Sunday

Cold. Damn cold. It's the dampness and the wind that cuts right through you, makes your hands freeze up in minutes. I spent Saturday (which was gorgeous temperature-wise, despite the fog and rain) working on CS3. Specifically rear soffits. I managed to get in a whole lot of blocking and another sheet of plywood up, and most of the outer perimeter soffit and venting before dark. Next I ran into town at the parents and for groceries after the sun decided to set. With cleanup going on out here I had a couple items on eBay that needed wrapping, too. Also returned The Expendables 2 (an entertaining film if you suspend all disbelief..which is the point). Got home and made burgers and onion rings that turned out great for a new recipe (grilling in December?) and pretty much passed out by 10:30.

Today, no sleeping in, soffits to work on and the new thermostat to install. It's 5PM now and my hands are still pretty numb. The rear glass corner eaves are now all set for plywood- the blocking is in and the rough locations for the recessed lights have been figured. I also dismantled 4 of the chem lab desks I picked up from Price Lab and squared the short sides of them so that they can be assembled into one long workbench. The trick there was finding right angles to rip to. 50+ years of use, sanding and re-laquering and you're not dealing with rectangles anymore. I also bid adieu to one of my Bell System switchboards. A gentleman picked it up today for use in a new museum start-up in Palmer, IA. Thank goodness he had a tommy gate on his truck. Before he arrived I figured I'd pull the desk shelf off so it'd fit through my door. Nope. The previous owner epoxied the screws in!! Fortunately, I was able to remove my entry door, strap it to a cart, and manhandle it through without a scratch before he showed.

And now...time for a movie.

Miscellany

A couple weeks ago I discovered that the first two Cinerama films had been released on DVD, in both letterbox, and a peculiar format called Smilebox. After going a little research it appears this isn't just some goofy name for a gimmick, but a legitimate process that is being applied to other extremely-wide-screen films as well. Cinerama is a true three-strip, three-projector process. Due to wide field of vision, Cinerama screens actually curved around the audience, both pulling the viewer into the action, and avoiding nasty parallax. These films were eventually reduced to a single strip intended for a flat screen, but trying to project such a thing on a curve doesn't work. The Smilebox format, which presents a curved interpretation of the image on a flat screen, actually corrects for the distortion that would otherwise be caused by manipulating the image so. The only hangup with this format, is you need a big screen to really make it work. Watching Youtube clips of it on my iPad was a bust. But viewing it at work on a 19" LCD screen while only sitting a foot or so away..and with earphones in..pulled me right into the action like you wouldn't believe! This gets a man thinking...for the drive-in rebuild, perhaps I should consider a screen wide enough to support this format.

In a similar vein, the last time I was in an IMAX theater was many years ago, possibly an ALPHA trip back in high school, and it was a dedicated theater such that the seat rows were practically at a 45 deg angle, if not more. So when I was in Chicago recently and drove by a theater that had the IMAX logo on the outside along with other popular movies, I got curious. A quick google search showed that it was some sort of nation-wide adopted IMAX standard projected in a more conventional setting. I couldn't pass this up, and bought a ticket for the 9:40PM showing of Skyfall. That, and a drink, set me back 20 bucks, but it was worth it! Now, if you do a little research, you'll find that the director never intended for this movie to be shown in this format, but because the film was overshot and cropped later for letterbox, each frame had sufficient image information to fit the IMAX frame. You might think the result is a lot of extra sky and floor, and in any other film, you'd be right, but in a constant action thriller like this, you never notice it, and I knew this little tidbit going in. The screen was 48' wide according to the ceiling tiles, and yes, it had a slight curve to it, too. As a Bond flick, it's one of the best to come out in the past 20 years. I'd see it again in a heartbeat, but do yourself a favor, and find the biggest screen you can.

Crossing the Finish Line

A while back I commented that the next couple months would be a complete blur, right up to Christmas, and it looks like that was the case. I vaguely recall November, and December is flying by. There was, of course, the events leading up to the big move. Getting all the prep work in place so we would have a minimum of trouble on the big day, and that work paid off in spades. December first we moved over 300 items from both my parents' place and the Lodge into CS3. It was a long day that left all of us sore for days to come. A tally was taken the following day, and while I don't have it in front of me, I know we moved 35 Radaranges (bringing the collection total to 41). 35 table model and portable TV sets (with still more remaining to move). A refrigerator, a stove, a combination washer/dryer, a steelcase desk and return, a huge lab desk, multiple tables and solid wood shelves, typewriters, couches, small kitchen appliances, a telephone switchboard and a Hammond organ, just to name a few. Sunday the 2nd, more things came over from the Lodge as I made multiple wagon trips loading and unloading up and down the outside stairs until I could no longer move. I recall being in town the following week, picking up additional things at the parents' each night on the way home, and re-arranging the downstairs of the Lodge as more and more items went to their proper home (I think people forget CS3 was designed exclusively for this purpose). Then I was off again to Chicago! 

So currently we're in good shape. The downstairs is getting cleaned up, Cara's been working hard sorting through her totes now that we can get to everything and have space to do so. The large armoir has been moved and once the weather hits hard and I can no longer work outside, I'll be ready to tackle the room divider cabinet that will separate the washer area from the dining area downstairs. Meanwhile, at night I've been tackling small things. The '62 Frigidaire dryer is just about ready for service, while the '55 was dragged outside for parts. My YA700 is back in business as a two-speed instead of a single-speed as was the case for sometime. The Spartus wall clock in the kitchen that never did work, has now been given new life with a Quartz movement that I found leaving work last week...in the scrap bin. Christmas lights are up on the front balcony. The replacement poly pump for my Maytag 806 just arrived, as did The Nest thermostat. But more on that later.

So what of this weather? It's mid December and we've yet to put up the downstairs plastic, nor even draw the dividing drapes upstairs in the living room for heat conservation. No snow to speak of which meant I could spend a couple hours after work this past week moving all the pre-painted siding boards to sawhorses around the building and get them off the ground where snow would otherwise cause damage. It's also meant I could get back to soffits. I haven't done any legitimate construction work on CS3 since the end of October, and while I don't really look forward to it, I need to finish A) Soffits, B) Siding, and C) the front roof fascia. That pretty much does it for the building's exterior. Interior-wise I have plans for the upstairs over this Holiday break- including building a 16' long workbench, insulating and wiring the ceiling over the front entrance, and installing bamboo flooring (somehow) onto that 24'x10' ceiling area. Will the fun never end?

Instruction Sets

A computer. Without an instruction set. Is nothing.

Possibly because even the techies don’t know much about them and you know the old saw, better to keep your mouth shut and all that.

What’s an instruction set? Well, it’s the language your processor speaks and its ‘words’ are composed of strings of binary digits, commonly referred to as machine code. At its basic level, this code is responsible for enabling and disabling where control pulses are directed in the micro. Back in the good old days, memory was expensive and clock cycles were valuable. The only way to program a computer was explicitly with machine code- there were no compilers or high level languages. Even operating systems were rare. They sucked up valuable resources.

Adding A to B and printing the result might look something like this…

10000001             Data in following addr to register A

00001010             Addr for A

10000010             Data in following addr to register B

00001011             Addr for B

00100001             ADD A to B; Result into C

11011000             Print Register C

11000000             Halt

The text to the right is simply comments, the machine of course only understands the binary code. While this is actually pretty compact, writing anything more than a simple program becomes a frustrating and error-prone process. Imagine debugging a program like this without any comments. And programs could easily exceed 100,000 lines.

If only there were a way to make the computer understand more human-like language and automatically convert..or..compile.. its own program. And so came Fortran (formula translator) for scientific work and COBOL (common business orientated language) for business uses, like invoicing and payroll.  And of course a myriad of other languages. For example, BASIC. The same instructions to the computer would look like this:

A=5

B=7

A+B=C

Print C

Now that’s programming! The downside is, the computer has to first examine all of our code and interpret it according to the rules. This means it might not always interpret what we want correctly, it also means our program will end up larger then intended with non-value added code, and because it’s larger and has more lines of code, it will run slower. It sees numbers that aren’t in parenthesis and so it assumes these will be variables. It sees the plus sign and so it assumes an addition will be performed. It looks for any characters after the word Print to determine if the output will be a variable or literal text. And then it writes its own binary code (just like we did above) to perform this. But no bets if the compiler will end up with the same code as we did.

Granted, there’s not much open to interpretation in something like A+B. But imagine a complex algorithm that used multiple constants. The programmer would know which storage locations were no longer needed as one-time use variables were used. But the compiler wouldn’t. It might just keep reassigning new locations as variables were called. It may end up using more memory and more cycles accessing them than is necessary, but today, we don’t care. We have Gigs of RAM and GHz processors. In fact, the whole GUI environment is a valid parallel of this. What would take one line to type in DOS to launch a program, requires a complete graphical environment with a pointing device, video mapping, a graphical file hierarchy, etc. etc. But again we don’t care, we have horsepower to compensate.

Imagine if we couldn’t make B=7. If all our variables had to go through A first.

First Set A=7. Then Move A to B. Then Set A=5. Now Add.

Imagine the bottleneck this would create if we had a list of numbers to assign!

Nobody says an instruction set is going to be easy to work with. A good instruction set translates into faster throughput. A faster machine. More flexible programming. Anyone that went through the Mac vs. PC wars of the 1990’s will remember how the PC with the faster Intel chip was getting smoked by the Mac’s PowerPC. I won’t go into those details here but it’s an interesting story. And as computers evolved and compilers became popular, the instruction sets took on a decided bent towards accommodating those languages. 

So while guys are beating their chests and boasting about their latest processor speeds, hard drive capacities and RAM figures, you’d do well to ask them about the efficiency of their instruction set.

[Incidentally, the binary code in the example above is real. It’s part of the instruction set of my computer]

Hang on!

Like an unstoppable boxcar rolling down a steep hill, things are really moving around and there will be no stopping it until it all gets sorted out. I think a nice, long, vacation will be in order when all of this is through.

Thanks to Cara and the parents, we’ve got 50 more pieces of siding stained and ready to go up. Likely, the snow will be flying when I put these on. The furnace venting is now complete, and the pigtail and shutoff wired in. The LP was installed for a princely sum and not quite where I had wanted it…another story. But we have heat and that’s what counts when you’re trying to keep things from freezing. I’ve got my eye on a nice thermostat which will be the subject of another post, but at the price of an iPod, it’ll have to wait right now.  

The final drywall coat and spray texture is finished upstairs and we actually started priming the walls and ceiling last night..given the consistency of the paint and the number of gallons we’ll need, this could be a long process. I also lined up delivery of the carpet, which is scheduled for Wednesday. AND, found an installer who will take the job on, hopefully this week. It’s a delicate balance between getting it done “now” and giving us time to get all the paint up, plus he’s doing it in his spare time.

Picked up the floor registers and repainted them a nice dark hammertone to cover their beige-ness. Have some 9x9 VCT for the kitchen that might work if I can make use of a couple of cracked corner tiles..NOS so it’s not like I can run out and pick up any extras. The laminate samples arrived but that’s also a big-Q. Nice patterns, but you either get super-gloss or uber-matte. No in-between.

As if this weren’t enough excitement….plus my day job of trying to keep projects on schedule…there was a hearing on Friday to share with the public, Mid-America’s plans for upgrading their high voltage transmission lines over a route that passes directly over my land. This is a major upgrade with poles much larger (towers, actually) and taller than current and of course the path has changed dramatically. Since it affects both us and the neighbor, we’ve got plans to discuss and hopefully arrive at an agreeable placement of one of these towers. Otherwise…we’re looking at a game-changer.

Now, Dec 1 is move-in day, but I leave this Sunday for testing in Chicago, will get back just in time for Thanksgiving, hop in a car and head for MN the next day, re-pack my bags and turn around and go back to Chicago that Monday, and come home the day before move-in.

And to add the news that trumps all of this petty running-around, my grandfather passed away on Veteran’s day, with funeral planned for this weekend.  He fought at Anzio, one of WW2’s bloodiest battles, losing an arm and taking much shrapnel, and against all odds, made it home alive. Amazing.

And an Update...

Friday, November 2nd, 2012.

The drywall is moving along and most of the upstairs is on the 3rd coat. In fact, things have been clicking into place such that I was able to finish hanging drywall in the NE corner over the big corner windows and the 54" wide sheet over the downstairs door..something I hadn't anticipated being done until months from now. This works out well because the mudders and tapers can hide the screws, finish the corner and texture the works at the same time that they do the rest of the room.

The furnace and ducting are now installed. I just have to connect the external vents and run the wiring. I put up the first row of rear east-side siding last night since the gas pipe must extend through it before the regulator goes on. Kind of impossible to do that if the gas is already hooked up. This was also a good time to pull down the small lower soffits and seal for any drafts and stuff in extra insulation.

Speaking of which, the LP company is currently enroute to set the 500 gal tank and start trenching-in the copper tubing. Then a second truck will stop out today and fill the tank. In theory, we may be able to give the furnace a test run this weekend which would certainly help with the drywall curing upstairs.

I received notice yesterday that our carpet has arrived at the local store. Our plan is to paint the ceiling after the spray texture is done (I imagine by mid-week) and get that carpet in ASAP. Unfortunately, the kitchen VCT can't be selected until the counter-top laminate samples arrive, and that could be anyone's guess (found a non-mainstream design company with some great patterns). So....we'll end up having to cut out a section of carpet after the fact to install the VCT.

Exterior stairs are now finished and have provided much relief to the drywall guys. Yes, the spiral stairs are tight, and I can vouch that one would not want to haul any sort of equipment up and down them. Also, genuine Remcraft light fixtures have arrived. Pricey, but much more reasonable when you buy them from a closeout lighting store. And genuine Made-In-America. I'll try to get one installed Sunday..which means moving the picker.

I just got off the phone with CFU and their voluntary-enrollment program for their smart meter is experiencing delays. Actually, getting their website up and running is proving to be the problem, or so they tell me. Our new meter was installed weeks ago but those of us on the trial program will have to wait for the URL and password.

And this weekend's big project...try to finish the soffits (or at least reach the last rear corner). This calls for a functional circular saw and temps adequate for painting. Both are dicey propositions right now.

Late October 2012

Now That’s a Weekend.

Sure enough, things are getting busy. Wednesday PM I got a message- the drywallers would be ready to go Thursday morning. Perfect, I thought. Since the HVAC guys would be showing up that morning as well. Which means I wouldn’t have to burn more time outside of work. As I was talking to Cara about this, a call came in on the other line and a voicemail was left. The HVAC crew wouldn’t be able to make it until Friday. Oh well. Hemmed and hawed but ultimately, that worked better than Monday or Saturday.

So, with pending drywallers, I got busy Wednesday night making sure everything was ready. Cara helped pick up tools and pile up scraps while I measured, cut and installed the last few wall panels and got things into shape upstairs.

Thursday morning- Rushed to work, took care of what I could, then back to the Lodge to meet the drywallers. Managed to move most of the tools and supplies downstairs before they arrived. In only a few hours they managed to hang the entire ceiling with 5/8” sheetrock. Meanwhile, I was able to knock out some of those smaller tasks that don’t seem to make it on the radar anymore. Installed the doors on the downstairs cabinets. Unsheathed and stripped all the wiring along the south downstairs wall. Put in the outlets on the west wall. Ran romex and put in a j-box for some of the upstairs wiring, and so forth. After the crew had finished. I surveyed the upstairs and realized I could actually get the front NE corner finished before the mud and tape crew were to arrive. I also realized the drywall crew had put up sheetrock right over a couple of angled bays that completely lacked any sort of insulation.

So, I rectified that situation, and proceeded to sheetrock around the 14’ tall windows. This was a real chore being there’s no easy way to get to that corner without the extension ladder, and if the ladder is against the wall, how can you put up the sheetrock? Being so cold and rainy outside (and windy!) it was a good day to finish up the interior. All that really remained then, was to hoist up the giant 54” wide sheet of drywall over the front door (I put in a call to see if Cara and the parents would be available that night). Since this wasn’t planned to be done for a few months, there was still insulation and wiring to do in that wall, but I knocked it out in short order. Around 7PM everyone showed up and we got that panel up, with enough screws to hold it. We bid farewell to the parents, and I started moving tools and materials that would either interfere with the HVAC crew, or might be a temptation for sticky fingers. Dark, cold, and rainy, I closed up shop for the night.

Friday, back to work earlier than usual to get in a few hours, I knew it would be a long day. Left work to meet the HVAC crew. What a ragtag lot. The entire day was spent on pins and needles keeping an eye on the progress and crossing my fingers that something wouldn’t get destroyed. I ended up working on rear soffits and checking in occasionally to monitor progress. The job itself could have been tackled in a day, but based on general speed and difficulty of what was left, it appears the sandbagging started shortly after lunch. The crew left at 4 and I returned to work, with my nerves shot.

I met up with Ben, mutual friends Sandy and Mark, and Cara joined us as well at the PL for drinks. The place was doing good business  but the popcorn and feet-pizza weren’t enough to satisfy. After awhile we headed downtown for dinner at Toad’s. By 9:30 Ben was ready to call it a night so we reluctantly packed it up.

Saturday morning, up and on the road by 7 for an auction in Cresco.  The original intent was to try to bag an ’88 Eighty-Eight. Unfortunately, the bidders came out of the woodwork and the car went for almost twice what I expected. The upshot was that we came home with a lot of smaller items for dirt cheap. A GE iron for a buck. A Sunbeam electric skillet with instruction manual for a buck. Cara nabbed a quilt. We scored a very nice cedar chest. A good quality wall mount steel cabinet (50’s kitchen cab) for a buck. A 60’s Styrofoam ice chest with aluminum handle, etc. etc. Then more good scores on the way home at Trinkets and Togs. But even though it was 2PM when we got home, our day was just beginning.

We unloaded the car, and headed for Menards. After a brief stop at the parents we were on our way. Not only did we have a list of items to pick up during the 11% off sale, but we also picked out the upstairs carpet. This was no small task. Cara and I went through everything and came up empty handed. However, if you’re looking for just the right shade of beige, they had it in spades! I had considered the red/blk carpet currently in the living room of the Lodge. It’s long-wearing, about the right thickness, good price and it’s not beige. Menards actually carried it a few months ago (along with Home Depot). HD discontinued it (they actually kept it in stock at that time!) and apparently even though it’s branded differently, we could no longer find it in Menards’ version, either. Must be the same mill. The punk working the carpet dept was no help. Eventually we picked a shade of charcoal that wasn’t offensive and got it ordered. We also bought 200’ of service entrance cable for a princely sum and, working together, got the dang roll into the Blazer. From there, a quick stop at Fareway and we were home around 8:30 or so. Exhausted.

Sunday. Tried to sleep in. Sort of worked. Ended up firing up the new Presto skillet and making a big batch of French toast and bacon. Then out into the wind to work on building exterior stairs for CS3. Started in the early PM and got the stringers made up. Then took the angles and measurements to the computer and figured out my treads. Despite running out of deck screws and my skilsaw giving up the ghost, I had all the hard work done by 6 and moved on to cutting up insulation bats and putting them in behind the ductwork before the HVAC guys resumed work Monday morning. After the vents are in it’ll be awfully hard to insulate the rear bays.

Inside by 7, showered-up and ready for Columbo. Made up a big batch of chocolate chip cookies and collapsed for the night. And now another week of tradesman, materials, construction, and the 9 to 5. Gotta get the LP set up out there now too. Each thing hinges on something else. Miss a detail and you're screwed!

Here Comes the Blur!

Nov 15^th, 2010 is marked as the “official groundbreaking” of CS3. That’s when the trenching began and the footings and walls were lined up for the pour. The groundwork was laid for start of construction as soon as the snow melted and the ground thawed. And believe me, we started off with a bang that spring! By fall, all the walls were up and sheathed, the steel beams and LVLs were in. The concrete floor was poured and the roof was on. Windows and doors were in and I was parking cars inside for the Winter. My job also got very busy with a lot of long hours and lost weekends, but spare time was spent tackling drywall downstairs, putting in floor to ceiling glass upstairs to keep the weather out and running romex. All told, A LOT of progress was made in  less than 12 months. With a mild winter I was able to push on, and in Mar/Apr of 2012, the commercial glass went in, the spiral stairs were ordered, the upstairs floors were sanded, and I moved on to soffit work to keep the birds out and allow drywall to progress. And so, in just the last 6 months, the upstairs walls were insulated, romex and boxes installed, the perimeter drywalled, and the ceiling fully twined and insulated, too. Siding work started, the soffits have progressed on to the rear, trim and seals went up around the garage doors and all the lower fascia boards are installed on the roof perimeter, with flashing on east, west and rear. And so, here we are, Oct 18^th. Essentially a month shy of 24 months if you want to compare it to the official date. (I always feel that’s a cheat because nothing ever gets done the first winter…it’s just a foundation and frozen ground).

But if you do consider that date…then we are actually in a remarkable spot. In one month’s time, all the drywall upstairs should be finished, textured and painted. The carpet will be going in about that time. The furnace will be installed and the propane up and running, and the outside stairs will be finished. It looks as though we will actually start “the move” around 1 December. In fact, that’s the target date.

Now..meanwhile, besides trying to play beat the clock with the pending snow and freezing weather, and trying to get estimates and schedules for the HVAC guy, the LP service, the carpet installer and the drywall crew, I’m also going to be out of town on business a good majority of November. And I still have soffits to put up, wires to connect, and as much siding to put up as I can before things turn unreasonable. Oh yeah, and ‘the move’.

Pretty sure it’ll be January before I catch my breath!

May 2011

Apr 2012