Getting Close to Ready at Gypsy Lea's

I received a surprising email from Gypsy today. She is asking us to bring our small items into the shop earlier than usual. The smalls are usually the bane of our existence while setting up. If they are present, we end up moving them and moving them and moving them some more. The small item shuffle can take up half of our set up time. Because of this, smalls have been banned until the bigger pieces are set, We can then smear the smalls over the bones of the pieces already in place. Gypsy wants the smalls early because the set up is ready for some smearing.

I worked at the shop last night kinda getting in the way of the people who actually knew what they were doing. I took some random photos of the bones while I was there. It looks like it is going to be another interesting sale at Gypsy Lea's.









Mr. Flannery

It Lights Up My Life

I spent the morning rewiring an interesting 1920's Mediterranean style 5 arm chandelier. All of the wires going to each socket were crap. They claimed that it was working when they took it down, but if that was the case, they are damn lucky that the entire house didn't burn to the ground. It was much more a fire starter than a chandelier.

I have the best setting to work on this type of project. As long as it isn't raining.

The chandelier has a very nice, shabby touch of rust to it. Doesn't this wiring look wonderful? Just what I would want in my house.


Well it works and no flames are leaping from the new connections.


I'm going to bring it to Gypsy Lea's for the July sale. Now I have a crystal chandelier to tackle.

Mr. Flannery

Gypsy Lea's -- Already?

The set up for the July sale at Gypsy Lea's has already started. Our once a month sale starts on July 8th, the earliest that it can be. That makes this a short month for preparation and set up. I dropped my first small load at the shop today, anticipating that I would then spend a couple of hours helping with the set-up. I was too late and missed any chance to assist today. It already looks great. There is some neat stuff already in place. I am scheduled to work on set up tomorrow. I will have some photos for the next posting.

Mr. Flannery

Auction Finds

I attended the weekly auction at Dave Miller's in St. Cloud last night. I had a very good time. Here are some of my treasures:

This is an automatic change cashier with great casting.

Some wonderfully illustrated old books.

These are antique rotary electric switches. Some even display whether it is off or on. Maybe the light going on and the dark disappearing is not enough signal. A couple of these are going on my Steampunk Mad Scientist lamp that I am going to build.

Some 1960's hard cover magazines.

I bought three of these industrial lights.

Very cheap floor lamp.

One of my favorite lamps. Enterprise looking floor lamp with stars on the base.

Who else has a helicopter tail rotor?

A second Atwater-Kent radio horn speaker. Will serve as one of two speakers for my Steampunk pump organ turned Computer desk that I will build this winter.

I got about 100 of these white oak handles for free. A friend bought a box lot of stuff and didn't want these pieces.

A ballot box.

Kris told me that this antique lamp and shade was "cute".

Mr. Flannery

The Command Center - Almost

Real work has been draining my time and energy. I hooked up my old computer to get things done on Monday and Tuesday morning. Then I decided to rip into my office "Command Center" and to get things going on the new office configuration.

I pulled most of the stuff out of my office. (I think that this is the first verified sighting of my entire desk top in 3-4 years). I moved my table, moved the roll top desk 2 inches, because I hadn't figured that the wider part of the shelves would hit exactly on the spot that the desk top protrudes. Assembled the wire shelves, disassembled the wire shelves, reassembled the wire shelves, pulled the shelves, pushed the shelves and finally got the shelves into place.

Then it was time to get the TV's connected. Get the computers connected, get the phones and DSL and LAN connected. Troubleshoot each of these connections at least three or four times before they work properly. And finally sit down in the 86* and 90% humidity, no breeze weather in my no A/C house, to rest.



I'm about half done. The set up looks great in the dark. I will be working on it for a couple more days. I hope that everything continues to function. It is going to be great.


Mr. Flannery

Start Over on the Transition

The guy from Dell came to my house on time and as promised. He replaced the motherboard, hard drive and the video card. Everything fired up fine and appears to be working properly. That's the good news. The bad news is that I lost everything that had been moved over to the new computer, all my videos and photos and a few documents from my real job. Luckily, except of the videos (I still have the DVDs) and the photos, everything is also on my old computer. So I get to start the transition all over again.

I just ordered a 2 TB external hard drive from TigerDirect. It only cost $149. I am going to wait for it to arrive before I start the transition in earnest. I am going to dump the entire old hard drive onto the external and then move it to the new computer. I'll drop most of it onto the new computer and then erase the external. Storage has become SO cheap that I'll probably buy a media player too and just use the external for media through my local network. (Now that is a dream. I have a rudimentary network built, but I want one of those mega this and XP-3388 whatever networks that I read about, and do not understand).

I have found the perfect piece of furniture to make my office makeover proper. It is a 5 foot wide wire metal shelving unit that will fit perfectly at the end of my desk and hold most of the computer, audio and video items that are stacked around, under and on top of my desk and makeshift shelves right now. Of course there is a catch. The particular shelving unit that will work perfectly is still in my garage stacked to the gunwales with 10,000 frames and other junk. I have looked at the big box stores and found that 3' wide and 4' wide wire shelf units are plentiful, but that 5' wide models are non-existent. So I will have to move enough stuff out of the garage to get to the shelves. Empty the shelves of their 10,000 frames, haul the unit out of the garage, just to start. Then I will have to put some other shelves up in the garage in the place of the 5 footer and restock those shelves.

Next I will go into my office and empty my desk and surrounding area and squeeze the 5 foot unit into place between the wall and the roll top desk. I will string the cables, wires and connectors for the 5 TV's, satellite receivers, VCRs, DVDs, surround sound receiver, monitors, computers, modems, network hubs and pencil sharpener that will be reinstalled in the updated "command center".

Damn, I'm already tired and I haven't done anything yet today.

Mr. Flannery

It's a Mega-Giga-Terabyte CRASH!!!!!

You may remember that last month, or so, I bought a brand new multi-taskable computer with HD monitor and megas of this, gigas of that and even a tera or two of some other things. Well last night the megas mashed, the gigas gagged and the teras tore. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Rasheed in Southern India. He even took control of my computer trying to troubleshoot my problem. BUT it is DOA. A Dell technician is headed to Flannery Bay to replace the hard drive (a tera thing), the video card (a mega thing) and maybe even the motherboard (a giga thing).

I have been running my old computer in parallel with the new, just to make sure everything is ok. I have been reluctant to make the full transfer over because of the changes in email servers and printer and Internet modem connections. Everything has been working well, virtually all of my Internet and photo work had been transitioned and I was starting to do more real work on the new computer. Well today I am back on the old, slow beast. And happy to have it.

The new computer, like the old, is a Dell. The service people and their willingness to stand behind the computer are great. But damn this is a pain. And now I get to wait for the service tech to call.

Mr. Flannery

June 14th is Flag Day

On June 14, 1777 the Second Continental Congress adopted the official American flag. We celebrate the flag, and the Republic for which it stands, every day.

Mr. Flannery

June is Busting Out at Gypsy Lea's

The June sale at Gypsy Lea's started today. The entire crew has been working to get things set up and beautiful. The past two days Gypsy and Kris have put in an unreasonable amount of time, including an all nighter on Tuesday-Wednesday, fluffing and shuffling things to perfection. The shop looks FABULOUS!



A steel chicken incubator with great decal still intact.


A telephone booth turned into a cupboard.

Everyone needs a Smut Treater box filled with radio tubes.



The sofa portion of a three piece blue mohair living room suite.


Can you get more Mid-Century modern than this pink and black lamp with wedding cake shade?


Steph, the pink toile love seat is still here at only $189.

Fun waterfall buffet with wonderful ornate steel leg organ stool.






Its going to be a lot of fun at Gypsy Lea's this month. There is more in the store room just waiting to fill the holes created by sales. I am sure that the shop will look entirely different by the time that I work on Sunday.

Mr. Flannery