Prosthetic Conscience

Jason McBrayer's weblog; occasional personal notes and commentary

Wed, 08 Dec 2004

Outage

The outage of this website is because the CPU fan failed on bertrand, the desktop/server that serves this site. Yesterday morning when I got up, bertrand had halted, and the overheat alarm was sounding. It let me know it was the fan when I turned it back on. Cleaning all the dust out of the fan and lubricating it gave it one more day of operation, but it’s well-and-truly dead now. I got a replacement this morning, and will replace it tonight (this entry is backdated, of course; if you’re reading it, bertrand is back up).

[ Posted: 09:06] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Sharpening stones

In order to do a proper job of honing my ever-increasing stash of edged tools, I’d like a diamond stone and a Arkansas stone. Right now, I’ve got a tungsten V-sharpener, which is fine for the cheap kitchen knives, and for coarse tools like shovels, but I’m just not willing to use those on my good chef’s knife or any of my pocket knives, never mind a sharp sword, should I acquire one for cutting practise (dream on…). I’ve also got a triangle system with ceramic rods; somehow I can’t get a decently sharp edge with this, and I’m not sure whether it’s my technique, or if the rods are too fine grit, or what. Maybe I should just get new rods for this… I’d like to learn the skill of properly using a set of flat stones, strops, and such. I probably also need a steel, especially for my kitchen knives, as I suspect they get a rolled edge well before they actually get dull.

[ Posted: 09:06] | [ Category: /wishlist] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]