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| Cement Mixer |
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There’s a new sidewalk! Yesterday, as I mentioned, the guys from Finer Surroundings arrived early to finish the forms for the sidewalk. About ten am the cement mixer arrived. I’ve seen these trucks rolling down the freeway with the boom folded up, but they’re a lot more impressive when it’s stretched out.
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| It’s remote controlled |
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A neat feature that I hadn’t thought of until I saw it in action is that the boom is remote controlled. The operator can swing it around, control the flow of concrete, and probably a few other things without having to run back to the truck. It seemed to make everything go a lot smoother. Of course it didn’t hurt that instead of two guys, there was a crew of five out working during the pour.
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| conveyor belt detail |
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In the boom, there’s a conveyor belt that fits into the trough of the boom. It moves the concrete out to the end, where it falls down some fancy cloth tube to be directed where it needs to go. Because they couldn’t get the truck in next to the side of my house, they still needed some trips with the wheelbarrow, but well over half the work was done by just swinging the boom around. The truck was empty by noon, and it was just up to the guys to smooth everything out put on the finishing touches. The result looks pretty darned good.
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| backyard |
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I don’t have any pictures of the finished sidewalk yet, but the last shot of the truck is nice in that you can see just how long this thing was (and see my neighbor standing in my backyard, watching the whole process). I’ll be taking some pictures of it over the weekend (after the forms have been taken down) and post them next Monday, I hope. The sidewalk should be good to walk on in time for poker on Saturday night, too. About the only snag is that it didn’t warm up as much as I’d hoped yesterday, so I didn’t get the garage painted. I’m hoping the weather guys are right and there’s going to be some decent weather next week. I suspect I’m going to be painting in sub-optimal weather anyhow, but I’d like to at least try to follow the temperature guidelines for latex paint.
- I haven’t been buying much music lately, mostly satisfying myself with filling in some gaps in my existing collection. Hell, I haven’t even unpacked my CDs since I’ve moved. But I’ve read the reviews of My Morning Jacket’s Z and thought it sounded interesting (
a cross between Morcheeba and The White Stripes
or elements ofRadiohead, The Who and Lynyrd Skynyrd
). Then I found out that it’s a DRM Crippled CD, read the increasingly bizarre story that explains that the reason it’s crippled is some pissing match between Sony and Apple, and well, I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying what sounds like some pretty good music, which is a shame, since the company seems to be genuinely apologetic about the whole situation. [kottke] - Speaking of books and copyright, the Head Lemur says to Scan Them All, and Doc has a darned good quote:
What makes your creative works immortal is not your ownership of them.
Amen. [doc] - Claire’s got a couple examples of how your biometric Real ID drivers license will be used once RealID is in place everywhere. The hassles of not wanting (or being able) to show your government-approved ID keep growing. Yeah, I know. It’s just Dave being a paranoid conspiracy theorist again and our good friends in government would never use all this information to round people up, right? [claire]
- Schneier says Fatal Flaw Weakens RFID Passports. I’m still waiting to get my renewed passport back, but it sounds as though I might have gotten in under the wire and might not get one with RFID. I guess we’ll see… [schneier]
- Warren has an excellent Free Speech Thought for the Day and the quote:
When supporters of a law take the position that
Sounds like a damned good rule to live by. [coyote blog]This law is not necessary for me but for all those people who are not as smart as I am
, it is a bad law. - Here’s a bit of good news, though: the Serenity DVD is available for pre-order, and if everything were to go right, you could have it for Christmas. Of course that’s not guaranteed with Amazon. [claire]