rogerhanson.com

It seems like it’s been raining for 40 days and 40 nights….except for Thursday. Thursday was a very nice weather day. Boy, was it windy on Friday. When branches or who-knows-what flies through the air and bounces across the shop (metal) roof, it can really startle a person. Sometimes I try to hurry outside and see what it was, but by that time it’s long gone.

I started refinishing the church pew we bought in the spring. When I say pew, I really mean it. After we bought it, it was obvious that it sat outside and cats were peeing on it. It really stinks. It turns out that part of finishing it is sealing it up with some sort of shellac finish that keeps the stink inside. Hopefully our cat, Jubilee won’t be able to smell through the finish. When it’s done, it will be sitting in the entry by the stair railing.

Menards still hasn’t received the wood I ordered for Holly’s bedroom ceiling. Now they’re saying it may be here early next week. I tried putting up some ceiling texture patch in a can today – in one of the bathrooms upstairs. I ran into a similar problem as the bedroom ceilings…when you get the existing texture wet, it falls off. I hope it can be salvaged because I’d rather not scrape it all off and redo it. I don’t think there will be a lot left to do on the house until spring. Once the bedrooms are done, only some faceplates, ceiling fans/lights and a very little bit of trim ‘should’ be all that’s left to finish. In the spring, I’ll have to refinish the wood in the porch. Hopefully the winter won’t be too hard on it and make me replace wood in the spring.

I added a music player on the right side of the web page. Right now it’s playing Christmas music. I’ve been listening to Christmas music to try and find some songs to make the lights flash to the music. The enclosures for the light controller boards came in. I’ll need to cut two of the plastic screw mounts off and move them so I can use all 4 mounting holes in the board to secure it inside.

Does anyone out there know if a utility trailer has to have fenders on it? I’ve asked the sheriff and a city policeman. They didn’t know the answer, but didn’t think a sheriff or local policeman would pull me over because I didn’t have any fenders. The police suggested I call the state patrol. I did that but was only able to leave a voice mail. I guess until I get answer, I’ll use the trailer if I need to haul that wood from Menards. I wanted to put the fenders on anyway, but I’ll need to spend a little more $$ for angle iron and time to get it done.

I still think about Jessica and Erika every day, hoping they are OK, happy, healthy, loved, protected and that God blesses them.

It stopped raining for a little while, but it sure is windy! There are even  whitecaps on our little lake!

Things are moving, slow but steady. I fixed a broken piece on a window, and found out that our windows were made in North Mankato – Lindsay Window Co (Lindsay Sash, when I was growing up in Mankato).

I’ve been working on Christmas lights. There are 5900 lights up (I think that’s a correct count) and I’ll be putting up another 5000 more. My goal is to be over 10,000 lights this year. Don’t worry, next year will be better.

I ordered some enclosures to put the light controllers in, out in the yard. It saves $$ by putting them out there instead of keeping them in the shop. It makes less wire I need to buy and run along the ground to each set of lights. This way I can put the controller closer to the lights it’s running and just run 2 extension cords to each board with an ethernet running between them. The first board has to be no further than 50′ from the PC running the show because of RS-232 limitations.

The wood for Holly’s ceiling isn’t in yet. Menards said early next week (but I’ve heard that before). We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I put up some more pictures of the Christmas light stuff.

I put up about 3800 lights yesterday. 800 of them are along the driveway, the rest went in trees. We have a lot of pine trees in our yard, so that works out really good for Christmas lights. But, many of the trees are super tall. I was able to use a long piece of wood (around 14′) with a ‘V’ cut in the end to help me put lights up in the trees. Getting the lights down in the spring may be a little harder to do.

I still need to get the FM transmitter finished, tested and running. I think that’s going to be the hardest part of what remains. Putting lights up isn’t very hard. Sequencing the lights to music may be frustrating and take a lot of time, but troubleshooting an FM radio transmitter is something I know absolutely nothing about. I have some external SCSI drive enclosures that I’ll try to get set up to house the transmitter and related boards. This is getting fun.

I’ve been waiting for some wood from Menards for a few weeks. I’m putting up tongue-groove ceiling in the basement bedrooms. Mitch’s room has the ceiling up, but needs to be painted. There is the last board that is a little goofy and I may take it out and replace it. Once I get the wood for Holly’s room (mid-late next week) I’ll get it up and then paint them. The carpet guy should be back from down south and will put the carpet in soon. Once the bedrooms are done, I think that may be it on the house for a while. Well, maybe I’ll check on putting up some plastic or something in the porch to protect the wood from the snow/rain. It really needs a coat of something on the wood.

I made quite a bit of progress on converting the boat trailer to a utility trailer. There are a few things to finish up (lights moved so they are more visible, tie-down locations, sides and fenders put on) but it did support the 4-wheeler down the street. A good test will be when I pick up the wood from Menards. There will be 60 pieces of 12 foot long 4 inch tongue-groove on it.

I’m feeling almost back to normal after the hospital stay. I still don’t think I can eat as much without feeling full faster – like there’s still a blockage somewhere. But, I suppose that’s not so bad if it helps me lose a little weight. The hospital and doctor bills will start coming in the mail soon.

I picked up 5 boxes of Christmas lights (100 light strings) at Menards for $.97 each after rebate. Also found some on craigslist that I’ll pick up, too. I found an enclosure I’ll try putting the FM transmitter into. Gotta order some more electronic parts from Mouser and some plastic enclosures  so I can finish some projects for the Christmas light display.