Excentrivial Musings

7:41pm: Casa Vila - Front Porch...
The project to screen in the front porch is proceeding fairly well. I finished the framing earlier today, and have started the initial painting. Tomorrow, I'll finish the painting and correct my mistakes when I attempted to frame in the doorway. All I'll need to do is make a pair of shims to extend from the floor to roughly halfway up the door frame. After that I'll have to paint the shims and the trim pieces, then hang the screen and the door. I should be totally finished by Thursday or Friday. I'm putting on two, possibly three coats of white paint, then I'll add three coats of Exterior Polyurethane, in a clear gloss finish. That way the wood will be free from water damage for several years.

Once I know that I have enough trim pieces to cover the studs, I'll be able to make a start on new frames for window screens for the living room & kitchen windows. That will be a delicate job, actually. I'll have to measure everything very carefully, and make sure that I cut everything exactly as I need it to be done. One slip will cost me several dozen dollars per window.

During the hottest part of the next few days- while I'm letting the paint or polyurethane dry, I'll be finishing up the bathroom floor tiles and as much of the baseboard trim as I can manage. (I keep forgetting to buy the few short pieces of baseboard trim I need whenever I've been at the hardware store.) One difficult bit: the floor trim from the master bedroom walk-in closet doorway into the bathroom. I'll have to use a jewelry saw to cut that piece to exactly fit the door trim-work. Any mistake there will make me look quite foolish indeed. :)

OK... I'm done for the night. I might still have some daylight left, but I ache from bending, twisting, and stretching in unfamiliar ways in order to finish the framing and do the first coat of paint. I really need a replacement ladder, but I can't afford one right now. Cest la vie...

Vila

2:10pm: Photos from LibertyCon 22
This isn't going to be a Con report, but I have been asked to post our photos as quickly as I can. So I'm making this quick "filler" post with a link to my Flickr page with the LibertyCon set. I'll put a small copy of one photo here, and you can click on the link below to get to the full set.



We had a great time, raised a glass in toast to some absent friends as well as those who attended in spirit, and generally carried on like crazy folks- Which is probably more accurate than it is flattering. Here are the photos:

LibertyCon 22 Photo Set on Flickr

I'll try and write up a full report later this evening, but for now I have to get started on another home-repair/remodeling project. I just came back from buying almost everything I need to screen in the front porch. I expect it'll take me several days to finish this job. I might not get it done before Lyn and I come back from the family reunion this weekend. But I do need to make a good start in what time I have left today and tomorrow.

More later!

Dan

9:26am: LibertyCon 22...
Lyn and I will be heading out for LibertyCon in Chattanooga in about an hour or so. We've got a couple of stops to make on the way, but by 3 PM we'll be checking in to our hotel room and getting our convention ID badges. I don't know if any or you fine folks are also going, but if so we'll see you there!

Going to test out the new GPS unit on this trip. Since we already know the route, we won't be taking a risk of getting lost. If the GPS gives me a stupid instruction, I'll ignore it. No worries.

Be reading everything from here when we get back.

Later,

Dan

3:38pm: Update on Aphelion's Summer Party
Our annual Summer party is less than six weeks away, now- Please plan to attend if you are able, because we'd love to see you all again.

We wanted to post an update on the Aphelion Webzine annual Summer party at our house. There is an updated page of directions & a map from Atlanta to our house for those folks who plan on attending Aphelion's 2009 party on August 22nd. The link is Directions from Atlanta We'll be posting maps and driving directions from other areas soon, so expect another update in about two weeks.

Aphelion readers and writers, Steampunk folks in the Southeastern US, UGA SF&F members, SCA folks, our neighbors, and our other friends are all invited. Usually, only a dozen or so people connected to Aphelion show up, but this year we're inviting everyone we know. A good time will be had by all- Food, drink, music on the stereo, perhaps even some Filk if Rob & Larissa Wynne feel like singing. If steampunk folks feel like holding a photoshoot, there are woods behind the house as well as plenty of space in the yard.

Because some folks who plan to attend suffer from allergies, smokers will be requested to go outdoors. This includes me, so don't feel slighted. I'll be headed outdoors, too.

So far, the menu is:
BBQ & hash from Bill's Bar-B-Que
Hamburgers & Hotdogs on the grill
Veggies, chips, and dips as munchies
Sodas, tea, coffee, booze, etc. as drinks
Anything you wish to bring to add to the menu will be welcomed, but not
required.

August 22nd, from 10 AM until you feel like leaving-
Casa Vila
751 Moons Grove Church Road
Colbert, GA 30628

We're located roughly halfway between Athens and Danielsville, GA just off of HWY 29, inside the Diamond Hill community- if you're looking up maps on Google or MapQuest. Anyone coming from further than a comfortable driving distance might want to look into booking a room at the new Comfort Inn on North Ave. in Athens. That's only a 20 minute drive from here and it's a wonderful hotel.

Please e-mail vila (at) america (dot) net to let me know that you plan to attend, so that I can stock up on enough food and drinks. Also, please let me know about any allergies or dietary restrictions you have so that I can plan accordingly. Bringing additional food & drinks will be welcome, but not required.

Dan & Lyn Hollifield (Captain Vila & Lady Cita Resthal, to the steampunk folks.)

5:44pm: As promised...
... a dull and uninteresting post about my recent adventures in home repair. The job; replace a rotted-out section of our bathroom floor. A complete photojournal of an unpleasant, but necessary task. To save my f-list from page-spread ( photos & text behind the cut. )

Vila

10:12pm: 10 PM and all is finished...
Just got through laying the last of the floor tiles and nailing the last bits of baseboard trim that can be re-used. I even managed to fit the hallway door trim back better than it had been since I first removed it to get my washer & dryer in the laundry cubby of the bathroom. There is still a yard or so of baseboard trim that I'll have to replace along the floor because that was water-damaged too much to survive being pried loose from the walls.

I used almost a whole gallon of polyurethane on the existing & replacement plywood in that 5x10 foot room. It ought to be *very* waterproof, now! 5 coats of polyurethane, total.

I'm very tired now. I did take photos of different steps of the repair job, but the camera's batteries died as I took the last one, so uploading them to the computer will have to wait until tomorrow- After I get home from work with a new pack of batteries.

If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't have bought a pack of floor tiles. No, I'd have bought 2 or 3 sheets of cheap wall paneling and made a fake hardwood floor over the plywood. I could have made the paneling waterproof as well, using up the last of the polyurethane. I think that's what I'll try to talk Lyn into letting me do in the kitchen when we get to the point that we can replace the linoleum in there. It'd wind up being far faster to do that way.

OK, got to go shower, shave, and go to bed. I go back to work in the morning. Goodnight, everyone!

Dan

6:46pm: Home repairs...
I'm in the middle of replacing a 4-foot square section of our bathroom floor. We've stripped away all the old linoleum, sawn through the plywood floorboards in the section we want to replace, and are currently painting the whole bathroom floor plywood with polyurethane in order to make it waterproof. Tomorrow I'll pull the toilet out of the floor, replace the 4x4 foot plywood sheet underneath it, lay down replacement lino tiles, and then put the toilet back in place. We may be buying new baseboards and trim as well, but that will have to wait for another week or so.

While I was working in the bathroom, Lyn has been out in the flower beds clearing out weeds and undergrowth. She's also trimmed the Azaleia bushes back so that they can re-grow in far better health. Her next project is to weed the cactus garden. I plan to buy her a pair of special gloves for that so that she doesn't get stuck by nearly as many cactus spines as she did last year.

This is not the easiest home repair job that I've done. In fact, it might just be the most difficult one. Replacing a floor is always a pain in the posterior. Thank goodness it's only a 4x4 foot section of the 5x10 foot room. Once we're finished, 80% of the prep for Aphelicon will be finished. After this, I might get a chance to screen in the front porch- But not if we can't make our budget work with that extra expense.

Photos of the work in the next post...

Dan

1:22pm: ApheliCon 4
I've updated the page of directions from Atlanta to our house for those folks who plan on attending Aphelion's 2009 party on August 22nd. The link is Directions from Atlanta

Aphelion readers and writers, Steampunk folks, neighbors, and old friends are all invited. Usually, only a dozen or so people show up. A good time will be had by all- Food, drink, music on the stereo, perhaps even some Filk if Rob & Larissa feel like singing. If steampunk folks feel like holding a photoshoot, there are woods behind the house as well as plenty of space in the yard.

Because some folks who plan to attend suffer from allergies, smokers will be requested to go outdoors.

So far, the menu is:
BBQ & hash from Bill's Bar-B-Que
Hamburgers & Hotdogs on the grill
Veggies, chips, and dips as munchies
Sodas, tea, coffee, booze, etc. as drinks
Anything you wish to bring to add to the menu will be welcomed, but not required.

August 22nd, from 10 AM until you feel like leaving-
Casa Vila
751 Moons Grove Church Road
Colbert, GA 30628

Please e-mail vila (at) america (dot) net to let me know that you plan to attend, so that I can stock up on enough food and drinks. Also, please let me know about any allergies or dietary restricions you have so that I can plan accordingly. Bringing additional food & drinks will be welcome, but not required.

Dan

6:24pm: If a dog lives in a doghouse, then...
...what is the proper term for an outdoor home for one's herd of cats?

*I* know what most people think of when they use the term "cathouse" so that's out. :) A Pet Apartment? Pet Hut? That sounds silly, but probably covers all the bases. Besides, once the kittens are big enough to have either been adopted or to have adapted to living outside 90% of the time, then the Pet Hut will also be used by the dog as a rain shelter. Indeed, he already uses it as such on rainy days when the kittens are inside the house and he has to go outside on his cable run. I'm already planning to build a door for the shed that not only has a cat-flap, but also can be opened for the pony-sized dog to use. An upper half-door and a lower half-door, with the cat-flap in the lower half.

My insurance agent has long wanted me to tear that shed down "to keep rats & mice out of the house." Any rodent that can survive our 20 cats would just chew his own door through our brick walls.

By the way, we can spare some of the 16 kittens. But we'll miss them terribly. We'll keep the three Momma cats and the grandmama cat, and we'll keep the kittens Diddles, Pinky, Tesla, Cali, and possibly Modesty Blaze & Gray Mouser. I'd like to keep Spot, too, but I might not be able to do so. There is also a tuxedo cat that we've named Avon who has been promised to Kim, if she still wants him. Michelle wants to keep an orange one she's named Junior, but she and Marc might not be allowed to have pets wherever they move to when they leave.

It would be hard to let any of them go, but we can't keep them all in the house. And we can't protect them from the coyotes and the cars if we shove them outside.

Dan

6:11pm: Pool and Phone...
The pool is filling. Lyn and I have worked for almost three whole days now to get the pool ready for Summer. Lyn scrubbed the thing for what seemed like half a day, yesterday, and today I started it filling. It should take two days to fill, because we don't want to over-stress our well & pump.

Final treatments and such will have to wait for an evening after work this week. By the weekend, we'll be ready for the typical hundred degree Georgia Summer weather.

In other news, I finally broke down and bought one of those TracFone cell phones. Still figuring it out, but I have hopes that this old dawg can still learn a trick or two. Like, how to set the bloody thing to ring rather than send all incoming calls to a voice-mail that I haven't figured out how to activate yet.

Oh yes, you may laugh. I realize that I'm way behind the curve as far as that goes, but then I can't get any spam calls yet, either. That's one better than the landline, so far.

Dan

6:12pm: 2nd Verse, Same as the First...
Well, today I reconstructed the tent garages yet again. I dunno how long it'll last this time. But if I had cash for enough lumber to rebuild the frame, etc. I would take that route. Chances are I will when the economy improves enough for me to quit counting nickles & dimes.

On the plus side, I budgeted for enough gasoline to mow the lawn at least three times. That's my chore for tomorrow - Mow the lawn. I'll have to drag some tree limbs off into the woods in order to get the whole yard mowed, but that's not a problem.

Dan

3:32pm: Very depressing...
I spent several days putting my tent garages back together from the twisted and torn bits that the snowstorm left behind. I managed to put one and a half tents together from the scraps I had on hand. I was quite proud of my salvage efforts.

But last night's thunderstorm ruined almost all my work. The full-sized tent garage has collapsed - again. The framework is bent and twisted, perhaps beyond repair.

Naturally, I'm somewhat upset.

I do wish that the economy would hurry up and start climbing back out of the hole so that I could quit worrying about things over which I have no control. I don't much like the person I've been being recently. I have to turn this around, somehow. I can not accept that this bitter, angry monster is who I am to be from now on.

Dan

10:50pm: I'm not dead, I'm just resting...
I found a back-up file of the soundtrack of mp3s I'd used while writing my Nightwatch novel "Fly By Wire"! I'd stored the soundtrack on a USB thumb drive. Now, thanks to my lovely wife, with some help from David Bowie and Be Bop Deluxe, I now know how to write the ending for my steampunk novel. Once that ending is done, I'll finally be able to go back and write the beginning-to-middle section of the story. Yes, I did a dumb thing and started the story in the middle, but last year when I started typing the text, that was the most vivid part of the story that had come to me.

I've been struggling with this story for almost a year, now. Thanks to my muse- a 5'2" blue-eyed raven-tressed goddess who consented to become my lady-wife, I now have the genesis of the ending I need to wrap up the novel's Part Two. That gives me the freedom to go back to the research I've been doing for Part One and get the story moving onwards. I know, I shouldn't have started the composition in the middle, but I wanted to give the characters a chance to tell me what they'd been doing in their pasts, so that I could go back and add those tid-bits when I finally got to start the beginning of the story.

Forgive me for being ungrammatical and somewhat cryptic, but I can't edit this when I need to be writing *that!*

Dan

5:11pm: Snow? Power outages and collapsed garages...
As you may know, Georgia got blanketed by some lovely snow yesterday...

Lovely? Sure, it looks nice, but I could have lived without the electricity outages and the ruination of my pair of $200 garage tents. Not to mention the minor damage done to my van by the bent and twisted tent poles when the weight of the snow caused the garage to collapse.

OK... Other folks have it far worse. I did use the power outages today to give me time to put some PCI cards in my computer and re-work the shelves I have my CPUs sitting upon. I needed that time to do the work.

But given all the garbage that I've had to put up with vis a vie the recent snowstorm, a few hours without electricity is a small annoyance.

Dan

2:39pm: Upgrade to Lyn's computer...
I got a chance this morning to put a second hard drive and a CD-RW/DVD Player into Lyn's computer. For a few minutes, I couldn't figure out the hoops necessary to jump through in order to add new hardware to an HP Pavilion. But finally, I managed it. What I thought to be inconvenient interior architecture turned out to be some neat features. Once I passed that particular IQ test, the install went quickly. The non-working CD drive and the working DVD player came out easily. I swapped the original 32 Gb hard drive into a different drive bay, put the new 320 Gb hard drive into the bay the 32 GB had been in, and put the new CD/DVD drive into the bay the original DVD had occupied.

The result? Lyn now has ten times the hard drive space in her computer, and she has a new combo-CD burner/DVD player drive. Mission accomplished!

If there had been just one more power supply plug to use, I wouldn't have had to take out both of the old optical drives. I could have just pulled out the one that had died. Another quibble, if HP had not put a funky cover over the front of the computer, I could have installed a drawer that fits into a standard 5.25 drive bay. Just minor gripes, I know.

My next computer project ought to be able to get underway in a few days. I'm waiting on the parts to be delivered. I'm going to install a 5-port USB 2.0 card in my computer, install a video card in the donor computer I was given, and hook both computers up to a KVM switch so that they can share my monitor, mouse, and keyboard. After that I'll have to format both new hard drives in the donor computer, then install Win XP Pro on it, plug it into my LAN hub, and tie the donor computer into our household network. Once all that is done, I plan to save up for enough RAM to max out the donor computer.

So I'll be duplicating my preferred e-mail, browser, IM, and IRC programs between my computer and the donor. I'm doing that in order to do web stuff on the donor while my computer does memory-hogging tasks like burning DVDs and such. I get so tired of the slowdown my computer suffers when it is burning DVDs.

I'm also going to max out the RAM in the *other* donor computer that I set up in the living room as a DV player. There's a TV Capture card on order that will go into the computer in the living room that will turn it into a real DVR. And to think that there was a time when I was afraid to attempt upgrading a computer at all. Thanks go out to Rob Wynne for curing that affliction, as well as so many other things. Thanks also go out to Sean Sullivan for continuing my education in computer hardware.

Dan

3:31pm: Hyped about stuff...
I won a charity auction a couple of weeks ago. The item I bid on was to be a character in a favorite writer's next book. I just got off the phone with her a few minutes ago. She wanted a few personal details, hair & eye color, general interests, that sort of thing. It turns out that she has room for both myself and Lyn as characters in the book. We're both excited, naturally.

I'm not going to go into any detail. I know only a little about the plot, in any case. But when the book comes out, I'll post links to where it can be purchased.

In other news; I've been asked to be on a couple of committees at work that are supposed to brainstorm improvements for the machines I run. Those are mostly fun, and may actually have positive results.

There's lots of steampunk stuff happening this year. Lyn and I are having loads of fun with that. We went to a photoshoot and a birthday party last weekend. The next event we'll be able to afford to attend will be the Time Traveler's Ball on May 2nd in Atlanta. Look up the TerminuSteam LJ group for details if you would like to attend as well.

After that, our schedule includes LibertyCon in Chattanooga, a family reunion in LaFollette, TN, and so on...

We thought about going to Dragon*Con this year, but I doubt we can afford it. So we're going to plan to get started early on plans for attending in 2009 instead. I'm already putting cash aside for the memberships and hotel rooms.

OK, enough for now... Hugs to all!

Dan

1:08am: Bettie Mae Page: April 22, 1923 - December 11, 2008
Earlier this month we lost Forry Akerman. Now we've lost Betty Page. The world is a poorer place for their passing, but a far richer one for their having been with us for so many years.

I am unable to think of more to say right now...

Dan

8:28pm: New mattress...
The new memory-foam mattress was delivered today while I was at work. 30 minutes after I got home, it was unpacked from its box, unrolled, and the plastic wrapping stripped away. It is now decompressing and awaiting our first night's sleep upon it.

It actually took longer to deflate the air mattress and roll it up for storage in its little silk/nylon bag than the foam mattress took to unpack and unwrap and fit into the waterbed frame.

Lyn and I will put the sheets on the mattress just before we go to bed tonight. We're looking forward to being in a warm and comfortable bed again. But from the website's information page, it will be sometime tomorrow before the mattress is fully decompressed and achieves its full comfort-factor.

The air mattress is going to be stored for later use - When we go camping, or when guests visit.

Dan

5:51pm: Burst waterbed - Update...
The carpet is as dry as the shop-vac can get it, but it's still pretty damp. The waterbed mattress has been drained, taken outside, and put with the trash. The waterbed frame has been dried, cleaned, furniture polished, and the inflatable temporary mattress has been unpacked and inflated. The comforter and sheets have been washed and are in the drier.

The particleboard floor under the carpet has indeed sagged, as I predicted it would. Eventually, the whole carpet will have to be removed, the particleboard will have to be removed, plywood will have to be laid down, and carpet - probably new - will have to be stretched back into place. The insulation under the floor is also "probably" ruined. Thankfully, I work in an insulation factory and will be able to get scrap material for free to replace it with. Or I could use my Employee Discount and buy new Certain-Teed insulation at a sizable discount. But that's for the future. By the time the new mattress for the bed is delivered, the floor should be stone dry and set into its new, tortured shape. Which we will have to put up with until such time as I can afford to tear the whole floor out and replace it. To those who owe me Home Handyman favors, be forewarned. At that time I'll need some extra hands to help with the work. Two extra people who know which end of a hammer to hold on to and can operate a tape measure & pencil can turn the floor replacement from a week-long job into a one-day project. Of course, the carpet will most likely have to be laid by professionals. Sadly, I lack that particular skill.

Happily, all that work is slated for some future date. As is a similar floor replacement in our bathroom. That'll be easier because instead of carpet, new linoleum will be the surfacing material. I can *do* Linoleum!

OK, equilibrium has been reached for today. After twelve hours and $600, I'm now no significant amount worse off than I had been before I woke up this morning... I just have a little less money than I had yesterday.

Dan

9:20am: Pre-Dawn Emergency...
We've had a strange morning so far. About 6:30 this morning, I started to roll over on my left side in bed. Suddenly - No, there's not a pirate ship looming on the horizon. I wish. That would be a tad easier on my nerves. No, suddenly my elbow went through the waterbed mattress. Suddenly, we have water flowing over the sides of the bed and onto the carpet. Suddenly, we're carrying buckets of water from the bedroom to the bathroom to pour into the tub. Suddenly, Lyn and I both go from a sound sleep into a stress-filled chinese fire drill, without the benefit of so much as a cup of coffee or a long, comforting cuddle before arising to start the day.

I'm afraid that I got snapish, and for that I do humbly apologize to my long-suffering and more-patient-than-I-deserve wife.

Today was planned to be spent going out to buy the last of the yarn that Lyn needs for a knitting commission that she's just undertaken. I'm afraid that today will mostly be spent bailing out the rest of the water that the liner managed to catch, and using the shop vac and carper shampooer to get the water out of the carpet.

A new, memory-foam mattress of the correct size to fit into our waterbed frame has been ordered from Sam's Club. Thank you, Momma! I didn't know if you'd kept the membership current, but it turns out that you did. You saved us $400 to $2800 off the normal price for a California King-sized mattress! It will be delivered in 2 to 4 weeks. So we'll have to go get a cheap inflatable to use until then.

OK, I've finished my usual morning pot of coffee while I was online shopping for air mattress/memory foam mattresses/whatever I could find that would fit the bed and not cost $3000. The water is no longer dripping onto the floor. I need to go finish bailing out the frame liner. Then I need to go out to the shed and fetch the shop-vac.

Lyn, I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm a jerk when I'm not awake and am being forced by circumstances to function in an emergency. I'll make it up to you somehow. I'm glad that you're so forgiving. I love you. Thank you for putting up with me.

Dan

9:50pm: Steampunk novel update
Calling a halt to the writing session tonight. My hands are cramping. I have to take some Aleve. I'm at the end of a scene, and it's a good place to stop.29,426 words in the draft-0 of Part Two.

I have to go back to work tomorrow, so it'll be at least Sunday before I can write again. There are several plot points I can decide upon before then. Shall I stretch this out a little further, or allow my heroes to finally close with the enemy and bring Pt.2 to an ending so that I can get started on Pt.1? I'm nowhere ready to write Pt.1 yet. There is still tons of War of 1812, Civil War, and astronomy research to read before I can even make a good beginning on that. Or should I start polishing Pt.2 into a draft-1 before I commit to starting Pt.1? Will I need a more complete, draft-1 version of Pt.2 for all the necessary character reference tie-ins for Pt.1? The more I let my characters run in Pt.2, the more backstory tales get suggested for Pt.1 and the longer that part will wind up becoming.

Wow, another thing occurs to me. Would anyone buy the story if Pt.1 winds up being nothing more than backstory for Pt.2? Am I doing it wrong?

ARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH! I hate second-guessing myself.

Dan

2:01pm: Steampunk and Anime Photoshoot Last Saturday
EDITED Nov. 11th to add another link.

On Saturday the 8th, Lyn and I joined some members of Peach State Costume Society and some Steampunk folks from the Lawrenceville, Duluth, and Atlanta areas for a photoshoot at Dunwoody Nature Center. Great fun was had by all during the day, and afterwards at a nearby eatery.

In attendance were samurai and airship pirates, anime characters and an assassin, and even a Sky Marshal with his lovely bride. As can be seen in the photo below - taken by the organizer of the event, rather than myself.



I'll put in a cut tag to keep my F-List from screaming at me. ( More photos and links... )

So as you can see, a wonderful day was had by everyone. I recommend that you check out all the photo galleries that I linked to inside the cut.

Dan

5:26pm: Repairs and upgrades...
As I've stated in an earlier post, a week and a half ago my computer's largest hard drive suddenly died. I had thought that it was a 500Gb drive, but it turned out to be 320Gb instead. It's been so long since I installed the bugger, I couldn't remember. I went for something a bit larger for the replacement. Now I've got two 1Tb SATA internal drives instead of that single 320Gb EIDE internal drive. My boot drive didn't fail, so it is still a 60Gb EIDE internal. The boot drive has had loads of files transfered off of it to partitions on the new drives, so I've now got plenty of room for my OS and future new programs to grow into. I also got myself a 1TB external USB drive to use for backups of some of the things that I lost in the drive crash. Music, video, digital photos, e-books & audio books, that sort of thing.

I still have hopes of recovering some of the data from the dead drive. I haven't written it off, but it won't be as easy as I first thought. Once I have all the bugs worked out of the new installation I'll be looking for the controler card that I'll need to attempt the data recovery. If I can't find one, I'll start looking for someone who does data recovery and see what they can do with the drive.

Things look better today. Some of the frustration has passed. I have friends who have been helping me figure out little quirks of the upgrade, and friends who've offered advice and help with the data recovery. Now that the computer is on the mend, I can concentrate on throwing a few more words down on my steampunk novel and putting the finishing touches on my outfts for the photoshoot Saturday.

On the whole, life is very good!

Dan

8:28pm: And the years roll on...
So, today I turned 51. Big whoop... I don't feel any different than I did when I was 19 or 20.

I spend the day installing the new hard drives in my desktop computer. After a short panic when I discovered that the fellow who originally built the computer for me had put it together differently from my earlier desktop 'puter, I contacted a friend who builds computers for a living and confirmed my guesses about how to go about the instalation. Turns out that I was on the right track all along, just frozen with fear and unwilling to screw up.

The instalation went well, with only a single glitch which was quickly corrected. The minimal documentation that came with the IDE-to-SATA adapter card didn't say that I needed to connect a porwe wire to the card. Sean looked up the specs from the manufacturer, I plugged in the required power connector, and WHAM! I have a usable computer again. My boot drive is an IDE 60gb, there are two 1tb internal SATA drives, and a 1tb external USB drive.

I'm formating the new internal drives now. I may yet put some partitions in one of the new drives, but I do want the other one to be just one undivided whole.

The bad news? I don't have another drive with a controler card that would allow me to salvage the files off of the dead drive. I thought I did, but after comparing the two dead drives side-by-side, I can see the cards don't match.

Bummer. I suppose my next option is to look for hard drives that might match on e-bay, or something. I dunno, I really don't have $1500 to pay a data recovery center...

Well, at least Lyn and Michelle went out of their way to feed me some great Chinese food this evening. And Mom dropped by to give me one of her watercolor paintings as a birthday present.

I should cheer up. Only one bad thing happened today, and finding out that those controler cards don't match up isn't the end of the world.

Dan

6:20pm: Finished mods to the old Sam Brown belt-rig...
This afternoon I finished reworking the shoulder strap to my first Sam Brown belt-rig. This was the one I made for the Steampunk Indiana Jones outfit - and kept re-using for several other outfits as I came up with them. A few months ago I bought a new reproduction 1911 US Army issue belt and flap-closure holster from Sportsman's Guide Catalog for any WWI, WWII, or Indiana Jones outfits. So I felt free to re-mod my original belt-rig with a longer shoulder strap that featured more accurate "dog leash" clips to hook the strap up to the belt. This is, without a doubt, the most accurate reproduction that I've done of a Sam Brown belt-rig to date. I did keep the old shoulder strap parts to re-use on another project sometime in the future.



Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

Still to be done: Getting out the leather dye and staining the shoulder strap, the tie-downs, and the light-colored ammo pouches darker, to better match the belt and holster. I'm going to wait until later to dye the new additions, because my hands hurt from pushing the awl through two bloody great thicknesses of leather on the front-piece of the shoulder strap.

Materials used for the entire project:


Two brass dog leash/horse bridle clips bought from the local hardware store.
A 1&1/8^th inch wide leather dog collar, bought at the hardware store.
A 1&1/8^th inch wide leather dog leash, bought at WalMart.
Two 1/2 inch wide leather wrist bands with stud fasteners, bought from Hobby Lobby.
Two 1 inch, and a single 1&1/2 inch brass D-rings, bought from Hobby Lobby.
A $6 belt from the Dollar General Store.
Several pouches bought from e-bay and Army Surplus stores.
A holster made to fit the 1858 Remington pistol.
Several scraps of another $6 Dollar General Store belt.
Several bits of leather thong shoe strings bought at the grocery store.
Two 1/2 inch wide dog leashes used for the sword holder straps.

The materials used for just this present re-work of the shoulder strap are indicated above in bold type.

Tools used:

An awl and a foot or two of waxed, black thread.
A variable hole punch to pierce the strap so that it would buckle.
A pair of small clamps to hold the leather still while I did the sewing.
Dark Brown leather dye and a cotton dye swab.


Method:

Step 1; I sewed a brass D-ring into both of the wrist bands such that I could fasten each to the belt with the D-ring sticking up. These D-rings would be what I clipped the ends of the shoulder strap to in order to fasten the strap to the belt. (These are shown in some small detail over on my Flickr page, linked to below.)

Step2; I threaded the large D-ring over the dog collar and then threaded the collar through one of the brass clip-fastener's swiveling end. I wanted the collar to fit so that the collar's buckle would be near the center of my chest when the job was finished. Then I sewed the fastener in place, cut the excess leather off of the collar, and sewed the remainder of the collar so that the D-ring could slide up and down roughly 5 inches between the sewed seams to whatever position I needed to catch the tail-end of the strap after it was buckled up.

Step 3; I cut the hand-loop of the dog leash and threaded on the other brass clip-fastener. Then I sewed it into place using about a two inch overlap of the leather strap. That gave me the maximum length of leather to use for the shoulder strap.

Step 4; I put the belt on - at the position I wanted it to fit around my hips - clipped the two bits of shoulder strap to their respective small D-rings that I'd previously fastened to the belt, and pulled the dog leash over my shoulder so that I could measure how much of the trailing end I needed to cut off. After cutting off the excess, I cut & shaped the new tongue end of the strap to look more like a factory-made belt/strap. Then I took my hole punch, selected the tip size that best matched the buckle prong on the dog collar, and made roughly a dozen holes about an inch apart up the length of the leash-end.

Step 5 will be staining the newly made strap parts with the dark brown leather dye so that they better match the original belt.

I don't have many close-up photos of the project. My computer's largest hard drive died last week and the replacement drive I've ordered won't be delivered until tomorrow, at the earliest. (Tomorrow also happens to be my 51st Birthday, BTW.) So I'm being conservative with what space I have left on my remaining hard drive. What few close-ups I do have are over in my Flickr pages @ Vila's Photostream. I'm not including them inside this post because A) I'm tired and I'd really rather be writing more scenes for my steampunk novel, and B) I'm sure that anyone who really wants to see those photos won't mind going to Flickr and looking at them there.

I'm not really with it tonight. I spent most of yesterday night working on my steampunk novel and didn't allow myself much sleep before I got up and got started working on this project today. I'm going to crosspost this to one other steampunk community on LJ, so I apologize in advance for any extra times that you see this post. I'm happy with the way the shoulder strap turned out, even though I think I could have done better stitching if I'd gotten more sleep last night. I'm very tired right now, yet my brain won't stop formulating new scenes and dialog for my story. I'm going to go type for a while - even if I delete tonight's wordcount when I am better rested.

See you later, my friends...

Dan