Breaking on through....to the other side!

Aimee, Charlie (at our feet) and I at Matthiessen State Park this past weekend, about 1.5hrs SW of home.

 Another loop around the sun, complete!

This was certainly a memorable year for me.  I'm grateful for years that stand out from the rest, even if some of the things that make it stand out are not particularly excellent (domestic threats to Muslims, immigrants, same-sex couples, and international relations with the rest of the world being the ones that have me the most concerned, not to mention BLM/Policing issues).

In no particular order, things in my life that jump to mind from 2016:

- Our Wedding: freaking brilliant - well done Aimee! (and everyone that helped out).
- Moving to Chicago: Road trippin' in a 20' Uhaul, sleeping in Walmart parking lots.
- Trip with dad in Alaska: 4 days of coffee, whiskey, whales, wilderness, and bonding.  Misty eyes.
- Trip with Christian in Alaska: 10 days of bushwacking, rock-rolling, and photographasizing awesomeness.
- Making Chicago our new home: nesting, and slowly meeting people/places.
- Ecuador/Peru/Amazon: business tag-along with dad: we glamped in the jungle, fed pink river dolphins by hand in the wild, and socialized with good travel companions (Chuck and Troy).
- Getting a job at Cascade Designs: great people, excellent environment, good pay, lots of learning.
- Getting a job at A-1 Tool Corporation in Chicago: sweet job, friendly people, AWESOME machines, and exhausting levels of learning (but I love it).
- Spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years by myself (but with Charlie as my companion).
- Joined a makerspace in Chicago for a couple months and learned about hobby CNC machines, and all the weird politics that come with community workshops.
- Went to my first caucus, and attended a political rally (Bernie) with my god-daughter and sister.
- Spent my first winter in the Midwest, walked the dog in sub-zero weather, and survived.
- I also turned 30, and finally left "home."

Other things happened, for sure, but these are the big ones that will likely stick out for years to come.

In more recent news, these things happened:

- When Aimee was visiting family over Christmas I nearly emptied out my hobby room, purchased a 46" ball-bearing toolbox, and re-organized everying.  It is SOOOOO much better than before.  I also had purchased a 46" workbench about a month prior for $5 at the local Goodwill, and between the new tool box and workbench, my available space has skyrocketed.  I removed some of the shelving that was underutilized, shoehorned a bunch of storage bins together, and even made my own custom shelving units out of artisan Swedish Pine (aka, cheap big-box hardware store 1x4's) to store photography gear.  And since I mentioned it, I got into woodworking a bit!
Since I did such an excellent job of cramming my toolboxes into a small space against two walls, there was little room left between the wall and the edges of the toolbox drawers when they were slid fully open (about 4", to be exact)....but there was nearly 30" of bare, underutilized wall and it was driving me mad.

The hobby room: with new shelves, pegboard, toolbox, a selfie GoPro and monitor, and overly powerful LED bulbs.

So I wanted a shelving unit that was shallow enough to allow for the toolbox drawers to open fully, but also utilize the bare wall space.  Since I've always fantasized about my camera gear actually living outside of a Pelican case, I figured it was time to make that dream a reality.  I found 6-foot finish-cut 1x4's at Home Depot for $1.98/each, bought a new, not-in-box Ryobi 10" laser miter saw for $60 at a pawn shop ($120 new), and then went to town setting up a woodshop on our back porch (enclosed, but not insulated).  We never use our back porch, and neither does our upstairs neighbor, so it works out AWESOME!  Speaking of things we never use, just inside the door from the back porch is our bedroom and "master" bathroom.  I put the quotes there because while it is attached to our bedroom and has a clawfoot bath/shower, we never use the tub/shower, and rarely use the bathroom.  So the clawfoot tub just became a corded power tool storage platform, after I consulted the Port Captain for approval.  So now I have all my big corded tools like the scroll saw, miter saw, worm-gear circular saw, etc hanging out on boards I placed across the top of the tub, an epic hobby room, and a budding wood-workshop in a semi-protected outdoor space!!!  I'm loving life.

Speaking of loving life, work resumes tomorrow, but we're only working five 10's!  So hopefully we don't see 12's again, and no Saturdays, which will allow me to feel a bit more like a human during the work-week (update since original draft: we're back to working 5-hr Saturdays...wahwahwah...).

Our finances continue to be extremely tight, but we're keeping our heads above water, even if it's a bit of a struggle.  On the up-side, Aimee will hopefully have found work in her field by late summer of 2018....so that means only 18 more months of lean living!  Also, I qualify for 100% employer-covered medical/dental/life insurance for both Aimee and I in February, so our healthcare expenses each month should approach zero, allowing us a little bit more breathing room financially.

Also, in order to afford said saw, toolbox, and lumber for my hobby room, I finally sold my Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 lens on Ebay, which (when the dust settles) will hopefully allow me to purchase an 18v cordless dewalt jigsaw and most of a CNC machine (update: I bought said jigsaw, and it's great!  I found it at the same pawn shop I bought the miter saw, new-in-box, for $80 out the door (new is $130+tax)).  I captured many beautiful moments with that lens, but for the past few years it has pretty much sat dormant and depreciated itself (2 newer version of the lens were released since I purchased it in 2009).  So on to new hobbies and interests!

Speaking of which, that 70-200mm lens was worth a *bit* more than a jigsaw, and I decided that building a CNC machine before a new computer is putting the cart before the horse (I need to get better with Fusion 360, Premier Elements, etc).  So after a week of nightly research and back-and-forth emails with an online refurbisher, I ordered a new (to me) PC.

Said beastie is going to replace my 2005-model HP laptop, which has served me well for many years.  I purchased it with a 2.0Ghz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 32-bit OS, the better screen option of two available, and a single *tiny* hard drive.  About 7 years later it was upgraded from XP to Windows 7 (still 32-bit, as the processor doesn't support 64-bit), a 2nd internal hard drive was added, and I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, the largest it can handle.  About a year ago the screen became more dead than alive, and I just hacked it off and used it with an external 22" monitor.  Then the WiFi adapter started not working, so I bought an external WiFi adapter.  Then the CPU fan started making noise due to accumulated dust (but you can't access the fan without cutting the computer case apart a bit....so I did).

So it had a good ride, but the final thing that put the nail in the coffin for me are my CAD/CAM and video editing desires, which are some of the most intense things you can try to make a computer.  Software for those applications now utilize 4+ core processors, hyperthreading, epic amounts of RAM, and GPU video cards, while the file sizes from "HD" still and video cameras have grown exponentially, compounding the bottleneck at my laptop to the point where it just says "no."

So being a bit of a scavenger (thanks Mom, and Christian), I sought out ways to skin this particular cat on a budget.  My solution seems to be to purchase a lease-return industrial PC or "Workstation" - a machine whose sole purpose is to perform well and reliably 24/7 with very little chance of costing the company leasing it any downtime.  Aka, this PC is like an A-10 Warthog, for you aviation nerds.  As ordered (refurbished), it will be kicking out 3.2Ghz on 6 cores if they're all in use, but it also has a cool setting that monitors core temp and will auto-over-clock a single core to 3.8Ghz if it is doing a single-core job and the temp is within limits.  Pretty snazzy: thanks Intel!  But the fun doesn't stop at the processor.  This critter can handle up to 64GB of ECC RAM (very reliable, error-correcting RAM), so I went ahead and optioned it out with the full monty, hoping to not to upgrade it anytime soon.  I also wanted a computer that could handle hard-drive failure issues by implementing a RAID array (basically, a grouping of hard drives connected via a controller that will - depending on configuration - allow you to automatically mirror/copy data to multiple sets of drives to protect against failed/exploded/erased/accidentally-magnetized drives).  On the video card side, I chose a 2GB Nvidia K2000 GPU graphics card, which will speed up video and CAD/CAM renderings, while also allowing for up to 4(!!!) monitor support.  Lastly, it has USB 3.0, and perhaps in the future I'll add either a PCIe SSD (so so so fast!!) or a standard SATA SSD (so fast!) to increase my rendering and previewing while editing videos.  As configured in 2013, this thing would have likely cost somewhere around $5000, but I'm getting it delivered to my door (refurbished) with a new install of Windows 7 Pro for $617.  We'll see how it turns out.

Oh, and I also ordered a small Arduino CNC electronics kit off Ebay, which includes 3 stepper motors, a driver board, drivers, limit switches, and a knock-off Arduino UNO.  I'm planning on taking this $50 el-cheapo setup and installing it on a Lego and aluminum-extrusion CNC machine I'm building....so maybe I'll have made some progress in another month or so...time will tell.

Anwho, that is all for now: I hope this helps fill in some of the gaps in what life in the midwest has been like!

Danny