Hawk’s Babble-Log

Literally: my new table vice. No, I haven’t started smoking anything, and I haven’t joined the millions of addicted World of Warcraft players. If I were to win the lottery, however… I may consider getting a WoW account, because, hey, at that point, I wouldn’t even need a life.

Anyway, this is my new table vice and I love it. It cost me a whopping $20 from Home Depot.

I mounted it to the side, near the corner, of my workbench. I couldn’t mount it on the corner as the workbench leg is fixed there. And I couldn’t mount it on the end because there are a few steel rods which run the width of the table right where the two left-hand supports would have gone. I discovered this the hard way: by drilling into the table and meeting steel.

Here it is, mounted on the long side, near the corner. It’s a good location as I can rotate the thing around 270 degrees and it hangs off the edge of the workbench nicely. It’s wide enough for just about anything I’m going to be doing; the box says 4 1/2 inches, but it’s more like 4 3/4 to 5 inches wide. I know because I ran it out far enough for it to fall off.

Mounting the vice
-

First, I drilled some holes. The holes in the four corners of the vice base were huge, so I grabbed the largest drill bit I had: 3/8″. I made sure it fit within the holes of the vice base, then went to my local hardware store, OSH (Orchard Supply & Hardware) and bought some bolts, nuts, and washers. I had measured the thickness of the top surface of my workbench, and I made some allowances for the vice base and the washers, but the thickness of the edge of my workbench is a half inch greater. So I got several different lengths of bolts, just in case my measurements were a little off.

Here you can see I was pretty close with my length measurements. Well, close enough. It’s fixed good. One of the holes that I drilled was a little off, and I had to grease the bolt to get it down into the hole. I gently coaxed it down into the hole by hitting it repeatedly with my hammer. The bad part about this is that I was off in my placement measurements. The good part about this is that the vice ain’t moving. At all. Nadda. It’s tight and it’s fixed but good… even if the bolts and nuts weren’t tight. Now I just hope I never have to remove it!

Here it is holding a block of aluminum I’ve been workin’ on.

The first real use of my vice
-

Here’s the first real use of my new vice. The part you see mounted came from under my vacuum. This part is responsible for raising up the fromt of the vacuum, to adjust the brushes for different heights of floor/carpet/etc. The problem with my vacuum was that it didn’t go high enough for our carpet. So it was always grinding away needlessly. Recently, it began to overheat easily, so I thought I’d better do something about it.

Near the top-right of this part is a raised piece of plastic. This raised part slides against a wedge-shaped slider which is accessible from the top of the vacuum. This way, the operator can slide the slider, adjusting the height of the front of the vacuum, because the slider is thicker on one side than the other.

In this picture you can see the small screw I installed. I drilled a guide-hole in this piece of plastic, then drilled a hole which was the exact size of the screw core. I used a wood screw so that the threads bit into the plastic. Now, because the screw is there, the front wheels press down lower than before, and additional height is attained. And it’s adjustable because the screw is very tight.

Could I have done this without the vice? Of course. But the vice made it much easier.

EvilGeniusHawk continues his quest for world domination.

Well, it’s been almost a year now and my little water distiller is still distilling water like crazy!

As you can see from the picture… sort of… I kept a log of the number of gallons that I distilled. I marked one tally for every gallon, month by month. It was just coincidence that all of 2006 fit on one page. Well, almost all of 2006; from Feb 2006 until the end of Dec 2006, I distsilled about 166 gallons. That’s about one gallon every two days.

Cleaning it has not been much trouble. I even let it go for a month or so because I ran out of cleaner, but it works well even if it’s really nasty inside. Now I clean it once a week, sometime over the weekend.

If you don’t want to buy the cleaner from the distiller guys, you can get some from Urnex. I found some good cleaner from these guys:

[http://urnex.com/](http://urnex.com/)

The product is called Dezcal:

[http://urnex.com/productsfordescaling.htm](http://urnex.com/productsfordescaling.htm)

Works well, but if your distiller is really nasty (like mine was), you’d do well to use two packs (or more) per gallon until she’s clean.

I just have to take a moment here and say, WTF? Rant mode ON:

I got the second Pirates movie for myself for Christmas, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man’s Chest. I got the widescreen version, of course. I was kinda surprised when I opened it up last night to find that there was only one disc inside the case. With the first Pirates movie, there were two discs, one for the movie, and one for all the extra stuff, the bonus features.

With Pirates 2, there is only one disc because there are no bonus features except some bloopers and commentary by some of the writers. So, already I’m disappointed in the product.

But then I discover the unthinkable! There is an ad for one of the major cell phone carriers inside the menu system! If you elect to watch the commentary, as I did last night, you’ll see a screen telling you that you’ve selected the commentary, and it has been brought to you by [insert one of the major cell phone carriers here].

I’m not going to state which one it is because I don’t want to further the ad any more than I have to.

Let me be clear: this is a DVD that I got with my own hard-earned money. I paid the money for the _movie content_, NOT FOR _ADS_! The menu system is not bypassable without ripping the disc. It’s no wonder people are ripping DVDs and breaking copy-protection scemes. The studios just don’t seem to get it! All I want is the movie and the special features; in other words, the CONTENT. I _DON’T_ want ads!

If I got this disc for free in some kind of promotion, then I could understand ads. That’s how they could help pay for it. But _I_ paid for it! And I’m not going to pay for ads.

There, all done ranting. Rant mode OFF.