A New Year

Posted on by Chewbode

I feel lucky that all of the craziness that began in 2020 has barely affected me and Cari. What’s missed the most is hanging out with friends, both near and far, and not being with them during the holidays. Other than that, every once in a while I get the craving to go out to a restaurant. We have not eaten out since the pandemic started, and that’s not really an issue with online ordering as it is these days.

I’m also not blinded by the fact that an arbitrary number on a piece of paper now says it’s a different year and things will be different. Sure, I’m hopeful that maybe things will be much more normal by the end of 2021, but I fear that the narrow-mindedness of people who think that everything bad died with the turn of the calendar will once again push us into a heavily quarantined state. The beginnings of which is already being felt in California.

With all that said, I’m being positive of what the future holds.

I finally got the 3D printer dialed in and can print some really great tolerances. I decided to begin an overdue project of printing divided inserts for my Akro-Mils parts organizers in the office. Over the years they’ve become disorganized and, frankly, I’m wasting space in them.

A standard drawer with a six-compartment divider.
How I’m labeling what’s in the bins.
The bin removed from the drawer.
More bins printing.

I spent some time getting some other things done today too. I recently bought a Chamberlain Home Hub and hooked that up to the garage doors so I can now remotely check to see if I left them open, and even use Siri to raise and lower the doors.

I also started power washing the lanai and the patio furniture. You can see in the picture below that it was pretty dirty. There’s still some more work to do tomorrow, but it’s looking really good.

Four plus years of dirt built up here. Need to power wash this floor yearly, me thinks.
Nice, clean furniture.

Add to library: Trolls World Tour

Happy Holidays

Posted on by Chewbode

I think it’s starting to sound cliche to say that I’ve been very busy in my day job lately, which is why I have been posting regularly. But, I’m gonna say it anyway. Over the past couple of months I’ve been able to re-build how my department works. As a result, projects are getting completed quicker and the team is getting happier as they see see their efforts bear fruit. I think we’re on a great track for 2021.

I’ve been experimenting with creating a schedule for my free time. I have so many interests and things I need to complete that, if I don’t organize and strucutre, the time will get wasted. For me, the approach to this will be identifying the things I need to do (projects), scheduling them, and then fitting in things I want to do around that. I’ll post more on this as I get closer to figuring it all out.

I currently have a backlog of 28 issues (7 months) of the DeLorean model subscription. This stems from an offer I received from Eaglemoss where, if I bought six months at once, I’d get a 25% discount. Since I was going to be getting these months anyway, it made complete sense to save a little money and do this. Well, the downside is making the time to actually assemble the car now (see previous paragraph). Once that big box showed up and I opened it and inventoried the issues, I knew I had a task ahead of me. And since then another month arrived! I need to prioritize this, for sure.

The podcast Unsubscribe button has been utilized heavily today. This was the natural progression of the unsubscribing I did from YouTube channels back in July. I cleaned house of everything that I don’t really need to be listening to. Currently, this is what I’ve decided I want to hear (in no particular order):

That’s it? Yep, that’s it. I felt like there was way too much time being spent on listneing to podcasts. With both a 45-55 minute drive into the office and a 45-55 minute drive home, you’d be right in thinking that I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts. And I do. But, with all of the re-organizing I’ve been doing in Q4 of 2020, I’ve realized that I’m spending too much time consuming and not enough time making or creating. Part of creating and problem solving is having time to think and get your thoughts in order. Even after trimming down my list to these four, I still have a little over five hours of podcasts to listen to weekly, on average, which will fill about three days of commuting. Now I can spend the rest of my commute thinking.

To round out the news, I was able to (FINALLY!) get around to properly calibrating my 3D printer yesterday. I’ve had several small projects I want to bang out, but parts weren’t fitting properly. Now they are. So, I’m going to be firing that up now.

Added to the video library since last post:

Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays, my friends!

Drawers

Posted on by Chewbode

In case you were curious, Hurricane / Tropical Storm Eta gave us a good soaking, but nothing significant really happened here.

I was able to tackle another studio credenza drawer this weekend. This time, the target was the crafting supplies.

Credenza drawer cleanup 3 of 4 (before).
Credenza drawer cleanup 3 of 4 (before).
Credenza drawer cleanup 3 of 4 (after).
Credenza drawer cleanup 3 of 4 (after).

Preparing for 2021

Posted on by Chewbode

I’ve decided to focus on deep cleaning, organizing, and purging inventory in the studio. I’m halting all of my own projects until this is complete, with the hopes I can resume everything again on Jan 1st.

To that end, about a month ago I started planning out drawer organizers using foam core boards held together with hot glue. Yesterday, I was able to complete two of them.

Combination of foam boards and custom 3-D printed holders (left side).

There are still two more drawers in that credenza, and eight drawers in my main desk pedestals that need to be done. I hope to be able to do two drawers per week.

I also took the time to completely empty off my desk (computer monitors, charging stations, etc.) and dusted and wiped everything down. I rearranged and relocated a lot of things on the desktop to a point where I could deploy my new MOTU M2 which I’ll be using in the future for some video projects.

This lead to the DeLorean going up on top of the cupboards in it’s display case. I’ll leave it up there most of the time and only pull it down when new parts come it.

And, lastly, been keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Eta.

Tropical Storm Eta – Sunday, November 8, 2020 1:00pm EST Advisory 33A.

Movies added to library: Angel Has Fallen
Read: AARP The Magazine, October/November 2020