The time has come once again to stretch out my brain muscles, fondly recall things I’ve done over the past year, and interface with technology to upload the results to the internet.
In March a rather abrasive windstorm blew through town and did a number on our fence. And by that I mean a big old smelly number two that we didn’t have the luxury of ignoring for a few weeks like all the little number twos the dogs make in the back yard.
Up until then my general plan regarding fence repair involved identifying a part that wobbled too much and fastening it to something that wobbled less. While this worked surprisingly well for the past 15 years, I couldn’t find any zip ties or wood screws that could repair the posts that broke off two inches above the concrete. So, the next weekend we purchased a few hundred dollars of supplies, invited our neighbor Steve to a fence party, and worked hard to convince ourselves we knew what we were doing. In retrospect I should have filmed a “Brooklyn 99” style introduction where we dramatically walked to the damaged area carrying hand tools in slow motion while exciting music played in the background.
Why, yes, I am pulling out the buried concrete with the car jack from our Kia Sorento. And yes, it did work. I also screwed in a bolt to what was left of the wood to get a more secure hold on the concrete. As a side note, if you are currently in the online dating world this is the kind of image you should post to your profile. A recent study revealed that nine out of ten women prefer a partner with fence repair skills to one with visible abdominal muscles. And that other one will most likely cheat on you with her fitness instructor.
So, what is my advice for all the fence repair enthusiasts out there reading my website? There is literally nothing fun about this activity. It is physically demanding, you have to get your body in unpleasant positions, and in the end the absolute best outcome is to have everything work just as well as it did the day before the windstorm came into town. Enjoy!
Nothing helps us relax and reset our emotional pacing like taking a week off and visiting our good friend Fernando. For all of the alert readers out there who do not recognize that name, Fernando is the mouse landlord of the Airbnb we rented in downtown Montreal, Canada. Every other day he would politely check in and make sure everything was going well and offer useful tourist information such as the location of the seven closest Tim Hortons. I suspect this is a polite Canadian thing as our mouse landlord in Manhattan would often crawl on my face and poop in my mouth at night when I started snoring too loud.
I give the city of Montreal a score of 5 (out of 5) maple leaves. The public transportation was efficient, the streets were clean, and the poutine was top notch. (Side note: I know that the poutine wasn’t vegan and that it is totally possible to make a vegan version, but I made a rare exception to my usual dietary choices to try the real deal once.) We arrived at the beginning of June and the weather was perfect for wearing shorts and tshirts. I suspect, however, that the winters are a bit harsh as a large portion of downtown has slowly been burrowing into the ground to escape the cold. Entire shopping malls are underground and many buildings are connected by tunnels to avoid exposure to the surface. I suspect another layer is being built under the mall by mole people. This, spurred along by the rise of artificial intelligence, will be the future home of Zion as foreseen in “The Matrix” movies.
Are you like me (probably not, but keep reading) and get all excited at Home Depot when an employee uses the track saw to cut a full sheet of plywood in half so it can fit in the Sorento? Do you want one in your garage but are constrained by the realities of your living situation and financial resources? Do you still want it even though deep down in your heart you know it will only get used at best infrequently? Welcome to my world where I don’t let questions like that stop me. I literally spent the better part of a year building my own track saw mostly out of things I found at the Habitat For Humanity thrift store such as used doors and laminate flooring. Attached to the wall of the garage, I can use it to cut full 4×8 sheets of material. When not in use it only sticks out two inches so it doesn’t intrude on our parking situation. The only compromises I made was that it can only make four foot cuts and it doesn’t have that fun numerical keypad safety lockout like at the big box stores.
I can solve a Rubik’s cube! A few months ago I decided to spend 20 bucks on a fancy new cube that has ultra low friction movement and magnetically aligned corner pieces. Yes, I do have old man hands now, but regardless of age and digital dexterity getting a new puzzle will dramatically increase your odds of success. I could always get the first side solved but didn’t know what to do from there. I learned the “8355” method because 1. It is a number, 2. It doesn’t focus on memorizing algorithms, and 3. I really like numbers.
With the official world record for solving a cube currently at 2.76 seconds, I would like to propose some new cube challenges. The “unsolve” challenge involves looking at one scrambled cube and transforming a solved cube to the scrambled cube as fast as possible. The “unsolve ultra” challenge is the same except it starts with a scrambled cube which gets transformed to a second specific scramble.
The “fewest moves challenge” is a twist on the more popular speed challenge. You don’t see it online very much because contestants have one hour to find the solution which uses the least number of moves to a messed up cube using only three cubes, a pen, and some paper. This doesn’t exactly make for riveting Youtube short videos like the traditional speed challenge. I’m working on a process to master this challenge that I’m calling the “20/20 Solution.” Twenty movable pieces (8 corners and 12 edges) can be solved in 20 moves. I think of it as twenty incredibly simple puzzles that are beautifully and frustratingly intertwined. All I need to do is take twenty simple solutions and mathematically “AND” them together to get the optimal answer. Admittedly there are some non-trivial details I need to work through before this becomes a reality, but nonetheless I believe this will eventually lead to a “fewest moves speed challenge”. Keep an eye on future Christmas letters where this idea will launch me into the Rubik’s cube high society.
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