How to split wood

Splitting wood is a great form of excercise. There's a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when you have finished, and they say that burning wood warms you many times - splitting, hauling, stacking, and burning.

We had a 50-60 ft Norway spruce which was too close to our house fell. The tree service did not want to take the logs since it is not good for resale, but it didn't matter to us since we will use it for those little fires in the fire pit. Hello marshmallows and beer! The base of the tree was approximately 24" in diameter, and was cut in 16" sections.

I figured it would be a good time for a workout so I grabbed my 6 pound maul and set to work, thinking pine would not be too difficult to split. It is not (too difficult) as long as you use the right technique....after spending 10 minutes on the first round I decided to try some different methods, mine was clearly not working. I had plenty of time to figure out what worked better and what didn't work so well. So here's what I learned.

Before you start

• Use a maul (wedge shaped) for splitting not an axe
• Buy a maul with a fiberglass handle or transfer your wedge to one. If you don't, you will be soon
• Wear gloves, boots, and eye protection
• Get warmed up with some practice swings before trying to deliver the single strike that splits that 24" round.

So here are some things to consider on your swing:

• You have to generate maximum power, so velocity is key
• Don't use the technique of swinging the axe in a full circle, it's too hard to control where the maul lands
• Don't use the technique where you start with your hands on either end of the handle, and then slide your top hand to the end of the maul as rotate as illustrated here. Not good for splitting
• The best technique I found was to hold the handle at the end with both hands and raise the head of the maul up has high as I could. Stand on your tip toes and then bring the maul down forcefully. This give the maximum amount of distance for the head of the maul to travel and pick up speed.
• Come up on your toes.
• flick your wrists down at the end of the swing to help generate more power.
• Optionally, you can allow your wrist to bend so that the head of the maul touches the middle of your back before starting your swing, but I didn't find this to be any more effective than the technique I just described.

Placement of the strike

• Aim the maul at either (far or near) edge of the round.
• Don't try to split a large round by aiming for the center. Split at the edges
• If you have a very large round, try to drop the maul successively from one edge to the other using short blows. This will help create an initial crack and will aid in splitting. Still deliver the splitting blows at the near or far edge of the round.

Know your limits

• Some wood can be split right after it has been cut, ie Maple and Pine
• Other wood needs to dry, or your maul will bounce right off, ie Elm

Good luck!

Integrated login issues with Deltek Vision

One very nice feature that Vision has over Advantage (Deltek), is that you can enable integrated authentication so that the user's windows account is used to authenticate them to the Vision application. This was fairly straight forward to setup within Vision, just check the integrated enabled checkbox and specify the network domain for the user. Each user can be setup for integrated or non-integrated.

We are using Windows 2008 Std Server which puts us on IIS 7. For IIS, the Vision site must be set to Windows Authentication enabled (all others disabled); the VisionClient site must be set to Anonymous Authentication enabled (all others disabled).

With these settings, things may work just fine for accessing Vision. However, we were getting a server authentication box whenever we tried to load Vision. This was generated by the server, and no username/password/domain combination would work. After several hours of searching by myself while I waited for a callback, the Deltek technical support person was able to pinpoint the problem with a little thinking. The solution: disable Kernel-mode authentication.

To disable kernel-mode authentication in IIS 7, browse to the site, double click on the Authentication icon, click on Windows Authentication, click advanced settings (on the right hand pane). Uncheck "Enable Kernel-mode authentication"

Advantage to Vision conversion success

The database has been successfully converted from an Advantage format to a Vision format. Key point! If you try to specify a target database name (in the conversion utility) that already exists on the sql server, you will run into a failed conversion. We needed to specify a Vision database name that did not exist on the SQL server.

Advantage to Vision Conversion

Both our Advantage version as well as SQL version were out dated, so we are using a process of upgrading as well as conversion which has involved the following steps. These are based on several conversations that have taken place with Deltek support and consulting.

Original configuration was Advantage V8.0e being hosted on a SQL7 database. The final conversion needs to be done on the SQL 2008 platform so we need to do an intermediate upgrade to SQL2005. Why? Because you cannot upgrade directly from SQL7 to SQL2008. So the process will be SQL7 --> SQL2005 --> SQL2008.

• Convert DB from 8-9.0 using the Deltek conversion utility
• Convert DB from 9.0 - 9.1 using the Deltek conversion utility
• Backup DB on SQL 7
• Restore 9.1 DB .bak file to SQL2005 server.
• Change Compatability level to 90 (SQL2005)
• Run DBCC Update usage query
• Backup DB
• Restore DB on SQL2008 server
• Change compatibility level to 100 (SQL2008)
• Run DBCC Update usage query
• Backup DB
• Advantage DB is now on our new W2K8 server running SQL 2008.
• Install Advantage on W2K8 server
• configure/verify advlink.mdb through Advantage
• Install Advantage to Vision 6.1 conversion utility
• Run Adv to Vis conversion utility

The result of the conversion was some errors. So now we will utilize Deltek technical support to help resolve the issues.

Deltek Vision Upgrade Hardware

Installation of the hardware went fairly smoothly except for the drive rails for the tape backup were too long (by an inch) to fit into our Middle Atlantic network rack. We purchased some very handy rack extender brackets from Rack Solutions to remedy the problem. The Dell R610 and R710 servers with the sliding rail racks went in almost effortlessly.

Upgrading to Deltek Vision Overview

We are in the process of converting a Deltek Advantage 8.0e installation to Deltek Vision 6.1. The existing Advantage accounting system runs on a client server based system, where Vision is a web app and is module based. Modules are available for many different aspects of business including Accounting, Purchasing, Project Management, HR, and Marketing. Vision is based on the .net framework version 3.5. The migration is being pushed based on several factors, but we also anticipate benefits of the software:

1. Deltek's elimination of future upgrades and support of the Advantage product.



2. The need to push more information electronically to our project managers and executive team.



3. Data connection between Vision for software such as Excel and Word



4. new to us Expense Keeping



5. Dashboard views customizable per user

Another future possibility for us is to add the Marketing (CRM) module to help tie our Marketing efforts with client projects. We currently utilize Deltek CRM which is a sister product to Deltek Advantage. Our use of CRM is limited and further analysis of the benefits and use of a CRM module would need to be done.

We looked at several different systems in our evaluation process including: Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and several SAS (software as a service) options. Deltek Vision was recommended for several reasons including: familiarity with the interface, project based business focus, industry leader for AE firms. SAS options were typically too high in cost for a firm of our size (75 people). Systems such as MS Dynamics and SAP were eliminated because we really need something that is somewhat pre-built as opposed to configure based on your needs.

To support the Vision system we have purchased 2 new servers and will phase out one aging server. We will be using a Dell R710 running Windows 2008 Server 64 bit to host the SQL 2008 database and provide reporting services, and a Dell R610 running Windows 2008 Server 32 bit to provide the web application and process services. We are taking advantage of our EMC CX300 SAN to host storage and we added 1.5 TB of disk space in conjunction with the other hardware. Additionally we will add a new LTO 4 Tape drive system for backup. Our existing LTO 3 Tape system will be brought to our second office.