Category: Foo

What Does It Mean?

At the Olde English Pub & Pantry, at the end of the Tweed Ride, I was getting to know Erik. He’s also in the computers/software/web industry and was asking about the name of my blog. What does “Life After Programming” mean? He thought I might be one of those Google guys who cashed out and now organizes Tweed Rides all over the world.

Thank you for unexpectedly summarizing my dream job.

Alas, no, that is not the case. But it is very interesting to me that someone (someone I just met, no less) would ask me the exact question I’ve been pondering for a few days.

What did I have in mind when I picked that title? Was it a manifesto? Something to aspire to?

Finally Fixing Something

A long time ago someone gave me this little “shower” bag from H&M. It has served me well for many years, but a few months ago the buckle broke. I won’t go into much detail, but a tiny spring broke off of a tab on the buckle, and the whole thing would not buckle anymore. Nobody wants their toiletries falling out when they travel. Most people would’ve tossed the whole thing and gone out and bought a new one. I was determined to fix it myself.

Eventually I decided to take drastic measures. I used a pair of pliers to break one half of the buckle off. I had to use a hacksaw to remove the other half. Then I went out and bought a pair of D rings. My thought was that I could feed them through the strap loop, and then weave the other end of the strap through the D rings. I’ve seen belts like this so I thought it ought to work.

Well. No, not really. I could not bend the D rings, and in all my efforts to bend them I realized two bad things: I was scraping the nickel plating off the rings, and even if I could bend them and put them on the loop I wouldn’t be able to bend them back.

So a change of plans. I put the D rings on the open end of the strap, folded it over, and sewed it down. I used a (book) binder’s needle and some binder’s thread. I felt pretty clever about this. I used what I had available. I used crap I had stuffed in boxes I’d forgotten all about. Then I took a piece of leather cord, cut it to size, fed it through the loop, and knotted it at one end. That weaves through the D rings really well.

End result here.

10 Things That I’m Really Glad I Have

Our society seems hell bent on making you think the stuff you have isn’t good enough anymore. Here’s a short list of things I have that I’m perfectly happy with, most of which I use on a daily basis lately.

  • Leatherman Serac S2
  • Leatherman Juice C2
  • the Handsome XOXO
  • Sackville Trunksack
  • the Powell’s hat my brother gave me
  • Smartwool hat
  • My corkscrew, which came as part of barware set
  • Canon PowerShot SD750
  • 4GB iPod from a few years ago
  • SIGG Metro Mug

Friday is For Failing to Fix

I took today off. Around 9:45am I went outside, to the garage, to get my bike, which I planned to ride up to Anton’s to get breakfast. The garage door would not open.

If this had happened at 7:45am, when I was on my way to work, I would’ve been furious. So yes, it’s probably a very good thing I had the day off. But interfering with my breakfast is not a good idea.

It’s a two car garage, so I opened the other door. We don’t use this door because parked behind it is an old Mercedes Benz that our landlady hasn’t moved in two or three years. Getting in and out of there is awkward. But I got my bike, got breakfast, and no one got hurt.

But, says I, that door needs to open! So I investigated the situation. These doors have cables that go up the side of the door to pulleys attached to the frame. There is also a cable that loops through another pulley, which is attached to a long spring. This spring is supposed to be hooked to something at the back end of the door frame. When you close the door, the spring stretches out. When you open the door, the spring retracts, making it easier to lift the door. The hook at the back of the spring was gone. The end of the spring looked old and rusted and it looks like the hook part just broke off. The rest of the spring isn’t looking very good either.

My thought was to get a heavy S hook, hook one end into the spring, and hook the other end to the anchor at the back of the frame. Seems reasonable. So I biked to the hardware store on Central and bought a 3″ hook with a working load of 145 pounds. I hoped it wouldn’t snap. When I got back to the garage I had to move a lot of the landlady’s junk out of the way. And then I found out the hook I bought was too thick, and wouldn’t fit between the coils of the spring. I suppose I could go back and try to exchange it for a smaller one. Maybe someday I’ll do that.

In the meantime I thought I’d rig something with some rusty wire I found hanging around. If, at this point, you’re shaking you’re head, I do not blame you. I had to lift the door so that I could get the spring back toward the anchor. That door is very heavy. Very. Heavy. I got the wire in place. I adjusted the cables. I went outside and tried to close the door. Slowly. It got about halfway down and then crash something broke. I lifted the door open again and found that, big surprise, the rusty wire had just snapped. Back to square one.

My current plan is to notify our absentee landlady with our next rent check. I know she won’t do anything, but I was raised to follow procedure even if you know it’s pointless. Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to pass my bikes in and out of the garage through the narrow space between the one remaining working garage door and the abandoned car. I am actually more worried about dinging my bikes than the car. When the time comes that we need to move out, (and the current plan is roughly June,) I’ll lift that door open one last time and we’ll clear everything out.

If you are the kind of person who likes to keep track of the number of doors that do not function properly in an apartment, this new one brings the total to four.

What would you do with that kind of money?

This morning the news is all a-buzz about the MEGA Millions jackpot being $540 million. I don’t play the lottery because I’m reasonably good at math, but I’ll daydream like anybody else. This is a crazy about of money, so I thought I’d write up my thoughts on it. Assuming you don’t have to split it with any other winners, and assuming the government takes half of it, you have about $260 million. So I’d take $60 million and put it aside for living expenses. That’s a million dollars a year for the rest of my life. I’m set, but what would I do with the rest of it?

I’d give WWF and the Nature Conservancy $5 million dollars each. I’d fund cancer research, and a cure for AIDS. I might help stop malaria. I’d fund emergency rescue operations so that things like what happened in Haiti (does anybody even think about what it’s like there now?) are never that bad again. And that leaves me, what, like $150 million?

I’d have the Albany County Rail Trail built. Period. I’d push the Livingston Avenue Railroad Bridge. I’d pay people to pick up trash around the city. I’d buy urban blight and turn it into greenspace. I’d do more than volunteer at the Radix Center. I wonder what the Albany Public Library would do with a million dollars. Dear WMHT, here’s a million dollars, keep up the good work.

These are just off the top of my head while I rode my bike to work this morning. The point is, all of those “crazy” things you’d like to see in the city/world? This is the kind of money that makes that stuff possible.