I received my Leatherman Juice S2 from Instructables the other day. They engraved “Zieak enterprises” on it for me. You can see it next to my copper Palm Treo 680 and it appears that i’m fond of orange. I have two orange rain jackets and a fairly good number of orange shirts too. That’s natural since i have an olive complexion.

I have really gotten quite a bit of use out of the thing in just a week of having it. From 10-12 today was a family fair and i did free bicycle tune ups for kids. I forgot a screwdriver in my pile of tools and also used the knife to cut some handle grips to let the bike bell ringers move freely.

What ever happened with the salmon that i offered to do for the Petersburg Mental Health fund raiser? I finished it a little over a week ago. Here are some project progress photos and notes.

The back of the fish had a fairly large access panel cut out of it. You can see that i put in one of the eyes first. That’s from a pair of binoculars that fogged up or were bent out of whack.

It usually does not take long for me to start bleeding.

…and once i start bleeding it just seems to spread. This is about the time that i talk myself into doing something different for a few hours.

So i drilled through the front side of the fish and ran LED lights to the openings. I then wired a button to the top so when pressed the LEDs light up. But they were really bright so i needed to figure out how to dull them a little. I used some pieces from a Coleman stove repair kit and cut rubber pieces from remote control buttons to give the spots different colors. The silver piece you see attached is from the reflector inside a halogen lamp.

I decided to armor my salmon with metal plating. I used some aluminum sheets from some siding scrap that i found a few years ago, a silver colored piece from the inside of an old laptop screen, and copper from a roll of copper banding that i found under the house a few years ago. It took a bit of experimenting to find the right adhesive for the job. I had to clamp, rubber band, or tie each piece in place for an hour or so which really slowed down the work.

I then covered the part i had completed with masking tap in preparation for spray painting the fins and head silver.

At this point all i had to do was get the fins to stay on well. I don’t have a good photo of the whole fish but Mike Tozzo took a few for me at the opening.

The little pieces sticking out from behind the halogen light reflector are radiator fins from the inside of a stereo amplifier. Not only is the fish mostly made from recycled materials but the materials are recyclable.

I found out the other day that my salmon will be on display in Wild Celery, an art gallery, framing studio and jewelry store.

Last week when i had more than enough to keep me busy i thought it would be cool to have a big LUX sign behind the checkout area.  So on Saturday night after the Salmon unveiling i used my Sharp LCD projector to make big letters projected onto the wall where i traced the outline onto the backs of old posters.  I cut them out and then traced the paper cutouts on thin sheets of metal that i bought at the hardware store.  We painted a large rectangular area on the wall centered on the checkout area (two coats) and then used foam double stick thingies to put the letters on the wall.

I kind of want to write above the letters “Make checks payable to” but that isn’t that funny.

I replace my toothbrush as needed but i don’t discard them. There are scores of uses for them and here are a few that i use and a few that i have found suggested online.

I keep one old toothbrush in my toolbox with the markers, pencils, magnetic wand, and other fine tools. I have used it to remove a small amount of paint with a little thinner or to clean rusty bolts with some CLR. I keep another with my plumbing supplies to slather flux paste on copper pipe before soldering.

One seems to always end up under the kitchen sink and i have used it to scrub the threads of my water bottles or other cleaning in hard places to reach with a sponge. I have not tried it but now that i’m thinking of it i bet it would work great to clean the tiny holes in my garlic press or cheese grater. (One suggestion was to use an old toothbrush to polish between the tines of silver forks but since i have never polished silverware i doubt i’ll ever use the kitchen one that way.)

Another is under the bathroom sink or in one of the drawers. I hope i never mistakenly end up using it because i scrubbed a seam of the shower enclosure with it when i was replacing the shower door. If we ever put highlights in my hair at home using an old toothbrush would apply the bleach better than the brush that comes with the kit.

I think i’ll put one in the laundry room for scrubbing spots with Spray and Wash instead of using my fingers.

One would be great for spot cleaning a pair of shoes to get mud off or to clean the tread of some dog poo. Naturally this would be that toothbrush’s last duty before being discarded.

For a crafty use they can be used as a rudimentary paintbrush or some can be boiled in water and then bent to form bracelets.

It has been a while since i have been able to sit down and watch movies. We watched Jason Statham’s Transporter movies on two consecutive nights. Because Jason’s first film was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and his character’s name in that movie was Bacon any movie with him in it or directed by Guy Ritchie will automatically get 5 out of 5 slices of bacon.

Transporter and Transporter 2 both have some cheesy action sequences that could have used more live action and less cgi/effects but they both have riveting action , good plots and decent cinematography. Jason’s character “Frank” is excessively calm throughout both movies and his martial arts background makes his fight scenes look like something Jackie Chan or Jet Li put together. The screencap below is from Transporter 2 of Kate Nauta’s character Lola – one of the antagonists of the film. This might inspire me to collect a blog post about the best bad girls of action movies.

Thigh highs?

Stuff on fire?

Wet woman?

Guns?

On April 2nd one of the shower doors exploded in our upstairs bathroom. Fortunately, we were placing an order with Lowes for a few things to complete the apartment (light fixtures, crown trim, and a kitchen counter top). I finished up installing the new shower doors on Wednesday night and they really help to modernize the look of that bathroom. We still want to paint, update the trim. change the light fixture, replace the faucet fixtures, and replace the medicine cabinet and light over the sink in that bathroom. None of those are on the list of things to get done immediately though.

Last night i had a meeting from 7-8:30 but was still able to solder in two Ts into the hot and cold water lines for the apartment kitchen. There was already a hole in the wall for access to shut off valves for the bathroom shower – i only needed to enlarge it slightly. Earlier in the week i removed two of the cabinets from the boiler room and moved them to the apartment kitchen area. The boiler room has what appears to be the old kitchen cabinets, cupboards, counter top and sink which has been great place for me to work on projects. We do want to convert the space into a home office and shipping center for our online sales with a corner set aside for a sauna. If we have a futon in there it would also give us enough space for another guest room.

We need to get the apartment bedroom painted and the trim up and new light fixture installed to finish that room. The kitchen needs a short wall put up (i need to get a building permit soon) and the drain for the sink installed along with the installation of the new light fixture, cabinet and cupboard installation and the countertop, sink, and trim completed. The apartment living room just needs trim finished around the french door. If we put a motion detecting light on the deck it will wrap up that phase of the home improvements and give us the means to make a few extra dollars toward the mortgage.

Kevin (the administrative contact for zieak.com) received this email today seeking a text ad on one of my old blog posts.

hello,

i will pay you something in the ballpark of $35 dollars to place a text ad on your webpage: http://www.zieak.com/2007/03/08/clearing-out-the-myspace-fake-profiles/ the text ad would be for a company that sells fake diplomas. i can pay you through paypal immediately. please get back to me if you are interested :)

thanks!
sarah raymond

I foresee many solicitations like this in the future.  $35 is a fair price for a permalink from a website as old and varied as zieak.com.  If i added the link none of my regular readers (you) would ever likely see.  Just the 35 people that have done a search for “myspace fake” or something similar and landed on my page.  Of course, linking to scammy sites is a good way to get my pagerank knocked down because of poor credibility – but it is interesting to see the advertisers starting to approach site owners about placing content.

Between my trip to Valdez and this past week of long hours of setting up a new store the time has been flying by. This week i’m catching up at work and outside working on the ball fields and then getting home and working on the house so that Beth can move in soon. Ignoring my site has impacted some of the site stats.

1. Technorati: 77,665 (down 1,208) 78 links from 56 blogs.
2. Google Page Rank: 4
3. Alexa: 856,597 (down 72,854) with 38 links in.
4. Silktide Sitescore: 9
5. Page Strength: 4
6. Feedburner subscribers: 14 (down 5)
7. SocialMeter: 218 (down 3)
8. BlogTopSites: 226

One of the last days of setting up Lux we took the couch that Mike Tozzo gave to Cena for the store in. Instead of cramming it into the back of the Explorer we put it on the trailer that i resurrected. Ollie just loved the perch.