Busy week around the house.

First, the surveyor arrived on Tuesday and staked out our property line.

It was warm that day and when Charlie got home from daycare he helped me water the garden, then played with the hose. His favorite outdoor activity! (Compare to the same week last year.) He was also pretty busy with his wheelbarrow later that day and the next morning.

Wednesday the fence crew arrived and started replacing the fence.

A couple hours later the sump guys came to install the sump and dry well. I was amazed that they knocked everything out in just three hours.

Thursday and Friday Charlie was home from daycare. It breaks my heart to have to work while he is home, because he notices that I’m not paying attention to him. I did get to spend some quality time with him after work to go get ice cream and take him on a little bike ride along the Old Croton Aqueduct before picking up dinner.

Later he acted like he was typing on a computer and pretended to ignore us. Gutted me.

Despite all the distractions, I was able to get through my to-do list at work this week, but it was challenging for sure.

Saturday I cut down a tree limb that was already cracked because I didn’t want it to fall on the new fence. I also spent a couple hours replacing the vinyl trellis under our porch with wood.

Saturday night we learned the hard way that our sewer is clogged. It backed up into the utility tub in the basement. Thankfully we caught it early. I thought it was just that sink plugged at first and spent a while trying to snake it, until I saw more bubbling up when I heard water running upstairs. I was not excited to realize that I was elbow deep in shit water 🤢

A plumber came the next morning and cleared the blockage pretty quickly. We got lucky because the blockage was in the house trap/U trap rather than something worse like tree roots in the front yard. At least I learned how the U trap works, where the clean out caps are, and saw the plumber (a nice guy named Mike who works for Sewer Heros) use a 6ft toilet auger to clear the blockage. It looks like Harbor Freight has one, so I’ll pick one up next time I’m over that way.

Sunday we did a lot of yard work to get ready for a Memorial Day party. We hope the newly forecasted rain holds out.

Charlie had a lot of fun helping us wash the outdoor furniture. He is the keeper of the hose. He also helped me push the lawn mower for a while.

My friend Jon stopped by for a short visit to check out my workshop upgrades, the fence, and the sump.

The fence is coming along nicely. We gained a few feet inside the fence since the old fence wasn’t on the line. The yard feels bigger! Should be wrapped up sometime next week if the weather is nice.

Short one this week. I’ve tried to write this a couple times, but keep running out of time.

Look at the determination ⚾

Amanda and I started doing lunch dates out once a week while Charlie is at daycare since sitters are hard to get, and it has been great. We never have to make a reservation, we don’t have to worry about a sitter, and the company is still great.

Ups and downs with the garden. The radishes came in great, but something ate every single tomato and tomatillo plant we started from seed. I guess we’ll need to go buy some plants this week.

The griddle insert on the grill continues to get regular use.

Bike rides and walks with Charlie down by the Hudson. Some days you’ve got to run him until bedtime.

It was a tough week on the potty training front. Lots of poop accidents. Thankfully we are seeing signs of improvement yesterday and today.

I made some falernum and pizza on Friday. These two don’t go together except that I made them at the same time. This was the first pizza in the cast iron casserole pan. There will be more in the future! The dough was tasty, but I want it crispier on the bottom, which takes time and better oil distribution. Amanda wants it cheesier and less done.

The falernum is much better than the standard John Taylor’s Velvet Falernum. Notes here.

Mowed the lawn and got out the deck furniture Saturday morning, then attended two parties that afternoon. We are getting too old to do two parties back-to-back with a toddler.

I got some workshop time in on Sunday. I made more French cleat tool holders (screw drivers, C-clamps, planes, and hand saws), then drilled holes in my bench for the holdfasts. Next up is making bench dogs.

That’s about a wrap for French cleat tool holders I needed to make. I still need to make some for Shopsmith attachments, but I don’t know what I want to do with them yet. With these I’ve been able to clear off the bench, which was the goal.

Full detail post on the French cleats coming soon.

Charlie played outside while I worked in the shop.

Potty training update: We kept Charlie home for four days, then he went back to daycare on Tuesday. Overall he has the gist of it and we are very proud of him. The next thing we are working through is that he sometimes doesn’t want to stop playing, so he has accidents. We keep reminding ourselves that it has only been 10 days since we started and he has been 90% of the way there since day 4, and the remaining 10% will just take some time.

One thing we didn’t expect is how grumpy Charlie would be this week. Regularly being reminded at home and at daycare to stop and try to potty after being able to go anywhere and any time you want must be very frustrating. Any time we’ve tried to direct him or make a suggestion on anything, we’re met with a lot of resistance. I get it little man, it is tough being told what to do.

A Charlie highlight unrelated to potty from the week is that he is now comfortable going out and playing in the backyard while we are in the house (keeping a partial eye on him through the window). He is also climbing the rocks in the woods while we stand down on the path. He is getting a lot more independent!

We needed to get out and burn some energy Saturday afternoon, so Charlie rode his bike around Depew Park and then played at the playground. He loved it, especially stopping at the STOP signs and asking what the other ones meant. We are big into signs right now.

Lots of yard work on Saturday:

• Mowed the grass
• Trimmed the edges with the battery-powered weed eater. So nice to grab it and put a battery in vs messing around with gas and starter fluid.
• Planted the seeds we started in the garden beds. Honestly mediocre to poor seedlings, so we’ll see how they do.
• Direct sowed new seeds in certain spots.
• Added more dirt to the potatoes.
• Got out the hoses and hooked them up.
• Moved half of the dirt pile from the sandbox.

You can just get up and make garlic aioli whenever you want. It is delicious and no one will stop you.

I’m liking LLAMA3. I run it locally using https://ollama.com/ and interface with it on the command line. Not quite good enough to cancel my OpenAI subscription, but it is nice to have a fast free alternative.

I’d love to run this on my home server and put it behind a login so I can use it, but I don’t think the FreedomBox could handle it. I need to keep use cases like that in mind for future setups.

Now that summer is around the corner, time to start thinking about making another batch of falernum, orgeat, and allspice dram.

I have some recipes picked out, but need the time to make them. Perhaps one night this coming week.

Our friends Colin and Hayden had us over for dinner on Friday. It was nice to catch up with them. It is always nice when friends without kids have no qualms about having us over, knowing full well that kids are unpredictable.

Update to my first aid kits: I got these little containers on Amazon (stickers included!) and put together a set for my backpack, Amanda’s bag, the car, and the emergency box. Each includes:

• Advil
• Aspirin
• Tylenol
• Dayquil
• Allegra
• Pepto Bismol tablets
• Pepcid
• Gaviscon

Here is a photo I took before I finished putting them together and labeling.

Almost time to start making cold brew again. I still drink hot coffee in the mornings, but in the afternoons cold coffee is nice.

Have you noticed that Twitter basically stopped showing external links in the “For you” feed? What bullshit. Not my social web.

Speaking of, I’ve had all social apps off of my phone again for the last couple weeks. Only using them on my computer right now. Highly recommended.

The big thing this week is potty training round two. Charlie is a champ and making good progress, but we are all worn out and a bit stressed. I took naps twice this weekend, which is big because I almost never nap unless I am sick.

Despite the protests, each day is better than the last. We just finished day three, and decided to keep him home from daycare tomorrow to get some more wins and make this our new normal before introducing another transition.

We are proud of Charlie, though we are frazzled and ready to get back to normal. Human emotions are complex, so it can be both.

We finished the sandbox this week! Separate post coming soon, but Charlie loves it.

I also finished Charlie’s baseball bat this week. Separate post coming for that as well. Trying to put out smaller project posts more frequently, too.

I made a new-to-us blended tiki drink this week, the Coconaut. Dark Jamaican rum, Coco Lopez, and lime juice, blended with ice. It was good, but I prefer the Angostura Colada (I just didn’t have pineapple juice on-hand.)

Played with a Flipper Zero a little this week, and looking forward to doing more with it. Flashed it with the Momentum firmware and added a bunch of assets from UberGuido.

Mowing season is upon us. I really like having a battery powered mower. Not having to deal with gas, oil, and pulling a cord to start mowing makes a big difference. Much quieter, too. I hate getting the gas-powered weedeater out, so I decided to get a battery powered one as well. I put it together just before a rainstorm hit, so I’ll probably get it out when I mow this week.

We have firm dates set for the fence replacement and sump installation 🙌

Next: Radon abatement.

I did a bit of clean up and maintenance in the workshop while Charlie napped today:

• Paste wax on the Shopsmith carriage
• Paste wax on saw tables (didn’t get to the planer tables, but that is next)
• Cleaned off the green cabinet and put the bolt drawers up there
• Fixed the lock on the green cabinet (used more as a latch than a lock)
• Put a couple things in the rafters
• Made a french cleat for the saw blades
• Vacuumed

It is a lot easier to go out and start a new project when things are clean, organized, and maintained.

I used to think it was incredible that my Dad could look at some threads for a missing bolt then go rummage around in some drawers full of bolts for a couple minutes and come back with one that fits. Now I’m getting there, too. It is a function of having the bolts and working on enough stuff to recognize what you need. The lock I fixed was missing a bolt, but I rummaged around and found one that fit, and when it was a bit too long I added a couple washers. Works just fine.

Amanda likes to say that my Dad, Charlie, and I all have the same natural curiosity about how things work and interest in tinkering. Charlie surprised me by grabbing parts of the weedeater and figuring out pretty quickly (and with no input from me) where they go. He doesn’t have the dexterity or strength to put them together, but he has the right idea.

New ice cream place opened in Peekskill this week. We had to check it out.

My allergies are surprisingly mild this year, despite it being a pretty rough pollen season. I haven’t had to take allergy medicine yet. Only two things I know of have changed: I started taking probiotics and spirulina daily. There haven’t been wide enough trials to show a positive link with spirulina, but there is a positive link with probiotics, in particular ones that contain Bifidobacterium longum and Lactobacillus gasseri strains (the probiotics I take include those.)

I’ll take it! I’ve suffered from seasonal allergies a lot in the last 20 years and it is a literal breath of fresh air to not suffer this year.

Until next week ☕

Nice spring weather this week. We enjoyed it by taking walks in the woods.

I was mostly recovered from strep by Wednesday, which was good because Amanda was in Austin for work from Wednesday morning to Friday night.

Charlie and I spent Wednesday and Thursday evenings at playgrounds, then on Friday we went to Home Depot and got some soil and planted potatoes.

Charlie has been refusing all medication, even if he feels super sick and really needs it. We have to dupe him by mixing liquid medications into either yogurt or gatorade. Thankfully he hasn’t caught on yet. I hope by the time he does he can be reasoned with a bit more.

Which books still pop into your head at least once a month, even if you read them years ago?

For me:

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
• Daemon by Daniel Suarez
• The Founding Fish by John McPhee

These might not be my all-time top picks, but I can’t get them out of my head.

We went to dinner on Friday with one of our high school teachers, Chas Deremer, and his family. It was nice to catch up, and now that we are adults with a child of our own, we have much more in common with him and his wife than high school Chuck and Amanda could have realized.

We spent most of Saturday and Sunday building some stuff for Charlie in the backyard: A mud kitchen and a sandbox. Not ready to share photos yet, but everything is coming along nicely. We’ll finish the sandbox on Monday or Tuesday and put the finishing touches on the mud kitchen next weekend.

I made a circle cutting jig for the bandsaw to cut nice circles. Burners for the mud kitchen stove.

Charlie is showing some interest in baseball, so I decided to turn a small bat for him. Started tball bats are roughly 24″ long, 13-16oz, and 1.9″ in diameter. I turned down a piece of 4×4 pine to roughly 2″, which I need to finish shaping one night this week. I know bats are usually made from ash, but I don’t think I’d get down to 13oz with a hardwood, and he’ll start using softer baseballs anyway. I’ll make a bigger one out of ash in a few years.

More on the carbonation front: I carbonated a 1944 recipe mai tai. Very good, though didn’t hold the carbonation when I added ice. Some ways to try and remedy that:

• Triple carbonation over the course of 2-3 hours.
• Get the drink as cold as possible before each carbonation. Aim for 20F.
• Clarifying the drink? Not really worth the hassle, IMO.

Grilling more again is nice! I got my first sunburn of the year today.

I’m writing this while recovering from strep, which I also got last year. Probably the same source (Charlie via daycare.) Hopefully the antibiotics kick it quickly. I’ve avoided the worst of it by catching it early. Both Charlie and I had two days of being properly sick, then back on the upswing.

It put a damper on my weekend plans. Was hoping to get some yard work done and drill the bench dog holes in my workbench. I did get some reading done, though. Still reading Children of Time.

Before my energy totally crashed on Saturday and I had to admit to myself that I was sick, I cleaned up an old Craftsman scroll saw, lubricated the arm, replaced the blade, figured out the tensioning, and got it running. It will be nice to use that to make tighter turns than I can make on the bandsaw.

Would a whole grilled duck be good? 🤔 Perhaps spatchcocked like a chicken.

I should listen to more Titus Andronicus.

Further carbonation adventures:

• I overcarbonated some imperial cider I brewed. Every drink let off way too much carbonation and it foamed too much in the mouth. Next time I’ll try less. I did ~50PSI and about a minute of shaking. Next time ~35PSI and 30-45s of shaking.
• I carbonated a standard negroni to share with the folks at Benny’s Brown Bag. It came out quite nice. Also ~50PSI, and two rounds of carbonating since I decanted it into a glass swing top bottle for sharing.

Two upcoming woodworking projects:

1. Sawbenches, similar to these: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2014/12/07/have-a-party-build-a-sawbench/
2. A wooden tball bat for Charlie. After some research, I think it should be ~24″ long and 13oz. Still trying to decide which wood to use.

FreedomBox server updates:

• I installed Kiwix and downloaded the entirety of Project Gutenberg (~80GB) to add. It worked great, but now the server crashes around midnight each night, which is when updates and backups run, so I’m trying to exclude Kiwix from the backups to see if that solves it.
• I have email running on the box now! It took a while to get the correct ports forwarding and DNS records set up, but it works! Got my first DMARC report the next morning.

House project updates:

• Fence contractor is secured, materials ordered, proposal signed. I couldn’t find two critical pins with my metal detector and survey, so a surveyor is coming out to stake the lot lines.
• Sump pump installation proposal signed, too. Should happen within the next month, which should help with the basement flooding.

Things are moving forward.

I made some Matzo Ball Soup on Sunday for the first time. Fitting, because it was cold, it is Passover, and I wasn’t feeling well. It was good, though I think I still prefer chicken noodle soup.

We were able to spend some lunches and pre-dinners on the porch. Amanda took a moment to press some of the violets in our yard. Charlie enjoyed looking up at the sky.

I didn’t take many photos this week. The sickness and rain really put a damper on things. But two more photos for fun: Charlie and Amanda explored the football field and track while I was sick. And before I was sick Charlie and I were silly at the dinner table.

I didn’t write last week because I was out of town. Here is a recap of the last two weeks.

As I wrote about in the last post, my Mom was here to visit and watch Charlie since he had the week off (daycare closed for spring break) and we still had to work. It was a rainy week, but Charlie and Grandma made the most of it.

That Saturday we drove to Ohio to take Grandma home and to witness the eclipse in the totality path. Charlie had a blast playing at my parents’ house. The eclipse was incredible, well worth the trip. It didn’t get as dark as I expected, it was more like twilight. Something I’m probably (hopefully!) going to remember for the rest of my life. It was nice to get some family time, too.

The day after the eclipse we took a drive down to Holmes County (Amish country) to visit Colonial Homestead, a hand tool store owned and operated by Dan Raber. They have probably the best collection of traditional hand tools in the midwest, if not all of the United States. Dan is knowledgable, helpful, and friendly. I bought some holdfasts made by a local blacksmith, a Millers Falls low angle block plane, a large gouge, and The Guide to Woodworking with Kids by Doug Stowe.

Dan said he works with local schools to assemble sets of hand tools and kid-sized benches for their sloyd classes. They start in 2nd grade! Inspiring.

Dan had copies of Emmet van Driesche‘s Greenwood Spoon Carving and had read Emmet’s other book, Carving out a Living on the Land. Emmet is a friend of mine, so it was cool to see his book there.

I’m intrigued by these axes and this is a reminder to myself that I need to look them up in Eric Sloane’s A Museum of Early American Tools. I also liked these smaller benches with removable legs and plan to build one with a 3″ thick oak board. Perhaps with two sets of legs, one longer and one shorter.

We also went to the Guggisberg cheese factory and Lehman’s Hardware, where I got a 9×13 cast iron pan. I think it will make great pizza and focaccia.

It was plowing time in Amish country. So many teams of horses out plowing the fields. Cool to see. It was also a beautiful warm day, and every Amish schoolhouse we drove by (we took the back roads) had the yards filled with children enjoying the sun. Lots of baseball games happening, too.

I took the opportunity while we were at my parents’ house to back up my pre-2008 digital photo library. Everything post-2008 was already backed up on a drive I have in NY, but I was missing pre-2008. Glad I got it before that computer crashed (one of the original Intel-based iMacs). I also found my old OPML of circa-2007 blog feed subscriptions.

We drove back home on Wednesday. I’m thankful that Charlie is a pretty good traveler. Most of the credit for that goes to Amanda, who sits with him in the back set on longer trips to keep him company.

Hectic catch up days at work on Thursday and Friday, then a birthday party for one of Charlie’s friends on Friday evening. Afterward we got dinner with some friends and kept the kids out later than we should have, but they had a good time.

Signs of spring in the yard:

Not pictured: The peonies, rhubarb, and lilac producing buds!

This week a friend sent me a photo of a swing set he just built for his kids from my plans. There are now 5 of these in existence in 4 US states. It makes me so happy to know there are lots of kids enjoying them.

Saturday morning was gymnastics, then I felt motivated to do some cooking. I made two kinds of tomatillo salsa (avocado salsa verde and tomatillo arbol chile salsa), refried beans from scratch, and chicken fajitas.

Later I put a new gauge and washers on a CO2 regulator and tried my hand at carbonating various liquids: Water, grapefruit juice, and margaritas. While we were in Ohio I mentioned off-hand to my Dad that I was thinking about getting a CO2 tank to force carbonate things (you can only do water in a SodaStream… anything else ends up in a huge mess, which I know from firsthand experience), and it turns out he had a 5lb tank in the garage that someone he knew was getting rid of, and it just needed a new gauge for the regulator. Thanks, Dad!

I’m still getting the hang of how to carbonate different liquids and what PSI works best for water vs juice vs cocktails, but I’m excited to sip fizzy cocktails on the porch this summer, and maybe even fizzy cold brew coffee.

It took me two tries to get the water carbonated how we like it (halfway between regular seltzer and Hal’s). The grapefruit juice was fun because it had a softer, almost velvety mouthfeel. Smaller carbonation bubbles compared to water. The test margarita was tasty, though I prefer it without ice, as pouring it over ice immediately released the carbonation. Perhaps I need to slowly add the ice after pouring? We’ll see.

Sunday Charlie slept in much later than usual, then woke up sick. He had a fever most of the day and just wanted to snuggle with one of us on the couch for most of the day. I took the morning shift while Amanda went horseback riding, then after lunch I worked outside for a while. I repurposed (planed and cut) old lumber to make a mud kitchen for Charlie, which we’ll assemble next weekend. Then I made three new french cleat holders: First aid kit + paper towel holder, squares holder, and jig saw holder.

By the time I was wrapping up, I was more tired than usual and started to get a headache. Amanda felt the same way, so we are probably getting whatever Charlie has. Yikes. I decided to muster the rest of my energy and go to the grocery store to stock up in case we all wake up with fevers tomorrow. Let’s hope we don’t.

Going to be a shorter post tonight. I’m tired from a day of shoveling compost and dirt to finish the garden beds project. We ended the day by sowing peas, radishes, spinach, and cilantro.

Check out how nice our compost looks! The compost bins were one of our early pandemic projects. I’ve already used it all once and started fresh, so this batch is made up of grass/leaves/kitchen scraps between 6 months and 2 years old.

My Mom is here to visit for the week. (Hi, Mom!) Charlie’s daycare is on spring break (matches up with the local schools), so she is hanging out with Charlie while Amanda and I work. (Thank you, Mom! We really appreciate it!)

I put those notes to Mom above because I guarantee she’ll see them. She holds the top number of comments on this blog by a wide margin.

Charlie and I picked her up at White Plains airport, and there is a little observation area on the third floor outside of security, so we got to watch her plane come in. Charlie loved it.

We did an Easter Egg hunt with Charlie this morning. He loved that, too.

We’ve been enjoying the longer days and warmer weather. Lots of wood walks, and Charlie is starting to venture further from the paths to climb the big rocks and to throw smaller ones in the creek. I have a feeling this is going to be Charlie’s Summer ™️.

The Forsythias are starting to bloom! My favorite.

Trying out a new watering solution in the garden this year. The past two years I used wick irrigation (see 1 and 2), but this year I want to try using Ollas. I’m hoping to cut down on the issues I had with wick irrigation (mosquitos in the open buckets, wicks drying out, too much air evaporation.)

I didn’t want to buy them, so I took an chipped terra cotta pot and siliconed a saucer in it. Letting it dry overnight tonight. As long as it proves to be waterproof, I’ll bury it and fill it from the small hole in the top. (And make 5 more)

The general idea is that terra cotta is porous, so water will dissipate out into the soil when the soil is dry.

I did our taxes this week. Got the car cleaned and house cleaned. Did lots of laundry. Charlie got a haircut.

I noticed while driving on Saturday that it was possible to identify large swaths of maple trees in forested land because they are budding out and look red while everything else is still brown. I wonder if any mapping companies are using things like that to build forest datasets? You of course can’t tell the particular species that way, but knowing general percentages of types of trees might be useful.

There was a point in college where I thought seriously about going down the biohacking route. I was tracking lots of different things for a year and a half. I eventually stopped because going to the next level would have required constant monitoring of what I ate and how I exercised, tons of spreadsheets and research, and lots of time getting labs done. I’d rather skip all that and fill it with more fulfilling things than spend all that time on stuff I hate just to eke out 5 more years at the end. I guess if that is something that brings you fulfillment than it is a win/win, but it isn’t for me.

Home server update for the week:

• I have Syncthing running (basically Dropbox without Dropbox – syncs files from designated directories between multiple computers/servers)
  • This required 3x the time I expected and reminded me how much elbow grease you need to get things to work on Linux (Debian in this case.) Even things I thought would be simple like reformatting a drive to get it to mount turned into hour-long ordeals.
    • Sorry, Richard, I meant to write GNU/Linux.
• Daily, weekly, and monthly backups are enabled. They write to the same machine right now, so I need to configure external backups next.
• I downloaded every ebook we’ve ever purchased from Amazon Kindle, stripped the DRM, and put them all on the FreedomBox, which runs Calibre. I wanted to make a digital family library, much like our physical one. Now we can log in, select the book and the format we want, and Calibre will convert it on the fly and download it to our device.
• I started archiving my Likes and Bookmarks using ArchiveBox, and I set up a script to add newly saved links to the archive daily. ArchiveBox does not yet run on Debian, so for now I’m running the tool on a Mac and mirroring the archive to the FreedomBox server, available publicly here: https://grimmett.xyz/share/archivebox/
  • More to configure here, such as automating adding more sources, fine-tuning the settings, and waiting for the 0.8.0 release to unblock an issue I hit with the tool parsing JSON imports. Once resolved, I probably won’t need my scripts anymore and I’ll be able to use the built-in scheduling feature.
    • Twitter bookmarks, Mastodon bookmarks, Instagram saved posts, things I link to in my blog posts and digital garden, Are.na links

What’s next?

• Maybe setting up an email server!
• Dynamic DNS. Probably using GnuDIP.
• Adding a wifi plug so I can remotely cycle the power if the server crashes and I can’t SSH in to restart.
  • Automating this would be cool. Ping the server every 5 minutes, and if (4?) consecutive pings are bad, cycle the power. I think the only hurdle here is that my plugs don’t have an official API, but there is a community reverse-engineered project written in Python.
• Configuring an external backup solution and getting another 2TB drive to clone locally.

We’ve all been sick with a cold this week. Charlie got it first and recovered the fastest. Amanda got it next and was down Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I got it Saturday afternoon and was down most of Sunday. Hopefully I’ll recover quickly.

Thursday and Friday after work/daycare, and Saturday after dinner Charlie and I hung out a lot to give Amanda some time to rest. We went to the library to pick up some books we reserved (Charlie had some requests!), two different playgrounds, the grocery store, the riverfront walk, and an ice cream shop. Charlie’s new ice cream order is chocolate with a cherry on top. (I think he picked that one up from Trash Truck.)

One of my favorite things is toddler-led walks. He chooses the pace and where we go. I follow his lead and cues. I love how much he notices and how curious he is. Afterward at dinner he recounted to us everything we did and saw, quite accurately.

Charlie is big into helping. Here he is helping make breakfast while Amanda is on her way back from the gym.

Here he is holding some daffodils that he and Amanda cut for our mantle:

As we start the engine, so we start our days.

I’m loving the griddle we put on one half of the grill. It is nice to quickly cook some veggies while grilling some meat. Monday we did a pork tenderloin with some zucchini and squash while rice cooked inside.

I finished restoring a cutting board that was my Mamaw’s. My Dad grabbed it when they were cleaning out the house after Papaw moved in with my aunt and uncle. She’s been gone almost 11 years now.

First I had to glue some sections back together. It fell apart.

Then I sanded down the pretty deep knife cuts and general wear.

Finished with my standard beeswax + jojoba oil blend. Started using it in the kitchen the next day.

Keeping with the woodworking trend: I made more french cleat holders this week after work:

• a chisel/gouge/hook knife/carving knife holder
• measure tape holder
• Foredom rotary tool holder
• a cord holder so I don’t have to go hunting behind my Shopsmith for the cord
• clamp holder
• holder for Hand drills, push drill, and hand brace

I’m particularly excited about the Foredom being hung, because I ran the speed control pedal under the bench, so now I can just turn it on and use it rather than spend 5 mins getting it set up for a 30 second task.

I’m trying to tee projects up for myself in the workshop so I can jump on them when I have a little bit of free time. The next one is adding holes for bench dogs and holdfasts in the workbench, as well as making the bench dogs themselves.

I’m thinking a lot again about first aid kits. I’m putting one together for the workshop. I plan to write about this soon with more detail on what I have in the kit in the car, my backpack, and my workshop.

Seeds are coming along nicely. I’m now fertilizing them and have an oscillating fan on them daily to start the hardening process/prevent them from getting leggy.

We didn’t make much progress on the garden beds this week. The weather turned cold and being sick this weekend put a damper on things. We did line the bottom of the beds with the old plywood from the previous ones, plus some cardboard and sticks. Next step is shoveling in compost and dirt.

I heard back from the fence contractor, so hoping to get that project rolling soon.

I went to a friend’s birthday party on Saturday afternoon at The Vinyl Room in Beacon. Amanda and Charlie were feeling rough and had to stay home, but the cold hadn’t quite hit me yet so I went. Cool place and nice to meet some of their other friends and make new connections, like Ryan who owns an outdoor shop in Tannersville called Camp Catskill.

I bought a FreedomBox a couple months ago to dip my toe into the self-hosting world. I thought setting it up would be a whole thing, so I let it sit in the box. This weekend, since we were all sitting around with a cold, I figured I’d get it out and give it a try.

Setting it up was a lot easier than I expected. I had it up and running with less than an hour of active time (though lots of waiting for booting, updates, etc.) I have it running at https://box.grimmett.co/ and I set up some of the basic services, including a WordPress site.

It still blows my mind that visiting that address accesses a tiny little box currently sitting on the buffet in my living room.

Next step is adding some external storage, picking a more permanent location in my house, and configuring more of the services (for which I need that storage.) Then I need to figure out dynamic DNS in case my IP address changes.

I tried to connect an APFS-formatted drive today, but went down the Debian rabbit hole of having to compile my own drivers. I messed something up and ended up breaking the FreedomBox service. Thank goodness for automatic snapshots. I was able to load a previous snapshot, reboot, and get it back up and running.

Related, I finally got Backblaze back up and running, and while I was going through old drives to see what I could wipe and repurpose, I backed up my various machines and put a recent dump of photos on the photos drive.

I’m really proud that I have accessible photo backups from 16 years ago, which is when I got my first laptop. Anything before that is still on the computer at my parents’ house, and I’ll have to remember to clone that the next time I visit.

I had a nice conversation with Chris Glass over email this week.

I like Chris’s bookmarks and am slowly working on moving my bookmark archive from the past 16 years over to my digital garden.

I like the layout of Chris’s blogroll. The grouping + context is nice.

He inspired me to update my own /now page more regularly.

Jon Elordi started doing week notes! 🎉

Rough week at work. Not much I can say about it.

From last year: https://cagrimmett.com/2023/03/27/week-of-march-20-2023/

Amanda and I were sick then, too. We had strep. We also started seeds that week.

In 2022: https://cagrimmett.com/2022/03/26/week-of-march-21/

We started seeds then, too! And Charlie and I went to the same playground. Fun to see how much he has grown.

The warm weather and extra daylight at the end of the day has been a welcome change. Every night this week Amanda, Charlie, and I spent some time outside after daycare/work and before dinner. We are dinner outside multiple times this week, went for walks, cooked dinner on the grill, got our outdoor seating out, rode bikes, and played in the yard and at the playground. It was good for all of us.

Amanda found a battery-powered motorcycle for free on the Buy Nothing Facebook group, and I replaced the 6V battery and sourced a charger to get it working again. Charlie loves to cruise around on it!

I worked from Automattic’s NoHo office on Friday. I went in for a meeting, but I like going in once a month or so for a change of pace. Los Tacos 1, right around the corner, is very good. Astor Wines is also right up the block, so I usually stop in and restock on stuff I can’t find up in Westchester. This time it was orange shrubb.

I made more French cleat tool holders in the shop after work this week.

• Air nailer
• Air hose
• Router bits
• Axe and adze
• Pencil sharpener
• Clock and dust collection hose
• Draw knife and spokeshave
• Drills/drivers, bits, and charger/batteries (I also added a magnet bar for my most-used bits a couple days later)
• Files and rasps

I also made a workbench for Charlie that hangs on the French cleats so that as he grows we can just lift it up. I had my own bench in my Dad’s workshop growing up and have fond memories of the countless hours I spent out there, and I want Charlie to have the same option. I put a magnet bar up with the tools we got him for Christmas, and the old vise I had. He’s played with it a lot in the past couple days. Makes my heart happy.

I’m trying out toe spacers and one of those magnet nose bands to improve your nose breathing at night. Slowly trying to make improvements. Following up on a previous one I mentioned, the probiotics are helping quite a bit.

The seeds we started last weekend are doing great. 80% of them have sprouted already. Rosemary and the scotch bonnets are the holdouts.

This was a yardwork-focused weekend. We disassembled the 4 year old garden beds that were starting to fall apart and built new ones. Instead of elevated like the previous ones, we opted for regular ground-level raised beds so that Charlie can help more easily. Also, now that we got rid of the groundhogs, we expect fewer pest issues.

We went with 12ft beds (previously 8ft) to space things out a little more, plus and extra 4×4 box to grow some luffas in.

Yes, we know the fence is falling apart. I’m waiting on a contractor to get back to me so I can finish filing the permits with the city. Yes, I hate that we need a permit to replace a fence. No, I’m not going to go rogue because I’m pretty sure we have a neighbor that will check because another neighbor recently got fined for something similar.

Next steps: Lining the bottoms with cardboard and sticks, layering on compost and coconut coir, then shoveling the dirt back in.

I also secured Charlie’s swingset with some 24″ metal spikes driven sideways at an angle and attached them with conduit straps.

I needed to rent a UHaul to move the 2x12x12 boards and some wood lattice that I’m replacing on my deck. I originally wanted a pickup truck, van, or trailer, but neither Home Depot nor UHaul had them available. The only thing available was s 15′ box truck, so I rolled with it.

Unfortunately I had an awful experience. Their app is terrible and errors out constantly. First it didn’t show my reservation, which I finally fixed by finding a tool that helps you associate an order with your account. Then the “mobile pickup” option did not accept upload of any the photos it required. Three phone calls and hour later I finally got the truck. Drop-off/mobile return was the same headache, but only took 30 minutes.

Software and AI struggle the most where it has to interact with the physical world. The physical world is messy and does not follow clean, machine-readable rules like the computing world. We still need humans to help us navigate AFK.

At least Charlie thought the truck was cool.

That’s all I’ve got this week. See you next week 👋

p.s. if you read this regularly, drop me a note (email). I’d love to hear from you because I have little idea who actually reads these posts. I mostly write them for my future self, but I like hearing from other readers, too. Thank you in advance!

Lots of rain this week, so we did indoor activities like going to the library, going to the grocery store, and making ambulances out of boxes.

This box is still in our living room, though now Charlie calls it his “garage” and likes to hide underneath it while we walk around the house and call his name. Eventually he pops out and giggles hysterically.

We also went to gymnastics and a birthday party for one of Charlie’s friends.

Another activity was starting seeds. Charlie did the dirt scooping and watering. I’m learning from last year’s seed starting mistakes:

• more lights (shifted four bars to one shelf instead of one per)
• lights closer to the seeds (raised up the soil and heating pads)
• warmer location (basement instead of my drafty office)
• lights on a timer (sunrise to sunset)

Workshop upgrade progress report

I put in the dust collection system! It is a 2HP Harbor Freight dust collector that I took off the stand and mounted to the wall. Instead of the dust bag, which doesn’t collect fine dust, I used a canister filter, which does. Hoses run through the rafters over to my Shopsmith area and to the work bench.

I got a decent amount of karma on Reddit when I posted about my realization that deli quart containers can work as adapters on 4in hoses, blast gates, and splitters.

I also made and hung the french cleats and started building tool holders. I love how this works and am excited about it. More tool holders in progress this week.

I spent more time than I’d like last week figuring out the permitting process for Peekskill so we can get our fence replaced.

I’m slowly improving my Shortcuts actions. My Like shortcut and Bookmark shortcut are smoother and more flexible now. The same shortcut works across browsers and devices, and takes input either from the share sheet or the clipboard. I’m now posting bookmarks to my digital garden site, reducing my dependence on third party subscriptions. I need to clean up and rethink how they are displayed, but the data is there.

The next step is automating importing my are.na, Twitter, Mastodon, and Instagram bookmarks. If you do this, hit me up.

Related, it turns out consistently tagging disparate pieces of content using AI without pre-defining the tags is a non-trivial problem. Great thread from Simon Willison on this.

I’m doing very little pleasure reading right now. I’m working a lot in the workshop after Charlie goes to bed, which is when I’d normally be reading. In general, reading less doesn’t seem great, but I’m replacing it with something fulfilling and productive, which I feel good about.

Looking back at two years ago and one year ago. Charlie has grown so much in the past year! It is interesting to see how my week notes have evolved. Very work and life dependent. Also, I need to get a move on getting my weather station replaced.

Amanda and I have predictions on what is going on with Kate Middleton. Amanda thinks she is having a mental breakdown, I think she served William with divorce papers over his cheating and the royal family doesn’t know what to do about it.

My birthday was this week! I wrote a post about it.

I’m continuing to work on my workshop upgrade as much as I can. This week I:

• Added some light finish to my bench top (a blend of linseed oil and beeswax). I decided one coat is enough. It is just a workbench and as soon as I start using it the top will get dinged up anyway.
  • Using it so far has been great! It is very solid, a huge improvement over what was there before.
• Added weather stripping inside the doors to help the heater out and keep out some dampness
• Added some missing light switch covers
• Added a test set of French cleats to a side wall
• Made my first tool holder to go on the cleats: A holder for my lathe tools.
  • I used my Shopsmith in drill press mode for this for the first time in two years. I also set up the router table and got out the air brad nailer.
• Started modifying and installing my dust collector. Post forthcoming.
• Put an old style flexible spout and vent cap on my new diesel can because the new style “no spill” control spouts are terrible and so hard to use. Holding up the can with one hand while you squeeze the spout with your thumb instead of using your second hand to support and guide the nozzle is difficult. Full 5gal cans are heavy! After using it three times I was so frustrated that I ordered a replacement kit.

Things are starting to come together nicely and I’m pretty happy about it! I’m getting excited about working in there more.

Posts also forthcoming on the general upgrade project and the new workbench, and the French cleats.

I met my coworker and friend Fernando and his girlfriend Gabriele for dinner on Friday. They live in Brazil but are visiting NYC for a week. We went to Lombardi’s, the first pizza place in the US. Afterward we had drinks and popcorn chicken at Double Chicken Please. There we lucked out and got offered a table in the Coop, which had a 5 hour wait, but someone had just canceled. I had the Waldorf Salad (scotch, walnut bitters, celery, apple, ginger ale) and the Americano Americano (Campari, vermouth, coffee liqueur, branca menta, soda). I thought the Americano Americano was clever because it combines the Americano coffee drink with the Americano cocktail. And it was tasty! On the popcorn chicken: If a place is well-known for their bar snacks, you have to get them. The chicken did not disappoint.

Saturday was a full day. Charlie had gymnastics in the morning, then some of the gymnastics crew went to Dunkin Donuts for a snack and then Home Depot for the kids’ workshop. This month they built a butterfly house. Later that afternoon we went to a friend’s new job celebration party in Lake Peekskill. We brought esquites. There Charlie ate his first taco! Until now he would only eat the constituent parts instead of the whole thing together. I think the sour cream sold it for him… sour cream is one of his favorite foods.

Sunday was sunny and warm, which was a nice change of pace. Charlie played outside while I did some more work on the workshop upgrade and Amanda went horseback riding. We also installed a handle on the workshop door at Charlie’s height so he can open and close the door himself.

Challenging week at work. You might have seen various articles about Automattic from places like 404 Media this week. I won’t say anything other than the entire situation sucks. Like many other things in life, before you form your opinion you might want to consider assuming positive intent.

The big event two weeks ago was a snow storm on Tuesday. We got 11″ of snow here in Peekskill, the most in the region. Daycare was closed, along with everything else, so Amanda and I switched off hanging out with Charlie while the other worked. No snow days is a downside of remote work! (You still won’t catch me going into an office any time soon, though.)

Charlie woke me up that morning by saying, “Daddy, it NO-ing!”

Charlie and I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk twice, and took the sled out in the woods. Otherwise we hunkered down and stayed warm.

Charlie woke me up the next morning by saying, “Daddy, it Valentine’s Day!” – We’d been hyping it up all week, making cards, etc. He had a blast.

My parents came to visit for the holiday weekend on Friday. Dad helped me a lot with the workshop upgrade project:

• Saturday we finished putting in the rest of the insulation and installed the diesel heater (my birthday present from my parents)
  • I’ll put together a post once I finish the rest of the upgrades, but the heater is great. At one point we had it up to 70F in the minimally-insulated shed and had to turn the power down.
• Sunday we went to pick up some items from an auction and some plywood from Home Depot with their truck, then framed in the workbench, routed out spots for the legs and vise, then biscuit joined and glued the three pieces of the top together.
• Monday we put in the legs and shelving for the workbench, put a couple pieces of plywood up on the walls, and put in some electrical outlets above the new bench.

It was great to have my parents here. Always nice to spend time with them. Charlie loves it, too.

Wednesday night I hung lights above the bench and installed my vises.

More on that auction: An old woodturner in Fishkill passed away and his family ran an estate sale. I ended up not winning any of the wood he had roughed out and stacked in his shop because the bids went higher than I was willing to pay, but when I went to pick up the ShopVac that I won, I asked if they had any wood that didn’t sell. I lucked out! They forgot to post some of it to the online auction, so I offered cash on the spot and took it off their hands. 🪵 🙌

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we did some clean up and gave away some stuff on Buy Nothing. For the unfamiliar, there are local Facebook groups where you can post things you want to give away and people claim them. We gave away a giant beanbag chair, our old couch, and some baby stuff. We also claimed and picked up a toy piano for Charlie.

Friday morning we had a family breakfast date at the coffee shop.

We did the clean up to make space for reconfiguring the finished half of the basement into a half work/half art space for Amanda. Her desk was already down there, but we put up some bookshelves and moved her workspace around a little bit. Today (Sunday) is organizing.

Saturday afternoon and early evening Charlie and I met up with Jeremy and Miles to take the train to Cold Spring and hang out for a while. We went to the bookstore, playground, and dinner. Lots of running around outside, too. Everyone had fun.

I finished The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler this week. Good, fun, easy read.

One other cool thing this week: One of my posts was featured in the Stack Overflow newsletter!

Okay, I’m off to do some more work in my warm workshop. I’m putting up more plywood today, which I’ll later hang French cleats on.

I decided to go forward with the workshop upgrades, so that has been taking most of my time outside of work this week.

The current plan:

• Insulate with radiant barrier.
• Diesel heater for heat.
• Put a bench along the full back wall. 31.5″ deep, set up 36″ high. Top made out of laminated 2x4s on edge. Shelf underneath high enough for bins to slide underneath for storage.
  • Mounting my carpenter’s vice flush with the front of the bench for better full-length support. Probably left site, 1/4 of the way in.
  • Standard bench vice is probably going on the right side.
  • 3 4×4 feet in the front, 2×4 nailers on the back and side walls.
• Instead of a flip cart for the miter saw, I’ll build a platform to put the miter saw on top of my Shopsmith and use the tables on it to support the longer pieces. Saving the floor space.
• French cleats on the walls for storage.
• I may end up getting rid of the green cart/locker I’m currently using for storage. Every bit of floor space helps!

I spent a lot of time this weekend glueing together 2x4s and planing them for the bench top. After not pre-planing and jointing them in the first section, I decided to do the 14 remaining boards, which led to a much better result for the second section. I guess the first one will go in the back. As I write this, the third section is still curing in the basement. (This glue needs 55F to cure and it is in the 20F range here at night.)

I’m exhausted and sore, but I’m rushing to get the last section planed before the snow hits on Tuesday.

I’ve put up a third of the radiant barrier so far.

More future workshop upgrade projects in my digital garden.

Charlie loves Home Depot. Good thing we’ve been three times this week.

Crocuses are starting to bloom!

Getting steadily earlier each year, according to my unscientific records:

The weather was sunny and warm on Friday, so we picked up pizzas and met up with another family at the playground after work on Friday. The kids loved it. Nice to have the days growing long enough to do that again.

Amanda and I started watching Griselda and we like it. So our two shows right now are True Detective and Griselda.

Charlie was home Monday and part of Wednesday because he was teething this week and had a cough in addition to the mouth pain. Unfortunately getting him to take any kind of medicine has been a struggle recently, so it was a tough couple of days for everyone.

He recovered by the end of the week and had a great Saturday: Gymnastics with some daycare friends in the morning, then a kids workshop at Home Depot where he got to build and paint a Valentine’s Card Box with some of the same friends. Panera afterward, then home for a much needed nap.

I got things started and Amanda helped Charlie finish. He loves using his tools.

Amanda and I had our friends Jeremy and Marie over for dinner on Saturday evening. I roasted a duck and used the rendered fat for roasting potatoes and sautéing green beans with garlic and breadcrumbs. Marie made kartoshka from her grandmother’s recipe, a Ukrainian truffle-like dessert that we all enjoyed. Afterward Amanda and J played some flute duets.

As I mentioned last week, I’m trying to improve my lathe turning skills. I realized that not using a skew is a serious skill deficiency, and in learning how to use one I found out that the 45 degree angle and straight edge make it pretty difficult to use for peeling and planing cuts. So I got a used Shopsmith-mounted grinder on eBay and reground my 1in skew to a smaller angle with a radius. It works much better now, and I used it exclusively to make this tool handle, without having a single catch. That might sound pretty normal to a seasoned turner, but it was a breakthrough for me.

I’m also proud of myself because I haven’t done much tool grinding or shaping. I started out with the bench grinder and got the profile I wanted, but found it hard to make a consistent bevel on a 1in tool and a 3/4in grinding wheel, so I cleaned it up on the disc sander.

Next steps:

• I ordered some grinding wheels from McMaster Carr, which was the only place that had the combo of 5″ wheel + 5/8 arbor I could find.
• I need to get some finer sand paper for the disc sander, or figure out another way to hone my tools.
• Write up my sharpening techniques on my digital garden for future me
• Perhaps I can mount the sharpening jig to the other side of the lathe for easy sharpening while I turn to keep things in top shape.
• Figure out better storage close to the Shopsmith. I like the bottom shelf I have, but the sawdust and wood shavings are too much. Perhaps I need to enclose it.

Charlie climbing and checking out the lathe.

Before this he and I were looking at different kinds of maps (some local, some national parks) and drawing our own on paper. He is a lot of fun.

I’ve been thinking a lot about building a new bench, moving things around for better layout, and insulating/heating the shed so working out there in the winter isn’t so brutal. Some things on the top of my mind:

• Diesel heater or small wood stove?
  • Diesel heaters heat up quickly and turn off instantly, so I don’t need to start a fire and worry about it while i’m not in the shed.
  • Wood stoves are quieter and put out a nice radiant heat.
• Foam board or fiberglass for insulation?
  • Both are kind of annoying to install, but foam board might be less itchy.
• Can I make a flip-top cart with a router one one side and miter saw on the other? That would minimize dedicated workbench space usage and help me get things out of the way if needed.
• I need to think about dust collection, but have no idea where to start.

More to come on this. I’m talking to my Dad, some friends, and reading a lot online.

I started using How to Draw Almost Every Day for some simple daily drawing prompts. I like it!

The Roberta’s frozen pizzas are the best frozen pizzas I’ve had. I don’t know what they do differently, but they are excellent. Great crust that crisps up in the oven and great flavor.

After not reading for most of January, I picked up The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler and am enjoying it so far.

So many courses and membership platforms with private log-in built on WordPress are trivially easy to circumvent because they don’t lock down access to the REST API endpoints.

Related, Vimeo’s domain-level privacy setting is also trivially easy to circumvent as long as you know which domain it is supposed to be embedded on. It relies on the referer header, which you can specify with curl’s –referer option.

If you make course or membership plugin, don’t forget to restrict REST API access for your post types to authenticated users!

I started a new ferment this week after bottling my gin & tonic seltzer last weekend. I’m making an imperial hard cider, flavored with some oak and calvados. Should be ready in a couple weeks.

I spent two days in Manhattan this week—Wednesday and Friday.

Wednesday was a “I need a change of scenery” day. Amanda and Charlie had plans with another mom and toddler after work/daycare, so I worked from the WeWork in Union Square (terrible place to be productive, but great kombucha), got lunch at Halal Guys (chicken over rice white sauce hot sauce), dinner at Soothr (khao soi sai ua), then walked up to Kalustyan’s and explored before going home. I picked up some tasty hot sauces. Since eating that Paqui One Chip Challenge at Christmas, my heat tolerance is much higher than before. I’m now using habanero sauces like I used to use Frank’s, and when I want to heat it up I’m now reaching for ghost pepper sauces. My current rotation: Marie Sharp’s green habanero, Woodstock Ghost Pepper, Melinda’s Red Savina and Bhut Jolokia. Next time I think I’ll try Marie Sharp’s Belizean Heat and the Woodstock Scorpion.

The next day I learned that Matt was hosting a happy hour at the Automattic office on Friday ahead of his upcoming sabbatical, so I decided to head in and work from the Automattic office in NoHo (Crosby St). I had lunch at George Motz’s Hamburger America (onion burger, coffee milk, and fries). It was excellent.

Amanda and I went on a date on Saturday! We went to Goosefeather. The food was excellent, but the service and ambiance left a bit to be desired. I’m trying to recreate one of the cocktails I had.

Last week I mentioned some of my current interests in the shop. Here’s how I’m moving forward:

• I got out an old book I have on wood turning to revisit the basics. I also checked a newer one out of the library to compare.
• Found some resources online about wood turning.
• Watched ebay for a bent gouge and a grinder that will attach to my Shopsmith. Won both!

I read a recent study about certain strains of probiotics reducing acid reflux, which I suffer from. It renewed my interest in probiotics, so I’m taking some again. If you have some that have been particularly effective for you, I’d love to hear about it.

Sunday was a rare rainy weekend day where I had some gumption, so I organized the basement, replaced some pieces of the floating vinyl flooring that had cracked down there, and cleaned out the small basement fridge. Then made pork enchiladas with tomatillo salsa from our garden tomatillos for dinner.

Charlie helped with the crow bar.

Worked on some SQL optimization last week. It is insane how much faster integer comparisons are than string comparisons. This is where my lack of a computer science background makes me miss things other people might think is obvious.

We went to the library! We go every other week.

Charlie really likes Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I love that he notices different things on the page than I notice. Reading with him is one of my favorite things.

The new season of True Detective is good, but not for the faint of heart. IMO it is more disturbing than the previous seasons.