Puzzle News

Here is the first hint for the Puzzle for Charity:

Hint #1 (Posted 2146 021210): The tacks are there for a reason.

Good Luck!

Customer Service

I wanted to write a little something on recent experiences with customer service but then I thought: "How do I make this post different than most of the millions of irate, badly spelled, and (frankly) whiny comments that are out there in cyberspace?"

I don't know. I probably can't. Maybe tempering my vitriol a little by talking about the nature of people, their high expectations, and their abuse of the "nuclear option" will help, though. We will see.

I used to dread going to Lowe's for my hardware needs, primarily because of the lousy customer service - employees were routinely rude, hard-to-find, and less than helpful when they were locatable. Since Home Depot was a 25 mile drive, though, I really did not have a choice.

Well, actually I could have split my needs between the local lumber yard and a nearby small hardware store, but there are problems with doing that: the lumberyard has banker's hours and the hardware store is very expensive and apparently run entirely by the owner's virtually knowledge-less teenage children and their friends.

About six months ago I noticed a dramatic change: Lowe's became super friendly and helpful! You now can't walk more than a couple of aisles without someone in a polyester vest saying "Hello" or "Welcome to Lowe's" or "Can I help you find something, sir?".

Sir, even?! Well, la-tee-da! The first couple of times I experienced that I felt like Steve Martin's character in My Blue Heaven when he first confronts "small town niceness" at the grocery store. My reaction was nearly the same as his (look it up) - I honestly thought I was being messed with.

Now let's flip that coin over to the "Home Depot" side. Whatever happy chemicals they put in the breakroom water coolers at Lowe's they must have dumped the antidote to it into the ones at Home Depot. A lot of it.

Let me explain:

I just happened to be in the area so I went to Home Depot, skipping and whistling a happy tune (as I am prone to do) knowing that these folks will help me with my Desk Restoration project problem. You know... The problem with the mis-stained wood. I told you about it a couple days ago... Fine, forget it, I knew you didn't read it.

In any case I looked through the paint/stain area for varnish or shellac or some other way to fix the desk that you couldn't care less about. I didn't see what I need. No big shock there since I was really not too sure what I was looking for. Time to ask the shopkeep for a little help.

After a while I located a grumpy looking orange-vest-wearing guy of a certain age and I asked him my opening question: "Where can I find varnish or shellac?" He looked at me, managed to slightly de-lean himself off of a kitchen countertop display, and sighed "I dunno... Over near the paint and stains, probably".

A lot of things went through my mind at that point. "Oh, thanks, Captain Helpful! I spent hours combing the parking lot and the little bins of bolts and screws and I was just headed over to rifle through the bags of mulch. Thank God you could direct me back into the aisle you just saw me walk out of empty-handed." is just one example of the many over-the-top things I did not say at that moment.

Instead, I decided a barely contained public temper tantrum was in order.

I shouted (yes, shouted) "That's it, huh? That's all you are gonna say. Somewhere near the paint and stains?" At this point he was clearly shocked and unslouched completely and started to say something that, if I let him finish, may have been helpful. He didn't get the chance because I ended up with (in an even louder voice) "No, no, no... Don't worry about it. Sorry to have bothered you there, pal!". I then stormed off. For about a half a second I considered going to the manager but decided it wasn't worth my time, so I just left.

Pal?! I have never called anyone "pal" in my life, let alone in the high-and-mighty tone I liberally doused it with in this instance. What the hell was wrong with me?

And then it hit me. I had fallen into the same world-view as the people I hate the most: the spoiled-rotten self-righteous jerks that seem to think that the world revolves around them.

I mean, what did I expect him to do? Snap to attention as I came near? Blow a trumpet and yell “The king approacheth”? Throw rose petals onto my path so my feet never need to be sullied by contact with the floor?

Let's look at it from his point of view.

The poor old guy may have just been taking a much-needed break after unloading a pallet of floor tiles. While he is there trying to figure out if his gas bill is due or if he can afford a $25 iTunes gift card for his 10-year-old niece's birthday this weekend, I come by with this dumb look on my face and ask him (probably) an even dumber question. He stops to think a bit, because this is not the section of the store he is most familiar with, and he gives the best answer he can muster on the spur of the moment. And, all of a sudden, I come completely unhinged and storm off. So now the poor guy had to spend the rest of the day worrying if I just ran off to get him fired. In this economy, too...

Millions of hissy-fits like mine happen every single day. People demand to be overly-compensated for small inconveniences constantly. Now, before you get all defensive, I will admit there are instances where "the nuclear option" is definitely the way to go. Are you really upset enough to try and get someone fired because you spent 2 minutes longer in the McDonald's drive-thru than you are accustomed to? Are you seriously that unstable? Are you “raging against the machine” to get a discount in your satellite TV bill (victimless, good) or are you trying hard to get the overworked single mom who “screwed up your coffee order TWICE if you can believe that” canned (not-victimless, bad)?

Sorry, Home Depot dude... Unless you are actually a jerk, of course. In that case, let's just call it even and never speak of this again.

H1N1 News Update

I think this will be my last H1N1 Epidemic Update. 

The ECDC seems to have stopped publishing daily updates in favor of weekly ones (unless I am missing it), and the news seems to have stopped reporting on it, I can only assume that the epidemic is over. 

BTW, I have no idea why the spikes in the graph are there, but I suspect it is a reporting issue. 

Nothing really too much more to say other than my condolences go out to those that have been effected. 

New Poll

Hey!  New poll!  It's in the sidebar on the right!

Desk Restoration Project

I mentioned in a previous post that friend and reader jimmydunes donated an old wooden desk to the website. My intent is to refinish it, sell it, and use the money to fund the Prize Pool of the Puzzle for Charity.

The desk is technically an antique, but, then again, so are a large fraction of man-made objects on the globe, so I have no qualms about making this piece of furniture pretty and useful. I mean, what am I supposed to do, collect every damn thing I run across and put them on Mylar bags in case their value skyrockets overnight? No. I'm not going to be one of those octogenarians you read about that "go missing" only to be discovered underneath a mountain of old newspapers and National Geographics a couple of weeks later by concerned neighbors investigating the smell from next door.

See, there is such a thing as an object having "negative net value". In the case of the donor of this desk, it went from a useful piece of furniture in his old apartment to a big heavy pain in the neck in his new house. There was no good space for it in his new place so it would have remained dismantled in his garage or his shed out back, where it would get in the way a tiny bit every so often until, years later, he threw it away or gave it to charity after it accrued sufficient "PITA points". I think its cool that he decided to donate this now as part of his "clean house policy". He is definitely not the type to slap antique license plates on a rusted-out 1985 Chevette and proudly display it in his front yard or to try and steer work conversations around to classic cars so he could brag on it, is the point I am trying to make here. Thanks again, jimmydunes.

The desk, purchased from a now-closed used furniture shop in Lockport, NY, is solid wood (mostly poplar with oak trim, drawer, and veneer). Although it bears no official date marks the construction seems to indicate that it is from the late 50s or early 60s. The brass-coated tin pull handle on the drawer has the stamp 63-X3107 N.L.CO which I think might come from a defunct furniture manufacturer in Illinois. It is a well-used but not abused piece that looked like it just needed some TLC to make it look really nice.

The years and years of use really showed on the desktop. A dark shadow marked the "high traffic area" of the wood and water damage (from a planter, say) was apparent near the upper right hand corner. The finish had been worn down in these regions.

I had no interest in painting it, because the look I was going to shoot for with the desk was "Bob Cratchit". Nothing ornate. Just the type of well-worn yet well-maintained piece of dark, shiny, classic furniture that Scrooge's underling might toil at.

So, the first step was to sand the surface to start as clean as possible. I did not want to use a belt sander for this step because I wanted to avoid accidentally gouging the surface. It turned out that the top alone required me to use every single piece of 60 grit sandpaper I owned to get the dirty and water-damaged areas even close to the same color as the rest of the desk. It took about 8 man-hours to go from start to "OK, screw it, good enough" on the desktop alone.

Fortunately the sides, drawer, and trimwork took a lot less effort to get to a uniform shade.

I initially chose a dark stain and sealant combination for this project mainly in an effort to save time. I really should have known better - I prefer to do these steps separately because it gives me a higher degree of control over the project. In this case, the inside of the drawer was the first area to be stained and it simply looked terrible. It seemed like the wood didn't take to the treatment very well and everything was blobby and streaky. Fortunately, the inside of the drawer will be covered in dark green felt so this won't be an issue.

Speaking of the drawer I wanted to see if I could get the handle looking like new, and the first step to that was to clean it. It quickly became apparent that the brass coating on the drawer pull could not be salvaged so I would have to strip it down to the bare tin somehow. Bummer.

I put the mini wire wheel tool on my Dremmel to work on the issue and almost immediately regretted it. You see, my Dremmel is the cheap-o full-speed-or-off kind and the little wire wheel is pretty old and was not up to the task. It disintegrated quickly and steadily while I worked - fine wires pinging into my goggles and face and whatnot - and after about one minute my pain/annoyance threshold had been reached. I looked down to see about a hundred tiny metal needles sticking out of my t-shirt, as though I was just attacked by a miniature metal porcupine. Great. I took off my shirt and about 50% of the needles came with it or fell to the floor. The other 50% remained lightly lodged in the skin of my chest! They came out easily enough but that stopped the cleaning process until I can get a new wire wheel or come up with a better solution for dealing with the handle. On the upside, thanks to the impromptu high-speed acupuncture I no longer crave cigarettes and feel I have achieved perfect balance throughout my zang-fu. Thanks, Dremmel!

Back to staining. I switched to a dark stain and began treating the underside of the desk. it didn't take too long but it had enough fiddly bits to make me impatient to see how the actual visible surfaces were going to turn out. The outside surfaces of the drawer looked pretty good so I was pretty confident the top and sides would look awesome.

Wrong.

I guess I was unable to do a very thorough job sanding the surfaces down because it was very obvious that the stain was taking to some places better than others. I continued on with all the pieces since I was well past the point of no return once the problem made itself known.

It looks terrible. I am not too sure what I am going to do at this point but I hope I don't need to actually paint it (or crackle coat it) to make it look nice. Maybe some sort of varnish or shellac will put me back on track... I just don't know for now.

(To be continued...)

Pallet End Table (Conclusion)

(Continued from Part III)


Like I mentioned in my house repair post I got a new and awesome table saw to replace the rickety and broken Craftsman I had been using. Unlike the Craftsman, this Hitachi is a pleasure to use and I am not terrified of it. Well, I treat it with due respect, of course, but I don't feel I have to approach it as though I were sneaking up on a spooked pony.

Where was I? Oh, yeah... I cut the tabletop boards to size. I cut the sides to create flat surfaces and laid them together on the shop floor as flush as possible to get an idea of the best length for the boards to use most of the wood while keeping the tabletop square. In the end, I ended up with a 28 1/4” square – fairly large for an end table but not overly so.

Christmas rolled around about the time I was trying to figure out how to join the boards together. I was going to ask for a biscuit joiner for a gift but I was told by a couple of my friends that they are are tricky to use and I should consider other options. I am glad I took their advice because as it turned out that one of my friends bought me a Kreg Tool.

For those of you that don't know, a Kreg Tool is a jig and special drill bit that creates what are called pocket joints. With a bit of glue, a couple of self-tapping screws, and virtually no skill (a definite plus for me) you can create flawless and super-strong side-to-side or face-to-side joints in under a minute.

This tool is by far the most enjoyable contraption I have in my shop. The ease of use and the number of things this tool can do makes me feel very conflicted. On one hand, it is so awesomely useful a huge number of potential-project doors have been not just opened but blown completely off their hinges. On the other hand I feel very, very stupid that this sort of solution never occurred to me before. Sure, I could hide behind the fact that I am 100% self-taught but, to steal a line from Douglas Adams I was “as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.”

I love this tool a dangerous amount. I am pretty sure that I am going to wind up on the street a burnt out Kreg Tool junkie, bumming change for “just a few more self-tapping screws, and then I'll quit, I swear”. I can almost hear people shouting “Quit rapidly making high-quality picture frames and get a job, hippy!” from their cars as they drive by. On the upside I would have the sweetest, sturdiest squatter's lean-to in whatever alley I chose to call home. So lose-win, there I guess.

The table top was assembled using pocket-holes and wood glue (see pic for how these joints look after they are plugged). That used up the most of the first pallet. The plan for the second pallet was to scavenge what I could to make the table skirt and the legs. The usable slats, although thinner than those of the first, were in much better shape so there was no need to plane them over and over – just a few passes did nicely and the hand sander did the rest.

The skirt is just a simple box assembled using the pocket joints I gushed on and on about earlier with some 45-degree angle pieces (cut with the miter saw) to serve as leg mounts. The entire box was firmly mounted to the underside of the tabletop using pocket joints and wood glue. Elapsed time for the skirt creation from wood recovery to final screw – about two hours. Awesome!

Only a couple of the center studs were usable and they were all very full of nails so there was no chance of running them through the planer. Instead, I cut the studs in half and used a Dremmel to cut the rusty metal bits as flush as I could. This was actually kind of fun and it gave the legs-to-be a sort of “industrial” look (see the cool but informationally bereft picture on the left). I sanded the legs using a hand sander and a sanding drum on my drill press.

I needed to make the table legs removable since I will be mailing this to my brother as a sort of belated Christmas present. This was done by countersinking T-nuts and running mating hardware (all left over from the Windsor II Playset project, btw) through the 45-degree leg mounts. The legs slide into place nicely and I think they will be tight enough to result in a sturdy end product. The table is 22 ½” high.

Since I am working with less-than-ideal materials, I labeled each of the legs and the leg mounts so my brother will know where to place each of the legs. I will be including some felt to act as a sort of compression gasket to ensure a tight fit if he needs a little more stability on one or more of the legs. I don't think he will, though, since the end product holds my weight when I sit on it. Sweet!

The “final” step was to stain and seal it. I thought I had screwed this part up since the wood turned so dark when I applied the lighted stain Lowe's carried. I forgot that very old wood turns very dark even when a light coating of stain.is applied. After many coats of gloss poly sealant, the project was done.

Everything actually turned out fine and the final piece is actually pretty elegant and something I would not mind having in my living room if there was room. Not too bad for 99% reclaimed materials, IMHO.

Now all that is left is to mail the thing, which is going to cost a fortune. I will try and make that happen this week.

Bummer Reading List II

Although I have not written anything in a while I have been busy reading. I got each of these as a gift for Christmas.

The Flash Archives (Vol. 5)

As a youngster I really enjoyed reading The Flash. Although I still get a thrill from envisioning myself as the world's fastest human it is sadly no longer enough to let me completely suspend disbelief and immerse myself in the stories (which are actually kind of stupid). That said, I will still buy these archives for as long as they are published and I one day hope to own a complete collection of the comics (on paper, DVD, or otherwise). I know how it sounds. Shut up.

Under the Dome – Stephen King

I told my wife (who is sweet and awesome, by the way) a while ago that I do not read Stephen King books any more so it was a surprise when I got this for Christmas. According to the inscription she wrote “I know that it has been years since you've enjoyed one of King's books, but I couldn't resist. I hope this will be one of those guilty pleasures – one of those books you can't help but love.” There was some other mushy stuff but also she told me that I needed to review it in my blog, even if I didn't like it.

Sigh. Fine. Here goes.

First, please note that I did not say that getting this book for Christmas was a “pleasant surprise” or a “nice surprise”. I guess I was surprised much in the same way you would be if you walked out to the driveway and discovered one of your tires had gone flat overnight. “Cell” was the last in a series of horrible King books I read a while back (a notable other being the last book of the Gunslinger series). I stopped reading them on purpose because, umm, my perception of their value has changed significantly over the years. Yeah. Let's go with that.

Anyway, what can I say about this book? Oh, yeah. I hated it.

No. Hate is not a strong enough word. After plowing through nearly 1,100 pages of the most ridiculous garbage imaginable there is no single word in English for how I feel. I guess “anger” comes close, but it doesn't really reflect how multi-level insulted/disappointed I feel after reading this. Apparently the only thing keeping sleepy small towns in Maine from self-destructing within a week is sheer luck and their bonding hatred of out-of-state tourists.

I'm not going to sum up the book – lots of other people have done that already. Just picture all of the bad or predicable parts of every other King book you have read cut and pasted together to create this massive tome. If that's your thing, though, and you don't mind being hit with a parade of in-your-face bad science, bad technology, bad sociology, extremely unlikely personal behavior, extremely unlikely personal background knowledge/abilities, unnecessary and useless psychic events, all culminating in the most eye-rolling ending to a book ever, then by all means go for it.

In conclusion a) this book should have been 800 pages shorter and b) sent to the shredder instead of the printer. Of course, that is just my opinion – Amazon shows it has a rating of 3.5 stars... Some of the 1-star reviews are pretty neat to read, though...

Great. Now my blood is all angried up. Next review:

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World – A.J. Jacobs

Another Christmas gift (this time I was pleasantly surprised). I had read The Year of Living Biblically by the same and had loved it so I was looking forward to getting rid of the bad taste the King book left in my mouth. Unfortunately it did not.

The premise is that this guy decides to read/skim the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z and comment on what he finds interesting then pepper it with stories from his personal life - I guess much like a blog. As I wrack my brain trying to come up with distinct instances of things that made me mad or what have you, I can't. Well, actually, I can, but the reasons are all so petty that they simply don't stand on their own and they just seem bitter and unwarranted. Making a list would be time consuming and useless.

Why didn't I like it? Well, if I had to sum up the tone of book in two words I guess “smarmy over-privilege” is what I would be forced to use. It just rubbed me the wrong way for most of the book.

The Ultimate Book of Top Ten Lists – listverse.com

When I was young I had a 1977 printing of The People's Almanac Presents The Book of Lists that I read until the cover fell off and the pages were falling out. I don't know why I was so enamored with it- its just one of those things, I guess. I was overjoyed a few years ago when perusing a used book store in Norfolk, Virginia when I found a copy. I also found that there had been a re-print in 1993 so I picked that up, too. Both have honored places in my “library”.

Sadly, I can't say the same thing for the listverse book. I am sure it has some great stuff in it, but it has too many items in it that I feel are merely opinions or otherwise extremely debatable (such as the10 Things That are Surprisingly Good For You – the list includes ice cream and smoking). Meh. I did not finish the book and I don't really intend to.

So there you have it. Four grumpy book reviews for four distinct genres. I am looking forward to an enjoyable read sometime in the future. If anyone has any recommendations, leave a comment.

Back to Posting

Well, I apologize for the extended break in posting. I had some personal issues to deal with including some painful medical stuff. No real need to dwell. Water under the bridge. It suffices to say that I needed to take time off from 1) going to the gym and 2) unnecessary typing. I'm 95% fine now, and improving.


In any case its not like I have been laid up or anything like that – as a matter of fact gross motor movements were, for the most part, unaffected. I have been extremely productive and have completed several projects around the house including finishing the Pallet Table.

Stay tuned...

Art Table Project

Well, with one of five projects (the house repair project) pretty much knocked out my intention was to start on the play table for my son. Unfortunately, this is sort of turning into a chicken and the egg type problem with some tricky scheduling stuff thrown in.

See, in order to build the play table, I need to have a place to put it and room to build it in the garage, since it is going to be kind of big. I need to move a pool table to the garage and put it on craigslist or take out an ad in the paper or whatever. I don’t want the pool table in the garage for long because space is getting tight in there now as it is with the backup of projects. Besides, the pool table would get covered in sawdust and spiders instantly and it might even get damaged if it sits out there too long, from humidity or paint spills or whatever. I am certainly not going to have complete strangers try and manhandle it down the stairs (did I mention it is on the second story?) so it needs to be moved ahead of the new owners getting to the house. Couple that with “certain people’s” knack for seeing all flat surfaces as “a table I can use to put my soda on just for a minute oops I’m sorry I didn’t mean it I’m really sorry” and I may as well take a saws-all to it right now.

Hey, that’d be kinda fun…

But, since I don’t own a saws-all, the next best and clearly logical thing to do is to start yet another project. This time I am building a table for a friend to use as a staging area for his painting supplies since he fancies himself a bit of an artist (I kid – his non-representational acrylics are pretty fantastic).

His size and style requirements were based on an IKEA work table he saw online. After seeing the picture of it and deciding on a final size (48” wide, 24” deep, 35” tall) I went to Lowe’s to get some wood. Nothing too fancy – this is not designed to be an heirloom piece, after all – but not knocked together from plyboard, reclaimed barnwood, and leftover two-by-fours, either. This art table is going to be utilitarian, but also needs to look nice since it will be the largest piece of furniture in the room it will finally rest in.

There appears to be two kinds of wood at Lowe's: super-nice yet unreasonably expensive pieces and affordable but super low-quality pieces. There doesn't appear to be a lot of choice in the way of middle of the road stuff.

The expensive stuff is so pricy that it would probably be cheaper to build a small oak desk out of pieces taken directly from a larger oak desk. The cheap stuff is sometimes so warped that it might make excellent boomerangs if it weren't for the fact that any Aborigine attempting to use the weapons would have their throwing hand instantly flayed to the bone from cracks and other defects.

But take heart! It is possible, if you are patient, persistent, have a high threshold for pain, carry a sliver removal kit and have a way to staunch the bleeding, you can find some decent pieces in the cheap piles.

[An aside here. I just want to say that I have noticed a huge upswing in customer service at the couple of Lowe's that are in my area. About a year ago the stores used to be staffed by folks that were extremely annoyed that you showed up to buy stuff. Now it is packed with their opposite number. Convenient yet very nearly creepy.]

Now I decided to frame the table using furring strips in the same fashion I did for my 2x4-based workbenches in the garage. Since the workbenches have served me well for years I figure they would be a pretty good starting point.

It was a simple enough thing to throw together two identical shelf frames (one for the tabletop and one for the bottom shelf) using the furring strips, wood screws, and wood glue. The four legs (again, just lengths of furring strip) were screwed and glued to the insides of the shelf frames. The top shelf frame was made flush with the tops of the legs but the bottom frame was mounted five inches from the bottom.

At this point, the structure looks like, and, in fact, is, a flimsy, twisty box. Trust me, it gets more and more solid as we build up. All just part of using imperfect wood and imperfect tools. Also, having a builder who doesn't perform woodworking so as much as he inflicts woodworking upon others doesn't help the project much. Some pundits might even say that it is far, far more likely that the natural actions of wind, rain, and continental drift would spring forth a working art table than any of the skills I bring to the project. To them I say "No, you are".

You heard me.

Obviously, since this is supposed to be a central piece of furniture for an art room, the base structure should be hidden by trimwork for a more professional look. This was easy enough to do by cutting pine 1x4s to the appropriate length with a radial arm saw tilted to 45 degrees.

After the top and bottom were trimmed I added three more "trimming" pieces to the middle of the table. These pieces, like all the others, not only make the table look nicer but they help to make the unit more solid.

When I first started thinking about the project I envisioned using plyboard and ceramic tile for the top but the end user requested that the surface be as smooth as possible so he could slide his materials across it without too much danger of tipping or spilling them. I have made small, smooth tabletops out of component slats before but I really wasn't looking forward to trying to clamp and align something this large.

Luckily, they sell what they call "stain-ready" pieces at Lowe's that are basically for this exact purpose. And, since they are made from many, many smaller pieces they are significantly more affordable than higher quality large pieces. I worked with similar "composite" boards when I built my kid's toybox and I was pleased with the results.

I went with a four foot long by two foot wide by 1 inch thick slab for the top. It is nice and heavy and solid and didn't cost too much. I mounted the table top to the rest of the unit using only wood screws countersunk into the soft pine of the table frame. The top was made flush with the back of the table and centered left and right. This helped with alignment and also helps define the front of the unit.

At this point the structure had become very solid and all that remained was to add the bottom shelf. The tricky part here was to make a shelf that allowed the table legs to pass through without creating too much of a gap. I selected three four-foot by one-foot by ¾-inch stain-ready pieces to do this. After filling in the areas between the legs, I needed to cut notches in the next shelf pieces to allow the legs to pass through.

After aligning the next shelf pieces and cutting them to the right width, I used a pencil to mark the exact location of the table legs and used a hunk of scrap furring strip to trace an outline to use to guide the scroll saw.

I hate using the Craftsman scroll saw – it bounces and jounces all over the place (even when clamped to the workbench) and the blades are hard to change out – but it was the best tool I had to help cut out the notches. A wood chisel further helped size and shape the squarish holes appropriately.

To be honest, I thought I would really mess that part up but the alignment was good and the look was just what I was going for. Plus it helped to further fortify the piece. The main construction is completed! Sweet!

Now all that remains is to countersink the finishing nails, sand off the ink stamps, apply wood filler, sand out defects in the cheap wood, stain, seal, and do about a million other odious things that need to be done before a few hunks of wood can officially be called “furniture”.

[To be continued...]

Recent Reading List: The Gray Man

Ok. I admit it. I was wrong about this book.

When I started it, I thought this was going to be your typical 'big bad spy guy doing big bad spy guy things that only gun nuts would care about' type book. It sort of had that vibe to it a few pages in, but, since I was prepared to hate it when I started, I see now that my initial gut feeling was grossly out of place.

The Gray Man by Mark Greaney turned out to be a really fun and exciting read. The author provides the reader with enough detail to provide interest in the weaponry and tactics hero Court Gentry uses to accomplish his mission without trying to impress the reader with a smorgasbord of unnecessary factoids. The geography and city descriptions follow the same suit – enough to “put you there” without boring you to tears describing each and every cobble in a Paris alleyway, for instance.

The main character is not some god-like and completely unbelievable construct of innate superhuman abilities. As well trained and capable as he is in his craft, it quickly becomes obvious that he is neither flawless nor immortal (which is why I read it to the end instead of instantly dropping it).

That said, there is a little bit of a 'Deus ex Machina' feel to a end-of-the-book, umm, “conflict resolution”, but I do not want to post any more to prevent spoiling any of the action for those of you who might pick this up.

I am notoriously bad for being able to tell what would make a good movie from reading a book. For example, I remember thinking as I was enjoying the book Jurassic Park may years ago that “there is no way they could make a decent movie out of this”. But, for what it's worth, I would be very interested in seeing them turn this into a “Bourne-Identity-slash-Taken” screenplay as soon as possible.