The final Wheel of Time book (A Memory of Light) came out the Tuesday before last. I finished it last weekend but didn’t get around to posting anything about it.
Note: This post will be spoiler free.
That said, here’s the top shelf on one of my bookshelves:
Note how nearly the entire shelf is Wheel of Time, and that’s even with most of the series in paperback. (That’s a terrible picture – both out of focus and off center, but it gets the point across I think).
I thought it was a good finish. It didn’t wrap up everything, or answer every question, but I never expected that. It closed enough and I was very happy with how it finally ended. I did think some things felt rushed, though the book was already over 900 pages without a glossary so adding in the build-up to make the one that bothered me most work better would have made the book even bigger.
This weekends project was to improve my tablesaw. Now it has a switch:
The previous switching method involved using a power strip with a switch on the top that I could step on since the tablesaw motor just plugs into the wall directly. That worked, but wasn’t the best (and it was annoying to have to unplug my tablesaw to use any other tools). This way I’ve got a switch dedicated to the table saw, and if I ever find something that I want to turn on when the table saw it in use I’ve even got a spare outlet for that (not likely). I also have greatly increased my outlet wiring experience (I’m pretty sure this was the first time I did something like this on my own, and it’s been many years since I helped my dad or anyone else with wiring).
The cord I used was a power tool replacement cord. For a little bit cheaper I could have bought an extension cord and cut the end off, but the replacement cord seemed like a perfect match for what I was doing. Having it made for rewiring stuff certainly helped: I don’t have to worry about the cord shell splitting from where I split the wires out because the shell stopped cleanly there, and the wires were all color coded to make it easy (though I verified with a voltmeter anyways).
To be honest, it would have been far better to just get a heavy duty extension cord and put the switch in the middle of that. That way I could have used an electrical box for one thing (instead of two, I think the term is 1-gang), which would have been more stable, and it might even have been cheaper depending on the extension cord (not that a single outlet is at all expensive, though a switch-only plate would have been cheaper than what I ended up with). Unfortunately that method of adding a switch was mentioned to me after I’d already bought all the parts besides the cord itself, so I just went with my original plan.
The next tablesaw improvement project will be to add some sort of bag or bin underneath to catch sawdust. That way I won’t have to vacuum it all up every time I use the tablesaw to keep Dash from rolling in the sawdust and tracking it inside the house… No idea when I’ll get to that, probably depends on how much I need to use the tablesaw for the rest of the cat tree. The simple solution is probably to get the right size/shape cardboard box and put it under there, but that may be hard to empty without spilling and I’m currently lacking in spare cardboard to make a box.
