Some of you may know, and others may be unaware until now, Ben has graciously bought us brand new carpet for the common room at the space.  Via the help of the friendly Nashville guys we were able to secure it, and with Claudio’s assistance getting it home.

Now comes the hard part.  In attempts of further prepping the space for a LAN party around August 25, various other obligations of the board members, and general time frame, we hope to try and install the carpet in the space on July 28th.  That will be 1 week from this coming Saturday.  So this is a call out to everyone for any and all help we can get on the 28th to get that carpet installed.  We will need people to help move and shift around the stuff in the common room.  Especially when it comes to the benches, we will need a few extra hands to move those.  If we can get enough people together, we’ll be able to easily shift the furniture around, lay down the carpet, and then shift the furniture back.  The hopes and goal for the day will be to get everything carpeted so that we can have it ready for our house warming event.  If you think you can help, please make plans to be there and if you don’t mind speak up on this thread, or send me a direct message, so we’ve got an idea of how many will be helping.  After we’ve had an opportunity to discuss things a little further, look for more details to be announced here on time and any other plans.

Ben and Dan got another piece of pegboard mounted, a few more things shifted around, and a little more organized.  Between all the efforts Dru put forth this weekend, what Ben and Joe were able to accomplish on the recycling run, and what we did tonight, we should have the space in a much better situation in short order.  Be looking for more details and plans in another email shortly.

The big thing that we have coming up is going to be a wish list of items that we need.  Mostly little things from what I know, and I’m sure that others can contribute to the list.  What I would like to hit people up for ideas on is how we should go about handling such a wish list?  There will be various little things that we can all come up with needing at the space, and I’d like to have a setup that would facilitate people being able to pick and choose to get things.  What do you guys think would work best for this?  Also what items can you think of to add to such a list? Let us know on the mailing list.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help.

With our first move in day scheduled for June 23rd, here’s some updated pictures of our progress at the new space.

A bit warm with no AC (Getting fixed Monday)

Shop Area

Shop Area Facing Community Room door

Community Room

Community Room (facing shop)

Future dark room (left) Breaker closet (right)

Future dark room (left) breaker closet (middle) HVAC closet (right)

Dan Vacuuming Drywall

Just to give everyone an update, Ben, Claudio, Dan, and Joe have been up at the new space working nearly everyday since we’ve signed the lease. We have taken down all the walls we needed to take down. We’ve fixed the drop ceiling in the community room. We’ve prepped the walls of the community room to be primed and painted. We need to put up a couple of walls and we’ll be ready to start moving stuff in.

We’re still waiting on the AC to be fixed (Hasn’t worked since we’ve been there) and we’re waiting on a guy to come fix the broken glass in the front door.

We are going to be up working on the new space every night this week. If any members would like to come give us a hand we would greatly appreciate it. Let us know when you plan on coming out, we don’t want to get too many people in the space and not be able to get any work done.

Hoping to get our Comcast connection moved over (as well as our servers/camera setup) sometime Friday. We’re just waiting on Comcast to schedule a time/date.

My wife and I will shortly be moving into a new house. This house has nice side section on the side that is fenced off and I think will make a good vegetable garden, so I figured I’d keep a project log.
There are a couple of facts I need to make the reader aware of
1) Here is how this area looks now:

As you can see, it has been pretty neglected and left to run to seed.
2) The closest I have ever been to growing things has involved an animal-shaped pottery and some slimy seeds (http://www.chiapet.com/index.php/original-chia-pet). Since when it comes to growing things I am a complete dummy, it should come as no surprise that I will be using this book:

To guide me along.
My ultimate goal when finished is to have a garden of different types of vegetables (and maybe some fruit here and there) to supplement our groceries, help us eat healthier and make things more convenient than having to run to the store all the time for different items.

Its as good as walking into a clinic and getting some physical therapy, seriously its that good and no im not joking its amazing. Not kidding its one of the best thing I have ever done in my life. Getting physical therapy is something that I have wanted to do for a long time but just couldnt afford, and better yet going out and getting something like IV therapy Scottsdale is a dream for me but eating healthy is gonna have to do for now!

The first step (and most likely the hardest) is clearing out this area. Complicating things is that there is no telling what is hidden in the overgrowth, so until I clear the space out I will list the “treasure” I find each day.

DAY 1
TOOLS:
1 Gardening hoe (no jokes!)
1 Garden Fork
Based on the images above, I made the assumption that everything was dirt from the shed to the far fence. However, once I started, this is what I found instead:

Bricks and paving stones!

It might be hard to see above, but click the image to see the large size – there are bricks and paving stones covering much that area. So, I will need to pull most of these up before I start planting. I will probably leave a small area for a path and place to put a small table and chair under the awning.
Even with the little surprise, I was able to accomplish what I planned for today – I cleared as much of the overgrowth from the fenced in section as I could and enough on the other side to allow both gates to open and close freely.
GOAL: Clear out fenced in section of overgrowth
Status: Mostly Complete, with a surprise!
Treasure: A 5ft long post hole digger(handles intact and metal in excellent shape), bricks/paving stones, a decomposing Croc, and some empty aluminum cans, vintage indeterminate
OTHER THOUGHTS: I should have brought a large blade straight edged and a curved edge shovel and a couple of shears/loppers of various sizes. Those will be included next time as I go to work on the saplings and brush that has sprung up in and around this section of the garden.

Recently Roy and I set out to build set out to build a better headphone amplifier for our higher end Sennheiser headphones. A headphone amp simply boosts the power to the headphones a bit, this results in better sound on the bigger headphones. The design is built around a know design over at Diy Audio Projects. It is a Class A amplifier with a 12AU7 tube. We ended up puting a spin on the project and added a PCM2704 USB DAC (sound card). Sweet glowing tube action pictures are below.

Populating the board

Fully Populated

All soldered up.

Back of Amp

Front of Amp

Amplifier board hung.

Blown apart

Amp Running