Netfoot

And here I was, thinking he was just ribbing her. My misogyny detection circuit must be faulty. Hmmm. My racism detection circuit must be faulty as well.

Well, I have now put two more inserts into service. Here is a picture of one: It looks like the ⅜" blade but it is the dado blade set at 9/16". I used one of the blanks with a poorly made finger hole. I've had this dado blade for over eight years but never used it before. Why? Because I never had a suitable ZCI. And now I do. A dado blade stack has two main ⅛" blades which always go on the outside, three "chippers" (special ⅛" blades with only two teeth each) and a handful of "shims" (spacers without teeth) in various thicknesses from 1/16" down to 2/1000". By stacking selected parts, any width from ¼" to somewhere just over ¾" can be achieved. The 9/16" wide slot, 3/16" deep, is a part of a project I am thinking about. More later The second insert I have put into commission is also for the dado blade and will be for a stack that gives slots the exact width of the 18mm form-ply I have been working with. I will probably end up with a third, used for the dado stack with all the chippers and shims in place - widest slot possible. These inserts are like crack. You get hooked real fast! But the next batch will be from 12mm birch ply ($129.99 per sheet). MDF is not the ideal stuff for this task. I am using it because it's what I had lying around. Expecting a call tomorrow telling me where & when I go for the biopsy. Hope I don't get told that the blood test turned up something amid because I've been waiting 24 months and if it scrubs, it will probably be just as long before I get a second chance. I did not think to stop and mention it to Dr. Kristi on the way home and by time I remembered, she had gone for the day. She doesn't work on Fridays any more, choosing to work a full day on Mondays instead. So, the only way I will be able to tell her in advance is if I stop on the way to the biopsy on Monday. If the biopsy time is too early in the morning, even that won't be possible. Have not yet worked out how to get there and back again, assuming I won't be able to drive. Will start looking for trans-P after I find out tomorrow whether driving will be OK or not. I'm pretty sure it won't be but I'm just hoping for a miracle. I should have had a shower when I got done outside for the day. I will have to get one shortly, chill breeze in the window or not. The dogs in the neighborhood are all going barky-bark. As a result, Mo is a little excitable tonight. He is constantly switching from the window tona prowl around outside, with an occasional brief moment sitting on my head in between. Pension dropped today. Tomorrow I think I will deposit the cheque in the bank rather than cashing it at the post office and depositing the cash at the bank. It will be "five working days" before the account will be credited but we have food in the house and I can fall back on the pension if an emergency occurs before then. Ok, I have to go take that shower before I chicken out. Mo is lying under the bed with only his feet sticking out (the barky-bark has diminished considerably). The phone just issued a LoBat warning and there is a series of four YT videos I want to watch. So I will say bonne nuit!

I am very pleased The Race is back! Casting 14 teams just because you plan to eliminate two at once is not something I can applaud. Multi-eliminations have never appealed. Eric & Lisa at the start of S15 and Bilal & Sa'eed mid-leg of E1 on (I believe) S10. Not good Television. This episode was not much better. Perhaps if the FITR had occurred earlier and the two groups had had more tasks to do... but more tasks equals higher production costs... Unless they have already used the FITR at the start of S38, I predict we will ever never see it again. Everyone on the race comes across to me as an arrested adolescent. But as I get older, that is true of everyone I encounter, everywhere! In this context it means I start off with a general dislike for everyone and that remains the case, except for those who, through their actions, gain my respect. Often, I start to develop a liking for certain teams in E1, but not this season. Right now, I don't care who gets eliminated. Phil looks good. The challenges are on par, and I'm looking forward to E2! But so far, not to any of the racers in particular.

After a brief delay.... ... Mo and I set off for Enmore. Arrived at 8:28 and went to where I would normally go for the MG relayed appointments. Last time I was there (26th November) 8 was told that I should get a 4-month appointment for my next visit. The clerk told me she couldn't give me an appointment but she would call me with a date/time. That was over 3 months ago so I thought I'd get that date/time today, since I was already in site. I explained why I was there. "De clerk in' our yet." (Bajan: In' equals ain't.) I waited until 8:58 then I told them I was going over the road to QEH bout that I'd be back. Walked over to QEH Outpatients and asked for the required paper to get the required blood test to get the required biopsy on Monday. By 9:10 I was back at Enmore. "De computer is dung!" Your mistake for using software by MicroSoft. Computers were rarely "dung" in the pre-Gates era. Why do we listen to Anything he has to say? (Well, not we because not me therefore: you.) Phlebotomy Department, 9:20. "Pick a number!" I get #66. Now serving... Machine is broken. So how do I know when... ?!?? "Nex'!" Oh, so the number is irrelevant. Just go right after everyone who was here when you got here and before anyone who comes after you arrived. 9:55 and a pleasant woman drew the blood fairly painlessly. Mo and I left, and made our way through traffic and home. 10:45 and I feel I could have a mug of tea but I had one before I left home earlier. I also feel hungry and could eat something but I will wait an hour or so and call it lunch. So now, I have to figure out what to do with myself today. I wanted to start on the next batch of racks but when I said that to my guy, he said "We will talk later in the week." I don't know what he wants to talk about, but I hope it isn't to cancel the remaining racks! I have already spent the money to buy the lumber. A towel rack is a bulky thing. These are 36"x36"x11" or almost 9 cu. ft. If I make the frames and the rails but don't actually do the final assembly, the components occupy only ⅕ if a cu. ft. I could make the frames and rails and store them until they are needed. Then, when they need them, I can assemble them in about 1½ to 2 hours each, and 8 hours later, when the glue has had a chance to cure, they can be collected taken away. But I don't want to start making the sub-components only to discover that they have found a source in China and they won't be buying any more from me! (He told me that they were getting them from China originally but they kept falling apart.) So what do I do today?

I have two completed inserts, one for the standard ⅛" blade and another for the ⅜" slotting blade. I fouled up two of the remaining inserts by drilling the pocket for the riving knife mechanism on the top instead of the bottom. 😕 Some of the finger holes came out a bit ugly. MDF is nasty stuff and I had to stop the drill after every hole and clean the crud out of the Forstner bit. Ugly does not mean it won't work fine, so that isn't an issue. I quickly realized that if I turned the insert over and drilled from the other side, the ugly not would be underneath the insert and not generally visible. I now have eleven remaining after the two I have finished. These still need to be drilled for grub screws but that is straight forward; quick and easy. I will drill the holes tomorrow but I won't put grub screws in place. I don't have enough grub-screws to do them all and I think it makes more sense to wait until I put a blank into service and add the grub-screws then. That way, if I am making a replacement for an existing plate, I can take the screws out of the old one and put them directly into the new. So my supply won't be diminished. Mo had chow for dinner today. It is a new type for him. One of the types I've given him in the past was Purina One on a green bag. It is chicken based. Today I bought Purina in a brown bag, which is lamb based. I think it must be new because I don't remember seeing it before and the price is $10 cheaper than the chicken for a 2 Kg. bag. An introductory price, I suspect. Was muttering to myself in the grocery about there still being no evap. A woman overheard me and said, "End if the month!" I interrogated her and she indicated that PHD had said that evap. production would restart at the end of March. I couldn't get her to tell me if this is rumour, confirmed need or what. But if would be nice to get some evap. on the shelves again. So blood test tomorrow and biopsy on Monday. Here's hoping nobody throws a spanner in the works. Was feeling really crap after lunch today but feeling much better again now. Didn't get around to cutting the lumber to width today. Will do it tomorrow when I get back from QEH/Enmore. It shouldn't take long and it's only a phlebotomy so it won't be a big deal. Will get my head down early tonight. Had my shower before dark and Mo is here now so any time now would be fine. Just trying to find out the status of Starship 8 which (I believe) is scheduled for launch tomorrow evening.

Thank you, @Notabug, for the info. I expect it will be a needle because they have said for 23 months that they couldn't do the biopsy because they didn't have any needles, so guess they finally found one. Also, CT seems to ring a bell so perhaps they will use that rather than ultrasound. If I can't drive home afterwards, I can't drive down there in the first place. So I will have to seek two lifts, not just one.

Congrats! You get to win for once.

Crossing the corners on my pencil rectangle, I find it's center. The diagonals are 1¼" long. By drilling through the center point I make a pattern that I can use to transfer that center point to an actual insert. Drilling a pocket at that point gives me a clearance hole. I used a 1⅜" Forstner bit to give me some wiggle room to be sure the mount had clearance. The hole is just deep enough to leave a thin layer of wood undisturbed on the top face. I used two US 25¢ coins to set the thickness that will be left. So in theory, the insert should fit and raising the blade to the top will not cause the riving knife mount to lift the insert from underneath. The old and the new. I extended the slot at the rear of the new insert to allow the riving knife itself to protrude. The old one served me well. It was a devil to adjust, gluing on slivers of wood and sanding them down. Took for ever! The new one was adjusted in 2-3 minutes with the grub-screws. There are six of them and when you adjust one it affects the others. But even so, you can quickly tweak them until you are happy with the height of the insert compared to the table. Now I have 14 more to drill for finger holes, clearance pockets and grub screws. But I'm feeling rotten all of a sudden and just want to lie down. Not that I can, mind you! Mo still needs his lunch. And I still need to go to Kooyman and Popular this afternoon.

Putting in a red insert, you can see the shiny rectangle of the riving knife mount, by looking through the clearance hole in the insert. I take some stiff card and tape it down to the table top with the edge aligned to the edge of the mount. With more tape I align two more bits of card with the top and bottom of the mount. A fourth piece of card aligns with the fourth edge of the mount. Now the whole construction can be hinged out of the way on the original tape. We drop in a scrap that is shaped like an insert, hinge our cardboard contraption back again and with a pencil.....

Left kidney.

The first of the inserts is complete. It's for the ⅜" slotting blade. You can see the 1⅛" finger hole. AKA the "fingernail" hole. Put your finger in here when the blade is spinning and you never have to worry about trimming your fingernail on that finger ever again! You can also make out six small holes, three grouped at each end, that carry grub screws. With the insert in place you can insert the tool (2.5mm hex T-driver, in this case) down from the top and adjust the grub screws up and down until the plate is flush with the top of the saw. The difficult part of making this is the clearance pocket for the riving knife mount. Drilled in from underneath, it has to be deep enough to clear the mechanism when the blade is fully raised so the insert isn't displaced upwards by pressure from below. (You can also see two of the grub screws poking out/down. These allow the insert to be raised and lowered in the throat from above.) The exact depth of the pocket can be adjusted to suit. You could actually drill all the way through and the insert would still be useable - the red, factory ones have a through-hole, but I would prefer if the top of the insert were maintained as much as possible. The hard part of making this pocket is figuring out exactly where to put it. You can see I tried more than once to on this one. I think a single, circular pocket 1⅜" diameter would be fine, but you got to get it in just the right spot.... In other news, a call from QEH tells me that if I go this week and get a blood test at Enmore, I can have the biopsy next week Monday. I've been waiting for this for a long time. But I have to admit I feel some apprehension. I got a feeling it's going to hurt! Will I be able to drive home afterwards? I doubt it, somehow. But maybe I'm worried for no reason.

Bathed earlier and now lying in bed watching The Adjustment Bureau. Matt Damon & Emily Blunt. A slightly disgraced politician discovers that a secret group of "agents" with supernatural abilities adjusts minor occurrences in the lives of normal people to alter outcomes and bring about the future they want. The photo I posted earlier of all the lumber stacked on the saw? I said there were 16 boards at 37" but the eagle-eyed may have noticed only 12 boards were in the photo. On the way back from Garden Patrol I noticed four boards remaining in the van. I moved them to join the other 12 and will start cutting down into narrower boards tomorrow. I also want to put those inserts on the drill press and complete the drilling operations needed to finish them. Almost finished them. They will be finished in every way other than slotted. When one is needed it can have grub-screws inserted to allow for quick adjustment and the necessary opening cut to suit the use to which it will be put. I have been making those pockets for the rails with a ¾" Forstner bit. I drill a series of holes very close together. This makes a slot but the side is not perfectly clean and smooth. A better way would be to use a ¾" end-mill or router bit. With one of these I would push the bit down, move it along sideways to cut a clean slot and pull it up again. A suitable bit is available but it's $79.99 from Kooyman. We had rice with sausage, carrots, broccoli and onion for lunch. Dinner was potatoes with sausage, carrots and broccoli. We have no more broccoli or sausage. Only four small potatoes remain, with 2-3 carrots, a handful of small onions, and half a bag of rice. There is one tin of corned beef, one tin of milk, half a box of teabags (maybe a bit more than half) and a big bag of sugar. I spent most of the money I got for the first set of racks (for lumber to build the second set) but I computed that my pension should drop on Friday and that the second of the welfare cheques is also dated on Friday. I have to go back to Kooyman to buy 8 washers, 6 nuts, 4 bolts and 2 wing-nuts. Since Kooyman is just the other side of the roundabout from Popular, I think I will have to go and buy some basic groceries. Potatoes, onions, bully beef, whatever veggies I can afford, milk, tea, etc. I'm not as tired as the last few days. But it's still not far from midnight. Last night, Mo was curled up right behind me when I went out to lock up. He animated, shot past me and rushed out of the house. This happened three times. The third time, I let him go and locked the door. He slept outside until I let him in around 6:30 this morning. He's curled up right behind me again.....

And he isn't spending hours a day at the secret, Duffy BatCave. So he doesn't have the exposure to the situation that they do.

The amendment does not require that a militia exist at all, whether well regulated (trained) or not. The amendment says that since a militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the citizenry must not be prevented from forming one on demand, if at some time it proves necessary to do so. And since denying the citizenry free access to arms is a sure-fire way of preventing them forming a militia, the amendment makes it clear that the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Now, I've already said that I don't want to discuss the matter any more in this environment. Therefore, I will not respond to any further comments on this.

"Well regulated" means "properly trained". Not "Subject to regulation".