Books Worth Reading
Create image for chapter illustration. Carmen and Marie having a heart to heart talk in the galley section of a motor-home-size spaceship.
can you make the ladies seem more cheerful
that's too cheerful. try to strike a balance
Close enough! Read the chapter here!
Previously: Blendered. Ship in a Bottle. Run, robot, run. Also, if you REALLY want to get into backstory, buy the book! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSR3SDFT
But today, I have a real estate problem!
Yes, I can see foliage poking through walls and windows. It’s been fixed. My point is: Loyal House is 122 meters long, 27 meters wide overall, 45 meters wide in the sanctuary, center section ceiling height 35 meters.
Draw an imaginary line bridging tops of columns — a new floor deck will be installed, making part of the layout two-story. However, the issue of scaling an interior to fit available volume will not be solved by this tactic alone.
But look at how cool it is.
Yep. There's a lot of work to do. Does anyone want to draw up floor plans?
Where do you think elevator(s) should go? Shall I publish the WIP on Epic Games for all to see? Tell us in the comments.
2024 marks our tenth year renting the same Florida house, wherein hangs our Florida boat, graciously placed in our care by the landlord for a modest sum, and which has since consumed many thousands of dollars in upkeep.
And in all this time I’ve neglected to attend a niggling detail, that of a common iron hook upon which the boat was hanging, shedding rust flakes on fiberglass, leaving stains, and giving the successor captain more work to do.
I’d say I didn’t clean up after replacing the hardware so I could take a more evidentiary photograph, but the truth is that rehanging the boat was a struggle and I was tired. In fact, the business of finding a heavy duty SS latch hook was itself a struggle, which is part of the reason why it took ten years to get the job done.
But the main reason is that we’re getting older, and maintenance has become such a dreaded chore that, this time, when I replaced the hook, I wanted it to be the last time.
Is age creeping up on you? What are you doing to deal with it. Tell us in the comments.
So, Linda brings home this $5 Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 2772 printer/scanner from the women’s club rummage sale, because my $20 yard sale Canon Pixma IP3500 that I bought for the Florida house ten years ago doesn’t have a scanner.
The HP is slow, ink carts are expensive, the print head is unserviceable but yes, it does have a scanner. For $5 I can run the ink dry and throw it away. Good so far, right?
Continue reading “Ludditeticulous!”
My solicitation for dock builders flushed out a pair of sturdy young men who work weekdays for one of the name brand marine contractors.
A discount on the market rate ensued, along with better start and end dates.
But the big payoff may be that I discovered what needed to be done. The pilings were compromised by rot and seaworm predation. The first guys who showed up to bid didn’t say a thing about it.
Six bids in, I found out how bad it was. I hired the eleventh guy, on judgement and instinct.
It’s turning out well.
Have you experienced a satisfactory conclusion to a sticky problem? Tell us about it.
Following one hurricane and a tropical storm that should have been classified as a hurricane, the dock at our winter residence in Florida was left unserviceable.
Our landlord of ten years was not able to get the dock repaired before our arrival. His favorite contractor has more on the table than he can handle. We’ve been here two weeks. Nothing’s happening.
Continue reading “Un-Docked!”
Today I received my first-ever dental implant. See the photo. It’s #14, top left (your right) second from last molar.
Got it? Okay. So, it didn’t hurt, except when the surgeon numbed the site. What did hurt was four months ago when the tooth that used to occupy that slot was extracted, and whoo boy, that hurt a lot. It doesn’t even hurt right now, five hours later. We’ll see how that holds up tomorrow.
I won’t go into details about the procedure, except to say the ratchet wrench was kind of a surprise. The bill was not a surprise. They x-rayed my wallet ahead of time to make sure I could pay it.
My credit card still hasn’t gotten over it.
Are you tired of the same-old same-old escapist fiction you've been reading? Try John Dyer Writes, the cure for what ails you. Seriously, buy my novels, they're great. Or at least, read my essays. They're great, too.
After twenty-three years operating our elevator without mishap, our dog Ernie broke away from my grasp, poking his muzzle through the scissor gate at the worst possible moment. I hit the stop button. The car was three feet down from the middle floor landing. Ernie’s head and neck were squeezed between the gate and a concrete wall.
He cried, lost his water, strained to pull himself out. The gate was more robust than it needed to be. It took four tries to jerk it out of the track.
Ernie came away from the ordeal with a scuff on his neck. I pulled muscles in my back, neck, and hips during a last-ditch, adrenaline-fueled assault on the apparatus.
We were traumatized. Ernie trembled all night, going back and forth between us in the bed. I had to take him out at 3:30 this morning, something I haven’t had to do for two months.
Our friend and elevator mechanic Mike Zeller will install an accordion-style barrier. Until then, Ernie rides in my lap. Both my hands will be around his chest.
It’s Sunday. Linda’s at church, thanking God for a narrow escape.
It’s Tinkerer Wednesday! Today I’m contemplating the fill port on a West Bend Manufacturing Webalco 17209 liquid-core electric skillet, and wondering where I can get high-temperature silicone heat-transfer oil on the cheap.
Update: A reader recommended DOT5 silicone brake fluid. I tried it. It works!
#saladmaster #regalware #lifetime
My Dell XPS 8700 is seventeen years old. Anyone else would have given up on it, but I nursed it along, and it sufficed until the release of Unreal Engine 5. You see, I need UE5. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to use it effectively, but right now I gotta have it.
Prophetically, the old girl gave me a goodbye wave during the cutover procedure – a disk drive failed to mount. The backup was three weeks old. I did a restart. The drive mounted. I pumped it. Crisis averted.
Continue reading “Computerfied”
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