Hans at 70

[ChrisGreaves]

(From Wageningen with snow to Bonavista with snow)

Thanks for the prompt delivery; it arrived yesterday with a 24-hour fall, most of which the local plough threw in the form of ice-blocks across my 15" wide path to the roadway. I cleared that jam this morning while my stewed rhubarb was being heated.
Cheers
Chris

[Oliver]

Congratulations and thank you for all you do Hans!

I thought for one moment that was our friend Leonardo...

This is hilarious, I remember sending Hans a PM about three years ago and the last sentence was "I feel like Leonardo"

..There are MANY persons out there who rely on your insightful answers and who have a measure of reassurance with your online presence...

I agree, Hans has provided me with invaluable guidance which in term helped at work and my company (actually is my dad's company).

[JoeP]

I was one of the admins at the Windows Secrets Lounge in its last incarnation. In the last year of its existence, there was a major hardware disaster. The owners at the time lost several months worth of activity as they did not have a good, proven, recent backup. After the site was restored as best they could, there was a fair amount of time spent trying to recover the lost posts. When Woody reacquired this site, it was as Hans stated above. the AskWoody development folks did a good job of including the posts and users in the AskWoody framework. It is considerably different than the old Lounge and this Lounge.

[HansV]

@Oliver: Thanks!

[ChrisGreaves]

(From Wageningen with snow to Bonavista with snow)

Thanks for the prompt delivery; it arrived yesterday with a 24-hour fall, most of which the local plough threw in the form of ice-blocks across my 15" wide path to the roadway. I cleared that jam this morning while my stewed rhubarb was being heated.

20210211_124654_HDR.jpg

This doesn't look like too big a job, until you realise that that is as far as my backdoor will open, and to get it opened that far I have put my body weight at the door and compressed the snow on the outside. I can shovel the little deck, but only by shifting the snow either to the steps, or to the driveway, either of which sees me doing extra work to clear the steps so that I can get to the driveway, or a doubled-up load once I can reach the driveway from the steps.
This winter I can't exit by the front door because David took back the steps he had given to me to repair the steps across the street after the debacle of last November 2nd.
Here is a little music to celebrate from the steps to central driveway.
Cheers
Chris

[Doc.AElstein]

Maybe Chris you should consider a Porch ( Veranda ). I am very fond of these myself. They can be both
_ very practical
and
_ I think they add a very personal human type feel to a house, especially when they inevitably get filled with things you end up putting down in them temporarily, when you are in a rush, but then never get around to tidying away.

I am very keen to do something like this which would suit perfectly my House..

Porch.jpg

It might need some work to be authorised by a certain person, or maybe not…

Disclaimer: if the snow comes down horizontally as it does by us sometimes then a porch can be less effective. But if you hang some temporary sheets or covers then that problem is minimised, and it that can give a nice “winter camping tent feel” when you are inside it , which feels quite pleasant.

Alan

[HansV]

That porch would look rather weird on Chris's house...

[Doc.AElstein]

Could be a useful safety feature though, to help wade off the occasional passing flying car..

[ChrisGreaves]

Maybe Chris you should consider a Porch ( Veranda ). I am very fond of these myself. ...

Spot on Doc!
It is 17:00 as I squeak⁽¹⁾. David from across the street has gone home to Kerry.
I have a new kitchen counter, a new sink, a proper tap and drain, and David has reclaimed the space under the counter so I now can use all five cupboards instead of just two. The cupboard doors are off so I can clean and strip paper, prime etc and then Kerry can start painting. I made David buy a 12' counter top so that there would be an extra 4' left over, and this afternoon, after he had finished installing two new locks on my porch door, so that I can close the door and lock it when I go shopping or go to sleep at night, I coyly suggested that he knock up a cheap frame from 2x4s so that I could get the feel of what an L-shaped counter would look like, and I could dice carrots while watching the world go by.
As he was leaving I asked him how Maude used to cope with the snow on the porch (David has lived opposite 60 Canon Bayley all his life) and he told me that she had a temporary windbreak/shelter that could be put up after the first snowfall and (trickier) taken up before the last snowfall, and guess what I said?

But I can hold off on the new porch until David has (a) removed the old wood-stove plinth (b) remodeled my laundry room so that it can be used (c) installed twelve new large windows and (d) cut three 4"x4" holes in walls so I can have, at long last, an endless loop model railway that passes through four rooms.

This last is a serious project, for "... a track-side water-tower next to a loco-shed. The loco-shed will house a mini-heating element; the water tower pipes the hot coffee into insulated gondola tankers which (miles away from the loco shed) are dragged onto a trestle and then bottom-drained into a carefully-positioned mug. Dragging the rake of trucks double-headed with extra-loud CHUFFing would give the coffee time to steep.

And as I type, I think TWO-phases. You each write your orders on a not-to-scale loading-card which is slotted into a frame on the side of the gondola tankers, and the train of empties trundles off behind a partition where the cars are loaded according to the bar-coded data on the card from four coal chutes (tea, ground coffee, whitener, sweetener) THEN the hot water is added and three chuffing minutes later your mugs are placed under the discharge trestle and behold And Lo! each person's mug arrives with the required order.
And everyone would be chuffed!"

⁽¹⁾ While he was putting a new plywood base under the sink David found and sealed off a hole which mice were using as a front door to what they were thinking of as their granary. There were no "signs" of mice anywhere in my house this morning ...

Cheers
"Happiest guy on Canon Bayley Road"

[HansV]

That has a definite Wallace and Gromit vibe!

[ChrisGreaves]

That has a definite Wallace and Gromit vibe!

They will never grow old!
Thanks Hans for blowing my secret (grin)
Chris