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hardware for professionals
Sunday, April 7 2019
[REDACTED]
This afternoon, I took Ramona for a ride in out to the Tibetan Center thrift store, where I managed to find some things. There was an old Linksys WRT54G router outside by the dumpster. Its case had turned a pinkish-purple in the UV light and water came out when I tipped it. But back at the house, it fired up just fine. That venerable model of router is always a good find, since they can be reflashed with the DD-WRT firmware and made to do pretty much any task requiring ethernet and/or WiFi capability. Other things I got there included that set of steel mesh panel shelving I'd seem the other day ($4), a plastic theropod hand puppet ($1), and a Blue-ray player ($7). We'd never had a Blue-ray player of any sort in our household, and I could see it coming in handy should a guest happen to have a Blue-ray disc. It's unlikely we'll ever have a blue ray disc, as we'd moved completely to getting media as downloads before Blue-ray became the standard for physical high-definition media. It really says something about the importance of physical media in our household that we'd never felt the need to buy the only method of playing legit high-def media and could wait for that method to show up in thrift stores before getting one.
Next I drove to Uptown Kingston to see what sort of rubberized fittings were available at Herzog's. None seemed quite right for any of the possible techniques I would use to reduce the size of the vent pipe as it passed the cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. But some of the rubberized fittings seemed potentially useful. This made me drive out to Home Depot to look to see what they had, and when the choices were weak there, I continued to Lowes. I bought a few things that might prove useful, but the best fittings. of course, were only available online. That's how I also discovered a special bit that can be used to drill old pipe out of a plastic fitting to prepare it to receive a new one. One suitable for cleaning out three-inch fittings should be arriving next week.
Early this evening, Gretchen called to ask if I'd prepared any dinner or whether she should get some vegetables from the store. She said she would've liked to eat at the Garden Café but there was nobody to eat with her (Sandor and Eva were there, but they were having a landlordy meeting with Kate, the tenant of their fixer-upper on Maverick Road). So I volunteered to meet her there. I even brought Ramona, meaning both dogs could lie in the restaurant doorway as we dined (the outdoor garden hadn't yet been set up for the season, but the weather this evening was warm enough for the door to the restaurant to be open). I had a Southern Tier 2X IPA, a bowl of black bean soup (with sides of guacamole and vegan sour cream!) and a Beyond Burger with yet more guacamole. After my week of terrible nutrition, I've been craving healthier food. The burger was admittedly not all that healthy, but it came with a large salad (all of which I ate), and I only ate half the burger so I could have the rest at work tomorrow. Eva and Sandor had already eaten a meal, but they hung out with us for all of ours as well. At some point one someone brought out a slice of chocolate cake and we all sang happy birthday (because yesterday had been Eva's birthday).
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