I like this time at night on HBT

We tried making blueberry jelly once or twice, that turned out ok.

We were just a little shy of 13 jars of plum jam. I finally tried a little after it cooked for a bit. Reminded me of rhubarb sauce in that even after a fair amount of sugar was added it still finished tart and a bit dry.

I think it would make a good fermentable beverage some day. Who knows, maybe next year we will pick more.

Plum wine. Definitely a winner. I had some in Japan, sweet but not overly sweet. Had a little kick to it.

I don't know if I'll be making use of that source of plums again, I'm not entirely sure that was on public ground. My in-laws do have a wild plum tree of their own.

I'm hoping, though. Next year, plum melomel!

To all my friends, and to those I don’t know. Thankful for and praying mankind steps up and helps in the disastrous times of the southeastern coast.

My wife signed me up to build a damn float. Voluntold me later. Bragged on what a great builder I am. F THAT!! I’m not a carpenter or cabinet maker or drywall man. I do stuff around my house because it’s my house. I control the budget, I do things on my off work time.

I went to s float planning meeting my wife signed me up for. The guy heading it said he only wanted the leaders there; it’s a planning meeting.

WTF! I’m not a leader of carpentry. I can build yes. I’ve built some decks and remodeled a kitchen and a few other things in my home. But. Not sure I want to make a commitment my wife made for me when she ensured I was so great at building. I’m not. I’m ok, that’s it.

I’ve been watching the construction of a 4 or 5 story huge building. Some sorts of office building. All made of wood. I thought in Hawaii it would have aluminum been aluminum studs and joist, but the building was wood

I was watching the roofers, they’re brave guys in my book. Pretty sure they’re tied off by equipment. I go on roofs, don’t like it much. First story no problem going up and down. The safety equipment screw it (if nobody is watching)

Second story I’m good going up a ladder, finding an anchor point. There are generally D rings strapped to a roof.

Coming back down the ladder scares the shite out of me. Just the first couple steps from roof to top of the ladder. Not really too. We use walkthroughs.

**** got to go on a second story roof tomorrow to change out a solar water heater collector temp sensor. Changing it is pretty easy. Climbing the ladder and getting tied off and where I need to work is also simple. When I’m done with my work I got to get back on the ladder and climb down. The point that scares the **** out of me is the first step off the roof, going down, to the ladder. Scariest thing ever for me. The transition
Cheers
Dan

Good luck with that, Dan. Sounds like a tough gig.

I'm no fan of heights, either. We used to use vertical silos to store feed for our cattle at the home farm, and it took me a long time to get ok with climbing on the inside ladder.

I also once worked at a grain elevator / seed house. I once had to climb to the top of a leg with a drum vacuum. I thought I was going to fall off and die.

It’s getting easier. Today went flawlessly except it did start to rain, sprinkle as soon as I was on top. Not sure what I would of done if it down poured. Isolated down pours happen around here sometimes this time of year. But thankfully this wasn’t one of those days.

For the guys who go on roofs daily I got a lot of respect for. I don’t do it often enough to ease the pucker factor much. The crazy thing is the safety equipment is kinda heavy and cumbersome, but it’s required.

This job I have now is so different then what I did as a career in the Navy. The one that by in common was they are both maintenance related.

I’m a novice woodworker / Carpenter. I’ve never had the need for a tablesaw but we got one heck of one at work, two phase 240 volts. I thinks it’s a pretty expensive machine around 5 or 6 grand. The thing has a super fast safety feature. Suppose to stop the blade faster than immediately if it touches flesh.

My carpenter friend Grizz ( long story on how he got his nickname Grizz but a noble one. Suffice to say he’s a big man, older now mid 60s. His size about is about the same age as John Wayne when he played Rooster Cogburn, if anybody remembers that.

Anyways, I needed to cut a strip of wood 3/16” thick x 3 wide. I figured a a piece of two by four would work fine. I could cut the thickness n the table saw then cut the widt to 3”. My plan was to measure the 3/16” then bring the bare up just high enough to peep through the 2x4. Kind of risky I know and wasn’t all that confident about the plan.



I’m very glad Grizz happened to be at the shop. He made the cuts. He set the blade height just a little more than half through the 3 1/2 width of a 2x4. Made a pass using his hands, no push sticks. Then he flipped it over and made the right brought cut.

For me I was good with the cut. I’d use a chop saw and cut it length. He wasn’t good with it yet. He said the edges are rounded. It was a z2x4. So he set te saw up to take off the rounded edge. He did one side. Perfectly square edge on it. Then he flipped the piece over to cut the
Board to size, 3”. M

The saw didn’t turn on. The break had set locking the blade.

It was kinda weird. He’d made a finished cut. The blade had stopped spinning. And then it locked. The situation perplexed Grizz. Wood was dry, no obstructions. This saw’s safety feature is based on moisture. Flesh is moister than lumber generally. Like. I said, 5 - 6 thousand dollar saw.

That price doesn’t just come from it’s cutting performance and accuracy, Coke’s because the safety features too

Grizz was trying to figure out what set the break. Moisture like in skin is what’s sets off and he sensors. His theory is : as he was leaning into the cut a drop of sweat fell onto the blade. The blade and brake are amazingly tied to the “brain” of the saws safety

We went home today with all tigers intact. Maybe the safety systems are a bit pita. But you know what?


Thank you people who make us a bit safer in potentially dangerous situations.

I can climb up and down roofs all day long, flagrantly use tools without safety features, or drive my car without seatbelts for me or my family.

But why? Convenince? Humph!

Stay safe my friends

Cheers
Dan

That was interesting Dan, I did not know that they made a saw with a feature like that. That pretty amazing.

Is that the rat from Beakman's World (or however you spell it?)?

That is a show I haven't thought about in a long time...

LabRatBrewer said:

That was interesting Dan, I did not know that they made a saw with a feature like that. That pretty amazing.

Click to expand...

Hi Albert! Yep they sure do. I’ve lived life without a table saw, just came up with jigs if I needed straight cuts up to 8’.

The saw available to me is pretty nice but I’ve made a lot of things for my house without one. Decks, raised decks, cabinets and other things. All a man needs is a good circular saw, a compound miter saw is nice to have....and imagination, speed square and a drill. Haha,

I’m a tool junkie though, got way more power tools than I need on a daily basis. Pretty sure if I had a big garage like did before there’d be a nice (not 5-6k) tablesaw but a very good one, and nice drill press, router table....list goes on and on.

I work with another older (64) guy. He was in construction most of his life. He has a third the tools I have but has built houses with them.

Pretty sure I’m addicted to Amazon buying and neat new tools.

I hope I never forget to be creative with just the basics

Cheers Albert!

Dan

Kent88 said:

Is that the rat from Beakman's World (or however you spell it?)?

That is a show I haven't thought about in a long time...

Click to expand...

Yes, it is. "Lester" played by the late great Mark Ritts.

Anyone experience a phenomenon known as "the f***ening' lately? It's when things are going great, then suddenly things take a hard left turn and go not great.
Don't get me wrong, life is mostly pretty good but man, little things can sure add up.

Last week I passed a class that took forever to get through. I figure this is great, I'll get caught up on the weekend, spend time with my family for once, it'll be great. Hell maybe I'll even get a brew in sometime this weekend.

Saturday morning comes along, first thing SWMBO wakes up pissed because she got eaten alive by some bug that was apparently in our room. She swears its bed bugs, I say it was probably a mosquito and move on with my day, which mostly entailed long neglected yardwork, then spending the evening playing with my son and getting dinner on the table. All in all, not bad. Dead ass tired at the end of it, but that's how you know it was a day well spent right?

Wife refuses to sleep in the bed, still convinced of bed bugs. No problem for me, I'm ready for sleep anyway. I wake up late, no time for a typical morning brew. No problem again. Wife wants to take kid to her parent's place for lunch, so I've got time to clean and sneak a quick brew in. Was able to get my chores done, and squeeze in 5 gallons of Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde. Managed to get dinner on the table again, all in all, pretty good day. My face hurts a bit for some reason, and I got eaten alive by mosquitoes while manning the grill, but its still warm here in the south, so nothing out of the ordinary. Wife still is convinced of bed bugs, so Mrs. Goodness takes the couch. No big deal, I'll take the bed and reflect on what ended up being a pretty great weekend.

Then Monday rears its ugly head. Started off with my damn face oozing. Turns out I managed to somehow get contact dermatitis doing yard work. Not sure if it was poison ivy or just some other weird allergic reaction. Huge bummer, had to bandage my face. I looked like I just stepped off of the set of a bad "The Mummy" remake. It happens, not the end of the world.

I get home from work, put the kid to bed, pretty standard weeknight. Kid is officially asleep, wife says "hey let's take a closer look at the box spring." She's still convinced about this f***ing bed bugs. We looked at the mattress this weekend, but at least this will put the whole thing to rest. I move the mattress, stand the box spring up on its edge, and let her do her thing. I'm standing there, balancing the thing, wondering about how my Steelers are going to do tonight. Suddenly she says "there they are."

Turns out we do, in fact, have bed bugs. The short version is we're pretty sure we brought them back from the beach. We were able to kill everything we saw with a steamer. It looks like it's concentrated, conveniently in her corner (good thing too, because if it were mine I certainly wouldn't have thought to look for bed bugs). We only found the smaller ones, no adults so I'm optimistic it hasn't gotten to a huge problem yet, but we'll wait and see what the exterminator says.

Anyway, that's my "the f***ening" story. I sit here with my face 80% rash, wondering if it'll be cheaper to just burn the house down, hoping a 17 point advantage is enough to give their Steelers in the winner's column.

EDIT: Make that a 10 point advantage. If the rest of the day is any indication, I should probably just call it a day.

"wondering if it'll be cheaper to just burn the house down" - perfectly reasonable. I'd consider doing that if I found bedbugs. I've never had bedbugs, but I've heard that they're a really big pain to get rid of.

"hoping a 17 point advantage is enough to give their Steelers in the winner's column" - you had me until this. I don't hate the steelers, but I'm sure no fan of that quarterback. But I'm trying to keep my football comments confined to the Obnoxious Football thread, so I'll move on.

That sucks that you got into some kind of skin-irritant while working in the yard.

Feel better soon.

Got a guy working on it now. It'll be about a month long process but we'll get there. Huge pain in the rear...and the arm, the face, the leg...

Since it’s impossible to catch up on the 1 plus years I kinda went inactive on this thread in particular but also life in general, I’d like to say Hi, and maybe even welcome myself back. It’s been too long but life has a way of interrupting things so hello everyone

Man, I hear ya on the f***ening. Bedbugs are the worst! I mean, not as bad as the steelers, but f**k, they are terrible.

I had bedbugs in one apartment I lived in years ago. The absolute worst
The only thing that made it better was watching the Packers. Go figure!

Oh man, I don't want to actually direct anyone to the obnoxious football thread here in the DRMM because it is so different from this thread, but I really enjoy how chill this thread is and I don't want it cluttered up with football stuff.

I have clicked on that thread. That there obnoxious football thread.. haha never stick with me

It is a bit odd to say welcome back to someone who participated in this thread before I did, but I'll say it anyway.

Welcome back, gillsrob .

Have you met Jayjay? Turns out the guy was a major drug kingpin while he went to grad school. I just learned that yesterday.

Kent88 said:

Have you met Jayjay? Turns out the guy was a major drug kingpin while he went to grad school. I just learned that yesterday.

Click to expand...

More like an amateur botanist with two black thumbs.

Jayjay1976 said:

Man, I hear ya on the f***ening. Bedbugs are the worst! I mean, not as bad as the steelers, but f**k, they are terrible.

Click to expand...

You must be a Raven's fan
There's a lot I like about the organization, but Ben isn't one of them.

Off of the football derailment, the exterminator was optimistic yesterday about treatment, but it's going to take a full month (a month!) to be free of the bastards. He treated yesterday, will be back in two weeks, then another 2 weeks after that. In the mean time, all of our clothes have to be washed and dried, and nearly everything we own has to be bagged up and moved out to the garage. This is going to be a lot of friggin work.

What does the treatment involve? Fumigation? Poison bait?

Does regular laundry detergent work, or do you need to use a special variety, or a certain additive?

In my experience the treatment was a routine of spraying poison on the floors along all walls in the place. They’d do it once a month for several months.
This was when I lived in an apartment. I guess the landlord had a contract so I didn’t pay for it.

Good evening my friends. I’m in Hawaii so the time difference is significant. Just wanted to post a tune for you.

That was a reply I put out a night or few nights ago but didn’t post for whatever reason; but when I was going to make a reply to Cheesy’s post; those words, well the part about replying had nothing to do with my post now

Cheers I’m druk.

Cheesy, sounds like hell living with bedbugs. I get a mosquito bit and it itches for days. A jaw inflected flea bite is a weird one. Last. For weeks but not every day. And the bites are different. For me a mosquito brings on a significant bump and it’s. Flea bite small hard bump but doesn’t go away after a day or three. I can deal with them both. I think I got an immunity, for the most part [emoji3]

But bedbugs. Get an exterminator I suppose. Destroy the fvekers. If you can’t ... no you can
Cheers
Dan

My wife recently joined the Lions club, or is it Lyons? I don’t know.
Anyway, she met a Chinese guy who is building a float for the Aloha parade. And Yes she volunteered me for helping out

I went. It was fun. Worked my arse off, hurt my knees working on this float. The guy driving it had an imagination better than mine

I think it will turn. Out great


After finished I’ll send pics of the before and after

I worked volunteer of course just like everybody did. It was fun, comraderie

They spoke to me in English, and to each other in their native language. Madarin, Cantonese or some Chinese dislalect.


It was wonderful g tying to o be part of their team

Aloha Chinese Concepts Association



The ACCA

I’m always here reading and enjoying these posts. To me they are.....well...life.
Mahalo late nighters

How is everyone lately?

I could use a little distraction. Life was crazy today. Good stuff, not so good stuff. Just kind of exhausting.

Hey all and Kent. We're in Nuevo Vallarta. First major trip with all the kids. It's a blast and a nightmare rolled into one. The good will win out. Keep your focus on the positive.

Vacation with the kids, I have some idea where you're coming from. We've hardly been around our town on the weekends. Lots of trips to prepare the old house to sell, as well as visiting family. Most trips are > 3 hours one-way. Our little guy is just under 19 months as I type this. I keep thinking I should be getting used to traveling with him, and I probably am, but I'm still not as comfortable as I'd like to be.

Good news is barring some crazy setback we should start moving into a new house before Thanksgiving. Hopefully everything goes smoothly. Once that is done I'm looking forward to complaining about the mortgage while people come to visit our house once in a while, rather than us having to drive everywhere. Unless something really goofy comes up the mortgage will be manageable, so I'm not really complaining that much. We'll have plenty of space in the house for family to come visit and a nice bedroom on the main level that we're willing to make into a guest room.

Not so good news is I have a family member (not my wife or kid) who I managed to upset. That probably sounds a lot worse than it is, but I'm struggling to find a way to briefly describe the issue without sharing more than I'm comfortable with. We have different views on a touchy subject. I didn't think that would matter as much as it turned out it did (and I was really surprised by it). And unfortunately it is also the kind of situation/subject where I feel strongly enough about it where I can't recant and beg forgiveness. I did make some effort to reach out and start a reconciliation after I realized the kind of reaction it prompted, but so far I'm just being ignored. I'm hoping that I'm just overthinking it and that given a little time everything will be fine. Unfortunately a common flaw of ours is that we both can carry a grudge. In this case, though, I feel no ill-will towards this person and I did my best to communicate that.

Well, so much for the "brief" thing.

I hope everyone is having a good night. Hopefully with this house situation I'll be able to share some more positive stuff soon. I'll have a yard I can plant stuff in again, though it isn't as big of a yard as the last place. Still, looking forward to planting some neat stuff and then fermenting some of that stuff.

Kent congrats on the new house! My best wishes you and your family have many happy and loving days full of happy times and memories.

The difference you had with another, you obviously felt pretty strongly opposite his opinion but opted to reconcile differences. That takes a good man, which I truly believe you are.

Age, upbringing, ignorant pig headed ness (whatever that actually means. I don’t know any pigs). [emoji23]. My brother is kind of a bigot, homophobe and grouch...but in very many ways loving and generous. He’s also a bit hard headed bull.

Some of his beliefs I don’t really understand how we came from the same parents. Don’t get me wrong I love him he’s s my brother and a genuinely good man. Just has some beliefs; especially about gay people that are offensive to me and especially to my daughter who is gay.

Not trying to insinuate that’s what you’re talking about, just trying to emphasize with your struggle. Sounds as though whatever you’re dealing with you’re doing it better than me. My brother and I don’t talk any more.

Cheers
Dan

Best of luck with the new house and the move.

Family arguments or disagreements can be tough. I have many fairly close relatives that I barely talk with. I'm not even sure why at this point. I hope you find a way to reconcile.

I don’t think I’ve shown these next pics

I was at a house the other day and saw two 4’x4’ workbenches that folded up against the wall. Very space saving and sturdy when in use.

Here’s some pics. Some reason made me think of Shaker simplicity and craftsmanship

The guy said only reason he put the legs under the horizontal bottom support was because he was going in to metal studs so he wasn’t sure how much the horizontal back support board would hold, so the extra verticals underneath just ensured guaranteed load support

Kent88 said:

I did make some effort to reach out and start a reconciliation after I realized the kind of reaction it prompted, but so far I'm just being ignored. I'm hoping that I'm just overthinking it and that given a little time everything will be fine.

Click to expand...

As I’ve gotten older (not always wiser) I’ve come to understand that even though I have extended the olive branch that I cannot make the other person take hold of the other end. I find my peace from knowing I extended it.

Congratulations on the new house!

Thanks everyone! It's kind of a nasty situation and I simultaneously wanted to talk it through a little, and also just be done thinking about it.

Funny how our brains work sometimes.

A sincere thanks for reading and the kind responses.

Dan, those tables look really nice. I know I have seen some like them before, just a long time ago. My father in law does some woodworking, and something like that could be handy in the new (to us) garage. Will be keeping that in mind when the fishing is slow.

Today I Was given the opportunity to restore native Hawaiian plants to Hawaii. My company gives us 8 hours per year to do volunteer work

My boss put out about s month ago an opportunity came up. It’s right down the road from me, on a workday..paid for, lunch provided. How could I resist? Pretty sure I was the first to sign up

Mission was restore Hawaiian land. Hawaii is a great place for things to grow. Superior!

But many species foreign to Hawaii grow here too, thrive here.

I don’t you know what kiawe wood is but it’s the greatest smoky bbq would ever. Not native Hawaii. What a shock, probably to many locals

Anyway. Our volunteer mission today was to remove non native plants and then plant the native ones.

It was a fun day. Ended with fishing. I’m not a fisherman, I’m a goat herder. But these Hawaiian folks are pure and genuine. They’ve let me in a little.

Here’s some pics in random order. Was a pretty neat day.

Btw. I’m not in any of these pics, kinda wish I was. I’m sure I willbe in some later after pics are exchanged

Just revised what’s available ed by on my phone. A lot bleak and not all the pics I took are available

Just imagine beautiful Hawaiian land being restor
20 or so people
Cheers
Dan


Aloha
Dan

Double post. Pardon

Cheers!