Posted on by Tim Thorp:

Gravely 812 Partial Restoration

I’ve had a Gravely 812 for around 10 years now and I like her a lot. She is as old as me, built in 1973. She’s a brickhouse and even has a cigar lighter in the dash. She’s really jumpy when put in gear but there’s a few things about her that I really like:

  1. PTO: it stands for power take-off and it’s really cool. All old tractors have it – it’s a spinning shaft that you can connect to various attachments; snowblower, wood chipper, mower deck, tiller, brush hog, etc.
  2. Hydraulics: this 812 comes equipped with hydraulic lift. It’s the premium way to raise or lower the mower deck or snow plow
  3. Repairable: lots of new tractors are disposable. Not the Gravely 812. She has a Kohler 12 HP motor and parts are readily available.

I sometimes look at old cars and want to restore one. That’s a big job, but getting the gravely into better shape is a much more practical goal in that I already own one and I can restore a neglected part and resume using the tractor. There are limited parts and it really looks good when cleaned up.

Anyway, I took the hood off and cleaned, hammered straight, sanded, removed decals, painted and applied new decals that I ordered online.

Posted on by Tim Thorp:

Salesforce Project Completion

This year, I worked with Brown University to transition from legacy application and enrollment technology and their inherited problems to a new platform. We started from the ground up; facing legacy services approaching and surpassing their sunset dates.

We found replacement products available from a variety of vendors. The legacy backbone was Ellucian Banner. While Ellucian offered solutions in the same spheres as what we needed, we found that the systems didn’t handle the full lifecycle of the user. We decided to go with Salesforce.

We needed an application and an enrollment system. Standard products offered those with some handling of user records, but we went with a user-centered system and used TargetX for application and built a home-grown system for enrollment with a combination of our course catalog and a salesforce cart to manage registrations.

The key difference is central: who is at the center? a process or the user.

This was a major transition and we are still ironing out the details of how to integrate Salesforce data into our legacy systems. For example, we need to take Salesforce registrations and their associated costs and pass that data into our billing system. This is not a mindless transition. We need to maintain our legacy billing system while providing a new input from Salesforce. There’s a lot of technology supporting the transition but also a lot of stress that it is done right.

For now, it is a work in progress. I’ll have to talk about it more in future posts…

 

Posted on by Tim Thorp:

Kitchen Island

Our kitchen had a dated counter against the wall. It was fine for a few years, but it was made of 1/2″ particle board. As time passed it was falling apart. The particle board had broken corners and the dowel joinery was coming apart. It bowed when I would smash garlic.

This winter, I built a new island, situated in the center of the kitchen with more storage space and stronger construction. Featuring sapele lumber and solid brass hardware, this island is build to last and has a luxurious amber hue that stands out within the rest of the existing, dated kitchen.

I finished it today. This is the biggest woodworking project that I have worked on. It tested and developed my skills. In particular, my need for featherboards and my ability to resaw thick boards at the bandsaw. We are still moving into it but this is the current state of things:

Posted on by Tim Thorp:

My New Desktop

Shoot! I should have taken a pic before I replaced the old desktop. Welp? The old desktop was a tiny sewing table that I found on the side of the road. It worked but it was too small and wicked tall!

The new desktop was made of resawn (a woodworking term) sapele (a species of wood known colloquially as “African Mahogany”), an old file cabinet and a orange crate from the mid century.

Fun to have a nice, clean platform on which to compute.

In future posts, I will upgrade my 5 year old iMac to a brand new Windows 10 pc with a curved monitor and the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and mouse suite.

Along the way, I’d like to “design” a way to handle the -> right side so that the hardware is discreet, yet accessible.

Post any thoughts in the comments section:)

Posted on by Tim Thorp:

Hibiscus Tea Recipe

Hibiscus Tea, as I have recently discovered, is a delicious, refreshing summer beverage. If you train your palette, it is to summer what sage is to Thanksgiving.

Hibiscus tea is tart and red from the flowers. Often, it is sweetened with sugar and complemented with various aromatics, including ginger, star anise and cinnamon. How a tea brewer introduces those ingredients is a matter of preference; here is my way:

Syrup

I think that heat is most effective in bringing out the flavors of ginger, cloves, star anise and cinnamon so I make a hot tea on the stovetop. Additionally, the syrup is great in multiple applications, read: mixed drinks.

Syrup Ingredients

1 cinnamon stick
3-5 star anise pods
5 whole cloves
1 nub of fresh ginger, chopped
3 cups water
3 cups sugar

Chop the ginger and put in a pot with the cinnamon, cloves and star anise. Steep the aromatics in simmering water for a half hour. Strain out the solids and add in the sugar. Stir to dissolve. If the sugar does not dissolve, add heat until it does.

This is your ginger syrup. It should keep fine in the fridge for a month or so but, admittedly, at the point of writing this, I don’t know if I have ever encountered or could detect “bad” syrup.

The Hibiscus Tea

Tea ingredients

120 grams dried hibiscus flowers
2 gallons water

I steep the dried hibiscus flowers in the sun (as opposed to on the stove) for around 18 hours. My preferred batch is 2 gallons and requires 120 grams (3 mega-handfuls) of dried hibiscus flowers. I am not a professional but have never messed this up, so don’t sweat it. When the batch is done brewing, strain out the flowers and add sweetener to taste. I recommend 1 cup of syrup for 2 gallons of tea for a gently seasoned taste.

Serving

Hibiscus tea on ice with a wedge of orange is pretty fantastic.

The Inside Scoop

Here’s the thing: as a New England resident, latin markets are the only place I could find dried hibiscus flowers. They tend to sell a few ounces for a few bucks but that can get expensive if you really like the stuff. However, I recently discovered that the local restaurant supply store (to which I have a membership) sells dried hibiscus in 5 pound bags (which is enough to make 38 gallons of tea) for around $22. Noone really reads this blog, so the risk of random strangers asking me to get them some hibiscus is low. So, hit me up if you want some.