would be pretty weak, and maybe a real drill press could do everything it could do, and would be a better deal in the end.

Arrgh.

The miter saw is wonderful. I half-wish I had blown the extra money and bought a 12" sliding job. It would be huge and heavy, but much more versatile. Right now, there are things I have to use the table saw for, which would be easy to do with a sliding miter saw.

I'm going to order some featherboardy things. I can't keep putting it off. If I had cut something big yesterday, it might have flown off and caused problems. I had to "aim" the saw away from my motorcycles so flying objects would hit the garage door instead. That saw is scary as hell, and I want it to be as safe and predictable as possible.

Some people believe in buying tools as the need arises. I don't. You can do that for some tools, but there are some basic items you just goddamn well ought to have in your garage at all times. Just bite the frigging bullet and get them. You need a table saw. You need a good bench. You need a vise. Some kind of compressor. Everybody, without exception, needs a cordless impact driver. Why fart around? If you can afford it, put together a basic shop.

Buying a tool is liking buying a coffin. If you buy it before you need it, you can shop around and basically rape the vendors. If you wait until you have no choice, you buy whatever is available, and you pay too much. Simple truth. Yes, your money earns interest if you wait. But how often is the amount you earn likely to be worth it? Buy a drill press this year for $300, on sale, or earn interest and buy it two years later for $450. Did you really accomplish anything? That's a very typical scenario.

I spent like 90 minutes with the Wecheer yesterday, and I did an okay job, and by the end, I couldn't feel anything in my right hand. With a drill press, I would have done a perfect job in fifteen minutes.

I just dread buying another damn tool.

My table saw (Ridgid TS2400) has an aluminum top, so I can't use magnetic featherboards. If anyone wants to throw out suggestions, be my guest.

More

I decided to try the GRR-Ripper featherboard/push combination for the table saw. It's not magnetic, and people seem to like it.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:30 PM | Permalink  

Piped, Regulated, Hosed

I finally got my frigging compressor set up.

I'm not all that thrilled with the solution I came up with. I have two male-male 1/2" ID couplers, joined by a female-female 1/2" ID coupler, going from the ball valve to the regulator. I have a male-male 1/2" ID coupler coming out of the other side, going into a 1/2-1/4 female-female reducer, which goes to a quick-disconnect deal. Then I have the snubber hose to the reel, the reel is on the wall, and I have what appears to be a hundred feet of 3/8" urethane hose on the reel. I thought it was 50, but when I unrolled it to wind it on the reel, it went practically to the moon.

The thing I don't like about this arrangement is that the regulator's weight is held up by the fittings. It's just hanging out there. It's not heavy, and there isn't much vibration, and it's not in a place where anyone would whack it. And even if they did, the maximum damage would be one or two destroyed fittings. But it would be nicer on the wall.

Funny thing is, the people who make parts for compressors conspire to keep me from putting my half-inch ID regulator on the wall. For one thing, the valve is 25" from the wall (when the compressor is installed correctly), so it requires a snubber at least 30" long. Good luck finding one in half-inch size. You can't use pipe, because you need something that isn't rigid. On top of that, the regulator packaging prominently states that you can mount it on a bracket. But Ingersoll-Rand doesn't make a bracket, and there isn't a single place on the regulator where you can drill and put a bolt to attach it to a regulator you make on your own. So you pretty much have to hold it up on the pipe coming out of the tank.

On top of that, you can't put the regulator right up against the tank, where the connection would be subject to less torque, because the ball valve handle is in the way. I considered sawing half of it off.

I finally killed all the air leaks, using two wrenches and half a roll of Teflon. I guess I'll be okay. I love my impact wrench; it's so quiet, it's ridiculous. It doesn't have as much torque as some of the others IR makes, but on the other hand, I got it for 90 bucks. You can actually have a conversation with the wrench and the compressor both going at the same time.

The reel looks pretty sweet hanging on the wall. Thank God it's finally out of the way. I had it piled on my portable compressor for months.

Does anyone out there know how close to level a compressor has to be? I'm off by about an eighth of an inch, back to front. Not sure if that matters.

Time for a giant steak and an immense baked potato. I have earned it.

Posted by Steve H. at 7:08 PM | Permalink  

My Life is 100% Minutiae

This morning I decided it was time to get around to taking on a project I have been planning for quite some time. I ordered the cheapest electronic keyboards available, and I'm going to rig them up so Marv and Maynard can play them by pulling cords. I realize I am inviting a world of pain, but I can't resist. Imagine the Youtube potential. If it doesn't work, I'll be out 20 bucks, max, but at least I'll know I tried.

The problem with this idea is that parrots always hate the toys you think they'll like best. You know what really gets Maynard going? TV remotes and washcloths. A washcloth will entertain him for three solid hours.

I'm considering having Maynard tested for steroids. I looked at a bunch of other citron-crested cockatoos on Youtube, and it seems like almost all of them are way smaller than he is. He claims he's innocent, but then so does Roger Clemens. I guess it's possible that he's just a mutant.

Marv fixates on random words from time to time. His current favorite is "turd." So now we keep having this conversation:

MARV: TURD!

ME: TURD!

MARV: TURD!

ME: TURD!

MARV: TURD!

ME: Okay, you win.

MARV: TURD!

I apparently got very lucky choosing these two types of bird, crazy as that sounds. Greys are very independent and not too loud, and among cockatoos, citron crests are unusually calm and quiet. Other cockatoos scream all day, and they pull their feathers out. Apart from picking the right species, I also ended up with two very well-adjusted birds. Marv is always happy, regardless of whether it's appropriate, and he almost never bites, and when it comes to handling him, the only thing he won't put up with (any more) is feather trimming. I mash him ruthlessly all day, like a throw pillow. Maynard virtually never bites (me), and although he's kind of mopey, he has never picked his feathers or caused any problems. I'm horrified by the things I read about other birds. They bite constantly. They scream. They won't leave their cages. They won't go back in their cages. They pluck themselves bald. The worst I have to put up with is verbal abuse.

I have to get myself to Northern Tool today for the last part I need to get the compressor into service. It's the only place I can find that has any real air fittings. I'd use brass plumbing stuff, but I've noticed that it tends to have a low pressure rating, and I'm not anxious to go to the ER to have shrapnel dug out of my head.

I was annoyed to realize that fittings with 3/8" ID threads don't work with 3/8" hose. You have to have 1/4" ID threads to make the connection. So I stepped down from 1/2" to 3/8", figuring it wasn't a big loss, and now I have to step down all the way to 1/4". I'm not sure why my compressor came with a 1/2" ID ball valve. Does anyone in the entire world use 1/2" ID hose and fittings? I'm beginning to doubt it.

Once I get the fitting I need, here's what I'll have. Half-inch ID ball valve to 1/2" ID pipe. Pipe to 1/2" ID regulator. Regulator to 1/2" ID/1/4" ID reducer. Three-eighths ID hose. From studying physics, I know one or two 1/4" bottlenecks won't have the restricting effect fifty feet of 1/4" hose would have, but I'm sure it will make a difference, and it still seems like a stupid idea.

What else is going on? I'm waiting for relief from the cold. A week or two ago, I bought myself an electric blanket, locally, for $150. That's apparently a reasonable price for a good quality blanket. I was flabbergasted.

I did a little research, and I noticed that people complained a great deal about the failure rate on these things. Evidently, the manufacturers don't really expect them to last more than a year, and they go bad frequently. Unacceptable.

I returned it to the store and found myself a good online deal on a heated mattress pad. They're cheaper, and you can leave them on the bed all year, so there's no storage. Unfortunately, Linens and Things would not honor the price locally, so I had to order it online. Ha ha. I'm so smart. I saved twenty bucks. But wait...I bought it on the 29th, and it turns out the damned thing won't be here until at least January 11. I can't believe it. It got down to 34 degrees here a couple of days ago, and NOBODY I know has heat that works. Everyone here has air conditioning, which is fine for dropping the temperature twenty degrees. But when you need heat to raise the temperature forty degrees, your central air isn't worth a crap. We just don't build houses to be heated down here. Some rooms are warm. Some rooms, like my bedroom, are cold. So when it gets below 55, I absolutely have to have electrical help in order to sleep.

I figure that by the time that stupid thing gets here, a third of the cold nights will be behind me. I will have lost maybe fifty hours of sleep. But I saved twenty bucks! I'm a genius!

Like most men, I am inept when it comes to all aspects of homemaking, and the blanket failure is a good example of that. But I managed to improve one thing: my pillows. Mentioned it recently. For a long time I had been having congestion problems at night, and I kept changing things, and nothing really fixed the problem. I think I'm making progress, though, because I got me some new pillows to replace the old greenish-gray ones detergent no longer seemed to affect, and they appear to be helping me breathe. The price wasn't too bad for down, either. Here they are, in case your pillows, like my old ones, are starting to grow feet. I got the soft ones, because medium pillows are similar to concrete blocks.

It took a while for the new pillows to work, because they stank of potpourri. The marketing assholes at LNT apparently believe women won't buy anything until it reeks the way women themselves reek when they pass middle age, lose their sense of smell, and start buying perfume that smells like rotten fruit. That potpourri stench drove me crazy for about a week. It was like sleeping with my head on Helen Thomas's belly. But it is finally subsiding. Ladies, here is a tip. If you're over 60, let your daughters pick your perfume from now on. It's no coincidence that one of older women's favorite Avon products turned out to be a powerful insect repellant that drives hungry mosquitoes shrieking into the night. When I go fishing, I have a choice. I can be bitten by bugs. Or I can smell like my sixth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Melville.

God rest her soul.

By the way, Warner Brothers just killed HD-DVD by moving its catalog to Blu-Ray. So maybe now we'll see some progress in the disk market. I'm still buying regular DVDs for my collection, though, because it will probably be six months before a decent Blu-Ray player becomes available. Right now, they all suck or cost tons of money. I have added Get Carter (the original), To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, Dark Passage, Dr. Strangelove, O Brother Where Art Thou, On the Beach, The Fountainhead, and some other crap I can't remember.

That's my interesting day for you.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:10 PM | Permalink  

Easy is no Fun

One of the annoying things about coming up with a tool project is that sometimes someone has an idea that instantly lets all the air out of it.

I was planning to build a pig rotisserie. I was looking forward to sawing and welding and drilling, to built supports to hold the spit. Then commenter Skippystalin asked why I didn't just use jack stands.

Damn it.

But all hope of excessive work is not lost. I've been Googling, and it turns out it's not easy to find cheap jackstands that go up to three feet. HA! So my plan is still intact.

I found the ideal solution. Boat stands. I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I've seen them a million times in boatyards. They're basically tall jackstands that hold up boats. But unfortunately, they cost over a hundred bucks.

I'm trying to find other answers. Harbor Freight has a bicycle stand for $9.99. Looks a little flimsy, but it holds 150 pounds. The biggest load it would possibly have to cope with would be around 75. It's worth driving down there to take a look.

If these things worked, the modifications would be limited to putting a yoke on one stand and a plate for the motor on the other stand. In about an hour, they could be ready to go. Hilarious. Is there anything Harbor Freight can't do?

Do you realize what the pig project now boils down to? Two bike stands, a motor, a plate, a $5 yoke, two cinderblocks, and an $11 sheet of metal bent into a charcoal pan. Plus a pole with a hub and a collar, and some mesh and Tapcons to anchor the pig. Blocks on ground, pan on blocks, stands at ends, pig on pole, mesh on pig, pole on stands. Add charcoal, and you're cooking. You don't even need the cinderblocks. A few bricks would do it. Anything nonflammable that would hold the pan off the ground.

I should have told Grainger I was a construction company so they would sell me the motor I wanted for $27, but $70 isn't exactly scary.

It's funny, people who make and sell pig cookers use giant motors that cost a couple of hundred bucks. I'd be all for it if they were necessary, but Val's experience with a tiny gearmotor proves they're not. The motor I ordered (Dayton 4LL05) has something like a hundredth of a horsepower, and it will be fine. Because it's slower than Val's motor, I'll be able to use direct drive (no reduction) to get 1 RPM. That means less stress on the motor. No sideways force on the bearings. No added friction.

I weep when I think of the unnecessary work Val and I (mostly Val) have done, roasting pigs. This year, he had to dig the parts of his giant caja china out of his shed, carry them across the yard, assemble them, add extra screws to anchor them, level the box, add stuff to stabilize the motor...it was no fun. Next time, we could grab two stands, a pan, two blocks, a pole, and a motor, and that would be the end of it. At the end of the day, throw out the pan, put the blocks out of sight somewhere in the yard, and hang the other junk on a wall. Poof! Done. To roast a turkey, I could use the new smoke box I made for the Hoginator. The lower half is just a grill. Toss charcoal in, light it up, put the turkey on a short pole between the stands, and open a beer.

The more I think about it, the more I think Skippy's idea, though very slightly off-target, will lead to the best possible solution.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:59 PM | Permalink  

Shopping

I have returned from Home Depot, Northern Tool, and Petsmart. Before I had tools, fish, and birds, I was content to lie on my ass and watch the world to by on Saturdays. Now I have to go out and buy things.

I went to Home Depot for research purposes, mainly. Although I also bought a cool little aluminum square. I was trying to put the pig rotisserie together in my mind.

They had a lot of interesting stuff. The easiest things to make it from would be angle irons and a U-shaped yoke thing from a chain link fence. You know; the thing that swings down on a hinge and goes around a post to keep a gate from opening. Weld one of those to an angle iron, opening up, and it would make a perfect place to rest a fence post holding a pig.

The also had mysterious things they just called "anchors." It's a four-foot length of galvanized rod, with a U-fitting thing on top and an auger sort of deal on the bottom. Evidently, you're supposed to screw these into the ground for some reason or other. I don't know if they'd be rigid enough to hold a pig.

I'm kind of disenchanted with the idea of driving the uprights into the ground, because I would have to do that over grass. That means putting the charcoal pan over grass. That means dead grass. The appeal of this approach is that the uprights wouldn't need bases, so you could store them in a very small space. Maybe I'll have to make some sort of base that comes off.

They had big sheets of galvanized steel for eleven bucks. Those would be perfect for charcoal pans. Cut, fold, and possibly weld the corners. Done. At the end of the barbecue, throw it out. I'd rather waste eleven bucks than put a nasty sheet of galvanized crap in my garage.

It appears that the whole apparatus will cost about thirty bucks, excluding the motor. And I know it will work flawlessly.

At Northern Tool, I finally managed to scrape together an assortment of fittings that will enable me to use my giant compressor. I've been going for weeks, and every time, they have approximately 15% of the fittings they're supposed to stock. I plan to have a straight fitting out of the ball valve, then a coupler, then another straight fitting, and then the regulator. On the other side, an angle fitting which reduces to 3/8", and then a snubber hose that runs to the reel.

I hope it won't be too much weight for the giant ball valve. The other alternative is to fabricate some kind of bracket to hold the regulator and hang it on the wall.

I don't like the reduction, but my hose is 3/8", so I had to do it or buy a bigger hose. If I ever have pressure or flow problems, I can always upgrade, and when I do, I'll be able to keep the regulator, which has 1/2" holes in it.

I also got the rubber wheel chocks I should have gotten weeks ago. I was tempted to buy a "Borrowing Tools is For the Weak" T-shirt, but Northern Tool assures that no one buys shirts, by only stocking XXL and up.

At Petsmart, I picked up two more yo-yo loaches. The one I already have has annihilated the snails, and it's a fairly entertaining fish. Supposedly, if you have three, they do interesting stuff. And knowing my record, it's a good idea to own extras, in case a few die. I also got a couple of otocincluses and some giant bird toys that Maynard and Marvin will eat in about two days. I love Jungle Talk bird toys, but they jacked their prices through the roof, so now I only buy them on rare occasions. If they were still cheap, I'd buy several a month.

Guess it's time to release the loaches and see what I can cram down my gullet for dinner.

Posted by Steve H. at 5:48 PM | Permalink  

Also, More Pig Technology

Here is wonderful news. I got rid of the instarefresh. I mean, "autorefresh." Now you can read my site without worrying about annoying reloads intended solely to increase my Sitemeter count.

Wow, I'm shrinking! This must be how Tom Cruise feels when he takes off his shoes.

I was surprised by the positive comments my last post received, except from curious commenter ab, who, like new readers kl and mr toad, who always seem to have something nice to say. I may have more to say about these individuals in the weeks to come.

I assumed I would get one or two positive comments, plus a bunch calling me a tedious asshole. I'm almost disappointed. Maybe the people who would leave negative comments have already grown weary and stopped reading my site. That would be great news.

The Sitemeter experiment was fun. And it led to some interesting reading. Evidently, the guy who runs Truthlaidbear had a kerfuffle with some liberal bloggers a few years back. They put the same code on several sites, in order to increase their traffic count. And he sent them threatening emails, saying they would be removed from the Ecosystem if they didn't cut it out. I wonder if he ever laid into Kevin Aylward, when all of his sites mysteriously started registering the same hit counts.

That led me to wonder...why would anyone care about being thrown out of the Ecosystem?

Maybe I'm missing something, but here's how it looks to me. TLB rarely sends anyone traffic. No one gets checks from TLB. No one in the media takes TLB seriously; they're obsessed with questionable Alexa data. What do you get for participating? Not a damn thing, far as I can see.

I have to admit, I liked the Ecosystem much better when I was ranked up around 150. Now that my ranking is approximately the diameter of Hillary's ankles in Angstrom units, it isn't quite as exciting.

Another thing that takes the joy out of it: the rankings mean less than they used to. The Ecosystem is full of spam blogs and fake blogs and corporate pseudoblogs and blogs that aren't blogs at all. And as the autorefresh experiment demonstrated, it's not hard to game the system, so the figures don't mean much. A whole bunch of blogs deserve asterisks, just like Barry Bonds.

I've often wondered how many bloggers have exchanged Sitemeters, in order to jack up their counts. If you don't know how, I'll explain. I figured it out myself, and I'm sure a million other people--even Kevin--have figured it out, too. If you have a free account, you have to display the Sitemeter icon on your site. But you can add a couple of words of code to make the icon too small to see. You can specify height='1' and width='1'. That gives you an icon one pixel high. No one will ever know it's there. I've done it myself, just to make the icon less annoying. Using this code, you and your friends can all exchange Sitemeters, and no one will find out unless someone rats on you. Give it a try; it's fun.

Now that I think about it, having a Sitemeter is somewhat pointless. I'm pretty sure the stats I get from my hosting company are more accurate, and I don't have to deface my blog with a slow-loading icon in order to get them. The big advantage of Sitemeter is that checking it is fast. You click, you see who has been bothering you, and you're done.

Anyway, they can eject my fat ass from the Ecosystem any time they want. For all I know, they already have.

I keep thinking about the pig roaster design. The more I think about it, the more disgusted I am that someone hasn't already put a good cheap one together as a retail package. There are rotisseries you can buy for hundreds of dollars, but my guess is, they're completely inferior to something you could easily make for yourself, for the cost of a tiny motor and a few bits of crappy steel.

First I considered two welded frames. Then I considered something that could be screwed to a pair of sawhorses. Then I started thinking about two simple steel or wood posts, driven into the ground. That's where my head is at, currently. I'm virtually sure you could safely spin a hundred-pound pig on two ordinary pieces of galvanized fence post, or two pieces of sturdy square tubing. I'm not sure how far you would have to drive them into the ground, but I don't think it would take much. The advantage of square tubing is that it's smaller and would resist less as you drove it. And the upper surface is smaller than a sledge's face. With fence tubing, you'd have to get yourself some kind of device to slip over the upper end of the tube, with handles that you pull down to drive the tube into the ground.

Another possibility: big angle iron. It's rigid, it's easy to bolt things to, it's easy to drill, it's easy to drive into the ground...what's not to love? Now that I think about it, that's the best choice. And you could make it easier to drive by welding a flat piece across the top.

I think I'll go buy a piece, cut it to length, drive it into the yard, and see how sturdy it is.

I suppose there is no reason why you couldn't use this setup to roast smaller items, like turkeys. If the fence-post spit has a detachable end piece to mate it to the motor and the upright member, then the length of the fence post isn't fixed. You could take the six-foot pig spit out and put a two-foot turkey spit in. Instead of roasting over a big rectangular pan, you roast over a small charcoal grill. Would that be more work than a grill with a built-in rotisserie, or less? More, I guess. But not much more, and it would be somewhat nicer.

In other news, shocking as it may sound, I have a niggling thought in the back of my mind, pushing me to write about politics again. Hear me out; I'm not talking about the kind of crap I used to do. I'm talking about a site which, instead of attacking the left and promoting the right, reams virtually ALL politicians for being assheads. If you think about it, this is what real professionals like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do, as contrasted with amateur punks like Joel Surnow. Yes, they lean left, but that has more to do with the inherent difficulty of being totally objective than with a moronic plan to save the world by only attacking one side of the spectrum.

Back when I did Huffington's Toast, I made a big mistake. The humor was nearly all anti-liberal. A few times, we made fun of conservatives, but the unspoken policy was to go after the left. That's stupid, and it's limiting. I mean, if you can't make fun of Mitt Romney's Indian-bleaching cult or Mike Huckabee strafing reporters or John Ashcroft's remarkable and unfortunate willingness to sing in public, you are crippled as a humorist, and it also affects your credibility. If it makes sense to say a humorist has credibility.

The big problem with my plan is, everyone would hate me. More than they do now. Liberals would hate me, conservatives would hate me, and swing voters would be too stupid to get the jokes. So maybe it's a bad idea. Maybe no one would link to me or mention me. I have to think about it.

On a related note, Moxie--I use her own words here--is now in danger of becoming Moxie the Peasant. She is considering resuming blogging--get this--with an anti-conservative tilt. I don't know if it's a good idea, but it will be interesting.

Hey, it worked for Arianna Huffington.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:28 PM | Permalink  

New Old Router Table

It looks like I may have an undiscovered treasure in the garage. I've been reading up on router tables, and if what I've seen is right, a big MDF computer desk covered with melamine is nearly ideal for routing.

I was worried about the flatness of the surface. I checked the table with a square, and it has a slight bend in it. But I can fix that by screwing one or two pieces of stiff angle iron to it. In fact I suppose that if I were really smart, I'd be able to set it up so the flatness of the table could be adjusted at any time, by using a wrench on the screws.

To do this, I'll have to get a router plate from Rockler, plus a template and a bit to make a hole for the plate. I could do it without a plate, but I think it would be harder. I'll also need to figure out how to rout a slot in the table for featherboards. Other people have done it. Some people put a sacrificial layer of something or other on top of their tables and flatten that, but if I did that, how would I slot the table? If I cut a slot in the MDF, it should be easy to set up for stuff to slide back and forth in it. I think it would be harder with a sacrificial surface, because the slot in the MDF would be much shallower and harder to mount things in.

I read that MDF machines very well, but you have to get rid of the dust, because it's full of poison. So I guess I'd have to drag the desk into the driveway. I could do it in the garage and then sweep and blow, but that doesn't work well enough to get rid of all of it.

I hate to chew up that desk. It cost me $140 ten years ago, and they don't seem to make them any more. But I have no other use for it. I do all my computing in a recliner. And the desk is showing its age.

I'm stuck here Googling this stuff because I decided to see if I could wash the allergens out of my bedding, and I made a big mistake which added two hours to the ordeal.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:18 AM | Permalink  

Can it be Done?

Here's a question from left field.

I was thinking about building a router table. I already have a router table, but it's not great. Let me see if they still make it. Hmm...I can't get into the Sears site because it's down for maintenance. Okay, it's an aluminum Craftsman job with a funny ribbed surface. It's maybe 15" deep and two feet wide, and it stands on steel legs so it's at waist height. I had no idea what I was doing when I bought it. I suppose it's okay for small work.

Taunton.com has plans for a breakdown table which is supposed to be very good. You attach the rear to a workbench, and legs drop down to support the front. I thought it would be fun to make one. But I've been reading all sorts of confusing stuff. Pat Warner, the router obsessive, claims router plates are no good. He says that if you want to do good work, you use a plain old MDF table with a hole for the bit to poke through. And the Taunton design has a plate.

On top of all that, I now have room to re-erect my old computer desk in the garage. This thing happens to be MDF topped with melamine, which Rockler's site says is the best possible crap for a router table. I was planning to give it away. So now I'm wondering--this is the question--should I try to turn this thing into a router table?

It's about 1 1/4" thick, which is kind of a lot. But that should make it very stable and flat. I'm not sure how thick a table you can get away with. Maybe I'd have to rout out a thinner area for the router to attach to. I don't know how well MDF responds to router bits.

I'm also not sure how I'd put a miter slot into it. There has to be a way. Other people use MDF.

If I could work it out, this might be a good solution to more than one problem. Since building my workbench, I have realized I really need a surface to the right of it to put tools on while I'm using the main bench. I could hang my router from the desk, put it to the right of the bench, and use it as a regular table when I'm not routing. It's five feet long, which would be a blessing when using it as a table, and it should give plenty of support for long pieces when routing.

Or I could give it away and start from scratch.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:03 PM | Permalink  

And Put a Plastic Head-Bobbing Dog in the Rear Window

Here's what I learned today. A metal cutoff blade in a circular saw you don't care about will do an okay job of cutting patio stones, if you aren't in a hurry. But if you're smart, you'll work outside. Because the dust is beyond belief.

I wasn't smart.

I managed to hang a hundred pounds of useless crap high up on the garage walls this afternoon, and then I decided to cut a piece of a patio stone and stick it in a place where runoff is eating the dirt. I feel like I dug the Panama Canal, singlehanded.

I'm turning into one of those old guys whose garage is always perfect. A guy who nails baby food jar lids to a board, hangs it by his workbench, and keeps sorted screws in the jars. Soon I'll be wandering around the yard in Bermuda shorts and black socks, muttering about chinch bugs and how the law will never find my secret stash of Chlordane. Anchor tattoos will spontaneously appear on my forearms, I'll start using Brylcreem, and I'll have false memories of storming the airfield at Guadalcanal. I'll get up at six every morning, run a flag up a pole by the driveway and salute it, and in the afternoon I'll sit by the mailbox in a folding chair I bought at the drugstore, drinking whatever canned beer is on sale and telling my candy-ass neighbors to keep their goddamn dogs off my swale.

Yes, I'm turning into one of those scary guys who taught PE in the sixties and seventies. A guy whose hair never got more than three-eighths of an inch long, and who wore a giant special Frankenstein shoe because he stepped on a landmine. A guy who slapped every kid who couldn't climb the rope. Who smoked Luckys while making the kids run laps and went to his grave without ever having trimmed his toenails. A guy who pulled his own teeth with pliers in order to avoid taking sick days.

I want to buy some enormous white boxers with bizarre little geometric shapes at regular intervals on them, and I want to pull them up to my armpits and wear them when I go outside in the morning to get the newspaper. I want to smell like Lectric Shave and fall asleep watching Lawrence Welk, on a TV that takes ten minutes to warm up.

That's my dream.

If you think your garage is too small, spend a couple of months organizing it. You may be surprised. You probably have five or six hundred pounds of stuff you can set by the curb for the trashpickers. You probably have no plan for floor space usage, so things that could take up x square feet are taking up 3x. And you probably don't have enough hooks and shelves.

One of the most irritating things that happens in garages is that stuff ends up on the floor, down around your knees, in front of things you need to access at waist level. For example, you'll have a cabinet you need to use a lot, and below it, on the ground, there will be an old television. And you'll have to bend forward at the waist in order to reach the cabinet every time you use it, and that strains your back. Putting up shelves that begin around four feet off the ground makes a big difference. A tremendous percentage of the junk that sits on the floor will fit on shelves, and suddenly, your floor will be twice as big, and your lower back won't hurt. Except from building the shelves.

Once your floor is clear, you can find a place to hang that board with the baby food jar lids. Oh, hey. I better get to the drugstore. I need some new shirts, and I'm almost out of Aqua Velva.

Posted by Steve H. at 7:31 PM | Permalink  

Grainger Sucks

I am highly annoyed. I found a nice pig rotisserie motor at Grainger's site (Dayton 4LL05), and then I tried to check out, and it said they only sold wholesale. So I'm not eligible, unless I cook up a huge lie.

They're selling it for about $27. Next best deal: $68. Can you believe that?

Ebay has a nice 220 gearmotor, but I don't feel like cooking in the garage. They used to have some really nice ones dirt cheap, but I didn't strike while the iron was hot. I could have had a big enclosed motor that would have outlived me.

I think I have the fundamentals figured out. I get this motor, and then I buy a 5/16" bore sprocket, with a keyway. I buy a similar-sized sprocket I can attach to a pole. I connect them with ordinary bicycle chain, from which I have removed the grease. I won't need grease at 1 RPM, and it would make a mess. Maybe a light application of oil.

Looks pretty simple. Perhaps too simple. I feel like I'm being set up.

I wanted to put this thing together without much metalworking, so other people could do it, but I think that's going to be too hard. The main thing that will require moderately hard-to-get tools is the pole. I have to fasten a sprocket to a 1 1/2" pole. If I could find a sprocket with a 1 1/2" bore that would fit a bike chain and attach with a simple screw, I'd be fine. But they seem to not exist. I suspect that I'll have to buy a flat sprocket and weld it.

They have all sorts of sprockets at Surplus Center. I found one with a 5/16" bore, to fit small gearmotors.

Damn Grainger to hell. I can't believe they teased me like that.

Posted by Steve H. at 2:47 PM | Permalink  

In Addition to Their Other Charms

Wait until I get my hands on the person who suggested I could fix my space heater.

Dedicated readers will recall that I have an annoying space heater that makes a loud noise when the fan goes on and off. I bitched that the manufacturer should have a setting where the fan runs constantly, to avoid the noise when you're trying to sleep. Someone said I should open it up.

I took the damn thing apart, and I figured I'd bypass the thermostat on the fan circuit. Oh, no. Sorry. It turned out the fan and the heating elements are in series. The fan is a 3V AC job, and I have no way of providing that voltage except by running the power through the heating elements. I tried to measure the resistance of the elements so I could match it, but I can't get a decent reading. Seems like it may be 10 ohms.

I suppose I could go find a 10 ohm 120 V resistor, plug it in, and see what happens.

I decided to open up a second heater which has the same problem, and guess what? The screws have TRIANGULAR HOLES. What sick son of a bitch came up with that idea? A hex wrench will sort of fit some of them. The rest will require a screw extractor.

I swear to God, sometimes trying to use tools is like a chapter out of Kafka. I want to look up the guy who designed those screws and spend about a week kicking him in the groin.

Long story short, I did not fix the heater.

Posted by Steve H. at 8:59 PM | Permalink  

Which is Best?

Okay, tool nerds. Say you want to drill a series of holes straight into a piece of wood, perpendicularly to the surface. More precisely than with an unaided hand drill. But you're too cheap to buy a drill press.

What's the best jig or cheat?

Posted by Steve H. at 8:42 PM | Permalink  

Ding, Your Job is Done

If your comment didn't appear today, it's because Haloscan is having one of its periodic fits. Unless you are one of the two lucky people who got the "Your comment has been posted" message, your comment disappeared the instant you hit "publish."

Sorry.

In other news, I've been cleaning up after blue-collar slackjaws again.

I get a lot of grumpy comments because I insult blue-collar tradesmen a lot. Well, here is my response: kiss my fat ass and die. My complaints will never begin to make contractors and handymen suffer anything like as much as they have made me suffer with their incompetence, stupidity, laziness, and dishonesty.

I asked a contractor to open a hole at the base of a wall, for a pipe to let water out of a confined area. When the slackjaws walked off the job, I was informed that they needed a bigger demo hammer to finish the hole. But they would be back soon. I believe that was at the end of the last Ice Age.

Today I went out there with a blacksmith's hammer and a chisel and finished the hole in about half an hour. I dug a trench, put together a PVC pipe with elbows, stuck the pipe in the wall, laid the pipe in the trench, squirted Great Stuff in the wall around the pipe, leveled the ground above the pipe, put a vapor barrier on it, waterproofed nine patio stones, laid the stones over the barrier, dug out an area where the pipe and a downspout empty, added another stone to keep them from pouring onto the ground, cleaned everything up, blew out the garage with a leaf blower, put away the tools, and came inside. Total time, including a trip to the hardware store? About three hours.

It's not perfect. Some day I'll need to trim the Great Stuff back, put some sort of concrete or stucco in on top of it, and paint the area. But the job is fundamentally sound, and I somehow managed to do it without a nuclear-powered jackhammer, and the slackjaws could not do that, with all their years of menial experience.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do better work than the best contractors I can find. That ought to tell you something about the state of blue-collar pride and workmanship in America.

I wish to God we had teleporters. I would bring people here from China and pay them to do the work. The construction industry is sliding into the toilet because Americans got suckered into the housing bubble, and work is getting scarce for the slackjaws, and frankly, I hope they all starve to death in the gutter. Nothing would make me happier than to see workers who screwed up jobs for me, handing me fries through a window at Wendy's. I am so sick of wiping their noses and changing their diapers. I have better things to do that stand in the yard swinging a mattock, doing something a moron with plumber's crack told me was impossible.

I can't believe the excuses these chimps give me. "You expect too much." "I guess your work is perfect." As a matter of fact, it IS, shithead. That's what I told them the last time they whined. I've never had a judge send a filing back to me because of an error. NEVER. I've never had a complaint about my work from a judge. As a writer, I drive myself and my editor crazy, picking nits and rewriting. Mistakes are few and far between. If I can do that, why can't a pea-brain who pushes a paint roller for a living?

Here's a blue-collar horror story. The mailman had the balls to put a Christmas card in the box last week, proving that government employees have a sense of humor. He clearly wants a tip. I have been getting Mary Garcia's mail since 2003, and this asshole and I made a deal: he would stop bringing it here, and I would stop writing "DELIVERED TO WRONG ADDRESS" on it to embarrass him. He blew it about fifty times, so now I have a rubber stamp with bright red ink and an exclamation point, and I use it. I wonder what Mary Garcia thinks. Am I seriously expected to tip this retard? He's overpaid to begin with. He works six hours a day. He got his position unfairly, because of affirmative action. A gerbil could be trained to do his mindless job. He has been screwing it up badly ever since I've known him. He has full benefits. He has a pension. He cannot be fired unless he rapes the President. He should be tipping me for not strangling him. Sorry, "Shakir." Merry Christmas to you, too, but I would sooner slice my fingers off than use them to write you a check.

Why would you tip someone who makes that much money and has it that easy, even if he weren't an imbecile? I tip waiters and waitresses. People who need it and deserve it. I'll tell you what. Instead of tipping the mailman, I'll tip Mary Garcia. But I can't do it by mail, because it will come right back to me.

I guess maybe I sound a little crabby. Digging ditches will do that to you.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:40 PM | Permalink  

Scroll Down

Dennis the Peasant says Chaz Johnson is having a slapfight with the Gates of Vienna.

My response: what the hell is the Gates of Vienna? I went and looked, and I got real bored 'cause there weren't many pictures, and then I saw the Pajamas Media Seal of Bad Quality, and I realized I had had all the fun I was likely to get. Then I checked out some dirty freaky midgets single-serving-sized exotic dancers on Liveleak.

I got a funny email about my post about dope. Maybe the person who wrote it will own up to it; I'll keep the info to myself. Here it is:

Your thoughts on grass are spot on. I smoked it daily for about six years and all it did was leave me unable to remember much of what went on during six years of my life. I could have saved a lot of money but just relying on age to bring senility, and with it, the loss of any memory of those six years.

In my response, I compared marijuana addicts to bags of suet that do nothing but fart and complain. "Whine" is what I really meant. And my correspondent said:

I can’t say I’ve been around anyone who does dope for nearly 25 years, but if memory serves, you’re right about that. I have a 45 year-old ex-client who had on-and-off cocaine/alcohol problems, and one day he was talking about how much time he spent in bars. I listened as long as I could and finally said “If you’re over 40 and spend more than 1 night a week in a bar, you’re a loser. Period.” I feel the same way about reefer boys… if you need reefer in your life, you’re a loser. Period. By the way, that ex-client said to me about two years later that my comment was one of the biggest reasons he cleaned up.

Ouch. It's a good thing I'm too lazy to go to bars, or I would be royally pissed.

Can you believe a person would say something that judgmental? Frankly, I was taken aback.

I was thinking about what I said earlier today, about dope smokers smoking to help them not be jerks. And I remembered an obvious truth. People always drink or use drugs to correct what they perceive to be their deficits. For example, I drank like a whale in high school and college, because it created the illusion that I had a personality, charm, and self-confidence. Luckily, I resolved those issues. By developing a personality, charm, and self-confidence? No. By realizing I didn't really want those things. And would not know what to do with them.

I used to know someone whose wife was grateful when he smoked weed, even though when he was high, he did nothing but lie in bed, watch TV, and put on fat. The reason? It really did make it possible to get along with him. When he was straight, he was a challenge, to put it mildly. My sister is the same way. Stuff her full of Oxycontin, and she nearly resembles a human being. Straight, she's like Hillary Clinton with a red-hot wire up her ass.

The sad thing about weedheads is, they think they're okay. Like all addicts. They buy the bullshit about dope being harmless and non-addictive. Wrong. Forget the tendentious, ludicrous rationalizations we've heard for thirty years. It works like this. If you have to have a mind-altering substance, you're addicted to it. End of discussion; your opinion is not valid and has been pre-rejected. If you think you're fine, great. When you finally man up and quit, ask your friends and family if they thought you were fine when you were smoking.

Fortunately, all my addictions are healthy. I worked on my tool addiction today. I cranked up the new table saw and made sure everything was aligned. I also watched a video called "Mastering your Table Saw." That's how bad I am. I learned all sorts of stuff. Mainly, I took this away from the experience: the inconvenience of using a blade guard beats the inconvenience of having a plastic hand. On short, of being Munsoned.

If you read about table saws on the web, you'll see all sorts of things about people cutting their fingers off. One forum post I read was actually funny, God forgive me. A guy said his father lost three fingers to a circular saw. In three separate incidents. Now, I realize nobody is perfect. And I know his suffering was awful. Really, it's not funny. Seriously. But how many fingers do you have to cut off before you get it right?

This guy is like the cat in the Far Side cartoon that tried to eat the piranha. Remember that one? The funniest thing about the cartoon was subtle. It had TWO wooden legs. Meaning, after it lost one leg, it still thought eating piranha was a good idea.

How do you lose a finger to a circular saw? Was he saving money on sawhorses by cutting wood as he held it in his left hand? All I can say is, tools are not for everybody. I plan to budget my extremities, and if I lose more than one, I'm going to get a new hobby.

The whole business has me terrified. I plan to make a push stick about nine feet long. I cut a piece of two-by-three today for purposes of marking the table's surface, and the whole time, I was staring at the saw, trying to figure out if there was any conceivable way I could maim myself during the three-second pass.

The video was good, although it was 14 years old and the guy was wearing a Mondale button and I think the table saw was powered by a steam engine. Apparently you can do incredible things with a table saw. If you're willing to maintain a three-story-building full of jigs.

I keep reading that jobsite saws like the one I got suck. I don't care. A stationary table saw is like a pool table; it takes up a whole room. I would rather suffer with my little saw, which can be stood up and rolled against a wall, than build a wing on the house for a he-man saw that can rip a redwood log.

The garage is killing me. It's so wonderful now, I go out there and stare at it for minutes at a time. I'm like a stalker, only I'm stalking a room. It's so clean. It's so orderly. And I have so much room now, I have terrible urges, pushing me to buy a full-size drill press.

Bench drill presses are supposed to take up less room, but is that really true? They have the same size footprint, and when you're not using them, they don't just evaporate. You have to put them somewhere. If they're on your bench, they're in the way. If they're on the floor, they might as well be full-size. Damn it.

I used the leaf blower in there again today, like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. I cannot countenance dust. I am not willing to discuss it. Dust will not be permitted to exist.

Not sure where I'm going with this. Ron Paul waterboards baby penguins and he ate Jon-Benet Ramsey. I guess that's the bottom line.

Posted by Steve H. at 7:03 PM | Permalink  

But It's my Life

More proof that bricks-and-mortar stores suck.

I have some crap. I want to hang it high on my garage wall, where I will barely know it exists. I need two giant hooks.

Went to Home Depot. They had 6 3/4" hooks which looked sort of okay. Got them home. They were marginal. I refused to put them up.

Got on the web. Two minutes later, I found the same huge hooks I used to hang an aluminum ladder last year. Lowe's price? About five bucks. Another site: $1.16. I wasn't sure whether I got two hooks or one for that price, so I ordered four. I'll receive at least four hooks, so I can hang the crap plus another ladder. I may receive 8 hooks. If so, I'll find a use for them.

God, I love the Internet. If it weren't for Al Gore, right now I'd be halfway to Lowe's in Hialeah, to buy something overpriced. And I'd get home in about an hour and a half.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:40 PM | Permalink  

Try Dr. Porter-Cable Instead

I'll tell you what. I'm starting to think I should promote myself as an alternative to obese diet guru and hit-and-run therapist Dr. Phil. My method? Tool therapy. I keep writing about this. You get yourself a big pile of tools, you start conquering problems that used to make your testosterone evaporate, and the first thing you know, you feel like a new man. And you didn't even have to be exposed to Oprah.

I took some classes at the University of Kentucky a long time ago, and I had a psychology professor who was pretty obviously a Republican or a Libertarian (college professors generally smoke dope). His name was Tom Zentall. He made a big impression on me. If I recall correctly, he said welfare didn't work, because it caused something called "learned helplessness." He mentioned a rat experiment in support of his work. It goes like this. You give rats some sort of a problem--I forget what--and then you either make them resolve it for themselves, or you resolve it for them. Then after you've done this long enough to get them conditioned, you put them in a tank of water. And the rats that helped themselves survive, and the rest let themselves drown. The principle extends to people and welfare. They learn to depend on it. Shocking news, I know.

Okay, I looked it up. You squeeze the rats. Some you let go, and others, you allow to extricate themselves. The ones you release drown, and the ones who save themselves swim. I actually think about that every day while I mash Marvin. I let him think he freed himself from my grasp, but that's only true when he bites the hell out of me. Don't tell him; he feels a tremendous sense of achievement.

Zentall made the news not too long ago, with some claim or other that reflected his political beliefs, but I can't remember what the story was, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

The same principle unquestionably works on people. You don't have to be a psychologist to know that. The more you succeed at solving your problems, the more willing you are to tackle new ones. And if you can't solve your problems, you become less willing to try in the future. You can couch this stuff in psychological mumbo-jumbo terms, but you could just as easily pick it up from watching John Wayne or reading Patton's biography. Patton said, "Never take counsel of your fears," which amounts to the same idea. The more you try, the more you succeed, so the more you try.

One of the greatest things you can do for yourself, psychologically, is to beat a problem that has been kicking your ass for months or years. And every man who has a home and a reasonable amount of stuff has problems like that. And tools are the answer. Tools are the way out.

I've been disposing of all sorts of old business since I tooled up. Shelves all over the garage (even on the ceiling, ten feet in the air), concrete slugs pulled out of the yard, a new workbench, three 240 circuits, new electrical outlets, concrete voids filled and sealed, a huge outdoor entertainment cabinet with a TV and stereo, a big smoker with an external smoke box...one thing after another. You would think the big payoff would be the concrete results, like the shelves and cabinet and so on. But that's not true. If that crap all disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't care, because the real benefit is that I have the ability to do it all again. And now, when I look at other things that need to be done, instead of caving in and putting them off (eternally), I realize I can take care of them, and I start making plans, and I actually follow up.

Last night I fixed the headlight on my Harley, and then, of course, it wouldn't start. Because the last time I filled it up, I failed to add the Sta-Bil which I bought for the specific purpose of avoiding taking the carb apart again. I knew this was coming. Dumbass. But I was ready. Instead of turning off the garage light and plopping in front of the PC or the TV and trying to think about something else, I yanked the air cleaner off, opened up the carb, took out the slow jet, blasted the bejeezus out of it with carb cleaner, determined that I had succeeded in salvaging it, put it back in the bike, and tried to start it. Nothing happened. So I grabbed my MAPP gas Turbotorch, held it up to the carb, hit the ignition, and started it using the gas as fuel. Ten seconds later, I had a smooth (for a Harley) idle. I got on the bike, went to a gas station, filled it up, came home, added Sta-Bil, and felt like I had cured cancer. It runs better than ever. It should. It has aftermarket pipes and a carb kit. But I digress.

I woke up today thinking about other things I should do. Nagging problems I have refused to confront. I used to have a habit of refusing to think about difficult household jobs, but now I have a lot more confidence in my ability to handle them, and I can anticipate how great it will feel to get them over with, so I end up doing things instead of avoiding engagement.

The Dr. Phil angle here is that conquering your tool fears will give you energy and confidence that will extend beyond tools. You'll feel more motivated to tackle life's challenges, generally. And wouldn't you rather spend $300 on a new miter saw that will last 20 years, than on a ticket to a seminar delivered by a fat, self-righteous, bald grifter?

I wish there was a book in this, but no one would buy the damn thing.

Here's one of the fruits of my journey into tool competence. I want to get my finances totally computerized and update them as I go. I would rather kill myself than dig through receipts again or pay a single dime in penalties to the IRS for screwing up on a filing. I want to know where everything is, all the time.

I hate the damned IRS. Not because they take my money. Because they make me fill out forms. I despise forms. They are the devil's favorite instruments of torture. Forms usually fit 95% of the population, and I'm always in the other 5%. And the IRS can do pretty much whatever it wants to you, if they don't like your accounting.

I was thinking about Wesley Snipes last night; apparently he has given an interview, claiming he had no idea he was breaking the tax laws when he took weird advice from his accountants. They say he could get 16 years. And for the first time in my life, I asked myself: why do we put people in jail for something as trivial as screwing up their taxes? I had never questioned it before, but if you think about it, it's insane. If I owe you ten billion dollars, the most you can do is sue me and get a judgment. But Richard Hatch went to the penitentiary because he owed the government a relatively small sum. Does that make sense? And isn't it counterproductive? If that creep had been allowed to remain free and pay fines, he would have made a pile of money, and the IRS would have gotten a lot of it. Why criminalize his behavior? Now the taxpayers have been saddled with his bills and the cost of his trial, and for the rest of his life, his tax contributions will be greatly diminished because the scandal crushed his earning capacity. I just don't see how that is a good result or how it can be considered just, in a country which prides itself on the decriminalization of debt. I don't know if any Presidential candidate will ever get anywhere with a flat tax plan, but I'll bet a promise to decriminalize the tax laws would bring in twenty million votes.

Wesley Snipes is apparently nearly insane, and I guess he tried to screw Uncle Sam. But I wouldn't want him to go to jail for that. That's just stupid. Let him make movies and pay it off. It's not necessary to put people in jail, in a world where virtually all money can be tracked down using computers. Accounts can be frozen. Wages can be garnished. He's not going to be able to hide anything significant. Tax debt is just debt, and the damage can almost always be undone. Why shoot the cow when it can still give milk?

Anyway, I want some software. Some guys want to die with the most toys. I just want to die organized.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:34 PM | Permalink  

Harley Repair

Couple of years ago, I rode the Harley up onto a stupid unmarked traffic island Coral Gables had just placed in the middle of a street. I bent a fender. I should have raised hell, but I fixed it myself and got on with my life.

Last week while continuing the Grand Unified Reformation of the garage, I decided to put the windshield on the bike to get it out of the corner. And the damned thing almost wouldn't go on. The headlight seemed to be in the way. I looked closer, and sure enough, the headlight was pointing a little bit to the right. I guess it smacked the palm tree when I hit the traffic island.

Goddamn Coral Gables Nazis. I hope our idiot mayor rots in eternal damnation.

I was afraid a whole bunch of stuff in the front end was bent, so I got out my manual and started taking stuff off. And I eventually realized that the real problem--most likely--only involved the headlight itself. It attaches to a block with two big bolts through it at right angles to each other, and you can rotate it around each bolt to some degree. I think the collision knocked it to the side, with respect to the vertical bolt.

I found the head of the vertical bolt and applied a 14mm METRIC SOCKET TO MY HE-MAN AMERICAN-MADE HARLEY because half of it is Japanese, and I tried to turn it, and nothing happened. Then I got out the half-inch-drive socket, and tried that. Oddly, I couldn't get the 14mm half-inch job on the bolt; I had to go to a 15 or a 9/16. I couldn't budge it.

I tried fitting my electric impact driver on it with a universal, but it wouldn't move. I couldn't get a pneumatic impact wrench on it. I decided I needed to get up tomorrow and get a pneumatic ratchet. But I checked, and the damned things crap out at 60 lb.-feet. Useless.

I loosened and lowered the fender to make more room. Still no dice.

Finally, I decided to risk ruining the bolt. I got me a piece of 3/4" EMT conduit around 30 inches long, put it over the 3/8"-drive ratchet with a 14mm socket (tightest fitting socket I had), and yanked. BANG, it broke loose. I nearly crapped myself. I had been sure I was going to have to go to a mechanic.

Now I'm charging the battery on that POS, and if I can start it, I'll back it out to 25 feet from the garage and aim the headlight. With any luck, the windshield problem will be gone. If not, I'll kill myself. It would be less painful than trying to find someone who could fix it.

I thought that conduit was scrap. Little did I know, it was actually a high-quality, rust-resistant breaker bar.

Posted by Steve H. at 8:31 PM | Permalink  

Jack Accessories

I have a floor jack. I'm afraid to use it. Help me out.

I was going to get a rubber pad for the jack, to keep it from scraping the underside of my car up. Then I saw a special adapter, with a bunch of ad copy about how floor jacks destroy late-model cars.

Which do I need?

More

Answered my own question. The Helm manual has the information. Although the T-bird has weird notched lift points for the scissor jack, the real points are on the frame, farther in. And they'll take a regular floor jack, which means it's time to order a cool rubber pad!

Posted by Steve H. at 5:22 PM | Permalink  

Also, Pizza

Against my better judgment, I keep reading about routers.

I thought I had the whole picture after reading Pat Warner's site. But he has information that hasn't been updated in three years. I guess he has been busy. When I found that out, I continued on my quest for knowledge.

He says a good start is a combo kit or "PK router," and he recommends the Dewalt DW618PK. He says if you want a serious table router, however, you need a Milwaukee 5625, which is a bigger 3.5-HP model. That's swell, but in the last few years, new stuff has come on the market. Unbelievably, it took that long for router makers to realize people needed routers designed for tables. Personally, I have zero interest in freehand routing. All the stuff I've ever wanted to do has been well-suited to table routing.

There are three routers which get really high marks for table use, and they're not made by Milwaukee. Two are made by Triton. One is a 2.25-HP job called the MOF001KC, and the other is a 3.25-HP model called the TRC001. You can use them freehand, but they really shine as table routers. The third router is a Bosch, and it's the 1619EVS. It has 3.25 horsepower. This is supposed to be the all-time greatest, most versatile table router, and you can also use it freehand.

As for PK routers, tool nuts everywhere are excited about the Milwaukee 5624-16, which is fairly new. So if you're planning to buy a Dewalt, you should look into it.

It's surprising how messed up routers are. When you read about other tools, you typically find that there are a whole bunch of offerings with no major flaws, and that price should be the big concern. With routers, you read all sorts of horrifying things about parts falling off and features not working and switches getting clogged with dust. So it looks like you have to be careful when you pick one out. And they're all rated at "peak" horsepower, which is pure BS. You really have to go by the number of amps they draw.

I think if I get one to replace my hopeless Craftsman, I'll go for the Bosch. Triton has had quality issues. Maybe Bosch has too, but I haven't read about them. Whoops, yes I have. Some guy at Allexperts claimed the bearings wear out. Maybe length of warranty is what matters.

I have to make food for Sunday's Nowlive show. I'm considering pizza. I may try to hand-toss a crust today. My crusts are good, but I'd prefer they were perfect. I'm also wondering if "kneading" in a Cuisinart is the best method. It's fast, and it works great for bread. But I'm wondering if pizza dough should be less uniform, and I think using a hook or my hands would give me a less uniform dough, with varying concentrations of yeast which would result in the random air pockets so common in pizza crust.

I've also been adding salt to my sauce. In the past, I was reluctant to do that, but pizzeria pizza is loaded with salt, and you can only put so much in the cheese and crust. It turns out that salt in the sauce is helpful. And I've been diluting the sauce more.

I think I'll throw a couple of crusts together and see what happens.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:41 PM | Permalink  

I Sound Like Rummy

Reader Wall left a comment containing a link to a remarkable site. It belongs to a guy named Pat Warner, and he is evidently "the Router King." About 85% of his life is dedicated to routers and routing. The wood kind, not the kind the craps out while you're trying to download porn. He even testifies in court as an expert router witness.

Sidelight: he has a page of photos. They seem to come in three flavors. 1. Very professional but not exciting photos of router-related stuff. 2. Wonderful artistic shots. 3. Instapundity vacation snaps. Well, Instapundity except that they're in focus and you can tell what the subjects are, and they don't contain sad, desperate blind links to Pajamas Media.

I got mad the other day because I learned that my old router wasn't very good, and that it might be the reason my routing sucks. It's a Sears Craftsman, model 73444 (I think), 1 3/4 horsepower. Circa 1995. It's pretty hard to control the depth of the cuts on either axis. I've had a hell of a time trying to put a smooth face on the sides of 3/4" boards; maybe it's me, or it could be the table, but no matter how carefully I set it up, it seems like the boards end up narrower on one end. I finally ended up using a circular saw, which is a real pain. I mentioned my routing lameness here, and Wall provided that link.

It's an interesting read. Apparently, all routers are somewhat screwed up, and you have to buy the one with the fewest problems, and then you should probably buy attachments to make the problems easier to deal with. For example, if you hold a router in your hands while you work close to the edge of the wood, it will wobble and give a crappy cut. Mr. Warner makes a bizarre clear base you can stick on your router to give you more leverage to hold it steady.

I was considering upgrading my depressing routing setup, so I looked at his recommendations. God, it's confusing. I'll try to summarize what I remember.

First of all, there are plunge routers on spring-mounted platforms. You push them down into the wood and take off. They work well for this kind of thing, but if you turn one upside-down and mount it on a table, it will do a crappy job.

Second, there are routers with fixed bases. These are what you want for a table, and they also work well as hand routers. But if you get one big enough to be a kick-ass table router (3 HP+), it will be really heavy, and you won't want to use it as a handheld router.

Third, there are "PK" routers. That may stand for "plunger kit." I don't know. These are fixed base routers that come with plunge bases you can swap onto them. This is weird; in one place, he seems to say they're lame compromises, but in another, he recommends a particular fixed base router, and it happens to be a router that is also sold as part of a PK deal. So if PK routers are not good, how can a fixed base router be any good, if it's also sold as part of a PK kit? I mean, it's the same router.

He's on the West Coast, so maybe he smokes too much dope while he writes this stuff.

If I understand this guy correctly, and I am drawing the right conclusions, your first buy should be a plunge router, and you should eventually get a bigger router for your table. And if I have deciphered the PK commentary properly, the choice that will give you the least aggravation is the DeWalt DW618PK. He also likes Bosch, but on the whole, the DeWalt seems to be his favorite. I think it has a lot to do with compatibility issues; I'm not sure. As anyone who used a Mac before 2000 knows, sometimes smart design is worthless. You also have to be able to play nice with others.

I think the idea is, you get this kit, and you use it for a handheld router and on your table, and when you get really serious, you buy a bigger router for the table and keep the DeWalt for other stuff.

Here's a fun bit of news, if you're router shopping. The DW618PK is available for a wide and insane range of prices. Amazon has it for 235, and Toolup has it for 207. But it gets more complicated. Amazon says the real price is 195, because there's a $40 DeWalt rebate. Toolup doesn't mention the rebate; they only mention a 10% discount. Out of curiosity, I called Toolup. They said they had never heard of the rebate. So evidently, you can get this thing from Toolup for 207, delivered, and then get a 40-dollar rebate from DeWalt. So 167. That's just wacky. A lot of places are selling it for around 280.

Even more shopping weirdness: Ridgid just came out with a kit that is supposed to be really good, and it costs about 200 bucks. And Ridgid is currently offering their nutty lifetime warranty, even on wear and tear, if you manage to satisfy the sign-up requirements. Make damn sure you don't throw out the box; you have to send in the UPC labels or yell at Ridgid until they agree to waive them. The cool thing about the Ridgid router is that it has bright LEDs under it to light up the work. But it scares me, because