Small Talk: The Welcome Mat

[b4pjoe]

8 hours ago, Netfoot said:

The blank they had was not quite ideal. It was slightly too long. The guy cut the pattern on the end of the key

which will work but if you look closely you will see that the lip or stop on the new (lower, front) key is further back. This means if you insert the key until it stops, it won't work. You have to insert it to the stop and then ease it back a sixteenth and try turning it. 

It works. It is not difficult, just jiggly. If I was using it every day I'd soon be sick of it but I'm not likely to use this more often than once every 4 weeks, and then only if the landlord himself doesn't appear and give me the mail himself.

Give the new key to your landlord and let him deal with it! 😁

[Netfoot]

Been thinking about that key.

The blank was too long. The guy cut the active shape of the key on the end, leaving the stop maybe a sixteenth too far away than ideal. This gives me a key that works fine, but only if you remember to insert it all the way and then pull it back that sixteenth. 

I think the correct thing to do would be to start by removing the tip of the blank until it is the same length as the key. I'm sure the key-cutting machine could do this. It follows the original active shape and grinds away the unwanted metal from the blank. Surely it could follow the tip of the original and grind away the unwanted tip of the blank? 

If not, cut the new key so the two stops align. Then the active shape and the stop on both would match, but the new key would be a sixteenth too long at the tip.

But I have files at home so it wouldn't be long before the unwanted sixteenth was gone. In fact, I could buy the blank and take it home to use files to replicate the active shape myself. (But why make work for myself? I doubt the blank key would cost any less than the cut key. If so, not by much.)

Anyhow as I said previously, it works as is, without too much hassle and I won't need to use it more often than once a month anyway - if that. 

[Netfoot]

Some more photos from Saturday.

Some of the aircraft on the strip:

A couple of the girls and some olde farte:

Unka Rudy. (Not pleased about Mo's absence):

Edited Wednesday at 07:55 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Watched the pilot episode for a show called Watson. That would be John Watson, friend and confidence to Sherlock Holmes. After Holmes "death" at Richenbach Falls along with professor Moriarty, Watson returns to 2025 Philadelphia to open a clinic? What? And BTW, Watson is black? And Moriarty is asian? 

Not sure I'm going to worry with episode two....

Also watched the first episode of Squid Game series #2. Will continue with this until it fails to intrigue.

Mo had the last of the pasta for lunch. I cooked a big pot of rice and had a portion for my lunch and we both had some for dinner. 

I have two tins of corned beef but there are no more potatoes and no more pasta. There is probably enough rice to cook one more pot and there are onions and a single carrot to go in it. I have a package of "Soup Mix" beans soaking which would also go into rice. So another pot of rice will happen but the pot is currently close to full. After that there is less than a quarter of a bag of flour so we could make fry-bread and/or dumplings, enough for one small meal. Then the larder is totally empty.

Mo is in and out. I am about to go to sleep. Got to test blood sugar in the morning and would prefer not to be awake until 4:30. (It's currently 00:25.)

Think I will go and fetch... No need. Here he is now. OK, time to go to sleep. 

[Netfoot]

Mo's been at it again...

Edited Thursday at 12:32 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

We ate the last of the cooked rice today, for lunch and dinner.

I will need to cook more tomorrow. I soaked some "Soup Mix" for 26 hours and then boiled for 40 minutes. I'm not terribly impressed with the result. I think I tried this stuff before. It looks good in the package. All different beans in a variety of colours - green, brown, yellow.... But by time they are soaked and boiled until softened, the colours leach out of the beans and they are all a uniform light grey. 

Boiled until still a little crunchy, they are a glutinous, sticky mess. I'm not looking forward to trying them in rice. But they are all there is left. 

Repositioned myself to watch movies on the computer. Mo thought it was great! He insisted on playing Tummy Trampoline. After a long, tiring game, he collapsed on my tummy and decided that was a good place to take a nap. Of course, the whole time, I could not see the TV episodes I was trying to watch. But sweet cuddles with the most handsome of boys? Well worth it.

Problems today doing some woodwork. Rough cut all my pieces but four of them need to be rounded on narrow sides. As the wood is ¾", two passes with a ⅜" round-over bit, one on each side, would do the job. But the big router with the ½" chuck had a ¼" round-over bit in it. I located the ⅜" round-over bit but I couldn't get the ¼" bit out it the router! Stuck! I tried half the day and got nowhere so decided to remove the entire base of the router to see if it made it any easier to free up the bit. It gives more room to maneuver. That didn't work very well. The base was stuck too! It was after 10:00 PM before I finally got the base off!

Tomorrow, I will work on getting the ¼" bit out and the ⅜" bit installed and the base reattached. I'm hoping that happens quickly and without damaging the router. The ¼" bit might be damaged which would be bad enough. I doubt a replacement would be available for under $100. Kooyman has one for $129.99 which is out of reach. 

But better lose a replaceable bit than the router itself, which would cost a minimum of $500 to replace.

Door is locked, Mo sleeps on the tiles and I've got reflux tonight. Also been fighting with a bit of a tummy bug all day. Not bad, thankfully, but never pleasant. And it seems to have relented now, so all I have to do is switch off the lights and close my eyes. Which I plan to do soon! 

Tomorrow night I drop the rent cheque in the landlord's mail box. He never returned to get the key so I thought I'd put it in the envelope with the cheque. Good thing I thought that over, eh?  😏 He will just have to ask for it when he comes.

I've got $6.17 in the bank according to my calculations, but that's assuming the service charge at the bank is $16. It is normally $13 which would give me an additional $3 but it was $16 a couple months ago so now I assume it will be $16 so as not to be surprised. And if it is actually $13 intake the $3 win and be glad. 

There is enough milk for one more mug of tea. I would like to take the $6 (or $9) and buy milk, but it might be better to get something Mo and I could eat. 

It's a quarter to midnight. How about I go to sleep a wee bit early tonight? I think I will do that.

[Netfoot]

Ok, got the collet removed from the router with the bit still stuck in it. And lo! There was enough room in the base of the collet to get a ¼" stainless bolt in and touching the bottom of the ¼" round-over bit. Gave it a couple of smacks with Big Red.

And out she come!

(Very little resists Big Red.)

Reassembled with the correct (⅜" round-over) bit and ready to make some rails!

Thankfully, no damage to the router and not much (if any) to the bit. There was some rough handling with grippers trying to get it out before dismantling, but the bit was wrapped in leather, so no apparent damage. Won't know for sure until I put it back in and try it. 

But today is blistering hot and I am sitting in front of the window with the fan blowing and still sweating. And funnily enough, when I got up this morning (warm, fuzzy snuggling against my back) it was quite chilly, so input on a tee-shirt.

Anyway, gotta go and turn some rectangular stock into "stadiums". And since I don't have a router table, I will be crapping myself the whole time. I have a thing I do when using scary tools: I count my fingers - out loud - before I start. This sets up the correct frame of mind; you want to take care to ensure that the after count be the same as the before count....

[Netfoot]

OK, it took quite a bit of fiddling to get the router base back on. I don't take it off too often. Putting it back on, I had to adjust the locking mechanism. This involves putting it on and testing, and if it needs to be tightened, you have to take it off, adjust the locking screw a quarter turn and put it back on again. Repeat, ad infinitum, ad nauseam!

Got it in the end and tried the "stadiumizing" (stupid word) on a scrap:

It isn't perfectly rounded at the two ends but it will take very little sanding to get that fixed. 

You have to think of it as four rounded edges rather than two rounded ends. If you look closely you might see a ridge (my thumbnail is hooked on it) on this one edge. 

This is because the initial test showed the bit was a hair too far up. Or more accurately, the base was too far down. But this is why you try it out with a scrap. Adjusting to eliminate this, all three other edges were fine.

Now that this is done, I can "stadium" the three rails.

My fingers pass within 1" of that bit, which is running at thousands of RPM (slowest possible is 8,000). Scary.

But now, I have to go cook lunch for Mo and myself. The last pot of rice. Hope there are four cups remaining in the bag!

[Netfoot]

Four rails complete, bar sanding.

Router (with bit) in the background.

I wish I had some grease. I'd grease the shaft of the bit and the inside of the collet. So I don't have to resort to Big Red in future. I wonder if I can use petroleum jelly?

Lunch turned out OK. I have cut my portion in half; Mo's is a unchanged. It was tasty enough, for sure. 

Edited Saturday at 02:49 AM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

This is what my monitor thinks it looks like:

This is what it actually looks like:

Woke up to find it this way this morning.

Good news: Remember I was waiting to see if the service charge at the bank was going to be $16 or $13? Turns out it was $10!  So I have $12.17 to spend at the grocery. Some thought must go into this!

Edited Saturday at 06:27 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Remember that package of "Soup Mix" beans? They were pretty in their package but after soaking to rehydrate and boiling to soften, their colours were all faded and the resulting pot of beans were gluey. 

Well, this morning, I took 1½ scoops of those beans and set them to boiling again. I added salt, garlic, MSG, paprika and a mini stock cube. Also a very small piece of bully beef. After 30 minutes of boiling, I ran the mixture through the blender and the resulting soup was delicious! The blender left very tiny fragments of the beans in the soup, which was thick and rich without any thickening agent. The tiny bits of bean might have been a little sifter softer if the beans had been soaked more than 26 hours, or boiled for more that 1:10 in total, but maybe not. What I can say is that the little bits of bean were fine by me. I actually like "bits" in my soup. I just wonder whether I should have blended and then boiled rather than bord boiled and then blended.

So I have $12.17 to spend. I can't spend it all because I don't want the bank account to go to literal zero. So let's say $12. When I was hoping for $9, I was thinking a 2Kg bag of rice for $6.29 and a tin of condensed milk at $1.89 which is $8.18 total, leaving a buck in the bank. We have one tin of bully in the pantry already. 

Now that I actually have $12 to play with, I can go with the rice at $6.29 and another tin of bully at $4.79 or $11.08 total. A bag of rice should make two pots of rice which is four days food.

So I will go with that. No condensed milk, but Mo's need for food trumps my desire for tea.

Edited Saturday at 10:15 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Damned forum offline for half the day, yesterday.  😠

Mo and I had rice for lunch and dinner yesterday. It taste pretty good. There is enough left for a meal (lunch) for Mo and possibly for me too. Tonight will have to be dumplings.

Apart from the ongoing woodworking project, I found the time to  rewatch all three of the Crocodile Dundee movies. The first one was pretty good, the second nearly as good and the third trailed behind, Paul Hogan looking older than his 62 years. There was a lagniappe made fairly recently, with Hogan in his early 80s, which I've never watched, but intend to. I believe this movie departs from the brawling, crock-hunter wielding a (very, very ugly) knife for more civilized country.

Some time today or first thing tomorrow I have to go to Popular and spend that $12 on rice & corned beef. I wish there was enough for milk but I guess I will need to keep drinking my tea with <gag> lime. But not to worry - the lime is about to run out.

Managed to burn my finger in the kitchen last night but not too bad. 

Mo very affectionate in bed last night and this morning but at 7:30 he advised me in no uncertain terms that it was time to get up. Took my blood sugar (4.2 mmol/L), and now contemplating a mug of tea. Just not sure if I can stomach a milk-free mug at this time of the morning. Also think this would be the ideal time to go to Popular but right now I feeling extremely lazy.....

Edited Yest. at 12:27 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Eleven bucks. And eight cents. Took me less than a minute to pick these items up. Chose the shortest line of all; half as long as the others and a quarter the length of the "Express" line. Only four persons in front of me, plus who was already being cashed out when I joined.

28 minutes later.....  😕

[Netfoot]

Here is a short "foot" which is to be glued to the longer "leg". 

The feet will make the base of the rack 3½" wider and a little more stable. 

To reinforce the glue joint I will add a short dowel. Two would be better but there isn't much room. To accommodate the dowel, I made this jig which guarantees that I can drill a dowel hole in the same place in the four feet and the four legs. (The rounded end of feet and legs are identical.)

With the holes drilled, these pieces are ready to be doweled and glued.

Clamping is tricky because the offset caused by the opposing curves prevents direct clamping across the joint. Using spacers to keep the leg & foot parallel and calls on the outside, I can use two clamps. 

Edited 23 hours ago by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Here are the four feet attached to the legs:

These completed leg/feet need to be sanded, of course. And when assembled I to into two frames, I might even return to the router and round over the edges. 

Tomorrow, I will have to look into turning four legs into two frames by adding two 11" cross-bars. Lap joints.  There is trick that can be used to ensure that the cut away portion of the lap joints are a perfect fit to the other half of the joint. I will have to do some test cuts until I get it perfect because I can't afford to screw this up. I've taken way too long on this job thanks to a week plus with a bad back. And I can't afford to buy any more wood to complete the job. I just have to remember to readjust the blade height for cutting the part two rebates after the part one rebates. 

The rice was sufficient to give Mo a full portion of lunch and a small portion for myself. There is a new 2 Kg bag of rice and about one cup from the last bag. So around 11 cups total. One cup is enough for Mo and I to get a meal. We eat twice a day, so 11 cups is 5½ days, starting tomorrow.

For dinner I cooked dumplings. Using most of the remaining wheat flour and adding some Indian corn flour to stretch it, I made a batch of dough and turned it into a beriffle of dumplings. While they were cooking I made BOK and tossed the finished dumplings in that. Fishing out the dumplings then splitting the remaining BOK gave us a good sized meal. Here is Mo's meal:

Mine were about the same except I get tired of dumpling making as time passes and the later dumplings were slightly larger and therefore slightly fewer in number. 

Watched that movie The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee made when Hogan was in his early eighties. Not a Crocodile Dundee movie really, but about Hogan himself. Obviously, plenty of references to those movies but more about the life of an aging actor in Hollywood. 

Other than woodworking I also did some work on software on my computer. The monitor seems to have marginally recovered. It is still bad but whereas before working with it was impossible, it is now only difficult.

It's now just gone midnight but I fouled up my meds today so I have to wait until 1:30 in order to take a dose so I can rectify my mistake. I guess I will read a while. Mo, who has been lolling around in the bed for hours, has now decided to rush out and prowl the yard. It was raining heavily earlier so when we went on Garden Patrol, we made or it swift. Here comes Mo now! Looking out the window. 

Is I'd have a mug of tea but there is no milk. And the lime juice is almost all gone, too. And beastly as tea with lime may be in comparison with tea with milk, tea with neither is not to be contemplated.

Edited 4 hours ago by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Lime juice almost gone.....

Edited 14 hours ago by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Stupidly managed to flood the bathroom this morning. Was trying to fill a bucket. Walked away for a few seconds... Well, by the time I realized that I'd forgotten and rushed back, much more than the bucket was full!

Because the tiles in this house are so poorly laid (there are places where adjacent tiles are ⅜" different in height; you can stump your toe on a tile in the passage, if you aren't careful!) there were shallow and deep pools of water all over the bathroom and the flood had started out into the bedroom. 

I stopped the flow into the bedroom with a towel, then bailed the water into the sink. I got most of it but there are some wet spots remaining (low-set tiles). Mopped up where I could and now waiting for the heat and breeze to take care of the rest. Nearly fell down, slipping on the wet tiles but avoided hurting myself. 

Later, went to cook lunch. Rice, bully, onion, "Soup Mix" beans, paprika, garlic, MSG and tiny stock cubes. When I went to scoop the beans from the bowl in the fridge into the pot.... no ladle. A cursory look around in the kitchen and then:

That's a good tee-shirt! And the ladle has been properly gnawed upon. I had to cut and sand 1½" off this handle once before!

Ok, back to the kitchen to get this rice pot on the stove!