Quotulatiousness

September 7, 2010

A “terrific, haphazard mess of twenty arbitrary thingamabobs”

Filed under: Humour, Randomness, Tools — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:57

I’m not much of a woodworker, so I don’t quite have the necessary gravitas to manage a proper takedown like SippicanCottage:

It’s a shameful pleasure of mine, I admit it. I love to read lists of tools randomly drawn from a Home Depot flyer, written by people that can’t write, aimed at people that don’t make anything but reservations. Popular Mechanics doesn’t disappoint with their: Tools Everyone Should Own. It’s a terrific, haphazard mess of twenty arbitrary thingamabobs, written in the breathless prose usually reserved for paperbacks with pictures of Fabio on their cover and the tears of countless overweight data entry clerks dappling the pages.

OK, first, let’s take care of the easy stuff:

  • Sledgehammer – You don’t need that
  • Center Punch – You don’t need that
  • Combination wrench – Singular? Never mind. The item just before it is a socket wrench set. You don’t need both. And they put an adjustable wrench on the list, too. How many nuts you got, Willis? Are they all loose?
  • Jigsaw – You don’t need that. And Jig Saw is two words.
  • Tin Snips -You don’t need those
  • Machinist Vise – You don’t need one of those

Down to fourteen.

Hmmm. What about a slightly more serious look at the PM list? Here’s my barely informed views on the suggestions:

  1. Sledgehammer. I’ve got one. I bought it for one specific job. I’ve only ever used it for that one job. Should have borrowed one from the neighbours.
  2. Center Punch. I’ve got one. Inherited it from my late father-in-law’s toolkit. Never used it.
  3. Putty Knife. I’ve got a few. Used occasionally for filling voids in plywood.
  4. Safety Glasses. SC is right: this isn’t a tool, but you should definitely use them whenever you’re waving powertools around.
  5. Adjustable Wrench. Got a few, mostly inherited. Occasionally used, but I could get by with fewer.
  6. Pipe Wrench. Got one, also inherited. Never used it.
  7. Socket Wrench Set. I have both metric and Imperial flavours. Used fairly frequently (far more than I thought when I first bought a cheap set at Canadian Tire). SC is right that if you’ve got a socket set, you should have few uses for adjustable wrenches.
  8. Combination Wrench. I have several, unmatched, in various states of rust/paint/corrosion. All inherited, and rarely used.
  9. Jigsaw. One of the first power tools I bought. Rarely used once I bought a table saw.
  10. Crosscut Saw. Once I used a Japanese saw, I scrapped all my “traditional” western saws. Cutting on the pull stroke allows a much thinner blade, and better control in use.
  11. Snips. I have some general purpose snips. They’re just oversized scissors, and not used very often in my shop. Probably more useful if you do metalwork.
  12. Needle-Nose Pliers. Yeah, okay, you probably need these.
  13. Power Drill. Yes, you need this one too. Don’t go for the biggest and best: at heart, these are simple tools and you don’t need too many “features”. Variable speed and a “pilot light” are probably all 98% ever use in the way of extras. More battery power also means more weight: unless you want the exercise, don’t go bigger than you can comfortably lift and hold without wobble or shake.
  14. Drill Bits. I don’t know why they listed this separately: what good is your power drill without drill bits?
  15. Circular Saw. I’ve got one, and use it for breaking down plywood panels pretty much exclusively (I can’t get full 4’x8′ panels down the basement stairs). If you have a table saw, you won’t use your circular saw as often.
  16. Measuring Tape. Yes, you need one. Get a good one. A metal case is probably better for general use, because it’s one tool that everyone seems to drop off the workbench every now and again.
  17. Hammer. Yes, you need one, but you won’t use it as often as you expect.
  18. Machinist Vise. No, you don’t need one, unless you’re doing metal work. I have one — bought on sale several years ago — it’s still in its original packaging.
  19. Multibit Screwdriver. Yes. Get a good one, if you can: you’ll use it a lot.
  20. Extension Cord. Once again, not really a tool, but do get a heavy duty cord for running your power tool away from the outlet: don’t use cheap household extension cords for this.

H/T to American Digest for the link.

Another reason we don’t think we’re as fat as we really are

Filed under: Health, Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:26

It’s because our clothes are lying to us:

. . . I immediately went across the street, bought a tailor’s measuring tape, and trudged from shop to shop, trying on various brands’ casual dress pants. It took just two hours to tear my self-esteem to smithereens and raise some serious questions about what I later leaned is called “vanity sizing.”

Your pants have been deceiving you for years. And the lies are compounding:

H/T to Mark Frauenfelder for the link.

The Guild, Season 4 Episode 8

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:57

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&#038;from=video_hub_the-guild&#038;fg=video_hub_the-guild&#038;vid=f92ff3f2-d335-44a2-8505-db9de5e529e4" target="_new" title="Season 4 - Episode 8 - Busted">Video: Season 4 &#8211; Episode 8 &#8211; Busted</a>

A different kind of “outreach”

Filed under: Asia, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:42

Looks like Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center got exactly the level of attention he was looking for:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.

Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.

“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen. Petraeus said in an interview. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”

Over at Fark.com, they have a highly appropriate term for people like Mr. Jones: they call them “attention whores”. Seems to fit.

On the other hand, wouldn’t an appropriate counter-protest involve a small mosque in Kabul burning some Christian bibles? I wonder why nobody’s doing that instead of the mass protests being threatened? It should probably be noted that this church has fifty members: hardly the mainstream of American religious belief.

The problem with knee-jerk reactions

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

Too often, they make you look like a jerk:

The CRTC has nixed the idea of “mak[ing] us all pay” for Fox TV News for now. But a CRTC under a compliant chairman could rubber-stamp whatever sort of licence Quebecor wanted, purely for political reasons, and the Fox News-ification of Canada would be unstoppable. Would that not be outrageous?

Yes. It would be outrageous. I’d sign a petition protesting it. But Ms. Atwood seems to accept this theory as fact. And it isn’t fact. Fact is that the petition is called “Stop ‘Fox News North’ ” and refers to its product as “hate media.” In a particularly astonishing Tweet on Thursday, Ms. Atwood revealed that she hadn’t even realized the Quebecor network wasn’t, in fact, to be called Fox News North! Had she done any due diligence whatsoever?

Anyone who supports Quebecor’s right to beam its product into our homes under reasonable commercial circumstances, as Ms. Atwood claims to, would do well not to sign that petition. It’s clearly opposed to the existence of Sun TV News, not just to the Prime Minister’s hypothetical meddling in the CRTC’s affairs. She’s far from the first celebrity to embarrass herself by blundering headlong and uninformed into politics (an urge that still baffles me). But she could at least own up to the gaffe. Surely it’s not a far-fetched idea that one’s signature beneath a block of text signifies approval of the foregoing.

Because I don’t watch much TV (except for NFL games), I must have missed the mass takeover of American TV by hate mongers. Yet another advantage of avoiding TV watching, I guess.

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