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Category: around the house

A Place For Stinky Clothes

Published July 12, 2012

With a few minutes to spare at lunch today I tackled a problem that has been bothering Danielle (and me, to some degree) for a while: stinky bike clothes. After riding I’ll hang up my sweaty clothes in either the bathroom or basement so that they can dry. This keeps them from becoming too pungent, but even after drying they still have a lingering funk until they are washed.

Since the smell in the bathroom is a bit unpleasant and Danielle has been spending a fair bit of time in the basement on some weekdays (it’s darker and cooler down there), another place to hang the clothes was needed. The solution? Hang them up in the garage.

By purchasing $7 worth of shelving brackets from Home Depot and using some PVC pipe and fasteners that I had sitting around home I had everything needed. Now there is a 58″ long rack in the garage, right above where our bikes are kept, perfect for hanging up clothes. It’s also large enough that I’ll probably be able to use it for drying clothes and blankets after they are washed.

I think I may add a end cap on where the Headsweats cap is hanging and add a pair of hooks for the cap and my hydration pack. This’ll keep these out of the way and give them a place to hang and dry as well.

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Improvised Lock Picking Tools

Published June 27, 2012

Walking out of the house to the Wednesday Night Stony Creek Ride I realized that I didn’t have my keys seconds after pulling the locked door shut behind me. After running through a number of ideas (most of which involved calling for help and missing the group ride) I ended up fashioning a half-diamond pick from a cable tie, then using it along with and using a plastic sword toothpick (as a tension wrench) to pick one of the house locks and get back inside.

I have a set of lock picks and while they were (unfortunately) locked in the house with the keys, experience playing with them in the past let these tools be used successfully. The white nylon pick was quite flexible and too thick to easily use, but I was still able to use it to rake the pins and open the lock in a couple of minutes. I then made it to the group ride on time.

This shows just how easy it is to pick the cheap house locks from Schlage, Kwikset, and the like.

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Almost-Lost Phone

Published June 24, 2012

Today I almost lost another phone. While heading out to Addison Oaks I set my phone on the top of the car, put something in the trunk, then apparently forgot the phone on the car before leaving. By the time I reached 23 Mile and Schoenherr I wasn’t sure where my phone was, and thinking I’d left it behind I turned back and looked around the house for it. Being unable to find it I called it, only to hear a ringing outside where my car was.

So, where was it? Just as seen above, sitting on the windshield of my car, down against the wiper, positioned just where I couldn’t see it. (Yes, I had a second camera handy, which is a good thing because I didn’t want to move my phone before I took a picture of it.) Apparently it slid down from the roof at some point, then stayed where it landed even in 50-55 MPH winds and through a couple of stop lights.

I’ve been feeling a bit out of it today and this seemed to be right in line with that. Even riding today just didn’t feel right…

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Coat Hanger Muffler Hanger

Published June 3, 2012

After work on Friday I noticed that Danielle’s muffler was hanging off her car a bit more than normal and that the support strap had broken. I finally had a chance to take a look at it this evening, and I ended up hanging it back up using two extra thick coat hanger segments (from hangers for a comforter) to hold it up. I hope (and suspect) that this’ll hold until she gets a new car.

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Don’t Let Your Silverware Nestle

Published May 31, 2012

If you’ve ever pulled out a spoon out of the dishwasher that just didn’t seem like it got as clean as everything else there’s a good chance it had nested with an adjacent spoon, blocking the dirty part from being directly sprayed with water / cleaning solution.

When placing silverware in the basket in a dish washer, set pieces so they alternate back and forth in the tray and they will be highly resistant to nestling together when jostled around by water. The result? Cleaner silverware!

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U+1F4A9 Successfully Deployed

Published April 26, 2012

Today I successfully employed one of the new characters in Unicode 6.0, U+1F4A9, also known as PILE OF POO (dog dirt). (See the table and list of names here.)

Needing a separate, sealing garbage can for Roxie’s collected poop I grabbed a spare one from the basement, but I figured it needed some manner of appropriate labeling. This did it. I printed it on a full-page label, sealed it with packing tape, cut it out, and stuck it in place. Hopefully the can will also help keep the garage from smelling like fresh poop on warm days.

Check out this page for more information on this character and to see if your browser and installed fonts support it. Hopefully it does.

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Nupla PA375-LESG Pulaski Axe

Published April 19, 2012

Wednesday evening UPS delivered my new Pulaski, a tool combining an axe and an adz, and commonly used in wilderness firefighting and trail construction. I’ve been borrowing one for the past year or so but I wanted my own, so I looked around and ended up picking up this one, a Nupla PA375-LESG.

Made in the US and available from Amazon for ~$53 it seemed like a pretty reasonable purchase. I particularly like the ribbed handle which should make it feel a bit more solid when used with wet hands.

I also added this photo to the Wikipedia Pulaski article because it previously didn’t have a good photo of the tool’s head; just a man swinging the tool, with the head lost in shadows.

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Final Kegerator Drip Tray Design

Published March 5, 2012

This past weekend I put the finishing touches on the tap portion Kegged Beer Cooler (Kegerator) by finishing off the drip tray. It was built using a 14″ wide stainless steel drywall mud tray that has been caulked with RTV silicone. I’d originally attempted to hang it using hard drive magnets, but as can be seen here this didn’t look as nice as I’d hoped, and the magnets sitting off of the wooden support blocks made it a bit unstable.

This past weekend I cut some new blocks out of oak (picture), stained and sealed them to match the collar, drilled holes in them so epoxy could penetrate nicely (picture), then epoxied 24 square (1/4″ x 1/4″ x 1/8″) neodymium magnets on the back of each (picture). These blocks were then epoxied to the metal tray, and they now hold the drip tray nicely under the taps. As expected the magnets are quite strong, so spaced evenly along the block the tray is held on with considerable force. I imagine I could fill it with liquid and it wouldn’t budge.

This isn’t a particularly fancy design, but at a total of ~$30 I’m quite happy with how it came out. It serves the need of collecting drips, is easy to remove for cleaning, and looks pretty good.

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LP Gas Tank Weights

Published February 18, 2012

My LP gas tank, when essentially† empty, weighs 17.82 pounds. When freshly filled by Metropolitan Tool Rental in Shelby Township it weighs 36.32 pounds. The TW (tare weight) stamp on the chime indicates that the empty tank should weigh 17 pounds.

I’m not sure if I’ll go to Metropolitan for another tank fill, as they seem to charge a fixed price for tank filling regardless of amount needed. I was getting one tank filled and another (which was about half empty) topped off, and I was initially told that there was a flat rate for filling any tanks. Asking them if it’d really be full price to have one tank partially filled they cut that price in half. Next time I’ll try and find a shop that simply charges by the quantity of fuel sold plus a base service charge or something.

† Essentially empty is defined as when the tank is empty enough that, while operating a turkey fryer burner for brewing beer, it would not produce a normal flame and thick frost was developing on the very bottom of the tank. Upon swirling the tank to warm the liquid the flame would return to normal size, but within a few minutes it would settle back town to a trickle. I’m presuming that the gas level was low enough that any evaporation (read: liquid turning to burnable vapor) was sufficiently chilling the remaining liquid so that it wouldn’t readily evaporate.

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