Beach-Club - December 2004
Introduction:
Well - this month is December -
I start this 'update' on Sunday, 12th -
almost half way through the month - so beat me with a wet noodle, I've
not been very 'punctual' with updates - we got thrased by two
hurricanes (not one but two) and it's taken us 'some time' to recover,
but - Mr. Bill & Ms. May and two quats (Siew Mei & Tigger) have
finally recovered "Great Pocket Trail" into some semblance of
living-harmony and we ARE enjoying Mr. Bill's retirement (except for
the lack of income - but we'll figure out how to deal with that after
the 'holidays'). - Though there's only 2 holidays left.
We DID DEAL WELL with Thanksgiving - enjoying turkey and all the
trimmings ON TIME at Cousin Peggy Sue's in Jacksonville, with Mom-Nadia
and step-Dad Chuck... This 'traditionally American' event was
well-supported by Ms. May (native Hong Kong Chinese) and Ms. Yoko
(native Japanese) by making their first-ever Pecan pies and by Ms. May
by making the first two-ever "Mince Meat Pies" (which, incidentally
have NO MEAT in them) - and all pies were raved about by those eating
them at Thanksgiving festivities...
So - but - whatever - life moves on, even after the hurricane(s)...
Last minute (Tuesday morning,
14th December) update: Dead 70 foot pine-tree-removal:
Well - the same day that the last tree-company phoned and said would we
pay them $860 to remove two pine-trees, Asplundh showed-up to do FPL
tree-trimming, so I walked across the street, and asked if they'd do
this dead 70 footer, about 8 feet from the power-line and they said
'Sure, we'll drop it for you!'
- so we were impressed at the guy in the bucket and the 3 guys on
the ground - very professional / clean-up oriented, didn't damage
anything, and it took them a total of maybe 1 hour - the guy in the
bucket being very careful not to drop anything on our well-pump-piping,
water-softener, and everything in that area. - we are EXTREMELY THANKFUL that these guys
happened along, that I asked, that they accepted, etc. etc. etc.
- a 'you had to be in the right place at the right time' thing, we both
agreed...
So - here, to start, as always a NEW cat-picture - and we thought,
maybe, we'd "over-done" the cat-pictures a bit but several viewers have
said, no, they like cat-pictures - so if you DO NOT like cat pictures
you must write and register a complaint with the complaint department -
write your complaint here __ and the press here . for auto-magic e-mail to the
complaint department...
click on the above Tigger-Keyboard picture for a surprise...
Now here's some other, more relevant pictures of various things we've
been doing to 'recover' from our dual-hurricane-damage...
the 'screened-in-porch' is, once-more, screened-in and the doors
re-hung (the screen-door you see in the distance required a
re-engineering and moving of the top-hinge - the hurricanes had pretty
much 'abused' the top hinge but all else seems well. As of today
(Sunday 12 December) we still need to add a bit more trim on the
outside to cover-up the staples that hold the screen-in but, for the
most part, we're done with this 're-rennovation.
click the image of the 'new' porch / screen for a 'before' picture
(after hurricane) picture
and it may be very hard to see (in the picture above) , but at the
bottom left of the far-end-screened-door there's a small
'glass-block-wall'. Some of you will have had 'brief' updates on
this - which was created after Ms. May and I found a 'pile' of
'rejected' glass-blocks on one of our bicycle rides after (probably the
second) hurricane (but, REALLY, who remembers these things?,
huh?. We hauled home about 60-70 of these, and Mr. Bill spent
'hours' trimming-off the excess mortar and then washing and cleaning
them, and we used 24 on the end in the above picture (4 high / 6 wide)
and then on the end behind me in the above picture, we used 28 (4 high
/ 7 wide) - and I think that's a total of 52 blocks; - we bought
7 new ones (at $2.39 each at Lowe's) to complete these two projects...)
West end (4 high / 6 wide (all are 're-cycled')) picture facing west
(from inside the porch)
East end (4 high / 7 wide (top row is all new blocks, remainder are
're-cycled')) picture facing east, (from inside porch)
and, and, and, and, - after the hurricanes we hauled home two-loads of
this excellent dock-lumber that is both very nicely pressure treated
but also has nice rounded edges... - we wanted to make a 'bench' with a
back and arms - big enough for at least one people and one cat - and
sometimes two-people and one cat, - never two-cats, though, they're not
that friendly???
And - in keeping with our 'glass'
theme, since 'glazing on pottery is a form of glass' - here's some of
Ms. May's most recent wheel and kiln work, for your perusal...
May's favourite new mug with a red rim
May's new tea-pots
May's Chinese themed bowls
Ms. May's two-tone bowls (there are more than two of these, very
similar, so I've turned one upside down so you can see both sides in a
single image...
This is a 'scrub-brush-bowl' to use in the kitchen, designed &
requested by May's Vietnamese friend Mai.
And - Ms. May had her friends Yoko and Kara from the Armory Art Center,
come to stay and visit a few weekends ago, and we 'celebrated' by going
out to eat one night at the local Mexican place, where I took this
picture:
Mr. Bill's "Stump
Be Gone" service runs rampant around Great Pocket Trail -
(demolishing 7 stumps in 5 days!)
Onto other things - We have had a number of trees-lost in the
hurricane(s) and you can see Mr. Bill chainsawing them up (in previous
web-pages that are more 'hurricane-centric'), and the trash-man has
hauled them all away (well various and sundry different trash-people
have hauled them all away). However, we were left
with 7 'scrub-oak' tree stumps - which Mr. Bill removed the bulk of in
one week's worth of 'morning work' - here's just a 'very brief'
overview of one:
Stump be here
Stump be there
Stump(s) be gone
AND _ while still in / around the back-yard, a very brief picture of
someone we met right after the hurricane...
And - along with our 'growth' (or lack thereof) theme, we'll review the
'parking-driveway-circle in the front (on Great Pocket Trail) in which
we had several 'problems' after the hurricane(s)...
One problem was our 'sleeping-bamboo' - seems like the 'vertical'
component of this bamboo was overwhelmed by high-winds from Ms. Frances
(at least based-on-dates!)
now replaced with a new one...
and a new place to help-out the local wildlife who've had their
'homesteads' forcibly removed by the hurricanes - these guys & gals
did a LOT of talking after Hurricane 1 and then even MORE talking after
Hurricane 2, so - we decided to offer them a couple of
'buffet-stand' / look-out perches for a while to help them
transisition into their new home-arenas (such a they are?) (Designed by
Ms. May, built, painted and installed by Mr. Bill)
And - here's some more / other
things we've found / gotten-into / done / been involved in - in no
particular order:
Mr. Bill's working on a class at IRCC (http://www.ircc.edu) on
AutoDesk's "Viz" product - vizualization, textures / materials,
walk-through-camera-path-animations and such - he's having a LOT of
'TROUBLE and spending a LOT of TIME..., here's a few web-sites that
have some 'real' Viz things on them - a truly astoundingly versatile
piece of software... this software is not as much an 'engineering' tool
(like most that I have worked on / studied in the past) but more for a
'marketing' view - a presentation to clients or people with the
resources to change the world...
here's a couple of Bill's 'interim' images - neither is 'finished'
(ready to turn-in-for-credit) at this time:
Savoy House Exterior (this will ultimately
be a 10 second 'camera-fly-around-in-space' animation before it's
turned-in
Savoy House Interior (this will ultimately
have granite tiles on the floor - the 'light-fixtures will have light
coming out, and the glass (along the extreme right side) will be
semi-transparent and you'll be able to look out onto the courtyard)
http://www.viz2000.com is the main 'Viz' CAD-software-tool web-site -
but it is not necessarily associated with Discreet (the owners /
developers of the code) nor with AutoDesk (http://www.autodesk.com) the
people who've bought it and market it
- http://www.janbrookes.com (click on 'Gallery' for something
special); then try "Tutorials" / scroll down to the very bottom of this
page and click on (ONLY) the one that says, 'How to setup an interior
Scene for Daylight" - then in THAT window scroll, slowly, all the way
to the bottom for some really stunning interiors..
- http://www.scottonstott.com (awesome stuff - these guys are
truly masters of their craft)
- http://www.tbmax.com (go to right side of page and click on
'gallery' - this should keep you occupied a while!)
- http://www.vizdepot.com (two links (in the main-home-page) of
interest: "up and down" and "fashion boutique")
Another friend from Hong Kong - we recently ran-into on the web, a
Japanese feature length cartoon movie called "Totoro", there's now a
new web-site (http://www.totoro.com) but there's nothing there but this
picture.
Ms. May and Mr. Bill have been 'running-regattas' at both the US
Sailing Center (http://www.usscmc.org) and Ms. May's running a regatta
this weekend (Key West Warm Up Regatta for the (Corsair (24 & 27
foot) folding-trimaran people.
And Mr. Bill got really tired of
trying to do 'hardware' work with no-light and no-place, so he
built-himself a little table out of left-overs, and bought a $10 light
at Lowe's and so - he's MUCH HAPPIER now with a place to do hardware
things!
top-shelf 'things: left stereo
speaker, mini-mouse (at base of speaker), temperature (in/out); Cisco
wireless LAN base-stationg (not active); Bill's
mini-digital-camera-battery-charger; Icom Marine VHF charger, stereo
(Sony), CD-ROM-case (laying flat on the shelf, may be hard to see;
Pelican flashlight(yellow); "Husky" belt-zipper-case; right
stereo speaker
bottom-shelf 'things': LAN-hub;
Vtec cordless telephone; Davis-Instruments "shunt" for testing
wind-meter; canned air (red-label); Fluke 8600A / 4 1/2 digit DMM Bench
meter
purple & blue paper: -
Christmas presents wrapped (workbench doubles as a Christmas Present
wrapping table!
Mr. Bill finally removed our old, noisy, 10 year old
well-pump/motor from the south (domestic) well and replaced it
with a NEW pump/motor (and a new, fiberglass 'drip-house' so it doesn't
get wet in the rain(s)... ... ... Turns our our inability to
get a 'reasonable' volume of water out of this well wasn't all
the pump's fault.
I've installed a vacuum-gauge on the suction side of the pump (between
the pump-suction and the well-head) and we're sucking up about 27inches
of vacuum when the pump's running which is at least twice what it
should be. So the well is pretty dead-meat as wells go.
- Had Mr. Syd Jones come out and twiddle with the well a bit (acid and
'shooting' (don't ask)) and it's better now than it was, but he
turned-up the pressure and a hose blew-off while Mr. Bill was in
Brooksville (fire-fighter-training(again, don't ask)),
and Ms. May wasn't too pleased about not have shower-water (but -
of course, Mr. Bill had programmed the blown-off hose to wait until Ms.
Wong was all soaped-up!!!).
Now, here, it is VERY APPROPRIATE for Mr. Bill to mention that Ms. May
(in her soapy-condition) found Mr. Bill's house-based-tool-bag, the
right nut-driver, and re-installed the hose and made it work - all
without her huggly-hubby's support (as we was (as previously noted) in
Brooksville in Training)... - So Ms. May is to be given great accolades at having achieved
this feat of engineering.
We KNEW she had it in her - this was just a 'test'...
So - Sometime early in the new year (2005) we'll have to have a
new well.. - ugh - another bit of dollars down the proverbial drain...
... ...
In dis-assembling the old two-stage pump he found a couple of impellers
(about 4 5/8" (115mm) in diameter, and for want of
something better to spend his time doing - he decided to model it in
Rhino3D (http://www.rhino3d.com) - which he's been working with, now
for just over a year... - ANYWAY - he'll model the same thing in
something else later (probably AutoDesk Inventor) when he gets the
chance... - but here it is
- the 'inside' of the 'vanes' (near the hub/shaft) isn't quite right in
the model, but we'll have to work on that (something to look forward
to, for the future - keep me out of trouble!)
last updated: from home-Stuart;
Wednesday 15 December 2004 @ 09:02 edt-USA
