Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

The New York Times on the Web

I noticed a situation about perceptions and values between cultures.

"A city person calls it Shit or Crap. A suburbanite calls it Manure. A farmer understands it as valuable organic matter."

John is coming over this AM to bottle beer. I should be downstairs racking the fermenter into the keg as to make bottling easier.

I am also planning on hanging my new barn door today. It will look great. I spent a lot more effort and thought on that door than most would appreciate.

Kelley Blue Book - Used Car Bluebook Values and New Car Pricing

There is a pickup truck being auctioned off by the town of Berkshire. I like these sealed bid things. You can actually get a decent deal through these sometimes. I am going to ask my friend Jeff if he is interested. I think he is looking for a new truck.

We had an organizational restructure announced yesterday at work. It certainly appears that this will not open any doors for me personally or my career. I look at my career in a two-fold light; those items in my control (personal development and investments of time) and those items that are not in my control. The items I consider out of my control are fixed attitudes and values of senior management, history and what I call "winds aloft".

I was looking through my bookshelves of manuals the other night looking for the one a guy in Oregon wants to buy. While searching I ran into a manual that had "send off comments" in it from a place I resigned from a few years back. There was a theme in the comments that indicated that I was liked and respected. I felt good when I read them.

Although I was not denied a promotion or anything that grave I am often amazed at who gets promoted. Reverse engineering the decision tree really gets ugly.

http://www.woodmaster.com/

I am looking at better ways to heat our house. I have some initial ideas of building a large chimney that will have a fireplace and a flue for the coal stove. The coal stove will be in the basement and the fireplace will be in the living room. Bonnie brought me some excellent information on designing and building a chimnney and fireplace from the architect library where she works. So far that information is great.

Unlike many contemporaries, we will be putting the chimney structure inside the heated space of the home. Although you lose usable square footage, you gain a great deal of thermal mass. That means the house will be secondarily heated by the heat slowly given off from the masonry after the fire cools in the early morning hours.

A lot of chimney and fireplace design information is reverse-engineered information. Successful fireplace systems are measured and then those dimensions are recommended. I am looking forward to this project. I like masonry and building with stone so this looks like a lot of fun.

http://www.ovencrafters.com/

I am trying to figure out how I can incorpoarte the brick oven and the incinerator into the same project. It probably won't happen though. I am planning on building a combination incinerator and brickoven. The brickoven will be based on the designs offered by ovencrafters. The incinerator will be around the back of the oven with a separate flue. All masonry construction will be used or course.