Some educators resist giving woodshop the chop – Boston.com: “”
I took shop class in 6th and 7th grade and it showed me I could make things and take pride in a hand-crafted object. I was one of those kids who was never great at math but excelled at spatial thinking. Glad my generation still had access to dangerous tools while in school, and I’m glad that they’re making comeback.
Fifteen years or so ago I bought a Global office chair. Nice one, too. Retail on the thing was $650, though after discounts and such it came in at under $300. It’s a typical premium chair with lots of padding, support, and adjustment points. It doesn’t get into the super premium market like Aeron chairs do, but it’s a good product nonetheless.
At the time I thought ouch, it’s just a chair. $300?. Still, I figured that I spend so much time at the desk that it’d be a good investment. As long as I was buying, might as well buy for the long-haul. Had a lifetime warranty, too.
Fast forward 15 years and it’s still going strong. I love the thing. It supports in all the right places and lets me tilt around to a bunch of different positions throughout the day. I’ve recently had some posture-related pain, but I think that’s more due to a 41 year old body pulling weeks of consecutive 15 hour days. No chair is going to completely alleviate that kind of strain.
I’ve had a few very minor problems with the chair- mainly things like screws working loose over the years, but really, can you blame it? I’ve spent literally years seated in this thing. Whenever I call Global (which is rare), they’re very helpful and don’t seem to mind at all that they’re supporting a decade-and-a-half old product with no further revenue stream. They’re upbeat and friendly and just want me to be happy with their products.
The pneumatic piston has been leaking a bit lately (again- 15 years), which results in me spontaneously dropping several inches while sitting at the desk. It’s pretty funny the first few times, then quickly becomes rather less so. So I called them up. The chipper Joanne kidded around with me a bit and then promised to get a new cylinder out in the mail this afternoon. Free of charge. Just like that.
I often kvetch in this space about bad customer service, so I wanted to take this chance to point out a really good example of a company taking care of its customers. Next time I buy a chair I’ll definitely spring for the Global. But at the way this thing is going that’ll be another 15 years. Just reinforces my “buy once, cry once” philosophy. Don’t buy junk.
Thanks, Global. Great people, great product. My backside thanks you too.
Joanna Lange is the mother of friend’s of Erin’s Aunt. Amazing. She’s in her 80′s.
From an email:
Joanna is a pianist and longtime piano teacher, living in Indianapolis. The family was originally from St. Louis, where Cathy and her cellist sister grew up. Joanna and her husband moved to Indy some time ago to be close to one of her daughters. She had a serious stroke in 1990, but continues to perservere with playing and teaching. She is pretty fully paralyzed on her whole right side… but continues to teach and be as active as possible since her stroke.
Amazing. You never have to slow down. Love the proud smile at the end, too! Get this lady onto Leno.
Looks like Fermilab’s Tevatron is shutting down at the end of this year. Bummer.
This will be of particular interest to my mad scientist friends.
Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.
“Still the One” is probably one of the sweetest, catchiest songs ever. Love it!
Good advice. Figure out what makes you cry tears of joy and do that. Simple but effective.
“I could not keep from sobbing by the close, as the beauty and truth was too devastating to encounter directly. This is not a film in the simple sense; it is a masterpiece of art and a triumph of hope. This is not a Christian film; this is a film a Christian would make.”
A very kind and positive review of Paradise Recovered. I was, coincidentally, working on the M&E mix of the film this afternoon and watching some of the very scenes the reviewer talks about.
“this Congress borrowed more money than all 110 previous Congresses combined…Sinking in an ocean of red ink cannot go on forever. Eventually the nation will become insolvent and collapse will follow. But how much longer can it go on? Unlike the old sub crews, we will physically survive reaching the crush depth of debt. But whether we can survive as a great nation is unclear at best, and highly unlikely in probability.”
Well, this is depressing. All the more because it is among the most forseeable crises in American history. Anyone with a calculator and a calendar that extends more than just to the next election can see that we’re on an unsustainable fiscal path, but nobody in leadership seems to care. The U.S. Federal government spends 4,000,000,000 (four billion) dollars more than it brings in. Every day. And feeble efforts to claim that we can go on spending and that future events (economic turnaround, technological developments, magic money fairies) will alter our course are blatantly ignorant of even the best-case extrapolated fiscal curves.
When the time comes and we must endure massive fiscal changes as a result of profligate spending it won’t be because it was a surprise. And somehow I don’t think that our current leaders will personally feel the pinch then anyway. They’ll spend their time pointing fingers at the other guy and claiming that it’s his fault.
Guerrilla guide to CNC machining. Also see the same author’s Concise electronics for geeks.
Reference this post if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
I deposited some Christmas money to the account (thanks, folks!) and made my normal $50 monthly savings payment as well. Total amount in the ING account is $200. 23 months to go! I’ve also become intrigued by the possibility of getting the LumenLabs MicRoCNC bot instead. The MicRo has is a high quality (aluminum and HDPE) machine that does CNC cutting. They’re working on adapting the Thing-O-Matic’s extrusion nozzle as well as a high output laser cutter to the system. These different mechanisms would be interchangeable so that you could cut wood or non-ferrous metals with the milling tool, cut precision parts with the laser, or extrude Thing-O-Matic style with the plastic extrusion head. It’s a 3-in-one machine that uses the same .stl files, has a larger print area (but shorter z-axis), and is made from industrial aluminum instead of laser printed 1/4″ ply. This is one of the reasons I’m giving the whole technological area some shakeout time instead of rushing out to buy a unit right now. The next two years should be very exciting.
The new Grizzly Tools catalog is here! The new Grizzly Tools catalog is here!
“A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to being available at your doctor’s office.”
Hope it’s true and not just more hype. Early detection remains the %1 way to successfully treat cancers. Of course, I wonder how many false-positives this will generate since our bodies are more or less always creating cancer cells (random mutations) and dealing with them before they become a problem. Should be interesting.
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