The weather is getting warmer, which means it’s not quite as painful to stand outside and bang knuckles against cold steel, which is everyone’s favorite winter pasttime. I woke early on Sunday to drive over the bridge to Chestertown and pick up work on the schoolbus, something we haven’t done since early December when we put the seats in.
The first order of business was to get it started. It’s been sitting in the shed for months, so we put a trickle charger on the battery and futzed around with the windows inside. Testing out the theory that the windows are easily interchanged, we moved one of the emergency exit windows forward so that it sits directly between the passenger seats and is easy to get to.
Once we got it running and pulled out of the garage, we decided it would be much easier to work in Brian’s driveway where power and tools were easily accessible. We caravaned back to his house and then had to jockey trailers and tools and building materials around to make room in between the house and his new garage footer.
With that done, we got to work disconnecting the engine and storage batteries, pulling the wires, and disassembling the battery box. It took a while to get the box itself out, because they’d welded the back corner of it to the frame and spot-welded the edges to structural supports on the side. We wound up having to step on the edge to push it downward, shove a prybar between it and the frame, and whack it with a sledge to start separating the materials. Several sawblades, a trip to Ace Hardware, more pounding, and some specialized curse words later, we released it from the underside of the bus and dragged it away.
The plan was to replace it with a newer, bigger box where more batteries will fit and be be easily accessible. But now that the box was gone, we could also mount the passenger seat base permanently, which went relatively easily. Putting the new box in was more of a challenge; we realized early on that we were going to have to drop the other box we’d labored over in September. With that out of the way we got the mounting bolts in place and roughed in the battery box. By 7PM we were beat, the boxes were cattywampus, and the sun was down behind the trees. We called it a night and went in for a cold beer. I laid down on Brian’s spare bed at 9:30 and was fast asleep fifteen minutes later.
Monday morning I made sure my automatic replies were set correctly and we got back at it. Dropping the box, we found a couple of reasons why the box was hanging incorrectly and beat them into shape with a hammer. With that box hung, we put the longer box next to it in place and I set to work fastening both boxes to each other and to the stair wall.
Now that the box was in, we had to sort out how to put a set of industrial ball bearing rollers in and fabricate a shelf. The rollers were pretty easy to mock up, and I figured out a way to reuse the shelf from the original box with some new angle iron. Another trip to the Ace scored us the hardware we needed, and by about 5PM we had the shelf in place, the batteries mounted, the wires rerouted, and everything reconnected. Brian turned the key and the bus roared back to life.
We had a new power awning ready to be hung, but found quickly that the arms were too long, so we packed everything in and I hit the road for home.
Today most of my joints are sore, I’ve got gouges in three of my ten fingers, and I feel like I could fall asleep as I write this. But I’m happy with the results, and we’re that much closer to the interior work.
Frequent visitors here know that I’ve been hoarding a lot of truck parts for the last couple of years. This week a set of original Rallye rims popped up on CL down in Virginia, and through the course of the week, the seller dropped the price from $400 to $350. On Friday I contacted him, and he sent me pictures of each rim that were clearer than the listing. I did a quick freelance job last weekend through a friend—basically creating a vector outline illustration of his car—and the payment hit my Venmo account a day later, for roughly the same amount as the rims. Serendipity, right? I thought it over all day Saturday, and in the afternoon I decided to pass. I don’t need different rims, although Rallye rims are my favorites. Something in my brain told me to slow down.
I’m very aware that I’ve been filling the pandemic void with retail salvage therapy, basically hitting the parts listings daily to find good deals on stuff locally. I love the thrill of the hunt, planning for recovery trips, and the fun of going to discover and pick over old wrecks for good parts. I enjoy the planning and preparation almost as much as the picking itself: having all the right tools to do the job is a satisfying feeling. And knowing I’ve got spares of most everything is a comforting thought, as well as helpful when I want to refurbish what I’ve got. I learn by example—seeing how something is put together vs. squinting at a poorly-printed diagram or following shitty directions in a Chilton’s manual, so it’s been worth the money to have spares to refer to.
But how much is enough? Do I need more than one of a lot of these things? I tell myself I can refurbish some of this stuff and resell it, but I haven’t made a lot of effort to do that in the last couple of years. If I was serious about it I’d put the word out before Nationals to pre-sell, and bring it with me (I don’t want to piss off the vendors there by selling from the back of my truck). I have enough sheet metal, one or more of everything that unbolts from the tub. I have spares of almost all of the mechanicals save the chassis, some of which I want to learn how to refurbish myself. Do I need more stuff? Where do I put it?
Going by that Mayo Clinic article, I’m not to the point where sheet metal is piled up in the house, but the garage is pretty well stuffed with parts. I’ve got things organized as best I can in the space that I have (and I have plans for re-organizing it all in the spring). I have sold lots of parts in the past, in the Before Times, when we did more in-person meetups, so I’m always willing to wheel and deal.
The other problem is ongoing projects. I’ve got about six different projects on the bench right now waiting for parts or better weather to complete: the heater box, the steel gas tank, the windshield washer switch, the spare hub, the rear seat etc. When my focus shifts and I let things go for too long, I forget where I am in the process and I have to start over again. The gas tank needs warmer weather, as do the washer switch and seat. So I have to finish those first before I move on to other stuff, and sometimes it’s hard to be patient.
Jen and I were talking about this a little bit, and something she said resonates with me: I’m a results-oriented person. I like to see progress in some form for each day: What did I accomplish? How did I make a difference? A pile of rusty parts is one way to scratch that itch, especially when my career is less and less defined by tangible products and more and more by an Outlook calendar filled with Zoom calls. But there’s got to be a balance somewhere, and I’m struggling to find it.
In 1994, after a series of mass shootings, Congress banned many assault weapons. A decade later, the ban expired, and these firearms flooded the market. According to the Wall Street Journal, before 1994 there were an estimated four hundred thousand AR-15s in the U.S.; today, there are twenty million AR-15s or similar weapons.
The New Yorker does a deep dive into the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and how a troubled, bullied kid made a colossal series of mistakes and was co-opted by a whole slew of opportunists eager to exploit his situation. Nobody comes out OK in this story.
After a long pause in the logistics chain, my readers finally arrived last night, and it was with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation that I tried them on. They are made better than the safety glasses I bought last year. The progression is much less abrupt, and there’s a midpoint where I can use them for middle distance (about a half an arm’s length away). There’s a bit of distortion at the bottom of the lenses that affect my vision when I turn my head back and forth—it’s enough that I notice the curve of the lenses down there—but not enough to bother me that much. The biggest thing to get used to is the same issue I have with my safety glasses: keeping my eyes aware of the two main zones and moving my head to put my eyes on what I’m focused on instead of moving my eyes. I’ve also got to break the habit of moving to take them off to see things up close. I’m not using them for work; my monitors are far enough away from my eyes that I don’t need them, but it’s great to have them for reading in bed and doing detail work.
I finally got around to updating the idiotking post count in an interactive visualization instead of a flat graphic. I’m going to see if I can find a way to overlay the category counts next.
I’ve been working on some sketching projects at work which required me to lower my desk chair, bust out the pencils, and get close to the drawings I was making. After a short while working without glasses, I put my progressive safety glasses on and used those to switch back and forth between the drawings and my computer monitor. Those glasses work OK, but I look like a total dork if I have to take a call wearing them.
Warby Parker made me new progressives and shipped them on February 22nd by USPS. When I check on it with their tracking service, it arrived at the Baltimore sorting station three days later and hasn’t moved since. No updates, no movement, no nothing. USPS offers an “extended tracking service” which I’m sure would provide me absolutely zero further detail; I’m going to call Warby Parker on Monday and see if there’s anything they can do—but I’m not holding my breath.
Meanwhile, a friend recommended me to her client for a quick linework illustration job that I knocked out in a couple of hours this afternoon. I like making extra money on the side.
I made a list of projects to tackle around the house this year in my notebook the other night before I went to bed, mainly as an excuse to collect them all and quell anxiety:
- New basement windows. I’ve been back and forth with my rep this week waiting for her to get the quote correct, but when that comes in I’ll sign off and get it paid for. I’m told it’ll be 4-6 weeks for delivery, just in time for some warmer weather.
- Find a fixed basement window with a dryer vent. I really don’t want to close off the window over the washing machine with glass block, but we may have no choice.
- Basement step rebuild. The concrete pad right outside our basement door has been tilted toward the house since we moved in, allowing for rainwater to spill over the edge of the stairwell and flood our basement doorwell. This pad needs to be broken up and removed, and the yard regraded away from the house. I’m going to mix a couple of bags of concrete and pour a higher threshold for the stairwell while I’m at it.
- Bust out the concrete walkway out back. Running over the walkway with an eight ton boom lift broke it up into lots of portable chunks, so it should be easy to lift and haul away.
- Clean up the treeline behind the greenhouse. This is a Sisyphean task that never seems to amount to much, but it’s got to get done. I think I need to nuke it all with Round-Up and then take the mattock to the earth. Or maybe rent a tiller…
- Repair and paint the garage. It’s never been painted since we’ve lived here, and the front “doors” make it look like we’re cooking meth inside. I’m going to pull the front off, reinforce the doorframes, and build new doors that look and work better. Then the whole thing will get sprayed to match the house.
- Pressure wash and paint both rear porches. This didn’t get done with the rest of the house last spring; both of them need a freshening up.
- Finish scraping the outside windows. There are a couple at ground level that need some attention, but everything on the second floor got painted properly with the boom lift.
- Polish the headlights on both Hondas. I did this for the CR-V three years ago and it made a huge difference, but the plastic has broken down again and fogged over. Time to buy another kit and have at it.
We had guests over for a lovely dinner on Saturday night, and I figured I’d set up some soft jazz in the background for mood music. I’ve got an iTunes library with a real nice jazz collection that I’ve spent years curating. For a long time, all it took to work was to have iTunes running as a shared server and the AppleTV would pick it up on the network; I could scroll through the shared media from there and play that through the head unit into the speakers. So that’s what I did.
But Saturday our AppleTV didn’t see the server; an app is supposed to pop up called “Computers” and from there the library is visible. But I didn’t see that. I checked the connections and realized the AppleTV was on the wireless network, so I hardwired it: still no luck.
Thinking it could maybe be that the ancient version of iTunes 10 I’m running downstairs (the server is a 2008 model and maxed out at OS 10.7) isn’t compatible with the AppleTV, I figured I’d bypass that and started hunting for old laptops from that era which could still talk to it. I’ve got an ancient Powerbook G4 running 10.6 in the basement, so I dug that out and booted it up to see if I could access the shared library. Success! I moved it to the den and balanced it on the receiver, then plugged an iPod input to the headphone port. But from there I got nothing; I guess the mini headphone jack isn’t compatible with that port.
The receiver has a big Spotify sticker on the front, so I checked into that as an option. For some stupid reason it needs an app on your phone, which is a ridiculous situation and one I can’t use anyway—I’m still on the free account and it requires a paid subscription. So I just tuned into the local college radio station and we suffered through some hair metal.
This morning I did some sleuthing and happened upon a random comment on Apple’s boards which led me back to iTunes on the server to check whether I was still logged in to the iTunes Store: I was not. (How I ever got logged out remains a mystery). I logged back in and presto! the server popped back up on AppleTV.
There are a whole slew of watch-oriented websites out there, and the majority of them feature watches that cost more than my car. But there are some that are geared towards people like me, with budgets like mine, but who want something better than what they can get at the local Walmart.
Worn & Wound reviews a lot of mid-tier watches that range from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars. I like how they structure the reviews and their selection fits neatly within my aesthetic—military/diver without a lot of glitz. And, the cards used for listing their reviews clearly show the case size, which is a huge timesaver for me.
They reviewed a retro diver by a company called Baltic that I really dig; it’s both the right size and the right design for me—a 38mm case with minimal complications and just the right amount of color. I’m not a fan of watches that look like they were dipped in gold or covered with dials, and this design has just the right balance of color and utility. It’s way outside my price point but I’ll keep an eye on it. Even further outside that price point is the GMT variant, which adds a pricy Swiss movement and a date function. I really dig the split-color bezel though—the blue over orange is beautiful.
Two Broke Watch Snobs is a similar vibe—they focus on mid-tier watches, although they do sometimes venture into the land of $3K Omegas and other higher-dollar brands. They have a podcast, which sounds like it would be monumentally boring, but their written reviews are detailed and thorough.
A Blog To Watch has their reviews split into under $500 and over $500, which is handy, and the reviews are excellent. Apparently they’ve been around for a while so there’s a lot to dig into there.
I found a unique retro diver there that looks very cool even though it’s at my size limit (38mm is my sweet spot, and this is 40mm) but I’d consider it for ~$300.
Professional Watches has reviews that date back to 2013, but their site navigation is shit and the pages take forever to load. Their review section is laid out as cards but you’ve got to continually hit a “load more” button at the bottom to see anything. They split reviews into over and under $1000 and feature a wide assortment of styles, from dainty evening watches to goofy G-shock models that look like they came out of a Kirby drawing. Still, the depth is appreciated, even if I’m only interested in 5% of their articles. Looking through the high-end models is funny; there are some staggeringly elegant watches and some that look like they were barfed up from a bad steampunk novel.
Additionally, I found a good resource on cheap military watches made by Timex in the ’70’s and ’80’s; I remember a barrel of these for sale in the old H&H Surplus store in Baltimore when I was in college.
At the Drift, Oscar Schwartz looks back at the TED talk and wonders what it was originally for and what it means now.
TED is probably best understood as the propaganda arm of an ascendant technocracy. It helped refine prediction into a rhetorical art well-suited to these aspiring world conquerors — even the ones who fail.
Having just been asked to produce a TED-like talk, this hit close to home. How have these talks changed the world? What real fruit have they borne?
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I was in DC yesterday for a work happy hour/meetup, and had a great time catching up with colleagues in person at a beer garden down the street from our office. It was around 30˚ with a slight drizzle but we were in a covered cabana with a couple of gas fireplaces, so the chill was kept at bay. I would post a picture, but the one crowd shot I took was blurred beyond recognition.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been eyeballing a large 4-drawer file cabinet in our basement filled with papers that date back to my first house. We have these huge multifunction copiers at work that can batch-scan documents; I used them to scan all of our BGE bills before COVID. I have binders filled with statements from my old investment accounts, and I figured I’d bring a couple of them into work with me and convert them all to PDFs, then use the recycling bins there to toss the paper. So I humped an entire backpack full down there on the train and fired up a machine to scan them. I got through 1/2 of the first book when I noticed that none of the emails were coming through. I futzed with the machine for a bit and then tried a different copier in another part of the building—with the same result. Somewhere they’ve messed with the network settings and the copiers can’t talk to the outside world. So I had to hump the binders all the way back home.
Our utility is running a special on Nest and Ecobee thermostats right now, underwriting them for $50-100 off the list price. When Nest was first released I was keen on buying one, but as soon as they were bought by Google I wrote that idea off. Ecobee gets excellent reviews and their privacy policy is solid—my concern is that our household data might sold to some third party without my knowledge; I’m trying to limit that as much as possible. Smart thermostats need a constant power source, so I’d have to figure a way out to get a wire up to it. It’s compatible with HomeKit, which means I could control it from within our Apple ecosystem. Finally, the Ecobee has a geofencing feature that knows when you come and go based on your phone, but it only supports one phone. There are workarounds, but I’d definitely want the thermostat to know when we’re both home and away. And I definitely don’t want it sharing that data with anyone else.
Meanwhile, I realized after I was sprung from quarantine that Mom’s old TV actually has a built-in client for Netflix and Prime. After running a wire to the network drop on the wall, I plugged our account information in and had it up and running in five minutes. Then I went back into the settings and shut off data sharing. Wish I’d thought of that when I was laid up, but oh well.
In my news feed today, I stumbled on an article that mentioned the 818 Market downtown closed earlier this week.
But as of Tuesday a sign on the door notified customers “818 Market is closed” and urged people to check the business’ Facebook page for updates. As of Thursday, 818 Market’s most recent Facebook post is dated Jan. 30 and invites customers to pick up a bottle of wine for championship games; there is no mention of an upcoming closure.
We’re really not surprised; the idea was a great one, and they definitely went all-out on the execution. But Jen and I have been saying the same thing since before it opened: their scope was too broad. They tried to do everything—bakery, deli, produce, groceries, booze, and a restaurant—all of it admirable. But the baked goods were mediocre, the deli, produce and groceries were twice the price of anywhere nearby, and they were a block from a much better liquor store. And worst of all, their coffee sucked.