Today was my first Father’s Day, ushered in with the decadent pleasure of sleeping in until it was nearly time to go to Church.  My darling daughter has somehow acquired the ability to purchase a card and write quite legibly at the ripe old age of nearly three-months so I got a really nice Father’s Day card.  I also found a nice congratulatory message from my cousin Shanna in my email inbox, beginning a slow rush of similar sentiments via various media throughout the day.  It meant a lot to me to have so many well-wishes since I wasn’t around my family (or my own Dad) to celebrate.

We went to Church and were happy to see that we didn’t miss Eve’s name in the “Our Parish Family” section, which gets printed for baptisms.  After that, we were off to downtown Louisville to meet The Waltons for brunch at a place called The Huckleberry.  I opted for their French Dip (which means I had lunch, technically) and I think it might be at the top of my list now.  For those of you not well acquainted with my eating habits, I have sampled a French Dip sandwich at nearly every restaurant that I’ve been to that offers one since my first at Lum’s in Pekin.  I think I was 10 or 12 years old when I had my first one, so that’s a lot of sandwiches.

Anyway, I’m off topic… we had a nice lunch and dessert (Creme Brulee) and took some photos, which you can view on my Facebook profile and then it was time to head home.  I spent a little more quality time with Eve while Tasha negotiated the laundry demons that dwell in our basement, and once she was done with that I headed to the garage to spend a little relaxation time.  It was already up to 5 pm by this point and I desperately wanted to attach the front bindings of Dad’s ukulele, but it takes a good 45 minutes for the bending iron to heat up and about an hour per side at my clumsy pace.  I didn’t want to run out of daylight, so I opted to assemble the base of my band saw instead.

Let’s just say the manual left quite a bit to be desired, but after some effort I was able to get the stand assembled properly with no extra screws, washers, or parts leftover.  I used my ratchet set to ensure that everything was as tightened down as possible.  I was also able to heft the band saw itself out of the box and stand it upright, but I quickly realized that I am not going to be able to get it up on the base myself.  The stand assembly completes with four upright screws where the band saw is seated, so I will need at least two stout men to lift the saw and someone to ensure that it gets placed on each of the four screws properly.  There is a necessary nut and washer that seperates the base from the band saw, so I can’t just do that after putting the saw on the base (but I did think of that).

Satisfied with my efforts to this point, I headed inside.  Tasha and I discussed the best arrangement of tools in the garage, and she asked whether or not they made a mobile base or something to allow the saw to be moved into the middle of the garage when in use.  It turns out they do make such a thing, with a raise-lower system and a 400 pound weight rating so I ordered one.  Thanks to Amazon Mom, the stand should be here in two days and I’ll be ready to get it all situated.

We decided that we were both still very full from dinner, so amid playing with Eve and taking some cute photos we made baked sweet potato fries.  My Mom and Dad made those for us when they were out visiting Eve and we loved them, but hadn’t tried to make them for ourselves but they are SO GOOD.  I wrapped up Father’s Day by eating those while watching the UK version of a show called Coupling (which is hilarious) and writing this blog post.

It was a full, great day.  Being a Dad is excellent!  It really makes me appreciate my Dad to get to experience all of these things for myself, and I would be remiss if I didn’t say how important and great of an influence my Dad has been in my life.  I can’t even begin to enumerate all of the lessons he has taught me, help he has provided me, and the significant ways that he has shaped me into the man I am today.  Thanks for everything, Dad.  You are the best!

Today Tasha and I wandered down to Littleton to pick up my band saw from Sears.  The box fit perfectly in the back of my CR-V but it took two guys the size of my cousin John to lift it in there (a 227 lb box will do that).  Once we got it home, Tasha and I got it moved from the CR-V into the garage and Tasha spied the reason why it was discounted so far… it was a closeout item and was marked used.  It was in the original factory box even!

I opened the box and this thing wasn’t very used… it looks as if it was a floor model: the ruler and guide were not scratched or dirty at all.  It seems that the band saw itself was assembled, but I won’t know for sure until I unpack it and set it up.  Providing everything works, I am really pleased with this purchase.  I will try putting it together tomorrow after Church and brunch!  Fun!

On Tuesday, it was the second anniversary of my grandfather passing away.  I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately as I’ve been working on my Dad’s ukulele kit and I still miss him a lot.

This week I decided to have a look at buying some tools, since the proximity to Father’s Day usually equates to some good sales.  Grandpa always used to have Craftsman tools, so I decided to look at Sears and Sears Outlet for a band saw.  I was lucky enough to find a really nice Craftsman Professional 14″ band saw with stand for only $189 at a nearby Sears Outlet store, so I ordered it.  This model is normally in the $500 vicinity, so I feel like I got an excellent deal.  I’m going out to the Littleton Sears Outlet to pick it up tomorrow, and I can’t wait to start using it for my guitar projects.  The item listing had the item condition as “New” so I’m eagerly anticipating a nice new saw to use.

More soon!

Today was a long day at the office.  A crop of bugs popped up, and I was basically the only person on our team in Westminster today.  That meant it was up to me to triage the bugs and determine the best possible course of action.  I tend to do this best when I have a pair to program with… someone to bounce ideas off of and determine the best course.  Investigation is harder when done alone in a vacuum, and it was this reality that I was stuck with today.

This made the day pass quickly, however I was happy to see the end of the work day.  I screwed up my back at karate on Friday, so I headed to a fix-up chiropractic appointment right after work and it was much needed.  The doctor had to spend a fair amount of time on my lower back and my upper neck had a very loud adjustment.  It feels much better now, I need to get back to strengthening exercises so my back doesn’t slip out so often.

The rest of the evening was spent listlessly surfing the Internet after dinner.  I may look for more ways to make myself unplug more often… I find that I’m spending a lot of time aimlessly surfing around on the Internet.  If I have a project to work on that’s one thing, but if I’m just burning time that’s a big waste.  I haven’t decided how I’m going to accomplish this quite yet, but it’ll be something to work on.

Today my Dungeons & Dragons blog, Stupid Ranger, got hacked with some SEO Malware that injected some PHP to make each of our page titles advertise for prescription drugs.  I spent the evening restoring our WordPress installation, revising templates, and restoring our database.  I ultimately had to reinstall everything and then point WordPress back at our original database, which I scanned and found no malware hooks embedded in the posts themselves.

Things have quieted down to a small roar now, I just have some loose ends to tie up with the support folks now.  I really should go through my sites and do some Spring cleaning… I have installations hanging around that were used for side projects that just stuck around and aren’t useful any more.

That’s all for now!

Kerfing on the front went great!

The back binding looks good at a distance.

Even from this side!

However up close there are some sizable gaps to be filled.

Today I spent a little more time with the side bending iron in my work to get the wood bindings on Dad’s ukulele.  I was pleased to find out that the binding that I had bent stayed pretty much in the same bent position as I left it, but I still re-soaked it so I could work it a little more.  I got things as far as I could work it, the wood was starting to scorch and in some cases cracked.  I decided it was time to attempt gluing these bindings on, and it became quickly obvious that things were going to be harder than I expected when I superglued my fingers to the binding on about three occasions.

Bending wood bindings is hard.  As you can see from the pictures, it came out really well with a few notable exceptions.  As the wood dried, I got some gaps between the edge of the binding and the body.  The kerfing went on so well that I went ahead and put it on the entire body at once.  I was very pleased with how this worked, despite the fact that I soaked some of the strips too long and they delaminated.  I did get better as I worked the wood bindings, the second half was much better than the first.

So far my favorite tool is the hand-held scraper.  I used it to even out the binding edges along the body of the ukulele, and it makes these satisfying tiny curls of wood as it removes a small amount of material each time.  More about that later.  The solution I am going to use for the gaps in the binding is one that my Dad recommended, and my grandpa used to use on his bowl inlays.  He would take a pile of sawdust of the same type of wood and mix it with wood glue until it is a paste, and then use that paste to fill the gaps.  With any luck, this will fill the gaps satisfactorily and I can move on with finishing.

I wish I could say I was more satisfied with the results, but the wood binding is tough to work with and very hard to make look perfect.  It’s all a learning experience though!  More soon!

Today I got a lot of work done on Dad’s ukulele.  Thanks to some lessons learned from the last kit, I was able to get the kerfing and binding channels routed without major incident.  Thanks to the ultra-crappy build quality of the Grizzly ukulele kits, the thing was considerably destabilized again so I decided it would be best to attempt to bend and glue the binding.  Bending the binding was pretty fun, however I did push a little too hard and cracked the binding in one place.  It was repairable, so no real loss there.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck again while I was trying to fit the binding.  While I was attempting to press the binding into the channel too much pressure was applied to the back of the ukulele and the lack of glue in the Grizzly kit was once again made apparent. This time most of the back came apart from the sides and part of the lower bout came apart on the top.  Since the channels were routed properly, this one was fixable.  I simply had to glue the sides back to the top and back and hold it in place until the glue started to set.  I want the glue to dry fully before I attempt to do more of the bindings, so I had to suspend my bending operations for the day.

I’m counting today as a success, since I learned from my past failures and was able to repair the shoddy workmanship this time around. With any luck I’ll need one more session to get the bindings bent and glued, then sanding, assembly and finishing.  More soon!

It was an interesting day at the office… when I arrived I quickly noticed my schedule was perforated with meetings, and what I really wanted to do was code.  I took as much advantage of the short breaks between meetings to work with my pair to program and solve some problems.  I got to have a very good meeting where I got to assert one of our architectural guidelines when they were going to be violated, and I got the point across well enough and crisis was averted.  We had a long lunch for one of our coworkers that was celebrating their 5 year service anniversary, and I got one more problem solved before calling it a day.

I was wiped out when I got home from work, so I took a much needed nap.  I’m optimistic for getting a lot of recreation in over the weekend, I have designs on making Attempt #2 on Dad’s ukulele kit.  Let’s hope I don’t ruin it!  More soon!

Without noticing, I’ve missed a few days of blogging (the shame!)… I guess life has been pretty busy lately.  With PW out of the office, I have found myself staying at work longer to help keep things running along as smoothly as possible.  Over the weekend we got a few nice days, so I spent a lot of time outside getting chores done and preparing for my mother-in-law to arrive tonight.

The weather is warming up here in Colorado, so I’m beginning some of my outdoor past-times like yard work and grilling.  Soon I’ll be taking another stab at my Dad’s ukulele project since the replacement kit came in the mail last week.  The baby is still doing very well, but she has been fussy in the evenings which is part of the reason I have been absent the last few days… she’ll start getting fussy and the only way to soothe her is to either walk with her or get Tasha up, who usually needs my help preparing the supplemental bottle and what-not.

That’s really about all that is going on right now.  Lots of work, lots of baby care, and little play.  Hopefully that will turn around this weekend, when I plan to put some serious time toward getting Dad’s ukulele project back on track.  More soon!

Today I got to spend the day off in the best possible way, catching up on some much-needed sleep.  Tasha took the morning feeding, and I took the mid-morning feeding which afforded us both some extra extended periods of rest.  This made a huge difference in our demeanor on the rest of Saturday, however we missed several things on the To-Do list due to sleeping in.  No big deal.

After we finally got out of bed, we headed out and had lunch at Denny’s and then went over to Target and the pet store.  While at Target, I got two new pairs of jeans and a couple of new t-shirts… this is the first time I’ve bought new clothes for myself in awhile, so it was fun.  I had taken a Benadryl when I left for lunch due to some extra allergies popping up, and by the time we made it home from our outing I was sporting my classic “the Benadryl is working too well” medicine head.  So I went back to bed for a two hour nap.

I’ve spent the rest of the evening finishing up a side job, and I’m looking forward to a productive day tomorrow.  More soon!