CozyNet Blog

Tuesday Journal (20260728)

Publish Date: 2026-07-29

Last Sunday I lost one of my notebooks that I used for taking quick notes at church. I've been searching all over my car, the house, and even called around to see if others may have found it. I guess it really is gone... So I suppose I'll have to go and buy another one. I'm not sure of what else to do in order to not lose these things. It's like I set em down somewhere and they just simply vanish!

Here lately I've been grabbing the Dallas morning news paper (I think that's what it's called?) when at the grocery store. It's mostly just news about wars and political stuff that has no relevancy to Dallas or the local area what-so-ever, but my cats love sitting on them! I was noticing that KitKat in particular likes to sit on paper, and sometimes they both like to jump up on the dinner table. I'm afraid their claws might damage the surface of the table if they accidentally scratch it, so I got a few news papers to lay out. When I was eating breakfast, I noticed near the top of the papers a "$4.99" just off to the corner. Ruh roh!

Without realizing it, I may have been taking these from the store without paying, thinking they were just sat out by the door for free. Some places do that you know? And also, I didn't see any obvious price tag on the racks. I'll have to drop back by and ask them if I was supposed to be paying for those because I've already grabbed three. Also, I kinda like perusing them when eating breakfast.

The workday was run of the mill with not too many eventful things worth writing about. I did go out for lunch to a little burger place I like. I usually try to get out there early since it's such a small place, but I got caught up assisting with setting up a Logitech Teams conferencing rally bar, so by the time I got there the place was packed full! So, I had to take my order with me out to the car.

When the work day was over, I drove right home. I didn't waste any time getting supper together which I remembered to take a picture of them tacos! I made them with the same ingredients as yesterdays tacos. I also scrambled some eggs and mixed them with the left over carne asada for tomorrows breakfast.

I had a lot of leisure time after supper, so I prepared a lunch for the next day. After that, I played around with my power tools to get back on track with making some replacement window frames for my kitchen. The kitchen windows are two casements side-by-side. The bottom sashes are approximately 27 1/2 inches length and width, while the top sashes I haven't yet measured since I intend to keep them (they're still in decent condition.) My cuts have to be 28 inches though because when I make the profiles and joints, it'll shave them down to the correct size. I hope this first set turns out correctly because it's been such a stinking ordeal to learn how to work around the imperfections of my table saw.

My table saw is a "job site" saw, which me being new to all this stuff didn't know that "job site" saws are not exactly intended for precision wood working and are best for making rough cuts. The kerf plate is ever-so-slightly bowed in the middle from DeWallt, which causes me to have to be extra careful not to apply downward pressure when making my cuts. I've also learned to not make long cuts through a whole piece after so many inches high (about 2 1/2 inches), or else the grain in the stock will cause the blade to subtly move and warp, resulting in a sloppy job. So I just cut half way thru on one side then flip the piece over to cut it the rest of the way from the other side instead of cutting all the way thru in one go. Each piece needs to be perfectly square on all sides and this technique seems to work well.

You can see a slight bow when I lay it flat and down on its face...

It's a little difficult to describe this in writing, but hopefully someday soon I'll be able to make a video on how to make your own traditional wood windows with conventional power tools. From all my trial and error, I've learned that making traditional wood windows would ideally call for either an original "sticking(?)" machine from the early to mid-1900's, or really expensive precision machinery which can range between enthusiast to industrial scale equipment. Alternatively, hand milling tools are an option to make them by hand, but that requires a lot of experience and skill to do for something that shouldn't be all that hard to do with plain old power tools... It just takes finding a technique that works, and I think I found one!

Thanks for reading my blog!