It was a busy day at Oddyssea today in Half Moon Bay. First and foremost, the new work table for the create room was delivered around lunch time. It’s got a great zinc top that will be very durable and came along with 2 comfortable benches that are aesthetically very pleasing.

We had a little Keystone Cops routine happen as we attempted to get the table through the front door. This necessitated a quick trip to the hardware store to get the right drill bit to remove a few bolts and take the foot pads off the table. This provided enough clearance to bring the table in. Thankfully, the table is made from sturdy stuff and the minor disassembly doesn’t seem to have any negative impact on it.

The table and benches were built by Terra Amico, specializing in fine wood work using salvaged material. We are very pleased with this piece and are anxiously awaiting a few others we’ve asked them to help us with. We can’t wait!

This morning also brought the first real interaction with the Half Moon Bay Chamber of Commerce. We met the team and shared the Oddyssea concept with them to an enthusiastic reception. Several good, pragmatic ideas were suggested and many introductions to other businesses in the area were undertaken. I left feeling very positively about how the Chamber will work with us to make Oddyssea a success.

The bid on the back flow prevention valve that is required by the Coastside County Water District is underway and seems like it will be relatively minor once scheduled. There is a hand sink that I installed in the create room – actually, a better term would be mounted as neither the water supply nor drain are yet connected. That’s a task for tomorrow.

Today we filed the application and paid the fee to have our shop inspected by the Coastside Fire Protection District. They do a once over to make sure that we don’t endanger our customers or ourselves with fire hazards. The inspection will happen next Tuesday.

Also, our first real shipment of inventory arrived (the cheap novelty bits) which created great excitement for Spouse, Daughter, and Daughter’s Chum. Being Earth Day and all, it really hit me exactly how much cardboard and plastic we’re going to need to recycle as we receive, process, and refresh inventory. Good thing we have a truck!

A long standing problem in corporations over $1B in annual sales is identifying and nurturing innovation. Why? Read the Innovator’s Dilemma and you’ll get the answer and then some.

Corporations, despite intellectually knowing and really wanting to innovate, are nearly impotent in realizing true innovation because it’s so frequently opposed to the status quo. And the status quo (and those who are responsible for maintaining it will remind you) is what pays the bills. Sometimes, this plays out slowly (see Yahoo) and sometimes this plays out quickly (see RIM) – but it seems to happen over and over.

Many companies have incubators, encourage “tinkering time”, sponsor innovation contests, acquire startups, and/or partner with external innovators to foster innovation. Despite these efforts innovations come from outside these programs and frequently outside the corporations themselves. It tends to be non-sanctioned “skunkworks” like groups that succeed at internal innovation and startups that succeed outside the corporate walls.

The partners over at 2020 VC, Gaye and Shani, have decided to do something about this. They have taken the best concepts from incubators, accelerators, and innovation programs and melded them together into a program that takes the innovation needs of corporations and places them squarely in front of qualified and motivated entrepreneurs. The inaugural event happened last night in Palo Alto; it was full of energy and enthusiasm from the participants.

I encourage you to check this out if you’re part of a corporation that wants access to entrepreneurs to help with your innovation needs or if you are an entrepreneur who would like to understand what the corporations are looking to do. Last night we heard from the City of Palo Alto, Cisco, NICE Systems, Faurecia, and Nokia Siemens Networks.

The model is new and the first success has not yet occurred, but I like the direction and agreed to be a Mentor because I believe this model has legs. Let’s see how this progresses and I’ll be happy to share the first success story as it happens.

In an earlier post I indicated that the lighting in Oddyssea was complete. And that was technically true in that “all areas were lighted.” However, I was in the bathroom (not available to the public) and noticed an opportunity for another funky light.

So, I built and installed one this week in between milling and staining lumber for the apothecary counters.

This one is a standard UL rated socket that has been roughed up a little and had its surface treated. It’s attached to a short piece of conduit and a connector were an electrical junction is insulated and hidden. The conductors are in a twisted configuration and were wound in excess copper braided wire I had from a prior task. The conductors and wrap are secured by another connection which is anchored into the ceiling box and covered with a piece of metal.

This was a short, fun project and the Edison globe bulb really makes it pop.

Before

After

Click Image to Enlarge

Here’s a little before and after on the apothecary counters. Not bad stain matching for a color blind guy!

I made the kick boards from white oak that was first stained with a Red Chestnut color and allowed to set for 15 minutes before wiping off. The second coat was Ebony which was also allowed to set for 15 minutes and then removed. The piece was sanded and then coated with Satin polyurethane before being installed on the cabinets with small finishing nails.

The shape of the base required it to be a 2 board operation. I started off with 1×8″ white oak which was ripped to the right height of 6″, then milled that piece with a router to get the correct edging. The remnant was then milled to 1.25″ and also edged with the router. All of this happened before the stain and finish clearly.

For not being a carpenter, I sure am learning how to get some of this stuff done and to my surprise, I think it’s looking pretty good. What do you think?

The balance of the day today is on products for Oddyssea; which is a very fine thing to do on this Friday the 13th.

I realized that I hadn’t posted what we did for lighting in the create room. With the 14′ ceilings and the exposed joists, beams, and HVAC, it was an interesting challenge to come up with something that looked “right” while providing the correct illumination for the tasks that will happen in the room.

In the end, we chose to install 8 separate lights each dropped 4′ from the ceiling to just below the bottom of the roof joists. The fixture is a standard galvanized steel industrial shade with 100 watt clear halogen bulbs. As you can see from the photo, it turned out nicely.

It took some time and effort to get the conduit into the correct positions and connect everything up. I can now recommend without hesitation laser leveling tools. This helped in 2 dimensions, the first was in positioning the drops for the lights on a nice grid. The grid was first laid out on the floor and the laser was then positioned at the right spot on the grid pointed at the ceiling and that’s where the fixture was placed.

The second dimension was in making sure all the drops were at the same level from an eye perspective. Since the building is old and not square, just cutting 4′ drops and trusting it to look right didn’t work. So I mounted the laser on a wall at drop level and then used the projected line to align the shade drops at a consistent height above the floor and to themselves.

Unlike the track lighting which was a nightmare, this project was actually kind of fun. So, lighting is complete (as of more than a week ago – just reporting it now.)