Grumpy
Looks like I put my grumpy pants on this morning. To be fair, they may in fact have been put on some 10-15 years ago, and never taken off. Since they're apparently virtual, do not worry that I'm wearing smelly pants for something like a decade... One can hope, anyway.
Looks like it started with a little bit of carryover from yesterday. Loaded one of my emails in my browser, and noticed down at the bottom of the screen that I was approaching 50% of the free space granted used. So last night I started a cull through some of those folders. For many years, I had relied on an email client - most recently Thunderbird. I might go back to it some day when I get my dream machine with 16 or more Gigs of RAM.
Aside number one - yes, there is an entire tape in my head (yes, kids, us old folks are built on older technology) that starts with "my first computer was very cool to me when we got a gadget that allowed me to go from 3 to 8K..." Yeah. I know. The astronauts who went to the moon in the Apollo program used computers much less powerful than my cell phone, and the computer I'm currently using is probably 10 years old, and has a whopping 4 gigs of RAM. The business I bought if from is gone now, I've been shopping the used computer sales on the Office Depot web site, seems $239.99 is a nice sweet spot for a Dell tower with an Intel I5 processor, 16 Gigs RAM, a 2 terrabyte hard drive, and what appears to be a CD/DVD Drive. I'll forgo aside #2 where the grouch grumbles about a 2 terrabyte hard drive, I started back when we used 360K floppies, and my first hard drive, in the early 90s, was a whopping 40 Meg. On which I used compression. Yeah. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled whine...
I did clear out a few of the folders which I thought was useful, as there was one titled "Updated" (not one I created) which at the start held nearly 2000 messages. I culled that down to a little over 20, most of those being either from people I still speak with on a regular basis (which includes my wife), or reminders of some key events that either went right or wrong.
That 7.2 Gigs used changed not one bit. Look, I know how big emails can be. That is, there's the stuff you see on the screen, the header (which may be gigantic compared to your "Yes, Dear" message in the body of the email), there's the HTML if you opt for that style that tells the browser to display the message looking like this, and other stuff. Which doesn't apparently amount to a hill of beans.
I did also empty the trash, which used to be an automatic thing, but now isn't, so I deleted some 8,000 emails - still at 7.2 Gigs.
So I thought I'd get up and go do something useful - and I looked at the local radar. My bedroom is in our basement. We have an egress window which, these days, is usually open, but almost always lately shows the same dull gray interior of the window well, without sunshine, on the weekends. Weekdays, when I'm working from my basement WFH desk, it's usually sunny. But at least it's not snowing. But the weather radar told me that nope, it's raining - or at least, that's what the various shades of green right over our address is usually telling me when I check the local weather radar. So instead of accomplishing something useful, I'm still here.
And still grouching about lumber prices. I had designed something I thought would turn out being a pretty nice looking piece of furniture, mostly out of "construction lumber" - that is, 2x4s and 2x6s which are usually hidden inside walls. But the cost of building a seven foot long by nearly three foot wide table was going to run me close to $180, not counting the finish. Which is to say that the dimensional lumber, consisting of 3 2x4s, 4 2x6s, 1 sheet 3/4" lower grade plywood, and 1 sheet Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF), and one piece of Poplar 3/4" thick, 3 1/2" wide, and eight feet long.
That was going to be the 99.9% of the material used. I'd also use probably 24 3" screws from my on-hand stock, 1/4" Tee nuts with 20 threads per inch, and I'd have to add four 1/4" by 4 1/2" bolts to hold the whole thing together. And somewhere I'd probably tack on some "feet" to go on the ends of the legs to permit sliding the table around on carpet.
However, when my wife found a suitable table on Amazon for $129, which was only 63 inches long by 29 inches wide, I had to cave in. 7.43 cents per square inch versus 7.11 cents per inch was a winner, I guess, so instead of building my table, which had been beefed up, construction-wise, to look nicer, ended up biting me in the hind parts.
As I sit here, however, I could scale down certain portions of that larger table. In several ways. Which could reduce the cost significantly. Looks like I may need to do some additional figuring.
Other than that, not a whole heck of a lot going on around here. I'm stacking up the overtime hours as my employer allows, as I am considered experienced enough on our "new" system that when the good folks who were not brought over with me, or with our second round, come aboard round early June, the OT train will likely continue for a few weeks, after which the clamps shall be re-applied and we'll ratchet back down to forty hours, no more, no less, per week.
I can't really complain. Compared to my prior employer, they are extremely fair. And value people. Or at least, many managers there do. Not that I wasn't valued last year when they dangled me off the layoff cliff, it was, rather, one of those situations where stuff had to happen, as the business was adjusting to demand, and they were not sure I was needed. Then it turned out I sure as heck was. So I can't complain there. Getting a great bit of exposure to how some of my coworkers do their job, and starting to learn where I've managed to incorporate some efficiencies in my work day. So that makes me look even better.
But beyond that, I got things to do today. Removing the final Christmas Decorations from the yard, primarily due to the fact that someone who was more instrumental in obtaining and installing the decorations no longer lives here, and that a significant percentage of them (the six candy-cane lights, next to the four "Christmas Bulb lights") didn't survive our third-snowiest-winter-since they started keeping records.
That's right. I've seen old-time photographs and some paintings of old steam railroad engines sitting aside drifts which were far over the tops of their smokestacks. Or, if you're somewhat intrigued by how snow tends to function, you're thinking "I'll bet they used some form of heat to remove some of that snow, because if they did not, the sides of these railway trenches will undoubtedly collapse when the wind picks up..." But that's probably one of those things you file in your brain and use when the snow flies - because if you create hard-edged snowbanks before the snow is compacted (which can take up to 72 hours, depending on the weather), the snow will simply sluff off and fall down - or collapse into that spot you just cleaned. Which is why it helps to form sloped sides, rather than square sides, on your trenches. Or it does help in those cases when you can push that much snow out of the way. If you can't, well, there's the avalanche risk.
None of this does anything to remove from my brain the vague memory of looking down on the roof of the first home I remember. We were not air dwellers, we tended to stay on the ground, and that first house had a driveway of perhaps 30 feet long. It was also sloped down from the house, the road surface in front of the house being at least five feet below the surface of the garage floor, so we had a bit of a slope there. So I'm not entirely sure how we came about with a pile of snow some 12-15 feet tall, right next to the house, but I've seen pictures showing it was there. And I remember looking down, being fascinated by the roof of the house being below me.
So none of what I need to get done today is going to get done if I sit here typing about it...
Of course, you also don't get to see it if I fail to confirm the "Publish" dialog's "Confirm"... So here ya go. Sorry about that.
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