Gandolf inna tree

Gandolf happily perched in a redbud tree.

Gandolf's travel perch

Gandolf is trying out her new car perch. It's 4 ft of rebar with the ends stuck in the holes for the head rest. Then some insulating tape and pipe insulation all secured with a tight wrap of string. I'll replace the string with zip ties, soon.

Friday Links: April 18

Free clinics are shutting down. Thanks to Obamacare they're no longer needed. [link]

You can judge a book by it's cover. [link]

A map of the deepest cave in the world. [link]

Captain Janeway says she was tricked to narrate a "documentary" about geocentrism. [link]

Lawrence Krauss doesn't know how he got in the "documentary". [link]

Cardboard remote control tank. [link]

The pickup that insurgents everywhere prefer to use. [link]
Be sure to watch the Top Gear video. 

Most crosswalk buttons in NYC are only there for show. [link]

Kermit Christ Superstar - Songs from Jesus Christ Superstar done by a Muppet impersonator. [link]

I didn't get picked for the Mars One mission. This article is by the husband of someone who did get picked. [link]

Boycotting the Kochs

If you haven't been paying attention, the Koch brothers are horrible, horrible business leaders who like to throw their billions of dollars at promoting pollution, denying health insurance, and generally promoting the sort of politicians that make the Tea Party look moderate. I don't want to give them my money and I'm betting that you wouldn't either if you knew them. But you never see commercials for Koch stores, so how exactly do they make money? Well, here's a depressingly large list of businesses and products that they own.

Koch Industry Gasoline:
-Chevron
-Union
-Union 76
-Conoco

American Greetings
-Angel Soft
-Angel Soft Ultra
-Brawny paper towels
-Dixie products
-Insulair cups
-Mardis Gras napkins
-Perfect Touch cups, paper products
-Quilted Northern
-Sparkle paper towels
-Vanity Fair napkins & paper towels
-Zee Napkins

Georgia-Pacific Products:
-Angel Soft toilet paper
-Brawny paper towels
-Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
-Mardi Gras napkins and towels
-Quilted Northern toilet paper
-Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
-Sparkle napkins
-Vanity fair napkins
-Zee napkins

Georgia Pacific Building products:
-Dense Armor Drywall and Decking
-ToughArmor Gypsum board
-Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood
-Flexrock
-Densglass sheathing
-G/P Industrial plasters
-Agricultural Plaster
-Arts & Crafts Plaster
-Dental Plaster
-General Purpose Plaster
-Glass-reinforced Gypsum (GRG),etc.

Georgia-Pacific Office products
-Spectrum paper
-Georgia-Pacific's enMotion paper towel dispenser
-Georgia-Pacific's engineered lumber

INVISTA Brands
-INVISTA’s PET polymer is used in oxygen-sensitive packaging for food and beverages.
-ADI-PURE® Adipic Acid
-ANTRON® Carpet Fiber
-C12™ Intermediates
-COMFOREL® Fiber
-COOLMAX® Fabric
-CORDURA® Fabric
-DACRON® Fiberfill
-DYTEK® Idea Intermediates
-FLEXISOLV® Solvent Solutions
-LYCRA® Fiber
-LYCRA HyFit® Fiber
-OXYCLEAR® Barrier Resin
-PHENREZ® resin
-POLARGUARD® fiber and
-POLYCLEAR® PET
-POLYSHIELD® Resin
-SENZAA™ Additive
-SOLARMAX® fabric
-SOMERELLE® bedding products
-STAINMASTER® Carpet
-SUPPLEX® Fabric
-SUPRIVA™ Fiber
-TACTEL® Fiber
-TACTESSE® carpet fiber
-TECGEN® Garments
-TERATE® Polyols
-TERATHANE® Polyether Glycol
-TERRIN™ Polyols
-THERMOLITE® Fabric
-TORZEN® PA66 Resin

Koch Fertilizer Company's AGROTAIN® nitrogen stabilizer fertilizer products are used around the world to improve nitrogen efficiency and enhance crop productions.

And, with that huge, impossible to memorize list I suppose I should point you to the Buycott app. You can pick your cause and it'll create a list of companies you should support or not depending on your pet cause. You can scan products in the store and determine if they're on your list.

House for sale

I've got a house for sale in Washington, DC if you're interested. It's not exactly move in ready. I mean, you could, but it's got a lot of half finished projects if you think you'll want to fix the house up yourself first.

The house is 12'x24', two stories tall, there's an attic, a deck, and a front lawn. It's ideal for one person or a married couple. You could have a kid, too, but for purposes of space and education you'll want to leave before the kid starts school.

It's only 3 blocks from the DC Metro. The Metro system is extensive enough that I went 9 years without a car.
Also 3 blocks away, the U st shopping corridor is full of restaurants, bars, furniture, and clothing stores. I'm really missing the easy access to everything.

I'm asking $350,000 for the house as-is. It's probably the cheapest house you're going to find in DC.

It's seen a lot of improvements since I moved in.

In October 2006 I replaced the back wall and bathroom

In November 2007 the roof had it's surface stripped and replaced. It has an estimated R-25 insulation value now and was painted silver to reflect heat instead of absorbing it. A new coat is recommended.
In January 2008 I finished work on the second bedroom/office. It has a bamboo floor, exposed and repointed brick, and is open to the roof. 

That was followed in February 2008 with me making the space over the main bedroom into an attic.

The deck was added in May 2008. It's made of composite materials that should last 50 years.
The furnace and tankless water heater were added in December 2008.

In August 2009 I painted the crawlspace with multiceramic paint. Additional insulation was added in November 2010.
I made the stones that make up the front patio in May/July 2010.

If you're just an investor, the neighborhood was rezoned a few years back to allow 3 story homes. Houses that have added the third floor have doubled in value. If I had the funds I'd do it myself.

If you're interested you can reach me via the comments or at douginbaltimore@gmail.com.

Friday Links: April 11

Why you shouldn't get a tattoo, but having a baby is fine. [link]

Why part of Canada is missing some gravity. [link]

Opt-out of a bunch of advertising trackers. [link]

"16 and Pregnant" is helping bring down teen pregnancy rates. [link]

Intact T-rex soft tissue found along with why it's been preserved this long. [link]

Switzerland is wired to self destruct in self defense. [link]

A high school prank using a tunnel that connects two parts of a school on opposite sides of the street.


The smell of rain on dry earth has a name: petrichor. [link]

Smooooooth Game of Thrones theme.


The making of the Doctor Who version of Guess Who. [link]

A cake that looks like The Luggage from Discworld. [link]

I'd display this art in my home. [link]

The oldest known message in a bottle. [link]

Doctor Zhivago was part of a CIA plot to undermine the Soviet Union. [link]

Charge your iPod in 30 seconds. [link]

Unprofitable valley. [link]

Game: Super Planet Crash - Crashing planets for fun and prof... for fun. [link]

Court stenographer writes "I hate my job" over and over. [link]

Sloth rescue. [link]

Libertarian Police Force. [link]

What do you get when you cross a goat and a sheep? This. [link]

Using quotes to make book titles sarcastic. [link]

Wrath of Kahn storyboards. [link]

The Navy is making gasoline from sea water. That or we've spilled more oil than we thought. [link]

Gotham City may be worse than we think

What you see in the movies and comic books is Batman and friends stopping the smuggling of drugs and dangerous weapons into the city. That's some of the lower level stuff they show you. Nothing like stopping the Joker or breaking up the Penguin's latest scheme. They still break up muggings and car jackings and the like, but that's pretty basic for them. You can't keep an audience's interest with that. But it still happens. Think about that for a second. It still happens. You have a colony of creatures of dubious humanity who can swoop down on you at any moment, drag you into the shadows, beat the crap out of you, possibly cripple you for life, all for trying to steal someone's wallet or sell a bit of weed. And these people still choose to try to make a living that way. Which raises the question about how bad the economy in Gotham City really is. Sure, Bruce Wayne keeps opening shelters, funding free health care, scholarships, money for schools, creating jobs, and generally trying to turn things around for the poorest of the poor before they turn to crime. He works to elect politicians who will try to drive the city to do similar things with city money. But it seems to me that it's still a city with the density of New York with the economy of Detroit.

Pity the people of Gotham, for hungry African children send them money.

It doesn't help the people of Gotham, but you can give money to the Wayne Foundation. Their focus is on helping the victims of sex trafficking. [http://waynefdn.org/]

Super hero shortage in a super hero world

As it stands in the real world, there's lots of people of all ages who want to be super heroes. Not necessarily with powers. Just someone like Batman or Green Arrow or the like who is perfectly normal but fights crime. Even those who train to be able to fight almost never go the way of the movie Kick-Ass and actually try to pull it off. Those people we see in the news who have made costumes don't get into the physical stuff. They're helping people carry their groceries and whatnot. At most they might perform CPR sometime.

Now step into a different world. One like that depicted in comic books. One of the more recent Batman movies showed Batman-wannabes fighting Scarecrow and friends in a parking garage. Batman himself showed up and broke it up explaining that the difference between him and them was that he wasn't wearing hockey pads. Nor was he toting guns, but he didn't mention that. The fact that he'd inspired copy-cats is sort of the point of my thesis.

Batman has to remain a myth that only criminals know about because otherwise Gotham becomes filled with wanna-bes who Batman then has to smack around and send home. He's trying to protect people and barely trained and funded are just putting themselves in the middle of minor skirmishes and getting themselves hurt or killed. But in Boston, where Bats can't patrol, there's going to be nearly as many Bat-pretenders as there are cops. Sure, it's illegal to be a vigilante and the cops will be arresting them when they can, but it's still going to be happening a lot because Bruce Wayne proved it could be done.

This comic book universe has proved something else. Aliens do exist. Meta-humans do happen. How many kids do you know who have tried to use the Force after watching Star Wars? All of them, right? Often doing it well into their 50s and beyond. It's hard enough to keep kids from wrapping a towel around their neck and jumping off roofs now. How hard would it be when there are actually people who really can fly? Because how do you know if you don't try? Maybe you do have laser vision and you just need to figure out how to turn it on? We'd constantly be exposed to ads by con artists claiming that they can help you unlock your secret super powers. We might all be mutants who just haven't activated our powers. Around Chernobyl and Fukushima they'd need intense security to keep out all the people who just want to get exposed to a bit of radiation in hopes of unlocking some powers.

My point being that the comic book worlds are woefully under vigilanted. Superman HAS to stop all these accidents because otherwise a dozen other heroes are going to appear like lawyers on an ambulance.

Movie Review: Captain America: Winter Soldier

Typically we can have faith that the Marvel movies will be pretty good. But if you saw Thor: The Dark World (not bad, but a B- in an A or A+ movie tradition) or the dubious trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy then you may have some doubts about Captain America: Winter Soldier. So let me reassure you now, it's a good movie and you'll enjoy it.

I was wondering what they were going to do for a story. I mean Captain America is still too tied to WWII in my mind. To do otherwise you'd have to make this movie an origin story for a new villain. From what I've seen of the trailers Marvel doesn't want to give you too much of the movie and I'm going to respect that... mostly. I'll just say that some of the old baddies and heroes are manifesting themselves in new ways. And this movie will fuck things over royally for the Agents of Shield TV series. This movie may explain why Fury wasn't taking Coulson's calls. Or they may be unrelated.

Cap and Black Widow have better chemistry than Thor and stupid human played by Natalie Portman and Cap and BW aren't supposed to be a couple.

There are two clips in the credits to watch for.

Since this is a short post I want to share a story. While filming The Avengers Chris Evans sent out a text to the rest of the main cast with the phrase "Avengers Assemble". And they'd meet at a bar and party all night. Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) said it was his favorite text he's ever received.

Friday Links: April 4

One of the greatest jugglers in history has turned to masonry. [link]

Chimps have better numerical memory than humans. [link]

Just roosters. [link]

Anita Hill talks. [link]

Find out what song that was in that one TV show or movie. [link]

Creepy tunnel. [link]

Talented dog. [link]

Detroit and other cities have tens of thousands of unprocessed rape kits just sitting there for decades. [link]

Alternative scene for Gravity.


Yellowstone isn't about to explode.
In this video you see buffalo running to leave Yellowstone National Park. Some theorized that they knew the caldera was about to explode. The first issue is that the video was posted weeks ago and filmed awhile before that. [link]

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan's tourist pics from New York. [link]

Ford puts Cadillac's ad in it's place. [link]

Albuquerque police gun down homeless camper. [link]

The first trailer for Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It's fallen so far since it's early days as a spoof of the superhero genre. 
I will not be seeing this movie. But that was established the moment it was announced.

Artistic dog grooming. []

Cupcake vending machine doesn't work like a high speed EZ Bake Oven. [link]

Besides their land and ships, Russia now controls Ukraine's dolphin army. [link]

I've played games on an Oculus Rift. It's awesome. I have high hopes for the technology. So I'm really mad that Facebook bought Oculus. If Mark Zuckerwhoozit bought it I wouldn't mind. But I seriously dislike Facebook and will put off buying a Rift as long as possible. [link 1] [link 2]

High quality time lapse foodage of slow moving sea life. [link]

"Why do you hate porn?" [link]

Painting letters on the street. [link]

Disaster architecture. [link]

Bird coffee shop. [link]

The pneumonic plague. [link]

Smiley face screws and screwdriver. [link]
Are you kidding me? I need to buy ANOTHER kind of screwdriver!?

Movie Review: Mr Peabody and Sherman

When I first saw the poster for a movie based around Mr Peabody and Sherman I was a little horrified. Another damn movie taking a children's property and royally screwing it up. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that the movie, if done right, might actually be really good. So I held out hope and dread both.

The source material was more of a test of your historical knowledge than educational material. It took history and messed around with it as well as throwing in some horrible puns.

This new movie does mess with history a bit, but does try to stick closer to historical fact than my memory of the original cartoon did. Still, while it does point out that George Washington didn't cut down a cherry tree it does claim that Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake" which just isn't true. Or, if she did ever say it, she wasn't the person who originated it.

And they try to keep the horrible, horrible puns.

What you get with this movie is essentially "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" for kids. I was 14 when "Bill and Ted" came out. Mom took me to see it. I didn't get all the jokes at the time. Specifically "69, dude!" But the historical figures I knew. Alas, when I showed it to the neighbor kids a few years back, they were 16 or 17 at the time, and they didn't know half the people in the movie. They had some idea who Freud was, but didn't get his jokes. Some of the others it was like watching Captain America actually catching a reference. "Dude! I got that!" Alas, the 10 year old (or so) girl sitting two seats over from me had the same problem with "Peabody and Sherman". She didn't know who those people were or anything about them.

Even so, I would recommend taking your kids to see this movie. You'll likely get the historical jokes and your kids... even if they don't get the jokes they'll remember some of the names. When this stuff does finally come up they'll remember the movie and be better able to store and retrieve what they learn in class. I mean there's plenty of historical and scientific issues that stuck with me because of Monty Python or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Star Trek. How much classical music do you know because of Bugs Bunny?

I should warn you that after a good strong start the movie slows down a bit. They have to send Sherman off to school for a good adversary and start to screw up their lives before they finally get in the way-back machine, again. Because, really, what do we know about these two characters other than that they have a time machine and a fondness for puns.

I wouldn't be surprised if Peabody and Sherman end up with their own cartoon. Bill and Ted did and Peabody and Sherman started there in the first place.

All that said, I probably won't be getting it on DVD soon. When I do it will be to show it to others more than to watch it myself.

Friday Links: March 28

Bluegrass Gangnam Style.

... and with that we can call time-of-death on Gangnam Style.

Youngest soldier in WWII. [link]

Sleep helps flush toxins from the brain. [link]

Any life we might find on Mars or Europa may have come from the dinosaur killing asteroid impact on Earth. [link]

The Windows boot sound was created on a Mac. [link]

Earth is technically inside the Sun's atmosphere. [link]

An artificial heroin causes a decades worth of Parkinson's in just days. [link]

FDR's Economic Bill of Rights. [link]

Former Iran hostages talk about their time in captivity. [link]

Game: 2048 [link]
I'm totally hooked on this game. It's why Friday Links is so small this week. It seems like it should be so easy.

Kidney stone passed during gubernatorial debate. [link]

Google Flu just didn't work out. [link]

Haunted soda machine. [link]

There's some debate about whether superheroes can testify in court because of the whole vigilante with a secret identity thing they have going on. Here's how Superman deals.


Excited dogs were running around on the deck of the Titanic as it sank. [link]

There was a Doctor Who movie planned with either Michael Jackson or Bill Cosby as The Doctor. [link]

A butt load is 108 gallons. [link]

77 facts that sound like lies. [link]

Embroidering your own skin. [link]
We did this in high school, but not to this degree. 

India is now Polio free. [link]

An impressive Wheel of Fortune win. [link]

An interview with Nigerian scammers. [link]

A goshawk flying through a tiny hole.


What women like in a dancer. [link]

DON'T help your kids with their homework. [link]

Some of the reasons I am not having children ever. [link]

Putin and Cheney - hard to tell apart. [link]

I saw a doctor

I can count the number of times that I've been to a doctor since I left high school on one hand. Twice since college. They managed to convince me that insurance was a waste of money. I mean, I give them 1/3 of my salary and they give me ... the finger. That's pretty much been my experience.

And I've been a supporter of the point of view that if you're not sick then you're not sick and thus don't need to go to the doctor.

Well, my pay has gone up a bit since I last had insurance. The bite isn't nearly so big.

I've put on another 13 years so something is more likely to go wrong. When that happens it's better for the doctor to have a nice healthy baseline to work from.

I got insurance briefly from my last contracting agency. I used it to go to the allergist and find out my peanut allergy is gone. But, I had to go from a contractor to a government employee in order to keep my job. Sure, the government is supposed to give employees insurance. But, you have to have this computer card in order to access the websites that let you sign up. And you have to sign up in the first 3 months or during the 1 month of open enrollment. It took them 5 months to get me my card. By then I'd missed all my windows and had to wait another year.

I got my insurance back in December and found a doctor. I had to wait 2.5 months for an appointment, but I got one. Of course, with this winter, my appointment was snowed out. I got rescheduled for yesterday.

The list of things that could have gone wrong was pretty impressive. If I was feeling cocky about how good my health was before then his questioning was leaving me downright arrogant.

I got the glove and finger for the first time. I'm 38, so it is time. The urge to quote "Fletch" was almost uncontrollable.

"Moooooon River.... Whew. Tell me, Doc. Ever do any time in prison?"

I was there for quite awhile. It was an initial diagnostic session, after all.

Next stop is the dentist. That visit isn't going to go as well.

Friday Links: March 21

Moss powered radio. [link]
I'm unclear on how the power is generated. It looks like it's not much different than a lemon battery. 

Alien banana. [link]

T-Rex arms were tiny, but powerful. [link]

When did pink become for girls and blue for boys? [link]

The late Fred Phelps hated Mr Rogers. [link]

DARPA's new robot squad. [link]

Read the analysis below the picture. [link]

Gandolf's sword is part of the Iron Throne. [link]

The earliest musical instruments to be played one last time. [link]

Video of an earthquake during the news.


Gravitational waves detected. [link]

Surprising a guy whose theories are proven with this news. [link]

How would a dinosaur move... as determined by a chicken with a plunger on his ass.


800 year old monk found sticking out of a cliff. [link]

Hiding from sound waves. [link]

How to hold your breath for 20 minutes. [link]

Salmon need a new commuter vehicle. [link]

Internet companies say "we're not going to do what you gave us that money for. Do you mind if we keep the money, though?" [link]

Intel is taking the name McAfee off their anti-virus software. [link]
Be sure to watch the video about how to remove McAfee from your computer. 

Who is more famous than Jesus? [link]

Translating Lorem Ipsum. [link]

Unintroducing the VW Bus. [link]

How much real estate can $1,000,000 get you? [link]
Whoever did this was shopping in the wrong part of Baltimore.

How much of this will kill me? [link]

Darwin's kids drew on his manuscript. [link]

"No, I like it in here."


A tsunami safe pod. [link]

Sneezing into a trombone.


Obama called Kanye a jackass. [link]
Watch the video in the first comment.

Only the good die young

Update: The old bastard died earlier today.

It's said that only the good die young. Luckily, even the very old, like Fred Phelps, get sick and die. That's right, if you haven't heard already, Fred Phelps, high lord of the bigots, is dying. And, apparently, he was excommunicated from the Westboro Baptist Church last August.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/16/1285133/-Fred-Phelps-of-Westboro-Baptist-Protests-Near-Death

Many of us think that Fred is one of the best argument for the Christian faith simply because he makes us want there to be a Hell for him to go to. But, I'm going to take a moment and point something out. Fred will be spending his final days largely alone and unloved. And for that I do feel a twinge of pity for him. 

Typically when someone horrible dies someone tries to remind us that the deceased did have some family who have lost a loved one. Not this time. Fred's family is huge. He's had a lot of children and grandchildren. Some of them eventually escaped the family and have reported on how physically and emotionally abusive Fred and the whole Westboro Baptist Church society is. Those members of his family are not going to be sad to see him go. He's been kicked out of his own temple of hate. So the family he's been close to is not going to be sad to see him go. Fred Phelps has almost done for homophobia what Adolf Hitler accomplished for anti-semitism, so the anti-gay rights crowd won't be sad to see him go. In fact, most of America finds his behavior so reprehensible that they're reserving a dance floor to set up at the cemetery after his funeral.

His funeral will be populated mostly by people who are there to make sure he's really dead and protesters there to give him some of his own medicine. The only people who will mourn his passing will be gay rights supporters who probably wouldn't have made such great strides in recent decades without Fred Phelps there to show bigots the kind of company they were keeping.

Some reporters might try to get in to see him and get some idea of his thoughts and motivations before he's gone. But, apparently, the church is keeping people out. It may well be that he was excommunicated for finally coming out of the closet. It wouldn't be surprising at all to find out that his whole campaign against gays has been to cover his own feelings. Nor would it be a surprise to find out that he's lived this life to promote a pro-gay agenda. He did start his career as a civil rights lawyer, after all.

But, I'd put my money on him blaming all those around him for not honoring thy mother and father rather than him owning up to driving away everyone with a pulse. And I'm betting more than one nurse will show up a bit tardy with his pain medication.

Fred, you're a horrible human being and I hope that your church soon follows you to the grave. It does suck that you'll be alone at this point of your life, but you brought it on yourself and you deserve it.

The bedroom report

I want you to look at this picture.

That's what my bedroom looked like when I bought this house. That wood paneling and drop ceiling had been there since the 70s. The carpet wasn't as old.

Soon we had it turned into something closer to this.

By this point we had found that the ceiling had fallen on top of the drop ceiling. And the walls behind the wood panelling were ready to slump off into a pile. That the wiring was old enough it may actually have been made by Thomas Edison himself.

The lath and plaster were torn out, bricks were exposed and repointed, the ceiling was raised, new lights and outlets were installed on new circuits, the carpet was torn out, new framing was built on the front wall so someone else could put in spray insulation, drywall was installed, one guy started the mudding and I finished it when he proved unreliable, bead board and chair rails were put in, the walls were painted, a door was installed, the linoleum was removed and the 1945 newspaper underneath it was preserved.

And this is what it looks like now.

I regret that my camera phone doesn't have the wide area available to it to be able to reproduce the pictures you see above. So how about a video, instead? I know, it's bad form to video tape with your camera turned like this, but it wouldn't work the right way.



It's time to get a bed in there.

Friday Links: March 14

Between Two Ferns with Barack Obama. [link]

All the streets in North America with your name. [link]

A McDonald's employee got fired for buying food for some cold firefighters. [link]

Fake hoverboard rollout video.


Source of some of the problems at the Olympics.


Congress is demanding a Europa mission from NASA. [link]

Hunter saves deer whose antlers were locked with another deer that was eaten by coyotes. [link]

A crew member of the first Space Shuttle was on the Moon when he heard that the budget for the shuttle program had been approved. [link]

Why Umbridge is so hated. [link]

Franz Liszt was the first rock star. [link]

Washed and blow dried cow. [link]

Failed outdoor movie theater in Egypt. [link]

How to fall in love. [link]

50 cent microscope. [link]

Why does everyone hate Monsanto? [link]

A Turing test for poetry. [link]

The benefits of writing your own obit. [link]

Weird facts about states. [link]

Pried lath

This is some of the lath I had to pry away from the wall to get the door installed behind it. To the left is some of the horrible wood panelling that covered every wall of the house. And peeking out from behind the lath you and see the drywall strip that keeps me from having to squeeze drywall behind the door frame later.

House update update

About a week and a half ago I finally got my ceiling painted and the blades put on my ceiling fan. [link] It was a bit premature, but, I could do it and I was sick of mudding, so I did it.

This weekend I did most of the rest of it. I painted the beadboard a dark blue with a hint of grey to it. I finished sanding and mudding around the last window. I painted the walls a grey that turned out darker than I intended. I cleaned up a lot of the plaster dust that has been gathering on the floor. I installed the door. Packed mud behind one chair rail. And I put in the other chair rail. It's finally looking like a bedroom. I honestly think I can go bed shopping next weekend.

The door was the trickiest part. The door I ordered was made the size I asked for. But they added an inch or so to the bottom so that the door would be able to clear any carpet I put down or those metal strips that separate one kind of flooring from another. Which meant that the door was too tall for the space I had. So I shaved off a quarter inch to make it just barely fit.

You want the edge with the hinge to be straight up and down or the door will swing open or closed of it's own accord. Oddly, while the wall stud said it was 90° straight up and down, the door frame, when shoved into place, also said it was 90° straight up and down. This, despite the fact that there was a great deal of space between the door frame and the stud at the top of the door and none at the bottom.

So, shims in place, nails through the shims, and close the door. The door doesn't want to close. I push the door frame above the handle up and the door closes. Fine. Let's just nail it up there. But the nail keeps bending. Maybe because I'm nailing it to 100 year old wood that I salvaged from elsewhere in the house and maybe because the nail is a complete dick. Mind you, the next two nails were complete dicks, too. So I got out the nail gun. I should have started with that, but I was lazy and didn't want to drag it and the compressor out of the basement. So I put the door frame where I want it and hit it with the nail gun. The wood smashes and rains splinters on my face. But it's holding. Fine, whatever, a bit of wood putty will handle that.

What I had just put into place was one side of the door frame. The side with the door. The other side is just supposed to slide into a groove, you put a few small nails in, and it's all good. But, in this case there's a lath and plaster wall starting very close to it. So close, that I have to put the lath either under the door frame or over it. I should say that I put drywall there first. So when I eventually knock out this lath and plaster I won't be having to worry about space between the door frame moulding and the drywall. So the lath already is over the strip of drywall I put in. I had to slip some board under the lath to pry it out so I could slip the moulding of the door frame under it and connect this side of the door frame to the other. It doesn't sound like much if you say it fast. But the lath didn't want to be pried out. So much so that it was warping this side of the door frame. I had to pry the lath away with the board, push the door frame into place with a foot, and beat the crap out of the frame with a rubber mallet to get the tongue and groove of the two sides of the door frame to line up. And then, they didn't want to click together. I had to get a clamp around them and force them together.

I'll try to post some pictures of what I'm talking about this week, but the rooms are a bit small to get proper pictures.

Friday Links: March 7

How do vaccines cause autism? [http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/]

How the blocks of text on movie posters is built. [link]

When may I shoot one of my students? [link]

Bearing sons can alter your mind. [link]

Turning chickens back into dinosaurs - how's it coming? [link]

Turns out beer and wine wasn't popular because the water was bad. [link]

Chocolate chip cookie shot glass. [link]

Researchers in China have come up with a copper version of graphine. But they gave it the unfortunate name of CuNTs. [link]

Find all the streets in North America with your name. [link]

Russian child has been to a lot of concerts.


Warrior farmers with defensive towers built right into their homes. [link]

Rules of golf during an air raid. [link]

Koala have human looking fingerprints. [link]

5% of people don't react to music. [link]

Pelican learning to fly.


A village for dementia patients. [link]

World's longest aircraft. [link]

A dog experiencing a head massager.


3d printed pace maker. [link]

Snake eats crocodile. [link]

Batman vs Terminator.


Where Americans got their accents. [link]

Kids react to a rotary phone. [link]

Michael Dorn talks about Worf. [link]

Woman lifted with the help of two model helicopters.


Fountain chains.


Why would I want a washing machine with internet access? [link]

A button that can give you orgasms. [link]

I've posted part of this before. It's cartoons about the recent history of The Congo. [link]

New maple syrup extraction method. [link]