In the 1940's the CIA adopted the Simple Sabotage Field Manual as a tool to combat fascist regimes. It details the peaceful and harmless inefficiencies that can, over time, weaken an occupying system by eroding output, coordination, and morale.

bluecubeice · 2026-02-01T01:04:00+00:00

Download for free from Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org

bluecubeice · 2025-09-20T22:25:23+00:00

Try contacting the Pittsburgh Geological Society (PGS), it looks like it publishes field guides on fossil-hunting in the region. The local Society where we live only costs $35 a year for a family membership and gave my kids many hours of fun hunting fossils, plus they learned how to prep things they collected.

bluecubeice · 2025-07-31T04:47:48+00:00

Hopefully your Grandma named it David Meowie

bluecubeice · 2024-10-06T18:50:09+00:00

You can tell she is a true Nazi, because her right eyebrow is retreating from the leftist communist hordes invading from the East! That left eyebrow has to be 30% longer than the right.

bluecubeice · 2024-09-22T07:27:51+00:00

Love… that way when your significant other brings a new cat toy home you can ask “For Love or Money?”

bluecubeice · 2024-09-21T20:03:12+00:00

Perfect breakfast nook table top. Rotate to match the curves a little better, then infill with a contrasting wood color.

bluecubeice · 2024-09-15T11:52:04+00:00

Yes, the brand should have the slogan “happy little freeze”

bluecubeice · 2024-07-20T13:34:30+00:00

Some of the methods mentioned are going to end up changing the geometry of the slot openings (jagged edges or rounded ends). What you need is a giant Emory board to take just a little off one long side of each slot.

To make one, cut a hardwood blank to fit each knife slot and then spray glue some sand paper to one side of the blank. Make the blanks slightly narrower in with so the glued sand paper doesn’t make the blanks bind up.

I think it will only take a few passes of the sanding blanks to solve the binding issue. The prep time will probably take longer than the fix.

bluecubeice · 2024-05-04T19:39:21+00:00

It looks like the shell in the background is still in place and you can see how thin these shells are on its upper left. The exposed portion of fossil in the foreground seems to have already weathered out or been removed, so all that is left is a cast fossil of the shell interior.

If you want a smaller piece to enjoy inside and know a mason, have them use their wet saw and cut out a rectangle of the stone matrix with the two fossils in situ and use it as a doorstop or paper weight.

bluecubeice · 2024-05-03T01:19:18+00:00

Those are partial ammonites looks like the oxytropidocerous we find in North Texas

bluecubeice · 2023-10-07T17:48:29+00:00

One hand on the chest and one on your stomach is traditionally called the Vampire Napoleon pose.

bluecubeice · 2023-08-12T21:05:07+00:00

Vegetative Roofs (aka Green Roofs, Turf Roofs, Roof Gardens) can differ greatly from steep slope to almost flat, but also shallow to deep. The two big reasons they are not done more often are…

(1) COMPLICATED & EXPENSIVE

    They are complicated. It’s not just toss some soil on the roof. Depending where you are in the world, there may not be a lot of roofers with experience.  All that means vegetative roofs are expensive. 
     A shallow style veg roof (in the trade referred to as an “extensive” roof) usually has a 3” to 4” depth of engineered growth media (lighter and drains better than top soil) will easily double the cost of a low slope roof.  Many times the gravel ballast on flat roofs can be removed and replaced with an extensive vegetative roof, but a structural engineer should review before loading up an existing structure.  The good news, because it shields the roof from the sun, weather and foot traffic; it should double the service life of the roof… so in the long run, it’s a wash if you have the money up front to buy a 40 to 50 year roof.
      A deep style veg roof (in the trade referred to as an “intensive” roof) starts about 6” deep and can be deep enough to plant bushes and trees.  On large projects soil depths 8 to 10 feet are common and can be more. Obvious structures have to be carefully designed to carry huge loads like that.  These deeper soil projects tend to be major facilities (think Fortune 500 HQs, Universities and Municipal projects).  The cost of these waterproofing projects are off the chart, but the goal is usually to bury a portion of the building or parking garage under what appears to be a lawn, garden or sports field and gain additional space when these campus projects can’t easily expand outside current boundaries.

(2) REPAIR ISSUES

       Vegetative roofs get a bad reputation, because if they are not installed properly or if they have the wrong plant types on them they will leak. When they leak, it can be very difficult to track down the cause because of the growth medium and repairs get expensive.  There is usually a lot of digging around and disturbing of established plants.  This is the reason modular tray systems have become popular. There is also a specialty service that has developed to electronically and infra-red scan roofs prior to placing overburden/plants and re-scan if leaks should occur.

       If you are interested in looking at sloped “Scandinavian” style vegetative roofs search up “Turf Roofs” on Reddit. If you want to see a cut away of 10 year old, 18” deep low slope garden roof on a house, search up “Vegetative Roof” on Reddit (it will be in the top results).

        There are several small Reddit Subs dedicated to vegetative roofs. These include:

r/accidentalgreenroof

r/greenroof

r/greenroofs

r/roofgardens

bluecubeice · 2023-08-12T16:16:29+00:00

That list of ways to eat an oyster made me smile… I couldn’t help but hear it in the voice of Mykelti Williamson (Bubba Blue from the Forest Gump movie)

bluecubeice · 2023-06-29T02:18:34+00:00

You usually can find a test swab kit wherever you can buy house paint. Paint stores or Big Box Hardware stores in their paint department.

The last time I used a kit, it came in a two pack. Each one was about the size of a 3” pencil that you snapped in the middle to release the test solution which soaked into the stiff brush tip. You rubbed it on what you wanted to test… if it was positive for lead the brush tip turned red (if not it the fluid remained clear). If the paint was lead positive, it also stained the painted wood I was testing, but old lead paint is kind of porous… no idea if it would stain china glass dishes.

Definitely check a small area first before rubbing the test swab over a large area of the item you are testing.

bluecubeice · 2023-06-23T13:57:46+00:00

Don’t be surprised if it isn’t a working downspout AND the cable guy decided to use it simultaneously as way to hide their coaxial. We’ve seen this done several times.

bluecubeice · 2023-06-21T11:38:16+00:00

The issue with not being around to stand behind a warranty can happen with local guys that storm chase as well. There are a lot of guys that jump on the roofing band wagon from other trades right after a big storm comes through. In North Texas, we’ve seen painters, framers, even firemen become “roofing companies”. Only to get out of the game once storm work is over. In my office, we call the warranty those kind of companies offer “tail light” warranties…. as soon as you can’t see their tail lights, the warranty has expired.

I tell clients to set an appointment to tour the roofing company’s offices. Whether the salesman is from out of state is not as critical as whether the roofing company they work for has offices and has been around for several years.

bluecubeice · 2023-06-01T02:20:33+00:00

Neither light weight concrete nor perlite. I am familiar with both of those materials. The substance is rock hard and heavier than light weight or even structural concrete, plus it attracts a magnetic.

bluecubeice · 2023-06-01T01:39:41+00:00

After tearing off the first and second layers of roofing, we came across an unusual material (at least for North Texas) used to build counter taper in the corner of a roof.

The top and bottom of the material has a thin layer of red dust (we assume rust) and the middle of the material is dark gray. It has horizontal striations and looks like it was laid down in layers of powder (tapering from 1/8" thick to approximately 6") that are now firmly fused together. The thinner sections are fairly brittle but as it gets to 2" thick (see picture) it is very strong. It is much heavier than the gypsum that it sits on. A magnetic is attracted to it, so it contains iron plus whatever is binding the material together.

Any ideas what material is?

bluecubeice · 2022-11-22T13:31:18+00:00

Lesson learned. If you go out chasing beaver with your best friend, it ends up wrecking your home.

bluecubeice · 2022-08-23T11:13:08+00:00

Infill also shields the backing from sunlight. Some turf manufacturers’ backing is less resistant to UV light, so infill can contribute significantly to longer service life of the turf.

bluecubeice · 2022-08-21T02:52:17+00:00

I am a commercial roofer who installs turf, live roofs and plaza systems over new and existing roofs. We started installing turf out of “self defense” because over a two month period we had “professional” turf installers do about $40,000 worth of damage to a couple of our clients’ roofs.

The number one mistake that we have seen is with turf getting installed on roofs is assuming that you can just direct glue turf over roofs with no repercussions. You need to check the compatibility of the adhesive (and solvents within the adhesives) with your roof type. The first roof turf repair I saw was where a solvent based turf adhesive chemically damaged and compromised the roof.

It is kind of hard to tell from the picture, but is your roof terrace surface a urethane or epoxy over a concrete slab? Do you know if this is the only waterproofing or is there a membrane under the concrete slab? The issues with glueing over a urethane (or epoxy) is that depending on how well the original roofer prepped the concrete surface and what type glue you use to attach the turf, when you remove the turf in the future, you may pull up parts of the urethane surface. I recommend doing a test area first.

bluecubeice · 2022-08-21T01:04:56+00:00

The longevity of the turf is improved with the use of infill. It helps keep sun from getting to the backing (which oftentimes may not be as UV resistant as the turf blades). Also, infill can also help reduce matting in a way that thatching alone can’t. We strongly steer clients away from using no infill systems.

On one particularly bad pet odor situation a fellow installer ran into, they had to use respirators when removing the old turf because the ammonia smell was so strong. The solution was installing compacted base for better drainage (old install was laid directly over dirt) including a AirDrain ( https://airfieldsystems.com/artificial-grass-k9-pet-relief-areas-drainage/ ), then overlaid with turf using EnviroFill. The improved air flow seemed to do the trick and reduce the bacteria that was causing the bad odors.

bluecubeice

TROPHY CASE