Misc. things

I temporarily have access to the web, so I'm tossing up a brief update as to what I've been up to.

Family: The Lady and The Bub are well. Ralphie's fine. Tall Guy is fine. I'm fine. My in-laws here in Brisbane are fine, and my folks 'n' sibs (and spouses 'n' kid) are all fine. Ayep!

Computers: For a while, was fiddling with Linux during the evenings, but have given that up for now. The big difficulty with Linux seems to be modem compatibility: Most modems only have Windows drivers, and they don't provide Linux programmers with enough info to write their own drivers. I bought a modem that was **supposedly** modem-compatible, but three Linux distributions so far have not wanted to recognize it. I could spend AU$60 (IIRC) on buying a driver from a ''Linux Drivers R Us'' place on the web. I may, yet. For security reasons, I'm being subborn about only wanting to link to the web from home via Linux.

Woodworking: Nothing much -- although I **did** score an off-brand portable workbench (the original, Black & Decker ''Workmate'', pictured at left). The local Big W (kinda Fred Myers, Target-ish) had a few tables out in front of the store with discontinued items: sheets and towels with outdated patterns; toys with dead batteries; car seat covers and car-smelly danglies...

The portable workbench was apparently their floor model. Orginally AU$88, marked down to AU$50 (about US$38). I'll describe it more in another post (which I'll pre-date to a few weeks ago). It folds flat, and I haven't had a chance to use it yet. But, t'was a varra good price.

Ph.D. Dissertation: Mild progress, but mostly have been running errands regarding getting the house built; see below.

House building: Have been running errands in support of the house getting built (e.g. choosing brick colors and colors for the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room tiles), during the day. The last week has been spent doing various sorts of land-clearing things. We have two sheds (one's a small hut; the other is a two room cabin, formerly a chicken coop) that need to be knocked down by the end of June.

Friday morning a very large metal bin (a ''skip'', in Aussie-speak) showed up: about the lengths and width of a schoolbus, and mid-chest high (for me). This weekend (Saturday and Sunday) BrotherDave (my next-door brother in law) and I went through the two sheds and tossed The Lady's late granddad's collection of scavenged junk metal into the skip, plus some white goods (old 'fridge, old washing machine, two dead microwaves...).

Most of the metal ended up being rusty, almost-falling apart bits, as BrotherDave saved most of the bulkier, solid items, for himself. (You never know when an large chunk of metal might be needed...) So, the skip won't weigh as much as if we had actually filled it with the three or four rear axles, brake drums, and all the other stuff we found. That's fine, as I'm not recycling the metal for the money (AU$50/ton! Woo-hoo!!!), but just so it gets productively used, rather than terminating in a landfill. Still, between the two-rusty-to-use sheets of metal roofing, all the old appliances, and all the rusty junk, we managed to fill the bin up to the top. Not bad!!!

((Language note: In the U.S., ''white goods'' are sheets 'n' towels; in Aussie-land, ''white goods'' are large home appliances, and ''Manchester'' is the section of the department store that sells sheets 'n' towels. Likewise, those big metal bins you see at construction sites? Referred to as ''skips'' around here.))

The smaller shed was half-collapsed. We managed to knock it completely over, and I've tossed the useable timber and sheet metal roofing off to the side. Before construction starts, I'll have to stack it somewhere. The Lady would like me to eventually build her a potting shed, using -- for sentimental reasons -- the leftover parts. (The shed was apparently one of the first places her grandparents lived.)

The shed had a dirt floor, and was used to house loads of old parts and misc. junk. I've discovered that by scratching up the dirt an inch or two down, I've turned up lots of interesting smaller parts. Among these was a ''bullnose'' porcelain electric insulator (for an electric fence; pictured at left), as well as fair number of cylindrical porcelain insulators (which I may use as drawer pulls; photo below the bullnose insulator). I'm about one-third of the way across the ''floor'' of the former shed -- had to quit due to darkness.

Down the road from is a ''scoopy guy'' who owns a bulldozer/backhoe and a dump truck. Charges AU$85/hour for his time and his machine, plus AU$120(?) a load to go to the dump: very reasonable rates. He's done a few days' work for us, knocking over non-native trees that are where the house will be built, gathering up chunks of concrete scattered across the property, and such. And, he'll be doing another day's work in the next week or so.

So, a week ago I had him in just for a quickie job: take three concrete-lined rainwater tanks, bring one over to BrotherDave's (next to his existing one), and put the other two over in our back left corner. All of them lying on their sides, with their back end towards the fence. Nice, sturdy, pre-built storage containers, to keep things out of the rain.

He and I are specializing: He's the metal guy (he's taken a welding class, and plans to buy a welder), so he's filled his two tanks with all the metal scraps we've salvaged; I'm the wood guy, so I'll have all the wood that Grand-dad saved under various sheets of corrugated tin roofing.

((GOOGLED EXAMPLE PIC OF TANK TO GO HERE -- BLOGSPOT NOT COOPERATING))

The storage tanks were therefore, essentially free. Took the Scoopy Guy an hour and a quarter to move all three, but he waived the charge, noting that (1) we're darned close by, (2) we've been flexible with our scheduling, allowing him to fit it in between his larger jobs, and (3) he's got a lot of work off us, and still has more work coming. Fair 'nuff. ;)

Timber (or ''lumber'' to you Yanks) is freakishly expensive here, so all this hardwood that we've found lying around is quite the treasure trove. Need to finish clearing it out of the way by the end of the month, though, so Scoopy Guy can knock down the remainig shed.

As more and more things get cleared away from the building site, it's easier to envision a house actually sitting there -- instead of all that non-native brambles.


Construction supposedly starts July 11th, and the house is supposed to be completed sometime in November. Thus, it's a bit of a two-way race which will happen first: my Dissertation or the house being built.


--GG