1. Make sure you are measuring & marking the boards as accurately as possible before you turn on a machine.
2. Be safe in all that you do.
At the top is a T-square with engraved measurements, from Woodpeckers. Great special purpose tool. The Starrett combination square below it is much more functional, and is always the first tool I grab to mark and measure new stock. The 6″ and 12″ steel rules are also shop essentials. Two pencils here: the one on the left is always at the table saw, and was made for me by my brother-in-law. The one on the right uses smaller lead, and is more accurate for layouts.
So many tools here! Triangles, a square, a combination square … a pencil.
A compass lets you draw a circle; this one has an extension arm allowing circles up to 12″ in diameter to be marked.
You need 2 identical tape measures: one lives on the table saw, and the other is at the work site.
SAFETY. I always use safety goggles and a push stick on the table saw. Always. Hearing protection is required with a planer or jointer; some use it with a router or table saw as well.
My garage hasn’t seen a car in many years. What it does see is woodworking.
Here are the key floor and bench top tools that I use. I’ve built everything from our kitchen cabinets to curio boxes. Check out some of my work on my woodworking blog, which is a part of the Lumberjocks website. See my projects, here.
The workbench is the centerpiece of every project in the shop. I built this one with holes across the hard maple top. With the end vise (on the other end), I can clamp large projects using “bench dogs” in the holes to hold the piece in place.
The most important power tool in the shop. The table saw is the most versatile, and the most dangerous, of the tools I use.
My benchtop bandsaw gets the job done, almost, on this 1-1/2″ stock. If only I had room for a real band saw….
Making relief cuts on the radius of the circle makes for a much smoother arc to be cut in the stock.
The router table is a wonderful addition to the shop, but the best thing for better quality of life in the shop is a dust collector, shown inflated to the left. Now, operating the table saw or router table is almost dust free.
The router table also has a mitre guage mounted over the fence for easy work routing at a 90* angle.
This router table top was made by Jessem and sold by Rockler … but it has been discontinued. It’s my # 2 go to tool, after the table saw.
The drill press is essential for drilling holes at a 90* angle to the stock; you can’t match it with a handheld drill. In this case, I was using a 1-1/2″ forstner bit, which couldn’t be used in a handheld drill.
The benchtop sander makes quick work of corners and rough edges.
There is a reason Henry controls the blog and not me…I might be the world’s worst blogger. Sorry for the hiatus friends. Life has been a bit wild over the past few months and it all has to do with my teaching career.
I first stopped blogging to focus on passing my English CSET(California Subject Examinations for Teachers). That test was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I thought I knew things about literature and teaching the English language…I wasn’t wrong, but I definitely didn’t know ALL THE THINGS. The minutiae on this exam was astounding. Every greek god, every major work of literature from the dawn of time, every poem, every author, every grammar rule, every exception had to be somewhere accessible in my brain. But I passed and am now a credentialed English teacher! Hooray!
We just won’t talk about the fact that this was attempt #2.
Pitiful excuse #2: I finally got some teaching experience under my belt! This school year was pretty wonderful for me. I got to work on my first school musical, Cinderella. It was definitely a learning experience, but I had an amazing partner and we put on a lovely show(She’s also a fabulous blogger. Check her out at Bees Times Three!). We were the directors, the set builders, the costume designers, the choreographers, and the student wranglers. I’m a wizard with a safety pin, let me tell you. It might have been a nearly insurmountable amount of work, but it was awesome.
At the same time, I taught English as a long term substitute. Oh, the papers. If you know an English teacher, give them a hug. They’ve probably spent the last nine months grading papers and need summer break more than you could possibly imagine.
I finally feel like this is my year. Later this afternoon I’ll be headed to orientation for summer school. I’ll be teaching sixth and seventh grade. I couldn’t be more excited! I’m hoping this nervous energy will help me write lesson plans. Here’s hoping I’ll start sharing some lovely teaching anecdotes and blogging MUCH more. I’m slowly making my way towards having my own classroom. This journey hasn’t been easy, but I know the rewards will be great.
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
– 1984, by George Orwell
So now you should know the federal government is gathering data from millions of calls every day.
Who calls who. Where calls originate, and where they go.
American citizens calling American citizens … and it is being monitored because the government has decided its a good idea.
And, by now you may know that the reaction to this is … (yawn).
Everyone wants the terrorists to be stopped. Can we prevent another 9/11? Then do so, please. Just don’t give us the details. We trust you to get it right.
REALLY?
Right now, trust is in very short supply. We don’t trust Obama to tell the truth about how the IRS is targeting the tax-exempt status of political enemies. We don’t trust Bush to tell us who our enemies are. We don’t trust Christie to choose when to elect a Senator (Oh, wait, we do trust him, and New Jersey has now done a $24 million giveaway because he thinks it’s good for his political career).
A leaked court order has Verizon giving the NSA “telephony metadata” – such as what phone number called what phone number, from where to where – for all calls involving domestic US callers. That court order would not have been made public until 2038, except for this leak and its publication. What do you think: are the other cellular providers also turning over their data? That’s a secret … still.
But let’s all trust faceless bureaucrats in the intelligence community who are collecting millions of datapoints from innocent, unsuspecting citizens every single day because it just might lead them to figuring out another terrorist attack.
Oversight? Well, that’s secret. How much is this costing? Well, that’s secret. Congressional approval? Well, they are kept informed, trust me. And that’s secret.
Did it prevent the wackos from bombing the Boston Marathon? No. Did this prevent a wacko from shooting up Santa Monica yesterday? No. Did this prevent a pregnant wacko from mailing ricin-laced letters from Texas in a bid to implicate her husband? No.
But it’s a good thing. Trust us.
“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”
– Barack Obama, 6/7/2013
President Obama is on board with the program, but his obfuscation about how it works and what the benefits are is troubling. His obsession with prosecuting journalists for investigating government activities indicates he really doesn’t want independent evaluation of his administration’s actions. (He did say he found the leaks “troubling.”) That’s why his justice department got permission to monitor communication through the Associated Press — to see who they’re talking to, and see what they’re writing about. He needs to know that, because he knows best what information should be released about the activities of his administration.
We’re just supposed to trust him.
Please, don’t think this is an anti-Obama thing. It’s not. It’s about trust.
I trust open, transparent governance. I trust independent thought. I trust an independent free press.
But I don’t trust Big Brother.
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson, 1791
Please read the chilling article by Jack Shafer, link below, which updates and extends the news about the leaks that have happened and continue to happen.
35 is the fifth tetrahedral number – and I can pronounce that word correctly, without help from the word’s creator.
The above graphic is an animated .gif. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, and they can be either static or animated.
The inventor of this handy file format, Steve Wilhite, finally settled a controversy in the graphics community by declaring his preference for the pronunciation of the universally accepted short-hand name of this file, “gif.” He created this format 26 years ago, in 1987.
It’s “jif,” with a soft “g” sound. Not the hard G, as in graphic.
So, I’ve pronounced it wrong for all of these years, as have most (but not all) of the graphic artists I’ve worked with. My apologies to Mr. Wilhite and to the creative community for the mistake!
We had our breakfast gift on the lanai, anniversary morning.
I love giving gifts and receiving gifts. Who doesn’t?
But the very best gifts are those that arrive when they are least expected.
Velda and I celebrated our 30th anniversary in Hawaii (which I’ve written extensively about. Some of those links are below). We had never been to Hawaii before, so it was a very big deal when we made these plans. It was a rare vacation for us … if it wasn’t a family camping trip or a visit to see family in the Midwest, we simply hadn’t taken vacations. It was an even more rare adult vacation … something we’d never done before.
When we arrived at our hotel in Kauai, we were informed by the staff that we had two presents waiting for us. My boss Erica had sent a bottle of champagne for us to enjoy, and when would we like that delivered?
And my right hand, my good friend Kristy and her husband Aaron, had sent us an in-room breakfast. On what day would we like that delivered?
Simply, we were stunned. These gifts were totally unexpected, but the fact that these good friends wanted to make our special vacation just a bit more special was just incredible.
And 7 years later, those gifts are still very special. Can you say that about Christmas or birthday gifts you got 5 years ago?
This week, the family got another totally unexpected gift, and the result was truly uproarious.
Michael was graduating from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering with a Master of Science degree. There was a family lunch at El Cholo, which is our favorite Mexican restaurant in LA.
And since it was a family event, of course we were checked in on Facebook, and of course we had checked Tony in with us even though he was in Missouri (the tagging war continues!). We had introduced Tony to the glory that is El Cholo last year. He even enjoyed their guacamole. So while we were enjoying El Cholo, Tony was getting text messages of what he was missing. Everyone sent him pictures of their entrees as they arrived. Tony couldn’t have been getting any work done; he was just getting non-stop harassment from the Left Coast.
And then an anonymous gift arrived at our table. “Someone” had sent us a pitcher of margaritas. The only message: “I hope you all get sick, except for Payton.”
Payton assumed it was for her. If was within reach, after all.
At that point, the celebration kicked into very, very high gear. We laughed and laughed … until we finally calmed down enough to take this picture. My goodness, did we have a great time laughing at this gift and how wonderful it was.
How did he get the wait staff to find the right party? How did he DO it? (As his daughter Claire pointed out, all you had to do was look for the big table with 3 big guys and beards. That certainly narrowed it down!)
And then, there were some wonderful margaritas to share. You know how well that would have been received in this family!
And why was it wonderful? Because of the unexpected graciousness of our spectacular cousin. It was the perfect gesture, at the perfect moment.
Unexpected pleasures.
Surprise gifts don’t have to be expensive, and they don’t have to be a part of a celebration. They do have to be heart-felt, personal, and loving. And that can be a candy bar when someone needs a chocolate pick-me-up as easily as it can be a pitcher of cocktails at a family celebration.
Me, I need to pay this forward to other friends & family. It’s not enough to fulfill obligatory gift giving for holidays & birthdays. To truly give gifts that properly, fully express your feelings, you need to find a gift that is wondrously surprising. I don’t mean doing the dishes when your spouse doesn’t expect it (though that’s not a bad idea, either).
The good news is that when a gift is unexpected, it’s a surprise for your friend or loved one. And don’t we all enjoy surprising someone we love?
It was Christmas break, and Little Girl was home from college. We went out to lunch at a SoCal favorite, In-N-Out Burger.
And Little Girl fired the opening salvo of a war that still reverberates today.
What did she do? She checked in (because you have to tell everybody when you eat at In-N-Out). She tagged me, and she tagged our cousin Tony. His family had visited that year, loved them some In-N-Out, and she knew Tony would be jealous of where we were. And he wasn’t.
We could almost hear his groans 1,816 miles away. And the war had begun.
Soon, we were tagging Tony and his family wherever we were. Venice Beach. A prison that we drove by. Dodger Stadium. Every airport anyone flew through. If we were there, Tony was there. According to Facebook.
And, of course, Tony gave as good as he got.
Our family was tagged when he went to Spring Training in Florida. We were tagged when he flew to South America on business. We were tagged everywhere his family went. We always knew what they were doing!
And then one day, he tagged us and achieved tagging immortality. He tagged our family as being with him when he visited that mecca of local retail, Walmart. Now, of course, it’s sad that Tony went to Walmart, and it’s sad that anyone thought we went with him. What do they think of us?
But that Facebook tag was seen by Velda’s sister. And Velda’s sister asked their Mother when we had arrived in the Midwest, because she saw that we were at a local Walmart. And Velda’s mother then called Velda’s cell, asking why we kept our visit to the Midwest a secret from her.
Now, Velda’s mother does not use a computer. Imagine having to explain to her that we weren’t actually in Missouri, we were in California. But we were shown as being in Missouri on something called Facebook. And that it was a joke.
That she didn’t get, of course.
I still don’t think she believes us. After all, somebody read about it on the internet.
