My Attitude about Comments

  • Posted on: 8 April 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

Those few of you who read this stuff I write, you may be curious about this site. Particularly, why do I post stuff, with no capability for feedback? The entire internet is built around community and feedback and comments and social-this and personal-that. Why no way to deliver a witty and scathing riposte?

Part of it has to do with why I keep this site in the first place, which is a topic I reserve for another time. (Some time soon, though. I've been mulling that one for awhile and it's about fully cooked in my noggin' now.) But mostly it has to do with what happens when I do open up comments. As anyone knows who has any presence on the internet, the stream of things that come back at you are various, mostly banal, and usually spam. Spam is the cholesterol of the internet. It's everywhere. A small fraction of it is actually good. But mostly it just sticks in the gears and gums up the works.

I occasionally break down and turn on the comments for an individual article or project update. I always regret it within 24 hours. It starts with a small dribbling of benign, but unfocused, random comments. Usually in pairs.

Sam123: Hey, <articlename>, do you know this?

Sam123: Hey, <articlename>, do you know this?

Then, usually about 24 hours later, that same tag comes back, but this time it's a longer post about how great a blogger you are and, oh, by the way, here's the link to my website: buyviagrafromrumaniafornotmuchmoney dot com. In 36 hours, the stream goes from about 5 comments an hour, to about 50 an hour. If I leave it open, and heaven-forbid, allow anonymous users to publish their comments without my approval, I'll be gettin' more than 500 comments an hours. And not one has one damned squat-bit of anything to do with the article they're posting on.

Back, six or seven years ago, when I started this particular website, I used to leave these open all the time. The acceleration wasn't as extreme back then. I'd get to about 50 comments an hour after a couple of months. For a long time, I actually went through every couple of weeks and deleted all the old spam comments, and GOLLY, occasionally found a real comment. The ratio, thinking back, was about one genuine comment out of about 4 or 5 thousand submitted comments. I finally gave up and shut it all down. 

This goes back to the basis of why I post at all. I can tell you right now, hearing feedback from readers isn't even in the top ten. It is occasionally nice, though. I've had some good feedback a couple of times. But the spammers and other jerk-wads always have to bury that in their shit.  I mean, I get it. It's all commerce. The internet went from the wild west, to the wild west run by Russian mobsters. Anything to get their clicks.

I think I'll run an experiment. I'll leave the comments ON for this one article, and I'll tell you what. I'll *approve* every comment for the first 24 hours. And leave that as a testament to all you ass-hole spam-bots, chinese state-sponsored hackxors, and SEO-seeking, mass-linkbacking, Google-rank chasing, PC-sweat-factory-living human drudges who generate most of this stuff. Here you go. This is the last of it. Then I'm turning off the entire comment function completely for good.

Sigh. I remember the early days of the internet, when most of its inhabitants weren't human douche-nozzles with pea-sized gonads. A sneak peak on that article about why I have this website and post the way I do? Here's the secret . . . . shhhhh, don't tell anybody . . . .in this place . . . .  I can say whatever I want.

And here, at least most of the time, you get to say . . . . NOTHING.

 

 

But just this once, have at it, boys: Say your Say. Sound your barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. 


Finished door hardware, Primed the Roof

  • Posted on: 6 April 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

Installed knobs and latch hardware on the small side doorsGot a bit more done on the aviary tonight. I bought the basic door hardware from the big box hardware store last weekend and finished installing it today. The hinges I had on already, but I've now installed the door latches, the door handles, and the knobs on the little doors. These knobs were actually in a box in the house we had in Florida. That home had been built by the builder of the development, and I found a box of about a hundred white ceramic knobs and mounting screws. I've used the heck out of those knobs over the years. I've only got a few left. Here I mounted two on the little side doors of Adriana's aviary. 

I love it when a plan comes together. Smooth moving doors all around.

Added Grids, Lights

  • Posted on: 3 April 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

Opening the roll of PVC-coated wire fencing to start fitting it to the aviary partsI spent about 12 hours this weekend working on the aviary. I finished attaching the doors and door handles over the past week, so now it was time to add the grid or cage material and to finish up some interior work before adding the roof. I mentioned in a previous post that I had ordered the grid from a New Jersey fencing company. It's nice stuff, but it wasn't cheap. Well, it was actually not that bad, per unit area, but I ended up ordering much more than I needed just for this project. I wanted 24" wide pieces, so they'd fit naturally on the 24" wide sides and easily cover the bottom and doors. The label from the Academy Fencing spoolThey didn't have the 24" x 50' spool in stock, so I ordered a 24" x 100' spool. That was $90. But that thing was HEAVY, probably close to 60 pounds. Thanks to that, shipping was another $45. I ended up spending as much for the fencing as I did for everything else on this project. I was a bit surprised by the label. It seems they manufacture the stuff, or at least they repackage it themselves. 

Cutting the wire grid with a Dremel tool fitted with a cutting diskAfter opening up the spool, i had to figure out how to cut the stuff. I tried tin snips, which did work, but it was slow and it would probably have a) ruined my tin snips, and b) killed my hand by the end of it. So I went and hunted down my trusty Dremel tool and cutting disks. Luckily, I found them in my wife's stained glass supplies. (She steals my tools from time-to-time to finish up her glass projects.) The Dremel worked well, but had to be careful to wear safety glasses and be careful as I cut each wire. Cutting through the PVC coating and then through the wire usually resulted in a little "CHICKt" at the end of the cut, just as the disk exited the back side of the wire. This was the disk catching on the edges of the wires. I went through about 20 cutting disks, each one rather startling me as it exploded off the end of the Dremel. A couple of times I heard the pieces hit the ceiling or the far wall of the shop. Oh, and the smell of the PVC as I burned through it with the cutting wheel . . . not pleasant.

Aviary with doors, grids, and lights installed

Doors and sidewall gap filler

  • Posted on: 29 March 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

All of the door parts dimensioned and organizedAnother weekend, another update. I'm getting into a rhythm here.

This weekend's goal was to build the front and side doors. Unlike the main structure, which is out of southern yellow pine (SYP), I'm building the doors out of whitewood, which is significantly lighter. I don't want the doors to sag. 

Crosscut sled set up to cut half-lap joints on the door frame partsI ripped an 8' 2x6 down into 1" by 1 ½" strips on the table saw, then cut them to length on the chopsaw. The plan is to half-lap the corners for strength. The doors should be light enough, even with the cage material attached, to stay square. I set up the crosscut sled on the table saw to cut the half-laps. This took some dialing-in. I set it up for less than half the depth and then inched up on the correct fit. I didn't bother installing the dado stack, I just nibbled away with multiple cuts. (AKA, 'The I'm too lazy to set it up' method, or better known as the Norm Abrams method.) Here, you can see that the depth is *not quite* deep enough. Another half-turn on the blade height knob and it was perfect. I also tweaked the location of the stop block a touch to make the overlap perfectly square.

First fitting of the half lap joints on the lower side door. Still a little shallow. I'll need to raise the blade just a touch.AHalf-lapped joint on the corner of the lower side door. Still dialing in the length of the tenon at this point.fter cutting the joints, I then went back and touched them up with a sharp bench chisel to remove any loose cruft between adjacent 'nibbles'. This also smoothed the cheeks of the inside joint enough that the glue joint should be strong. I glued up all of the doors and allowed them to dry for about three hours.

I'm using the quick clamps for everything these days, since most of my nicer clamps are all still packed away in a box somewhere. The sad part about that is that I built a really nice wall-mounted clamp rack for all of my clamps back in Florida, but I just don't have the wall space in this shop to put it up. (Not that I want to drill any more holes in the rented walls in any case.)

Progress has been made. Started mounting the doors.

Door jambs, Test assembly, Stain

  • Posted on: 21 March 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

Front wall frame laid out in prepartion to fit a door jamb. I cut the L-shaped jamb pieces on the table saw, then cut them to fit with the ryoba.I worked on the aviary some more this weekend. Building a piece of furniture is always an exercise in mental gymnastics, as you figure out the sequence of how things must be assembled and finished on the whole unit. Since the walls need to have grid material installed before final assembly, but since it's a modular unit that can be assembled and dissambled, there are some things that need to happen first and some later. I decided to add door jambs for the doors, to make it more certain that the doors close solidly, and also to prevent gaps through which a tiny finch might escape.  Fitting the door jamb for the large front doors. Looks like a good fit on the left one.Both central door jambs on the rear side of the central pillar of the front of aviaryI had a pair of spice finches in college for a short time, until they both escaped out of the Chinese bamboo cage I had purchased for appearance. 

I started the work this weekend by cutting L-shaped moulding pieces to be installed on the inside of each frame where a door will be installed.  These were done on the table saw, but then cut to size using one of my ryoba. For quick, smooth cuts where fine sizing is helpful, I really like working with the Japanese pull saws.  At this point, I also finished sanding the walls to a fairly rough finish. And I did each of the jamb pieces as I cut them. I only sanded to 80 grit for time, and also due to the fact that it's just contruction material, and the birds will get it dirty soon enough.

Aviary structure held together with clamps so I can stain it

Recent Outage

  • Posted on: 18 March 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

What a tangled web we weave when first we suffer to . . . blog?My site here had a rough patch the last few days. I attempted an update to the content management system, which caused problems. But then backing out of that update caused the whole site to go down. I should know, working in IT, to depend on things going well when you upgrade. Luckily, I do have good backups. And we're back up and running now. 

These shenanigans have prevented me from posting a bunch of updates recently. For a change, I'm doing a lot of work in the shop and I have lots of thoughts on topics I want to talk about here. I'm designing and building an aviary to hold finches for my wife's new bird-keeping hobby. We're in the process of hunting for a house, which frankly, has given me lots of insight into the U.S. mortgage lending industry. It's not pretty, folks.  Oh, and  my workbench project continues to make progress. I'll post updates here as I have time.  (Time is always short, but especially now as I try to stand up an asset management system at work. Fun.)


Began Work on the Aviary

  • Posted on: 12 March 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

Prepping the plansAfter I went out last week to buy BORG lumber for this project, I got started this week cutting the 2-by lumber down to more useful dimensions. I had to stack all of my lumber outside on the back porch this time, since I'm out of room in the shop. Hopefully it'll stay dry for a few days until I can bring it in. (Note: It didn't, of course. We had the wettest two weeks of the year so far right after I posted this.)

The lumber for the aviary stacked outside the back window of the shopEven though I dimensioned for 2"x2" legs, I just used the dimensions of the lumber define it. So all of the members actually ended up 1½" x 1¾". (That's ripping a 2" x 8" into four pieces.) Once that was done, I started the process of chopping to length and then butt glueing and screwing into place. The little birds have hatched and I need to get this thing done quickly.

This thing is going to be modular, so if it's too large to fit through a doorway, I can take it apart into four walls, a floor, and the roof pieces. So I started by framing in the front and back walls with their long legs. Building the front wall of the aviary. Butt joints, glued and screwed.I extended the legs 10" below the bottom of the aviary so that it'll sit up higher. I've got a ton of long screws from the outdoor playset I built the boys back in Florida, so I used those with glue to hold the frames together. After the front and back, I built the side walls. The right side is a simple rectangle, but the left wall has members in the middle to support three little doors for feeding and cleaning the cage.

The back wall of the aviary leaning up against the chopsaw station. I was running out of room in the shop on this project.

Power in a Temporary Shop

  • Posted on: 9 March 2016
  • By: Jay Oyster

As I've mentioned recently, my workshop is a temporary construct. We've moved several times and will move again in the near future. This is the result of our evil banking industry and the fact that when they tanked the world economy, my wife and I were forced to accept a short sale on our Florida home. Rental is never stable, as we found out when our first Atlanta home was needed back by the owner last year. From a shop perspective, that was really too bad, especially since I had invested in a pair of 30Amp circuits in the basement shop in my las rental property. (You're welcome, Mr Landlord.) But the additional burden of moving a shop is that things just get lost.  I still haven't located my random-orbital sander.

Running power down the stairsBut lately, it's been getting even worse. The wiring in this house is absolutely horrendous when it comes to supporting a woodshop. The entire lower level, including our garage and my workshop, are on a single 20Amp circuit. That was bad enough, but then some time during the winter, that circuit just . . stopped. It hasn't tripped a breaker. I can't find a single problem wrong with it, other than the fact that there is no juice at the outlets or lights on the circuit. And since I'm moving soon, I refuse to invest the time and energy into tracking down the problem. Especially since we've reported a ton of fix requests with the renting company. I fear we're getting a reputation. 

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