Month: May 2008

Kayak Construction, Shopping List part 1

I’ve given up trying to decide if a day of doing nearly nothing counts as a day or not, so subsequent posts on this project probably aren’t going to have day numbers any more.

Today I made a first whack at getting the stuff on the shopping list. I didn’t get all I need, mostly because I couldn’t find a bunch of stuff at Home Despot and didn’t reach our local hardware store until just before closing.

After that, I started laying out the boards to do the end butting, but I can’t actually do the gluing until I get a few more items on the shopping list. I also discovered that I don’t have enough space on the table to do both sides at once. That means wasting some epoxy, but on the other hand it means taking it slower and that’s probably a good thing for me.

I’m currently doing the two hour hot water soak that they recommend for your epoxy to undo any crystallization that might have happened in transit.

And I’ve got a roll of wire to cut into 3.5 inch lengths, so I’ve got the roll of wire, a pair of “dikes” (diagonal cutters), and a juice glass which just happens to be 3.5 inches deep, and I’m cutting like a mad man.

My boat and UPS

UPS tracking InformationI’ve said some nice things about UPS recently, but it appears that my streak of luck with them is running out. My delivery from Pygmy Boats is in three boxes, two of which are around 30 pounds, and one that is around 7 pounds. I’ve been tracking them eagerly on the UPS web site. All three of them showed as arrived in Hodgkins very late Thursday night. Hodgkins is a city that seems to be in quantum flux because some entries on the UPS web site say “Hodgkins, IL” and others say “Hodgkins, IN”. One of the two heavy packages hasn’t updated since it got there, and is still showing that although it’s there, it’s scheduled for delivery on Monday. The other heavy one and the light one, however, showed travel to Buffalo, NY on Friday via Middleburg Heights, OH, which is good because Buffalo is almost right next door. But for some reason, those two also say “Rescheduled for delivery” and Tuesday’s date.

I’m kind of at a loss to understand why it’s going to take them from Friday to Tuesday to get these packages here from Buffalo. Hell, I’d offer to go pick them up myself if it would help. Especially since the other package is evidently going to be dropped off via wormhole as Hodgkins makes its transition between its Illinois incarnation and its Indiana incarnation. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s probably a matter of scheduling low priority room on the truck or something, and the package whose status hasn’t updated since Thursday is probably going to be late as well. Still, it sucks.

Free clue

If you start a long rambling description of a problem, and in the middle of it I interrupt you to say “fixed three builds ago”, that means that I understood the description, and realized it was identical to a problem I recently fixed. Your action at that point should be to go back and upgrade your system, not continue with your rambling description. Because otherwise I’ll be forced to put my earbuds back in and resume listening to Glen Gould and ignore you until you go away.

Thanks.