Daryl’s Brain

It all started with…well, really it all started way way back when I took a work aptitude course through the Salvation Army (sometime around 1997 or 1998), but it all resurfaced when Stela mentioned that she would like a new coffee table.  I did not want to spend the money on a new coffee table, so I jokingly said I should make one.  The idea got lodged in my brain and refused to leave.  This lead me to write this year’s Christmas list as the following (in part):

• Tools to work with wood:
  • Full sized saw (I have a little one)
  • Plane (the tool, not the vehicle)
  • Sandpaper
  • Wood glue
  • Saw Horses (or something to set up a work area in general)
• Wood.  To make things from.  (Like a coffee table.)
• My work area all set up
• Plans for making a coffee table from wood

Thanks to the many people in my family I actually got much of the above, including a box of tools from my Papa which filled in some of the items I will need but didn’t know existed.  Of course, not being a woodworker, there’s a lot that exists that I have no idea about.  For example, my brother said I need a router.  I have a router.  It’s connecting my home network to my modem and allowing us wireless access.  Apparently he meant a different kind of router.

Anyway, so now I have everything (and then some) except the wood, this mysterious router thingy, and the set-up-work-area.  Fortunately, Stela needed a new coat.  This means that I now have the amount of money that went towards the coat to be able to purchase wood guilt-free.  So basically I’m all set.  Because I am a software developer I also figured I should blog about this (as you may have guessed by now).

Background

I think a little bit of my background is in order here.  It all started way back when my great, great grandparents got busy and produced my great grandparents, who decided to follow suit and produced my grandparents.  On both sides of my family tree woodworking is very prevalent.  Not only were both my Papa and Grandpa woodworkers, but I think that their fathers were also woodworkers (I could be mistaken there).  On top of that, my father is very wood-workingly-inclined, as is my brother.

I’m more of an idea person.  While I can tell you what the shapes of all the different types of screwdrivers are (maybe not all…most?), I can not -unlike my 3-year-old nephew- name them all.  If you said to me “pass the Philip’s head”, I would look at you blankly until you said something like “it’s the [fill in shape here] one”.  This whole woodworking thing seems to have skipped over me.

However, what I do have on my side is the fact that I work by intuition.  Some things feel right (or not) and I can make my decisions about what to cut, how many nails are needed, or what tool to use based solely on what feels right to me.  Intuition is wonderful that way.  Right?

Well, regardless, I’m fairly certain that cleaning the garage and setting up a work area is the first step.  (See how helpful my intuition is?)  So, that will be where I start.  Stay tuned for where I will end up.  (And, no.  No one is taking bets as to whether that will be the hospital or not.)

Well, I almost made it through the Christmas season without engaging at all in my Christmas rant.  Almost.  I did, this morning, feel the need to correct two people on the bus as to when the twelve days actually were, but apart from that I did not rant at all to anyone.  (Well, about this topic, anyway.)

Before the new year starts and the Christmas season ends, I do feel the need, however to state, for the record, what my New Year’s Resolutions will be.  Chances are, if you are reading this, then you know me.  If you know me, then you’ve probably heard one (or more) of my many, many schemes and world-saving ideas.  If you’ve heard at least one of these and did not walk away from me thinking I was a complete moron, then you probably have figured out that I have a tendency to start things and not finish them.

My New Year’s Resolution is this: to FINISH one thing I have already started.  Just one thing.  Doesn’t matter what.  I just want to start the cycle of completion.  Who knows, I may even enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that you get when you are done.  I will end this post with a quote from my favorite ants:

If you take a long vacation
Without making preparation
For the coming winter when you go
When you get back from your going
And the winter winds are blowing
There’ll be nothing left to eat but snow.

We don’t pretend it’s easy but at time it can be fun
And you’ll never feel a feeling that’s as good as the one that you feel when you’re done.

- The ants of Antsilvainia

“So,” Mark started, and then paused.  “They do exist?” He asked, unable to mention what they really were.

“Yes” came the typically short answer.  John looked up at his partner in crime.  The look on Mark’s face said he needed more than that.  “Think of them like aliens. Most people can deal with it better in those terms.”

“Aliens?  I don’t think so.  They’re too…” Mark searched for the right words as the events of their recent, close encounter ran through his mind.  His hands reached up to massage his scalp as his words stumbled over his memory.  “They’re just, it’s just that, well, they’re not alien enough.”

The old beggar stopped sorting through the items they had pilfered and looked Mark strait in the eyes.  There was another pause before John looked away, almost as an act of mercy, and pretended the rags he was wearing needed adjustment. “I think you might mean that they’re too alien.”

Mark started to object but closed his mouth quickly.  I think this is the most he’s spoken since this whole thing began he thought, and he could tell that there was more to come.

“Think about the aliens you’re used to seeing on the tely in the theater.  What does everyone say they are like?”

“Well, that’s not exactly a real question.”  Mark’s subconscious was grateful to be focusing on anything but what had just occurred.  “It’s all just speculation, after all, but they’re nothing like us.  And they’re definitely not…”

“Do they have colour?”

“Well, yes, of course they do. Everything has colour.”

Already he starts to forget. “Do they have bodies?”

“Of course an alien would have a body, but it wouldn’t be like ours.  It would…”

“What did they make you think?” John was starting to get a little impatient as Mark’s memory faded.

“What kind of question”

“Think of what you just saw!”

The verbal slap in the face brought Mark’s mind back to the alley where it had happened.  Time stretched out as the part of him that strived to answer every question forced its way past his refusal to accept the very thing it sought.  Colour?  The thought almost made him cry.  Body? His hands were trembling.  I, he tried to breathe. I am, only short breaths were manageable.

John saw the moment for what it was.  “They are innocent.”

Mark’s body began to convulse.  For fifteen minutes John held the weeping Mark.  Had anyone seen them they would have wondered at a young professional being comforted by a dirty homeless man with an obvious odor issue. They would have pondered the missing footwear from either of the men.  They likely would have even called the police, especially if they noticed either of the men’s wounds.  But this was not a place where anyone went.  Not anyone respectable, in any case.  Not here, and especially not now.

When Mark did, finally, look up he did not care about his surroundings in the least.  Well, not right away.  He was looking, instead, to John who had resumed his fussiness over the stolen goods.  “What do you mean by innocent?” His hand wiped his eyes clear.

Stillness.  Mark knew now to wait.

“Do you have any children?” John asked.

“Yeah, Sarah.  She’s just a year old now.” Mark couldn’t help but smile at the thought.

“When you saw her for the first time, what did the sight of her make you think?”

A slightly puzzled look crossed Mark’s face.  “Well, to be honest one of my first thoughts was that I was going to have to cut back on all the overtime I’ve been putting in.  You know, so I could spend more time to be with my family.”

“So seeing her, in all her innocence, made you want to be a better husband and father?  Be a better person?”

“Yes.  That’s exactly it.”

“Why would you want to be a better person, if not that you were already failing at being the person you thought you should be?”  Again there was silence.  “You see, this is what innocence does to us humans.  It reveals our faults, our failings. If another human can invoke such feelings, how much more a creature of pure innocence?”

Mark was at a loss for words.  He had never thought of such things before.  Finally, he asked “what do they do?  I mean, why were they there?”

“They have their orders.”

“Orders?”

“Yes.  Just like your child will obey you, until such a time as she thinks she knows better anyway, so too they obey their father.  It’s the nature of innocence.”

Mark thought about all that had just happened.  As John finished packing what they would need, Mark looked around.  “Wait.  Where are we?”

“Whatever we have that we do not need is theft of the poor.”

This was a statement made by Father Lawrence in one of his Coffee Cup Commentaries that hit home for me.  He was trying to summarize some of John the Forerunner’s teachings and was talking, specifically, about Luke 3:11 which says, in part:

“The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.”

Another example mentioned here was where we are told that if we see someone without shoes we should run home, get our extra pair, and give them to the person.  (I forget the exact reference.)  What struck me was that this was not a “sell all you have” command (given to those for whom wealth is a stumbling block to salvation), nor was it the “go the extra mile” command (given to those of whom help is asked/required/demanded); it was a separate command that was given to the general public as a statement of how they need to behave on a regular, day to day basis.

Notice how John specifically singles out the person with multiple tunics, and *not* the person who only has one.  In the example of the shoes (I wish I remembered that reference) we are to run home and get our extra pair, not give them the ones on our feet right there and then as we will need them to be able to go home for the extra ones without causing harm to our own feet.  I have a habit of thinking in terms of “giving until it hurts” or sacrificing of what I have no matter the cost, but that’s not what’s being asked of us.  We are being asked not to give up what we need for the sake of others, but to give of what we have extra of.  Which brings me back to the quote:

“Whatever we have that we do not need is theft of the poor.”

North America (and indeed a lot of western culture in general) is almost entirely built upon the premise of having what we don’t need.  Take that to its logical conclusion: North America is almost entirely built upon the premise of robbing from the poor.  As we approach Christmas we are going to be bombarded with advertisements telling us that we should buy things that we don’t need or won’t ever use and trying to convince us that this is the true spirit of Christmas.

How ironic is that?  Businesses are trying to tell us that the true spirit of Christmas is to rob the poor.

My wife and I recently moved from Victoria to Langley where I encountered, for the first time, the modern, suburbian garage.  To understand the evolution of the garage, we must first understand where it has come from.  Basically, a suburban garage’s purpose was to either to park a vehicle to keep it protected from the elements, or to park a bunch of junk to keep it protected from an over-enthusiastic, garbage-throwing-away spouse.  With the advent of modern suburbia, this role has changed.

The difference between classic suburbia and modern suburbia is such an important factor here, that I must highlight the differences before going on.  Classic suburbia can be thought of as a large area divided into parcels of land called yards, on which houses (and the odd park) were built.  Modern suburbia, however, can be thought of as half the “large area” divided into houses that have a thin border of a yard in name only.  If you were to stand between two houses in modern suburbia and stretch out your arms, there’s a good chance you would be able to reach the exterior walls of both houses.

The concept of cramming as much house as possible onto a yard has not, however, increased the number of rooms in any given house, or, rather, it hasn’t increased the number of usable rooms.  Now you have things like a “great” room that is really just a living room, but used less so it looks nicer.  The same thing applies to the “formal dining area.”  You also have the basement suite, which would be usable if anyone could afford the house they just bought, but they can’t so it gets rented out.

In fact, apart from the common oversight of the chapel, there are several rooms completely *missing* from a modern suburbian home:

• The unfinished basement.

  No one seems to have an unfinished basement anymore where they can set up the kid’s toys to keep them busy until dinner.

• The workshop.

  While not really a missing room of the house itself, classic suburban homes have always had enough yard to accommodate this should the occupants desire it.  Now, however, there are little plastic buildings, slightly larger then a dog house, that accommodate the mower, weed-whacker, and sprinkler.

• The entryway.

  This former room has been completely assimilated by the rest of the house and now just opens up into whatever area of the house the front door happens to be attached to.

• A games room.

  Okay, this may not be missing, per say, but I am very surprised that houses this large do not accommodate this.

These missing rooms, combined with the absence of a real yard, are the main contributing factors to the evolution of the modern, suburbian garage.

Think about it.  What is a garage on a home like this if not just a smaller unfinished basement that happens to be on ground level and has a really big door and poor lighting?  But really, it’s so much more.

No one in modern suburbia uses their garage to park their car, that’s what the driveway is for.  (Well, there are a few.)  No one even uses their garage to store their junk.  (Again, a few exceptions do exist.)  No one uses their garage for what it was intended for.  So, what do they use it for?

1. Workshop.

   Many people use their suburbian garage as a workshop.  This can be a workshop where you build things (due to the lack of an actual workshop), or a workshop where you work on your special vehicle/project (due to the lack of space available in the driveway ‘cause that’s where the car goes…not to mention the lack of parking that’s a result from the proximity of all the houses).

2. Lounge for the grownups.

   With the garage door open parents are able to keep track of their kids more easily who are playing on the streets and sidewalks due to the lack of a real yard.  This has resulted in the advent of the modern suburbian lounge garage.

3. Storage of non-junk items.

   Due to keeping the garage door open all the time, and the proximity of all the houses, everyone can see into everyone else’s modern suburbian garage.  As a result, what is stored in the garage is usually nothing near junk…that’s in your walk in closet or spare bedroom closet.

4. Entryway.

   Yes, in some cases the garage has evolved into the main (not the “great”) entryway.  This is due to keeping the garage door open all the time, and some (though, not many) places to put things when you walk in through that area.

5. Games room.

   As a result of not having an unfinished basement for the kids, the kids get actual living room.  (We wouldn’t want them playing in the great room and a garage is no place for a kid to play.)  With the kid’s toys in the living room, where do the grownups go to play?  Heh…the modern suburbian garage, of course.

If you think any of this isn’t true, feel free to stop by our place for a visit.  Preferably between 5 and 8 PM so that more people will be home at the same time.

Apparently, if your voicemail gets hacked and is used to make $60,000 worth of long distance calls, you will still be responsible to pay $7,000 of that simply because it is deemed to be your responsibility to establish a password that is not easy to guess.

My question to the phone companies is this:

“How do you expect us to create strong passwords when all we can use are 4 – 6 numerical digits?”

This policy is absurd!

I love the “How Stuff Works” site!  One of my favorites.  Today, I read up on how to prevent a heart attack and learned some interesting things.  I’ve summed up the full article below and marked the ones that had surprising information (to me) in them with an *, but you’ll need to read the article to find out what the surprise is.

10 Steps to Avoiding a Heart Attack

#10 Exercise; specifically cardiovascular exercise
#9* Sleep; get 8 hours of sleep each night
#8* Aspirin; A daily, low amount can help
#7 Lower your cholesterol
#6 Lower your blood pressure
#5 Chill out; relax dude
#4 Stop smoking; obvious, but awfully difficult
#3* Undergo preventive screenings; hmmmmmmmm
#2 Know your family medical history

And the number 1 step to preventing a heart attack is…

#1 Adopt a heart-healthy diet

Okay, so most of this I already know, and some of it I even already follow.  At least that’s what I initially thought.  Then I thought “wait…how much of it do I really already follow?”  Well, lets see.

#10 – I’ve decided to start, but only just.
#9 – I try, but usually fail
#8 – Not at all
#7 – Haven’t thought about it
#6 – Haven’t thought about it
#5 – If you know me, you know I’m usually relaxed.  Often when stressed.
#4 – Done.  (btw, NEVER tell someone to “just quit!”  It doesn’t work like that.)
#3 – Never done.
#2 – I know my immediate family’s history.
#1 – What’s a heart-healthy diet???

My answer to #1 was not rhetorical.  I clicked on the links to figure out what they thought a heart-healthy diet was and why.  They listed out the top five foods in such a diet.  Again, I will list them, but you will need to read the article.

#5 Whole grains
#4 Legumes
#3 Alcohol – huh
#2 Nuts
#1 Fish

So, my conclusion is that I need to think more about this and make a couple of changes.  Of the top ten things to do to prevent a heart attack I have 3/10 which isn’t the best odds in the world.

How many of the ten items do you think you have achieved?

Some of you know that I recently counseled at my Church’s annual summer camp. For those of you who didn’t know that, now you do. My cabin was comprised of 5 kids all around age 9. There was myself and an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in years (at least for any extended period of time) as the counselors for the cabin. It was a wonderful time full of both challenges and great joys.

I really enjoyed the group of kids who were in my cabin (the White Wizards) and hope to see them next year. (Yes, I had such a good time I think I might do this again next year.) Below are some pictures I took. I didn’t take many because I was too busy having fun…I mean working really hard.

(The following pictures open up in the same window.

My version of “packing light” was apparently a little off.	This became apparent to me when we had to strap the suitcase to the roof of the car.	A classic “surprise” driving shot.
The sign welcoming us to camp.	This is one of the log cabins. Compare this to the actual camper-cabins (you’ll see).	FDK-1 and his family walking around before everyone arrives.
A kid-carrying-clergy member (there were many).	Some campers arrived a bit early.	Most campers, however, arrived all at once.
The Black Mafia. (Only a portion shown here.)	Here all the campers are proceeding to the chapel to officially start camp.	A camp goat.
There were two.	A chuck wagon bearing its colours. These were the “cabins” the campers slept in.	Every night we had a bon fire. They got pretty big at times.
None of my pictures of the chapel turned out that well. This was the best of the lot.	Here the kids wait “patiently” before heading down to the swimming hole.	The swimming hole was really a river. Here the kids are hesitating to go in.
It didn’t take long before they lost their inhibitions.	An accidental shot that didn’t turn out too badly.	For some reason I found the idea of a guitar-playing cook amusing.
Noodles like the one carried here had more purposes then just hitting others.	Here the noodles can be seen acting as an improvised goal.	One of the councilors would often provide us with nice background music.
This is the main hall in which main-type things (like meals) happened.	A nice picture of a wonderful book.	My fellow councilor.

Doctors have created a list of who should be allowed to live and who should be left to die when a pandemic hits. My questions to them are:

• What makes someone over 85 years old, or a person with Alzheimer’s, a less valuable person?
• Have any of you even read any history books, or even head of the Holocaust?
• Are your own names on the list?

I was shocked when I read this article. I hardly know what to say. The fact that this is being taken seriously makes me want to cry.

The problem is not that some people are going to live at the cost of other people’s lives.  If the pandemic strikes, that will happen no matter what we do.  The problem is that this list sets a precedence with regards to the value of human life.  It states that one groups deserves a chance at life while the other doesn’t.  How far off from that are the gas chambers?

Well, hopefully it will have an end to it. And hopefully that end will involve the project’s completion. Until such a time, however, I thought I would let everyone see some images of our progress so far.

(The following pictures open up in the same window.)

The starboard side of the craft.	The port side of the craft.	the hovercraft as seen from behind.
The bow of the craft from one side.	The bow of the craft from another side.	The lift duct as seen from the side.
The lift duct seen from within the cockpit.	The eventual main thrust duct.	The main engine.
	The main engine up close and personal.