If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s stuff breaking while I’m using it.

While building our new loft, Tyler and I needed to drill dozens holes and drive a multitude of screws. I started drilling a 1/2″ hole with my corded drill. I’m not sure when I got that drill — I remember using it to work on my Thunderbird, so it must have been at least three years ago — but I do remember where I got it: K-Mart. Yup, I got the drill from K-Mart. As you all know, K-Mart sells nothing but the best, especially when it comes to store-brand power tools (riiiiight…). I probably shouldn’t have been surprised when my $10 K-Mart drill came apart, but the reality was that I was a bit shocked.

I was drilling the hole when the bit broke through and jammed. I tried pulling up on the drill to free the bit. The drill body came up with no hassle. Unfortunately, it left behind the bit and the rest of the drive shaft. I got out a pair of vice grips, freed the bit from the wood, and reinserted the drive shaft into the drill. After the repair, everything spun as it should have, so I attempted to tackle the hole again. The same thing happened.

At this point somewhat irritated, I removed the bit from the drill and chucked the drill out the window. Muwahaha! Primal aggression having been taken out on the piece of shoddy crap, I returned to the problem at hand.

Unfortunately, the only other drill I had at the time was a cordless 9.6v Black and Decker device. Earlier in the day, that drill started emitting an odor reminiscent of an electrical fire, that sort of pungent ionization stench. Burning or not, it didn’t matter: the drill was too underpowered for 1/2″ drilling anyway. Time for a new tool!

The archetypal American male enjoys shopping for tools, and I am no exception. I’m not sure what it is: perhaps it’s some deeply engrained instinct present since the first rocks were used to cut meat. There’s definitely a childish fascination associated with searching out the perfect drill, saw, or wrench. I think that the imagination runs wild with the possibilities made realizable by the tool.

Of course, even the most versatile tool is of little use if it is broken. I have been inconvenienced too many times by broken tools, so last year I made a commitment to myself to never again purchase flimsy tools. The result? Unless exceptional circumstances warrant, I vowed to purchase only Craftsman hand tools and contractor-grade power tools.

Mindful of the limits of my quest, I decided that I wanted a Makita 18-volt drill/driver. Four hundred inch-pounds of torque, all-metal drive train, NiMH battery, 1/2″ chuck… (insert HoHoHo sound from Home Improvement). Mmmm… Now, where to buy it? I went to Lowes. D’oh, sold out. Next stop: Sears. They had it, but it was $30 more than Lowes. Will they price match? Yes! Plus, I got a few extra bucks for completing the price match. Even better, and much to my surprise, there was an additional $30 rebate. Score!

The drill bored through the wood with aplomb, and we finished the loft.

Last year, I decided that I really wanted a particular room at the Pike house. I convinced my little brother Tyler to be my roommate, and we started brainstorming renovations. In the middle of July, I took a trip down to the house to start tearing down the old loft and carpet. When I returned in late August for school, Tyler and I finished the destruction and got on with the construction. We then proceeded to work more or less non-stop for almost ten days on the room. On at least several occasions, we worked eighteen hours straight, pausing only briefly for food.

Here is a summary of what we did, in approximately the order we did it:

• Tore down the old loft
• Ripped up the carpeting
• Sanded the hardwood floor
• Put several coats of polyurethane on the hardwood
• Painted the walls
• Built a new loft
• Installed new lights

I can’t find any photos of the room from before we started working on it; however, my July trip photos hint at the room’s former look.

The result? It looks good, if you don’t mind my saying. I took some photos of the work in progress and of the finished room, such as my desk, the emtpy room, and the finished view from my desk (more photos are available). The photos make the room look smaller (and messier!) than it really is, and the walls are not really *quite* that red, but you get the idea.

Up next: The trouble with power tools

Coming soon to a blog near you! Topics to be discussed include:

• The new room at the Pike House
• My adventures with poor quality power tools
• The fate of my dead computer and its drives
• Rush
• The search for a permanent job, and my Medtronic offer
• The continuing fire truck fiascos
• My temperamental car, including replacing its front wheel bearing (again) and diagnosing a fuel system problem
• The search for the perfect watch
• Senior Project
• Homecoming, and my behind-the-scenes involvement
• My triumphant return to the Pike executive committee as Sergeant-at-Arms

Should be interesting. Stay tuned!

100!

Yes, this is the 100^th post to Keacher.com.

One hundred also represents the size, in gigabytes, of the Western Digital hard drive that I had fail tonight. I turned my desktop computer on and noticed that it was seeing my 100GB drive as either an 8.4GB drive or no drive at all. Either way, the computer wasn’t making it into Windows and instead was booting off a secondary hard drive into Linux. Curious as to what demons had befouled my computer, I cracked open the case. Sure enough, the 100GB drive was making not a sound.

I tried various cables, various connectors, various power sources, all to no avail; the drive remained lifeless, refusing to spin up. The drive is still under warranty, so I can easily have it replaced. Nonetheless, I am a bit annoyed at having lost roughly 60GB of data spanning the better part of five years. I have backups of my important data, but unfortunately that represents only a tiny subset of the whole.

I guess I’ve been lucky: this is the first hard drive that I have owned which physically failed. Granted, I have seen a LOT of dead Quantum drives, but they were all owned by my school district. Remember kids: backup, backup, backup!

File recovery efforts will continue once I return to Rose, where I have sufficient, reliable storage space on my RAID-1 Linux box to house any salvaged data. Rumor has it that freezing the failed drive in the freezer overnight might bring it back to life long enough to perform recovery. If anybody has any better ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Next major purchase: RAID controller for my Windows desktop box plus a bunch of hard drives…

And now for a completely different topic (ha), my car started to make a terrible racket roughly a week ago. After replacing the spark plugs and wires, I hoped the noise would abate. Granted, the engine was much smoother, but this horrible repetitive noise continued to invade the cabin. I soon traced the problem to my air conditioning compressor (not a spun main bearing; whew!) and guessed that the problem was with a bad compressor clutch and compressor bearing. On Saturday, I brought the Bonnie into the dealer, as I had neither the tools nor experience to do service AC components. My eventual departure of from the dealer was a bittersweet moment: the noise was completely gone, but my pocketbook was disproportionately lighter. Still, having a quiet, smooth Bonnie was worth the expense.

Hmmm… That was too much of a complaint. Let’s try again.

Saturday was a beautiful day. The Bonnie was giving me a good-natured ribbing by producing a pesky little noise from the front of the engine bay. Silly car! I want her to last as long as possible, so I decided to have somebody adept in car medicine heal her. While the operation was in progress, I flirted with some other four-wheeled ladies at the dealer’s lot. I was casually moseying around, glancing at the workaday Cavaliers and faithful Impalas when I noticed an enticing foreigner in lurking in their midst.

Provocatively dressed in all black, the European sensation has been the object of my lust for years prior. Her black leather and silver jewelry further incited my primal passion. I yearned to dance with her, to hear her speak with her resonant voice. As I studied her voluptuous curves, it took every ounce of my self not to move closer, mindful that her foremost partner might be waiting nearby. I moved to examine her from a different angle, desperate to soak the experience into my psyche, to be able to recall and retrace her shameless lines with my mind’s eye.

She was obviously refined, yet she could not hide her bad-girl side. As I slowly circled round, I noticed a tattoo on her posterior. “Carrera 4S” it said. I spent the better part of half an hour studying her, but it felt like mere seconds. Eventually, I felt the time was right to move on, so I bid the beautiful Porsche farewell.

Later, when I picked up the Bonnie, I did my best to assure her that it was a one-time occurrence. Nonetheless, the Bonnie seemed jealous and sulked in silence. Fine by me; in the long run, she’s happier when she’s quiet, and so am I. Mission accomplished.