First, read this and if you have access, this from Scott Hanselman (especially the comments).

Now, I don't watch Game of Thrones, I admit. However, if even half of the points raised in this article (and it's follow up) are true, it's yet another example of how we haven't really moved forward. Of how racial equality is not here yet. Heck, gender equality isn't even here yet and we started working on that sooner. Moves towards sexual equality are in progress but imagine how long it's going to take to truly have equality for everyone given our track record of being able to even talk about it.

If we are to resolve issues of equality, whether race, gender, sexuality or even culture, we have to have discourse, but the reactions to the original article and the status update from Scott Hanselman show just how difficult this is. They almost always appear to be trying to invalidate the point, affirm it or just try and ignore it. There is no discourse, no understanding.

You may well disagree with this view of Game of Thrones, Star Trek or any other example of what others perceive to be racism or other prejudice in our entertainment. Perhaps there is racism and sexism and you don't see it, maybe it isn't there at all and some are being overly sensitive, or perhaps you never thought about it until just now. I'd love to hear from my many friends who watch GoT as I have no idea, in this particular case. However, when someone says something is racist or sexist (or genderist?), rather than immediately telling them if they are wrong or right or too sensitive, try asking why. Talk about it. Fight the ignorance. You might both learn something.

I may have mentioned this before, but we made our own rain barrel and I installed it on our new patio. However, there was one outstanding task to be done that I had been dragging me heels on.

The downspout that my neighbour and I had modified to feed water to the rain barrel was not secured to the siding, allowing it to pivot at the gutter. When the rain barrel was present, there was not much movement in the downspout, but when the barrel was set aside over winter (as you can see in the photo above), the spout would move in just about every breeze that blew. So, I stopped procrastinating and tooled up to fix it in place.

Tools

The tools and other items used for this project were (from top left, clockwise to center):

A rivet gun
Safety goggles
Aluminium bracket¹
Safety gloves
1/8" aluminium rivets
Drill with 1/8" bit
Pliers

Using the Rivet Gun

Rivet guns are kind of cool (at least I've always thought so). They allow things to be joined together from only one side, which means I don't have to get to the other side of my siding in order to rivet something to it. A rivet gun works by gripping the pin of the rivet and pulling it, causing the other end to bulge out, which holds the rivet in place. When it can't bulge anymore, the pin snaps off.

The Work

My intention was to match the existing approach used on the other downspouts, which was to attach the bracket to the house and then bend it around the downspout and rivet it. However, the existing brackets were all nailed to the house through the siding. I did not have nails to hand for this, so I decided to rivet the bracket to the siding.

First, I bent the bracket around the downspout. From what I know, this is not the traditional way to bend these brackets (usually, they are splayed out so the decorative arrows are flush to the siding), but I wanted everything to match up. Once the bracket was bent to fit the downspout, I drilled holes in each end where I would eventually rivet them together.

Before I could rivet the bracket around the downspout, it needed to be mounted to the siding, so I drilled two holes in the bracket and siding for rivets and used the rivet gun to secure the bracket in place.

Then I folded the bracket around the downspout and secured it with one more rivet.

Yes, I know it's aluminum in 'murka. [↩]

Month: June 2013

Equality

Securing my downspout

Tools

Using the Rivet Gun

The Work