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Man, winter really sneaked up on me this year. I planned a number of winterizing projects that I never completed and my procrastination just caught up with me in the form of a $365 utility bill. Time for some action!

Here are the known problems in my house:

Windows

Unfortunately we have cheap twenty year old windows, and a lot of them. I’m not ready to lay out the cash for replacements. Here are two (literally) stop gap options: Continue Reading »

Becoming a subject matter expert and conveying that expertise is easier now than it has ever been in the history of mankind. The interweb enables both the learning and conveying of knowledge.

The Self Made Scholar is a site that gives you some of the tools you may needto become knowledgeable in a field. For example, it provides links to free online classes grouped by subject area (The site is actually called Self Made Scholar: Directory of Free Online Classes and Free Online Courses).

More importantly, in my view, the Self Made Scholar website contains valuable advice on defining your education goals and turning those goals into reality. For example, choosing concrete, rather than generic, goals is stressed:

Ineffective Goal – Learn HTML
Effective Goal – Create several websites using HTML, referring only minimally to a coding book.

Ineffective Goal – Learn about American literature.
Effective Goal – Identify and read 100 classic American novels, memorize the major time periods in American literature, and be able to discuss major American authors.

The site goes on the emphasize other aspects such as collecting materials, making connections, and then finally taking action. The post Create Your Own Independent Scholar Research Plan is worth a look on its own merits.

As with all learning, be sure to examine your sources because I noticed that some of the classes offered were better than others.

The 98th Festival of Frugality is up at Being Frugal. My interview with Carl Weathers is posted there. Carl wasn’t happy with the post placement and threatened to sue if we weren’t moved up the page, but I talked him out of it.

I checked at some of the other posts and saw some I liked and others that were less helpful.

The Frugal City Popcorn is for the win in my book. Short story is you take a paper bag, put some corn kernels in, fold the top, and microwave- presto change-o you gots yourself some popcorns. No need for an air popper, and no need for the waste of wrapping, extra cost, etc. of commercial stuff. You can even reuse the same bag and any unpopped kernels next time. Well done Money Changes Things, you get an official Carl Weathers’ salute.

The shopping at ethnic markets post by Cheap Healthy Good also looked like a winner to me. I further liked the kitchen-sink approach of Lasagna Without Recipes, but maybe all that’s because I haven’t had dinner yet.

Less useful was another debate about whether to make your own laundry detergent. No way in hell I’m making my own laundry detergent. If I want to save twenty eight cents per load I’ll buy a more efficient washer. Just not interested. Neither was Carl Weathers, he just gets everything dry cleaned for the price of a few signed glossy headshots now and then.

Anyway, there’s plenty more in the festival and it’s not all food-related, so go check it out.

Here’s a little pictorial DIY segment with a frugal solution to a missing washer problem. Not only will this save you from rooting through the cabinets or taking a trip to the hardware store, it is often cheaper than a single store-bought washer.

So, you need to bolt something together and you have the nut and bolt, but not a washer that fits.

Dig around in your pocket and grab yourself a penny.

Dimple the center of the penny with a punch.

Using a small bit, drill a hole through the center of the penny.

Use a larger bit the size of the bolt to complete the hole.

Look, a penny washer!

Look how nice it looks! Fancy!

Now, you can save yourself some steps and just drill through with the big bit to begin with, but it is difficult to get it started and keep it centered. My results were much better with the above steps.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The idea is, after a little scrounging, to construct multipurpose shop machinery out of discarded engine blocks using hand tools. The basic design is labeled the Multimachine, which consists of a 3-in-1 lathe, drill press, and mill, but options are given to customize into whatever machine shop options you may want.

It is billed as an humanitarian, open source machine tool project for developing countries, and I think it meets that goal nicely. Not to mention that it would be the perfect project for the garage tinkerer.

Check out the Multimachine page which includes detailed step-by-step instructions in both PDF and html.