Category: Home Improvement

Super Winter

January was very, very cold. Some people have told me it was the coldest on records in 20 years. It was down to 3 or 5 degrees a lot of mornings, and even on warm days it only got into the teens. It takes a lot of energy to endure the extreme cold and by the end it feels like a miracle to survive. Luckily no on in the family got sick, although pleanty of people were out at the office.

Last week two of the guys in our band called in sick for practice, the lead singer and one of the guitarists. So Mike the bassist and I split the vocals. Some of our songs worked better as a quartet than others, so toward the end of session we just started calling songs to jam. I called two from the Infinigon days that went over so well we added them to our set. One is Burnin’ for You by Blue Öyster Cult. The other is Money by Pink Floyd. I had heard Mike jamming on the opening riff to warm up once before so I knew he knew it.

February came and started with a really warm weekend. It was up into the 40’s on Saturday and the 50’s on Sunday. Everything melted, and I even started up my Mustang and let it idle in the driveway for 20 minutes or so. I thought of taking for a drive, but the roads were all full of slush and salt, so I waited.

Today it’s heavy snow again. Already to 6” or so since I woke up. And in the middle of if the tree people finally showed up to take the logs off our yard and cur down the stunp. They’re at it now with a giant truck-crane-claw and a chainsaw. I’ll bet the lawn underneath is totally trashed but at this rate it’ll be quite a while before I can see it.

Patio Project

Last week was Michelle’s birthday. She’s ten years old now, getting bigger and more helpful and sweeter than ever. She made her own birthday cake from scratch, including pink and purple layers inside and decorated frosting with writing and artwork on top. She’s been getting into watching youtube videos of cake and cupcake decorating ideas, so Jeannie got her a cake decorating kit and helped her out.

Michelle asked for a bike for her birthday, and I got her a nice shiny red one. Twenty-one gears and nice components. Her first ever new bike after a series of hand-me-downs from her big sister. I got my own bike a for my tenth birthday too. It must be the age where the older sibling has stopped growing and wants to keep their bike.

We got a new picnic table for our patio on the same trip. Our old one, a cheap plastic thing, got pretty beat up in some storm a year or two ago, to the point where on leg was practically falling off. I had been going ‘round and ‘round on what the replacement should be. I’d seen a few nice sets around, but they’re crazy expensive. I was considering making my own, so it would the right dimensions and construction, not to mention more economical, but the labor required was trumped by the patio itself. Then I realized I don’t need new chairs, just the table. Old chairs are cheap plastic too, but they’re great: stylish and well-nigh indestructible. We found a new table that matched them quite well. It’s larger, with room for six, and it’s aluminum, so it’s light and well-nigh indestructible too. And it has a perforated top so it won’t blow over in a heavy wind. We got a matching canopy while we were at it, and the whole backyard scene is quite nice now. Looking forward to the summer.

The patio itself is coming up on ten years old. I built it with the help of my father when Michelle was a baby. It took us a week, after I’d done the design and prep work on my own. It was a pretty big project, and I’m glad he helped me out. It’s made of bluesstone put together in a pattern over a bed of sand and gravel. The stones are rectangles ranging from 1’ x 1’ to 2’ x’ 3’.

Designing it was fun, like solving a tessellation puzzle. I followed the style of people’s patios around here, and the stones go together according to rules. First, they only come together in 3-way intersections, never 4. Second, two stones of the same shape/size should not be adjacent and line up. Third, no seam between stones should run in a straight line the whole way through. Lastly, I preferred putting big stones (2’ x 2’ or 2’ x 3’) in the corners. You can see that these rules generate a strong, stable structure that resists slipping or sliding. Of course these rules can generate a large set of patio layouts, so there’s still some art to creating the best one.

When my dad was here a few weeks ago, he observed that the patio is still “doing well”, but close inspection revealed that was not exactly the case. When we made it we leveled the ground in the back yard, taking dirt of the high spot and filling in the low spot. Over the years the low spot had sunk again, so the whole thing needed to be leveled up. Basically this involves lifting the stones one by one and putting sand under them until they’re back up to true. The small ones are pretty easy to handle but the big ones are quite heavy and require special care. I used eight bags (400 lbs.) of sand, with the lowest stones being raised over and inch. It took me four sessions of a few hours each. Now the whole thing is nice and level again, and should stay that way a few years.

Fast Cars and Rock’n’Roll

Sounds like an exciting title for a post, eh? But no, this might be the most tedious one yet. The springtime random task agenda continues. I got some repairs done on my Mustang last week. I’m hoping to get around to getting the body restored this spring, but first I had to deal with a weird and rather nasty problem. The first time I took it out this season there was a little drippage coming from under the dashboard on the passenger side. Last time I took is out it turned into a pretty good leak, and it was radiator fluid, all over the floor mat! The leak was in the heat exchanger. My mechanic told me he’d have to take apart the whole dashboard to fix it, which was a really major job. But since I don’t drive the car in the winter I don’t run the heater. So we decided a much easier fix was to reroute the radiator hose to bypass the heat exchanger. Problem solved, fast and (relatively) cheap. He also recommended a body shop, so now I have two places to go for an estimate.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about upgrading some of my furniture to replace the hand-me-down stuff I’ve had since college. A new sofabed downstairs for next time we have houseguests, maybe some end tables, that kind of thing. After all, they say living well is the best revenge, although I’m not sure who my vanquished nemesis is, which is probably not good. Somehow this led to the realization that our house is full again, to the point were we can’t even put things away, so before we can do anything we need to get rid of a few loads of accumulated stuff.

I sifted the thru the game closet and found some minor long-lost treasures: a bunch of wind-up balsa wood airplane kits. Michelle and I had fun putting them together and trying to get them to fly. Next I got rid of a shelf’s worth of old programming books. It’s amazing how books, CD’s, and even videos have become basically obsolete these days, because they’ve become virtualized. At least for some kinds like reference and pulp fiction; I’m sure glad I never got Game of Thrones as printouts. Instant future trash.

But for other kinds it’s still very much worth having the book. The three main categories for me are sheet music, origami books, and comic books, but I suppose it goes for any book where the layout and graphics are more important than the text itself and a bigger page works better than a tiny screen. I also sorted thru my pile of old Origami USA Convention Annual Collections. These are spiral bound and easy to take apart. I got rid of more than half the pages but also came across a lot of great stuff, some of which I want to fold, and some of which gives me new ideas for a subject or an approach.

As far as the CD collection goes, that was what motivated this whole thing in the first place. Most of the music I buy these days still is on CD. You can get pretty much album for $5 or so. But my shelf space is finite, and for the last year or more they’ve been piling up on the stereo, in my studio, and on the dining room table. Somewhere along the line I got in the habit or ripping CD’s and playing the mp3’s rather then playing them directly thru the stereo, so over time a good number of them have become ripped. So I finally sorted thru all the CD’s and put my favorites on the shelf, and put the rest in a box, which I put in the closet, completing the circle of clutter.

Maybe or maybe not an interesting data point, these are the bands for whom I have ten or more records: The Beatles, John Coltrane, Billy Joel (these are Jeannie’s), King Crimson, Led Zeppelin (they only ever had nine albums back in the day, but have since put out a few more), Steely Dan (they only had seven), Rush, and Neil Young. I guess you could say that these are my favorite bands who were also prolific and enduring.

Along the way found quite a few records I haven’t listened too in a while and ripped them for my commute. Now I’m enjoying rediscovering a lot of favorite music. I’m listening alphabetically and I’m up to Jeff Beck. Such great stuff I might just stay with it a while, but next up is Walter Becker.

Back to posting stuff about origami and/or making music soon, I promise.

Riders on the Storm

We had exactly a week of pleasant weather a week ago, and now its been back to cold and rainy every day for a week once again.

My next-door neighbor put in a new driveway. It looks really nice, but it sidles up right against the property line, and is edged with stone blocks that make it a good deal higher than his old driveway. I was concerned about the possibility of the watershed patterns changing, creating the potential for flooding on the side of my house, where I re-concreted the foundation a few years back and re-graded the earth. But seven days of solid rain have pretty much shown it’s not going to be a problem. Still, it motivated me to do a bit of landscaping on the shrubs on that side of the house.

I finished a few longstanding tasks. For the first time in a while there’s no big pressure to get stuff done. Even work is at an even keel these days. Summer’s coming soon.

We finished the project of painting the trim in the house: all the baseboards, door frames and window frames. Started back in February, the whole thing took eight sessions. Now everything is clean and shiny. Starting the fall we’ll paint the doors that need it.

Jeannie helped me put a new hard drive in my computer. I bought the drive last December but I’ve been too busy to get around to it. Then once we got into it, what was supposed to be a simple task took three days because of difficulties doing the backups.

Got my Origami e-book done. Hooray! Look for announcements about its availability soon.

Been continuing to get to know the Pilot Hoban. Lots and lots of buttons for the heater and the radio. Last week for the first time we took it further than the train station or kids’ school. Had fun with XM radio working my way thru a zillion station. They have about 20 rock stations, cracked into subgenres like petroleum distillates, but apparently no prog station and no steely station. I noticed an Elvis station and a Grateful Dead station. I want a combination of the two. “Fire – fire on the mountain, where you can be lonely, uh-uh-huh, yeah-eah!”

We watched The Blues Brothers movie with the kids, since Lizzy had done the song Soul Man in honor band, and I’d played her some of the Blues Brothers records. She was surprised it wasn’t a documentary. Michelle was upset that Jake and the rest of the band ended up in jail since it was Elwood was doing all the driving and Jake was just in the passenger seat. And besides, the light was yellow in the first place!

Spring Break

Another mainly rainy week. We’ve been on spring break, such as it is. Took a few days off of work because the kids were off school. Manly catching up on our rest and doing odd jobs. Last Wednesday I worked at home and the kids did art all day. Thursday the rain stopped and I got a bunch of yardwork done. Turned over the garden, laid down cedar mulch under the hedges. Pretty much done with the spring cycle.

We finally retired El Jeppo last week and replaced it with a shiny Pilot in a very attractive shade of blue. Yes, our quest is at an end and good riddance to the whole ordeal. On the way back from negotiating the deal I was say to Jeannie it would have been nice to get a better trade-in price. But then back windshield wiper stopped working and I remembered why I needed to get rid of the old bucket o’ blots, and considered it was probably a fair deal. We named the new car Hoban after the famous starship pilot Hoban Washburne.

Last Friday I took the kids into the city for a visit to the Guggenheim museum. It’s been years since I’d been there, before I moved to California. Lizzy has been getting into abstract and impressionistic art. This was the perfect exhibit for her. It was all about the birth of Modernism, 1910-1918, plus a side exhibit on the Bauhaus. Lots a Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky and others all in one place. Modern art’s greatest hits. It’s been a while since I checked in with this stuff and it struck me how deeply the language of modernism has come to permeate every day pop culture, media and industrial design, to the point where it’s almost invisible. It’s always interesting to image a time an place where ideas we now just accept were new and radical and challenging. Plus the gallery itself is a most excellent space, with it’s snail-shell spiral main hall.

Jeannie has been making Lego robots to solve a Rubik’s cube. More on that later.

Like a Lion Fighting an Angry Ram in a Wet Cardboard Box

Feeling the first hints of early spring. The weather has been more mild lately. Traded snow any bitter cold for rain and heavy winds. Cold comfort for change.

Work has been busy; big deadline looming at the end of March. Jeannie has been having dental work the last few weeks and has a few weeks more to go. We’ve begun researching cars. Lizzy got accepted into honor band for middle school, which starts this week.

We’ve been painting again. This time it’s the baseboards, door frames and trim. We’ve done two sessions two weekends in a row. The downstairs is done, and the stairway (huge amount of work) and the kitchen and living room. Still to go are the hall, bedrooms and bathrooms, plus some window frames and doors. Most of time is laying down tape. Hope to be done all this by the end of March so we can concentrate on outdoor stuff when spring come in April.

Again With the Turkeys

Let’s see … a few things. Yesterday was our big deadline at work, the release of v2.2 of out software. We almost made it, but our QA guy was hung up by our server going down all the time the last few days. Meanwhile the last bunch o’ weeks of working extra hours while trying to keep everything else going have caught up to me and I was kinda under the weather yesterday. I’ve been watching some Galactica to unwind a few nights over the last few weeks, TV as a sedative. Everyone says BSG is awesome, but I’m not so sure. For one thing, it’s very dark, gloomy and humorless. Not very entertaining in the sense of providing entertainment. Second, EJO is great as Adama, but the only character with any personality in the whole show is Starbuck. Everyone else is just in the situation, and pretty dark and gloomy and humorless about it. Third the pacing is very slow, like a soap opera. A lot of inconsequential stuff happens every episode, and some of it moves the Big Plot forward a degree or two. Lastly, the genius scientist and his imaginary Cylon girlfriend are just too much! Still the thing is strangely compelling, and I expect I’ll be making my way thru the series just to see what happens.

The big thing we accomplished around the house last week was to paint the ceilings downstairs. They kinda did a crappy job when they built the house and it always bothered me, but it sometimes takes a while to get around to things. It’s a big room that includes my studio and our family room and Jeannie’s office (the size of all 3 bedrooms plus the hall and bathrooms and part of the kitchen), and it was a big job. We started Friday night and did most of the rest Saturday night, and finished Sunday afternoon. It’s the only way to fit in a big job like that. And of course that’s probably part of the reason I’m so burnt out right now. Still, we’ve been meaning to get around to it for a long time, and it’s much better than it was before. Cross another item off our hydra-headed todo list.

But you came here to read about turkeys, and by that I mean origami turkeys. In between everything else, I taught my Turkey at the Origami USA Special Sessions Saturday at the museum. I get a lot of great feedback on this model. I taught it last spring, but decided to it again this fall because of the tie-in with Thanksgiving. And I’m happy to say it went over quite well. It was a good group and they all did great at the model. Including one kid about Lizzy’s age. Wow.

I hadn’t folded the model in about a year couldn’t really remember how it went. It’s a pretty complex model (probably over 100 steps once I diagram it). As luck would have it, Friday at work our servers crapped out so I had some downtime and was able to fold a few attempts and get as far as the base. When I taught the class they were all advanced folders and got the idea of free-form sculpting the details from the base, so that wasn’t a problem. Still it’s good to work it out and take it to the next level. Absolutely necessary for diagramming for a book. Along the way I got some of the previously improvised parts a bit more formalized too, particularly in the tail, so I feel a lot better about this model then I did before. The only thing left to work out now is the head. Now if I can only find the right paper I can make an exhibit quality version.

I had some time a the end of my session so I taught my Walrus. (I usually bring whatever new models I have to these things to see what people think of them, and there were some requests to teach this one.) This is the kind of model I really like. It’s only 20 or 30 steps, but communicates so much, and not being so hard, a much wider range of people respond to it. This one will definitely get into my book. The slate is already pretty full for my first book and most of the diagrams are drawn, but I guess there’s the potential for a follow up. I only wish diagramming didn’t take so long. Recently people have been sending me email asking to make youtube videos teaching my models. I guess I should be grateful they ask, but I have to tell them no. Boy, why doesn’t some one volunteer to help diagram for my book? I guess that’s why we need diagramming software. And so the circle of futility is complete.

Here’s a crease pattern for the Turkey Base. Probably not enough detail to figure out how to fold the final model, but enough for the basic layout. Hint: it’s a modified bird base.

Catching Up

I haven’t really had a chance to give a general update since the start of the school year back in early September. My deadline at work come and gone. The new rev of my product is in QA with the release slated for 11/15. It seems like I’m always in the middle of things.

It’s November now, halfway to winter break. Although the weather is starting to turn cold at night, it’s been really warm until a couple days ago. One day last week I walked up thru Central Park to the American Museum of Natural History to drop off my origami models for the holiday tree, and the temperature was in the 70’s. Now it’s in the 30’s in the mornings. Time to break out the hats and warm socks.

Jeannie and I got back to our house painting project. In the fall of 2008 into the winter we painted all three bedrooms, including the ceilings, plus touch-up in the living room, halls, kitchen and downstairs room. Last winter we didn’t do anything cuz I hurt my back. So this fall and winter we’re gonna finish the house. We did the ceilings in the upstairs hall, kitchen stairs and half the living room a couple weekends ago, and then the high part of the living room last weekend. It looks great and was not an overwhelming amount for work. We started Friday night with the taping up and edging. Saturday we did the roller work, and were done by mid-afternoon. The hardest part was the stairs because we needed the big ladder, which is hard to move around. We did the high part of the ceiling in one night. The only difficulty was that the extension handle to the roller broke midway thru, so I did a lot of trips up and down the ladder. The plan now is sometime before Christmas do the ceiling in the downstairs. Then it’s down to touching up the trim, which we’ll start after the new year.

We’ve had some time for fun in there too. Way back in September, we went to the Maker Faire when it visited NYC. Had fun playing with robots and electric hula hoops. Plus the event was at the New York Hall of Science, which I’d never been to before. Jeannie and the girls had been and love the place, and they’re right – it’s very cool. In particular there’s a really great discovery playground. It was also the first outing as a family with the new Prius. Tons of Prii in the parking lot. Don’t know if it’s just the effect of noticing when you get a new car, or maybe the Maker Faire is the kind of event that tends to attract the same kind of people that drive a Prius anyway.

We took a day trip up to a farm near New Paltz in October. Met up with Martin and family, and picked apples and pumpkins. Came home with three giant pumpkins, which have been carved into jack-o-lanterns and placed on the front stoop, where they are now serving as squirrel food. When we were done at the farm we went into town for lunch, and ended up walking around the historical district, where houses dating back to 1705 and older are still standing as a sort of park or museum. Pretty neat. The motivating excuse for the outing was to give Prius a good run on the highway. The car did not disappoint. It got 46 mpg.

Inspired by Maker Faire Jeannie finally got around to getting herself a Lego robot kit from her gambling winnings way back from our trip to Tahoe. While she was at it, she picked up a minifig of Jedi Master Yoda to hang from the rearview mirror of her car. “It’s a toy Yoda for my Toyota, see?”.

A friend lent us season one of the new Battle Star Galactica. The idea is to make it our main video entertainment for the coming winter. So far we’ve only had a chance to watch the pilot, which was excellent. I’d forgotten what a compelling actor Edward James Olmos is. I hope does some origami in this show.

Somewhere in there Jeannie and I celebrated our anniversary, Halloween (Lizzy was an aqua witch and Michelle a devil), and put on a birthday party for Lizzy. Now it’s time to make plans for camping and ski trips. Hopefully the end of the year will be a little less hectic. I know I have some vacation time that I have to use soon.

This n’ That

Things are pretty quiet here now. We took last weekend off after all the activity of the past few weeks, and basically hung around the house and caught up on work and on some household projects. I’m redoing supports for the curtain in our family room. The old one was bent and drooping from years of kids pulling on the curtain, put the real problem was the supports weren’t strong enough in the first place. This was on the todo list over the winter but it was one of the things I had to let slide after I hurt my back. But now it’s the season for using the patio door so the time has come. Even a small project like this takes time and effort though. Multiple trips to the hardware store, drilling holes, spackling, sanding and painting, etc., it all adds up. Today I’m mostly finished, but I’m going to wait a day or two to install the last bracket over the spot where I repaired the wall.

The other good news is that today the roofers came and replaced the shingles on our roof that had blown off in the storm a couple months back. It only took them an hour so, and while they were up there they cleaned out the gunk that was clogging my gutters. So the todo list clicks forward three notches, but lots and lots of tasks in the offing keep me from getting too excited about it.

Sunday was Mother’s day and Michelle was very excited about it. Together with Lizzy we made Jeannie brunch, and later in the day she put on a special show. She wrote two songs especially for the occasion, and had me help her out on piano. She’s been working on these songs for a couple weeks now, trying to keep it a secret from Jeannie so it’d be a surprise. One is called “Love” and the other “Now and Forever”. It was very sweet. Then she had Jeannie and me dance while she played one of the songs of my new record. This is funny because most of the time when Jeannie dance or hug and kiss, she’ll wedge herself in between us and insist we stop.

I’ve been getting back into diagramming origami after taking most of the winter off. Closing in on finishing my 100+ step dragon. Boy, I sure hope when I finally publish my book people like it.

After the big heat wave a last week it turned cold, and I mean cold. Down into the 30’s every night and maybe up into the 60’s in the day. It’s also been pretty windy and lots of rain off and on.

Catching Up

It’s been a while since I posted so here’s a quick update. I’ve been in the middle of a bunch of things; progress on multiple fronts.

Summer’s here! Summer Fridays are in effect at my office. The kids are counting the days until the end of school. We had a good visit with our friends Seth and Cathy at their new summer house over the long weekend, kayaking and making barbecues. Great time. Thanks!

I replaced the drive gears in my garage door opener, and then had to debug all kinds of fussy settings for travel and balance and torque so the thing would go up and down smoothly without tripping the automatic safety shutoff when it wasn’t supposed to. Looks like it’s pretty much there. Also I took the Mustang out for a good long drive the other day. It sounds kinda rough under 30 MPH, especially when the engine is cold, but once it gets above 50 it’s strong as ever. Strange. I wonder what can be done about it. Once I straighten that out I’ll feel better about getting the bodywork done.

I’ve been slowly getting back into updating my web site, which is long overdue for a major overhaul. As a start a made a new index page, which combines the features of old index and home pages, replacing them both.

I got the horn section for my new song Green Glove recorded and mixed, and I need just one more session to tweak some levels before I’m ready to post the rough mix. I’m also nearly complete my origami War Elephant. I’ve been working on this steadily the last month or so. More on both of these in separate posts soon.