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possible fire in the hole
Saturday, September 23 2000
Today, I believe, is the second anniversary of the thing you're reading, Randomly Ever After. Some things in my life have changed, but some fundamental things remain the same. I'm still an East Coast slacker boy living in California and working as a web developer at a dot com.
Today I found myself helping my housemate John design an Access database to help him keep track of his students. As John began to grasp relational database fundamentals, his database rapidly blossomed into a system containing a half-dozen tables. He's a remarkably fast learner.
Later in the day I fashioned a three foot long drill bit out of a narrow piece of steel pipe normally used to support hanging industrial lighting. I hammered one end flat and then sharpened it into a symmetrical triangular blade. When placed in an electric drill chuck, this bit could theoretically drill three feet through anything. It was perfect for my purposes; I needed to drill through the deep floor of my condo to run some ethernet cable to the downstairs computer.
With a little help from John (he served mostly as an observer and fireman upstairs), I managed to create the hole from below. Making it through the hardwood floors was the toughest part. Judging from the resistance, I think I ran into a nail, which chewed down the end of my bit rather severely, necessitating a re-sharpening midway through. When I was done, the makeshift bit was so hot from the drilling that I poured water down the drill hole to snuff out any fire I might have started.
Stringing the cable through the hole required the manufacture of another custom tool, this one a coat hanger hook to snag the cable from below and pull it through. By the end of the day, I had both upstairs and downstairs computers communicating over a little network.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?000923 feedback
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