Abstract:
This session will cover the basics of choosing a topic, writing an abstract, building a slide deck, and finding an opportunity to deliver your presentation. This is a short introduction to beginning to speak about technical topics.
Length: 30 minutes
Slides: FirstSpeakingOpportunity.pptx
Sample Blank PPTX: BlankSample.PPTX
My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.
Today I started the day (after PT) with a little shopping. With the approval of my chisels from the instructor, I could just add the other tools that I needed for class. I had the safety glasses and hearing protection, along with a backsaw and measuring tape. The things I need are:
The last one I wasn’t sure about, but we’ll be sharpening in class, it could come in handy at home, and the ones the school has certainly have worn out bearings. Plus at $15, I figured it’s worth just grabbing.
The instructor likes Lee Valley, who I’ve seen at a number of shows and been impressed with the craftsmanship of the various offerings. We had a number of choices for each item, and I spent a few minutes going through them. The squares were quite a range of choices
From $14 to $70. I decided the second one, a small square that we actually saw in class, was a decent compromise. The 4” one will get me measuring, and I’m curious to see how far out of square the other combination square, carpenters square, and right angle square I have here are.
I also picked the $35 marking guage. I tried building one at one point, but it didn’t work that well for me, so I’ll give a professional one a go and see how that works.
The weather sucks today. It’s very windy, 25-30+, and gusting, which makes for an ugly time with the saw. Plus it will be blowing stuff all over the garage. Still, I want to get some cutting and assembly done on my jig.
I went out and decided that I’d give the wind a chance to die down and start by getting my work surface ready. I had placed a scrap piece of OSB on a long 2×4 and also a few scraps to give me a surface that was 8ft long. I had the OSB slightly extended beyond the end of the 8’ 2×4 so that I could attach the next piece there. I started by first using a few screws to attach those the OSB to the 2x4s. Once that was done, I added another scrap piece and a couple of long 2x4s with another sawhorse. I laid everything out and measured. I had a bit over 22ft, so I was in good shape.
As you can see, I needed to hurry a bit now. The weather was looking bad.
After I got these pieces on, I checked the level. It was off, so I put a few scrap 2x4s on the sawhorse to raise up the pieces. Things looked close enough here.
With the wind blowing and a few drops of rain, I managed to screw down a few more pieces and soon I essentially had a 22ft work surface. I measured, and slide the OSB towards the ends, leaving a small gap in the middle, but since I’ll be putting a jig on top of here, that’s fine.
And since a storm was coming, I also added some scrap braces to ensure things didn’t blow away. The last of these went in as rain was coming down.
The rain was a coming in so I closed the shop side of the garage and spent a few minutes with my plywood, extending my lines along it. No cutting with the wind and cars in the garage today, so it’s an early day. A good thing, since I’m beat. This has been a long week.
My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.
This has been a crazy week. It’s the first week of time off, but I’ve found myself as busy, or busier, than I am most weeks. My son coming back from China, extra kid volleyball, doctor appointments, and more.
Yesterday started with a slow wakeup, blogging, and planning a few things. I had a list of supplies from woodworking class, and I spent a bit of time looking at the various options and trying to decide what was worth spending money on. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that woodworking isn’t cheap, so I had to decide if the $15, $36, or $80 squares were better decisions. I also dug out some chisels that I’d received as a gift. These were Stanley chisels and my plan was to bring them to class and see if they were acceptable.
I lost a bit of time at a doctor appointment (knee is doing well), and swung by Lowes on the way home for a few pieces of wood to finish the sawhorses. I also got slightly lost in the miter saw section. The one I inherited from a delinquent tenant year ago is a basic miter saw, no tilting cuts and the flagpole plan calls for a beveled cut. I’m not sure if I can get a vertical cut from this saw, so I spent a few minutes drooling over DeWalt and Hitachi compound miter saws, and debated a Kobalt brand. Ultimately I think any would work, but I deferred the decision.
The afternoon was assembling two more sawhorses. I dado’ed out the tops, working my way across with the circular saw. I suppose the table saw would work, but this was quicker, and less messy. Plus I was in the cool afternoon.
With my guide, I marked and then cut the slots in the wood. This might be overkill, but it adds a lot of strength to the legs. I’m surprised how much more stable these legs are then sawhorses I’ve thrown together in the past.
It’s slightly messy, but it went quicker today. I was better at cutting closed to a dado than a series of grooves I needed to use a hammer to clean out. However the weather didn’t cooperate. It started hailing and raining and I got chased inside.
The boys, however, enjoyed the view.
I did manage to get everything inside, and I cut a few braces from scrap plywood to use on the legs. I assembled one and then stopped when I had to close my side of the garage. Still, I marked up the other braces to cut today.
After that, it was off to class. I brought my phone inside and took a few pictures this time. Feels good walking into the classroom. It’s like I’m improving my life with some learning in a way I haven’t done in years.
Class was better as we started with actual work right off. I was in the group that started with sharpening. Each of us grabbed a plane and removed the iron for sharpening. I was a little slow, or too polite, and all the waterstones were gone by the time I got over there. So I got the Japanese waterstones to work with. There isn’t much of a difference. These are natural and the others are synthetic, but the same process applies.
First I had to flatten the stone. I hadn’t worried too much about this in the past with my mechanical sharpener, but I see the importance here. Instead of a marble base, I had a metal/diamond plate to flatten the top.
Once that was done, I worked on the honing guide, and went through the grits fairly quickly. I was first to get started, and I think I had a fairly sharp iron to start with and I was done in no time. The TA approved my work and I assembled the plane.
After that, it was the boring part of class. Actually, it was interesting, but sitting on stools listening to the instructor explain how logs can be sawn and the effects on wood isn’t exciting. It’s relevant, and important if you make fine furniture, and something I’ll struggle with choosing wood and considering the grain and cut of boards.
Then it was practical time. We each had a rough board that we locked into a workbench. The instructor showed us how to use winding sticks and a plane to flatten a board. His was fairly twisted, and it was amazing in 15 minutes that it was flat enough that it didn’t rock on a jointer bed. Not perfectly smooth, but flat.
I used my winding sticks to check my board, putting them longways along the long edges and seeing a board that was slightly dipped at one end. Then I turned them across the long edge and crouched down to look at how parallel they were.
The sticks weren’t, and I marked a few places with pencil and then started shaving off sections. I generated a lot of shavings, and was surprised at how much they were like the bundles of straws as they came out of the planer. I should have taken a picture. Maybe I’ll try next week.
I thought I had it pretty good, and when I put it on the jointer bed, I still had a wobble. Back to marking and planing, but it seemed I was fairy quickly moving from side strokes to diagonal ones. At one point it was fairly flat, but I had a few pencil marks I wanted to smooth out. Of course, I added a wobble back, but a little more work and it was flat.
Again, not smooth, and definitely some cut marks in there. but flat enough that I felt a little grab as I put it on the jointer bed. The instructor thought that was pretty good, so I cleaned up and headed home.
The one good thing was that my chisels passed inspection. They need some flattening and truing on the bottom, but they were good enough to use in class, so one less purchase.
Someone posted a note to me on Twitter that noted that Write-Host is not recommended for your scripts. I checked the link to an MSDN blog on Write-Host Considered Harmful, and it made some sense. Basically it says that since Write-Host always goes to the console, any output sent through Write-Host can’t be consumed in a pipeline by other PoSh commandlets or processes.
At first I thought, what does that have to do with my script? I’m really just noting status information. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s a minor change, and who knows? Maybe I’ll chain this in some other process, or more importantly, maybe someone else will.
Today I popped open the script in the PowerShell ISE and did this:
That’s an easy fix. Just write the output to the pipeline, and if there’s nothing consuming output, I get it on the screen.
I also refactored a bit more. I added a “Debug x:” line to each Write-Output command, with x replaced by the appropriate debug level I’d checked for. This way I know what debugging output is being returned to the calling screen.
I also found a few lines that were just output, using “Attaching as…” code. I replaced those with Write-Output.
Voice of the DBA 