It's as happy as a desk could be

Started working on this bright and early Sunday morning. In spite of neglecting to charge the batteries for my tools I managed to:

• cut all four pieces (from top grade plywood)
• route the user-facing edges
• dado for joining the pieces
• drill cable holes
• sand
• dry fit and glue up

At one point Boo came into the garage and I said "This is your new desk!" to which she dismissively said "No it's not. It's just a bunch of wood. It's not put together or anything." A couple of coats of stain and it will be in place.



I have come to the conclusion that plug in tools are the way to go for almost everything. A single cordless drill and circular saw are useful for basic home maintenance. To do any project of notable size relying on batteries is guaranteed to screw you often. So now I'm looking for some good plug-in tools.

With two new 18v batteries (less than 6 months old, always stored properly inside the house, used perhaps 2 hours/week at most). I was only able to get through cutting four panels from a sheet of 3/4" cabinet grade plywood and halfway through cutting four more panels from a sheet of 3/4" average grade plywood. Fortunately I didn't have to do any jigsaw work, as that really seems to suck down the juice.

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I walk in the shadows

A 1x6 cut down to pieces for two shadowboxes. Each of the Littles will be getting one for their wall to store/display keepsakes and breakables. And a different part of the workshop/garage even! I've got the workbench, drill press, and all the hand tools on one side, the van in the middle, with the table saw/router table and jointer as well as some materials storage on the other side of the garage.

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I paint the things I want to see

This picture is the sort of thing that comes about as a result of a typical morning conversation with the kids.


My writing is worse than my five year old's so up there in the top left it says "space" as in space themed sleepwear. The top right says "dress" as in nightdress, as opposed to pajamas. The bottom left says "P.J.s" and the bottom right says "tink" as in Tinkerbell. The letters represent assorted children.

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And the fields are turning

One of the joys of driving through Forest Park to work is sometimes seeing things like this:

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Cooler weather it's cooler not to smile

Some Friday fun reading:

First up is a fascinating study in theories of intelligence by Blackwell, L. A., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S.. To summarize: Belief in fixed intelligence versus malleable intelligence is an indicator for academic improvement. I seriously need a Statistics refresher if I'm going to keep reading things like this. In the interest of full disclosure this study not only confirms something I'd already thought was true, but one of the authors is a very good friend of mine.

David Dobbs on The Finite Filing Cabinet model of memory.

Anthroslug presents a wonderful dissection of The Caveman Fallacy. In discussions I will frequently refer to pre-civilization man for insight into why we are the way we are, but also try to emphasis that humans *are still evolving* and what was true physiologically and made sense sociologically 20,000 years ago can simply inform us today, not direct us.

Greta and Dave Munger delve into the long term effects of Day Care.

Scicurious covers Oxytocin and orgasm. I get the science has to be precise, but I can't imagine it's easy to perform amorously when the setup includes "Then, add a blood pressure cuff, a butterfly needle indwelling catheter for continuous blood level monitoring, and anal probes for monitoring of smooth muscle contraction.". Ouch.

Those last three stolen directly from Amanda @ Skepchick under the topic Skepchick Quickies.

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I feel ok just for a while

Riser for the unbalanced toilet problem. I hate plumbing. The platform is two 22" long pieces of pressure treated 2x6. I do really enjoy doing glue-ups and stock prep, though I've no idea why I don't use my jointer more often. Running the stock over the jointer on all faces gave me nice flat surfaces to join together and to tile once I get to that point. A planer is a must purchase come spring, as that's the final piece missing in getting the kind of panels put together that I want.

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Most of all he needs the funk

Took two non-working Mags and made one working one and one toy for the littles.

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