Back to basics

This fall has been quite busy, somewhat too busy, I must admit. It’s all the stuff going on at work, as usual. In addition, my handyman season has lasted longer than usual.

Living in a 100-year old house is like rowing a leaky boat. You need to bail out water continuously to keep it floating. That’s OK. I’m used to it. But this fall there has been more. We have refurbished the ground floor (still going on). We have ripped out everything, and rebuild it from the core; putting in insulation in the walls and floors, installing water-borne heating, and so on.

We have hired craftsmen to do the most difficult and time consuming things, but I’ve done a lot myself too. So, I’ve been working as a scientist at day time and as a carpenter in the evenings and weekends. It’s a nice combo actually. I rest my body when doing research in the office, and I rest my brain while swinging the hammer and saw.

In fact, I enjoy it. It feels like I’m doing some real work, not just fiddling around with physics and mathematics and computers. However, it leaves too little time for reading and writing. Things are too complex right now.

I don’t believe in any gods and superheros, and I think that from the beginning, the (pre)humans were much like any other species of animals. Our mission in life was very simple; to eat, fuck and die. We were supposed to spread our genes to the next generations, and then get our bio-mass recycled.

But at some point, our brains just got too big, and we started to worry about religion and science, and stuff like that. I don’t like religion, but I’m happy with the science.  

But there’s more. There’s no end to this craziness. We shop for hardwood floors and induction cooktops, and what the hell should we do with all the old crap that we have bought at the mall over the years? At work there are company strategies and deliverables and achievements, evaluation systems and key performance indexes (so-called KPI’s). Management is pretty insane. I've developed my own management theory. More about that on a later occasion.

Right now, it feels like I wanna go back to the basics. Fortunately, there’s the Christmas vacation coming up. I don’t like the Christmas part of it, but I do like a mid-winter vacation. Tomorrow we go skiing in the mountains for a week. Great!

To whom it may concern: Merry Christmas.

I prefer to say Happy Winter Solstice >:)

(The pictures were taken some years ago, when little boy was really a little boy. He had heard the Christmas Gospel in the kindergarden, and re-told it at home, in his own way. I made the clay models while little boy directed. There were Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the Holy Kings, and little boy insisted that they played soccer. This was unknown to me, but who cares. I just made it the way he wanted)

Breaking my thumb with a hammer

You have probably seen these gangster movies where they break people's fingers with a hammer, to make them reveal or confess something.

A few days ago I tried this, on myself.

Did I confess? No, not at all. But I swore a little bit, I admit.

It happened by accident, of course. I was doing my handyman stuff in the attic. Then I hit my left thumb with the hammer. And I hit hard, damned hard.

As a torture method, I think it’s over rated.

It wasn't that painful, not in the beginning. But after a couple of days it was. I think I've broken the outermost part of my thumb. Something has come loose in there.

I don’t want to waste my time waiting in the line in the hospital, so I tried to take care of this myself. After all it’s just a minor injury, and I’m supposed to be a handyman.

I fixed it with a nail and some tape. No problem.

It’s like you don’t need to call a mathematician to do some simple calculus >:)

(That’s a picture of my thumb, after I did my self-medic-treatment.)

Democracy is un-Islamic

Skiing season is over, and my handyman season has started.  Living in a 100 year old house, there’s always plenty to do.

Yes, I can.  Now I’m refurbishing the attic, insulating the floor and ceiling and stuff like that.

I always listen to the radio while I’m working. It’s a very old radio. I bought it when I was in highschool. 

I can’t stand the chit-chat-and-pop-music stations, so my radio is tuned into the national broadcasting’s news station.  Most of the time they just switch in the BBC World Service, which is very good.  You get to learn a lot, not only about Europe and America, but the entire world (or at least the Commonwealth).

This weekend there was two main happenings: The resign of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson after 26 years in charge, and the election in Pakistan.

I found the latter to be the most interesting.  And so did BBC World.

There was in-depth presentation of Pakistan’s political system. Reports from the big cities, and from rural areas, where politics, bribes and loyalty to local landowners are intertwined.

The campaign was very violent, with frequent bombings taking place. The Taliban did their best to undermine the election, claiming that “democracy is un-Islamic”.  Still voter turnout was 60%, including many women (provided their family allowed them to vote).  

It’s encouraging if Muslim countries start to move away from religious fundamentalism.

The election was won by the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was kicked out of office and exiled in the military coup in 1999.

The runner up was the former cricket star Imran Khan. His slogan was obvious:  “Yes we Khan”.

(I've never been to Pakistan. In fact, I've been to a Muslim country only once, at the World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar, a couple of years ago. The picture above was taken inside the congress center, by the women's prayer room. Maybe I should build one in my attic?)

Return of the handyman

A couple of weeks ago, older boy and his buddies crashed our old Toyota. They ran off the road, hit a traffic sign, and wrecked most things on the passenger side. Fortunately the boys didn't get injured, except older boy cutting his hand when the window broke (he's a freestyle skier, so he has a high tolerance for pain, and didn't even bother to see the doctor).

The car is 12-13 years old, so we had no insurance, except the obligatory liability part. To make it cheap, I went to the junkyard and bought some used auto parts; head light and front and rear doors. I was lucky and even got them in the right color.

Cars don't interest me. I find them totally uninteresting. Therefore, I have never tried to repair a car, never touched anything under the hood.  But I thought, what the Hell,  it can't be that difficult. And I studied in a technical university (only math and theoretical physics).

I removed the wrecked doors, paying attention to how things were put together with bolts and nuts. Same with the electrical wires, and then the headlights. Then I mounted the new used doors and lights. And voila; everything worked right away.

New merits can be added to my handyman record. I hereby proudly announce that I've become an auto mechanic >:)))

(I took some pictures with my phone, to document my merits as a auto mechanic. At this point, I have replaced the rear door, and taken off the front door.)

Lead

A couple of days ago, on the way to work, I stopped by a workshop to buy some lead. I was surprised to find it was very cheap. I bought a strip of sheet lead, 4 meters (12 feet) long, and 12 cm (5 inches) wide, and I paid only $35.

Lead is a heavy metal. The density is 11 kg per cubic meter, which is almost two times the density of iron. This means that a brick of lead is almost twice as heavy as a brick of iron of the same size.

Furthermore, lead is very soft, and easy to shape. The Romans knew this, 2000 years ago, and it literally killed them. They made water pipes, boiling pots and drinking cups of lead. However, they didn't know that lead is poisonous. Lead poisoning has been proposed as a major factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire.

You may wonder for what purpose I need the lead. I'm not using it in the kitchen.

We live in an area with snow and ice in the winter and frequent rainfall in the summer. I use the lead to cover critical points on the house to prevent water from coming into the construction. Because the lead is very soft, it's easy to cover corners and edges and joints of profiled mouldings.

I didn't invent this myself. This is the way they did it when our house was built 98 years ago. I just do it the same way.

There's always something to learn from the great craftsmen of the past >:)

Another handyman weekend is coming to an end. Nice and sunny, but chill. Next week I'm going north ... I'm going back to Alyosha

(That's my roll of sheet lead in the picture, and a tool to cut it. The tool is for cutting various types of metal, including iron and aluminium. I found that lead is so soft that I could cut it with regular paper sissors. That's what I used in the end, because of the better precision.)

Handyman

I don't want to brag about this, but I can be quite a handyman, if I want to, and get the time. Not in the winter, then we're out skiing all the time. Summer is my handyman season. Then I swing my hammer and saw.

We live in an old wooden house, about 100 years old, close to town centre. There is always plenty of things to do. Last summer I built a new staircase in front of the main entrance. Now I'm doing the last finish, making the slate tile cover in front of the door.

The main challenge with slate tiles is to cut them to fit. I had to ask my old lady to borrow her angle grinder. I bought it for her birthday some years ago. It's one of the most useful birthday presents I ever gave her.

The staircase is completed, finally. Now I'm planning my next handyman project, not sure what to take first. I'll probably start on the loft, re-doing the floor, and completing the isolation of the roof that I started four years ago.

It takes some time ... but a real handyman is sexy, right >:D

(That's my old lady's angle grinder in the picture. The main challenge is to cut the slate with power and precision, making a nice clean cut, without chopping off my fingers and feet. I stay away from the diamond blades. They are too dangerous, and I don't have proper safety equipment and experience to use them)