Saturday, December 29, 2007

Having a Merry Christmas

Jamie and I had a wonderful Christmas and were visited by all sorts of great folks over the holiday season. This year, we broke into the piggy bank and bought a Christmas present we both can use...

A tandem bicycle.

Only the cool kids ride tandem.


We're riding indoors because its raining outside. We were able to ride it on the 26th down to the coffee shop. It was a real adventure, trying to coordinate pedaling and keeping the whole thing upright. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with our new coffee shop bike.

Our crack house is progressing. The hole in the kitchen has been replaced. I built extra storage in the attic to hold our massive pile of junk and I've managed to creatively hang four bicycles in the laundry room without affecting access. We still have four more bicycles scattered about the house. My two major jobs now are to repair our fence in the backyard and finish the structual repairs to the house.

What? Structual repairs?? What created the big crack in the previous post was from us jacking up portions of our house. The house is only 6 years old and it was built by complete structual morons. They did a great job finishing the house but the structure underneath does not match the walls above. The result is the center of the house slowly pushing its way through the floor. The current estimate is 15 new supports will have to added underneath the house. Between these supports will be 5 wooden "I" beams I have been fabricating and dragging underneath the house. So far only 4 supports have been installed. Those four supports have arrested the major settling the other supports are to make this deal bombproof.

I know what you're thinking...

Yes, I did calculate the moment of inertia of the "I" beam.

Yes, I did go full on nerdy engineer and calculated the number of supports needed, strength of beam and then compared different "I" designs to maximize the strength/cost ratio.

No, I did not draw everything out in CAD, although I wanted to.

No, I will not laminate and staple the drawings to the beams for the next building inspector comes.

I'm waiting until after I get my PE for that.

You can take the nerd out of the lab but you can't take the lab out of the nerd.

Lee


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