One Of Those Near Misses

PortMantle is a Portmanteu

So, on Monday I was supposed to head down to Boeing Field where our piloted simulator is to do some testing.  Since the test pilots were on board a real plane however, that didn't happen.  Which is just as well, because a gang related shooting apparently decided to pop up on the freeway where I would've been driving.

This morning I went to a mentoring meeting with an executive who is an RPI alumni and we talked about my future career at Boeing.  Good stuff, a lot of great advice.  I think people might be lying about the weather being nice in the summer though, because he said last year and this year that this was by far the worse summer weather he'd seen in his 30 some odd years here...

Then we actually went to the simulator.  While I was eating lunch in the cafeteria, the Blue Angels zoomed by as they are practicing their routine for Seafair.  So that was pretty neat.  You could see them regrouping way off in the distance and then zoom by.  And then coming home from Boeing Field we didn't get shot!  Whoo!

I also signed up for a gym membership... I should probably like actually go to the gym one of these days.  I was also supposed to go sailing today, but the simulator session ran over and I didn't get a chance to do that.

I tried cooking garlic chicken last night, and despite opening all the windows and turning on all the fans my apartment STILL smells like garlic.  I've locked my clothes in my closet and stuffed it with dryer sheets to hopefully keep everyone at work from knowing I hunt vampires in my spare time.

Also bought the highest rated book on Motorcycle Maintenance on Amazon to peruse.

I will now leave you with four craigslist things I feel like I should own.

1950 Crosley for $2.5k

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/3151027434.html

Yes it is an awful color, and yes the engine block is smaller than a toast, but you don't see them that often.  And watching DW get into it would provide endless hours of entertainment.

1958 Ford F-100 for $4.5k

http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/cto/3154891757.html

Just a little too new for me, but looks to be in decent shape and the price is pretty reasonable.

1937 Studebaker Dictator for $9.5k

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/3170541848.html

So I definitely can't afford that.  But just look at it.  So many wimmenz.

1947 Ford Cabover for $8k

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/3169628831.html

No doubt, this is ugly as truck.  But I've never seen one before.

I Have Sand In Places I Don't Want to Admit.

So, this week has been good. The second PCB I made at work came in this week so I have been starting to put it together which is pretty exciting/awesome. We also received a really sweet case made by Protocase, they have some pretty cool CAD software that lets you design sheet metal cases. They cut it out on their laser cutter, bend it, paint it and assemble it. The end result looked pretty good too but I think some part of it was a bit too shallow. Anyways,......

I brought this small spot sandblaster down that my dad apparently used when he built his hot rod. It has a small can that you fill with sand and it just shoots it out a little nozzle. You have you refill it like every 3 minutes which kind of stinks but it does a pretty good job and I don't have access to a huge air compressor so it works out well. The blaster is kind of like this except it's not made of cheap plastic. Speaking of air compressors, the hose on Dwights compressor uses some really weird fitting that I've never seen before. It is similar to a typical air hose fitting but it has a much thicker lip on the male version of the fitting which makes it impossible to interface with the more widely used hoses..... Basically I ran down to the hardware store, got a new fitting and installed it on the compressor. I feel bad cause I didn't ask Dwight about this but I'll tell him soon, I just wanted to get sandblasting damnit! Also I nearly blew my hand off taking the old fitting off.... there is a lot of air in that tank, be careful kids.

Oh, also.... I got pulled over today on my motorcycle. I was speeding. I knew it. 62 in a 45...... Whoops. By some sort of luck/miracle the officer gave me a warning, which was just damn awesome of him. I wouldn't have argued with him at all if he gave me a ticket because I was pretty blatantly speeding. Anyways, I shook his hand and counted my lucky stars.

Back to sandblasting.
After blasting through quite a bit of sand, I cleaned up the places that needed it on the right rear. Trust me there are plenty of places that need it besides the right rear. After an hour or whatever it was of blasting I was absolutely disgusting and have sand in every corner of my everything.

Rust free!

Primer to seal it up

Also, my backordered rocker panel arrived today from Busdepot. The metal looks great and it will be an awesome replacement, however it got kind of dinged up on shipping. The panel was bent in the middle and the corner of it had clearly taken a good hit. The damage shouldn't be anything I can't fix pretty easily but I might send them an e-mail and tell them to pack these panels with some more support. It was literally just wrapped in cardboard.

Hoping I can start welding some stuff on Thursday. I'm going to call the Havu's welding buddy (Bart) who is pretty awesome and see if he can give me a hand. 

SHOWER!

I Miss Ovens

In my heart of hearts, I believe, no wait. Believe is to weak a word. I know that the finest pizza is made with the freshest ingredients, lovingly slaved over by those who work daily to perfect and hone their craft. Pizza, as with any type of cooking, is a weird conglomeration of science and art that blend before the hands of the chef to craft delicious and beautiful creations designed to tantalize ones taste buds. The perfect pizza does not come out of a lab, it is created with love.

That being said, I have a guilty pleasure that it pains me to admit to. A weakness if you will. Because all though in both my heart and my mind I know it's shit, I have a weakness for Digiorno.

Pictured: Heresy.

I swear the cheese, sauce and crust are filled with crack cocaine and super meth. I could eat seven and I'll hate myself every damn second of it. So today I found myself at the store and saw one and felt the internal dilemna break out. Now there is an issue, I don't have an oven in this suite. I only have a toaster oven and a George Foreman.

Pictured: Broke Ass Kitchen
Note: All of our appliances are on the floor
because there are no counters.
Also Pictured: The reason I have dreams
of strangling res life.

But then a brilliant little scheme was hatched. It was simple math really...

Pictured: Maths.

So cut the pizza in half and threw each half in and let the science commence.

Pictured: Science.

And now it's all done and I'm pretty happy with the results, I bet you can't even tell which half came out of which cheap ass kitchen appliance.

Pictured: Sarcasm

So toaster oven makes good frozen pizza. George Foreman makes terrible Italian Saucy Bread. This is why we do science Gentlemen. Results.

Pictures: Results.

Good Day Gents.

Edit: When I posted the article I saw you both have drafts in the works and I anxiously await to hear of your near misses and sandy parts.

This Weekend

I went to my lead's house for a cookout on Saturday.  All of the my aged coworkers flaked, so it was me and a bunch of people a lot older than me (oh wait, that's like all of the things I do).  Had a pretty good time though, met a bunch of people's families and Dave brought his yellow lab.  Also my lead's husband has a sweet 4 car garage where he had a bunch of dirtbikes, a '57 Chevy pickup that is need of love, and a '60s Camaro that is currently receiving some serious love.  Total frame-off restoration, looks awesome now (all the bodywork is done) and when it's done in 2 years I'm sure it will be super awesome.

I also met my manager's fiance, which is nice because I'm going to their wedding in like two weeks.

Today I was going to do stuff, but then I didn't.  So I just went and saw Batman.  Great movie, how do you shove so many excellent actors and actresses into one film?!  Bane's voice was really the only part I didn't like.

So, I still need to buy furniture, a TV, and get all these boxes out of my living room.

I'm Actually Getting Better at Age of Empires

Played some serious Age of Empires III with Sam and Chris the other night. I usually finish dead last on the post game stats but I am actually improving (still not beating Sam though). I struggle with actually being good at any video game so this is a big achievement for me. Returned a bunch of bottles, got $25 bucks which turned into free lunch. Also, got a PC power supply that will be hacked to power the Reprap.

Also watched a lot of olympic events this weekend.... people are really good at volleyball. Like shit son, I didn't know they made people that are that good at volleyball. Anyways, it's been pretty fun watching it, I haven't actually been into many other summer olympic things before.

Spent much of today repairing this lamp that was given to me by my aunt for my place in Orono. It is a really old floor lamp and everything on it was super solid but some bugs had crawled into the fixture to die and the cord needed replacement. Since it was so old the whole thing could be easily taken apart and cleaned/fixed. Now I have a pretty cool lamp, nice. Also, cleaned off a bunch of hardware for the bus engine. I am anticipating needing it within the next couple months so I figured I should clean it up. Soaked it in a bucket of gasoline for a week and then wire brushed it, I think it did the trick just fine.

Hung out and did some visiting with my grandma today, she's just a boss.

Hoping to start welding on the bus this week, so I am bringing this tiny sandblaster my dad has so I can hit some small spots. I have been cruising the VW forums and found this bus that I really like the looks of:

It is lowered but not to the extreme and I like the "roo bar" on the front. Unfortunately I don't know if that would look as cool on mine because the front bumper is different. This bus is a bit older than mine but what a cool looking ride, I'm a fan of the small roof rack too. 

Smokin'

Howdy ho Gents. I'm entering my last week here at the observatory and getting pretty pumped up for the drive home. In the meantime, gotta keep myself entertained here. All summer I've been on the BBQ subreddits and allowing my mouth to water at the awesome pictures these people post and reading tutorials on how to make the perfect rack of ribs/briskets/pork butt/bacon/everything. This drove me to the decision that I need to stop reading and start doing.

So yesterday I headed up to the observatory and got to work making some bitching ribs. Pulled out the charcoal grill we have up there and got the charcoal going. Headed inside, trimmed the ribs, put mustard on to hold on the rub which was applied in bulk to give it a crust of spice. Then moved the charcoal to one side. Put an aluminum pan full of apple juice on the other and put the ribs directly above it. Then put some hickory wood chips in with the charcoal and slapped the lid on with the vent just over the meat. Every 45 minutes I'd put more wood chips in and squirt a mix of vinegar and oil onto the ribs, adds a little juiciness. Also put some potatoes on which I smoked for an hour and then wrapped and tin foil to finish cooking. Then just put a can of beans on the grill to heat that up. The smells, were amazing...

I am officially addicted to BBQ

After years of considering BBQ to just mean burgers, steaks and BBQ sauce, doing dry rub ribs the proper way was just awesome and it all turned out spectacular. I think this is quickly growing into an obsession and I think all parties that ever have to eat with me will not argue.

Just... Holy shit.

The thing is, my dream house prior to this was a house in the Northeast with a sizable wooded area, preferably a lot of maple and a small sugar shack to make syrup. Now I want that sugar shack to be a sugar shack smokehouse. I'll never fucking go indoors again. I'm going to have to cross my fingers that I can get all that, it's a tall order for our generation.

Next time though, the beans are going to be from scratch too. Apparently you can use the trimmings from the ribs in your beans. Boo yeah.

Friday Night In Hollis

So, I've basically been going back to Litchfield on Friday nearly every weekend. I really didn't feel like driving last night and the weather was pretty good, so I figured I would go at the bus for a bit. So then this happened:

Man, I didn't need the corner of that bus anyways.... Actually, I have repair panel that will weld right back in it's place. The entire corner wasn't completely un-saveable but the panel is pretty large and I figure why not weld in more new metal while I am at it? Only thing is.... like most things with the bus so far, I discovered a bunch more rust underneath. I see why people hate rust so much now. You just really don't know how bad it is until you start hacking stuff away.

Kinda like this, should be easy enough to fix though.

Thinking seriously about buying a sandblaster with a pot on it so I can blast the engine compartment of the bus and basically everywhere else. They appear to be basically worth the money, buying sand can be expensive though and the affordable blasters don't recover the sand. But with something like the last photo, I shouldn't bother patching that hole unless I can sandblast the inside which is full of wet rusty stuff. However a decent sandblaster needs a good air compressor, like the one we have in Litchfield but not like the one in Hollis. Hrmmm...

Anyways, I spent the rest of the evening half-assedly playing settlers of catan with some friends of Andrea Jarrett. I know, weird right? It was actually pretty fun and located at this off-gird house in Hollis, which was cool. Anywho, I'm off to Litchfield this morning, hopefully it doesn't rain all weekend. Also, Tyler I had mad drama lamas this week too so I hear you on that one.

One Week Til Maine

Sorry I missed last night boys, had some drama llamas to deal with but we should do it again very soon.

The Observatory job is getting a bit more intense hours wise just because we only have a week left and there is still an awful lot to do. I've been plugging away at planetarium programming. Our eventual goal is to have like an hour long show and we're getting close with several smaller subscripts that do things like tour Saturn and show you the sky from the moon the date and time of the Apollo 11 landing. I like that one. The idea is to make the scripts play one after the other with some kind of narration. Also have to finalize the data on a variable star discovery and start writing a paper on that. This is why Jesus invented Monster Energy drink. Don't question my beliefs!

Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood,
the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.  It will be shed for you and
for all so that sins may be forgiven.  Do this in memory of me.

Also I want to be making more movies in my free time. I actually recorded a few for this blog and then low and behold I can't find the transfer cable fucking anywhere. The second I find out how to rig that up I'll get right on to editing/posting that stuff.

Don't Drop The Ball!

Tony and I had a hangout today, Tyler was MIA.  Perhaps the most noteworthy outcome of today was Tony updating his profile picture to remove a bitch and add a bitchin' sweater. [FROM 7/26]

Bitchin' Mantle.  Tried to represent a lot of different stuff from my life.

Today I didn't know what to make for dinner, so I just threw some bacon, potatoes, chorizo sausage, onions, garlic and Sriracha in a pot and let it sit for a while.  It was actually pretty tasty.  But I mean, to mess up bacon, onions, garlic, and sriracha I'd have to have done something pretty awful.

I also opened up a Bleriot Model that I purchased on eBay a few years ago.  Meant to go pick up the stuff to build it, but since I'm lazy and didn't go to work until late I didn't get home until like 6:15 this evening.

And finally, this bitchin' cloud bank I saw on my way home from work.

Just Because the Recipe Says So...

Today, I finally got around to making those chicken wings.  At my parent's house (weird saying that...) there is a fryolator, so deep frying is fairly easy.  Not so in my apartment!  So I had to use a pot filled with oil on the stove.  I guessed a 6 would be about 350 degrees.  Why 350 degrees?  That is what the recipe said.  Why 6?  No idea.  But the recipe said to cook them for 6 minutes, and low and behold they came out perfectly done.  [Pats Self on Back].  The sauce was a bit of a disaster.  It said 1:1 honey to whiskey.... nope.  Too much whiskey, it was basically water instead of a sauce.  Also said only two tablespoons of Sriracha.  Nope.  Not enough heat.  I also didn't have any soy sauce, so I just added a bunch of salt and garlic.  They actually weren't too bad!  The grocery store only had chicken wings in 3 lb batches though, so now I've got approximately 2 lbs of chicken wings in the fridge. (first world problems)  I think next time I'll try just regular wing sauce.  Also it made a huge mess, there is flour everywhere and I really don't want to clean it up.  For some reason my phone won't upload the pictures of the mess in the kitchen, so I guess you'll have to miss out on that.

Electrical Storms

Today I woke up and felt alright but then started to develop a pretty bad headache. I almost never get headaches but this was a pretty good one, it kept letting up and coming back every 15 minutes or so. I fought it until about 12:30 and then I gave up and came home to lay down. Luckily the stuff I am doing at work isn't on any super deadline right now.

Good rest will do me well.

WHAT IS A PLANE AND HOW DO I DO ONE?!

Today I took an intro glider flight.  It was awesome.  So awesome in fact, that I was too busy living the awesomeness to be bothered to take pictures.  Which is okay with me.

Got up this morning and continued the arduous process of putting away all the crap that I own.  I really have a lot of it.  A lot of useless junk too.  As time goes on hopefully I'll be able to get rid of a lot of it by just chucking it or pawning it off on eBay for a dollar or something.

My flight was at 1, wanted to set up a good impression by getting there early, but ended up driving around the airport twice before finding the correct parking lot.  Of course it was the parking lot I originally arrived at.  Met up with Chris who'd arranged it on the phone, he said it would probably be a short flight due to the weather.  I was fine with that, plan on giving them plenty more of my money to learn to fly anyways.  On the way out to the airplane we passed a Catalina, another similarly sized flying boat, and a DC3.  Apparently all privately owned... I must meet these people!  

Catalina

DC-3

My pilot Mark was a nice guy, he showed me the various knobs and instruments.  It is honestly mindblowingly simple compared to the 787 cockpit, which I kind of like because it blurs the lines between engineering and athletics and art.  One of these days I'll have enough flowerly language to give a TED talk!  And honestly it's even insanely simple compared to a 172 cockpit.  This is good, Karl Erickson would die before flying something with a glass (modern) cockpit.


The instruments consisted of a compass, a piece of string glued to the outside of the windshield, an airspeed indicator, a radio, an altimeter, and two variometers [which measure rate of ascent/descent, Mr. Sid would no doubt call them d(altimeter)/dts].  For control surfaces you have a typical stick for the elevator and ailerons and rudder pedals for the elevator.  Very conventional.  The airplane stalls around 37 knots, the speed to stay aloft longest was low 40s and the speed to move the farthest distance per height loss was high 40s.  To convert knots to mph, multiply by 1.15.  And for your useless piece of trivia for the day, 1 nautical mile is 1 minute of arc (although it has been redefined to be 1,852 meters).  So be sure to laugh at all your unit challenged friends when they complain about how many dumb units we have, because the nautical mile and knot are now defined entirely by metric units.


Anyways taking off was pretty awesome.  You get towed up behind this tank of a crop duster, and it takes about 5 minutes to get to 3k feet.  The whole time it looks exactly like the "behind the plane" view in flight sim.  Then you let off town, and the townplane does a diving turn the left, while the glider does a shallow climb to the right.  Then we flew around for a while, Mark tried to find lift (there wasn't much) and he let me fly around for a while.  Its amazing what you can feel in the glider vs. your regular GA plane.  Basically you have to do what is called coordinated turns, where you use aileron and rudder to turn.  The reason for this is as you deflect the ailerons you get drag that tends to yaw the airplane in the direction opposite of the way you want to turn.  The piece of yarn is to tell you if that is happening.  However it takes surprisingly little for the airplane to start buffeting (aerodynamics telling you the plane is not happy).  And you can get some really neat transients and periodic motions with small stick inputs.  The aerodynamicist in me was going nuts.


Landing was fun too.  It's a little disconcerting, the grass strip we were on had sailplanes at the end, and we seemed to come in pretty hot.  However, when Mark deployed the speedbrakes it was remarkable how quickly the airplane slowed down to a stop.

PLANE!

Free Blueberries!

Went to this newish Chinese restaurant in Randolph today, they give intense amounts of food. It was pretty good and for the amount of food is actually pretty cheap too. I ate like as much as I possibly could and still packed full a take home box which will give me at least two more meals.

We went to pick some blueberries in some lady's field who has way too many berries for just herself. I picked a huge bowl of them and plan on eating the heck out of them this week and sharing them with the Havus. 

I know I have given Ian plenty of VW reading material as of late but if he wants to read some interesting stuff he should go here: http://www.shoptalkforums.com/index.php 

Basically, that forum is full of people who do VW conversions and are bosses. If we had a garage it might look like this.

EDIT: Like this: http://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=138284

^Yes, that is a VW bus with treads on it. I didn't think that existed until now.

THIS IS NOT A TEST

The internet has informed me that a 1:1 mix of whiskey and honey with a liberal dose of Sriracha to taste is a sauce.  As soon as the groceries stores open tomorrow I will be going to try this out (seriously since when do they close?  They never closed in Troy).  I hope all of you will do the same.

Moving in & Sailing & Memories

Today was rather hamstrung by the fact that my stuff was getting delivered between noon & 4.  I really wanted to go to IKEA to finally buy a bed and a couch, but it looks like between the delivery today and my glider flight tomorrow this may not happen.

So I woke up early (been trying to keep a good schedule so I get out of work early), and hung around the apartment generally tidying and trying to be productive.  I have a todo list, so I tried to check things off, like measuring my apartment for furniture sizing, and again not making it a total pigsty.  In light of my laptop dying, I called the Lenovo Help Desk and told them how it made a loud crack and wouldn't turn on.  I had tried everything I could think of the night previous and couldn't get it to turn on.  Despite this, I tried one more time as I was on the line with the tech to make sure I wouldn't appear like an idiot when I mailed it there and it worked.... and lo and behold it just worked.  So, saved myself having to pick up a netbook.

Next I called Horizon Hobby as my DX6i radio for my R/C planes had gotten its antenna snapped when my mom shipped it out.  They can fix it, but I kind of want a DX7s, which has much better programming and is generally a nicer radio, so I'll probably do that.  I'll keep my DX6i sitting around, but it's basically free for the taking.  I bet it would probably be $50 bucks or so to get it fixed, which is like $70 cheaper than buying new.

Then my stuff arrived at around 2.  The movers were nice guys, and they worked very quickly.  But now I have all this stuff that I need to find places for.  I did not realize how many freakin' books about planes I own.  Below is a picture of all my stuff, it's probably ~40% put away at the moment.  The mover was also very impressed by my off-road unicycle.

At 6:45 I had a one-on-one sailing lesson at the Center for Wooden Boats.  I left at 5 since there was a lot of construction earlier, but apparently that's all gone now.  So I got there at 5:45 and wandered around for an hour.  To use the boats you need a Check-out, and I was pretty sure I just could've done that but I didn't want to waste anyone's time if I wasn't.  Turns out I probably was, but I'm very glad I spent the $50 on the lesson.  Christian, the instructor, was a super nice guy and had clearly forgotten more about sailing than I have learned to this point.  Also a great instructor.  Anyways spent about 1:15 on the water, and it was awesome.

Renting boats is like $35 an hour, or $550 a year, which is honestly a great deal for 4 kinds of wooden sail boat that you don't have to maintain.  However, you can volunteer and 3 hours of volunteering becomes 1 hour of sailing.  And since these people clearly known a metric fuck about boats, I plan on volunteering a lot.  And seaplanes are constantly landing and taking off, and lots of Boeing jets on approach to Seatac are seen overhead.  So it's awesome.

Now back to packing.  And I found a Journal I kept in third grade with some hilarious (and some sad) entries.  Tonight's tidbit is:

"Ian and Elyse are happy when Santa cums." 12/24/97

Epic Day

Headed back to Litchfield for the weekend so I could bring over more parts to the machine shop for the bus engine. Had to bring over the the flywheel so they can balance the crankshaft with it bolted on. Also, had to bring these over. 

Mahle 94mm pistons and cylinders, the beans and rice of a quality 2.0 liter type 4 engine

Of course like every time I stop in to see Steve Daniels, we always end up talking for a while. He showed me the completed line bored case and Steve educated me on the many nuances of all things VW (basically his favorite topic). The crank bore was actually slightly egg shaped so the line bore helped make it true again. He also faced off both halves of the case so it fits together perfectly. The oil pump mounting flange was also faced off and another flange that I am not sure where it goes....

Up close of the machine engine case, you can see three machined surfaces ( kind of hard to pick out)

Apparently the connecting rods were on the upper end of "new" as far as their wear tolerance was concerned so they were left alone. Apparently the rods are extremely overbuilt and Steve didn't actually seem that surprised that they don't need any attention beyond balancing. Steve is also working on a Type 1 (bug) engine in parallel with mine. 

Left: My engine case, Right: Type 1 case, Center: My heads, Outback: Awesome machine tools

I have to say that after waiting for so long for the machine work to get done on this engine, it feels awesome to see the rebuild process moving along. 

After a morning at the machine shop Chris Hatch and I threw a couple of kayaks in the truck and headed to the lake. Sam and Ariel came too and we spent a while in the sun on Sabattus lake. Perfect weather, sunny and just that type of July day you wait for all winter long. Came back to Ariel's house and her dad offered to take us water skiing, I'd never been but I have wanted to for a couple years now. I was bound and determined to get up and ski by the end of the day, it took me about a dozen tries and I drank probably 3 gallons of lake water but I finally got it. It was wicked awesome and I am so sore, getting dominated by a boat for nearly an hour really takes a toll. Ariel was able to snap a sweet picture once I had gotten my feet under me and I will definitely share that once she sends it to me. 

Yup, I Definitely Want Pizza.

Went to work yesterday only to find out that the telephone pole by the driveway was being replaced and we were without power for the next hour or so. So, we wasted time talking and doing random things that didn't require power. Also, apparently out back where they built the bridge used to be a sawmill that was powered by the river. The guys started to dig out this impeller that has been buried in the muck for years, it's kind of neat.

The day went on and I ended up helping one of the guys take out the master cylinder for his clutch... pretty random. After we realized no one was actually getting much real work done we decided to go next door and pay the neighbors kids a visit. They had a lemonade and iced coffee stand. Surprisingly the iced coffee was pretty damn good!

Adam (MSSM alum) buying some "100% Natural Lemonade". Naturally.

It was fun to see the kids with the lemonade stand though, apparently some awesome old guy stopped in and gave them $20 bucks just for shits. Awesome.

Also, had a ridiculous craving for pizza today out of the blue. So, I stopped by the store on the way home and made myself some quality ass pizza. It had spinach, red pepper, summer squash and italian seasonings on it. It was stupid good.

Found this sweet craiglist ad: http://maine.craigslist.org/cto/3114432710.html
Totally do not need this car but definitely want it. I e-mailed the guy to see what is wrong with it because it is pretty damn cheap. If it had a sticker I would drive it to the maine VW show and just try to sell it there for more money. I also do have a place to store it now if I really needed too..... Stop it Tony... Stop it.

BREAK ALL THE THINGS!

What an exciting few days it has been.  Yesterday my car came up with a low oil warning, which seeing as it is rather new was quite annoying.  I went and picked up some oil, and it was in fact very low.  Looking on the internet it seems like there are lots of threads like this, as it burns oil as the engine breaks in (and it is very thin oil to help eek out MPG) and the first recommended change is at 7500 miles.  So that was annoying.  I did get to go into an auto supply store... and there is just something magical about them.  Also, once you put the oil in, you have to drive for about 10 minutes until the "DANGER DANGER YOU ARE POTENTIALLY DESTROYING YOUR ENGINE" warning goes away.  This is spelled out in the manual, but it is rather annoying because despite religiously checking the dipstick, it is unnerving to drive around with that warning light on.

And this afternoon my laptop decided to poop the sleeping bag, as it were.  Made a loud cracking noise, screen flashed, and now it definitely won't turn on.  I took the battery out, and switched outlets but to no avail.  In fact, excuse for a moment while I go unplug it for good, would hate to accidentally start a fire.  Since I can't easily waste time on the internet, I've taken to doing busy work like laundry, dishes, and cleaning.  Which is good because this place is a mess and the movers show up with my stuff on Saturday.  Also on Saturday is a checkride at the Center for Wooden Boats so I can rent sailboats, and Sunday is a glider ride in Arlington.  Should be sweet.

Jumping back a bit, because I'm just writing as I think, yesterday I got the opportunity to play "the world's most expensive video game" aka the 787 simulator.  Basically, it is a full airplane cockpit in a random building, with a lot of fancy computers and projectors to make it just like flying the airplane (although this one doesn't have the hydraulics to make it move).  And we use it to test scenarios before we flight test them.  And I was there for 4 hours testing stuff.  And I'm going back on Monday with real test pilots.  Whoooooooo!

2003

Currently at the observatory again. Right now I'm running photometry on an undiscovered variable star my professor stumbled on in 2003 and forgot to get published. So I'm pouring through the data that was taken right around the time I was learning what exponents were. Hell in 2003 the most annoying thing to me about the Iraq War is that the announcement speech interrupted the episode of Star Search that a Caribou native was on. But thats neither here or now.

I did get a lot more done on my Andromeda Mosaic, it is such a big project. We are currently six half-hour pictures in and only about half way done. Here is the rough mosaic of where we're at and a map of where I want to shoot next. Won't shoot anything tonight though, very cloudy.

Now complete center of galaxy and got M32 as well.
I didn't do much touching up as this is meant to as a progress check.

Those squares are the next six shots I need to take before deciding where to go next.
This object is big.

I don't know if I've linked to the Flickr account where all this shaz is located, so here you go.

Observations

So, today a laptop battery and a book showed up on my doorstep.  For the first time in months I can unplug my laptop, and the book is really really good.  The guy has a real knack for explaining things.  Also, I really appreciate that the corners of the book are rounded off, because I hate it when the squares at the edge of the page fold over.

There is also something delightfully wrong about eating Kraft Mac & Cheese out of a pot on an air mattress while watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.

My Social Life Has Been Dominated by Time Warner Cable

I keep getting calls from Time Warner Cable because I canceled my internet service through them, we didn't need it because our neighbors just let us use their wi-fi. Also, I didnt return their modem so I kept getting an automated call from them about that. So, today I returned the modem. Hopefully they stop calling.

Went to Sears, bought some tools and a really bright LED flashlight (always wanted one). Sears is expensive, hopefully their craftsman guarantee will save me.

Came home, got all but one bolt on one CV shaft off. Still not sure how I'm going to accomplish it because it is a hexdrive that is certainly stripped.

Been making a PCB at work, it's been pretty awesome. Also got us connected to Angus King today because I know a guy who works for his campaign, so he may eventually pay us a visit or something.

This made me chuckle:

Happy Arbitrary Day!

I got my Arbitrary Day gift today and I have to admit, not what I was expecting. I got several anonymous messages asking me about my Dr. Who preferences, so I got excited for a gift along those lines.

Then it arrived.

Well, it wasn't Dr. Who related. Really not even remotely. I got a college survival kit which near as I can gather was an incredibly entertaining trip to the local dollar store. She sent me 6 bags of ramen, a shot glass ring, 2 shot glass necklaces, a pack of test tube shots, 4 packs of Trident gum, a 16 pack of red Solo cups, a 30 pack of LifeStyles condoms (including flavored ones), a nifty bottle opener, aspirin, lotion, 2 bic lighters and a god damned weed bowl.

I should note I say she because her i's had circles
instead of dots. Name one dude who puts circles
 instead of dots over their i's. One heterosexual guy.
Name him, show evidence and accept your prize:
Flavored Condoms

I quote from the letter: "There's condoms if you get lucky, lotion if you're not so lucky and a pregnancy test if the line between gets a little blurred". Well I'm really happy I opened this one at work. I thought "Whats the most embarrassing thing it could have in it?". At least the professor thought it was as funny as I did. Also there is something about a shot glass necklace that just fills you with immeasurable depression. I don't really understand how it does it.

Oh this? Yeah its a plastic shot glass I wear around my neck.
Yes it does have a cartoon smiling tiki head on it.
Yes, in fact I have pretty much given up on life.

I would just like to thank this random internet denizen for a laugh and for my new intricate glass bubble blowing device. 

God damn it internet...

Can you post GIFs on Blogger?

So I'm pulling another all-nighter at the observatory. We were asteroid hunting and successfully tracked the potential Earth killing asteroid 27GB026. Wouldn't you know that scientists apparently like to keep an eye on those things, make sure they aren't getting off track. I made a GIF of it.

Look at that sucker go. Fun to think that little white dot
moving across the sky is another world that has a finite probability
of killing everyone you love. Gorgeous.

Now I'm shooting the Andromeda Galaxy again since it will take probably 12 pictures each with half an hour of exposure time to create a mosaic. The Andromeda Galaxy is actually larger than the moon in the night sky and if you haven't see it naked eye yet, you really should add it to your bucket list. Nothing like realizing that faint fuzzy can barely be seen thing in the sky is 400 billion more stars that could harbor hundreds of intelligent civilizations looking back at us as we both wonder 2 million lightyears apart whether we have some stuff in our eyes. That is what it looks like honestly, like you've got some fuzz on your eye. It's awesome.

Also I wrapped hot dogs in crescent roll dough and baked it for lunch. It was kind of okay.

ALLIE WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!

Apologies in advance.

Outdated PCB Design Software and Lesbians.

I've been using this software called Protel a bunch at work lately. It's super old and you can't buy it anymore, my version is Protel 99, that's right baby 1999. Long story short, it is not intuitive and buggy.

Came home and tried to do a little on the bus but it was threatening rain and the wire wheel that I bought for my grinder was the wrong size.... whoops. Sprayed a little paint on the spot on the floor that I had cleaned off last weekend and removed the right rear tail light in preparation to cut off the right rear corner. Maybe I'll borrow a cordless drill and some hex drivers to remove the CV shafts tomorrow. Yesterday the machine shop called and said the machine work on the case is done! The crankshaft and rods are free of cracks and basically everything is good. I actually need to get him the flywheel so he can balance everything. So, they will start working on the heads now. Pistons and cylinders came to Litchfield on monday too, so those will go to the machine shop soon too.

Called Allie today to catch up, we haven't spoken in quite a long time so figured now was a good time to see what was going on. I actually am about to send her to link to this blog, I know we haven't published this anywhere and I dont think we should really but I think Allie would find some of the posts amusing.

Oh, Spartacus (the show) is awesome.

Also, I welded this today and ground down the welds to make it look pretty. I was going to give it a bottom so it would be a legitimate box but then figured it was kind of a waste of metal seeing as I had no use for the box and was only doing it for the welding practice. The corners actually look decent after some time on the grinder. Also, it isn't exactly square because I bent it up pretty hastily.

Where mah oil at?!

Today as I pulled into my driveway I got a low oil light.  Which is weird, since my car is like brand new.  So I'm gonna go buy some oil after work tomorrow (having a friend pick me up), and then take it into a dealership to get looked at.  Now I'm watching "No Reservations" while eating Kraft Mac and Cheese.  I feel like Tony Bourdain should be jumping through my laptop screen to strangle me or something.

Automation

Today was a grand experiment in getting up for work.  The past few days I've found it increasingly difficult to get up on time.  I officially listed my start time as 6, but no one was really expecting me until 7, and late last week I was showing up as late as 8:30.  If you show up past 7:45, you have to park approximately a half hour walk away from your desk, and that is no fun.

So today I set an alarm for 5:00 and forced myself out of bed.  Due to slowdowns making coffee and breakfast, I didn't actually make it out the door until 6:15 or so, but still a remarkable improvement over other days.  In a hilarious twist, traffic is actually a lot worse this early in the morning -- but parking is way way better.  Also when it was time to go the day still felt really really young.  It was kind of like "I get to go home now?  But... I still have work I want to get done!"

To continue this trend, I have tried to further streamline getting up in the morning.  Tonight I cooked dinner, and use the leftovers to make a lunch, which I have already packed and is chilling in the fridge.  Apparently we live in the future now, and your coffee pot also knows the time, and you can set it to make your coffee in the morning, no button pressing required.  Finally, I had some eggs I needed to cook, so I made breakfast sammiches for the rest of the week.  I'm not sure if they'll get soggy or whatever before then, but I guess we'll find out.

Also, I really want this truck.  And I could buy it if its still around Thursday... It even comes with the overdrive so you can drive it fast enough to definitely get yourself killed if you have an accident!

http://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/cto/3142177369.html

And D-W pointed out this lovely piece of work
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/3084303082.html

And finally, this lovely inspiration quote from the rather stupidly named Hobby Lobby.  IF YOU DON'T HAVE PLANES YOU ARE NOT A HOBBY SHOP.

I'm in Trouble...

Okay so today is Monday, when was the last time I posted on here? Couldn't been more than a couple days ago...

Oh, dicks. Also, I just noticed, it was Tuesday.
That post is funnier to me now.

Well shit. Well then I didn't do anything today besides go to work. Might as well run down the Toronto Breakdown story of last weekend as I seem to have neglected to write that one.

So last Friday I was off to see Toby at the University of Toronto where he was taking Latin classes. I got in me Jeep and bolted North for the border with a few hundred bucks and a full tank of gas. I filled up in Buffalo since I did not want to buy gas at Canadian prices. Gave Toby and me Mum a call since phone calls would cost a fortune in good ol' Canadaland. Then I crossed the border with practically no fuss other than the traffic jam leading up to it.

Anywho. I get across the border in my car which I might note has yet to have a single mechanical problem since I bought the thing. Then suddenly the car yanked back hard which sent my check engine light into on mode. This is by the way is when I learned where that light is on my dash. It decided to do this when I was halfway between the border and Toronto. I was in an interesting spot as I know nothing about car repair and my phone was useless. So I decided to make the thing take me to Toronto and after a few stalls on the highway and several shitty shifts I got the thing parked in a parking garage in the heart of Toronto.

I found Toby at a local Tim Hortons and made a blog post about the goings on. After deliberating with family for some time and trying a few suggested minor fixes over the phone, my Uncle who lives 4 hours away in Michigan decided to just drive over and fix it. This made a lot of sense since:

A) I don't know a transfer case from a smoked trout.

 B) If it was a transmission problem my wallet would most likely get butt fucked by a Canadian mechanic.

C) My Uncle is just a nice guy like that.

So I had to stay an extra night at Tobes and me Uncle came up Sunday. Toby by the way, just brilliant through this whole thing. We walked probably 20 miles over the course of the weekend to find parts and such and he was just 100% positivity the whole way. I began to think of how to repay him.

My Uncle arrived and we escorted the Jeep out of the inner city to end the parking garage fees which were piling at that point. Found an auto parts center on the edge of town and my Uncle, Toby and I worked on the thing for about six hours in a Staples parking lot. Turns out the transfer case was low on fluid and the computer sent out the error code to throw the car into what my Uncle affectionately calls "limpdick mode". We put fluid in and cleared the codes with a good old fashioned unplug the battery and go get some lunch maneuver. After lunch and some more mechanic-ing my Uncle asked me to go get a Coke at the Canadian Tire down the road. I got in his Ford Focus and I began to think back on how to repay good old Toby. Thats when I ran over Toby's laptop with a car.

I feel like I should back up and repeat that bit. It bears repeating if only to cleanse the bad karma. I, Tyler Beaulieu, took a Ford Focus and drove it over a laptop owned by Toby Hrynick, longtime friend of Tyler Beaulieu who has done nothing but help Tyler throughout this weekend, destroying said laptop's monitor and rendering it useless. Worst of all, Toby wasn't even mad about it. Kept saying it was his own fault for putting it there. Well at least he can retrieve the data, those Thinkpads are pretty tough. The thing looked untouched until we turned on the monitor. He should be able to plug an external in until he gets a new one.

In the meantime the Jeep is running and got me back to good ol' 'merica in one piece.

Also if you want to know why I kept forgetting to post for a week, well...

All 20 episodes in like 3 days with work.
Winter is coming boys.

 

 

Lazy Sunday (wake up in the late afternoon!)

Well, I didn't actually wake up in the late afternoon.  But it has been a pretty lazy Sunday.  I was going to wake up around 6 -- but that didn't happen.  So I actually woke up around 10.  I was going to go to IKEA to buy a table -- that also didn't happen.  So I went to TJ Maxx and Best Buy to buy a belt and a printer.  Unfortunately apparently you want to a buy a belt a size bigger than your pants -- I bought a size 32 belt and it is quite tight at the tightest setting... so it looks like I'm not eating so I can have a belt to wear to work!  For dinner I had Sriracha tacos with a Mexican Pepsi in a glass bottle (Mexican Coke is sooo mainstream...).  I'm gonna go buy some skinny jeans now...

Pictures of the printer below.

Kicked Out The Camera Tester and Went to Camden

Had to show what I had completed on this camera tester rig to my buddies over at Black Diamond. To my relief, they ended up taking the tester to finish up. I have plenty of projects and was honestly kind of happy that they wanted to finish it.

Packed up some stuff, gathered up the Litchfieldians and headed to Camden Hill State Park for an evening in this remote cabin. The cabin is located 2.05 miles down this tote road which is mostly uphill on the way in, incase anyone was wondering. We had to plan a little bit and pack only what we really needed as we had to carry everything in. We bought a bunch of potatoes, green peppers, onions and some steak strips to cook up for dinner. They told us at the registration place that there would be a ranger that would come "check up on us" at some point in the night. We started getting friendly with the captain around 8 o'clock..... luckily ranger Rick never showed.

Our dinner turned out awesomely, honestly everything was cooked perfectly. We played some cards and took a couple little dips in this stream that is next to the cabin. The water was perfectly clear and very cool, it must be really clean because it is basically all rain water from off the mountain. Here is a view of half of the inside of the cabin, it was very nice and well maintained.

Outside next to the grills. 

They have a shed there that is full of more firewood than you'd care to burn and a nice outhouse too.

In the morning Chris Hatch and I went up to the summit of whatever mountain it was (Mt. Batte maybe?) and checked out the scenic views of Camden and the ocean. There was even a windmill. Unfortunately I didn't bring my phone with me to take pictures at the top so the sauciest thing I have is Sam cooking some hot pockets on the fire.

Sam doing what he does best

For $32.10 a night plus some food split between some friends, it made for a surprisingly inexpensive get away. If you do go though, don't just bring a sleeping bag if you intend on actually sleeping. Bring a blowup pool floaty mattress thing like this: 

Otherwise you will almost certainly get imaginary sleep but that's alright. 

The Arlington Fly-In & CWB Orientation

I woke up this morning just in time to head down to Lake Union to be oriented as a volunteer for the Center for Wooden Boats.  It was pretty straightfoward, and Stefan had basically already filled me in on everything. Neat to see a wide range of people there, from my age to significantly older.  I signed up to volunteer at the Livery (where they rent boats), working on Puffin (a 1 cylinder steam ship), and volunteering at the boat shop.  I'll have to get checked out to take out the sailboats here pretty soon too.  Sounds like they run a lot of interesting classes, so I'll probably take some of those as well.

After that, I headed back up towards the Arlington Fly-In with my friend Ian.  It was absolutely nuts.  There were more airplanes than cars, and a ton of homebuilts, and old planes, in addition to an airshow.  If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be heaven.  There was even a Pietenpol, although the use of a Continental engine is less than ideal.  A real man would put the Model A Ford engine in her.  There was some other neat stuff including a B-17, a B-25, a bunch of Fleet and Travel-Air biplanes, apparently the only open cockpit airplane Stinson ever built, a Bowers Fly Baby, and the list goes on.  But I digress.  Below are a couple of random pictures.  For reference the Curtiss OX5 is a V-8 that went in trainers during WWI.  They built a bunch of them (I believe around 10k), but as a pre-WWII engine a lot of them disappeared in scrap drives so they are hard to find today.  However, someone who is after one is my kind of guy.

Also I was leaving to get in my car, a woman came up to me and asked me how I liked my car.  I said I loved it, she said she was thinking about getting one as she had recently gotten rid of her Toyota Tercel... with 550k miles on it!!  Wow.