The Big Think

The console table is coming along nicely. It’s also coming together quicker than I thought it would. I’ve only spent 3 work sessions at it and it’s almost completely assembled. I cut the details on the apron today, chamfered the top of the legs, router out the breadboard ends, and created the tenons in the apron pieces. I also fitted each tenon to its corresponding mortise- a tedious job that took a couple of hours with my smallest chisel. Oh, and I sized the top to its final dimension. I still have to but the tenons in the top and attach the breadboard ends and start sanding, sanding, sanding. then it’s off to the finish room.

I’ve noticed that the mahogany legs are quite a bit darker than the mahogany top. The legs are a rich reddish brown and the top is more of a salmon pink color. I hope I can color match the two woods when I do the finish. For that reason I anticipate that the finish is going to take me a week or more. I’m reading Taunon’s “Finishing and Finishing Techniques” book for pointers. I plan on taking my time to make sure I get the finish exactly right. Right now I’m thinking it’ll be some combination of shellac, wax, and some sort of analine dye. All new techniques to me.
Wish me luck.

Giles has baby pictures up. Check em out.

Link of the day: lacunainc
Song of the day: When You’re Ready (read the lyrics)

Congrats to Giles and Jen on the birth of their daughter Sarah! She was born just after 10pm last night and mom and daughter are fine. Daddy, however, sounded a bit stunned.
Just remember Giles: only 18 more years until college!

Started building Erin’s console table yesterday. I’ve settled on a two-tone look (big surprise). The top and legs will be African Mahogany and the table skirt will be hard maple. All parts are cut, did the mortises today, and got the tabletop gluing up. I also tapered the legs (after spending about 2 hours making a tapering jig.
If I hadn’t had to go to Mark’s last night to use his planer and jointer, I could almost have done the whole job in 1 day. I figure one more day to do the tenons and cut a special detail (and size the top), and a day for assembly and final fitting. Finishing will take a few days.
But I’m off to Waco tomorrow and have a meeting for the movie on friday, so the table will have to wait a few days.

NASA successfully launched its Gravity Probe-B experiment yesterday. GP-B will test fundamental assumptions about the universe and will confirm Einstein’s theory of Relativity down to quite a few spaces to the right of the decimal.

I almost don’t want to give him any more press, but that assumes there are more than three people reading this (hi mom).
Michael Moore has gone and stuck his size 13 foot in his size 15 mouth with a letter to his fans. There is a fantastic critique of the letter here. It’s amazing that Moore could be against a country that would let someone like him become an influential millionaire.
Thanks to coxandforkum for the cartoon.

Rise of the Robots, indeed. Festo ushers us into an era when giant blue mechanical smurfs rule the land with an iron fist.

Thanks to connections made through my friend Mark W, I have been commissioned to build a bench for a great couple’s entryway. We’ve yet to settle on a design or materials, but I’m very excited about the opportunity. Thanks Mark!

Scobel, over at Scobleizer, has a great article about the importance of customer service. How do you persuade someone to your point of view? Is it through trashing the opposition? Nope, it’s through acting (I would say being) the authority and having the customer’s best interest in mind. Great article if customer happiness is important to you.
I think this idea is important in every area, even Presidential politics. I’m not alone.

Great supper club at our place last night (saturday night). Had about 12 of our friends from church over and ate too much yummy Mexican food. Ole. Meeting with my first woodworking client for a comission.

Grrr… I’ve had a scanner for a few years now, and it’s a not by any means an obscure one. The Canon CanoScan N1220U is a sleek little silver scanner that was very popular a few years back, and being from Canon I thought it would be well-suported. Well here we are well into the OS X era and this thing still doesn’t have OS X drivers. Sure, I can install something from Canon to get it to work, but the fine print says I have to have Photoshop installed first in order for their drivers to function. GRRRR. I don’t want to have to buy an $800 piece of software so my $150 scanner can do what it’s supposed to. Get with the program, Canon!

Installed our new ceiling fan yesterday. The first one (downstairs) took me about 4 hours of fiddling. This one only took about 3 hours. Getting better at this, and it looks/feel great.

via gizmodo: AT&T Wireless has announced a new service that helps you identify songs with your cellphone. After dialing ‘#ID’ and playing the phone close to the music source for 15 seconds, customers will receive a text message with the name and artist of the song. Using the Musicphone database of over one million songs, the service will cost $.99 per use, plus air time.

Way too cool. The Lego Volvo (full size)

Arizona State has a fun little page where you can input some asteroid impact parameters and see what the effects are. My favorite part is the line at the bottom of the results page:
These results come with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

scriptingnews: “Or, more hopefully, the last former President Bush”

Normally I like Dave’s writing, and even though we’re at opposite ends of the spectrum politically, when he talks about his political beliefs I’m at least willing to listen, but in my mind he totally disqualifies himself from the conversation with this kind of unreasonable jab. Is he really saying that no other member of the Bush family would make a good president? I can understand that he might think Jeb is evil for “giving” the 2000 election to GW (nevermind the fact that it was another branch of the Florida governement altogether), but I’ve met Neil Bush and he seemed an upright guy. Okay, first impressions can be deceiving, I’ll grant. But do people with this kind of absolutist thinking really believe there have been presidents in the last 200+ years that would willingly sacrifice American lives for a personal or political goal?
I doubt that even the most hated political enemy (pick your personal Bush or Clinton, Lincoln or Nixon) would laughingly send young men and women off to their collective dooms on a whim or a personal vendetta.
The presidency is the toughest job in the world, and there are very few decisions there that are black and white. It’s definitely not a job I’d take for anything. But the absolute polarization of opinion in this country, reinforced by the media (TV vs Radio Talk) have made it almost impossible for the folks in the middle to join the discussion, or even to be heard above the mean-spirited shouting.
As amazing as it sounds we turn off fewer of the people we’re trying to convince if we’re thoughtful in our political complaining and at least try to listen. And who knows? You might just persuade someone to change their opinion.

*Update* I got a reply from Dave Winer today (this post originally started out as a letter to Dave in response to his post on GWB). His response? “You’re having a nice fantasy, Jason”. I’m not sure how to interpret this, and will refrain from chalking it up to his know mercurial attitude towards those who disagree (though I don’t think my thoughts count as “disagreement”). I could easily be disappointed that the middle road of thoughful listening was discounted by such an influential member of the left, but maybe he just meant that a thoughtul meeting of the minds is impossible nowadays.
I hope he hasn’t given up on honest discussion.