I am back!

airplane is 30 years old. Crap that makes me even older.

Tuesday

This is kind of hard to watch, but you will anyway.
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THIS is fun to watch and you deserve it if you made it all the way through that last video.

Wed

Quick links:
(drunk?) woman falls in front of train. Good reaction by onlookers.
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PROOF that picking up Microsoft products is a bad idea.
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ATTACK CATS from hell.

Have a good day.

FRIDAY

WOW. It has been more then a month since I posted here. I guess I have just been putting stuff on FB.
We got some hail for a min or so today, but nothing to worry about.
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I was reading an article in Wired about why Flash sucks and thought it was funny that Adobe says that Flash does not drain batteries. I know when I run Flash apps my fan kicks on high and the battery does not last long. I also read this blog post from Steve Jobs that told his side of why they don't support it.
So I got done reading and I had 2:15 left on the battery. I launched Country Living and all of a sudden (2 min later) I have less then an hour.




So, yea.. Flash does suck batteries.

Sunday

What a great day. It was about 50 and sunny. I washed 2 cars and a truck and defrosted the freezer in the garage and moved it to a better place (closer to the door)
I got the tool cabinet finished and put under my bench. That worked out really well. I want to make 2 more cabinets to fit under there, but I need to make something for the house first. Otherwise it just looks bad. I started using pegboard for the bottom of drawers in the shop a while back. It works well because you can put dividers into them and put small 3/4" screws from the bottom and hold them in place. It is quick and easy, and you can move the dividers when your needs change.
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I really liked these five second films.

sorry, Rick

I have heard that when Rick Nelson had his five neck guitars made he did it to end the multi-neck-guitar-wars. Sorry, Rick.. it is still on.

Tuesday

I had the day off and started to build a cabinet that will go above the toilet in the kids' bathroom. We painted yesterday and replaced fixtures and stuff. It looks much better in there. I have to get some oak to make the doors tomorrow.
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Here is my favorite commercial right now.

SHOP. FEB 2010

Here is what the shop looks like these days. (Click on any of the images to make them bigger.)
This is the switching on one of the blast gates that activates the dust collector when one of them is opened. The micro switch activates a 30amp relay that I salvaged off of an A/C unit.

The top of the router table. The hole behind the router sucks chips from the fence into the cabinet and out to the dust collector. That really worked out well.

The top and front of the router table with the fence installed.

This is at the end of the outfeed table of for the table saw. There are air nailers and staplers in the drawers along with the bullets for each.

This is around the corner on the out feed table. There are sanders on the shelf to the right. The top of the outfeed table is plumbed up to the dust collector and will be a down draft table as soon as I get around to drilling a few hundred holes in it. I was not in a hurry before because the filter in my dust collector sucked and it would just blow fine dust through it anyway.

The bench on the left was built for that space. The one on the right used to be a downdraft table at the other shop and is going to stay there until it gets replaced with something that fits better and is more functional.

My saw. Love that beast. I wanted to move the rail to the right for years, and finally got around to ordering a new self sticking measuring tape to put on it after it was moved. I went to peel off the old one and then and only then did I realize that it was metal and I could just re-stick in on the rail. (duh) I used the tape I bought on my miter saw so it was all good.

Here is the hillbilly cyclone. It started as a 35 gallon drum. There is a HF 2 hp (yea, right) motor and impeller on top of it. I just recently added the Wynn filter. I was not sure how much stuff would get through the cyclone, so I made a collection box below it. When I tested it out I dumped out all of the dust from the collector on the floor (it was about 2/3 full) and swept it into the floor sweep. Then I checked the white box below the filter. There was not a single bit of wood in there. Well that was just dumb luck, but I will take it. I got the blue barrel below the cyclone at university surplus with a lid and a hose attached. They gave it to me free since they "lost" the rest of the dust collector that came with it.

Just another shot of the router table I guess.

The miter saw and drill press. the extension on the right of the saw hinges down so I can stow 4x8 sheets behind it. The cabinet that the miter saw sits on is open below the saw. It sits on a couple of rails inside the cabinet. There is a trash can inside the cabinet below. The heavy dust just falls down into the trash can and the finer stuff gets sucked up to the top mounted dust collector port. I like this setup because it seems to work well, but also because then I can just toss cut-offs behind the saw and they go into the trash below.

Here is where the downdraft table will be. The planer is there for now, but I have a better solution down the road.

This is a bench I just finished up. The legs are 3x3 pine (glued 2x4's). It is all made of 2x4, but the joints are pinned mortise and tenons and I was happy with the results. I am going to make some cabinets for below it that will have drawers and perhaps some shelves.



The last 2 photos are of the hillbilly cyclone being made last summer. The one photo shows an old shirt that was cut up to make a funnel shape inside of the drum. That was then fiberglassed and sanded to make it as smooth as I could with my limited fiberglassing skills.



So there you have it. When I had my old shop I wished that I had built it bigger. My space is smaller now, but I am so glad that we moved out of the old neighborhood. I guess that no matter how big your shop is, you probably wish it were bigger. So I just look at it as a challenge to make things fit and to do the best with what I have.
There will always be more tools to buy, but the only big one I have left is a good bandsaw. I really want one of the Griz' saws and perhaps some day...

FRIDAY!!!

Well this is the coolest case for your Macbook ever..
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Here is the coolest cave you have never seen.
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Wow, Heidi Montag sold over SIX HUNDRED copes of her new single in just the first week.

thursday

Well this is truly amazing. If nobody told you that it was CG, you would never know it.

it just keeps getting better and better

There was our old house. Next to it was the friggin' habitat house. Next to that was the city owned house. There was a string of armed robberies in Iowa City a while back. Guy dressed as a Ninja robbed gas stations and such. They caught the guy. He lived in the city owned house 2 doors down. Well now this story: Seems the new tenant was arrested for an attempted stabbing last night. I am sure that it is all just a coincidence and that I am just a racist and crap like that.

Wed.

Well, we got our snow. At least a foot, but it is hard to tell. I did a bunch of snow blowin' last night and again today. The new blower did a good job.
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This is truly a cool clock.

Monday

Did not really get that much snow last night. Less then an inch I would say. There is supposed to be another foot of it on the way though.
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I would buy this hybrid car. Except for the whole $200K thing. Any time you can go 0-60 in under 4 seconds screamin' "I AM GREENER THEN YOU HONDA DRIVIN' TREE HUGGERS!" it is a win/win.

Sunday

Well we are about to get hit hard with a lot of snow. There is something kind of exciting about the first snow fall. My truck will go through anything, and I just got a new snowblower Friday. So I am kind of looking forward ot it. That will wear of pretty quickly, though.
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Here is how to look really stupid on TV.

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You got a real purdy mouth:

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.

Dec 1.

Wow. Dec.
HERE is a link to a car that I really like. I am at work looking through a site that has celeb's and their cars. Lots of tacky Hummers and Caddy's. Lots of big-dumb-ass-wheels. I came across this ferrari and was really taken by the looks. Classy choice, Lebron.

Again? Really?

For the second time in a few weeks FOX "news" showed the wrong video. This time they took campaign video and said it was for her book signing. Either they are trying to mislead the public, or they just really suck ass at what they do.

Thursday

DON'T DO THIS:

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John Stewart caught Fox "News" switching video and padding numbers to prove their point. I mean, he caught them making an honest mistake. Yup. That is it.

Sunday

Well good news (finally) in the sports world. Jimmie Johnson crashes on lap 3!! That is exactly what NASCAR needed to get people to care again.
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Here is a great idea. A steady cam mount for your iPhone. The only bad part is that the whole idea of phone cameras is that they take crappy movies, but you have them in your pocket all the time and can catch some otherwise lost footage. If you are going think ahead to spend $150 for the mount and have planned out a movie, why the hell would you use a damn phone to record it? Other then that it is brilliant!!
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This is truly impressive and very cute.

Saturday

Well the Hawks lost. it was bound to happen.
We watched Mary's nephew play football for Missouri Valley College. He is a starter on the D. He played well. The game was on the internet so we watched it on our computer. They were up by 2 but the other guys had a drive going. There was less then a second left. They were setting up for a long field goal to try to win it. Right before the snap my battery died on my computer. AAARG.
Turns out it was good and Missouri Valley lost.
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Did not do too much today. Dan and I went to Menards. I got some drywall and he took back some boards from the deck build. Then we all stood outside and drank beer and watched the game in Scott's garage. They are going to come over tonight and hang out. I really like having cool neighbors.
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We all have screwed up at work. But none of us as much as this guy:

Tuesday