Garage Project

With spring comes the bug to get things in order. A freshening of sorts to go along with with new season. I've had an idea in my head for some time of what I wanted my garage to look like, but never quite had the gumption to get it done. Until now.

I have a lot of tools. I love tools. At work, seeing as I earn a living with my tools, and at home. At home because I hate having to get someone else to do things for me. Change my oil, fix household appliances, build a deck. The thought of me getting someone to do these things for me just doesn't seem to jive. That's just me. It's just how I'm wired. If others prefer to hire these tasks out, good for them. But me, I'm built to use my hands, and I find great satisfaction in it.

All of these tools I had have always been organized in my garage and stored on industrial racking. The problem is, you can see them. It doesn't matter how tidy it is, how lined up everything is, when it's all visible on racking, it looks like just a bunch of junk. My idea of a 'dream garage' was to hide it all from sight and give the appearance of an empty minimalist garage, but still highly functioning for all those satisfying tasks I keep busy with. Not wanting to dump a bunch of cash on pre-made cabinetry, I built my own. It took two weekends but the end result is just how I had wanted it.

Spring time in Alberta

Ian Tyson isn't wrong. We've had a few glimpses of the seasonal change we've been looking forward to, and the bam! More snow. More cold. More ice covered roads on the early morning drive to work.

To the mountains

No better way to celebrate a birthday than ditching work for a few days and enjoying some skiing in the Rockies without the crowds that weekend brings. Slow paced and beauty all around. I like living so close to this.

Homemade Bacon

Keeping my new smoker smoking away, we made our own bacon. Start with fresh pork belly, remove the hair (gross) cure, smoke, remove the skin and it's ready to be cooked up just like store bought bacon. The flavor however, is nothing like store bought bacon. It's amazing! It's the difference between fresh baked homemade bread and white wonder bread. They almost shouldn't be titled with the same word. Well worth the effort, and if you have a smoker and haven't tried bacon yet, you should.

Jerky

Christmas present from my sweet wife. First batch is smoking away. Can't wait!

XJ 650: hypoid gear inspection

Early morning garage time while the family sleeps. Inspection reveals minimal wear and everything looks good. 2hrs of elbow grease and it looks new. Bag it, shelf it, one more check off this list.

XJ650: Minimalist Battery Holder

Finally we have some warmer weather (hovering just below freezing) which means I can finally get into the garage again. After an all day family outing, I have a few spare hours this evening to fab up a minimalist battery holder I've been thinking about. 

I already welded up a metal box that I was going to install, but I just wasn't feeling it. I found a leather strap that one of our tenants had left behind in the Rockyford house, and that gave me the idea for this battery holder. The perforated metal I found in a scrap bin while cleaning up my uncle's garage. I think it's going to work and it certainly feels better than what I had previously built.

A few months ago I picked up a MIG welder. It's nice to have a decent welder that isn't flux-core, but I need to do a little TLC to it. It works for now, but certainly not laying down the nicest welds I've done.

XJ 650 update

I have a lot of time off over Christmas, and without much in the way of travel plans, I thought I'd be able to get a whole lot done on my XJ 650. It's sadly been sitting idle for a long while. In the past few weeks I've finished striping it down ad grinding off all unnecessary frame bits. It's reduced as far as it needs to go, and now it's time to start mock-up and fabrication for what I'll be adding and altering. The bummer is that it's -24C (-12F) outside right now which makes for a stinking cold attached unheated garage. Combine that with getting over a nasty flu, and the garage isn't an appealing place to be right now.

So instead I'm doing what work I can inside, and started laying out a design for the emblem I'm going to put on the tank. This is based on a sticker that was on the donor tank I picked up for the bike. It was faded almost to the  point of invisible, but I took a picture of it, manipulated a little on the computer and now starting to trace it out and get it ready for a decal shop.

My goal is to have the bike done for spring, so hopefully this deep freeze will let up a bit so I can get back to welding in the garage. Until then, it's bunker down in the house with a steady stream of good coffee and lounging. 

Movember Platinum Club

For the second year in a row I participated in Movember, and for the second year in a row I made it into the platinum club. A club reserved for those who raise over $1K for mens health. My entrance to this prestigious club is all thanks to my dad. Both years. Last years prize was kind of cool, but this year, it's way better. A swiss army (style) knife, with a moustache comb. That's pretty rad.

Kershaw Speedsafe

I believe that every responsible, law abiding adult should at least consider carrying a pocket knife. I never used to carry a pocket knife until about 3 years ago. I've always loved knives and have owned a lot over the years, but never had I really be committed to keeping a good blade on me all the time.

I picked up this little Kershaw speed safe (which is an assisted blade) in Montana 3 years ago. I put it in my pocket and carried it a while just because it was new. I hadn't bought a knife in years and it had some novelty to it. I kept carrying it for a few weeks. The odd thing I found was that I had to train myself to remember I had it on me. I'd catch myself going to my tool box to grab a box cutter for opening a package when I had the knife right there in my pocket. It took a bit, but once I habitually remembered my knife, I was (and still am) amazed at how often I use it.

For 3 years it's been in my pocket, with the only exception being flying. Once I get to my destination, it's right back in my pocket. Sometimes after using it for something I'll ask myself what I would have done had I not had a knife. I've unstuck doors so a mom and her double-wide stroller could get into a store, trimmed cigars for a groom and his men, cut snacks for kids while ice-fishing, cut a running thread from a wedding dress and even cut the train off of the dress of a bride so she could dance up a storm.  The fact is, if you start carrying a simple pocket knife (traditional or the modern pocket clip, your preference) you'll find it to be incredibly useful. 

My strongest piece of advice: keep it sharp! All the time. Dull knives are dangerous, and a knife is only effective (and worth carrying) if it's got a good edge on it. 

Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree

This year we opted to get rid of our perfect, faux, pre-lit Christmas tree from Costco in favour of a real tree. A real tree that we cut ourselves. It makes for a more memorable time with the kids, and got us into the mountains, even if for just a few hours. We let the kids pick the tree, and I cut it down. It's an awfully sad looking tree, but I like it.

It was an all-Canadian Christmas moment. 4 kids, 2 hockey bags, 3 hockey sticks, an axe, a saw and a tree tied to the roof of the minivan.

I hope your Christmas season is going well.

A Deliberate Life

I couldn't put it any better myself.

Back on the internet

My little experiment in going without internet is now over. It was interested and I learned a few things in the process.

• Most blogs that I followed in my RSS feed (google reader) I don't really care about at all. As a result, I've deleted 24 feeds that I used to think I cared to read. They simply wasted my time.
• I surf the net when I'm bored or procrastinating. During my experiment, I'd be board, and automatically I'd think about grabbing my iPhone and see what was happening on the www. When I couldn't, I'd have to find something else to do, and more often than not, it was something productive or something that needed to be done.
• After the first week, I  became used to not checking up on twitter, tumblr and my google reader. It took about a week before the habit to instantly waste time was gone. Even when I was nearing the end of my 30 days, I still wanted to surf the net, but it was far less frequent and way less strong.
• I use the internet for far less productive stuff than I do for useful, productive things that will actually better my life.
• I'm convinced that North American culture would be more productive, efficient and I'd even go so far as to say that peoples individual economy would be better off if they spent less time on the net. The internet is mostly a time waster. Even for useful things, DIY things and such, how much intake can we really handle? We take in way more than we can actually do ourselves. 
• Social media is just a superfluous version of social. It isn't real, and it really doesn't matter. The people you see, interact with in person matter far more. I was amazed at how confused I was on this matter prior to my little experiment.

It was an interesting experiment, but I am glad it's over. Lessons have been learned, and I've adjusted the way I use the internet accordingly. The internet is an incredible tool, and something I'd hate to have to live without. It's just that most people use it too excessively and have it's usefulness misconstrued. I'm convinced that more most people in North America, it robs them of productivity, contentment and spending time with real people. 

Even this blog is pretty much a waste of time. It won't radically change anyones life, increase their productivity or add much meaning to their life. Happiness it will not bring. But, I will keep blogging. It is fun to share with other people. There's nothing wrong with that. Even if they're people that you have never met, or probably never will meet. But when you let these numbers get out of whack, that's when I question it all. I'm now on a path to seriously decide who I want to interact with on the net, whose blogs I'm actually going to read, and how much time I'm going to spend doing so. 

Mostly this no internet experiment has showed me that I've quickly become sucked into the feeling that anyone who has ever put something I like on the internet should be followed and kept track of. The feeling that I should follow so and so on twitter, or be friends with this person or that person on Facebook. Use the internet smartly, and don't let it get out of hand. Chances are, the less you use it, the better.

Surf's up kids!

A modern experiment

With the internet comes good things. It's cool to keep up on topics you're interested in, people you want to keep in contact with, and the vastness of general learning that's available is pretty radical.

The internet does however come with bad stuff too. Obvious morally questionable content that comes to mind whenever anyone mentions the bad part of the internet. There's the whole privacy, internet safety and yadda yadda. But one thing that's been driving me nuts is spam I'm getting because of the internet and specifically this blog. Not even spam, but companies trying to get me to announce some new-fangled product, cook book, event or whatever on my blog. Product releases for crap I don't even care about. I've had a lot of different people want to advertise on this blog and some of my other blogs. I know it's not much money, but even if it was, I resist it strongly. I started this blog a long time ago and I've put the work into every post. Not that I'm all that dedicated anymore, but it ticks me off to have some company email me, thinking that I want to post something about their wares, and ride on the back of the labor I've put into this. It's greedy and greasy. I get 2 to 5 emails a day. Some are obvious spam, but some do seem quite legit, with seemingly real people typing them. They're even email multiple times and reference the dates that the previous emails were sent. I'm almost to the point of simply responding with profanity-laced offensive comments in a return email. But, that would be in poor taste. So I've devised another way to stick it to the man, and thus I came up with my modern experiment.

I'm going on a 30 day internet hiatus. And, an email hiatus. 30 days. No blogging, blog reading. No tumblr, no twitter, no social media. No emails. None. I have a cell phone and business can carry on as usual talking in real time. If it's important that we need to communicate, we will.

The purpose of this experiment it to see what it's like before the internet and the pathetic dependance on it that I've developed. I always wonder how much of the whole social media thing is BS. I think it's more than I imagine. People I've never met, will not be driving me nuts via the interwebs for 30 days.

My hope is to read more books and magazine on subjects that fascinate me. To spend more time writing in my journal (which I do a fair bit already), more time drawing and creating things that bring me enjoyment. Most importantly, to be more present with my friends and family when I'm with them instead of reacting to the notification on my phone telling me that something happened on the internet.

I will miss reading my favourite blogs and I look forward to catching up with you after this 30 days is over.

Back November 8th.

Be well, enjoy life, and God bless.

Feeling winter in the air

The leaves have all turned. It was beautiful this year and more than once made me stop, just to stare at it. It's pretty much over now. The wind howling outside in the dark is removing the last of the golden from trees. The forecast is calling for snow in a few days. It's just part of living in the north. We had a nice warm fall, but I'm excited to move onto the snow.

There's an excitement to cooler temperatures outside. Especially when I get to come home to a loving wife, my wonderful children, and a stellar fig, bacon, caramelized onion and ricotta pizza hot out of the oven.

Life's seasons have me in wide-eyed wonder, and I'm loving it.