Showing posts with label construction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label construction. Show all posts

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Stone Age Technology


Sergei and I were working on the house Wednesday afternoon when Pasha came by with something he wanted to show me. It was an old, removable hard disk. Very old, made in the 70s, maybe. Maybe it holds some cold-war secrets. It was made in Buglaria, has 12 sectors, and stores 700 kb I was told. The plastic flip handle was a nice feature. Pasha took the thing apart later, he says he's going to use the disk to make a TV antenna. I'm not sure how that's going to work, but Russians are nothing if not resourceful.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Still Building a House


Well, the wall I built hasn't fallen down yet. Good thing. I've gone back to help Sergei a couple times, now, and I think we're making good progress. This shot is from the middle of my day three at the job site. Sergei and Pasha are in the background. The day before, Sergei and I had worked well past dark. I wasn't quite sure why, but he really wanted to get that wall done for the next day. Something about putting a "belt" on the wall. It was fun laying blocks and concrete in the dark. Sergei used his cell phone display to light my work. The next day I found out about the "belt" and why the wall had to be completed. We're building some concrete forms at the tops of the walls. We'll lay down a ring a steel rods and then pour concrete over it, making a "belt' to hold the walls together.