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Sree’s

Mr. Sree passed away. :-/ When I got laid off three times running, and wound up literally spending my last dime with no income in sight, he fronted me lunch for a month and a half until I got back on my feet. Really, really, really appreciated that; he was an awesome guy. Rest well, Sree.

http://www.srees.com/condolences.html

We are sad to report the passing of Sreevardhan “Sree” Mekala on the evening of Tuesday, June 28, 2011 due to complications arising from his battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Sree will be forever remembered for his kind heart, gentle spirit, and dedication to his wife Vydehi, daughter Sreethanaya, and to the community that he served.

Viewing: Thursday, June 30, 12PM – 2PM
Services: Thursday, June 30, 2PM – 4PM
Beinhauer Funeral Home
2630 West Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15216
(412) 531-4003

2011 06 29 livejournal Comments (2) Permalink

Perspective

The military spends more money on air conditioning in Iraq than NASA’s entire budget.

2011 06 19 livejournal Comments (1) Permalink

Rough Day in the Shop

Was trying to dimension boards for an adirondack chair I’m going to build this month.

Banged a 2×8 off the side of my kneecap, whacked my head on a light bulb (which broke on me), crunched a knuckle, and blew out my thickness planer.

After reading the directions to see what can be replaced, figured out the planer was overheated; that’s something good, at least. One of the boards looks pretty warped; going to replace it and try again tonight, probably.

2011 06 10 livejournal Comments (0) Permalink

Sammiches instead of missiles.

The Economist reminds us that the US spends more money on the military than the next 17 countries, all combined.

To be fair, by GDP, we only spend on the order of double, but still; is it Canada or Mexico we were afraid of? Diplomacy dollars go a *lot* farther than military spending; Rumsfeld said it, as did Gates; can Congress pull back on the missiles and work on sending more sammiches that aren’t also missiles?

2011 06 09 livejournal Comments (1) Permalink

Crazy Stressed

Still worn down from the weekend. Rode my bicycle to work today, and someone cut me off with their car; had to lock the brakes to stop in time, then they stopped and started *screaming* at me. Proper response: “no thanks! ” My response: “” That’d work fine, except it has me super-stressed an hour later. Argh. It’ll pass, just *ew*. Lesson learned, hopefully.

Built a dust collector for my woodshop; my dad’s lungs aren’t so hot, so coming out of my shop choking on dust from time to time I wanted to deal with earlier instead of later. Rebuilt a router table (with full dust collection top and bottom), then took the bottom 20″ of the cabinet, putting in three furnace filters (in series) and two 14″ attic fans (in parallel); the fans suck the air in the room through the filters, then back out again. Should filter allergens, even; the third filter is a really good one. Had to swap around some things to make this fit, and took one of the (unused) grow lights for seedlings and put it in the shop, so it’s now bright-as-the-sun in there, as well. Next project is a set of Adirondack chairs for The Wood Whisperer’s summertime build. Want to figure out a swing-arm or some sort of foldaway for my chop saw, so I can get it off the floor.

Still stressed. Argh. Lesson: do not engage with angry people. :-/

2011 06 08 livejournal Comments (1) Permalink

Streetlights

Streetlights can’t be on a motion sensor, because the metal-halide or sodium lights take a few minutes to warm up, and turning them on and off burns ‘em up.

We’re replacing city street lights with LEDs now; they use far less energy, and a bulb will last ~25 years. The other change we don’t seem to be making use of is that those lights can be rapidly cycled; an LED plugged into AC power turns on and off 120 times in a second.

So why not put LED street-lights on motion sensors, so that they don’t turn on unless *someone* is moving on that block? We’d save a *ton* of energy after midnight and before dawn, right?

2011 06 01 livejournal Comments (15) Permalink

Free Books

Brought a few boxes out of storage, setup a bookshelf in the basement, and there’s definitely some stuff here that I’m just not going to re-read any time soon. If anyone wants something, email me your mailing address, and I’ll send it to you free. If it’s not claimed by this Saturday… it’s heading for Goodwill.

one, two, three, four. There’s also a stack of Shadowrun (1st ed, maybe 2nd ed?) RPG rulebooks that didn’t make the photos.

2011 05 30 livejournal Comments (8) Permalink

Tired, but stuff got done

Moved a wall in the basement since this weekend. Demolition, moving three wall outlets, one ceiling light, cutting up carpet, removing plumbing and drain pipes that weren’t needed, reframing the new wall, drywalling, and one bit of spackle, done. Needs a bit more spackle, then some paint, and my shop gets a hell of a lot bigger feeling. (Yay!)

Work is progressing. I think I finally found at least one thing I’m good at, which is something. Waiting for someone to shoot me down on it, but running like hell full speed ahead in the meanwhile.

2011 05 25 livejournal Comments (2) Permalink

Lesson Learned

From riding a bicycle in the rain, I could use fenders, so that I don’t wind up with a stripe of water straight up my backside. Who knew?

2011 05 17 livejournal Comments (6) Permalink

Drywall

Productive weekend, sort of.

Half the basement is finished; I use that side for wood storage, a desk, exercise bike, a fridge, and there’s a sink as well. The other half is split; half is my oddly-shaped shop, half furnace+laundry room. The plan is to move a wall, expanding the shop to a rectangle, but that involves taking out the sink and building a new wall, which will take a bit. Moved out my desk, computer, chair, filing cabinet, and everything else I have that I haven’t used in years. Put the futon on wheels, and kept shuffling from there. Ideally, this won’t take long, but I suck at drywall.

——–

So, of the 25 largest cities tracked by Zillow.com… Pittsburgh has less than half of the underwater mortgages of the next city on the list. 6.8% of Pittsburghers owe more on a mortgage than their house is worth. Next closest city in America with data is Boston, at 16.9%. Worst off is Phoenix, Arizona, where two-thirds of mortgages are bigger than the house. (Ow!)

Here’s a little girl who’s made a friend of a dead squirrel.

What does a trillion dollars look like? It looks like a couple football fields stacked 8′ high with $100s, that’s what.

2011 05 16 livejournal Comments (1) Permalink