Wow, I didn’t see this coming. Salon had been A Thing on the internet when I was just beginning to dive in to it seriously, and their site was a regular stop of mine for years. They went to a paywall model at some point in the early 2000’s and my readership tailed off, but every once in a while articles of theirs would pop back up in my feed. Another gravestone for the early web…
When you have nothing but a glorified shack to use as your workshop, you have to learn how to organize the space carefully. My garage is, at best, minutes away from being condemned, but somehow remains upright and keeps the rain off my junk. But it’s small, and any hope of increasing its footprint is a distant pipe dream these days. I’ve had to learn how to be frugal with space, utilizing every inch of horizontal and vertical area for storage or working surfaces. Whenever I’m out there, I typically spend a half an hour cleaning up after myself, putting things in their right place, and trying to plan out my next project before actually doing work.
So when Brian warned me, on my way across the bridge to his shop, that it was a disaster, I chuckled to myself and sent a reply: Don’t worry about it. When I got there, his mess did not disappoint: he’d emptied out a storage locker and dumped its contents in the empty bay of the garage, so there was a pile of random contractor’s tools, building materials, and other stuff covering all of the free space. I’d driven over to make a plan for resuming work on the EV project, but quickly realized what he really needed was help cleaning things up and organizing the space (and our collective headspace). So we dove in: He started sorting the big pile in the center bay and I tackled the area around the EV, organizing the shelves, separating old ICE parts from new EV parts, collecting scrap metal, and opening up a space around the truck. Then I did a rough pass across the workbench, collecting hardware, putting tools away, and making more free space there. We then spent about an hour talking over where the truck is and what we need to be doing, and I left for home with a checklist. We’ll see how well we do there.
On Sunday, I answered the call from Bennett, who was looking for help moving Phantom, his ’53 pickup, out of his garage and onto a trailer for eventual transport to Brian H’s shop. Eight years ago, we’d dragged the pickup out of the shop at his Mom’s house and stuffed it into his garage, so I knew what we were up against before I got there. He’s been working on several cars out of that space (the Hudson, his Crossfire, a ’67 Mustang, and a Speedster replica), so it was completely packed with tools, parts, and other stuff. He’d cleaned the area out around Phantom before I got there, and after we staged the trailer in the street, we used the Travelall to pull Phantom out of the garage. After two tugs we realized we didn’t need the truck—the slope of the driveway was enough to keep it moving, so he got behind the wheel. I kicked the chock away, and he steered it down the driveway, out into the street, and it stopped right behind the trailer. Hooking the winch up to the front axle, we pulled it up and strapped it down, and then secured all of the parts in the bed. With that done, we brought it to his storage lot and hid it under tarps and a car cover.
After driving out for some pizza in the Hudson, we got back to the garage and started organizing boxes, moving them to the back of the garage and organizing by type—old pickup parts on the left, Scout stuff on the right, and ‘other’ in between. He’s having a new set of garage doors installed so the main goal was to make room for the installers first, and then prep the space for the new Scout. Hopefully that situation will work itself out soon, as I’m hoping I can piggyback on that effort to get the title for the DanScout—making it easier to sell down the line. But for now, I feel pretty good to be able to help my friends declutter and organize.
Pitchfork has been doing a weekend series where they commission reviews of older albums, featuring an eclectic mix of genres, artists, and selections. In a strange bit of synchronicity with my last post, this weekend they covered Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly, a solo album released right after Steely Dan released Gaucho and broke up. It’s a great review, and adds a lot of color to the album I wasn’t aware of. There are several classics on this album: IGY, New Frontier, and the title track are all equal to any of Steely Dan’s best output, while some others are a fraction of that quality. The Nightfly was one of the first ten CDs I bought in the late 80’s—I already had several Steely Dan albums on cassette and I decided I wasn’t going to buy stuff I already owned. Right after this, both Fagen and Becker went dark for a couple of decades, and I didn’t reconnect with their later output.
I’m sitting in front of our living room hi-fi system, listening to a used vinyl copy of Aja by Steely Dan on the turntable I brought back from the dead. The turntable itself is a Technics SL-0033, a really nice midrange deck with automatic start and stop. It’s playing through a Denon head unit I saved from the side of the road (really, no kidding), a pair of Mission bookshelf speakers—also saved from the side of a different road, on a different day—and a KLH subwoofer saved from my parents’ basement. I’d like a little more treble response out of the high-end; Aja is an excellent reference record to test out sound, and the high frequencies are too muddy for my taste. I can’t adjust the subwoofer frequency cutoff like I can with the Polk unit in the den, this being a lower-end brand. I turned the Loudness feature on and jacked the treble up, and that made a little bit of a difference, but still not quite where I want it. There is another subwoofer gathering dust in Mom’s basement; I’ll check to see if the circuitry is adjustable, and maybe that one will find its way back to Maryland.
Following up on the thinking I was doing about my old iPhone the other day, I used the email address assigned to the basement server to create a new Apple account, and used that to sign into the phone. This way the two machines were happy to talk with each other, and it didn’t fuck anything up on my current iPhone (using the same email address tells Apple you want to mirror the two devices, so you wind up with apps on the old phone that don’t work and no room left to add music). Once I got it connected and loading music, one of the other things I wanted to do was see if I could add it to the list of devices shared in my iCloud account, so that I could see it with Location Services. Because the iPhone is only on OS 12.5.8, it took a bit of finessing, but I was able to get it in the list and visible on my newer phone. With 64GB of storage, it’s a very fancy iPod, but it’s free and it works, so I’ll keep filling it with tunes.
Credit: The New York Times
Alright, there’s the good news. Now, to the Democratic leadership: GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND FIX THINGS. Do not slow down, do not pause to debate, do not wander down useless pet project side roads; we don’t need to squabble over trivial points. There are huge problems that need to be solved immediately, and the clock is ticking.
In no particular order (Jen and I talked about this over coffee for an hour this morning):
- Healthcare—rebuild ACA immediately
- Campaign finance reform
- Close down ICE, the camps, and fix immigration
- Equal rights for everybody, and reinstate Affirmative Action
- Nuke the Electoral College
I know I’m forgetting, well, everything, but those are top of mind for me.
I’m entering the second month of work wind-down, and so far, it’s been very busy. I feel like I’m putting more of myself into a lot of different projects than I was before, and staying busy right now is a good thing.
People at work seem surprised that I haven’t completely checked out, including the COO, who I talked with briefly on Friday. I laughed and told him that as long as they’re still paying me, I’m working for them. It’s a measure of how strongly I feel about the mission and the organization; I have no beef with them, other than the fact that they didn’t plan well enough, but I want to see WRI succeed. I like to think I’ve also finally learned something from leaving some of my previous jobs, where I did a terrible job of staying in touch with people—some who I really liked, and some who I didn’t. I have a lot of regrets about that, actually. I was never able to maintain long-term friendships going back to the days when my family moved around a lot, and with a few exceptions, I don’t talk much to my friend group from high school. I’ve never been good at maintaining these kind of things, because I’m afraid those people won’t want to talk to me, but I’ve been working to get over myself and put myself out there some more.
In the meantime, I’m trying to average sending 1-2 resumes out per day, depending on what’s posted, but I’ve only heard one thanks-but-no-thanks reply. There are a number of job websites out there with pretty decent listings, but a lot of the social media stuff that’s suddenly entered my algorithm is about how people haven’t been able to get past the AI bots to have their cover letter seen by a human being. Having been on the other side of this, I know how hard it is to weed the wheat from the chaff, especially when you’re getting 200 applications each day, but I always did try to take the time to look at every submission myself. This new way of doing things seems capricious and arbitrary. I’m doing that thing I hate doing the most [see paragraph above] where I reach out to my network and kindly ask if anyone might know of anything. I’ve actually gotten a couple of good leads from friends, and I’m hopeful that the network will do what the bots will not. The LinkedIn post I put up about ‘moving on from WRI’ got a HUGE response from people, and I made sure to reply back to everyone that posted to boost it further. Here’s to hoping the right people see it.
I’m also looking at other ways to start generating income. There’s money to be made doing housepainting and light carpentry, which I have plenty of experience with, and our old friend Jen, a realtor, can funnel me work. I can load the OG-V with carpentry and painting gear and work for hire without a contractor’s license for what I’m told is pretty decent money, and she could share my name around with her peers. It got me through college, and it can work in the short term now.
I’m headed over to Brian’s this weekend to take stock of the EV project. Making a go of this would be the best possible option, although it would take me away from home for long periods of time. He’s been busy with personal stuff, but I’m hoping we can make a serious go of it in December.
At the house, I’m finishing up the Travelall floor and also looking at inexpensive ways to insulate for winter. I got to thinking a couple of weeks ago about the underside of the front porch floor, which had originally been sealed up with some sheets of plywood over the joists, which were filled with insulation. When Brian and I shot foam against the sill plate shared with the ice room, we never covered that area back up, and there’s a section of the office floor that hangs out over that open space. I got under there and covered it back up a few weeks ago, but I then thought about how our kitchen floor is always cold. In the basement we have insulation up against the underside of the floor but it’s not sealed with anything, which I’ve learned is basically useless. I did some research and found that some simple sheets of 2″ semi-permeable foam sealing the cavity between the joists would keep heat from soaking downwards into the unheated basement. So I’m going to do some experiments in the next week with that to see how well it works.
Meanwhile, my left wrist has been bothering me for the last couple of days—right after I had my checkup with my GP. I’m going to make another appointment to go back in and have him look it over, but what I fear is that this is the beginning of arthritis. About 30 years ago, I was mountain biking with Rob, and we were riding downhill toward our car at dusk on a dim single track. I cartwheeled over a chain spread across the trail, invisible in the fading light, and did a half-decent tuck and roll, avoiding a cracked skull—but I planted both wrists on the pavement as I tumbled. They hurt pretty bad for a week or so after that, but as a newly minted graduate with no health insurance, I couldn’t have them looked at. I’m pretty sure I fractured or tore some cartilage that day, and I’d bet it’s coming home to roost now that I’m older and the weather is colder.
Before our current health insurance runs out and our deductible has been met, we’re rushing to wring as much blood out of the stone as possible. I went in for a physical and had them do a full panel of bloodwork as well as cholesterol (it’s good news!) and a PSA (also good news!) and I still have to go in for an X-ray to check out my bone density. With the bloodwork I got a look at my numbers and plotted them in the graphs; it’s very interesting to see how my white and red blood cell counts have tanked since 2024, but my lymphocytes have actually been trending upwards. The other numbers are in line with my averages, so when I talk to my GP this week I’ll see what he thinks.
I think I tossed out all of my old iPods when the boards died, but I’m gonna have to dig through the bins in the basement to see if there’s anything left: there’s a new project promising a modern, easily swappable motherboard for old iPods with Bluetooth, WiFi, 2TB of space and a 40-hour battery for 3G, 4G and Mini models. I had a 3G model at one point, and did try to swap in a new board for it almost ten years ago. That’s a long time to be hanging on to old broken tech, even for me, but there’s a slim chance it’s still downstairs. I’ll have to go see. Update: I think I did get rid of them all. Rats. I could have sworn I kept the G3 iPod somewhere. I’ll keep looking.
The other option is to have the battery replaced in one of our old iPhones, which is usually about $70, but then there’s the frustrating issue of having it linked to my Apple account and trying to sync with my actual working phone, which messes both of them up.
[scratches beard]
…now that I’m thinking about it, I could just create a new Apple account for it with its own email address so that it’s separate. I’m going to try that. There is something to be said for the simplicity of the original iPods, and I would love to go back to that. I do enjoy my $1 Nano, but that’s limited by 16 GB of storage space. It’s good for holding a driving playlist, but it doesn’t have enough room for a full catalog to match my ever-shifting moods.
* * *
In the meantime, I’ve cleaned up and updated our server in the basement, and with my departure from WRI, I’ve been focused on cataloging and storing files not only for work, but my files as well. Cleaning up Dropbox, archiving work files, and backing up photos and videos has been top of mind for the last month. I dropped off the server I was using for WRI files at the office yesterday and set it up for the guys to use. Having a solid week to organize, move, and catalog photo and video files was long overdue and very handy. I’m leaving them with about 25 TB of files organized in a way that they should easily be able to find and access everything I collected in my tenure there. That project complete, I’m turning to my own stuff and making sure that I have everything I need before I leave. Another thing I took advantage of was an electronic recycling day to get rid of four decommissioned laptops that were bouncing around the basement. There’s more to be done down there, but it’s a good start.
Meanwhile, a friend reached out to see if I could help convert a bunch of Pagemaker 7 files to something she might be able to edit. Apparently, the way to do this is to use InDesign 6 to convert the files: anything above that cannot read the files. InDesign 6 came at a weird inflection point in my software history. I was staunchly a Quark guy until Quark’s laziness caught up with them and they got left behind when InDesign’s capabilities eclipsed theirs. What that means is that I don’t have any install disks for InDesign CS 6, only CS 5.5 and then CC2 in all of the dozens of backups I’ve made over the years. I think I might have a workaround to get a version of 5.5 running, and I think that will convert the files, but it’s going to take a little time to sort that out. There are other ways to convert PageMaker files to PDF, and then copy the text out, but I want to see if I can get the files into a clean in design format first.
Update: I found a copy of InDesign CS on RoadWarrior, a G4 PowerBook I’ve got napping in the basement for just such emergencies, which read, converted, and wrote new InDesign files for each one of the original PM7 files. This makes me feel VERY satisfied. Later today I’m going to consolidate all of the text files exported from InDesign and send them off to my friend.
I saw this Alfa Romeo while walking Hazel downtown and told the owner how much I appreciated it. The color is a newer (Hyundai? Kia?) one not offered by Alfa, but it absolutely works for this vehicle.
And this Oldsmobile was sitting in the parking lot at the Panera, all by itself, waiting for the sun to set.