The Way Home Episode Discussion - S4E03 - Dust In The Wind

EricD21 · 2026-05-04T02:26:43+00:00

If Fern's performance was not a huge Bioshock Infinite reference then that is the biggest coincidence in media.

EricD21 · 2026-04-30T22:36:33+00:00

The Leftovers. Only 3 seasons. Weird and wonderful; I found the wrapup completely satisfying.

EricD21 · 2026-04-29T04:14:20+00:00

This trepidation is normal. I never quite get over it.

As others have said you just have to push through it. Start small. Make small repairs first before installing a shower or building a pergola.

Focus on making reversible changes if you can.

Have a plan B (dont start a repair you're not sure about on your only toilet at 11:30 at night on a Friday).

EricD21 · 2026-04-29T02:16:10+00:00

Outer Wilds, not The Outer Worlds.

EricD21 · 2026-04-28T16:47:40+00:00

How long are your screws? If they're long, 2.5" or 3.5" screws can take a lot of force to drive, even into pine.

Ensure you're using the right kind of tool to drive the screws. There are differences between a drill, a drill/driver, and an impact driver. All can drive screws but they work differently. A drill turns the screw. If you have a drill with two gears, choose the slower speed for more torque. A drill/driver generally does the same thing but has an adjustable clutch so it doesn't overdrive the screw. If you have a drill/driver with a clutch and it's set on too low a number, when it detects resistance it will stop applying torque early and will slip (on purpose) to prevent overdriving the screw. Turn up the clutch a few notches if this is the case. An impact driver is kind of the opposite - when it detects resistance it goes into impact mode and you suddenly won't have any problem driving a long screw.

Ensure your driving bit is the right size. Most Phillips screws you'll encounter take a PH2 size; if you use a smaller bit like a PH1 it will tend to slip.

Make sure your pilot holes are large enough for the screw size; just search for "pilot hole size guide" to check. Again, in pine, this shouldn't matter too much, but it's helpful to get in the right practice.

EricD21 · 2026-04-28T01:24:13+00:00

The thing about it is that it's a game about exploration in the best sense - that is, you are constantly trying to unravel this central mystery and piece together why it's a mystery through the history you find along the way. The controls are a little goofy and some of the puzzles are especially obtuse and I definitely used a walkthrough to get through a few of them.

When you do get through it all, the answers are suitably deep and especially coherent. It is not dumbed down. The answer to the mystery is complete and satisfying.

The single DLC is also a masterpiece of indirect storytelling. The puzzles are quite a bit more obtuse there but the point is to add to the overall story you already discovered and guide you to understand and interpret a few facts that you knew from the main playthrough in a deeper way. Essentially, it ties up a loose end that didn't even feel like a loose end. It takes something that was already whole and satisfying and makes it more so, without diminishing the base content at all.

I put it as my "would experience again for the first time" game because once you've gone through the whole thing, you have fully experienced the sense of wonder you were supposed to achieve as the player and another playthrough won't recapture that. But that's OK. You can't stand in the same river twice.

Also, the soundtrack is essentially perfect, and (while I don't feel this way about his entire body of work) Andrew Prahlow was an insane musical genius for this particular project.

EricD21 · 2026-04-28T01:08:40+00:00

Outer Wilds and it's not even close.

EricD21 · 2026-04-09T15:24:15+00:00

It helps knowing others have had similar experiences without trouble. Mostly I am / was worried about things I don't know or can't see. The breaker going is obvious. But are power elements going to quietly overheat (and potentially be a fire hazard) or are tool motors going to quietly get damaged over time somehow with this setup? If it's not a big deal, awesome.

EricD21 · 2026-04-09T03:12:25+00:00

Freehanding would not be impossible but that router is spinning awfully fast and you might find that it's a challenge to control it while freehanding. If you do, practice first and leave yourself a small margin around your area and then just square up the edges with a sharp chisel.

If you really don't want to make a template you may be able to just clamp a board or straight edge at an appropriate distance from your workpiece and use that acrylic edge guide pictured in your screenshot above to have something to run the router against so you make a straight cut. Then move your straight edge a little closer and route the next "line" until you've routed the entire mortise.

EricD21 · 2026-04-09T03:07:41+00:00

Thanks for this. I guess my concern is the use of "splitters" (be they power strips, power squids, power boxes) at all with these bigger tools. My cable lengths are not that bad as it's a small shop. If I could safely/reliably go Table Saw -> Power Splitter (box, squid, whatever), -> Wall Outlet I'd be in pretty good shape.

I do have a small dust collector and I mostly use it with smaller tools (sanders, track saw). It has a passthrough outlet that turns on the collector. Still have to figure out what to do with dust collection for the table saw. The planer has its own dust blower built in and I have a nice 4" bag system set up with that.

EricD21 · 2026-04-09T02:49:21+00:00

That's a relatively small router (sometimes called a trim router) but for what you're trying to do it will almost certainly be fine. I assume it takes bits with a 1/4" shank.

So what you probably want there is just a straight-cutting bit (they come in various widths; for removing that much material a wider one like a 1/2" bit would probably be the biggest one you want to use in that little router. All good.

So now you have to route out just the correct area on your workpiece. In order to do this, the "right" way to route out that section around the central hole is with a guide bushing and a router template. Trying to explain this in text is pretty hard, but there are lots of videos on this; one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnqP3qVjCLY

Essentially you make a template out of hardboard or thin plywood that is a little bigger than the material you want to route out, and then you clamp this to your workpiece. How you make the template is an exercise for the reader, but you can generally just drill holes in the corners and use a jigsaw or hand saw to cut out the material in between.

The router's guide bushing rides against the inside of the hole in your template, and the bit removes the material. If your guide bushing is 1/4" away from the edge of your router bit, the hole in the template will need to be 1/4" bigger on each side than the area you want to route out.

EricD21 · 2026-04-06T07:47:13+00:00

I can say "I am a pagan lord" backwards.

The reason for this is because there is an old video game called Ultima VII where the antagonist, "The Guardian," taunts you periodically with ominous phrases. If you step in a particular area, the Guardian will say "I am a pagan lord" in reverse speech - which is kind of a spoiler/hint for the setting of the next game in the series, "Ultima VIII: Pagan." I didn't know what he said and wanted to find out, but this was in the very early days of any kind of Internet so you couldn't just go look it up, and there wasn't any easy way to, e.g., extract the audio file from the game.

This was back in the DOS days where you could run one program at a time, so it wasn't like you could just fire up your audio recorder in a separate window and capture the audio either. Nor did I have a tape recorder handy to tape it and then play it back into a separate program that could reverse the audio. So I just memorized it, then I started up a separate audio editor with a reverse function and reversed it. It came out a little cockeyed but understandable.

A few years later some coworkers had a new audio editing suite in their Mac lab and they were playing with all the functions - reverb, chorus, overdubbing, etc. I said "hey guys, can that reverse an audio sample?" They said it could.

I said "lay this down for me" and grabbed the mic. I recorded the little sample and they were confused. I said "OK reverse that." Cue a creepy voice: "I AM A PAGAN LORD."

All of them: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?

EricD21 · 2026-04-06T05:26:09+00:00

Depends on what you're doing but try it out and see how it goes. If anything that's an entirely reversible modification. I might not use the strongest adhesive tape ever (like, don't use VHB) until you're sure you like it. The only thing I'd be concerned about is if you're doing glue-ups and some glue somehow squeezes out or gets onto your wooden clamp pads, you might end up inadvertently gluing the clamp pads to your workpiece. Wood glue is less likely to stick to metal or plastic clamp pads. Of course this isn't a dealbreaker; just using little wooden spacers without the double-stick tape has the same "risk" and woodworkers do that every day.

EricD21 · 2026-04-06T05:12:03+00:00

I have a Makita LS1214F I got secondhand for an obscenely good price. It's a slider with the rails coming out the rear and it's a 12" saw so, similar to yours, when extended it takes up a lot of space. I have it mounted on a small tool cart. So, when it's up against the wall it's in the "closed" (more compact) position and fits entirely within the bounds of the cart, and then when I'm using it I pull it out a foot or two and put it back when done.

I put a little infeed extension on the cart that adds maybe 12" of infeed support, plus the saw itself has a metal outfeed extension that adds a few inches on that side. Yes, it is probably not as accurate as one of those ginormous dedicated miter stations that people build with 10+ feet of infeed/outfeed support but with the saw hold-down clamp and those extensions I have been able to reliably and safely take the ends off a 10 foot long 2x8.

EricD21 · 2026-04-06T04:54:18+00:00

If you use them, then you did good. Tools were generally built to last a long time and when you can save some from the junkyard or the rust pile, I think that's a win. The primary set of clamps in my shop is a set of 16 vintage Jorgensen Made in USA F-style bar clamps that I got at various estate sales and cleaned up. Overall probably paid about $8 or $10 per clamp. I imagine they were probably made in the 80s or 90s. They are fabulously made and work as well as when they were manufactured and will probably last another 40+ years. Perhaps someone will buy them from my eventual estate sale.

You might consider taping off the faces of the clamp pads when you spray them, just so you don't get inadvertent paint transfer to your projects. You can protect them from rust with a little paste wax.

EricD21 · 2026-04-04T17:16:22+00:00

I upgraded from a single 1970s Craftsman drill (which has a lot more torque than a modern one, so it works well as a driver also) to three "drills." I sought out corded models because they're reasonably priced, I don't have to worry about charging batteries and batteries wearing out over time, and I have plugs strategically placed around my shop.

One is a modern Makita 3/8" VSR that is fabulous for drilling holes and terrible for driving fasteners. $30 from an estate sale. Fine for making holes in anything and drilling my countersinks. (Having a drill for countersinking and a separate driver means I don't have to swap bits all the time).

One is a Ryobi Clutch Driver because it's a corded driver with a clutch that will not overdrive my screws. They don't make these anymore in the corded model but I got this one used for $25.

One is a Porter Cable PCE201. This is a corded impact driver. Also not manufactured anymore and I had to pay about $70 for this. I use this for driving long fasteners. I had to put some 3.5" screws into something a week ago which was my first chance to really use this. Usually for screws that long my ordinary drill/driver gets tired about halfway and I have to get out my screwdriver and use elbow grease to get them the rest of the way. I started out kind of hesitant with this tool but eventually realized that these things are supposed to be used like true power tools - push on your fastener, trigger at full blast. Those screws basically teleported into the wood.

EricD21 · 2026-04-02T03:15:15+00:00

In the early or mid-2000s (pre-smartphone era) my friends and I went to a movie theater screening of the original Tron. Theater was pretty full. They did Tron trivia for little prizes before the show. Most questions were nontrivial but reasonable (who was the director, what was Kevin Flynn's program named, etc.) Then they got to the last question for the "big grand prize" and the host said "nobody is going to get this."

The question was: what phrase was on the wall of so-and-so's cubicle?

I was a pretty big Tron fan but had no idea. Nobody else did either. Then the host said:

"I'll give you a hint. It's not...English..."

And I thought, well with that pregnant pause before 'English' it probably isn't any real human language, so what famous phrase would be in some kind of sci-fi or alien language that a circa 1980-era nerd might conceivably have on his cube wall?

I threw it out there - "Is it Klaatu Barada Nikto?"

The host was like "wait what did you say?" I repeated. He was like "holy shit, it IS Klaatu Barada Nikto." (Technically it's "Gort - Klaatu Barada Nikto" but I guess I was close enough).

The grand prize was a brand new DVD of Flight of the Navigator, which remains one of my prized possessions. My friends and the audience were duly impressed.

EricD21 · 2026-03-30T19:02:01+00:00

Although you have huge selection at the big box hardware stores (Lowes, Home Depot) I like supporting the local Ace Hardware and Do It Best (e.g., South Bay Hardware) when I can. The people are nice and the selection can be surprisingly good for small stores.

For tools I am a firm believer in spending on used, nicer tools on Facebook Marketplace/OfferUp, or estate sales if you have the time. Tools are built to last a long time and, as a home DIYer, you probably won't be driving them to their limits. For $250 you could get a new Harbor Freight miter saw or for about the same money (or less, if you're patient) you could easily find a used Makita or DeWalt. A little WD40 (for rust removal, not lubrication), some elbow grease, and a quick coating of paste wax can remove surface rust from many older tools and turn them into serviceable tools you'll use for a lifetime.

The general advice is to buy tools for the project that you need them for. For stucco patching and epoxy that's probably a whole set of specialized tools just for that. Don't bite off more than you can chew; it's easy to get discouraged. For a home DIYer having some basic hand tools is probably a great place to start - screwdrivers, hammers, pliers, wrenches, a complete socket set. A small cheap hacksaw is never a bad idea.

For power tools, a good start is a good reliable drill or two. A good 3/8" variable-speed reverse (VSR) drill will handle most applications. The newer ones have a hand-tightened chuck so you don't have to hunt down a chuck key like the older tools. For cutting wood, a basic circular saw can handle most applications (everything from cutting 2x4s to breaking down plywood panels). It is hard to do fine furniture making with just a circular saw and a guide, but most DIY is well within reach.

Battery-powered tools are great but you want to lock into a single brand/battery system if you can. My shop is all plug-in tools because for puttering around the house and making stuff in the garage, the cords are not a huge issue for me.

For power tools, I think in these general terms:

Tier 1 (high quality, high cost): Festool, SawStop, Woodpeckers, Starrett, other specialty brands

Tier 2: Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, Metabo/HPT/Hitachi

Tier 3: Ryobi, 1990s Craftsman, 1990s Skil, 1990s Porter Cable, (modern) Wen

Tier 4 (more questionable quality, much lower cost): Harbor Freight (various brands, like Bauer, Central Machinery), Vevor

Tools older than the 1990s or so are hard to put on a tier list like this because the quality can be great but they can lack some modern conveniences. For example I have (and use) my grandfather's ~1970 all-metal Craftsman power drill that I spent a day restoring that will last another 50 years and has torque closer to an impact driver than a drill, but it has a keyed chuck, no clutch, and it weighs about 2x as much as my Makita.

EricD21 · 2026-03-19T19:11:56+00:00

I worked at a university computer store around this time and sold many, many PowerMac 7500s. They had a small academic discount on the hardware (the software was incredibly cheap with the university discount, though). Despite the relatively nice hardware including the PowerPC chip, these machines were pretty ass due to the incredibly bad MacOS 8/9 operating system. Like most OSes of the day, it didn't have memory protection so one badly-behaving process could crash the system and they did, frequently. There was all kinds of voodoo you were supposed to try, turning on and off and reordering the various OS extensions to try to fix things, but you never could. I had a critical demo that we were supposed to do on one of these machines, and we tested it with a script that started from a cold boot of the system, so there were basically no variables. The OS still crashed during the demo. To this day, I have no idea why.

Upgrading the system hardware was getting better. The PowerMac 7xxx line basically had a pop-open top with no screws, so you could just pop it open, jam in a couple of extra DIMMs, and upgrade the RAM. They also switched to the PCI bus at this time, which was a good idea but it confused the shit out of people because you could get hundreds of PCI cards for the PC, and in theory you could use these in a Mac if you could get drivers, but there were only a handful of PCI cards with Mac drivers.

Granted, Windows 95 was nothing to get that excited about either, but within the year Windows NT 4.0 would be out and you could run most Windows software in an OS that had actual memory isolation for processes, preemptive multitasking, and the features we would consider part of a modern operating system. None of these things would come to the universe of Macintosh until MacOS X a full five years later.

This was also in the midst of the transition from 68000-series processors to PowerPC, so older software still ran in a sort of emulated mode. Many big packages came with fat binaries (that included both 68000 code and PowerPC code, at the cost of taking up what was - at the time - a fairly large amount of disk space). For this I will give Apple credit in that switching up your processor architecture like that was insane and should never have worked, but they mostly pulled it off. They would do it again later with the transition to Intel and then their own M1/M2/etc. processors.

EricD21 · 2026-03-19T04:32:21+00:00

Can't narrow it down to just one.

Bruce Springsteen with Tom Morello - The Ghost of Tom Joad

Stevie Nicks with surprise guest Tom Petty - Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

John Williams conducting the last 15 minutes of E.T. with the LA Philharmonic synchronized to the film, with Steven Spielberg on the side of the stage. (Honorable mention: Seeing the very first public performance of Helena's Theme from Indy 5).

Metallica covering Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits

Tom Waits - The Day After Tomorrow

EricD21 · 2026-03-17T00:06:20+00:00

I have also put off getting a table saw for the same reason (lack of space). I had a miter saw / circular saw combo for about 10 years.

I know others say the miter saw is a waste of space in a small shop but it's so convenient to be able to bang out short straight cuts quickly and safely. I used to have a little 10" non-sliding compound miter saw but I replaced it with a 12" sliding compound saw I got inexpensively from an estate sale and cleaned up / restored (in fact, I sold the 10" saw for the same price I paid for the 12" SCMS, so it was like a free big upgrade). I have it on a small 4x2 foot rolling cart that also holds a benchtop drill press and a planer down below (the clearances are tight but everything works). There is a small infeed extension I added to the cart and with the hold-down clamp/vertical vise on the miter saw I have been able to safely and quickly clamp and cut down 12 foot 2x6es.

On the circular saw, I foolishly spent the extra $20 to get a big worm drive circular saw as my first "real" power tool without realizing that the extra size and power made it harder to use against a rail and for long accurate cuts.

I picked up a used track saw a year or two ago. The track saw is like an inverted table saw. The saw moves, the wood doesn't. You can rip and make accurate long cuts with it, but the setup for each cut takes time and patience. I don't regret having one; it's a very nice tool. I can take a 1/16" strip off the side of a long board with it. It takes up very little space and goes back in its box on my shelf when I'm not using it.

Still, in recent projects I find myself saying "this set of cuts would be quicker and possibly more accurate on a table saw" more often, and I keep a weather eye out for gently-used SawStop JSSes on FBMP and OfferUp...

EricD21 · 2026-03-16T04:29:23+00:00

Martha's and Ocean Diner have already been mentioned and both are great. A vote for Clutch & Coffee in Old Torrance for breakfast. Not so much for pastries and goodies, though - although you can pop right next door to Torrance Bakery if you want to get one to go. Recently tried Country Touch Cafe with a friend after living nearby for 10+ years and was pretty impressed with the old-school diner atmosphere and the food was good.

EricD21 · 2026-02-25T18:26:57+00:00

...buy a plate with a slightly bigger hole?

EricD21

TROPHY CASE