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How to make your own buttonhook cheap

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When working a while back on my private tactics compendium, I summised that we probably call the Button-hook technique after the use of a real buttonhook. Well, my new work shirts are a pain in the ass to button at the collar, so on the way to the office this morning, I thought about how to make one. Yes I’m cheap and I like solving problems here and there lol.

Unfold a paper clip like so:

And you have yourself a buttonhook for like a penny versus $5-$15 out of a store!

Plus if you push the little end closed, you have an ear clip just like my father would make. Those are the most awesome way to clean ear wax out of your ears—qtips are no good.

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Well, I suppose all awesome footwear must wear out eventually, such is the nature of the clothes you love. On my way to visit my girl friend and her family over the break, coming through security in Calgary, while I was putting my boots on I noticed a nice hole in the lower port, inward side. It’s about large enough to put a finger through. I don’t know when the breakage happened, never noticed it before; leaving Atlanta I was a tad to pre-occupied with getting to my gate to notice.

While I was in Canada, I showed this to my Firefly and she noticed that the outsoles were also dead on arrival.

I should probably have noticed this myself, once I started to note unusual traction loss and “Sliding” around the past few months. I looked up what it would cost for having them resoled with vibram

My boots outsoles are pretty cheap, clicking through the picture in this journal entry links to their page at Rotcho. Actually, I think everything they make is pretty cheap but the quality to cost ratio is reasonable enough in all the cases that I’ve tried. These boots are Pretty Damn Comfortable and the material is sufficent for my environment, now if I was jumping out of air planes for a living or a park ranger, I might decide otherwise.

If it wasn’t for the hole in my port boot, I’d likely try to have them resoled. That would probably cost more than my boots are worth, or at least with something like a vibram outsole. Maybe that’d still be like putting lipstick on a pig, but I really like my boots lol. Bet a decent shoe repairer could even fix the hole.

So, bit of a debate: just buy a new pair or invest in something better. I’m thinking that if I bought a new pair of Rotcho 5057’s, I’d may as well buy a new pair every 8-14 months; however long it takes to wear out the outsoles. I’m not really convinced that even e.g. a vibram outsole is going to offer /that/ much greater life, but hey, if you’re gonna spend the $ to resole boots, may as well have a quality boot worth more than the resoling cost, eh? In looking around, I’m thinking about Belleville 790’s or 795’s. The former is unlined like my Rothco 5057’s, where as the latter has almost half a pound of insulation. My feet don’t really get very cold, at least not under socks and inside my boots, even when we were walking out in -8C/+18F kind of temps with ice/snow, I was perfectly warm of foot. In particular I like the look of the Belleville’s construction versus the Rotcho. What I don’t like, is there is NO one here that sells the darn things, so the only option is online.

Of course, if it doesn’t work out, I could always get up early one Saturday and take a drive over the Bear Paw Army & Navy in Griffin, and see if they’ve got anything I could use.

Well, I would say things are at an all time low.

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My mother curses at me for walking away from my family in favour of a stranger, and I can’t help but wonder, why on earth would I walk towards her? I’ve done nothing unduly hostile towards the rest of my family, except block them from my photos: because she would not stop using that situation to attack me. It’s between her and I. Just like when I was a child and my mother and brother were at near constant state of war; she tried every method of using me as leverage against my brother. As she often worded it, we were a “Packaged deal” and he wasn’t allowed access to me unless he chose her as well. Ain’t it a peachy family I grew up with? Damn she even leveraged my father ordering it as often as her packaged deal crap. Present day, every now and then I get bitched at because I have little to do with my brother. He now lives 70 miles away. Well guess what, when he lived 200 feet away I was regularly forbidden from having anything to do with him without being given much pain for trying to. We’ve more or less been grown into our present relationship, by our mother, because that is what she wanted for years, and expressed on more occasions than I can enumerate. Just because they’re at peace now is magically supposed to change something there? That is ridiculous! It changes nothing that my turning 18 didn’t. Now she makes efforts to do the same bologna with bringing extended family into the affair. I don’t care. 95% of my extended family have nothing to do with me 100% of the year: her GOD parents and occasionally my father’s sister. It’s not a weapon, it’s just words she can throw. My mother is a small and hateful person in private. I and the girl I love have been verbally abused and slandered enough that I am no longer on speaking terms with my mother until an apology is issued wich is about as likely as being hit by a meteor. And I have no intentions of changing that decision what so ever, my concious will not be bothered in the least if that lasts for life. Some time ago I learned the meaning of “A hater is going to hate”, because that’s how my mother is. She doesn’t know how to love or care past her own concerns, not in my experience over twenty some years. I gave my mother nearly seven years of my life, as unpaid labour in her under the table cleaning business. I put up with her trying to crush my efforts to get a driver’s license and a real job; I tolerated her hatred for me finding a truly awesome job and her attempts to derail it; I paid her more than I could afford out of my income, never asking for a dime back; I skipped moving out so I’d know she’d be O.K. and paid for it, then let her skip paying it back; I have even loaned her money, to the point of skipping my desires and getting in danger of being stranded, and allowed her to borrow enough that I’m not writing it off. But I am not a retard. My mother complains that she didn’t get anything out of having kids: since my grace, patience, and mercy are not as great as Mother Teresa, I think maybe she shouldn’t of had any then. I once needed antibotics for an abssessed tooth that had my jaw swollen up like a golf ball. That’s the kind of condition that can become fatal if left untreated. It’s been used against me at every turn she pleases, that she took me to a dentist for that (instead of letting me get worse and die?). I’ve given her many times the cost of that dentist trip without any expectation of return and loaned her many times more past that, to the point that I need to make it a standard debt just to stop her from using me for a blank check. Every time she has needed to go in for a checkup, I’ve taken her and lost count of how much I’ve helped her there in terms of cash. But wait, it’s still attempted leverage against me because it fits into her little world view of things. Everything a parent should do in that type of regard, is used against me and I’m treated like the scum of the earth when I help her. I don’t think my mother can love or care for anyone because it seems like nothing can get past her shelfishness, or maybe I’m the only one that thinks you have to care more about someone else than your own interests, at least some of the time. Is that being a loving and caring parent? I don’t think so. I think maybe my mother could use mental help but I’ll be damned if I’m paying this time.
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I do think this has to be the first cube that doesn’t just suck, that I’ve drawn free hand in a long, long, long time.
While it was on sale over Cyber Monday, I bought a copy of SketchBook Pro from the Android Market. Can’t say that I have any skill left at drawing, if I ever did really. I haven’t touched a pencil to a piece of paper that way in so many years now, I don’t even want to think about it. Probably a waste but I ordered a stylus, in the hopes of something more fine than my finger. I’ve an occasional interest in computer graphics but can’t say that a mouse really does it for me, if I’m thinking about drawing, my head understands how to use a regular pencil or charcoal. A finger is honestly more astute for my brain than a mouse cursor. Needless to say, I’m not the kind to be found in Photoshop so much as vi.
Far from perfect but hey, if I can’t even remember the year two thousand and whatever I stopped drawing in, I’m proud that it doesn’t look to terrible.
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After being busy between the lab at work and my mother’s steady pestering, I miss having time to update my journal – what a wonderful thing weekends are!

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Yesterday was a nice bit of fun. On top of not so good dreams, I end up *sailing* home at 60mph when it is practically raining fleshpounds outside—and I do mean sailing! All because my mother is wigging out over the weather report. By the time I’m nearly there, and there is barely a freaking drizzle in Duluth, compared to John’s Creek, she texts me saying the tornado was cancled. Poppycock! Then to top it off, while I’m working from home, she pesters me enough that I quit work early to take her fucking shopping to shut her the fuck up. And guess what? While I’m unloading the car there is such a flash monsoon that my feet and one eye was all that was left dry, guess the boots worked. Literally it was worse than showering with your clothes on. Of course, it was over by the time I was done, leaving me drenched. 

My vote is still she wanted to go shopping ASAP. Pest.

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+1 for waiting for the weekend: time to sit down and update my journal for the week 🙂

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Today has been a bit of a day. My aging parakeet has passed on; I say aging going by what’s on Wikipedia. Plus some good news at work, that I’ll nit relate here. Otherwise it’s been fairly uneventful. Pretty much been experimenting with Google Music and playing Killing Floor over the Halloweeen special event; one Scrake to go before I can join Ranzaar’s chubby Chicken Army lol.

Think I’ll probably get around to journalling other thoughts later: Night of The Living Dead is starting!