Random Thoughts

(written Thursday the 6th)

Finally, the slow crawl to Thursday. I can't complain too much, though the yawns are starting to take hold. After a day at the office and a night in the country I’m usually out as soon as my head hits the pillow. Not so this week. I must have gotten an honest recharge this past weekend and the ideas (and obligations) continue to bounce around long after the lights go out.

In other news, the Gen 3 iPod is back on the road. A tear-down and inspection at the ESD station at work under the microscope revealed a little problem. 3 surface mount components were literally sheared off the PCB! Yes the board, case, hard drive, etc were fully intact. Tweezers, a steady hand, and a very fine soldering iron tip put things back to operational. Half the battle was finding a torx bit roughly the size of a ball point pen's tip.

The Lodge clicks along with directional lighting and the complementing 18' workbench completed last night. Gaining a foothold on the tools, materials, and good usuable scraps you'd expect to accumulate in a bldg under construction is the next big thing. Flashing, 2x4's, strips of cedar, paint cans, ceiling tiles, tar paper. You name it, it's good material and its' got to go somewhere, lest the finished product end up looking like Sanford and Son's living room. OK, it still may end up looking like that, but with far more interesting, umm, pieces.

I may have mentioned before about how, as the place progresses, I can start to give legitimate thought to more permanent facilities for some of the hobbies that otherwise haven't seen the light of day in years, or never really had the proper venue to fully enjoy. Enter, the Quad bug. For once I'll have a large enough room to permanently set up a real quadraphonic system without making a bunch of half arsed concessions about equipment, speaker locations, furniture placement, etc. This means I get a shot at doing it right, and as I know all too well, trying to do things the right way costs bucks.

And the bucks be flying. At some point you have to ask, is the service worth the price tag? When you do it yourself, you're already of the advantage of knowing you can use premium materials and come in far under the asking price of the cheapest hire-ons. You also can put legitimate prep work and finish time into whatever it is you're doing and get superior results because your goal isn't to get in, get paid, and get out in the shortest amount of time like the majority of "pros". But when the work doesn't call for exacting tolerances and the bulk ends up as labor, like say, pouring and finishing a cement slab and requiring some heavy equipment that doesn't make sense to rent, all bets are off. Ultimately, you either suck it up and pay the man, or open a big ol' can of worms. But said can of warms could save a couple grand, so what do you do? One thing I know for sure, it's tough to get a lot of warm and fuzzy dividends from a slab of cement, regardless of cost. Whatever that means.