Dang I like Guy Kawasaki’s blog. I keep sending snippets from it to people. And I keep finding myself muttering to myself “dang! I’ve said those exact words myself. Why didn’t I think to blog that.” Here’s the link to his Let The Good Times Roll blog.
Business types will like it. Non-business types, you might too — Guy’s a bit more well-rounded in his approach than the typical heads-down business blogger.
Marcie and I are big-time walkers. We do 2 walks a day, 2.5 miles each time — 5 miles a day, 150 miles/month, probably around 1700-1800 miles a year. We run through a lot of walking shoes.
The new addition to our routine is walking with poles — aka “Nordic Walking” — which seems pretty nifty. It helps us old geezers navigate icy sidewalks in the winter and gives us a little bit better workout. Here’s a pretty good writeup of the whole Nordic Walking thing if you’re interested.
But oh my, those poles they’re using are darned expensive — ranging from $60 to $200+ per pair. My “cheap is good” instincts were aroused and we decided to make our own. Heading over to the used cross-country ski-pole place, we bagged some nice bamboo poles for a big $6 a pair. Heading over to REI, Marcie got replacement tips for walking poles for $9 a pair. So we’re talking $15/pair for stuff.
The making is easy. You need to know how long to make the poles. I came across a formula (somewhere, can’t find the link) that says that the length of the pole should be about 70% of your height. I used a hack saw to cut off the poles (sometimes there are metal gizmo’s in the middle of those used poles — those would be tough on a wood saw). A little detergent applied to the “replacement” rubber tips to slip them on to the bamboo pole and we’re good to go.
Yeah yeah, I know — these poles don’t have shock absorbent neutrino power subsystems with articulated carbon fiber folding landing gear modules. But they work fine for us.
Here’s the post about this winter’s Big Project — a couple of couches to replace the ones we have at the house in St Paul. Dang, we bought those couches pretty recently but the fabric was terrible — they’ve faded really badly in the sun and they pick up stains like nobody’s business.
Read on if you’re interested in the ongoing saga. [read more…]
I’m kicking off a new topic area — Woodworking. The “notes to myself” I wrote about my home brew PVR (”FreeVo”) project is what inspired me. Another kind of geek stuff I do is fooling around trying to teach myself how to make furniture. So this is the first of an periodic series of posts describing my efforts.
This winter, the “big project” was to try out making a dresser. This is my first foray into the realm of boxes — and this dresser has 7 of ‘em! The big box of the dresser case, plus six little boxes for the drawers. The big lesson learned is that making things square in two dimensions is a lot easier than making them square in three. The big box is out of square about an eighth of an inch and that wound up driving me nuts for the whole project thereafter — constant corrections.
I built this dresser following (slightly modified) plans from Bill Hylton’s Chests of Drawers book. A great book — filled with plans that are mostly way too advanced for me, but very clear and good at helping navigate the rough patches.
Here’s a picture of the big box, just after I glued it up. It was at this point that my fateful eighth of an inch out-of-square crept into the scene. I got too cute — I used mortise and tenon joints instead of the loose tenon joints that Bill describes in the book and paid the price for deviating from the instructions of the Maestro.
Now the “big box” is basically done. The top isn’t structural, it’s going to get hooked on with those little angle irons you use to put solid-wood tops on tables.
These are the blanks for the drawer handles. Another “first” on this project was to learn how to do pattern cutting with the router. Now that’s a gizmo! I can tell I’ll be having a lot of fun with that router bit in days to come.
Now the six “little boxes” are done and mounted. This dresser uses drawer-mounting hardware like you’d find in kitchen cabinets. I’m still a little too ham-handed to make a real dresser where the drawers fit in the dresser frame directly. Maybe some day, but only after I get better at square. One neat thing about this hardware is that it’s got a little gizmo that “self closes” the drawer in the last 3 inches of its travel — sorta like the trunks on fancy cars.
All done. I like it a lot, and Marcie does too. I’ve adjusted that one drawer-front that’s a little out of whack in this picture so everything’s looking pretty good unless you know exactly where to look for that dreaded eighth of an inch.
I'm quite taken with this index of financial management articles in INC Magazine.
They have done a great job of breaking out the topics and, while the articles are a little fluffy for my tastes, they provide a great starting point for ideas if you're stuck. Here's an example — what about doing a “trial run” of your business (or business-function, or project-deliverable) before opening the doors? Read this article to learn more about a fella that did that very thing.