Mower Hitch, Welding, and Thermite

I've been busy.

I mowed the whole yard and helped Big B with the Weed-eater.  Took Little B to the Ascent, an indoor rock climbing place.  Played on the Xbx with Big B.

Had a maintenance window for work.  We're doing a Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 AD migration that is pretty cool.  This weekend we hid the old windows 2003 DCs from DNS.  Hypothetically all of the workstation and server traffic should migrate over to the new 2k8 DCs, leaving only any hardcoded stuff behind.  Those we can identify with wireshark and remediate.

I finished designing the hitch for the mower.

And I built it!

It's not compeletely done though.  I couldn't find the (expletive) chuck key for the drill press.  I'm going to get a replacement from Northern Tool this week.  I also had to change the design of the support bracket from the drawing.  I broke my vice bending the 3/16 steel and there was no way I'd be able to put a 90 bend across the long edge without completely destroying it.  Big B helped me weld it.  He did a good job for his first time out.


I also worked on the shelving in the garage.  I replaced the 12 inch shelves with 18 inch ones.  This lets a file box sit up there properly without falling off at every sideward glance. 

Looking at the picture here, it looks like that top and bottom shelf might be off by one peg.  I'll fix that.  I've been listening to a podcast with Adam Savage for a while, and he turned me on to some videos by his partner, Jamie Hyneman.  In one of these videos he describes the shelving system they use at MI5.  I LOVE these shelves.  I wish I hadn't put these up now so I could build those.  :D

Brenden and I tried a thermite reaction.  It was pretty cool, but I got the proportions of reagents wrong.  One of my upcoming science projects involves getting useful work out of this type of reaction, so it was a good first time project.  I  also I'd really like to do some science, but I have to get my garage clean.  It's bugging me.


This week I'm building a new Minecraft server and carving some foam.  Fun.