The transfer of ownership of the internet key was painless; I didn’t even have to sign anything.
Installation was also easy. It was plug, reboot, and play. The speed is also excellent. I’m getting excited about this!
Month: April 2010
A Shocking Discovery
I’ve begun the study reorganization and was confident I knew what was behind every door of the overhead cabinets. I didn’t. Look at what I just found!
That is a serious amount of empty cabinet space! And I thought I had no ‘out of the way’ place to store extra linens and pillows!
I still can’t figure out how I went from being a packrat jammed into 750 square feet to finding empty cabinets in a 120 square foot RV!
A New Desk and a Place to Sit
My desk was fine while I was only doing a little work from home, but its lack of ergonomics was starting to get to me. I also learned that the importance of drawers should not be underestimated. So, I started to troll Craigslist for a desk. It had to fit under the window within the bumpout, be reasonably lightweight, have at least three drawers, be cheap, and be attractive enough to not drive me nuts until I got around the refinishing it.
Yesterday, I found it. Perfect doesn’t begin to describe it. It looks like it was a Glendale option for the back room, it so matches the style of the rig!
Don’t mind the rat’s nest of wires, I have a plan for dealing with them. š
I believe this was originally meant to be a child’s desk, judging from the low height of the keyboard tray, which I won’t be using. It was priced at $45, but my offer of $30 was accepted.
I have, for now, put the little bookcase next to the desk, but I’m not sure if it will stay there. I would love to leave it there with the printer on top, but I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to secure the printer. It is so heavy that it has never once moved from its perch on a piece of non-skid material at the end of the bed, but it would be just my luck to have it fall now.
The seller is downsizing to a smaller house and had a lot of things for sale. Something told me to go dig through her garage where I found this:
(I just noticed Neelix scoping out his new sleeping spot, LOL!)
It’s exactly what I was looking for! The chair is of high quality–solid metal joints and covered with genuine leather, but the fabric frame is falling apart and the whole thing looks hideous and worn. I convinced the seller to let me have it for $15, calculating that a can of spray paint and new cloth-backed vinyl would cost me less than $50 (I already have some foam that would be perfect for the padding). I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it pretty or not, but it will be a good project and not too expensive of an experiment. I would probably paint the metal frame dark brown and then recover the chair in blue vinyl.
(Neelix has given the chair his seal of approval!)
Here is photographic proof of why hatchbacks rock:
I got the desk, chair, and stool in the car and still managed to close all the doors. The seller suggested I come back for the chair, but I know that when you get a good deal you should run with it. Someone else could have come by after me and countered with more money.
I have lots of work to do in the study and the new desk is going to help immensely. I will have to secure it first using a few brackets screwed into the wall; all the drawers will need is a simple stick down through the pulls. I have to decide how I’m going to manage my wires and peripherals so that I don’t have to put everything away when I’m stopped and that will most likely involve moving the very badly located plug. I’ve been given instructions on how to do so, but playing with electricity always makes me nervous. š
When I planned the renos for this winter, I would never have thought that I would pull out of Campbell River with all the furnishings and goodies I wanted, so I guess some things are just meant to be!
Intangible Results
You know all that little stuff that doesn’t get done because you ‘have more important things to do’? Well, today was time for me to start on that little stuff. I feel like I got absolutely nothing done today and, yet, I scratched quite a few things off my giant to-do list.
The biggest victory was the stupid catch for the over-fridge cabinet. I can’t even begin to calculate how much time I have spent on this thing. No matter how carefully I measured, I could never get the door and cabinet pieces to line up. Add to that having to work with my arms above my body and it has been a hard job that slowly morphed into a nightmare. This catch problem was starting to keep me up at night. It was such a small thing and yet it had completely defeated me. Tonight, I had an epiphany. I inserted the door piece into the cabinet piece and smeared it with glue. I then shut the door and pressed tightly. The result was a perfect impression of exactly where I should screw in the piece. I don’t know why it takes me so long to come up with ideas like that. š
Another thing I did was finish two sides of the dishwasher cabinet. The third side, that of the library still requires some fine-tuning and thinking about.
While digging through the dregs of the scrap pile I found a small piece of solid wood that would look much nicer for the top of the kitchen-side cabinet. I used the plywood piece as a pattern, cut out the top, sanded it, and installed it from under the counter using straight brackets. I also found a piece of oak-type trim that perfectly matched my counters that I used to hide my imperfect cutting along the back of the piece. Looks MUCH better than did the plywood!
I had to do some fine-tuning of the door on the kitchen side, but now it’s done. I’m not 100% happy with it, of course, but it looks a million times better than I would have expected it would.
I also added trim to the side of the cabinet we see from the entry door. It beefs it up a bit, I think.
Finally, I spent an hour today hauling some furniture I found on Craigslist. That will be a the subject of tomorrow’s post. š
Floor trim notwithstanding, the kitchen, *gulp*, is done for this phase of the renos!
Internet Independence?
IĀ visit Craigslist almost every day, looking for good deals on items on my wish list. This week, something caught my eye and I followed up on it.
I don’t like contracts because life is unpredictable, but I decided to bend my own rule and take over someone else’s Telus mobile internet contract for a seven month duration in exchange for a free Sierra Wireless 306 Mobile Internet Key.
- Sierra 306 Wireless Mobile Internet Key
My initial contact with Telus makes me believe this contract takeover will be a good deal for me since, for a small fee, I can stop it over the summer and restart it in the fall (which would extend the contract into 2011). Telus is the main wireless provider in BC, meaning that so long as I stick to the main roads, ie. the Alaska Highway, I could have internet access most of the way to Whitehorse and back south.
The key alone is worth over $200 and was my biggest obstacle to signing up for such a service since I didn’t want to lock myself into a contract in order to finance the purchase of the key. The plans aren’t cheap, starting at $30 (plus taxes and network fees, of course) for a mere 500mb, up to $65 (plus taxes and network fees) for 5GB. Telus says that I can sign up for a cheap plan and move up to another plan once per billing period if I think I will be going overboard. For May, I will sign on for the $40 1GB plan and see how far that takes me.
I won’t be excited about this purchase until I am parked in a Walmart parking lot or a highway turnout and able to post to the blog, but I can feel the potential of this breakthrough bubbling deep inside me.
Now, I just need to decide on how I’m going to get online in Dawson. One step at a time!