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Theater Riser

When my Girlfriend moved in, we added her couches to the theater room and moved the theater chairs back. I knew I needed a riser and it would take me several months to build it. To make the building of the riser easier, I used simple 2 x 6 lumber for the frame and filled it with cheap insulation to help soak up some sound. I topped it off with 3/4″ OSB to make sure I had enough strength for the 2″ lip I wanted.

I framed up the riser just like I would for building a wall with 16″ spacing and a top and bottom support beam. This way, I could use standard wall insulation, and I was sure it would be very strong to hold chairs and people. To attach the OSB sheets, I cut them to size and glued and screwed them to the boards so there would be no creaking for years to come.

I knew I would not be able to match the carpet to what we had there already so I went to a carpet store and bought a remnant that was completely different. For the trim, I actually used 1 x 6 select or better lumber. I tried to find the trim with the least knots and issues and you really can’t tell that is is not “trim quality.” To add just a bit more detail I also decided to attach some corner-round trim at the bottom. I stained it all with Min-wax gunstock oil stain and poly on top of that. The color is nice but a little more on the orange side than I wanted but I think it looks ok.

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Comcast Hijacking non-SSL sites to “inform” me

The alert embedded into my site.

When I opened my browser this evening, I was greeted with popup from my ISP about my data limit. I looked at the code and sure enough, Comcast intercepted the site I was viewing and sneakily inserted javascript to serve the popup to me. From a technical perspective I can see why they did this. It is a surefire way to alert customers because there is no authentication required. You just intercept the private web site the anonymous user it wanting to view, look through the code, and insert whatever you want. Like, tracking information, malware, subtle censorship, or a friendly reminder that Comcast has the ability and the will to edit the content of the the private web pages you view however they see fit. Unless you are going to a site that uses SSL, of course. It is just unsettling and shows that Comcast is willing to Hijack your private Internet traffic. Just because a door is unlocked, it’s not ethical to walk around in someone’s home and leave a creepy note on the kitchen table saying “You left your light on.”

If you see the locked padlock in your URL bar, then they can’t change the content at all because the content is encrypted from your device all the way back to the web server the page is hosted on. That is, if you trust the integrity of the certificate issuer. I’m looking at you, Symantec. I really need to enable SSL on this and lots of other sites I take care of. It is absolutely something that needs to happen in 2017 and with sites like Let’s Encrypt, it’s even free! Although, if your “secure” connection ends/ended up at a server that is/was a part of the NSA PRISM program then you’re out of luck anyway because they just look at your info after it is decrypted at the head end. Good lord, that was a bit of a tangent. I’m on a list now.

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The Adventures of Rabbidos! -2016

On December 31st, 2015 a very dear friend and my new travel companion, Rabbidos, was born. He was born in an old shabby McDonald’s in Kentucky but I could tell from the start that he was destined for bigger and better things. He wouldn’t settle down, find a job, get married, have a couple of kids, and live out his years at that Mickey D’s like the rest of them. No, Rabbidos wanted to see the world and vowed he would get out of that dead end town.

I was on my way to celebrate the new year in Nashville, TN and Rabbidos convinced me to take him along for the ride. We set off and I somehow knew then that our travels had just begun.