Friday, August 15, 2003
You too can experience the thrill of being a Master Craftsman in making furniture!
I'm not sure when exactly this occurred—I'm guessing late 70s, early 80s—when some executive somewhere got the bright idea that everybody, at one point in their lives, maybe multiple times in their lives, wanted to experience what it's like to make furniture. I'm guessing that through extensive R & D it came to light that it wasn't the fussy or complicated steps like measuring, cutting, drilling or finishing that where popular, but the actual steps of assembly; the fitting of small wooden dowels, the driving of screws and twisting of fasteners that people wanted to experience.
Or perhaps it wasn't the actual experience of assembly that people wanted
but the thought of buying what looked to be expensive furniture at a
moderately expensive price for furniture made almost extensively from
pressed particle board (which does this hideous expansion number on you if
it comes anywhere near water) thinking they're saving money. Lord
knows that's probably what my Mom thought during the mid-80s on her
furniture buying spree. It certainly couldn't have been the thrill of
assembly since that thrill was left to forced on me. Countless
shelves, a bed/shelf unit, a desk, and two dressers were among the items of
furniture I “hand made” for Mom.
Thrills-a-minute, let me tell you.
It was more of the same today when I found Spring in the Kids' room in the midst of wood laminate particle boards, wooden slats, screws, wierd looking fasteners that you'll never find in any hardware or home self-improvement store and enough headboards to make what looked like two single beds. “I'm trying to puzzle this out,” she said. “The only instructions that came with it were in Chinese.”
“Engrish Chinese?”
“No,” she said. “Chinese. And I'm trying to figure out where everything goes.”
“There must be at least illustrations, right?”
“Nope.”
“Ah.” Not good at all.
After a brief interlude where I dropped the Kids off at the Charles Dickens After School Center, Spring and I resumed our forays into the wonderful world of Furniture Assembly—Bunk Bed Edition!
Rough placement of pieces on the floor. Discussions of what piece goes where and what possible function it could provide. The puzzlement over some apparent missing drill holes. And several mis-matched bolts. And non-illustrated directions in Chinese.
Time passes. We had most of the bunk bed assembled when Spring's cordless power drill (being used to drive screws) started straining as its battery slowly died. We were then faced with the prospect of hand driving in some 48 screws to fasten down the slats to support the mattresses. Not looking forward to that, I borrowed a power drill from one of our neighbors. Spring was able to get the Philip's head bit into the drill, but it proved to be too awkward to use so close to the bed frame. So I took the bit out, and attempted to put in a bit extention.
Only the drill wouldn't tighten up.
Great! I thought. I broke the neighbor's drill! “XXXX!” I said. “I think I owe the neighbor a new drill.”
“What's wrong?”
“I can't tighten the drill.”
Spring came over, took the drill and attempted to tighten it. “Yup, looks like it's broken.” She handed it back to me.
“I'll go return this and inform them I'll be buying them a new drill,” I said. Spring went to work hand driving the screws in.
Some twenty minutes later I returned. The neighbor took the now non-tightening drill (it still spun under power but unless you jam a particularly large bit into it, it won't be of much use) in stride, saying it was very old, needed replacing anyway and that her parents could get her a new one, since her father always brought his drill over when he needed to do home repair at her place.
That was some good news.
But the bad news was having to drive in 48 screws by hand.
Nothing out of the ordinary should ever happen to you at a Wal★Mart
I met up with Kelly and his friend N for dinner tonight; normally I'd be going to play D&D but the DM is currently on a cruise ship in the Alaskan region (I told him he was not allowed to go, but did he listen to me? Noooooooo!). Afterwards, we found ourselves at the local Wal★Mart Supercenter; N needed some school supplies and Kelly wanted to do a bit of grocery shopping.
This is a Wal★Mart—middle America! Squeezing out Mom-&Pop shops left and right America! Safe, mediocre, predictable America! Nothing out of the ordinary should ever happen to you at a Wal★Mart.
Imagine my surprise at being surprised—thrice—at Wal★Mart.
Now, upon entering the Wal★Mart, we passed a stand of fliers. When I looked closer, the fliers were school supplies of the various elementary schools in the area. I had never seen such a display before! So I grabbed about half a dozen, one from a different school. Upon reading I was completely blown away.
Park Springs Elementary, for instance, requires of its first graders one (1) disposable camera, one (1) box of gallon Ziploc™ bags, and one (1) box of tissues—but only if your last name begins with “A” through “L” (a disposable camera? Excuse me?), otherwise one (1) box of tissues, one (1) box of sandwich Ziploc™ bags, one (1) box of colored pencils and cotton balls (cotton balls?). Second grade at said school requires one (1) skein of yarn, one (1) box of 7 oz. paper cups, one (1) pack of large size paper plates (but only if your last name begins with “A” through “F” … um … this is second grade, right?) one (1) pack of small size paper plates, two (2) boxes sandwich size Ziploc™ bags, one (1) box assorted plastic utensils (only if your last name begings with “G” through “K” and now I'm starting to get scared), one (1) box large Ziploc™ bags, napkins and one (1) box of baby wipes.
Okay, that's it! Baby wipes? Plastic utensils? Cups? What is this, the students have to cook their own lunches? Nowhere on the Park Springs Elementary school second grade supply flier does it even mention pencils, pens or paper (oh wait … sorry, it does mention paper, but that's optional). Writing utensils aren't mandatory until third grade. Forest Hills Elementary is a bit better—first graders get to bring two (2) expo markers.
Then again, at Forest Hills Elementary, first grade girls have to bring one (1) box of gallon size Ziploc™ bags.
Um …
It was at this point the second surprise walked up. He stops, looks at me and says, “Are you Sean? Sean Conner?”
My reputation has really preceeded me, was my first thought. How does this guy know me? I then notice that he does, indeed, look familiar. Hold on a second! I thought. I KNOW THIS GUY! “Hold on,” I said. Thought. Heavy thinking. I was just thinking about this guy about a month ago or so. “Dave!”
“Nope!”
“Dale!”
“Yup,” he said.
“But I can't remember your last name,” I said. He says it, and yes, it finally clicks. Someone I had not seen for easily twenty years. He even mentioned that he had thought of me in the past week. Brief introductions go around, and we chat for a few seconds. He asks what I'm up to and when I say I'm underemployed I get my third surprise of the evening.
A job offer.
Granted, it's for a parts driver for a local dealership, but hey, I might be intrigued enough to take it. He gives me his number and we part ways.
This is Wal★Mart! Not a middle-school reunion! Or a job faire!
And what is with first grade girls having to obtain a box of gallon size Ziploc™ bags?
“It's mapped. I'm just not showing it to you.”
Kelly and I found
an interesting bug in Windows XP tonight (“Oh no! Not a bug in
WinXP? Say it ain't so!”)
I had taken a few photographs tonight and Kelly was attempting to copy them from my camera to his computer. Normally, you just hook the camera up to the computer via a USB cable, which then appears as a storage drive to the system and you use the normal system to copy the images off (under Linux, the camera appears as a removable SCSI device, oddly enough).
When I hooked my camera up, it didn't show up on Kelly's Windows XP
system. We knew the system recognized the camera since each time I hooked
it up, Windows would make one sound, and when I disconnected the camera,
Widows XP would make a different sound, so something was
happening.
But we couldn't see it.
Some poking around, and it seems that Windows XP has a minor glitch
(“you don't say?”)—it will happily map a physical device (like my
digital camera) and a logical device (like a network share) to the same
drive letter (say, for example, F:) and only the logical device
will be visible to the user.
Kelly remapped the logical device (his network share) to a different drive letter, and lo! We were able to access the camera.
And Windows XP is supposed to be the pinacle of Microsoft operating systems?
Scary.
