Response To Light

For Valentine’s Day I took pictures of the boys. It was initially going to be a play on the theme - Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. But as it turns out, I had less than 5 minutes with Brett & Braden each. So I tried to just keep it simple. Joel came home later and this is the result (after playing in Photoshop).

Both of my very expensive printers (Canon 950i & Epson 2200) are not printing well so I took a cd of the pictures to London Drug and had them printed out. The quality was good so I have no complaints.

No one would accuse me of being a portrait photographer but this one speaks to me. Joel is one of the most good natured kids I know but none of this comes out here. I think the eyes hint at something else. Anyway, I hope you like!

Tim

Recently I did some work migrating almost 400GB of data to their new SAN. Robocopy as always was my ace. However as part of this change I needed to edit about 3o login scripts to point to the new server. While it’s pretty easy to do, it’s a boring and time consuming process. What to do? What to do?

At first I looked for an easy scripting way. Nothing really stood out. Then I started to look for some simple applications. And sure enough I found one: RQ Search and Replace. This did the trick!

Once you install the application you simply point it to the directory that has the text files you want to change. Then put in the text to search for in each file as well as the text to replace it with. The only mistake I made was choosing String as the object to change. This changed each line as opposed to just the text in the line. I switch the Object Type to Block and I was off to the races. There were three things I needed to change. Viola! Press start and 10 seconds later I was done.

I saved myself about 30 minutes worth of work.

This cart started life at Ikea — both times. Let me explain.

One of my favorite places in Ikea to go is the clearance section. A couple of months ago, I went there with Lynne and found a couple of pieces of wood. Lynne sarcastically asked, “Are you really going to use any of that?”

To which I replied, “Of course!” At the time I had no idea what I would use any of it for but each piece was only a few bucks so even if I didn’t I wasn’t out much.

A month later we were walking in Ikea again and we started looking at Kitchen carts. There isn’t much kitchen counter space in our house so Lynne thought we might get one to improve our work area. “I can make one of those. They don’t look overly hard to make.”

She giggled as if to say, “Okay. If you say so.”

While working in the shop a couple of days later I found the table top I had purchased earlier and I decided to use it for our (Lynne’s) Kitchen Cart. I initially was going to buy some 2×2 Maple but changed my mind after figuring out the cost. A couple of weekends ago, I went down to the Totem in Airdrie and bought 2 Spruce 2X2s for the legs. Legs in hand (so to speak) I started sketching a few ideas. Should I make a mobile cabinet? Or just a pull out drawer with a couple of shelves? In the end I decided to keep it simple and to just make a couple of shelves and call it a day.

This is my first project that I had a design from which a cut list was created. My Mobile Station is taking so long because at each junction, I have to measure (and remeasure) everything and then create a cut list for that piece. It’s quite painful. In the case of the Kitchen Cart, I had the carcass measured, cut and planed in about an hour and half. It then took another hour and a half to create the pocket holes and get everything together.

My initial plan was to create slats but Lynne’s suggestion after seeing the carcass was to create real shelf. Back down to Totem I went. Lucky for me they had a sale on Birch Ply. I had them make three cuts so I could more easily manage cutting it once I got home. During the Half Time show of the Super Bowl, I cut one piece to fit. After the Super Bowl, I cut the second, created pocket holes for both boards and placed them in. This is by no means the correct way to do this but it worked reasonably well.

So here we are! This was completed in about a day. It looks pretty good if a bit simple. We still need to stain and finish it. And then finally screw the top down.

You can find larger pictures of this project in the Gallery section.

Enjoy!