Modern Toil » Work

DIY: Wooden Tie Rack

Rich — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:08:41 +0000

Recently I’ve had to start wearing ties to work, and the two total ties I previously owned just wasn’t cutting it. I harvested the ties my father used to wear, which rounded out my tie selection quite acceptably. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that while having two ties in your sock drawer works just fine, having fifteen in there doesn’t.

I headed out to my trusty local Wal-Mart to pick up a tie rack, but alas, they had none! Mind you, they weren’t out of them, they simply didn’t carry them. Sure, I could have ordered one online, but that meant waiting, and patient I am not. So, I bought a few vertical wooden hangers that came with hooks meant for belts and headed home.

At home, I pulled out the hooks from the vertical wooden hangers with locking pliers and made a simple plan to build my own rack:

The tie rack is 22″ wide, and 4.5″ tall, a good size to screw to the inside of most closet doors.

I made mine out of 3/4″ pine and sanded a nice round-over onto the edges. I marked everything with my 1:1 paper template, and drilled out the holes for hooks. I pounded the scavenged hooks into the holes with a mallet. You could just as easily makes the hooks from wooden dowels or cut lengths of aluminum rod.

I’m pretty happy with the result, and thought I’d share the plans.

Below is a PDF of the tie rack plans. It prints onto 3 sheets and each page overlaps the next by 2″. Make sure your printer is NOT set to shrink to fit, or it won’t be the full 22″ when you cut and tape it together.

Tie Rack Plans – 1:1 PDF Template

Enjoy!

Epic week for “I Quit!”

Rich — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:34:26 +0000

It’s only Tuesday, and there’s already 2 epic tales of regular everyday working class folks throwing in the towel with more class (or lack there-of) than most of us could dream about.

First, there’s Steven Slater from Queens who, after a verbal engagement with an obnoxious passenger, grabbed a couple brewskis from the beverage cart, popped the emergency chute, cursed over the PA, and slid to personal freedom while the plane was still moving (only to be picked up by the cops later):

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/08/09/2010-08-09_talk_about_turbulance_jetblue_flight_attendant_drops_intercom_fbomb_bolts_down_e.html?page=1

If that’s not enough, a woman, Jenny, allegedly quit her job, for being referred to by her boss as a HOPA, by mass-mailing everyone at her company a series of pictures featuring her and a dry-erase board:

http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/

UPDATE: Dry-Erase girl is confirmed a hoax. I knew it was too good to be true!

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/11/elyse-porterfield/

NPR: Two types of managers

Rich — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:15:21 +0000

Heard this on NPR, and it really rang true in a lot of ways. Over the years, I’ve definitely worked with both types of managers, and it’s truly a blessing when someone is a “multiplier” as this transcript describes:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128401148

Leaving for Boston

Rich — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:50:15 +0000

About to get on this plane and depart for the RHEL Summit in Boston via Philly Airport.

It only looks about twice as big as my truck

Red Hat Summit / JBoss World 2010 – Boston, MA

Rich — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:18:14 +0000

I’ll be in Boston for JBoss World and the Red Hat Summit from June 23rd to June 25th.

http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2010/

I’m headed there for work to attend the labs and workshops including everything from hardware to next-gen apps, security and cloud. This will be the first time I’ve been to Boston, and the first time I’ve attended a Red Hat Summit

I’m open to suggestions for places to eat, and things to see in the evening.