Reading (For Dummies)

Raising Barn

Over the weekend, a bunch of coworkers, myself included, went to Rich's house for some Stick Barn Building. I've never done much in the way of construction work, though I learned a lot from this short experience. Such as: Nail guns are way better than using hammers, building a barn from a kit really isn't that hard (it just requires a bit of sweat equity), and cheap winches, like cheap wenches, just don't get the job done they should.

Slaves^WContractors hard at work putting the finishing touches on a truss

Rich owns an absolutely gorgeous piece of property out by Potlatch, with views of the Palouse as well as Gold Hill (doubtful that it ever had any gold in it, given that the area is still habitable). Like all good country folk that I've met, he has a tractor, a plow, and emergency provisions in case a winter storm leaves him snowbound (as it did for a bit this winter).

No snow on a day like today, though...

Rich's previous barn burned down a few years ago, leaving him with the wreckage above. It used to be a snazzy classic car of some variety, or so I'm told.

Our morning of building started at 5:30am for me, with a leisurely jog around the neighborhood. At about 8am I set to work with hammer and nail, throwing crossmembers on the barn. By the afternoon, we had the trusses built, and the front and rear trusses lifted with winches. Unfortunately, the winches both gave way on the heavier middle trusses (seen in the picture above, the rearmost of the middle is raised only partway, which was as high as we could get it). We went home at dusk some defeated, although we did make great progress on the place (most of which I can't take credit for).

Building can be a heckuva lot of fun, something I hope to garner a little more experience with in the next few months...

Another month disappears

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but time to play catch-up. Over the last month, I've: run every other day, biked almost every other day; lost 10 pounds; seen Greg Mortenson speak in town; paddled down the Palouse River twice; run a leg of a relay race; gotten a raise at work all squared away; started programming in Python and Ruby f'reals (using GTK and all that fun stuff, even); received two death threats from members of Soka Gakkai, International.

The last bit has been one of those 'more amusing things in my life.' Six or so years ago, I posted a picture of SGI's sacred scroll, called the gohonzon, on my blog. I have received many promises of bodily harm and dismemberment from members of SGI since doing so. I'd guesstimate that, on average, I receive two to three legitimate death threats per year, with another two or three ranting emails per month telling me that I'm going to hell for posting the picture. I find it amusing that a group with buddhist aspirations treats a physical object as sacred (and a digital reproduction of a physical object as sacrilege?), so let the Googlers/background researchers on SGI beware. Of course, take my warning with a grain of salt -- I'd hardly call Jerry Falwell a representative of christianity. Similarly I'd like to think that the folks that leave their nice comments to me aren't in the main line of SGI. The whole affair has left a bad taste in my mouth, though -- how could it not?

I do find it interesting that while Wikipedia has angered many Muslims by ruling that pictures of the prophet Mohammed are A-OK in his entry, there is no picture of the gohonzon on SGI's. Perhaps an edit is in order?