Mist on the field...

Mist on the field...  I took the photo at right (click to embiggen) just a few minutes ago, standing under our pine trees and looking to the southwest, over our south field.  We had a little bit of rain this morning (maybe a quarter inch), and it's 100% relative humidity.  When the rain stopped, the water that had soaked into the top inch or so of relatively warm soil started to evaporate – but in the high humidity and colder air just above the soil, it quickly condensed back out to make this “fog” swirling above the field.  We see this general thing quite often here...

“To infinity and beyond!”

“To infinity and beyond!”  Diane and Bill Oblock have retired – great for them, tragic for us.  Why?  Because they owned our favorite local bakery (Crumb Brothers), and now they're closed.  Here's the statement they left on their web site:

Dear Friends,

We have recently announced the closing of Crumb Brothers Artisan Bread and Cafe effective March 28.

With respect to the 13 wonderful years at Crumb Brothers, plus our great fortune to share our love of food and books with the community since 1988, we are ready to close our last chapter as business owners. We remain passionate about our love of good food, great books and fine company. But we are now committed to turning our passions toward a more private domain and relishing often-neglected relationships with friends and family.

We have bought the proverbial sailboat to set off on new adventures. Only our sailboat is a new (wonderful) SUV and our adventures largely land-based! Mostly we are retiring from business in order to: stay home, travel a bit, enjoy friends, relish this community and look for new ways to express our commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.

We cannot thank you all enough for supporting us in our business ventures. We love this community. Now onto the next chapter...

"To Infinity and Beyond."

Love,
Diane and Bill

We have no idea where we'll get our gluten fix from now on.  No more wonderful bread, nor pear Danish, or Croque Monsieur.  Pardon me while I resume my crying jag...

Drill press and table saw...

Drill press and table saw ... now with photos!  At right is my drill press, all assembled, placed, aligned, calibrated, and tested.  It's a variable speed machine (250 - 3,000 RPM) that uses a variable diameter pulley for speed adjustment.  On low speeds that means more torque, which is exactly what I'll need for large holes in hardwood.

The table saw (at left) is also a very nice piece of machinery.  It's a long, long way from the 10" Craftsman saw that a friend and I owned back in the '70s.  Note the very wide table (55" on the right) that lets me cut the full width of a sheet of plywood or MDF, the solid steel tubing to connect the dust collection vacuum hose to the blade guard, and the outfeed table to hold longer pieces of work cut lengthwise.  I've only made a few test cuts so far, but it's easy to tell that I'm going to enjoy using this thing.  It's got a 3 HP motor, which is quite large for such a relatively small saw – it's hard to imagine what I could do to stall the blade.

There are a couple of features that really stood out to me, aside from the generally good build and finish.  One is the fence (far right).  It moves smooth as silk when you raise the red handle, then locks solidly in place when you push the handle down – without moving at all.  None of that takes much force.  Then note the two magnified cursors (one for work to the left of the fence, one for work on the right).  The fence can be used on either side of the blade, thanks to the very long fence rails.  Then (at near right) there's the blade guard.  It's made from several pieces of molded polycarbonate (shatter resistant) all cleverly hinged to keep the blade area enclosed as much as possible – no matter what the thickness of the work or the height of the blade is.  It's ever so much better than the cheap single piece of soft plastic used on that old Craftsman...

Developer survey...

Developer survey...  Doug S. (friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything) sent me a pointer to an interesting survey by StackOverflow.  It's full of interesting tidbits.  The one shown at right was the biggest surprise for me: 42% of all developers responding said they were self-taught!  I've known quite a few developer who were, like myself, self-taught – but it's certainly not two fifths of them.  It's probably more like a tenth.  This makes me wonder what's going on here.  Is my personal experience at odds with norms?  Or is the StackOverflow site more used by self-educated developers?

Something I found amusing: the most dreaded language or technology was Salesforce.com...

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  Lot of stuff happening yesterday – I was busy all day, and very tired by the end of the day :)  The remaining parts for my table saw showed up, and I finished assembling it.  It's now all ready to go to work!  My drill press also was delivered yesterday, and I assembled that as well.  It came as a kit, but the head (the big part on top with the motor on it) was mostly assembled.  That thing weighs about 250 lbs, and was way too heavy for me to lift by myself – so I used the forklift on my tractor again.  I lashing it up to the forks with ropes, then just hoisted it up and dropped it onto the column.  I'm really starting to like hydraulics :)

When you need to bang on something, it's really hard to beat an old-fashioned anvil.  I got a 165 pound steel anvil (Ridgid) with a machined flat top, much like the one shown at left.  It came by truck on the smallest pallet I've ever seen – so small that I couldn't get both forks under it at the same time, even when they were adjusted to be touching each other!  I got it into the shop by balancing it delicately on one forklift fork.

Shortly after I set it down, some of my neighbor's kids came over, wanting to look at the barn.  They're fascinated by the machinery, and stop by two or three times a week to see how things are coming along.  Yesterday, though, it was the anvil that captured their attention.  I showed them how you can flatten a piece of copper wire on the anvil, and for the next two hours, three of them took turns flattening every piece of scrap copper wire they could find lying on my barn floor (this is all left over from the still-in-progress wiring work).  None of them could wield even my smallest hammer in one hand, even though the oldest boy looks plenty strong enough.  I think they just don't have much experience with hand tools...