Nearly five years after completing the first model with my niece, this morning I cruised through the other models. It’s really more of a project for kids to learn about electronics, so it didn’t do much for me.
That’s another kit off my shelf though.
I bought this R2-D2 model kit from a toy store in Gatlinburg, Tennessee this summer.
There wasn’t any obvious way to open the package, so I tore off the top and then realized it ripped the instructions. The instructions are terrible, which led to making a lot of build mistakes. It was a very difficult build, which took me several hours. I even had to pull out super glue because the folded metal breaks if you have to fold it in the opposite direction to fix a mistake.
It turned out pretty good. I wouldn’t buy another one of these kits though.
We’re having a house built!
The planning phase has a been a lot of work, but we made it to the end. The plans are finalized and the construction agreement has been signed. This photo is only a portion of the revisions.
Our first meeting with the builder, Cobblestone Homes, was on August 21st and we signed on December 11th, which was our 13th meeting. In the end, we went with a custom build, heavily inspired by their popular split ranch floor plan. Their plan was too big for us, so we moved in some walls, changed the location of the basement stairs, and made a larger walk-in closet and pantry. We saved about 200 square feet and will get exactly what we want.
I did some early drawings before passing off to the architect. Since this is based off a Cobblestone plan, I believe they hold the copyright. This was my first attempt and we ended up flipping the entire house.
This next drawing I did is very close to what we ended up with. The final plan is 1,947 square feet.
Hopefully we close on the loan in a few weeks and then the lot becomes ours. If the weather cooperates, they should be able to break ground in February. We can’t wait!
We’re having a house built next year and it’ll have ethernet ports all over. I’ve already started gathering equipment and setting up a network rack cabinet (from Amazon), so I can start playing around with the stuff in our current house over the winter. The rack will do the job fine, but it’s not super high quality. Since the components usually only mount to the front rails, the heavy equipment can sag quite a bit in the rear. I cut and stained a couple of pieces of scrap wood.
The UPS is the heaviest piece of gear, so it’s mounted at the bottom of the rack. I used a couple of pieces of VHB tape to stick the support beam to the rack floor. The rear of the UPS simply rests on that piece of wood.
The other support piece mounts to the rear rails with washers and screws, propping up the back end of the switch.
Simple and effective improvements.
A friend wanted some forms created, so I dug through my scrap wood, cut to size, and assembled with glue and a nail gun.
He used spray foam to hold the pots in place, which will hopefully solve his problem of the Christmas trees blowing over all the time.
Here’s the yearly share of my iPhone home screen.
This year I switched from Golfshot to a Shot Scope watch, but since it’s out of golf season, the app moved from the home screen in to the Sports group. I think the only other big change is the wallpaper.
Check out previous screenshots from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2010.
After getting married in October, of course we were going to center our ornament around that this year. We took some leftover pieces that didn’t get used for the kitchen backsplash, glued two together, cut it to size, rounded the corners, softened the edges, and added a couple of screw eyes.
We bought two different colors (hard to tell in this photo) of twine and tied a square knot. Obvious symbolism.
After having a Cricut for almost two years, we finally cut vinyl on it.
A little super glue gel to attach the knot.
Then we sprayed three coats of lacquer to help set it and hopefully hold on to the vinyl better.
We also have some bonus ornaments this year. I drilled a hole through one of the golf balls Brandi had made for some twine. The other two were Huichol art we did on our honeymoon in Playa Mujeres. Can you guess who did which one?
Making ornaments is a yearly tradition for us. Check out 2021 and 2022.
I tried the main Mountain Dew Hard flavor back in August and was not impressed. This weekend I finally opened a can of the Baja Blast and after my first sip I thought it might be ok. Then the aftertaste kicked in. I finished off the can, but am not even going to bother with the other two flavors. This doesn’t even deserve a rating. Save your money and buy other alcohol. Stick to pop if you want Mountain Dew taste.
Two new flavors, Game Fuel Mystic Punch and Citrus Cherry.
The Mystic Punch is tasty. I get a hint of grape on top of the fruit punch. I’ll give it a solid 7.5/10.
The Citrus Cherry is very good and one that I’d actually buy again as an alternative to the standard Mtn Dew flavor. It gets a 9/10!
We had the idea to convert one of the spare bedrooms in to a closet for Brandi. Here’s what the room looked like after clearing it out.
After pulling out the carpet (and maybe painting?), we decided to design and build (not ourselves!) a house. Very exciting and we’ve been working through the process for a few months now.
So plans changed for the room. We painted the walls and inside of the closet with a white to brighten things up. Here you can see a bit of how dirty it looked in the closet.
We painted some shelving (the actual shelves are missing here) in the corner of the closet instead of installing new stuff. Here’s a look after paint.
With the upcoming move we bought cheaper flooring from Menards instead of getting the stuff we’ve used from Sam’s Club. The cheaper stuff is definitely harder to work with and I did the room by myself in about 6-7 hours.
The room didn’t have any ceiling lighting, which I’ll never understand. So I installed a ceiling fan and rewired the switch, which previously controlled an outlet.
I cleaned up and restained the trim instead of buying new stuff. There wasn’t any trim in the closet, so I bought white PVC trim for simplicity. I still need to get some quarter round for the room since a few flooring edges show.
I don’t like the floor style, but the next owner’s can worry about it. This was cheap and did the job. If we hadn’t already tore out the carpet, we would have left the room alone, saving a bunch of time and money.
Nick Momrik 