*Phew*

Well, I’m in.

Or “on” or “installed” or whatever. I finally have my computer back.

I finally targetted my 1 TB backup drive as the main unit and the installation succeeded. Looks like I have a bad drive. I haven’t fiddled with it too much, just installed all the patches, put on a few must-have programs, and tried avoiding any problems. I failed to change the BIOS settings for the main system drive at first and that caused some boot issues but I sorted it out (all my bad) and now things are working fine. I turn it on, it boots up, I do some stuff, and when I shut down I’m not afraid. Novelty.

I have a bit of cleanup work yet to do. I don’t trust my former system drive … but it’s showing up as healthy, chkdsk seems to think it’s OK, and I’d hate to just toss out a workable 350 GB drive. It could have just been that Windows was trying to pull files from a bad sector or something and I didn’t have the formatting tools to avoid the bad drive space. That said, I noticed I could get a drive this size from Fry’s for $35. Still, as a fella who uses coupons, $35 seems like a wasteful thing to part with if it’s OK.

And, that means I’m using a terrabyte system drive. Seems a bit, I don’t know, unnecessary? Excessive? Wasteful? Bottom line, I’d prefer to have about a 350 GB system drive and a large backup drive. Now, at a minimum, I need to go out and get a backup drive.

But, as I said, I’m in. <phew>.

I posted the last of my Australia\New Zealand pictures. (but, Joe, didn’t you take that trip in 2008?) Yes, yes I did. And yeah, I’m just getting around to posting them now. I also have a ton of climbing picts to post but that shouldn’t be as many. And, I need to go through and annotate the pictures. So, lots to do but will start chipping away.

Fortunately I have next week off and will have a lot of time to work on woodworking and my computer.

Why me? The saga of installing a new OS

OK, I’ve had Vista on my home machine for a few years now and, while it hasn’t been a love affair and despites it’s quirks, the OS has been stable and treating me fine. Along comes Win7.

I’ve had it on my work machines, both my desktop and my laptop, through the betas and it’s been a rock. Great performance, drivers haven’t been an issue, and compatibility (for what I use) has been top drawer. Time to upgrade the home machine. But, I was in no hurry so I didn’t need to be the first guy. Unfortunately, my home machine decided for me: it essentially blue-screened (or “AV-ed”) with a message about a “stor.sys” failure or somesuch. No worries, I have my Win7 disk and I’m ready to go. A bit of a bummer, though.

Anyhow, the first problem was that I couldn’t get the machine to boot into the BIOS so I could instruct it to boot from the DVD player. And, as such, it would just cycle through trying to load Vista, fail, take a crash dump, and reboot. Occasionally I’d get a message about “do you want to start from a safe checkpoint” or something like that. Sure I would! Unfortunately, the machine couldn’t help me. Every option I tried led to the same thing.

I brought the machine into work and someone asked if I’d tried hitting the “del” key while booting. Sure I had. He tried, and into the BIOS it broke. We set the system to boot from the DVD and off we ran.

I reloaded Vista and figured I’d just get enough going to pull off some data I hadn’t backed up in the previous three days. My backup ran on Wednesday, I crashed on Saturday. We got it, I took the machine home, and the next time I tried to install Win7 I hit the next problem.

I couldn’t upgrade from a running Vista 32-bit to a Win7 64-bit. Damn. So I just boot from the DVD, right? Unfortunately, I had a thumb drive burned from an ISO image and my machine wasn’t capable of recognizing removable USB storage devices as boot drives. Crap. Well, I had the ISO but I didn’t have the special use-this-and-nothing-else-boot-drive-creation-software on the machine I had at home. Only on my work boxes.

 I could have tunneled in with my desktop system but when I reinstalled Vista I blew away those settings. I couldn’t connect to the corpnet through my work laptop because while I’d been away the last two days they changed some setting and I wasn’t able to pull down the network certs or whatever through my home network … had to be connected. Damn!

So, I went into work (after taking Thursday and Friday off), did a bunch of work, and got the ISO burning software. But, by that time it was late and I didn’t get back to it at home. Took a break.

The next day I attacked things with the DVD and had a devil of a time getting the machine to boot from the DVD player. It looked like the DVD player was being detected during boot-up but by the time it was looking for the DVD to start from, it wouldn’t find it and would move to the next device in the start chain. But, through trial and error, I found that if I left the disk tray open and closed it when the system was starting up, it would load from the DVD player. And I needed this trick a lot.  >:-(

I’ve tried a number of installations and what it appears to be coming down to is that my former main drive is bad, had bad sectors, or is otherwise screwed up. Fine, get that piece of trash out of there … I can replace it for $50 from Fry’s if I need to. But, what could be happening, is the scratch drive that is being used to load Windows from (during an installation, a subset of the files are copied to a small system partition and then installed from there … it helps in the event of reboots to have all the files local and ready to use) is bad.

I built this machine back in 2006 and while it was super fast back then, it would be time to replace by now. That is, if I wanted a super fast system. But I’m no longer playing a lot of games and all the stuff I do use it for it’s just a fine machine.

When this installation fails … oops, am I being negative already? … I’ll go into the BIOS, change the main drive to a slave (or just pull it) and then install to my former backup drive.

Just frustrating to have the darned thing fail right now. Ugh. Well, I can use my phone for a few things (mail) and my laptop a bit (Internet stuff) but I really want a desktop for some of my picture and modeling activities. Oh well, I have next week off … what else would I have done but work on getting my computer running?

Week of Joe, 2009

On our birthdays, Suzanne and I celebrate for more than just a day … we recognize the “Week of”. Meaning, for the entire week we celebrate as if each day were our birthday! Excessive? Heck yeah! And delightful!

Usually we get\give little gifts each day, have special meals, or just treat each other with a bit more consideration. With busy lives and demanding jobs, this sort of thing gets lost and it’s a nice time to reconnect.

All that said … this is my week!

We started on Sunday “just because” and for my treat I’ve asked for all my favorite meals. Which means Suzy’s doing a lotta cookin’! She’s a great cook and spends the time on extra steps, uses fresh ingredients (lots from our herb garden), and prepares the meals impeccably. The results are wonderful.

So far this week I’ve had the best pork chops ever, chicken Kiev, and one of my all-time favorites, BBQ ribs. I could detail all of the meals but let’s just consider the ribs.

They start with getting a specific cut of pork rib and then spending time in the kitchen removing the rib “sheathing” or something like this. This step strips away a part of the ribs that keep them from being fall-off-the-bone delicious. After this they marinade for a day in a concoction containing mustard and some other goodness. Now  I wouldn’t normally have expected “mustard” to appear in the rib sauce, but that’s what she does. On the day of, the oven is turned low and she adds a bunch of tea leaves to the bottom of a pan. Suspended above the leaves on a cooling rack are the ribs in a foil “tent”. This goes into the oven and it essentially “smokes’ the ribs and imbues them with a deliciousness that’s hard to beat.

After all this, you pull them out and I sink my teeth into them!

While the food is the highlight, I can’t deny getting a present every day is a lot of fun. On the first day I got a small Lego set that allowed me to build the Guggenhiem Museum from New York City. Talk about a neat little model. The next day I got a space heater for my wood shop … oh, delight! That’ll keep me working through the cooler months! And then last night I got another woodworking treat: platter handles so I can build some serving trays from my shop!

As I said earlier, it’s excessive but it’s a nice break from spending all our time and money on the cats.

And I suddenly realize that rather than post, I’d saved this as a draft. Well, you get a peek into the rest of the WoJ (Week of Joe).

Let’s see, you got the meals and gifts through Tuesday.

On Wednesday I enjoyed lasagne. Yeah, it’s a simple comfort food, and yes, Suzy does it up right. Homemade sauce, herbs and tomatoes from the garden, and even homemade ricotta cheese! I think this started when we made butter a few weeks back. It was more than just churning some whole milk for a while … you mixed a couple varieties of specialty milk together, let it sit a couple days, then salted to taste, churned to develop the solids, and you pour off the liquids, “wash” the butter mass, and there you have it. We have pretty much had that sort of butter since … the freshness is amazing and it’s delightful. Well, the ricotta cheese was a lot like that.

Like that in that it wasn’t terribly involved, you just had to do it. The taste wasn’t fantastically different but the fresh taste was. Hard to remember a better batch of lasagne but fitting it should be served up on my week.

That night’s gift was a Cybercube. Probably not a household toy (yet) but I saw it somewhere and really thought it would be cool. Esstentially, it’s just a bunch of little round magnets. But you get a bunch of them and they behave quite uniquely in a large group. Suzanne got me the “7×7″ version and I have a hard time keeping from playing with it.

ThursdayI had the day off and we stayed in town. I got a 90 minute massage and who cares what happened after that! Seriously, though, it got better. I needed a pair of shoes so we went to Kohl’s or something like that. We’d done a big shopping trip earlier in the week (for all the eats we’d need) and out of the Safeway machine pops a $30 coupon for Kohl’s. I had no idea what gimmick was involved but I was ready for anything. And, don’t you know, there was none! I picked up a $50 pair of Nike’s (Just do it!) on sale for $40 and, after the coupon, I walked out of there with $10 shoes! That alone made my day!

Anyhow, that night we had homemade teriyaki. Oh, my! For those that are used to getting skinless chicken breast covered in some sweet sauce you should try homemade sometime. We don’t even get ours out anymore … that’s how good the Suzy’s is. She starts with thighs because they’re more tender and juicy. Then bones them but leaves the skin on. They get broiled for a delicious, crisp skin and tender meat. Add a homemade sauce that isn’t just a syrup and I’m a happy guy. Fabulous.

For my gift I got a t-shirt for Abbott Bait and Tackle. For an old Minnesota fisherman (and what Minnesotan isn’t?), it was perfect. And it complements my Abbott University shirt quite nicely.

The next couple days are a blur. We went out to a place called Cave B Inn at Sagecliffe. Yup, pretentious name but what a place. We have been there twice before and every time have really enjoyed it. We get the “cliff house room”: a modern bungalow room with sweeping views of the Columbia Gorge, quiet as anything, and a spacious floor plan. It is just really nice.

So, we moved in and setup home for a short while.

We had dinner at their restaurant and, as they’re attached to a winery, Suzanne got the wine pairings and allowed me to smell them. I don’t drink but don’t mind the smell of wine. Quite interesting, actually. We both got the same thing: started with carrot soup, enjoyed a pork chop (one of the best that wasn’t cooked at home), and I finished with creme brulee … Suzy had the fruit and cheese assortment. But that was a nice way to end a leisurely drive and our walks around the grounds. That night, I dived into the rest of the gifts from Suzy. Or so I thought.

The first item I opened was a red blanket or throw. Perfect. I don’t mind having the house cool but enjoy a light blanket … and so do the cats. So, we have lots of little throws about but the cats do tend to claim their own. And my last one appears to have been taken by Spencer. I could toss him off but we could just as easily get another throw. And so we did. Call that Friday’s gift.

For Saturday she got me a double whammy. At our visit to The Puyallup Fair this year, I bumped into an artist by the name of Charley Harper. He’s been around a while but it was my first meeting and I love his stuff. So clever and interesting. Suzanne got me a book of his art that I’ve been paging through since. Wonderful wonderful stuff. She also found me a 72 tile game of “concentration” using images from Charley Harper. Another wonderful gift! My memory isn’t great so this is a fun way to play at getting better.

In all, I was spoiled absolutely rotten. Add to all the excess of the above the fact that my mother sent me out some eating treats, a little book I’ve had my eye on, and a lantern to remind me of Trout. I could hardly want for more. Oh, I’ll be doing a special bit on the book my in-laws (Steve, Julie, and David) got me. It’s an awesome book.

And that was Week of Joe. Delicious and over-the-top. I proclaimed it “Best WoJ Ever” and then Suzanne reminded me of the great time we had last year when my mother came out! Hard to tell which was better but I don’t have to … I can just enjoy both!

Oh, did I forget to mention that when we got home Suzanne slipped me one more gift: a Porter Cable Router I’ve had my eye on. Will the excess ever cease?!?

What?

OK, in my last entry I got all nerdy and had my (pseudo) engineer on, talking about laminates and specialty fasteners and the composite core makeup of melamine. Let’s stick with the shoe niche project, get back into SketchUp and dump the “imagine this problem I’m writing about”.

To the right is the latest version of what I want to talk about. The part in blue.

From my previous entry on getting back to using SketchUp you should be familiar with the brown wall structure. This is the wall between my house and the garage that I plan on knocking a hole into. We’ll double up on the header and sill, providing a nice, rigid support top and bottom, then toss in a couple jack studs for side stability (and to hold up the header).

That brings us to the blue structure … which is the “just fill the hole with structure like you’d find anywhere else in the house” that I referred to yesterday. As you can see, it’s a simply constructed box using 2×4 and 3/4″ plywood. I may not need 3/4″ plywood and it just occurred to me to use 1/4″ to save on weight. That may be the way I go … and I could also ease up on the 2×4″ lumber and use something thinner. I’m not looking to support a lot of weight here. Which is why I can’t just use sheetrock.

Anyhow, this is the idea for now.

I could build the box on the garage floor once I get the exact final dimensions of the hole. I’d then either nail or screw it into the (brown) wall structure, making sure it was snug and level. The plywood siding would provide the majority of support as sheer panels.

The 2×4″ top, bottom, and sides are built-up to take in some insulation (I’ll have the unenjoyable task of cutting it down as most of the spacings are not the standard 15″ width).

I’d then slide in the thin melamine backing. This is an 1/8″ sheet of melamine material that’s not structural. I had planned on stapeling it to the back of the melamine box I’d talked about earlier but now I can just seat it into the back of this box. As a side note, I just realized that the current layout wouldn’t support the left and right sides of this back panel … I’ll want to add a little something to provide something to rest against.

With the back in, I could set in a bottom melamine panel and then support a top panel. Neither of these would have to be tacked or glued in. The side panels I’d add next would either hold the panel down (in the case of the bottom) or hold it up (for the top).

With those in place, I’d add the shelves … which, in turn, would support the left and right sides! I think I can get away without any glue or screws on this final structure! I’d want to be sure the casing around the outside frame covers any potential gaps (that’s what it’s there for anyhow) and is sturdy enough to hold the sides, top and bottom into the hole.

And that’s what I’m thinking about on this project for now. The modeling and thinking have been instrumental in doing this right. Had I started with my original plans I’d have a mess of scrap and need additional costly trips to the hardware store. SketchUp, and working out the problems it’s revealed, have really saved the day.

My Next Project

I’m finding that building out the shoe niche I mentioned in last week’s post is a bit more involved than I’d thought. At first I was just going to have the contractors stub out a hole in the wall and I’d slap in a melamine box. Alrighty, let’s go with that and see how far we get.

As you can see from this picture, melamine is made up of small woodchips pressed together with a binder and then surfaced with a hard, often brittle, laminate. While the edges are protected the panel provides adequate strength and rigidity to be used in a number of applications and hold up very nicely.

As a side note, the melamine we had chosen is surfaced with a slick white layer. This would match the cabinets in the laundry room where we’re putting it and have the benefit of reflecting a good quantity of light, keeping the recess visible when we’re looking for the odd shoe, sandal, or whatever we end up storing in the niche.

But, back to the engineering.

My intention was to use 3/4″ panels and butt join the sides and top\bottom sections, then using a air-driven stapler gun, tag on a thin, melamine backing. I’d carefully haul this section up to the hole, pop it in, and “find some way” to secure it. At the time I was dreaming this up, I did’t know how I’d do it but if I was pressed, I thought I could counterbore the sides, top, and bottom and drive screws into the framing studs.

This “plan” (and the quotes are intentional and appropriate here) has a couple serious flaws.

First, butt joining the sides to the top\bottom means that one of the panels will take a screw directly into the core. And, as the core is a pressing of wood bits, that’s just a stupid plan for anything that will take load. No, correction, that’s a stupid plan for anything. So, I’d countered this idea with using barrel nuts.

Here are a couple of pictures of barrel nuts, both loose and in a wood application:

 

 As you can see, you would drill two holes to place the barrel nut: the first one captures the nut, and the second allows a screw to come through the wood at a right angle and engage in the threaded hole in the nut. Brilliant! Suddenly you have the load being taken up in bearing, rather than relying on screw threads in the melamine chip core.

 This would be adequate but from an overall perspective, still not great. I was additionally considering cutting groves and lips in the sides\bottom\top and creating a box joint to ensure a rigid connection. It would work but would also be a lot of work.

Then I considered the box hanging out of the hole. And this is where my ideas fell apart.

The structure of a melamine box just wouldn’t hold up long, if at all. I could image sagging and flexing of the parts. Anyhow, I graduated to thinking about placing a 3/4″ plywood bottom on the whole thing to act as a large shelf for the box. I even got as far as making triangular “gusset-like” sides to pull the load into the vertical studs. As I continued thinking I realized I was just getting fancy and half-assing a project that would become part of my house.

 Enter my newest idea: just fill the hole with structure like you’d find anywhere else in the house, sheetrock the outside, add insulation, and then pop in the melamine to the box. That oughta work. More later when I have a model and plans scraped together. Not sure why it took this long but it’s fun to do a little engineering … even if it’s just constructing a melamine box!

Like Riding a bike

A while back I was playing with Google SketchUp and found it to be a marvelous tool. It was reasonably intuitive, powerful, and you could have results very quickly. And then my days became busy with other things and I didn’t touch SketchUp for a long time. Well, a week or so ago my wife asked if I’d be ready to make a Christmas present and I realized it was time to brush up my skills again. Happily, it was a short exercise!

I banged out the model for that project quickly (I still have a bit more to do … I want to try playing with the animation as my project has a hinge) and another one presented itself to me: a shoe niche.

A couple years back I put a counter into our laundry room. It was a modest job, everything squared and at right angles. We loved the new work space but while installing it one of the panels dropped and gouged the floor, within the first week of having it a big ding was hammered into the top, and the edge-banding has started to chip and peel off. Time for a replacement.

While we’re replacing it (with a single laminate slab from Home Depot) a few other projects in that room came up. In addition to the counter, we’ll add a sink, replace the flooring, and add another light. And, as the bonus, add a shoe niche. The shoe niche sent me back to SketchUp.

While I usually use SketchUp to get the details right … explicit dimension, work out joinery options, or make sure I understand how to put something together … this time I used it to work through some design decisions.

Here’s what we have now … pretty standard and simple:

And while simple, it sticks out into the room and is somewhat limited on space. We wanted better … and we couldn ‘t find this particular style of wire rack at any of the three big box hardware stores near us.

What we plan on doing is popping a hole through the wall … cutting into two studs and framing out an open box. We’d then create an “insert” melamine shelving unit and pop it in! Enter SketchUp.

Here’s a quick mockup of the wall substructure after we frame out our box:

And with that, I was able to whip out three options:

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

We’re going to go with the first option, Option 1 … it has a 42″ width, 72″ height, and 15.25″ into the wall. This should allow plenty of space for shoes, flip flops, boots, etc. The bottom shelf will be used for detergent and a laundry hamper. With adjustable shelves, it should be a snap to configure things to work out for us.

The other two options had their benefits but suffered in some ways. The middle option, Option 2, was just like Option 1 but is narrower by a half foot. The sole reason for this design is to avoid shelf flex over the 42″ width. While we might get some of this, our shoes are pretty light and I don’t anticipate getting a lot of flex. If we do, I can add a metal stiffening angle to the back edge of the shelves and let that pick up some of the load.

The last option, Option 3, was another compromise to avoid the large span but incorporated back-to-back verticals in the center. This allowed for two twenty-inch sections that would have shelves that could be adjusted independently. We didn’t like that I wouldn’t have a good way to hide the splice down the center. There are ways, just not good ones to my mind.

Now that we’ve completed the overall design, it’s time for the details! And, as it’s been a great tool so far, I plan on continuing to use SketchUp.

I’m thinking about barrel nuts for attaching the side panels to the upper and lower carcase members and attaching the center shelf in a similar manner … it would be fixed.I’m toying with reinforcing the corners with metal angle, either aluminum or thin steel. I’ll just tack on a melamine panel back with a pneumatic staple gun and that should provide a nice sheer panel support member.

I’m worried about it being cantilevered off the back studs. I don’t know how I’ll attach it to the boxed frame. I could simply zip a number of screws through the sides, top and bottom into the frame but not sure if that’s the solution I’m after. Just lacks some elegance.I’m also worried about the bottom panel. I’m pretty sure we’ll be putting a number of heavier items on that shelf so I want to come up with a lower support system. I’ll probably tie into the two severed studs but not quite sure yet what to do.

That’s it! It’s been fun “getting back on the bike” but mostly happy that the tool is easy enough to use that even after months away: I’m able to use power keys, build up the model, and just get ‘er done! I will say that I’m having some troubles, too. When I create a component in one layer, I want to “clone” it and assign the clone to a new layer. It doesn’t seem to be that easy. If you know something that might help me, please send tips\links!

Thanks!

Busy?

I note with some amusement that my got a lot going on post listed exactly three things … the madness!

Still, it feels like I have a lot cooking. Work is taking up full days, I have a number of interests at home (woodworking, computer stuff, Xbox, and Suzy projects), and then there are places to go, friends to see, and things to do.

On the woodworking front I’ve been building a “box” for Spencer. That’s a euphamism for a burial coffin. He’s doing well but the worst thing we can think about is trying to bang out a box if he should get sick. We did something like this for Trout … the box sat around for 6 years or so before we used it. I’m fine with that. Pictures will follow but I’m giving it a rest for right now … the joints weren’t coming together as well as I would have liked and it has a lot of finishing left to do.

Computer stuff is moving my pictures to Flickr and playing with the new Visual Studio. There’s a new beta out there and it’s a deep, fun toolset. Lots to play with.

On the Xbox, I just finished Shadow Complex … a fun little side scroller. I haven’t milked it for all the achievements but will when I’m looking for short little entertainments. David, my nephew, loaned me his copy of Army of Two. While it’s not getting the greatest reviews, the people I know who have played it like it. We’ll see.

As for Suzy projects, there’s always something around the house that could use my attention, a little fixin’, or just help around the yard. And it’s only fair. We have a nice setup and I should have a little obligation there!

But, soon I plan on starting another woodworking project of some Days of Christmas boxes. I’ll leave it at that for a while.

Too much going on

Lots of things are happening and yet, it’s pretty quiet.

A week or two ago Suzanne took me to the Star Wars concert … it was pretty cool. I was surprised at how many young people were in attendance … as in really young, not around during the first release of the films, sort of young. But, there they were and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had great seats, off the main floor and to the side, but we had great view.

Last night we went to Suzanne’s brother’s house for pumpkin carving. As usual, we all had very nice pumpkin designs and the exection was impeccable. I’ll be posting photos on Flickr but that’s my main job for today … sorting that out.

I’ve been spending my free time either in the garage or playing a bit of Xbox so arranging my Flickr site into something resembling order just wasn’t high on the list of things to do. But now I need a picture of my cat in a sweater and have no idea where I could have it … time to dig through a bunch of photos and create a single shop for all my stuff. Ugh … not looking forward to it.

Just when I thought …

… I was going to be blogging more, I ended up working a week of 15 hour days. Rough stuff but we were shipping. We still haven’t released but close enough that all the hard work is done. Just need to see it go out. And, well, to be honest, it was nice to just R&R with some time and no drama. I wrenched an ankle so I stopped climbing early this year but there was a lot going on at home.

Back now … expect more shortly.

New Quote I found and liked

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.
- From, The Once Again Prince by Irving Townsend