Category: around the house

Nice Trainer Setup

Published February 8, 2012

I’m pretty happy with the current trainer setup in the basement. It is located in front of the TV but behind the futon so I can watch a movie while riding and Danielle can use the futon (to watch the movie or play games) without us needing to move anything around. My netbook is on a keyboard stand in front of the bike so I can use TrainerRoad instead of a typical bike computer, and the I-beam spanning the basement is directly overhead and serves as a convenient shelf. The kegerator of homebrew is for after.

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Notched Pink Foam

Published February 6, 2012

This evening before heading home I stopped off at Home Depot and picked up some pink foam to line the inside of the Kegged Beer Cooler / Kegerator collar for additional insulation. It cut nicely and before long I was sticking it to the inside of the collar with hot melt glue. I was even able to notch it to fit cleanly around the tap fittings.

The wire basket fits nicely on top of the foam, and with the basket moved to the other side there’s now enough room for the fourth keg. Not that I have anything to put in it, nor a gas with which to connect it… But it fits!

All that’s left to do on this project is finish off the drip tray and add a Y fitting to one of the gas lines.

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Kegged Beer Cooler Upgrades In Progress…

Published February 2, 2012

Upgrades to the Kegged Beer Cooler are coming along very nicely. While not quite complete I’ve build, finished, and fitted a pine and poplar collar, and acquired and installed some taps. I still have to work out the drip tray, insulation inside the collar, and a few other random bits, but it’s almost set.

A year ago when first built it I figured that maybe one day I’d add taps, and a year later I’ve done so. After using a few friends’ taps and getting some nice ideas from how another friend built a collar I figured I’d go for it.

I feel really happy, proud, and fortunate that I have the means and abilities to do so. Growing up my dad and mom would let me help out with a bunch of things that they were working on. From both that and just being allowed to play with things I learned how to try and that it’s okay if things don’t always go right because you can learn and move on. These are very important things to know and I wholly believe that it helps me with most everything I do.

Now, hopefully I can finish off the kegged beer cooler / kegerator successfully and not end up with foaming taps or a poor quality drip tray or something…

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Nitrile Gloves for Wet Brush Preservation

Published January 28, 2012

Wanting to reuse a foam brush for applying another coat of stain in a few hours I normally would cover it in plastic wrap so that it doesn’t dry out. Since I was wearing nitrile gloves while staining I instead removed one, turning it inside out while doing so, stuck the brush inside, and closed it off with a rubber band. This should be sufficient to keep it wet until the current coat has time to dry.

Tokyo Banana

Published January 22, 2012

Jeff recently visited Japan and brought Danielle and I these Tokyo Banana snacks. These are banana custard filled sponge cake and are excellent. Apparently these are one of the most popular souvenir gifts from Tokyo, and for good reason.

I particularly like the English writing on the front of the package which reads:

People gather to TOKYO from here and there with memories of their home. And then, TOKYO gets everyone’s home town. TOKYO BANANA.

I’m hoping that these’ll be available at local Japanese shops.

Broken Garage Door Closed Sensor

Published December 7, 2011

This evening I was tightening and adjusting a few bits on my garage door when I noticed that the plastic garage door closed sensor was bent to one side. Upon touching it and applying a bit of pressure to bend it back it snapped off, rendering the opener incapable of detecting when the door was closed. The result was that the door would close, hit the pavement, press hard, then reverse making it impossible to close the door without stopping it manually.

Wanting this fixed I hurriedly grabbed some scrap aluminum (left over end panels from the SDrive NUXX) and fashioned a new lever with a slightly different spring retention system. As rebuilding this required drilling out the original pivot rivet I had to use a screw in its place, but hopefully this will work out fine. I also applied some UHMW polyethylene tape to the edge of the lever in hopes of keeping it from abrading the sled which presses against it. Some nail polish was also used as thread locker (because I couldn’t find my Loctite) to hopefully keep the assembly together.

A photo of the resulting assembly can be seen here, and thus far it’s installed and working fine. Hopefully it’ll continue to work well and the old, low-quality plastic part will have a permanent replacement.

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Broken Rake, Fixed Rake

Published November 25, 2011

Know what’s exceedingly stupid on my part? Tossing a log down while collecting stuff for a log pile and having it land on the handle of my rake, snapping it in two. Whoops!

Thankfully a year or two back I found a rake handle in the woods and kept it sitting in the garage for whenever I needed a random pole to meet some need. It just happened to be from the same model of rake as I had (which I’d found curious), so I was able to swap it on to the rake head this evening after getting back home. Now, fixed rake!

This morning’s work was building a new log pile at River Bends. There was a corner that was a bit tight and thus it screwed up the trail’s flow a bit, so I wanted to straighten out one of the jogs in it. The straighter route looked perfect for a mid-trail log pile so we left the original trail route as a bypass and everything is looking good. The new trail segment, log pile, and bypass can be seen here.

The log pile has been skinned and grouted with dirt so it’s a bit hard to see in the photo, but it’s generally the same kind of obstacle as the one pictured here, built a couple months ago along another section of the trail.

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Keyboard Cleaning Time

Published November 18, 2011

A visible build-up of finger gunk on the flat surface and laser-etched numbers on most-used keys shows that it’s time to clean my keyboard. To do this I first use Simple Green All Purpose Cleaner at full strength, then a generic glass cleaner to remove the Simple Green residue, then 99% isopropyl alcohol to remove any remaining residue. Each is applied to a clean paper towel and used to carefully scrub both the keys and gaps between. Being one of the (excellent) modern, flat, metal-body Apple keyboards it’s particularly easy to clean, and after I’m done the keyboard feels like new.

Onion Skin Clogs Garbage Disposals

Published November 12, 2011

Hey everyone, this is just a public service announcement reminding you that onion skin is a bit too tough to be chopped by the blunt impeller blades in a home garbage disposal and will tend to clog the outlet. When this happens water doesn’t drain well through the unit and the drain lines must be disassembled to remove plugs of material such as this.

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Shower Beer

Published October 15, 2011

Here’s to one of the greatest pleasures in the world: a quality beer while showering. I guess this is the evening corollary to drinking morning coffee in the shower, another one of life’s great pleasures. Not only does one get to enjoy a comfortable, relaxing shower a tasty beverage comes along for the trip.

The beer shown here is Big Sky Brewing Company’s Moose Drool, brought to me by my parents from their recent trip out west; seen poured into a glass here. Also in this sampler is Scape Goat Pale Ale, Big Sky IPA, and Trout Slayer Wheat Ale. All of these beers were quite good, and if I can find this stuff in Michigan (I think it’s distributed here…) I’ll likely pick some up.

This shower comes at the end of a long, and slightly frustrating, day. Today was Massive Fallout, a lengthy group bike ride around a number of local trails and an event that I’d looked forward to all year. This morning the weather was rather poor, and being not-quite-properly dressed for it and somewhat uninterested in riding in cold and rainy weather I skipped out on the ride. I don’t regret my choice, but I can’t help but be disappointed at the weather which kept the event from being what I’d hoped. Oh well, maybe I’ll be able to do the ride next weekend with friends or something like that.

(For what it’s worth, this photo was taken with the Olympus Stylus 850 SW that I’ve had for more than three years and which has accompanied me on almost every sweaty bike ride that I’ve taken, a couple of international trips, a few swimming adventures, and random other hostile places and it’s held up great. I’d highly recommend a camera from this series if one is looking to purchase a decent-image-quality pocket camera that can be taken along on almost all trips.)

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