John Lindal’s Blog

Gazebo — Part 1

Now that we no longer have 9 foot boards lying around on the living room floor, it’s time to do something about the 16 ton box on the living room floor which contains the hexagonal gazebo destined to frame the spa in our backyard. When we bought the house, the spa was covered by a beautiful, wooden gazebo, but even then, I could see that the wood was in bad shape. After a particularly nasty wind storm, some of the screws tore loose, and it has been wobbly ever since. Now I have finally demolished it. It was like cutting warm butter with a hot knife. The only trick was getting the very heavy roof off without dropping it on the spa, which I managed by first prying all the roof beams loose from the walls, and then gingerly using first one then another beam as a lever to shift the entire structure off to one side, until it landed with a crash on our lawn. Now we just have to find a good way to dispose of all this wood…

Bathroom Shelf — Part 2

The bathroom shelf is finally finished, and I’m quite proud of it. Originally, I had planned to simply mount the second 9 foot shelf board as two separate pieces, one on either side of the middle clothes hanger bar support. Instead, I managed to mount the board as one piece by cutting out notches for the supports. The notches at either end were easy, but the one in the middle was scary because I never fully trust my measurements and tricky because I don’t have a jig saw. But I managed it by first drilling a hole where the notch should end, then cutting straight in to the hole on both sides of the notch, and finally using my hack saw to square the corners. The board is now screwed tight to all eight brackets, so the shelf is ready to be used!

iCarly

I saw a very interesting episode of iCarly last night. Interesting in the sense that it revealed some of the fundamental assumptions of the show — not in the sense that it was particularly good…

The plot was silly: Insane history teacher vents rage from her personal life by torturing her students. Students deal with her by getting her arrested by the FBI for illegally downloading music.

So we learn that:

• The school administration did nothing to discipline the teacher, so school is basically a Nazi prison camp.
• The students had to trick the teacher themselves, so it’s kids vs. adults.
• The teacher was arrested for illegally downloading music, so the show must have been paid for by the RIAA. Since when did the FBI have nothing better to do than arrest people whom the RIAA does not like? I’m sure the RIAA would love to have this come true…

Oslo

I finally managed to visit Oslo again this August after 11 years! It rained a lot more than last time, but there were still some wonderful days with sunshine near the end — and then it rained the day we flew out, of course.

My daughter loved eating wild raspberries and blueberries and also proved herself to be a great hiker, despite being only 3 1/4.

A bed-and-breakfast is the cheapest, family friendly option for an extended stay, but if you want to stay closer to downtown, Cochs Pensjonat is a great place. The room we stayed in had both a refrigerator and a stove, and with a Kiwi across the street, we saved a lot of money by eating at home.

If you want to eat out cheap, Tullin’s Cafe has great Italian food. If you take streetcar 11/17/18 from Oslo S, get off at Holbergs plass (not Tullinløkka!), and it’s right there.

Iron Man

I got a chance to watch it on the flight home from Norway. Fun movie. Of course, we all want a suit like that

Am I the only one bothered by the size of the hole in Tony Stark’s chest? There is no way his esophagus could still work, and it looked like the hole was high enough up that it would block his trachea, too. So basically, he can’t breathe or swallow!

Any why did both suits leave smoke/vapor trails when flying? It looks cool, but surely they are repulsors, not rocket engines? Neither suit had any storage tanks for the chemical fuel required for rocket engines. And the hand repulsors, which were used for additional acceleration, did not leave trails!