I purchased a bike today so that I can start commuting to work. I am pretty stoked to start being able to leave the truck parked. Tired of using gas when I don’t need to and it will help me stay in shape. I packed it in the car and then realized that I should just ride it home. So I did and it was awesome. It has been awhile since I have ridden a bike though let alone ridden one very far. I was feeling it but I can’t wait to do it again. I think I have found my route so I’m excited to try it during the morning to see how it feels with a little heavier traffic.

The bike I ended up going with is a Specialized Sirrus. I got the base model and I am waiting to get the fenders, rack, paniers, and shoes until after we get our tax refund (counting a few of my chickens before they hatch). I also got a helmet and a lock. I don’t know that I need a helmet but considering the expense ($40) it could potentially save me a lot more. As I heard in “Alien vs. Predator” tonight “It’s like a condom – I rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

So far I’m really pleased with my choice. The geometry is so comfortable and even the saddle is comfortable. Which is saying a lot for a bike seat the first time out on it. I love the position that you ride. It is somewhat upright but you don’t feel like you are on a cruiser. I’ll write again after my first commute and let you know how it goes. I’m sure I will probably have to shower twice a day for the first month or two but if I keep at it I should overcome that need. I’m hoping I can ride it at least for 3 of the four seasons almost daily. Noble effort but I know I will be very thankful if I can make it happen.
More later.

Woooo hoooo, I can hear this at age 37.

Created by Train Horns

My first attempt at making my own tool was inspired by the Q&A section of Fine Woodworking #189. It was relatively easy but took some time to get the right fit between the head and the sliding bar. Since I am left handed I made it for me so it will probably appear backwards to most of you “rightys”. Here are the pictures.

Madeline chillin’,
originally uploaded by crookedshack.

So lazy

I just saw this and could not agree more. This is something that I believe should be mandatory anyway and now that I am self-employed I am really going to try to figure out how to make this a reality. At least a half day on Friday to start.

The Four-Day Week Challenge

Constantly stressed out? Not enough hours in the day to get things done? Ryan Carson has a theory: your problem is too much work time, not too little.

 

    I will not apologize for having a life but I will apologize for not letting you all know that I have one and that I have been living it. This is a post to let you know that I am now 34, my child will be 1 in a week, and we have almost updated two rooms of the house with carpet, paint, and new trim. I hate wallpaper. Time does fly when you’re having a good time (read: Time does fly when you’re so busy that you barely have time to sleep). I have posted more pictures of the building and the little one. That’s all for now.

Oh yeah, I had a moment of clarity and realized that I am not happy with someone else’s design so I will be getting rid of the Narnia template soon.

How to Freewrite – I often need to do this.

After having so much trouble with my Motorola C343 I went back to my old Motorola V60c for the last 5 months of my phone contract. Well on the 16th I was able to cash in on my “New every two” plan and get caught up with the latest phone technology. My wife upgraded her phone a few months ago and she got the LG VX7000. After having two Motorola’s and not being happy with things like the charger connections, call dropping, and slow menu time, I decided I would make the LG switch too. I really like my wife’s LG and so it was sealed that I would be getting that one but when I looked on the Verizon website I saw that they had discontinued that model. I remember looking at the Kyocera KX2 Koi swivel phone and really liking it too. It turns out that verizon has discontinued that one as well.

Since my wife has had such good luck with her phone even after the Madeline saliva incident, I decided to go with the LG VX6100. It has some great features that will hopefully be worth the $50 that it cost and I have already used the camera phone several times. The battery life and talk time are sufficient and I especially like the size. With just a little extra bend in the neck I can actually hold it in my shoulder (this was one of the reasons I wanted teh Kyocera). I have 15 days to decide if this is the phone that I want to keep but so far it seems to do everything that I will need it to do.

The day before I had my hernia surgery, the woman I have been working for loaned me a powerbook G4 titanium. Here are the specs from System Profiler:
Machine Name: PowerBook G4
Machine Model: PowerBook3,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 550 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.9f1

The processor is slow but the RAM helps out quite a bit. Not too bad but definitely an old machine.

When I got it I had to use the install disc, that I got from my buddy Martin, to reset the admin password. The owner of the machine is her boyfriend and he had just gotten a new one so she was trying to get rid of this so it would not be in the house. Anyway, I didn’t really want to mess with his account but I wanted to install some stuff and just check out latest Mac OS. I must say I have enjoyed it quite a bit but I have also been frustrated by some things as well. I love the look and feel of the hardware (the keyboard is superb) and the OS (running Tiger) is really slick. But I am just such a windows fan that I always feel like I can’t find anything on the Mac. I look at the dock and it looks like everything is running but I can’t find anything. Luckily there is expose and I don’t know how anybody used a mac without it. I have never used the function keys so much before.
I see the appeal definitely but I just can’t justify the cost. It is hard for me to even justify the cost of a PC laptop but the one I have has served me well so far and it was only $1000. I know the iBook is only $1299 right now but that is without any kind of protection plan. I have thought about the Mac mini as an option but I just love the laptop. I did not get a chance to use any of the iLife products because he does not them on his machine. I did however get a chance to use Macromedia fireworks MX 2004 and I did enjoy designing on the Mac. My only real gripe was with Safari. When I first started writing this post it was in Safari but I realized that none of the advanced editing buttons were displaying. When I switched to Firefox they were there.
I do like the Mac but I don’t think I could completely switch. Plus two of my favorite pieces of software – Feeddemon and Topstyle – would no longer be available (unless I installed other software to run them, I know I know). Maybe after I get the student loan paid off I will get one. Until then I am a PC user.

I made it through the surgery without any complications one week and 4 days ago. I was admitted to the hospital at 8:30am on October 27th and released the same day around 2pm. It all happened so fast that I barely remember my time in the hospital. My wife took the day off and was able to come to the hospital which helped a great deal with my mental state. I was not terribly nervous about it but of course you can’t help but be a little concerned since there is always a chance that something can go wrong.

It was scheduled to happen at 10:30am and by 10:15am no one had shown up to prep me except the shaving nurse. Just about then a nurse came in and told us that the earlier surgeries had gotten behind so I should be starting around 11:00am. Around 10:45 or 10:50 another nurse and the anesthesiologist came in to begin getting me ready. The nurse took my vitals and the anesthesiologist asked me a few questions and got the IV started. Within minutes I felt like I was incredibly drunk but without feeling like I was going to be sick. I guess this must be the appeal of intravenous drug use. I remember kissing my wife and then rolling down the hall. As we went through a couple of different doors the nurse told me that I would notice a temperature change. Nope — too numb already. The last thing I remember was a nurse asking me to move over to another table and me doing it.

The next thing I knew I was back in the original room with a heavy head and a pain in my side. I looked around and saw my wife and a nurse telling me to wake up all the while hearing an alarm of sorts going off on the machine next to me. I had some kind of plastic clip attached the end of my left index finger that was monitoring my O2 and the alarm was going off because every time I went to sleep the O2 readings were dropping below what the nurse wanted and so the nurse kept waking me up. It was not really very fun I remember.

I lay there for awhile fighting sleep with the driest mouth when I finally asked the nurse for some water. Even though I had not had anything to drink since 10pm the night before, I felt like I had to urinate like I have never felt before. When I tried though (into a portable urinal while lying down) nothing happened. I guess they thought I should go home because they made me get up, which hurt so bad that I thought I was going to rip the wound open; and get into a wheel chair. Once we got to the car I knew I had to get up again. Yes the pain was still excruciating. Next I had to bend down and get into the car. Besides the pain that was occupying the majority of my thoughts, all else I could think was that I will have to pay them for this experience.
Well the ride home was not too bad because my wife missed most of the potholes. The ones she didn’t, well, I really wanted to cry. Finally, I am home and I am so looking forward to getting into the bed and then I remember that I will have to first get up, second walk about 50 feet, and third have to lie down again. Oh wow. Once I made it through that and my head finally hit the pillow I was out instantly.

After a couple of days I was beginning to feel better and on Thursday I got up and took a shower. Getting out of bed was still incredibly painful but I was at least able to focus now. The doctor prescribed Lortab and while that is supposed to be a great pain killer, one side-effect is headaches and man I got them bad. I gave up taking the Lortab on Thursday and just settled for Ibuprofen. Not as strong but the headaches were actually causing me to want to throw up and I didn’t want to be putting that kind of pressure on my abdomen. By Friday afternoon I was up walking around and feeling pretty well for the most part. I had stopped taking the pain pills altogether (no Ibuprofen as well) and was feeling a little optimistic planning to get back to work on Monday. On Sunday we went out to get some things for the new home and even though we were only out for about an hour or two it was more than I was ready for because I was pretty tired and a little sore by the time we got home. I figured then that I would wait to go back to work until after I met with the doctor on Tuesday the 4th. On that day I finally drove again and everything felt fine. Doc took a look at it, told me not to pick anything up that weighed more than ten pounds for two weeks and then said goodbye. It is Saturday now and I really do feel a lot better. I have been able to unpack some things around the house now and that has made me feel so much better. It has been really hard just sitting around and not doing much. It would not have been so hard if we already had the house set up and were moved in completely. But when you are trying to just relax and there are boxes everywhere it is most unrelaxing. All you can think about is getting that stuff put away. The hardest thing about this whole thing has been not being able to hold my little girl. She puts her hands out now in the gesture of “pick me up” and I have to just bend down and hold her. She has gotten her first cold and it has been really hard not to pick her up and comfort her. I can hold her on my lap but she is such a busy body that if you are not moving with her she begins to fuss about. I guess I am over the worst of it though and now when I completely healed, in another 4 to 6 weeks, I will not have any pain when lifting and bending. So here’s to modern medicine for repairing me.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30am I am going to the hospital to have surgery to repair my hernia. Yes, I have an Inguinal Hernia and it bulges out so that it looks like I have about 1/3 of a tennis ball under my skin. It is not painful all of the time but since my occupation requires that I lift heavy things from time to time I thought that I should probably have it repaired. I had it diagnosed on the 9th of September and the 27th was the first opening for the surgeon that I am to see. I have heard good things about him so I am not as nervous as you’d think. Also, I read Nick Bradbury’s blog and he just recently underwent a surgery that puts mine to shame.
My mom is visiting for a couple of days so that she can watch the little one while my wife and I move the house and deal with my hernia. I have not written for awhile now and that is because of the move from one house to another and work and Madeline and life in general. This week though I will probably be posting quite a bit since I will be on the couch recuperating. Feel free to drop me an email or a comment on this post; you will definitely receive a reply as I will have lots of time.

Web-based job tracking, invoicing, reporting & project management software for the part-time independent contractor. – Side Job Track

We will be closing on our house on the 16th and it is hard to believe that it is really going to happen. We have really put up a fight to get this house so it will be wonderful once we are actually living there. We are both looking forward to the space that we are gaining and with that space the potential to make it fun for us to be in. Already we have plans to change a few things and it is nice knowing that we will not be pricing ourselves out of the neighborhood with the upgrades that we make.
The previous owners tried their hand at making some improvements, and while they had good ideas they just did not know what they were doing technically. For instance, they tiled the wall around the bathtub but they grouted it using sanded floor grout. Now if the right tiles are used and spaced such that you could get the grout between them then this would not be so bad. They, however, used your typical wall tiles and the joints between wall tile are so small that you have to have an sand free grout in order to push it between them. And we all know how hard it is already to clean grout, now imagine trying to clean sandpaper. Yeah, not good. Plus they did not wipe it off uniformly so some of the grout lines are really messy. That will have to be repaired. Also some of the trimwork in the house was obviously done by someone other than a carpenter. Nail holes and mangled miter cuts. This too will have to be fixed. We plan to put can lights in two rooms and a chandelier over the dinning room table. We will eventually replace the doors and the trim throughout the house as well as the entry door, but first we will be taking down wallpaper and painting. In the spring we are probably going to stucco the entire exterior of the house. Right now it has two different colors of vinyl siding and brick.
There are a lot of great things about the new house but the one that I am most excited about is the garage. It is a full two car garage which means I will actually be able to set up my shop and also use it comfortably. It is such a great feeling knowing that I will be able to get to all of my tools without moving six other things out of the way. WOOOO HOOOO!!! Also we have a little shed out back so we can keep things like the lawnmower and gas and weedeater out of the shop now.
I am also excited about the laminate floor that the previous owners installed (which they did nicely). Madeline is just getting the hang of using her rolley-seat toy and she will be able to cruise through the house on the smooth surface. We are really looking forward to the move and are more than ready to be in a bigger space. Who knows maybe we can have Thanksgiving at our house now.

moleskinerie: PocketMod – This is superb!