Orb Designs

Category: Beware of Leopard

This is the catch-all category.

  • Spring coming; International Women’s Day

    But let’s do this the other way around: International Women’s Day. The joke du’jour involves “of course it’s the day with just 23 hours” (in most of the US, anyway). But frankly, with women being treated badly in every old way, and in the various new ways that the Internet has spawned, it needs more than a day.

    Women are people. All people deserve respect. That’s the bottom line. And when people like Brianna Wu (Chief Panjandrum of Development at Giant Spacekat, @spacekatgal on teh twitters, outstanding geek feminist, and recipient of death, rape, and family threats daily) continually has to deal with shitty Internet trolls and modify her agendas and lifestyle because at least one of those trolls might be a for-reals psycho … well, that sucks.

    For every woman who speaks up about the unconscionable behavior she endures (one way or another), there are many, many who don’t speak up. To keep the job, to keep the family together, or because there aren’t any other alternatives. It shouldn’t suck to be a person, to be a woman. It also shouldn’t suck to be differently gendered, or developmentally challenged, or any of the other divisive modes that people (and most easily, the anonymous angry denizens of the Internet) use to spew hatred upon others for “fun.”

    *      *      *

    As a very-nearly unrelated side note, I’m generally not much of a casual gamer. I’m more on the hours-at-a-time solo FPS or RPG on the PC gamer. But I downloaded Giant Spacekat’s game Revolution 60 (free to start), and purchased the full game. I’ve been enjoying the gameplay. As usual, I don’t choose a single path, but somehow I always end up either chaotic good or chaotic neutral. Just who I am, I guess. If you play games on the iPhone or iPad, give the game a try. I think you’ll like it.

    *      *      *

    Spring may, in fact, be approaching. Temps got up above 50 today, and a lot of the snow from this last week … Well, did I mention that we had 8 inches of snow on Thursday. Um, yeah. Well, anyway, much of that snow melted off today. On a walk, Lexi has places to sniff and pee, again. Tonight is supposed to just edge below freezing. But for the next week, nothing below freezing is predicted. How nice that will be.

    I’ll need to get the spring fertilizer put down on the lawns, and turn over the garden beds pretty soon. But what to plant? More when I know more.

    *      *      *

    I spent a fair bit of time this weekend working on the walls and ceiling in the basement. I ripped out a crappy electrical fixture box, and cut a large enough hole in the drywall to put a much sturdier mount in, for the fixture that goes over Marcia’s sewing table. Patching and painting finished up that job. I also got all of the wall and trim caulking done today. During the week, priming and painting, if I can find the energy after work. Otherwise Marcia waits another week for her sewing room.

    *      *      *

    Still no new casualties reported by DoD in the latest week. Ciao!

  • Tree and Grass: Ice

    This morning, at the office:

    Tree and grass enveloped in ice
    Tree and grass enveloped in ice

  • Shoveling S…

    Yesterday we were due for 1-3 inches of snow during the day. Late in the afternoon, I took care of the first four inches of that snowfall. Early this morning I shoveled off the last inch and a half, which was lovingly topped with a freezing rain crust. Weirdly, by 1 PM, I was walking the dog while wearing just a light jacket – temps had ramped up to nearly 40° F.

    *      *      *

    In the afternoon, I painted:

    Cutting in: basement foyer
    Cutting in: basement foyer

    What I’m calling the basement foyer is a tiny little space, with a doorway (visible) through to Marcia’s sewing areas, a set of louvered doors to the furnace/AC, and the doorway to my woodshop. There’s structure, and cut-ins, and storage, and bulkheads. It took a stunning amount of time to do all of the cutting in. Rolling out the rest of the paint is going to take about 15 minutes, I think.

    *      *      *

    No new casualties were announced by DoD in the previous week.

  • Cold Holiday

    It was colder than 6° F when I got up shortly after dawn this morning, with about two inches of snow that was drifted and icy. No real fun driving out for the groceries today, as a result. The temperature had warmed all the way up to 15 by mid-afternoon. According to the NOAA, we’re not supposed to see the fun side of the freezing line until next Sunday or later, and we have some snow coming again in the mid-week. So, an utterly normal President’s Day weekend, then.

    *      *      *

    Being cute:

    Lexi being cute
    Lexi being cute

    *      *      *

    I managed two coats of glossy white enamel on my fabricated shoe mould trim yesterday. Today I applied some of that trim to the basement foyer area, and got another coat of mud on the areas of drywall needing repair. Tomorrow, a bit of sanding and some primer, I think…

    *      *      *

    Wow! We’ve made two months without an announced casualty (since 12/14/14) from DoD. Cool.

  • Super?

    There’s a football game on the tube. We watched the first half, decided that 14-all meant it was a new game… and we weren’t starting over again. So. Good luck, Tom and the gang! I will vote on most depressing commercial of the first half, though … that Nissan commercial with the absentee, almost died several times, race car driver dad. Really? Really?!?

    Not much progress on the basement this weekend. We’re adjusting sleep patterns as pain management changes – that plus several hours of on-site and remote work this weekend left me with enough energy for food shopping, laundry, and television. Back to the basement next week!

    *      *      *

    No new casualties reported by DoD in the last week. News I’m happy there’s nothing to report about. Ciao!

  • Productivity

    This weekend marks another transition for Marcia – she’s stopped taking the rat poison (Coumadin, aka Warfarin). That also means that she doesn’t have to wear the compression stockings anymore, which makes her very happy. She should sleep much better tonight. She’s solo’ing up and down the stairs, but not leg-over-leg yet. Progress is.

    *      *      *

    I spent the weekend on two different primary tasks. The first was a bit of patching of Linux production systems late last night and early this morning, during the appropriate maintenance windows for the systems in question. Much of the balance of the weekend was spent working on the basement floor.

    I started working it in past the entry way to Marcia’s sewing area. I’d start by scraping and cleaning the concrete, sweep up and vacuum, then lay a chunk of flooring and move a cabinet over to the freshly laid area, rinse and repeat. At the end of Saturday, it looked like this:

    Basement floor - Saturday
    Basement floor – Saturday

    Today, after the Linux patching and the weekly shopping, I got back to work. I moved all the stuff that was in the basement kitchen down into the area I’d gotten flooring into yesterday, then I cleaned up, shaved the edge of the linoleum to ease the transition, and started moving appliances and laying flooring. By the end of the day I’d gotten to about the 80% point on the entire floor – and the kitchen area looks like this:

    Sunday - basement floor progress
    Sunday – basement floor progress

    I only wasted two full planks doing cuts wrong, and shaved the skin off of one knuckle doing the work. So, a net win. Another day to get the rest of the flooring down, then I can start working on walls and paint and moldings.

    *      *      *

    No new casualties were reported by DoD in the last week.

  • Final Sunday

    So endeth the last four day weekend of the year. Well, I am on call, so it was four days of not going to the office, but keeping a reasonably close eye on email…

    We had a nice Christmas Day – food and relaxation and calling family off and on through the day. Friday was all about the leftovers. I’m going to have to pick up that exercise ball and run with it double-time for a while to make up for that.

    Saturday, I finished up a couple of small woodworking projects, and today, I finished preparing the first section of the basement floor:

    Basement floor: clean, patched, and ready.
    Basement floor: clean, patched, and ready.

    The “fun” part was removing the adhesive residue from the old stick-on tiles. Heat gun + putty knife for the bulk of the removal, followed by scrubbing the floor with low odor mineral spirits. Then I patched the concrete where divots remained from removing carpet and edge banding nails. On New Year’s day, I’ll try to lay some flooring.

    *      *      *

    DoD announced no new casualties this last week.

  • Catching Up

    The calendar is catching up to the weather, in fact. On Tuesday into Wednesday, we’re due for “wintery mix,” which sounds much nicer than it really is. But 30’s and 40’s for December are just fine. It’s the teens and 20’s that make us cranky, here in Chez Bilbrez.

    *      *      *

    I’ve got the week “off” – burning some unused hours before I lose them to policy, come the end of the calendar year. Primary focus: finish building Marcia’s rolling cabinet, which is do-able, methinks. Here’s the carcass, much progress:

    Marcia's Rolling Cabinet Carcass
    Marcia’s Rolling Cabinet Carcass

    In the last two days, I’ve got finish on all of the drawers and the body of the carcass. This afternoon, I made the face frame components and attached them. Tomorrow, I’ll sand the face frame and apply finish coats of urethane to the whole thing. Then I can get the hardware attached, and start working on the top and the drawer fronts.

    Also on tap for the week: the house needs a deep cleaning, and the basement floor continues to need my attention. We’d like that to be done by the time Marcia’s recovered from her right knee replacement (surgery scheduled for January).

    *      *      *

    Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

    • Sgt. Maj. Wardell B. Turner, 48, of Nanticoke, Maryland, died on Nov. 24, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when the enemy attacked his vehicle with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.
    • Spc. Joseph W. Riley, 27, of Grove City, Ohio, died on Nov. 24, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when the enemy attacked his vehicle with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

  • Winter is … What? Over 70 degrees tomorrow?

    Yeah. This week we spent a significant amount of time at or below freezing, including a couple of mornings around 20°F. But according to the various forecasts, tomorrow it’s supposed to get up to 73°F. But two days later we’re back down to the deep freeze, with potential snow/sleet on Wednesday. Very weird.

    I spent most of this weekend working in the woodshop on drawers and carcass for a rolling storage cabinet for Marcia, to use in her quilting space:

    New cabinet for Marcia
    New cabinet for Marcia

    Most of today was spent laying out and pre-drilling holes for the drawer mounting hardware. Then I’ll finish the drawer bodies and the carcass in an off white. The drawer fronts and trim on the cabinet body (as well as the cabinet top) are going to be made from the pine shelving that I got from Jolene’s yarn shop a few years back.

    *      *      *

    DoD has reported no new casualties in the last week.

  • Space, Patch, Read

    A number of folks who lack a sense of wonder, a sense of adventure, a … spine, perhaps, are whinging in articles here and there online about how awful it is that Michael Tyner Alsbury died testing a near-space tourist plane. How very risk-averse we’ve become, as a culture. I’d do his job tomorrow, in  a heartbeat, if they’d let me. The wonder and joy of experimentation, research at the edges of what’s possible make life worth living, either personally or vicariously (for those of us too old to but dream). Again, risk vs. reward.

    *      *      *

    Today I finished patching the rest of my Solaris systems. That’s a good thing, and it came off without a hitch, nothing but the 3 hours of time invested, and I was able to accomplish other tasks while monitoring the patch, live update activation, and reboot processes in other windows. Not the life of Riley, but it’s the one I have.

    I should have gotten to mowing the lawns and roasting some coffee, but that didn’t happen, so I’m going to have to squeeze those in during the week ahead.

    *      *      *

    Recent Reading

    I finished reading Cheri Priest’s Dreadful Skin this week. Jack is a changed man. Well, a man changed into … something. Avoiding spoilers when discussing stories like this is hard.

    Some of the joy of reading Cherie Priest’s wondrously intense writing is the little surprises in the beginnings that set the mood and reveal bits of joy (and horror). As in a well-done horror film, you can tell from cinematography and music that something scary and terrible is about to happen, but you can’t tell what until it jumps out at you from the shadows. Ms. Priest manages that time and again with her writing. I’ve not read the whole of the Priest canon extant, but so much that I have read contains that power to surprise and delight, even in the darkest of places.

    I enjoyed this triptych tale, and when you read it (as you should), I hope that you do too. Note – this is probably not for most of the YA and younger crowd. That said, I’d have probably read it by age 10 or 11 without harm. Highly recommended.

    I also finally finished up reading Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 97. My favorite of the fiction therein was Taxidermist in the Underworld, a grim tale with a twisty happy ending. I can recommend Clarkesworld Magazine without hesitation or reservation – I’ve been a subscriber (at a very reasonable price, mind you) for the last couple of years.

    In progress: I’m still reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Doubt Factory. I’m finding it harder to get into than I’d hoped. But early impressions are rarely reliable, so I’ll forebear any judgement until I’m done. That’ll be a while, because unless I’m mistaken, I’ll not be through before I leave the book behind for a week while I’m at LISA’14 in Seattle.

    On deck: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 98.

    *      *      *

    Our condolences to the family and friends of Cpl. Jordan L. Spears, 21, of Memphis, Indiana, who was lost at sea on Oct. 1* while conducting flight operations in the North Arabian Gulf.

    [* DoD says “previously reported”, but I haven’t seen Corporal Spears mentioned in the DoD timeline]