Category: Blog

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 was the first real day of my sabbatical I decided that I’ll treat the weekends mostly like weekends since I have no shortage of ranch chores to do and I’ll try to stick to sabbatical growth and work during the week.

I started today at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I had signed up to volunteer a half day a few weeks ago and today was the day. Up at 7, showering, getting ready and on the road at 8 to be sure I was there on time. The store is a bit of a distance for me, 50mi by the Google Maps app, so I wanted to be sure I was there on time.

The ReStores are places where people can donate old furniture, tools, appliances, building supplies, etc. and they are then re-sold to the public. The profits from the sales go to funding the Habitat organization. I don’t know about the other areas, but the presentation I got from Habitat for Humanity Denver said that the three stores in our metro area pay for all the operational costs of the affiliate. This means that in Denver, 100% of any donations, mortgage repayments, etc. goes back to building more houses.

I arrived at the store a few minutes early, and walked up to find someone else waiting that was a first time volunteer as well. We chatted for a minute before the store opened. Once inside, we signed in, had a brief orientation video (repeated a lot of what I’d gotten at the Denver HQ) and then got our aprons and gloves. After a tour of the store, we were split up to different departments. I ended up in appliances, which meant working with refrigerators, ovens, washers, dryers, dishwashers and microwaves.

My basic job today was the test new arrivals, of which there were a lot from the weekend. I worked a 9-2 shift, and after 45 minutes getting started, I spent the day moving large appliances around, to and from the back and around the area. We’d plug in 2-3 fridges and leave a cup of water in the freezer to see if they worked. We’d attach plugs to other appliances, most of which didn’t have them, and then see if ovens turned on, if washers’ motors worked, and in general, just give them a basic electrical test. If they worked, we’d mark them, and set them up for sale. If not, we’d take them in the back where salvagers would pick them up once a week.

It’s simple work, fairly basic, and not too strenuous. I helped a few people load appliances, and otherwise did basic menial work, including sweeping and mopping when we made a mess, and simple electrical connections. All in all a calm, quiet day.

With the Denver area building 30-40 homes a year, housing people that are without housing or in poor situations, it felt good to be contributing to the cause. I’m scheduled to go back out there next week and I’ll try to get in a different department.

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.

I need a few sawhorses for my flagpole. It’s 22ft in length, and I’m thinking I need at least 4, perhaps 5 sawhorses in order to work on it properly. With that in mind, I went looking for plans last week. I didn’t want to buy more, especially since many of them I’ve seen at the store don’t last, don’t work well, or aren’t that strong.

I found a guy selling folding ones, and selling plans. I thought, hmm, I could do that, and embarked on a prototype last week. My thought was that I’d see if this worked, and then build more.

It didn’t. Apart from being too low (though it was a test), I couldn’t get the angles right and it wasn’t as stable as I wanted. The folding thing is nice, but I think I can do better.

I searched again this week and found this guy’s video and article. I wasn’t impressed at first, but when I saw him show the strength and simplicity, I thought this was a good plan. I started off measuring things, marking up my wood.

Next I jointed the braces so they’d glue together cleanly. I also jointed the tops, even though that was a bit of overkill.

Once that was done, I glued the pieces together. No metal in here, just glue. I won’t want to accidently get into trouble with cutting at some point.

While that was going on, I trimmed the ends of the legs. I had to shave off an angle, and I used the circular saw first, but that was a problem. I actually messed up a couple of them. I fixed things later, but a lesson learned.

I also had to dado out a place for the legs to attach. Once the glue dried, I used the circular saw to cut out a slow. Slow going, but I got it done.

Now time to put things together. Here’s the first leg going on. I glued and screwed it to the cross brace.

From there, it was pretty easy to add the other four legs. I wasn’t worried about glue drying here, so I turned it upside down right away and went to work on the angle braces made of plywood.

Here’s the first finished one. It was fairly solid and level.

And strong!

I took a break, hit the store, and came back to finish the second one. I have parts for 2 more, but I needed to tackle a few other things today.

One of the things I noticed on the Habitat for Humanity – Denver site is that there is a speaker’s bureau. I was looking for a few other ways to help during the sabbatical, and thought this was right up my alley.

I emailed the contact, and included some of my speaking CV. We’ll see if they take me up, and if this is one of those things that will extend beyond this short time.

The sabbatical moves forward. I paid for college today, settling my bill for the woodworking class that starts on Tuesday.

Yeah!

I’m not thinking to do anything else until Tuesday afternoon when school starts and I get to class. I’m hoping these aren’t too many more costs other than materials here and there. I’m assuming there will be some, though I don’t know what projects we’ll be tackling, though I’m hoping for just some basic skills to improve my abilities.