Moving out

I am moving ship to my new blog lefthandedliving.blogspot.com

Campaign 2008

Is anyone else amazed by how much time our elected leaders spend campaigning, on our dollar? After all, many of the people running for the presidency are working as public servants. A quick look at the Washington Post article on the candidates, http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/
shows 17 listed candidates, 10 working as elected officials. How can you do your job if you are all over the country shaking hands every day?

I would like to pull the same stunt with my boss- hey, i'm going to travel around the country for a year or two and you're going to pay and shake hands and I don't know, if you are all over the country and you're going to pay me.

Noel, a week later

Last Saturday brought Cape Cod a good old fashioned Nor'easter, the remnants of hurricane Noel. The storm took form quickly and sprinted up the Atlantic seaboard from the Caribbean to Eastern Canada in a matter of days. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Noel_(2007)
By the time it hit Cape Cod, the storm was being called a post tropical storm, still packed hurricane force winds and monster seas. The Wikipedia article says that wind gusts of 89 mph were recorded in Barnstable. I love a good storm and this baby had me reminiscing back to hurricane Bob of 1991, the last hurricane to whack the Cape. We did have a good number of trees down, especially along Route 6A, but "nothing" compared to Bob.

Once I realized that we were going to get hammered, I was getting pumped up for the surf. With 30+ foot waves offshore, there was sure to be some bombs coming onshore. Sunday, I woke early and geared up to head to the Seashore. The storm had given way to westerly winds and blue skies. I started at Coast Guard beach in Eastham and made my way up the coast, spotting all the beaches to find the best break. Normally, I would be right in the water at the first sign of good waves, but with surf of this size I could be judicious. You know the waves are big, when you can see the waves breaking over the dunes.


The photo above was taken at Whitecrest beach in Wellfleet. I am standing about 100 feet above sea level on a dune and the twig in the bottom of the picture is a 40 foot tree sticking out of the beach (which you can't see). This wasn't the biggest wave by far, but i did think it was a good shot.
I am at a disadvantage with my digital camera because the screen broke this summer. I can take pictures, but I don't exactly know what I'm taking pictures of...

Give 'em the finger

Here is a little background on the venerable finger joint. The finger joint is made up of little "fingers" that are profiled into the edges of the wood. Finger jointed lumber used for structural purposes is usually dimensional lumber, 2x4's and 2x6's that are finger jointed at the ends, glued up, joined together and pressed until the adhesive cures.


Based on research, the strength of the finger joint is based on four parameters:

1. length of fingers
2. slope of fingers
3. tip thickness
4. pitch

A 1.18 inch finger with a 1:12 slope (parallel to the grain) and a .5-.7 millimeter tip produces the strongest finger joint. There have been studies showing that the tensile strength of finger joints can be 80-100% of solid sawn lumber.

Finger Jointed Lumber

I have been thinking and obsessing about finger jointed lumber off and on for the past 5 years. It all started when I visited a Georgia Pacific- Finger Jointing Mill in Tylertown, Mississippi. In T-town, they get all the cut-offs (cut off pieces from saw mills, usually 6-18 inches long) and finger joint them into 2x4 or 2x6 studs. These studs are straight as a die (no warping), defect free (no knots) and they are precision cut to length.
Finger jointed lumber is an engineered wood product. It's nothing new, people have been splicing lumber and gluing it up for a century. Today finger jointing can be found anywhere wood is being used.
What I like the most about finger jointed lumber is it's simplicity and efficiency. You can take small pieces of lumber that would have no real practical purpose by themselves, but when profiled and glued to one another, blam!

A true synergy of resource utilization and efficiency.

ONESHOT

Over the past 6 months, I have been helping develop a new car wax brand, Oneshot. It's a waterless wash and wax system. Pretty cool stuff, you can wash and wax your car in 10 minutes. Check it out, it's hot off the presses and ready for the mainstream.

Wash and wax in Oneshot.

www.autovitality.com

Order online and tell your local auto store or home center to stock it up! ! !

"Developed for professional detailers, Oneshot’s formulation contains synthetic wax technology combined with the brilliance of carnauba"

One man's trash

My local town waste disposal and recycling facility, albeit, pretty good, only takes plastics with a 1 or 2 recycling code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code

What about plastics with 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7(others)? They too should be recycled. For instance, polystyrene foam cups can and should be recycled into more cups or insulation panels/fill.

If Dunkin Donuts recycled all their foam cups for a week, i bet you could insulate 100 homes. Just a guess, and probably a conservative one at that.

As I see it, much of our waste can be recycled or reused. Landfills should be a thing of the past. In this day and age, we can recycle anything, short of uranium. I mean, if you can recycle plastic bottles into fleece jackets and run cars on grease, come on.

In addition to being environmentally friendly, one man's trash can be one man's treasure $$$$. There is money in recycling, maybe not Bill Gates money, but newsprint is trading at $552. A ton.

Pallet stock

For about a week now, I have been dreaming up a use for excess pallets. Although there are pallet recycling facilities, millions of pallets are shredded, burned or just stacked up and left to waste away.
I think recycling pallets is a great solution, I recently noticed that Quikrete, the "King of the concrete jungle" adds in a $15 deposit for their pallets. I was building a small deck and needed to pouring some Sonotube concrete forms. When all the materials for the deck arrived, the driver mentioned to me that there was a $15 charge that was associated with the Quikrete pallet. At first, I was like, damn, I have to take this thing back? But then after thinking about it and checking out the sturdy, branded pallets I thought it was pretty neat. This way, Quikrete can both promote and protect.

Promote their brand with their logo and colors emblazoned on their rugged pallets, and protect their investment by keeping tabs on all their pallets.


Now that is a great model for businesses to follow, but for all the excess, i envision tool sheds, coal/wood bins and maybe even houses made of pallets.
I'm not the only person thinking of using recycling pallets to construct buildings, by no means. I just read an article about an ecovillage built it's floor system on sturdy pallets utilizing wood floor trusses to support their ends.

My idea is much simpler, but just as effective. I see using pallets for walls in tool sheds wood bins and small structures.

My idea is simple and pretty efficient.

Utilizing a standard three stringer 40x48 pallet is 40 inches wide and 48 inches tall (stringer axis). I would incorporate both conventional stick framing (2x4,2x6 etc) and post & beam framing to construct the walls. Pallets can be left out, or cut out to accommodate windows and doors. The beauty of this system to me is that the boards on top of the pallets could be used as sheathing, eliminating the need for plywood. The exterior can be finished with inexpensive ship lap siding or cedar shingles. The roof can be finished with the ubiquitous asphalt/composite shingle that graces most roofs around the country.

Lateral bracing (side to side) is my biggest concern, since that is one of plywood's main purposes. During my test project of a wood bin at my mother's house I will ascertain the bracing issue and address it on site. I have drawings of a prototype shed/cottage I have begun to draw up, but I can't switch them to a viewable format for the web. :(

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A bit of a change from my usual, albeit sporadic posts. This story goes back to the 4th of July, a day of celebration, parades and fireworks. This day was like many other summer days for me, wake up and go surfing. I don't do the parades, but I do love the fireworks. Unlike me, a local pirate named Yellowbeard was full steam ahead at the Wellfleet 4th of July parade, with his merry crew in tow.
Later on that day, Caleb, Yellowbeard's given name, was involved in a serious skateboarding accident. He was in rough shape and had to be sent to Boston for treatment. He is still in serious condition, but is making strides every day.

A blog was started for Caleb: calebpotter.blogspot.com

This blog has been so inspirational to me. It has shown me how a whole community can rally behind one it's beloved. I can't stop thinking about the proverb: "it takes a (whole) village to raise a child". I have seen first hand that this old proverb still rings true.

I was repairing the nose on my old longboard about a month ago and I decided to tip my hat to ol Yellowbeard.

Rough rider

94 Mazda Navajo
I think this thing looked pimp, but it was too much to keep up. I wanted to soup it up and make it trail ready, but, time and $$$ weren't on either of our sides. This thing was bone stock. 5 speed stick shift, manual windows/locks and buckets up front. I liked the bare bone look though. I think it looks like a government rig. The thing has a few notable add-ons, a bull bar up front, wind and rain deflectors for the windows, pioneer CD deck.
I bought this thing on E-Bay, sight unseen for $1500, ironically the same price I paid for my new Volkswagen Golf. It had about 122,000 miles and was from Connecticut, so i drove down there and picked this baby up. The thing was clean and drove nice, but I noticed after hitting a pot hole that the suspension was much different than the Toyota Camry I was driving prior to this. The thing looked good, but the suspension and undercarriage looked like swiss cheese. I swear the guy I bought it off must have let the thing bathe in salt water.

my latest study

93 1/2 Volkswagen Golf III
This car was another good pick up from my man Pandula. Although there are quirky little things like the moonroof not working and the back passenger door missing it's pull piece. Oh and there's the radio, it turns on but nothing comes out of the speakers. Nada. I really need to check all the fuses and have a mech go through it. Other than the quirky little Bavarian kinks, the car is nice, a big relief after driving my poor little Mazda Navajo The VW is a rocket ship compared to that slug.
I've been getting between 30 and 35 mpg in all around driving. That's about double what the Navajo was producing, which was anywhere between 16-19 mpg. I remember never being able to crest the elusive 20 mpg mark.

Das Brat

Undoubtedly, the funnest car ever made. I reserve a special place in my heart for the Subaru engineers and designers for making that piece of glory happen. Like many of my older cars, I don't have any digital pics of it, and I don't know if I have any photographs of it either, I'm on the hunt, though. I know there must be a pic somewhere.

My favorite of the two brats I owned was my first, a beige, 1984 Brat. This thing was gangster, it had a great vanity plate on the front bumper of a great beach sunset, ejection seats in the back, shift on the fly 4wd, t-tops (not to be taken out, just flipped up). A great around town vehicle, aside from having a wimpy 75 hp 1.8 liter engine, it was perfect for the beach, or the snow or just putzing around with two stooges in the back.
I bought it from my man Pandula for $500, he wanted $700, so we bargained for a while before he gave in. I think it was in the fall of 1996 and I drove that thing for a while before having to retire it at Christmas break of 1998. I have so many great, funny stories with the ol brat. I could write a book.

So I got another car.

I have had a bunch of cars over the years, some for months, others for years. My friends were like "damn" you've had more cars than anyone. Here are a few different cars I've owned an a little background on them.

1. 1984 Mazda 626

My first car, I bought this 4 door from my man Pandula for $1200 in 1995. I really liked this car, It was loaded (ha). It was silver with burgundy crushed velor interior, 5-speed, power windows, locks, power sunroof, 60-40 folddown rear seats. Although i didn't have this car for long, It was the only car I've had with a sunroof (until now).


2. 1980-? Dodge Aries K

This was my brother's car and I had it on loan when he was in college. Just a Plain Jane beater, a workhorse. These were the ubiquitous box cars that Chrysler stamped out in the 80's. It was light blue (same as pic), with a matching blue crushed velor interior, 4 speed auto trans, front wheel drive, six passenger (bench up front), front wheel drive, blah, blah, blah.

My favorite memory of this car was when I was racing to school one snowy day and I was whipping around this turn in the WB and I fishtailed the rear end right into a mailbox. It was so surreal, it was like a slow motion picture. It was a slight left turn and I felt the rear end start to slip out. I was going like 35, which was probably 15 mph faster than I should have been going. Anyways, I steered the wheels to counter the rear slipping out, but instead of bringing it back to square, the rear end just swung around like a baseball bat and blasted this mailbox, blam. Luckily for me, the car was front wheel drive, so i just drove out of the mail box rubble and went on my way to school.

3. 1981 Toyota Corolla


This car was awesome, I bought this whip for $100 from a tow yard. I got a good 6 months of beating out of it. I bought it in the spring of 1996, sight unseen. I go to pick this beauty up and I'm like, damn, for $100 this thing is sweet. One minor imperfection was the passenger door was screwed shut.
It was a 1.8 liter coupe, white, with a light blue vinyl interior (tastefully worn), slick four speed tranny, tilt up moonroof, rear wheel drive. I need to scan in the pictures I have of this whip, see, stock photo's don't do this car justice.

So I give the guy $100 and drive the car back to my parents house, which is only about 10 miles away. The thing ran good, started right up and shifted and stopped fine, I'm thinking: "aside from looking a little rough, this thing is all right". I get about a mile from my house and the thing starts overheating. I'm thinking, "damn, I'm not even going to get this thing home and it's going to shit the bed." I pull over and let it cool down. I theorize (pray) that it just needs a new thermostat, a $6 part. I was right and we were off to the race tracks.

I beat the hell out of this car: e-brake slides, peel outs, roll backs and countless surfing trips were endured by this car. I had this car for high school graduation and the summer of 1996. Unfortunately, in the fall of '96 she was retired and given a send off complete with a power line party, helmets and brush breaking. A great car, I barely spent any money on it for the whopping, six months I had it.

I remember one day, I was going to work and the clutch cable broke (no clutch) and somehow I made it to work, despite having to go on the highway and navigate a handful of stop signs. It's tough to really describe how amazing (I thought) the feat was, but it was like running the gauntlet, no stopping, cause you stop and you're done.

This car had three distinct identities in a half year.

1. Since the passenger door was screwed shut, whoever sat shotgun would have to pull a Dukes of Hazzard and enter through the window. I painted an 01 on the doors as a tribute to the General Lee. I should have nicknamed it the Corporal Lee.

2.Then one night a bunch of us were at a party at Barry Pinske's art gallery and I decided it would be a good idea, if Barry would paint the car, it would be a work of art. Mind you this was probably at midnight and I was probably 8 cans deep. I go get the car from my house and I'm back at the party in like 10 minutes, tops, I get there and there's like 15-20 revelers, all with spray paint cans. Pinske is nowhere in sight. They tagged the shit out of it and make it look like a clown car. Pinske did show up to sign the bumper, as if to give his seal of approval. The thing was wrecked, I knew I would have to repaint it before I could drive on the streets. This pic I found on the internet isn't too far off from what it looked like.
3. Brown tops and white sides, with a roller. I painted over the spray paint nonsense with a nice thick coat of chocolate brown (oil base) house paint on the hood, roof and trunk, then I gave the sides a nice overcoat of white wood primer. I did keep the Pinske signature on the bumper.

City Drifting

What's even better than this guy's driving, is the sweet irony of this video. He's drifting around "Lee Circle" in New Orleans. Lee Circle is named for General Lee...

Give it up

I was just reading an article on usatoday.com about the democratic hopefuls wooing the AFL-CIO members in Chicago, Illinois: one of the big three cities in the USA. Regardless of what was promised by the candidates, what I took away was that Hillary R. Clinton criticism of an absent Barack Obama about statements made regarding the Pakistan predicament.

Shark soup

I was just reading through the website www.capecodtoday.com and noticed an article titled, "Nauset sharks bite". I'm like, what?!! So I go to the link, only to find out the article had been removed and the link was blank. So then, I went to the good old cape cod times online site and wallah: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070806/NEWS11/70806010

I was surfing just up the coast at Nauset Light beach on Saturday and I think back now and I don't remember seeing any seals, which is strange. Most people think that seals are just an occasional sighting on the National Seashore, but they are always out there.
One funny, eerie story I remember was a few years ago, the fog rolled in over the water and the visibility was down to like 20 feet, max. It was nuts, if you didn't know the waves were coming from open ocean, you would have no idea which way the beach was. It's like you're sitting in your own little fog chamber.

The water is like glass. No surface ripples, just the waves rolling in.

I was surfing with a few other guys and we were talking about how weird it was that the fog rolled in so quick and just bullshitting through the fog. Next thing I know, I'm looking for waves coming in and BLAM, 20-30 seals all pop their heads (in sync) out of the water like 10 feet away from me. Can you say bug out?
It's creepy enough not being able to see the person you're talking to, whose only 20 feet away from you. It reminded me of that arcade game where all the heads pop up and you have to smash them down with a hammer.

Seals are cool. They are funny, curious, inquisitive creatures and I enjoy seeing them out there but that was too much. I went in after that.

P.S. The pic of the chick surfing is one of my favorite pics ever. Thanks Jon Conant!!!

Stagnant

My blog has been like the weather here on picturesque Cape Cod, stale. It has been a hot, sweaty mess the past few days. What is happening, is that there is a lazy, fat low pressure system hanging it's head over the east coast. The weather in the USA, usually moves from west to east and is kept moving by a high level, high pressure jet stream. The jet stream acts like a big, invisible (to the naked eye) wave that keeps low pressure in check. Right now, the low pressure is running a muck like a juvenile delinquent and the jet stream is having trouble moving it along. http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_wv_hem_loop-12.html
I like the water vapor satellite loops, because you can get a good idea of what the weather systems are doing, simply by looking at the clouds move.

"The only thing constant in life is change"

In light of some rays shed on me by a watchful friend, I have decided to brand my blog, markmcc78 is no more, i have decided to change the name to lefthandedliving, I will soon be changing the web address.....

Marconi Station. Cape Cod National Seashore

I went up surfing yesterday morning and as I sometimes do, I started at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham and made my way up north, checking the beaches up the coast. The surf wasn't great, so I was trying to optimize the swell and surfer dynamics. I ended up stopping at Marconi beach in South Wellfleet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Cod_National_Seashore
For anyone that has not visited the National Seashore, it is a treasure (see below). In my opinion, one of (if not) the most beautiful places on earth. Thank you John F. Kennedy. These pictures were taken from the site of the former radio station site where Guglielmo Marconi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi) made the first transatlantic radio transmission from the USA to Europe.

Now, I haven't been down to the Marconi Station Site in many years. I actually ended up going down the off beaten road in search of the Park Service Dispatch center (which I didn't find). I decided to go out to keep going, I almost turned around, because I was thinking "there is nothing down there". It's ironic, because that's what makes the Seashore so breathtaking was what makes this site so beautiful, there is nothing, no houses, no people, no sign of human disruption, just nature.
When I got to the small parking lot at the end of the weathered asphalt road, I was speechless. For miles, all you see is beautiful windswept sandscape: comprised of sand dunes, beach grass, scrub pitch pine, wild cranberry, rosa rugosa, scrub oak and other hearty coastal plants. Then you have the cliff. While not technically a cliff, it's a wall of sand some 100 feet+, one of the highest points along the outer coast. From the observation platform, you can see the whole lower cape, from Chatham to Provincetown. From this spot, if you go down the dunes, you won't be coming back up.


Speaking of treasure, in this picture above, you can see a (blurry) vessel in the distance, a short ways off the coast. That ship is a part of a salvage operation of the pirate ship, Whydah. http://www.whydah.com/

Peace on Earth

Bouse House, Port-a-Potty, Sani-Can, Port-a -Jon, Port-o-let, Port-a-San, Porta-Potty, Shit-Shack, Port-a-John, Outhouse

This is usually not the first place people think of when peace comes to mind. Even though most people can say that they have necessitated depositing a #1 or #2 in one of these receptacles at least once. Most people think of the portable toilet as nothing more than a foul, waste filled, feces ridden outhouse. I agree, because that's what they are. They remind me of some sort of rocket ship capsule.

For some people, namely those who work construction, the Bouse House can be a place of refuge and serenity (ironically, Serenity is a brand of incontinence products). You see, construction sites are sweaty, dusty, loud and dangerous: an ever changing work place. And with all that change going on around you every day, one thing stays constant, the shit house. One can always find some peace in a port-a-potty.

And to that effect, check this video from japan, it's nuts. Watch the end too....

Crazy Japanese Port-O-Potty Prank - Click here for more amazing videos

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/165925/crazy_japanese_port_o_potty_prank/#