Grrr ... age!

So, several days ago I *finally* tried to park (*) my truck in the garage I've been working on for the past couple of summers (**) ... and the garage is too short. If I touch the back wall with the front bumper, there is still just a bit too much truck to allow the door to descend.

Here is how that came to be.

When I laid out the dimensions (20 years ago), I based it on the old double garage on the property. Also, I didn’t have a truck at the time. Then, the backhoe I’d hired to excavate broke down before the guy had finished digging the hole, so I ended up finishing it with a shovel … and I expect that at some too-early point I convinced myself that “that’ll do”.

I have decided to bump out the front of the garage by 4 feet. Once the construction is done, I’ll have to uninstall and reinstall the doors (***). Yesterday, I mixed and poured 1/2 the concrete I’ll need for this extension. Thank goodness I bought that cement mixer all those years ago (****)



(*) What with both stalls being used to store building materials and there being no driveway surface to the one side, I just hadn’t tried to put the truck inside.

(**) Or longer, if you take into account that I built the foundation about 20 years ago.

(***) Uggh! It took me a full day to install each one of them. Fortunately for me, when I framed the garage, I hadn't yet decided whether to use 7' tall doors or 8' tall doors, so I made the openings tall and then filled them in after I bought the 7' tall doors. So, I won't have to change any *structure* to allow the doors to lift into the space that is currently exterior wall.

(****) As I recall, I hauled it home on a Fiero.


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Edit (2017/05/11):

The photo shows my progress as of yesterday extending the garage (click the image to see a larger view).

The extended foundation is in (or course!) and the walls and ceiling are framed. A stringer to support extending that little porch has been attached to the foundation.

I plan to extend that porch over to the new corner of the garage, with the extended deck being a step down from the existing deck, and with a door in the corner of the garage opening onto the porch. This is the northwest corner; I may put another door at the northeast corner. I mean, it's only money, right?

Now, the tricky part will be tying the roof of the new construction into the existing porch roof to make it look as though I had planned it all that way.


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Edit (2017/05/16):
Keeping the Pioneer Spirit alive --

The stump of a sapling I'd cut last fall was right where the corner of the porch extension needed to be. So, in the spirit of my pioneer ancestors, I used it to support the deck as I framed it. I did later cut it out and put in something more permanent and rot-resistant.


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Edit (2017/05/25):
Kill it! Kill it with fire! --

A couple of nights ago, I noticed that I'd left a work-light on in the apartment addition. So, in my jammies and bare feet, I trudged -- the trip is about half a mile, I think -- down the stairs from my bedroom, through the front hall and foyer, through the "library" (the north side of the unfinished "great room" addition), through the passageway (between the "great room" addition and the garage/apartment), up the stairs to the apartment, and disconnected the light.

I *almost* didn't turn on the light before going up to the apartment. Thankfully, I did ... else I'd have met this charming fellow with my foot --

I don't mind telling you, I didn't much care for his attitude at all. He was all, "What you gon' do 'bout it?" But, since he was about the size of a dinner plate, or at least a half dollar piece, I skipped that step and prayed he wouldn't jump up to prey on me.

And, as I have the picture, you can see that he was so unconcerned by me that waited for me to go back and get the camera -- recall, it's about a half mile trek -- and return to take his portrait.

Amusing Contrast

Scott Adams (2017/04/20): Big Red Flag for Cognitive Dissonance

Scott Adams (2017/04/19): You Don’t Have Free Will – but You Might Get It Someday

There *is* no such thing as 'cognitive dissonance' were it really true that "You Don’t Have [as people say (*)] Free Will". Moreover, if "You Don’t Have Free Will" now, then you never will "get" it in the future.


(*) To say that we "have" free will is to use sloppy language, however common it is. The truth is that we *are* free wills; our "free will" is not something we can gain or lose, as though it were a cold or a foot.

A New Kind of New

Douglas Wilson: A New Kind of New

The Illusion Delusion

I'd like to share with Gentle Reader a comment/explanation from Kristor at The Orthosphere --

winstonscrooge - "Perhaps consciousness is the universal and the you of waking is an egoic illusion."

Kristor - "It’s an interesting notion. But all the phenomenal evidence we have – that, by definition, we can possibly have – contradicts it, so …"

winstonscrooge - "What specifically?"

Kristor - "All the evidence we have, without exception, is evidence we are aware of. By definition, we can’t have awareness of evidence that we are not aware of. So we can’t have evidence that the only sort of evidence we can have – the sort we are aware of – is illusory. All the evidence we can possibly have points to the suggestion that our conscious awareness is not illusory."

The "interesting notion" (as Kristor put it), popular amongst God-deniers, in particular, and those who wish to do what they know to be immoral, in general, that our consciousness of ourselves is an illusion is an incoherent notion; it is self-refuting.

IF it were true -- if it even could be true -- that our consciousness of ourselves is an illusion, THEN we could never know it to be true; and we could never truly know it to be even a logical possibility.

Stupid Leftist Tricks, I

I have posted two "Stupid 'Atheist' Tricks" posts. I had started to compose others but never completed them; considering how many hits the two I did complete and post still get, I probably ought to have posted more.

This is a similar post, but it's the inaugural "Stupid Leftist Tricks" post.

Recently, Victor Reppert posted this -- Islamophobia

This is a description of Islamophobia. As I see it, terms like this have a proper use, but people who like to use such terms this develop them into a blanket criticism (and even marginalization) of any critics of Islam or Muslims.

That's bad enough -- for it is utterly not true that "Islamophobia" or the other such terms that leftists like to toss at people who disagree with their plans for destroying the West and America "have a proper use" (*) -- but that's not yet the "Stupid Leftist Trick" this post is about.

'Legion of Logic' responded --

It's no different than any other label the progressive - sorry, regressive - left throws at people who disagree with them. Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, "transphobic"...all have definitions and criteria, but the vast majority of accusations of such are baseless and therefore the terms are all but useless.

And, right on queue, here comes the "Stupid Leftist Trick". You can always count on the functionally illiterate, proudly ignorant, leftist anti-Christian Joe Hinman to shill today's leftist party line --

Do you know Muslims? Do you believe any given Muslim is secretly supporting the terrorists?tell me this if it is fair to call the kind of Terrorists we are afraid of frm middle east"Islamic radicals then why is not fair to call KKK "Christian radicals" Or speak of "radical Christian terrorism"?

Do you know how many lynchings of blacks for being black there were in the U.S.? Most of those people doing the lynching called themselves Christians and went to church.

will you make exceptions by saying"but they have doctrinal problems and aren't really christian." That what Muslims say about the Terrorists,.

Notice first that this shrill shilling has nothing whatsoever to do with what 'Legion of Logic' said ... well, other than precisely to illustrate his point. For, how does the lying leftist fool start out? He starts out by labeling 'Legion of Logic' an "Islamophobe"!

And while it *is* a "Stupid Leftist' Trick", and a very popular one with leftists at that (**), to "prove" that a person who speaks a truth which you (being a leftist) want to keep under wraps is "wrong" by personally illustrating that he is right, this is not yet the "Stupid Leftist Trick" to which I wish to direct Gentle Reader's attention.

Consider what 'radical' means --

adjective
1) (especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.
2) advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme or progressive section of a political party.
3) relating to the root of something, in particular.
4) very good; excellent.

Definition #3 is *actually* the basic/root -- the 'radical' -- meaning of the word.

So, Billy Graham and Mother Teresa are/were contemporary 'radical' Christians. Martin Luther and even John Knox, wrong though he was on some key issues, were 'radical' Christians.

And, in the very same way, "radical Islamic extremists/terrorists" are 'radical' Moslems. They *are* the "Islamic Reformation" that willfully ignorant people hope will magically arise and tame Islam so as to enable Moslems to live in peace with the rest of humanity.

However, the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party, aside from being now defunct, were not Christian in any sense. You know, just like the bloody-minded leftist shill, Joe Hinman, is not.


(*) Hmmmm ... well, other than to identify people who *use* those terms as being "the enemy".

(**) Similarly popular with leftists, as with 'atheists', is the Stupid Trick I initially mentioned in passing: "refuting" the heretic by spewing a word-salad which has nothing to do with what he said.

Doubling Down

As best I can tell, this is Victor Reppert's response to my previous eviseration of his "argument" for why it is that he is *owed* "free" health insurance --

Here is the problem. Not even conservatives want to say that people should be able to keep all they earn. Money for defense in necessary. It it taken from people in exactly the same way that money for Medicare or socialized medicine is taken, through taxation.

The military protects me from ISIS. Medicine protects me from cancer. No conservative ever complains about a socialized military. They all complain about socialized medicine. Why? Protection is protection.

I'll blow this out of the water later; in the meantime, do bask in the Deep Thinks.

'House of Dumb'

Periodically, I like to see where the people (or browsers) who happen to arrive at my blog came from. I just noticed a reference to a "House of Dumb" blog (the content indicates Britain, the URL indicates France). I gamely popped over (just to see what it is). I said "gamely" because I expected it to be one of the trolls, with whom I am all too familiar, who like to misrepresent, that is, lie about, the arguments I make. But, it wasn't, and I have added it to my blog-roll.