Bryon Blog-O-Rama

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I sucked at math.

My Dad felt that this was unacceptable and the school I was going to didn’t have the academic strength to correct it, so he made math sheets for me. We then did timed drills, noting time on the sheet and doing further drills on the ones I missed, until I didn’t miss them anymore.

This was not a smooth process, by any means, but in the end, I learned what I needed to know. Dad has long since passed away but I have the original math sheets still. I’ve passed on copies of these math sheets onto others who needed them, and am doing this again for my Cousin/Niece to help her master the basics.

I think my Dad would be utterly thrilled at this turn of events. I can see the echo cascading forward so clearly, with the family resemblance that is truly astonishing at times. I’m also now remembering more of that time of my childhood, as I search my memory for how to do this for somebody else.

I still sorta suck at math, but at least I’m sucking at trig, instead of basic arithmetic. Thanks Dad.

We had a little shindig at our house, the first real party since the renovation, and it sure went well!

All the Northern CA Bryons made it, all my cousins and most of their kids and husbands even! Lois kicked butt and with little to no help from her husband, put out an amazing spread for brunch. Said husband managed to be of some use in other areas, but was also recovering from the “deathstar trench” he had to dig for electrical conduit, partially under the house. Best thing about that: it’s done.

Back to happier topics, entertainment was provided by the “under 10yrs Production company”, which included a never-to-be-forgotten rendition of “Tomorrow” among others(by a 3yr old with curly hair no less!). Fortunately captured for all time on video, for blackmail when they’re all older and dating.

We managed to not have any casualties, always a plus, and everybody had a great time! Mom and Papa met them all for the first time, and that went better than my wildest dreams.

We’re looking forward to doing it again, repeatedly, and becoming even more family in truth as well as name.

So, 3 days in, 2012 is starting out better than 2011 did. (Although 2011 improved right around May 25th, when I started meeting my cousins for the first time!)

Work on the art studio. Not work IN the studio, but work to finish the studio. Firstly, I will need to get electrical and data to it, which is going to be quite interesting. Holesaw drilling concrete, how hard could it be? Had to get a utility vault to allow for how the conduits are arrayed, it’s one of those rectangular little things in the ground you’ve seen a million times without noticing. Weird that I own one now. Did manage to get the one that says “electrical” instead of “sewer”, that was a plus. In case you’re curious, it is possible to lift the vault by yourself, but I don’t recommend it.

Then there’s the whole “install 50 amps of 220V, without killing yourself or burning the house/studio down” part. Fun! We’ll be hiring our electrician for part of that, the parts where death is potentially involved. Hasn’t killed him yet, so we’re good right?

After I’ve gotten electrical to the studio, there’s building the in-wall distribution for the outlets and hardpoints for the machine tools. I’m looking forward to this part, I’ll be using my handheld bandsaw to cut conduit. Also I’m installing compressed air plumbing in-wall, lots of soldering, but I’m hoping that it’ll minimize clutter given the space constraints.

Fortunately we’re hiring a guy from the renovation to do the drywall, thank god.

And after all that, I’ll have someplace to park the drill press I just got for Xmas!

So, a while back when we were visiting in MN, my mophie juice pack air (iPhone case with battery for extended runtime) died. Under warranty, so I sent it back. At the time, I had noticed that for the past several months, the battery was rattling a bit in the case. I suspected that the two were related, but moved on with the new case.

Fast forward a few months, and the new one starts rattling just like the old. And it too dies on me about two weeks ago. This time, however, things were going to play out different.

Instead of sending it back, I opened it up. Lo and behold, the battery lead to the charging circuit board had broken off, due to the wiggle of the battery fatiguing the wire and causing it to snap.

No problem, soldered it back together. But, rather than rely on the crappy double stick tape to hold the battery still, sugru has been deployed! Sugru is silicone putty that is fairly adhesive, extremely shock absorbent, fireproof, and easily applied. Also reasonably non-toxic once dried, but since it’s in the case that didn’t matter so much. And it comes in convenient little packets.

Pictures posted on facebook, as my blog seems to be having an uploader permissions malfunction. Fix that with some sugru next…

So the good news is that Vossen-fest 2011 starts Wednesday evening, and the guest bathroom will be ready for it! This was the last room in our interminable-renovation-death-march-can’t-we-talk-about-something-else-yet-? But somehow, as we have apparently sinned in some fashion, the minor cosmetic details (threshold strips and a cabinet door) will not be done in time. When my Mom said, “well you know it’s never really done” I don’t think this is what she meant.

But that’s okay. The shower is *awesome*! The shower head is the size of a small Frisbee and will *drown* you in sybaritic luxury if you’re not careful (didn’t look that big on the website, but what the hey). It’s height adjustable for our altitude variant guests (even my bro-in-law Dave will fit under it next time he comes, and it will swing down for the more altitude challenged too) and the controls are totally easy. Hot water shows up in 1 minute (and stays forever, tankless heater), and the shower rail is arced outward to keep that curtain from annoying you during your stay in the shower. And it even looks nice, with the new tile and fixtures. Just don’t trip walking into the bathroom, and we’re all good…

Diamond bits are great for drilling tile, just keep ‘em wet and go slow. Was sweating bullets until I got the holes for the shower rod done, did *not* want to have to call our tile guy back to replace any of our new tiles. Phe-ew! I even impressed Lois with that one, which takes some doing. I’m just glad that it’s done and I can move on to something else. The other adventure was getting the window done, we won’t be using that vendor ever again. I’m tired of having to don the cape and save the day due to other people’s screw-ups that I paid good money for. But doesn’t it just look great now. That’s what I keep telling myself. Big thanks to Andy Miller, our contractor/carpenter who really helped me bail out the situation. The window is now mahogany for rot resistance (it’s in a shower after all) and we put both smith’s and varnish on it, which means it’ll probably be perfect even after we’re dead and buried, many years from now. It’s also double glazed for insulation with some really nice fluted and frosted glass, pretty and private. Also heavy, so new sash weights were needed. (I now know far more than I ever wanted to about window sashes, and their various mechanical aspects.)

So now the house is so close to done that we can just let it go at that. Now we get to finish my work studio/secret laboratory in the back yard.
Oddly, I’m looking forward to it.

As I write this, our 4th generation Italian craftsman tile installer is working on the guest bathroom. This is the last room in the house to be receiving a major upgrade, and it’s going to be done before Vossen-fest 2011 commences and we have guests who would probably like their own bathroom functional. I have my own to do list, which I should probably stop writing about and just get to.

Once this is done, we move on to getting my workshop/secret laboratory functional. I’m more motivated for that phase, given that it’s basically all about me anyway, man-cave stuff. Hope to have that more-or-less functional by the end of the year, but that’s probably optimistic.

Off to buff up some lock hardware and a dozen other minor and semi-not-minor tasks…

So we moved back in, after 14 months of remodel. Tada, we’re all done now right?

Please ignore the note of insanity that may have crept into that last ironic laugh. No, we’re not done. Like dishes, I don’t really expect to ever actually be done, until we’re dead or sell the house and wander the land like David Carridine in “Kung-Fu”. Moving on, or in. Whatever.

Made a before and after remodel video, which kinda sucks as the camera work was really bad for the before, and the color saturation went totally yellow on the after, and we are just too tired to fix it. On the plus side, the after was shot with a gopro HD cam, so the quality is a bit better, and the wide lens gives you a better perspective, if a little fish-eyed, of the space.

But you can get an idea of the hugeness of the change anyway, and only be out about 11 minutes of your life. Fast forward, I won’t tell.

Haus Before/After Video

Still many details to work on, some big some small. Just got “internets” this morning, so yay for that. Wireless works, wired net I’ll be working on over the next few weeks. Cables are all pulled, just need to terminate the jacks. There are a lot of them, I decided that this was the only chance to cable, so cable I did. Everywhere we might need a connection, I put two. In case one fails. Yes, I’m a networking guy, what did you expect? Wired is still faster, more secure, and more stable, so we’ll have that and wireless as well.

My new wireless router is also really nice, and was cheep on amazon for $80. Buffalo technologies, can’t remember the model, but it’s the more-or-less top end one. Something-300-something n-finiti. Runs DD-WRT, so it won’t need to be rebooted every week like some other Cou*linksys*gh routers I could mention. It’s a derivative of linux basically, very stable. Setup was cake, checked connectivity while the cable guy was there with my iPhone even.

Lots of power features I might play with later, right now it works and I have other things to do.

Other bad/good news of the week:
-I’ve had a cold and no laptop (which died just as I got the cold) for the past week. Bleah.
-But now I’m mostly better, and I’m getting a new laptop from work, and I have backup data. Yay.

-Biggest good news of all, is that I met my cousin Taylor for the first time, and hit it off magnificently! Looking forward to building that family relationship, she is just fab-o! Can’t wait to meet her hubby and kids, and have her meet Lois. We do share a family resemblance, but she’s considerably cuter, (i.e. we both have Bryon noses, but I bet mine is bigger, and given the cold, definitely redder…).

All in all an exciting week. Well, except for the lying in bed and snuffling for about 96 hours straight part. But the more recent events more than made up for it. And I got to snuffle in a well insulated and centrally heated house.
Counts for something.

Several to-do items are complete. One, I sanded all the dipped/stripped doors. They needed it, and some of them were a real PITA.
Oh yeah, I also reversed the fridge door, now opens on the left, and leveled the fridge appropriately. And I think I did something else minor like rehang the TP holder in the bathroom (it was loose).

Lois filled nail holes, cleaned, applied Tung oil and polyurethane to sanded doors. And some more stuff I can’t remember. She is a robot sent from the future to run my lazy butt into the ground. When we got home she made me food for the week. I was flopped on the bed moaning quietly and wondering if I could take more ibuprofen. Robot, no question.

But we march ever closer to our move in date, now sometime in May.

Someday I’ll start work on the studio, but that now looks to be a bit farther away than I was hoping.

Now that the outlet issues have been dealt with (by me, didn’t need to get the electrician back after all, yay), and the final inspection is passed (in both senses) we’re now hoping to move back in a few weeks.

We have about a billion details to finish, two largish items for me to deal with (seal bathroom floor, finish out range hood chimney), but then we can get back in the house and start on the remaining million details of making it truly finished. This is down from the current billions of details, so vast progress is occurring!

Also, I have the studio build out to do, and this is fairly high priority. The “man cave” art-studio/workshop/machine-shop/Internet-enabled-secret-laboratory will be instrumental in finishing out the house, as my fabrication ability will be considerably increased. This should speed things up in regards to finishing out house details and getting things all worked out to our satisfaction.

Basically I need to get electrical and phone/data/cable installed with a trenched set of lines from the house. Renting a trencher for that. Then I’ll be building out the interior with a carefully thought out layout for electrical buses etc etc. Insulation, drywall, paint, and then I should be in decent shape to fabricate house parts. Of course I’ll probably be fabricating even before this is done with an extension cord and a shop vac… Hmm… need more clamps…

So, things are hopeful:

We passed final inspection today! As far as the city is concerned, we’re all done.

Sadly, the actual state of affairs is not quite as complete. We are planning to move back in, in about 2 weeks.

The todo list is still quite a few minor items, and not so minor items. The biggest is probably finishing the studio, trenching for power etc. But that can wait until after we’re moved in.

The kitchen cabinets are finally almost done, and so I only have two items left there, backsplash and the range hood chimney. Both involve cutting, but with different tools. That and sealing the bathroom floor are my last big items pre-move.

Anyway, progress!