I recall a few occasions in which a former boss of mine endeavoured to share the wisdom of efficiency in action, to touch something the minimum amount of times needed to achieve ones aims. It sort of parallels another mode of thinking, from another workplace authority, although his angle boiled down to regurgitating some motivational rhetoric while I'm sure his mind was on cheap beer and his next mail order bride: work smarter, not harder.


I tried to integrate these philosophies into my world view for many years. Plotting angles and trajectories, figuring out where something will come to final rest before touching it so I needn't handle it more than necessary and so forth. Guess what, nothing got done. I have adopted a different philosophy now: the more I have to move and contend with a big heavy piece of shit, the stronger I will be tomorrow. I need to move this metal rack enclosure (beneath the screw gun) into the outside world, without breaking any of the tubes I have stashed on this shelf to the left and without moving the heap of shit to the right because the only place it can go is in my path. I'm pretty sure I'll be humping this fucking object (amongst others) into and out of all manner of corners over the next few days, so long efficiency!


Here are some incredibly heavy speakers. Upper left is a pair of Altec 828 cabinets loaded with JBL D-130s, these are the mid bins, they are made out of 1 inch ply. Out of the quartet of bass cabinets depicted, the one at lower left and the one at upper right are slated for use at ENF. I estimate the folded horns weigh in at around 200 pounds each, I should get around to slapping some casters on them eventually.


This is the plotted course of all the cabinets, a quick assessment with a measuring tape proves beyond a doubt that we're deep into round hole/square peg territory here. I've got to displace these stacks too.


Before I seal off passage at the large shelf I've got to extract that metal case, which only weighs 50 pounds or so and can be hoisted over and under things. Of course, pulling this out puts it into the path of the larger objects to come, so outside will have to do. This roll-way beneath the shelving is the only way to get bulky stuff (mainly my rolling racks) through, since the passage slot for humans is roughly 16 inches wide. Stayin' thin..


Of course, all this shifting is not without the influence of gravity. I guess it's nice to have a quick respite from dealing with big stuff to scoop small stuff back into a box.

So, fast forwarding a bit, the big speakers get moved to the practice space. In order to make room at the practice space, I need to displace an old vacuum tube Wurlitzer organ, and empty 2x15 and 1x18 cabinets. These things are NOT going to laboratory, as that would put them in the path of the second PA speaker haul, so off to storage they go.


Once I make room for them, that is. A working title for this episode was "How to lose a power amp." I'm guessing the hawk-eyes can weave the fundamentals of that story together via the snapshots, so I needn't elaborate. I was happy to discover that the evasive power amplifier was in a rack enclosure that was shoring up the leaning stack of boxes front and center.

Those pieces were made to fit and it was back to the lab to excavate the folded bass horns...


Incidentally, if you've ever had part in designing useless, cheap piece of shit shelving do yourself a favour and keep that tid-bit of information to yourself, lest you incur the fury of my wrath.

Yes, I fully realize that I'm in hoarder territory according the the photo essay above. That's an integral element of this blog: processing the piles of broken stuff and further streamlining existence.