Category: acquired things

As my CD rack is now empty, Danielle and I headed out to the Detroit area (Canton) IKEA and poked around for quite a while looking at book cases for my office. After a bunch of research before and talking while in the store, we came to a conclusion on what would work well.

Unfortunately, it didn’t appear that the boxes would fit in my car, even after I went out to the parking lot and remeasured the inside of the vehicle with various seats repositioned. We first left without buying the book shelves, but decided that if Danielle were to sit in the back, and things were positioned diagonally, we just might be able to fit everything.

Well, it fit so long as Danielle sat in the back seat. That’s three of IKEA’s BILLY book cases (two narrow, one wide, both tall) and doors for them (three tall glass doors, and one short glass/wood door). It’s impressive what my car can hold, if pushed to its limits. (Here’s a rather not good photo of Danielle sitting in the back of the car along with the boxes.)

While at IKEA we also ate some lunch, which is seen above. My meal, as shown above, was a rather good pasta and garlic bread with elderflower drink. Later on, before leaving the store for the first time, we also split a cinnamon roll.

I’ll post photos of the bookshelves and stuff later. They aren’t completely done being assembled, as I still need some binding screws to hold the two side by side cabinets together. After that I’ll begin filling them.

The more I use my Millet Hybrid Maxed headphone amplifier, the more I realize that my iPod canot properly drive my old standby Sennheiser HD 570 headphones. Since the Millet Hybrid Maxed is a bit too large (and fragile) to bring to work, I’ve begun ordering the parts to build an AMB Mini³.

I also ordered up some cardboard boxes, because I’ve decided that I’m going to take the CD rack out of my office and put all the CDs in storage in the basement. As seen here this takes up quite a bit of wall space, and with all the CDs long-ago ripped into iTunes I think this space would be better filled by a book shelf.

At the same time I’m also considering emptying the office and installing a hardwood floor, just to make for a nicer area to work in. Since moving the CD rack is one of the hardest parts of this job, after removing it and before removing the book shelf would be a good time to do it. I’m also considering putting hardwood down the hall and maybe into the dining area, but I’m not certain of this yet.

After this I’m also going to consider some other changes, like possibly moving my Mac Pro down to the basement, hanging from supports in the ceiling, so that it takes up less space in my office and is even less audible. I’d also like to re-rip all my CDs in a lossless format to more permanently archive them. We’ll see, though. These two tasks will probably take more effort than all the others.

Danielle and I swung by Denewith’s Nursery today to get some gardening stuff, and while there I picked up flowers for the front porch for this year. The long/skinny planters are getting a mix of blue and red salvia, the space around the tree got some blue and white mounding flowers, and the square planter got the plant seen above whose name involves the word chaos. Yes, it’s supposed to look like that, and no, I haven’t yet photographed / scanned the tags.

Lettuce seeds will likely be planted in the long / skinny planter, and I have to acquire a pot for the extra plant I purchased, something called the cigar plant. Now, to make it all grow…

More photos taken today of the aforementioned plants, and a few more which won’t go in my garden, can be found here: Flowers 2009.

Today I replaced the output stage on the air compressor given to me by my coworker Brian. Beyond a small handful of brass fittings I replaced the regulator, added a filter, and adjusted the automatic shutoff. It now turns on at ~80 psi and shuts off at just over 100 psi, and everything I replaced or moved appears to be operating smoothly. There is a leak in the upper compression fitting on the line between the pump and tank (seen on the right here) which loses about 2 psi per minute, so I’ll probably replace that with a flexible line. The hard shutoff which is built into the manifold also leaks very slightly, but as I don’t want to spend time finding a replacement I’ll let it be.

With the purchase of a rather nice Goodyear hose, blower handle and tips, brass quick disconnects, and a tire inflator from Harbor Freight, I think I’ve got everything for it that I need. It would be nice if it held pressure, but as I don’t intend to store it pressurized I’m not too concerned.

My coworker Brian just gave me his old air compressor, as he doesn’t really need it and doesn’t want it taking up space in his garage. This is very, very welcome as I’ve been wanting an air compressor for a while, and this seems like a good one. I may adjust the power cord, redo some of the plumbing, and add a safety valve, but that all shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Hmm. Now I also need to get some hose, blower, filter, tire inflater, etc. I think a visit to Harbor Freight is in order for non-pressure-critical parts like this.