Cicada Siren Song

Remember last Friday when I said I had two things on my honey-do list before I put down the garage floor tiles? The tiles were installed on Sunday and those two items are done, but for the life of me I can’t remember what day I did them. Might have been Saturday afternoon or heck even Monday after work, I do remember it was during the day.

I don’t have my own little shop to work in, so I often do little projects either in the driveway or on the back deck. For cutting up that junk wood, the deck was used, because this way I could lay the long pieces of wood on the seat that runs around half the deck, stick the wood out about a foot, step on it and use the circular saw to cut segments off the the end.

The 12 feet of junk wood from behind the plant started life as a box top, so along with the 1/2 thick pieces I needed for my test, there was a border of 1″ x 3″ wood strips as support that had nails spaced about 4 to 5 inches all around. Rather than try and remove the approximate hundredty-million twisted nails from the 24′ of wood, I just hammered the bent ends down flat. Because of the nails I had to cut the 1″ x 3″ wood into about 60 pieces total.

After a little while I got a nice rhythm going; cut a couple pieces, release pressure on my foot, slide the board forward, repeat until done. About halfway through cutting up the second 6′ piece of wood a very large black bug dive-bombed by the front of my face and angled down towards my right hand. I let go of the trigger on the saw and dropped it to the deck.

There was a female cicada trying to mate with still spinning blade. After a few seconds the insect realized its mistake and flew back whence it came. I finished that board and started on the third 6′ piece and wouldn’t you know, my horny cicada took another shot at the saw. I dropped it on the deck again. This time when the bug flew back into its tree, I went inside the house and got my can of Raid Wasp & Hornet spray for the next time.

Sure enough, as I was finishing cutting the third piece, my love struck bug returned. I dropped the saw, grabbed the can and fired off a stream of insecticide at her. I’m not sure if I hit the cicada with any of the stream or she finally learned that the sound of a circular saw rhythmically cutting 1″ x 3″ pieces of wood was not a male of her species, but I cut the full 6′ length of the last piece without a return fly-ins.

What Is It?

If you have ever watched Ask This Old House you will have seen a segment they call appropriately, What Is It? One of the four hosts brings out some sort of oddity and asks the other three, “What is it?” They then, in their best To Tell The Truth manner pretend they know what it is and spin a yarn, only to be told what it actually is at the end.

Mazda USA every year gives out something they call a Zoom Zoom Box that is loaded with various Mazda branded items (pens, keychains, hats, t-shirts, etc.) to Miata Clubs around the country to give the items away as prizes or door prizes for an event they have planned. This year the MMC received such a box, and the officers divided up the content and passed out a small bag with some items in them out to all the members. One of the items that was given to us was the thing you see in the above picture. It is made from some sort of rubbery material and the back is covered by a piece of peel and stick adhesive. There are also 4 tiny holes in the back through the adhesive and material. I have no idea what this is.

If I was a host on Ask This Old House and was handed this item I would say, “I know exactly what this is, it is a replica of a small auto trash bag for your 1/4 scale replica Mazda made from Lego blocks.”

What would you say it is? Leave me your answer in the comments.

Got It

117 Years of Transportation – 2017 Fiat 124 Spider: A co-worker has had this Fiat 124 Spider for several months now and this is its normal parking spot, but this morning she was early enough, and I was early enough and we both had our tops up, so that I could get an uncluttered photograph of the 2 of our cars. (7/24/17)


I have been planning on taking this photo for the Moss Motoring Challenge of the CTBNL next to this Fiat 124 Spider for several months now and this morning my co-worker was early enough, and I was early enough and we both had our tops up, so that I could get an uncluttered photograph of the 2 of our cars.

Two hours later at my morning walk this is what that corner of the lot looked like:

Ta-Da!


Putting down the tiles only took about 2 hours. Would have been about 30 minutes shorter too if I didn’t have to trim 10 of the carpet tiles to fit around the stairs and the legs holding up the cabinets. Overall it took about 4 hours from start to finish when factoring in taking a bunch of stuff out of the garage to clean up the floor, lay down the landscape fabric, move stuff back in and clean up afterwards.

Morning into Afternoon into Night


This morning started with a little event that I wrangled up from within the MMC. Something that started with a video a member posted on the Club site and another member mentioned to me that it would be cool if we could do something like that within the Club. We got all four generations of the Miata together and each one of the owners got to drive each others cars, so that when we were finished we had driven all four models.


This afternoon I started on some valances for the garage and finished about 9:00 PM tonight. A co-worker who does woodworking for fun and profit made the valances for me out of some 1/4″ plywood he had laying around earlier in the week. I started by painting the bare wood with some left over white paint and with Donna’s help picked out about a half dozen old maps to cover them with. She also helped me hang them because there was no way I could hold up a 5′ long valance and somehow reach both ends to screw them into the garage wall.

Tomorrow, the floor.

What UPS Left Me

They showed up at lunchtime yesterday. Donna called me at work and asked if I’d come home and move them into the garage. So I did. They had to go in the laundry room for now because that was the only place those big ol’ boxes would fit and not be in the way.

Last night we went to Home Depot and bought the landscaping fabric for underneath the tiles and I’m hoping to put them down on Sunday, but I have a couple of other things on my honey-do list that have to be done first.

  • First thing I need to do is cut up the long pieces of junky press wood I used to test my 1/2″ is enough to get over my personal speed bump theory and put it in the outside trash can.
  • Second on the list is to hook up our new garden hose reel for the backyard.

About a week ago in the middle of the night I heard a loud thump outside the bedroom. My first thought was a a tree branch falling and hitting the roof, but in the morning I looked on the front roof and ground under neath it and found nothing. I went around back and looked over the deck area and on the deck and found nothing. Walked around the gable end of the screened porch and because of the angle and trees I couldn’t see the roof, but when I looked down I saw what was left of the garden hose reel that was attached to the wall. The back and one side were still up, but the other side and the 150′ of hose on the reel was on the ground. I guess 25 years is the lifespan of a plastic wall mounted hose reel.

Paper Recycling Under Our 5S Rules

The President of the company is going to be visiting the Valve Store in early August and apparently he is a big proponent of 5S. So much so that he is almost militant about it. So a few months back they forwarded a PowerPoint presentation about how we can prepare our cubicles so as to look nice and neat and orderly. But very few individuals actually took it as to mean the letter of the law. My cubical neighbor to the rear was one of them1, so not to be outdone, I did too2. This morning with the visit closer on the horizon the PowerPoint presentation was re-emailed to every one. There were just 2 items I still needed to address, so I undertook them this morning.

The first was removing the white cardboard pieces I had strategically placed in the A/C vents to keep the cold air from blowing on my neck and the second was removing the boxes under my desk, one of which was my paper recycling one. With that gone I wondered how I should handling that usual gathering of no longer need paper pile. So I emailed my immediate supervisor:

Boss,

In the past I kept an old box that the reams of paper come in under my desk where I would toss waste paper for recycling. I’d empty it every month or whenever it got fairly full. On the second page (which is numbered 43) of the 5S rules you forwarded4 yesterday, bullet point #6 says “No boxes, parts, etc. stored under the desktop, drawers, etc.”, so I have tossed my recycling box in a gray recycling cart on the Assembly floor.

I figure I have three options on what to do with paper that needs to be recycled:

  1. Just toss it in the trash.
  2. Put in a pile on the desktop (space is not an issue for this) and each day on the way out the door throw it in the big blue bin.
  3. Spend $8 on a dedicated recycle “waste” basket from Staples.

What is your opinion on my best way to recycle paper under our 5S rules?

Brian

When his answer back was that he was going to check with the big boss about buying everyone a blue wastebasket, I wrote back saying that not to worry about that as my letter was sort of tongue in cheek and that I was planning on doing #2. And that actually I was going to take the whole Lean thing even further by instead of waiting until the end of the day, because the large department blue recycling can was right next to the printer, I would dump my paper to be recycled every time I went over to pick up my freshly minted future recycling.