Irwin Quick Grip

I like looking at new and useful things. Through a friend (thanks Don!) I discovered Irwin Quick Grip clamps. These things are great. I build things in my yard, and I usually work alone. This clamp really makes putting something together much easier.

A lot of my projects involve treated wood, including 4X4s and 2X6s. In the picture above, I'm attaching a horizontal 2X6 to a vertical 4X4 as part of a canoe rack. I attach them together with deck screws. I held the 2X6 up against the poles and marked with my thumb where one of the screws would go. Took the board down and started the screw. Put the board back up against the poles with the level balanced on top. Holding the board against the poles, at level, with one hand, I reached out and clamped one end with the Quick Grip. I then pulled the drill out of my pocket and put the screw into the post on the other end. Voila!, my 2X6 is in place and ready for the rest of the screws.

In the past I used a large C clamp. Imagine holding a board up with one hand and clamping one end of it with the other hand and the C clamp. I hope that the guy or team at Irwin that invented this got a bonus!

Sydney's First Sleep Over

Friday, July 17 was Tim and Mary's fifth anniversary. They went to Melbourne Beach for the night and Carol and I had Sydney for her first sleepover away from home. We played with toys, banged on the piano, swam in the pool and ate lots of Veggie Chips!
Sunday we took the boat from Kiwanis Island to the Pineda Causeway and back. We drifted for a while and had lunch down by the causeway. Sydney went for a swim with Mommy and Daddy.

ChrisW at:
http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2009/07/06/here-comes-the-anti-database-movement/#comment-42942

said:
Most places I’ve worked (as a mainstream Oracle developer), the biggest problem is not that the relational model is not appropriate, but that the people building the systems don’t understand the model in the first place. And this has become a much bigger problem since OO languages like Java took over the middle tier application space, because there is still a tendency for inexperienced OO developers to regard the database as simply a glorified flat-file, rather than a massively powerful tool for managing your data in a robust and flexible manner. So they end up writing lots of complex processing to do stuff that a database is already designed to do for you really easily. Then they complain about the nasty old relational database.

Extremely well said!!

June 15, 1974
Happy Anniversary
Larry and Carol
June 2009
35 Years

Scout Camp at Raven Knob

Went to Raven Knob Scout Reservation with Troop 720 for a week of summer camp (June 20 to 27). We had a very good week.

Raven Knob has a good program and the Scouts really enjoy it. We stayed in Red Oak campsite on the east side of the reservation. Got a lot of exercise walking in the hills. Zach popped himself in the lip with the butt end of a shotgun, but otherwise no injuries.

The picture above is from the Cumberland Knob overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ignore the man-space issues with this picture. No rules were violated during the making of this photo :-)