joshua keroes

The electricians will need access into the walls to wire 240v. The new power wires will have to run up from the panel, horizontally over the ceiling (in the garage’s attic), and down the final wall. From there, I mine as well send some more power down to the basement – we can refinish that in a year or three. Anyway, for the task at hand, getting power into the garage for big table saws and welders, I needed to remove some sheetrock and provide access into the wall.

Task one: find the studs. If we remove the sheetrock over the studs, it should be easier to replace them later. No need to buy more rock, cut it to fit, and mud it back up. That’s the theory anyway.

Finding the studs on the panel was easy: they sit on each side of it. That’s a little bit surprising, because the panel’s narrower than the typical 18″ stud gap. Finding the studs in the second wall was harder. My cheap electric stud finder gave unpredictable results. There were a few preexisting holes. I could push a screwdriver into each hole, but not in between the holes. Maybe the holes were on each side of the stud which was sort of confirmed by the audio tap test. And 18″ from that it sounds… less hollow. More poking and I think I’ve found our studs.

Task two: remove sheetrock. Over the panel, I used hammer and chisel. Results were decent. Found two screws along the cuts and removed them. Easy removal!

The other wall I did two ways: knife/drywall saw/knife; the knife to cut the paperboard facing on each side. This method took about 45 minutes to work a 4′ line. It’s a lot of work but it doesn’t aerosolize the drywall into freefloaing particulate dust. With another 12 feet of cutting to do, I gave up, grabbed the circular saw, respirator, goggles, and finished the main cuts in three minutes. And had dust on everything and in the air. A few fans cleared the air in 30 minutes though. Not too bad…

These panels didn’t want to come off. After poking around, looking for screws, I had an idea: magnet. Kitchen magnet wasn’t strong enough. But I have a stronger one. In a dead hard drive. The magnets sit around the arm. Pulled the pair of magnets out and wow, these things are ridiculously strong! An hour later, every screw was in the trash. A few stray nails; too. Done.

Removed the sheetrock and… and now I know why my stud finder was behaving so erratically – there aren’t any studs right below the rock – it’s all plywood.

Another contractor arrives on Wednesday to give me a quote on the work.

Rich’s List aka the tttt.pdf lists all the different places to buy various Teardrop parts – everything from Aluminum and Axles to Vents and Wheels. Among those, they list different sets of plans. Previously, I ran through the free Generic Benroy plans. Since then, I’ve spent $60 on the Rich’s highest recommendation, Kuffel Creek’s plans, specifically for a 4×10′ Comet trailer.

The Kuffel Creek 10′ Comet on the playa

Seems like a good purchase. Kuffel Creek’s plans include both tool and material lists. The free plans didn’t have these, so I’d have to compile on my own. Better yet, the materials lists are divided into sections. You start by ordering the axle and windows. In their words, “Order the axle now, as the lead-time on it will determine when you can start the rest of the trailer.” Smart. Then there’s the trailer parts section. The deck materials. Each one is a decent length so the builder doesn’t get overwhelmed.

I might use a few ideas from the free plans – combining the best of both. The electricals from the Benroy plans were well-explained.

This weekend, the Memorial Day sales were out in force, so we stopped by Harbor Freight and picked up $144 worth of parts and tools. New:

• Air angle grinder
• Air die grinder (with wire wheel for cleaning up/removing rust from steel)
• Air shears, to zip through the aluminum
• 2 saw horses
• Wheeled trailer jack so the trailer will set level when not being towed
• Spare wheel holder. Don’t want to get caught with a blow out in Nowheretown, USA
• 4 pipe clamps, used when assembling the trailer sides

There are a few tools I’m hoping to do without (table saw w/ dado blade, router, jointer, biscuit or dowel jig. While the plans are pretty excited about building flush-face cabinets and closets, I’m hoping to avoid that; saving time, labor, and money. Portland is the lucky home of the Rebuilding Center, where house parts go to sleep before being repurchased and repurposed. You could probably build an entire house from their floor, using recycled wood beams, windows, doors, sinks, lights, all manner of fixtures… pretty much everything except the water heater and furnace. Never seen those there.

We walked through six aisles of recycled kitchen cabinets and vanities. A few of the bathroom vanities with smaller drawers look like they’d work perfectly. One was $50, the other: $60. Didn’t find any shallow sinks. I’d like one about about 6″ deep. Could buy a full-depth one, grind off the bottom, and weld it back together a little shallower. I think I’ll find a better solution before we get that far along.

Almost forgot! Tad gifted us close to 200 pounds of scrap steel. The previous owners of his garage just left it lying there. Half is small plate steel, up to 3/8″ thick, and the rest is angle iron. Perfect for practice.

Next: order axle, find windows, call Durabuilt to find out why my air compressor only hums.

More: patiently wait for towing kit to arrive (15 days after I ordered. Maybe etrailer.com’s not that great after all), turn metal bedframe into welder cart.

Found a factory-reconditioned A stock Hobart 187 for about 20% off. With a coupon or two, I’m getting it for $2 cheaper than their advertised price, shipped from ToolKing.com. This should make building the frame easier.

I picked this welder for a few reasons:

1. Hobart is made by Miller, one of the big welder manufacturers
2. I can get service at any Miller outpost
3. This is a 220v welder. 220s weld smoother than 110v welders. They’re smoother and easier to use.
4. It was one of the cheapest 220v welders from a brand-name out there. Read: not Harbor Freight.

ToolKing seems to do quite a lot of business selling refurb and factory-reconditioned tools; search for “toolking coupons” before you buy anything; there should be a coupon out there to save you a few bucks or get cheap shipping.

Last year at Burning Man, we slept in a small tent. Our camp had too many people for the amount of space we had. We pulled much of what we needed from the car, and parked the car on the outskirts of Black Rock City. Still, just about every day, we’d head back to the car for more supplies.Being able to pack everything we need into a trailer is a really enticing idea. No sooner had we come home then we checked out the Craigslist RV section for used camper-vans (aka class B motorhomes). These are smaller and less obnoxious than 40′ RVs. Drive out, park, sleep in the back. Nice. Problem was that the vans we liked were either 25 years old or much more than we wanted to spend.

A little more research and we saw our first teardrops. They were popularized in the 30s by magazines that printed DIY building plans.

There’s a lot to like: they’re small, they’re cute, they have living quarters in the front and a kitchen (galley) in the back, accessed by a hatchback door. You can find new ones for sale around the $5000 mark. Me, I’d like to build one. In fact, there’s a whole community of people who are repopularizing these great trailers.

Teardrop builds – in the broadest sense – are a two-stage process:

1. Build or buy steel trailer frame
2. Build wooden superstructure

Last week, I ordered a tow receiver for my car. It terminates in a 2″ square opening. Once that’s mounted, I’ll pick up the drawbar and ballhitch from Harbor Freight. They have a $20 kit that also comes with keyed locks. Towing will be a go at that point.

It’s also necessary to light up the trailer; to make the brake lights, side indicator lights, and direction signals work. http://etrailer.com is sending me both the receiver hitch and the electrical system. Of particular note, they have videos that demonstrate how to install different types of hitches on different types of cars. And the same goes for the electrical installation. Big thumbs up.

Next we need to talk trailer frames. Build or buy? Well, I’d like this project ready and done by August 1 so that we can roadtest it prior to BM, which is three weeks later. Roughly, that gives us a three month build time.

Back to the trailer. The [free] Benroy Trailer Plans call for a 5 x 8′. I have a choice of ordering one from RedTrailers.com for $635 (incl S/H) or driving out to a trailer retrailer in the area. More when I find out how much it costs to buy local.

Hello, my name is Joshua Keroes. If your last name is Keroes, too, drop me a line. Given my first name and this domain, you can probably guess where to send email.

If you’d like an email address at this domain, like davenull@keroes.com, that’s quite easy for me to set up so that email sent here will forward to your current mailbox. I like doing it that way for a few reasons:

1. you probably won’t need to change anything on your end
2. both your old and the new email addresses will Just Work
3. you won’t have to contact everybody you know to let them know about the new email address
4. I don’t need to put aside disk space to hold your mail
5. on my end, this setup has minimal tech support requirements and frankly, I’d rather be out and about then fixing someone else’s computer.

Hope to hear from you!

Got a real graphics editor!

This version of the Puzzle Pirates add-on replaces the stock carp pieces with Zebrawood, Sabele, Teak, and Tigerwood; all woods with a nice visible grain. I dropped the blue line that was present in the earlier versions. It was good as a proof-of-concept but well, how many trees grow with blue lines down the middle? … it took away from the game. This new release is more in the spirit of the game.

Download and install High Contrast Carp 1.0 [ OSX | Windows ]

I play Puzzle Pirates in my spare time. Carpentry is one of the games they offer. Carp is a free-form shape-fitting puzzle similar to Tetris. One way to get a high score is to place all the pieces with the grain laid out horizontally… problem is, it’s difficult to see the grain while playing. Thus was this small hack was born.

Here’s the before and after:

Want to try it out? Download High Contrast Carp tweak 0.2

…just bad news.

/var/log/system.log boot snippet [formatted for brevity]. Note the times:

May 22 16:40:41 popkin configd[56]: setting hostname to "popkin.eli.net"
May 22 16:40:50 popkin configd[56]: target=enable-network: disabled
May 22 16:51:07 popkin kernel[0]: ATY,RockHopper2_A: vram [9c000000:02000000]
May 22 16:51:08 popkin /System/.../loginwindow: Login Window Application Started

See that 10+ minute pause? Appears to be either network or vram-related. Since the bug is reproducible both with and without the network cable connected, it’s not the network. Plugging the machine into an ancient Tektronix monitor resolved the lengthy startup.

This is a 1.25GHz MacMini with a fresh install of OSX 10.4.6 on a brand new harddrive. The Viewsonic monitor is a 15″ or 17″ Viewsonic G773, model number VCDTS21543-3M. The only items plugged in are an Apple keyboard and a Microsoft wireless optical mouse.

Bug submitted to BugReport.apple.com.

Mom went in to the clinic yesterday to have a blackberry-sized cyst removed from behind her eye. The doctors had six hours blocked out for the operation but needed only two to get through it; always a good sign.

We went down an hour later to find Mom in the post-op recovery room where two patients reclined on portable beds and a bevy of nurses ran around taking care of everyone. Mom was groggy and had a huge headache. The nurses were giving her plenty of codeine for the headache. Right eye had bruising and was swelled shut. She was otherwise doing well.

Today we headed over around noon to find her chipper and awake. Below you’ll find a picture form this visit, looking beautiful as always. Left her with my iPod and some headphones to drone out the recovery room’s noise.

It’s 5pm now, she was just moved into her own private room, where she’ll finally be able to get some well-deserved sleep. Nurses believe she’ll stay in that room through the weekend; four more days at least.

I helped organize Portland’s Lindy Exchange, a three day event filled with jazz, blues, and swing dancing from 7pm through 7am. Here are a few pictures of me at the Sunday, March 3rd event with Art Abrams at the Crystal Ballroom, making some announcements to our guests. Click on the pictures to see them larger.