This is a PREEMPTIVE Post!

I am posting this to remind you that any and all Holiday Shenanigans should be posted here in an effort to spread holiday cheer and stuff.

I'll be catching a plane to Portland, Oregon Tuesday to see my sister get hitched! Ian, keep an eye on Southern(ish) Maine for me. Tyler, you've got the county under control. I'll be taking lots of pictures and hopefully seeing lots of hipsters.

In the meantime, please enjoy this.

Another Uneventful Weekend

Hey guys, figured I'll keep you posted on this boring life stuff.

So this week I didn't get to go to my sweet-ass job piling hardwood veneer, so instead I took a short little drive to the southern end of our state. Spent Saturday night drinking mediocre craft brews with an okay friend from high school. Then I had to get up first thing in the morning to drive further south just to meet a couple of douchebags I used to room with. Apparently if one of them flies from the west coast and brings some lady friend of his I'm obligated to meet up with them. Not like they're offering to pay gas money, assholes.

Spent a few hours having this self-involved cunt-waffle tell me all about his job and how it was helping the environment and stuff. Yeah I'm sure, let's just power the whole United States of America on fucking air. While we're at it we'll just replace cars with hot air balloons powered from our own farts. Dickhole.

Then they were all like, oooooh, lets go get some beers from some brewpub restaurant. Look how fuckin' hip we are, can't just eat at Wendy's like the rest of us? Got to hear all kinds of stories about these guys building airplanes and windmills and shit. Well I make shit too, you know? Hardwood veneer is serious fuckin' business. I stack some good fuckin' panels! Motherfuckin' full loads of 0 Select Whites, make a ceiling in a ski lodge or some shit. Asshats...

Then they're all like "Dur! Let's go to the mall, herpderpflerp!". Just full of original god damned ideas these cocksuckers. Then this fuck has the audacity to take him and his lady friend and fuck off to Rockland or something. Good thing I drove all that way. Fuckin' amateurs. Spent a few days wandering around shops in Portland and spending money I don't have. Went to the movies to see the fiftieth anniversary of some stupid cliche science fiction show. Fucking nerds everywhere. Had to help one little nerd pick up the pieces to his glowy stick, called it a screwdriver. What kind of fuckin' screwdriver doesn't even have a head. Just some glowy lights and stupid sound effects. Only screws he's taking out are the ones loose in his fucking nerd head.

Then these fuckin' people in the county have the audacity to make me go pick up a load of craft beer for them. Yeah, that's what I want to do, drive your stupid goods around. Now I have to go and eat a bunch of high carb food with these familial types. Thanks for fucking up any chance of success on my diet you sons of bitches.

Hope you guys had a better weekend, maybe with some super cool guy who drives a super cool Jeep and stuff. That would've been awesome.

<\sarcasm>

Wuv you,
Tyler

Awesome Domain Name Deal

Hey yall,

Just saw this post on Jalopnik. It's a wicked good hosting deal from dreamhost and seems like you can get two domain names plus unlimited storage for a year... I don't really have any use for it other than to steer tonynuzzo.com at it and maybe get a legit name for this blag but it's a really good deal for the money. Maybe it's time to get a domain name? I would advocate for moving from Blogger but it seems to work really well and I don't wanna mess with setting up a wordpress for something that works fine as is.

Thoughts? Opinions? I just need an excuse to buy this deal haha.

3rd Shift Piler and Other Tales from The County

So I haven't really written since I started the job because there isn't much to write about in regards to that. The planks come down the line, I pull them off and put them in the correct pile. We process 5-8000 panels a night. Also a man wore a gorilla mask Halloween night on the splice line. The place has got a lot of good folk in it and thank jebus I work the night shift where they have a smidgen of a sense of humor. Suffice to say that The Fox hit Columbia Forest Products like a ton of bricks last week. Everyone keeps on sneaking up on each other and yelling "HEY ______! WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?" and then _______ responds. One guy on the line near me just put his hands up and when someone asked him why he said without singing, in a perfect monotone "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, saying ayo." I'm stealing that.

Outside of that, I've consistently been having crazy weekends. Where the hell were these when I was unemployed? The first weekend a bar in Presque Isle had a party for Bradd and his fiance Carlina, welcoming them back from basic training. It was a camo party so I went in full dress from the Civil War. After much whiskey I don't remember the latter part of the night, but according to eyewitness testimony I may or may not have projectile closed the bar early. Not too proud of that. I blame Bradd since the last thing I remember is asking him to order me whatever he thinks I'll like. I don't remember the name of the drink but I will just refer to it as a Humdinger in future conversation. Good thing I know the bar owners, they were very nice to me about it.

The next weekend there was a surprise 40th for my cousin and wouldn't you know the whole Beaulieu clan showed up. I don't know how much I've told you guys about Beaulieu family parties, but they are pretty nuckin' futs. Country music cranked right up, a beer selection of Bud and/or Bud Light, obligatory dancing around 1-2 AM. Also there haven't been that many in the past 5-6 years since a lot of them moved in recent years. I ended up at my uncle's house, just drinkin' Buds with all my older cousins and uncles until 8 AM. Very good times.

Then last weekend Bradd came over for a LAN party which just turned into us drinking and trying to install Windows 7 on his laptop. Fun times.

Well now it's November or as I like to call it, Ernest Hemingway appreciation month. That is because it is both National Novel Writing Month and No Shave November. Also I'm still doing the low carb thing so I'm surviving on a diet of steak, bacon, eggs, whiskey and black coffee. Been trying out the NaNoWriMo thing, which is hard when you work a job that leaves you exhausted, so my word counts are less than stellar. I'm not writing for any other reason than to have a project, so if I fuck up, fuck it. Also I'm trying to write a really bad book on purpose because that approach seems to really take a shit on writer's block. Also if I accidentally write something good in between, well that's just neat.

My "technique"

If I actually do meet some stated goals on that I'll let you guys know. 

In the meantime there is a partial solar eclipse tomorrow morning here on the east coast (suck it Seattle) and I'm going to MSSM to see it with the Mr. Larry Berz. In the meantime I'm going to stay up and write about two guys eating tacos and/or burritos with some not so clever passages over-analyzing the Baja Blast Mountain Dew because this book is just me rambling. I'm good at rambling. You know that. You read all of this stupid shit.

This Prime Automobile!

Blatant picture dump. So.... long time no post but I had this crazy weekend where I took a wind turbine to MIT energy night (which was sweet), drove back that night. Next day went to Pika's annual Cider weekend, took Rita Cooper with me... it was pretty sweet. Then finally the day after that I went to a VW swap meet in NH. Now that I am an adult... why not do ALL the fun things, right?

Sweet VWs and I scored some good parts for cheap!

Look at how jovial this guy is, yes that is a human powered cider press!

Rita and I kicked some serious cider ass this year. I just got in the zone and pedaled my arse off and also pushed apples into the cutter machine which is the messiest and most satisfying job. Made it home with a bunch of cider and some of last years hard cider. Nice.

On the trailer!

So, I found this one on craigslist for what seemed like a good deal. I got there and found out it actually was a good deal. The dude held it for me until I could come back with a trailer which was sweet. Also, it's very hard to find a trailer this time of year... seriously several Uhauls were out of car trailers two weekends in a row. This bus loaded much easier than the last one I put on a trailer. We hooked it onto my dad's truck and he towed it down the guys driveway (which was wicked nasty). Loaded it on the trailer when we got up on the pavement. I got to drive it while it was being towed, which makes it officially my longest ride in a VW bus thus far.

Checkout that plaid!... Just don't look at the curtains. Please.

This one is a Westfalia which means it has a wicked sweet pop-top. The tent is missing but I will replace it once the thing is running again. I was surprised at how much room there is in the top though. I am 6 ft and I could probably sleep up there. Also allows you more head room in the back if no one is up there.

At her old home

Needs a new battery and a list of other things but the important thing about this bus is that there is less than 10k miles on the rebuilt engine. The rebuild was even done by the guy who is doing my engine (or... actually what is he doing with my engine). Also the bus was stickered last year, so it is much closer to being road able than my other rig. I jumped it with the Subaru and got it to turn over, all the lights work and there is fuel to the carbs so .... it's on the right track. I mean it's so much further along than my other one that in my mind, it's already running! First things on the list are to fix the drivers window (which doesn't go up or down), get a new battery, recondition the wheels, fresh tires, brake job and obviously get the thing to you know... do the whole start and run thing. After all that I'll re-pad the front seats, get a new westfalia tent and clean up the top part, maybe replace the gasket up there too. 

Hooray projects!

To War

Before I start, ATTENTION TONY NUZZO, THE FUNNIEST MOTHER FUCKING COMEDIAN I KNOW WILL BE IN PORTLAND ON MONDAY OCTOBER 21ST. GO.

HERE HE IS ON NATIONALISM OR FREEDOM

So the plan. Get up at 3 AM Friday, leave to pick up Toby from a train station in Brewster, NY and then to Alfred by Friday night to help them prepare for the war. The next day, battle and party. Then on Sunday up at 6 AM to drive back to The County. Damn near 1700 miles of driving in about 3 days. My family said I was crazy. What they failed to realize is that this is what I've been mentally preparing to do for months. Also it was just sort of amazing to do something, anything, especially something a little insane for mostly very silly reasons. After four months of absolutely nothing, three days of hour by hour something were a godsend.

The truly amazing bit, it all worked. Brilliantly. The trip was zero stress and adhered to schedule surprisingly well. The only glitch was the curse of Toby. Every single god damned time Toby and I get in a car together and say "LET'S GO ON AN ADVENTURE" the car fails. Every. Single. Time. There was my trip to see him in Toronto where my Jeep died in the parking garage. Him and Renee's trip to see me where her clutch fell out. Then this time my battery just sort of disappeared about twenty minutes after he got in the car. After we pulled off it was pretty apparent that all that happened was the battery terminal was loose and sort of bounced the fuck off after a bump. But still we had to pull over and tinker for an hour to figure that simple thing out. It is Tobias Hrynick and I, we are not known for our mechanical prowess.

We arrived in Alfred and dove right into helping the club build swords for the war. We had a good twenty five people building swords quickly for about four hours and met our quota. of 72 new swords. Got to meet a lot of the new faces including one kid everyone refers to as "New Tyler". I was weirded out until I found out he got the name for having similar drunken personalities. Looks like I've got someone to take on an adventure at Hot Dog Day. Then Toby and I went back to AJs apartment, had some beers and went to bed.

Wake up at 9 AM for the Officers breakfast, Toby, AJ and I were not officers but insisted that we are a necessary element of their discussion. Also I need Battle Waffles, it's tradition to eat waffles prior to combat for me. It's kind of my thing. We ate our waffles and headed up to the field of battle to set everything up. There was a lot of on the spot improvisation as it turned out we didn't have half the things we needed but in the end the new officer corps did it up nice. Alfred States army arrived and after a pretty ad libbed speech about the rules, we all headed back to camp.

I was happy that this year we got time to properly put together a strategy. We divided up into units, nicknamed the units, even had a group dedicated to relaying communication from the General. I could have really used that last time. We fought for maybe 4 hours and it was awesome. I spent most of the match defending the AU homebase which eventually fell after a near 90 minute siege. In the end Alfred State won, again. I had fun, Toby had fun, trip well worth it. After the war we got a couple cars and took some good folk to the chinese buffet in Wellsville and then went to AJs apartment for a wonderful night of drunken revelry.  I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see because of the short window of time I was there but I saw a good bunch. The weekend was pretty expensive to pull off but it was well worth it. PICTURES!

Toby Hrynick, in Alfred, helping fend off the State school horde.

My good friend Gaelen representing.

Pic from the final battle around the King Alfred statue.

A nice orchestrated group shot.

Toby and I left at 7 AM Sunday and I got home around 2 AM so I could start my new job at 8 AM. After 10 hours of OSHA safety videos I was considered an employee at Columbia Forest Products, making whole piece hardwood veneer of the maple and birch variety. The job is not exactly what I would call a dream job for me. The job is very physically demanding and only just mentally demanding enough that I'm not allowed to zone out for even a second. That said, the people are all very nice and the pay is quite nice. It's mostly headed to the bank where hopefully I can finally grow a small amount of savings. I haven't had more than a few hundred dollars in the bank since High School. A bit of money in the bank to fall on is just what I need while I plan the next step, which currently is move somewhere that people live and get a job that sort of uses this brain thing I got bouncing around my shoulders. It works decently and could be applied to any number of things.

Anyways, time to sit here and wait for something to happen.

Autumn, can we just call it Windmill season?

I've been at it at approximately 3/4 throttle with the gang at Pika over the past couple weeks. Last weekend was spent entirely at Common Ground Fair. Most of that time was hanging out at the Pika booth and talking with people who want one of our sexy wind turbines (I hope google catches onto that phrase and this blog comes up in search results for "sexy wind turbines", maybe I'll over use it in this post just to give us a fighting chance). I was pleasantly surprised to speak with some very informed customers on Saturday. Of course there were a few folks who didn't know how energy works but they were fairly few and far between. One point of discontent was that we had the wind turbine braked because in order to run we need an inverter and our inverter outputs "split phase 240V" which is what is at the entrance to your house.... however we only had a 120V extension cord. Most people understood why this was an issue but there was one man who simply did not understand that and was convinced that we were giving him some sort of BS. Next year we'll bring a transformer.

In the off times I hung out with Blandrea Jarrett (not actually bland at all) and her associated compadres. I have to say that after staying there all weekend, you really don't get the common ground experience until you camp there. The "volunteer" campground is the loosest run hassle free camping experience. I showed up too late to "get a permit" so I just pitched my tent anyways and no one bothered us the entire weekend, turns out that is what all of our neighbors did too. I just got a sweet new tent so I was excited to try it out, it worked great and despite wind, rain and uneven ground it kept me and my stuff bone dry. We did some contra dancing saturday night and witnessed a man playing guitar on hallucinogenics on Friday. Yup that's Common Ground.

That's right kids, it's a double rainbow over a wind turbine. Can you get anymore Common Ground than that!?!?! 

I didn't get to see much of the fair really but I did see a sweet booth with a bunch of bonsai trees. I nearly bought one because ever since visiting the national National Arboretum, I have thought they are awesome. There was some guy there who seemed to know everything about them too, unfortunately he was engaged in a Bonsai geek conversation when I was there and I didn't get to pick his brain. Overall a good time. On the way home my car started skipping, I put some "drygas" (moisture remover) in the tank and it ran fine the rest of the way home (more on this later).

Taking down our booth @ Common Ground

This past week we've been going great guns at work and installed two wind turbines and a bunch of solar stuff too. The two sites each have a turbine and 3kW of PV installed (or nearly installed at the time of this writing). We're not technically installers but we have been working with electricians and installers of other wind turbines to train them on our equipment. We had an out of state installer come up and walk through our manual during one of the installs with us. One of the sites has a sweet fiberglass monopole tower that comes in sections that slide over each other and glue together. The whole rig goes up with a winch so it doesn't require a crane, it's pretty sweet. We all take turns winching the towers up, not only is it a workout but it feels pretty BAMF to be part of the tower raising. 

I'll eventually get a picture of the monopole installed, I hope. My phone died part way through the install. 

In other news the Subaru is down with a clogged catalytic converter. After racking my brain to figure out why my car was loosing power, I decided to just play the uninformed idiot and drive it until it became obvious. After a painful 5 miles from my house to Josh's place (my car squealing and riding the struggle bus the whole way) I parked it and looked underneath. My catalytic converter was straight up about to be on fire. It was bright bright orange all over  and did NOT look pleased at all. A few months ago I had my friend scan the OBD2 port on the car with his fancy scan tool. The code read "efficiency of emissions tank 2 low", being an elitist cheapskate fuck I said "Oh it's probably just some sensor." Now I think that is probably directly related to the recent failure. Screw you hindsight, screw you! Also there really isn't much of a way around the expense of replacing one of these because the catalyst inside the part makes them $$$. Additionally it would be very difficult to replace with one person and no lift. 

So, this weekend I've been tooling around on my motorcycle which discouraged me from driving around at night much. It's kind of unsafe to ride when it is too dark, even though it is pretty awesome feeling to ride down the road surrounded by darkness with only a small headlight leading you home. 

I'm taking tomorrow off to spend the day with my pops at Fryeburg Fair for woodsmans day! It's where all the "big name" lumberjacks (is that even a thing?) come to participate in events like the springboard chop, two-man saw, underhand chop and various other lumberjack things. My dad and grandfather used to go fairly regularly but I could never make it because school. Should be a wicked good Maineahbubguy time! 

Slingin' Planks

Goodly evening unto you Gentlemen. You'll be happy to know that I have shirked the beast of apathy and have really begun to develop myself as a person during my free time. Been working on several projects, keeping up an exercise routine and really been using my time effectively.

Nah I'm just kidding. I've been playing Minecraft about eight hours a day with my other underemployed Alfred alumni.

One of the several projects I've built. This is the Port of Hawkbeard's
very own Comedy Cellar. I need to go outside.

I've also cemented my status as an unemployed drain on the system and bought myself a bass guitar. Overarching logic being that if I'm going to be home, I might as well develop a skill. It's been super fun actually and I'm getting to the point I can begin to jam with my brother in a rudimentary fashion, so that's like bonding and shit, good stuff. Also the diet continues to go well, down 18 pounds now. I know I'm a nerd, because my diet started with a new Excel worksheet. From the data of the past month and a half it is estimated I could reach a healthy weight for my height and age by St. Patricks day with an R² value of 0.8!

That upswing last week can be directly correlated with Bradd
Gustafson coming home from Army Basic and offering to buy
all the beers. And wings. And Chinese buffet. And gas station
microwave chicken sandwiches at 4 AM. It was good night.

But I shouldn't be unemployed for long. I have an orientation lined up now for a plywood factory as a piler. Basically I'm at the end of the line, I check the planks for quality and then put them in the corresponding pile. I was a little hesitant but then I heard it was 40 hours a week, on weekdays with $12-14 an hour pay. That sold me. My plan has been to work somewhere until after New Years, living at home with zero expenses and then basically go on, take the money and run. Woo, hoo oooh. In the meantime, having money and weekends off will hopefully allow me to travel a bit on weekends. I like long drives and I miss doing them all the time.

In the meantime I'm halfway done painting the garage for a cool $200 which will pay for my trip to the Alfred Civil War this weekend. Currently we have 86 people fighting for Alfred State and 61 people fighting for Alfred University. Both sides are hell bent on bringing a solid 100. I'm amazed how well they're doing recruiting. Last year we had 75 people fighting, total, for all armies involved. We have doubled that and they are still recruiting. They are running into a problem with lack of weapons, going for a massive build-a-thon tomorrow night I guess is their plan. 

Funniest part. They were complaining how much it was all costing. I asked how much of the budget they had spent. They asked, "What budget?". Apparently the treasurer fucked off and none of them knew that the former officer corps fought tooth and nail for a $250 budget just for the war. They've been buying out of pocket. I asked if they had receipts and thank god they do so they can get reimbursed. They also paid for a sword workshop out of pocket, for which they had a $100 budget granted to them. Grumble grumble. They've already curtailed some of the events due to money concerns and if they'd of known three weeks ago this wouldn't have been a problem. Oh well, what can a graduate do?

Anywho, I'm sure I'll have pictures of all that shit. It's going to be crazy.

Just to start thing blag rollin' again

So, I haven't posted in a while and I have a bunch of pictures from my awesome adventure to the big city, NYC, to see my sister. So here is the basic run down of the trip, but I think I'm going to make an album on the facebooks for all the pictures.

We drove from Maine to NYC on a wednesday night and I took thursday and Friday off. It's the only time I've taken off from work thus far and I feel like it was definitely well spent. Anyways, we stopped in Portsmith, NH at the Portsmith Brewery which was pretty decent. A big part of this trip was good food so I kicked it off right with a Chorizo burger which kicked ass but lacked some sort of delicious sauce. We got into NYC late that night and Chris had to work in the morning (poor Chris).

Morgan and I had to do some much needed grocery shopping but then kicked it into full-blown tourist mode by walking across the Manhattan bridge. K, I lied about all the pictures...

Checkout all the GODDAMN CHEESE!!!!!

Seriously though, that place had a massive amount of cheese that picture doesn't even capture it all or do it justice.

Here you can see the Freedom Tower (also know as America's middle finger) and the brooklyn bridge. 

NYC skyline

We checked out all kind of things in Manhattan including a sweet clothing store where the prices aren't bad and they fit your clothing for free. We walked about 9-10 miles that day so we covered some serious ground. Checked out Times square where there were about 6 different people dressed as Elmo. I also saw Iron Man, Batman and Spider-man hanging out there...I dunno... they seemed legit. Basically anyone in costume tries to take a picture with you and then tries to get you to pay for it, tricksy super heros. We checked out part of the NYU campus where there were these BAMF guys who had these huge steel rings that were large enough to stand in and they would ride them around on flat ground and do sweet tricks. Also, they were jacked.

Morgan brought lobster back with her from Maine so we cooked those that night but a bunch of them had actually died. If you know anything about lobster, you know that it is risky business to cook an already dead lobster. So, after deferring to the internet which basically said that as long as they haven't been dead for more than 24 hrs we would be fine. Since they probably had died within the past 12 we went for it and let me tell you..... Dead lobster is damn, damn, damnnnnnn delicious. I would almost consider killing it before I cook it next time. There were no ill effects whatsoever except that we ate more than our fair share of lobster that night. NOM.

The next day we went to the American Museum of Natural History, which was amazing. If you are ever in NYC and have a day to burn you should definitely check it out, it was sweet. It's also enormous. Protip: all admission (as far as I understand) is actually a suggested donation so when they say "That'll be $25," you can hand them a $10 and they won't bat an eye at you. Just saying. That being said I ended up paying full price, but that is beside the point! 

Narwhal!

So, one of the most hilarious parts of the museum (for me) was the plaque underneath this Narwhal skeleton that said something like "Obviously the Narwhal's sleek body was meant for swimming quickly through the ocean." That's all it said. No mention of the GIGANTIC FUCKING TUSK on it's head, nope no mention at all. What about the tusk man? We wanna know about the tusk, did it cross-breed with a unicorn? Are there any documented cases of Narwhals poking out each other's eyes on accident? If a Narwhal plunged headfirst into the sea floor would it be able to swim backwards to get it's self unstuck? THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS KEEPING THE WORLD AWAKE AT NIGHT PEOPLE!

After the museum we hit central park which was pretty cool. Lots of people running/biking and just a bunch of tourists. NYC is full of em for sure. That evening we went to this placed called BonChon to get their famous doubly fried wings, which were delicious and spicy as all hell. I don't know how Chris hasn't blown an O-ring or something because he ate them like he didn't want to live. We went to a comedy show that had this dude from 30 Rock as a headliner. It was hilarious and it was also just awesome how many comedy shows are happening at any given time in NYC. It's crazy and the selection of everything was just mindblowing. You've got options to see all of these comedy groups where really famous people came from for not that much money and it's awesome. 

The next day we went to this awesome food festival which was insane and had like every food known to man and unknown to me. On the way I got the stroke of brilliance to call Renee because her and Toby recently moved to the Bronx in pursuit of their various degrees in higher education. As luck would have it, Renee was actually in the area (quite a ways from where she lives). So, we met up with her and ended up going to the Bronx to check out their place and see Toby. We played some Munchkin and ate some animals crackers, you know... adult stuff. Apparently Renee is training to do roller derby and was doing the same course thing my sister had done earlier. That night we actually went to a legit roller derby which was BADASS. Chicks on roller skate beating the crap out of each other. I have to say one of the best parts about the whole thing is the names of the skaters. They choose their own witty names like "Puss and Glutes", "Donna Matrix", "OMG WTF", etc.

Then, on Sunday we went to this homebrew beer festival. We sampled 30 beers (equivalent to 5-6ish beers), the tasting started at like 1PM and we were there until like 4PM. They give you a card to write comments on and then vote for the best one at the end and let me tell you... my comment card is hilarious! At least I thought it was by the end of the time I was there, I kept it because at the time I was pretty convinced that it was an entire standup routine by its self. After all that day drinking, Mo and Chris took a nap. I went on a little city adventure by myself and just walked around Brooklyn. Cool town, too bad nobody knows about it... Anyways, that night I hopped the plane back to Maine (which was extremely empty) and landed with a bakers dozen of the finest bagels I've ever had. I brought them to work that morning and was the hero of the day. This concludes my awesome recap of my trip to NYC.

More recently (last weekend), I finally made good on something I'd been promising myself I would do since the beginning of the summer. I rode my motorcycle to the ocean and just dicked around. It was awesome and I highly recommend the many therapeutic benefits of a long motorcycle ride.

Yup, I should've done this more often...

This week it is back to business and preparation for Common Ground fair. Pika will have a booth there and I'll be there for a good portion of the fair. Hoping to camp out and meet up with some fun people. In the meantime I'll be salivating over cafe racer builds on the internet.

... Well that's just the cat's nuts!

So our kitten Remy had his manhood removed recently. This was him the morning after the procedure.

Considering...I mean that's pretty good honestly.

Been doing a lot of stuff at work recently (not like that is unusual...) but Friday we got to pour concrete for another site (relatively local). We needed two trucks to fill the hole for a 75 ft. monopole and a pole for a solar panel rack. In the morning I was running a concrete vibrator and in the afternoon I was programming stuff cause that's how we roll. Cool fact, this concrete has metal fibers in it which allows the foundation to be poured without rebar, pretty slick.

Don't fall in! That's a big hole.

My sister is home visiting from NYC, so I am hanging out back home with her and the family. She went wedding dress shopping today so I was left to my own devices at home.... where I realized I don't actually have a bed anymore. Kind of strange to not have a bed at your family's house, luckily we have a couch. Sleeping in strange places seems to be a common theme for me on the weekends recently, so the couch isn't too bad. 

I got the chance to sandblast my heat exchangers and paint them with some high temperature engine enamel. They look pretty decent, there was one spot that could possibly need some attention. I might eventually braze a little gap in the sheet metal closed but I might also just not worry about it. Hopefully the paint will preserve the metal for years to come.

It's weird all these people are going back to college, gives me a strange grown-up feeling. Things are kind of slowing down now that the college kids are leaving but I'm honestly feeling pretty OK with that. I made a list of stuff to do once I moved to Westbrook and I recently reviewed it... well let's just say I've got some stuff to do and I think this will give me a chance to get myself realigned to a more consistent schedule.  

I'll be off to NYC the middle of next week with Morgan and Chris. Looking for sweet things to do while I'm there so if you guys have any suggestions, let me know! Also, I miss you wankers!

Coffee

Today was a steak and eggs kind of day. So today, I had steak and eggs for breakfast. There are really three important points that make a steak and eggs breakfast.

1. Don't do it too often, you'll ruin the magic.
2. Remember, this is an occasion.
3. Always make like wayyyyyy more steak than eggs.

So right now I'm waiting to hear back about a job as a Potato Scientist. I don't know the official title but I'm sticking with that because that is what the description sounded like. Basically driving around picking up potatoes and then testing them for quality and stuff. I'm hopeful, since it's a good paying job near home that ends around December, so exactly what I was look for. Also, I'd get to put Potato Scientist on Facebook, and that's important.

That doesn't start for a week or so, so in the meantime it's same old unemployed crapola. A lot of spending all day really really tired and having difficulty doing stuff because I'm so tired and just wanting to go to bed. Then I crawl into bed when I just can't take it anymore and suddenly a carnival pops into my head that no amount of melatonin seems to be able to shut the hell up. The next day I wake up and I'm really really tired and having difficulty doing stuff because I'm so tired and I just want to go to bed. Then I crawl into bed when I just can't take it anymore and suddenly a carnival pops into my head that no amount of melatonin seems to be able to shut the hell up and so I wake up the next day and I'm really really tired....

This is literally the only problem I'm dealing with on any level right now. Twenty four hour days, seven day weeks, over three months now spent almost exclusively just trying to tackle a basic insomnia problem and no dice. The thing is I know what's causing it. I'm not doing anything and apparently when I don't do anything, I absolutely cannot justify sleeping. My brain starts looking over the day and goes "Really? That's what we did. Fuck that you need to learn a skill or something Jesus Christ!".

Oh well, I'm going to try the bed thing again. Maybe it'll work this time. It won't, but a man has to dream.

I Got Elon All Figured Out

Okay, so we're all big time fans of the Musk around here. He does a lot of neat stuff what with the rockets and the cars and the tubes.

So it's no surprise that he's been working on a gesture based rocket design program that prints in titanium, you know, just like in Iron Man. He admits he doesn't have the hologram bit down yet, but you know he's got a guy on it.

To me, Elon has always seemed like a man who is infuriated with how slow the future is getting here and took matters into his own hands. He wants to get rid of our fossil fuel dependence and put us in space again. His personal stated goal is to not just put man on Mars, but to put his own rocket designing ass on Mars.

Now let's review the facts here. Elon is an unrepentant futurist nerd who has been compared to Tony Stark so many times that he appeared in Iron Man 2 as an intellectual equal to Mr. Stark. We know he likes Iron Man. Hell, he's apparently built the computer that builds Iron Man.

Bearing all of these iron clad facts in mind, lets jump back to the fact that his stated goal and intention is to take his glorious entrepreneurial ass and place it firmly on another planet. So there are a lot things he needs to work on to accomplish that goal. One of those things he will need, would definitely be a space suit.

Now, if he has to build a space suit from scratch, well...

Let's just say I have a strange feeling I might be privy to some of the features and color choices for that particular project. I mean just ask yourself this, if you were him, you would, wouldn't you? I mean of course you would.

Fuckin' duh.

Canadians, Canadians Everywhere!

Been hitting up the hot spots in Maine recently and you know what that means.... Canadian tourists galore! Went to OOB last weekend and was surprised at the low quality of the actual beach. Seriously, the waves just pound you. It's actually kind of dangerous, we saw an older lady get cleaned out and suck up a lung full of water... she was NOT having it. Really the main attraction to OOB is for people watching, it ranks quite high for the state.

Then this weekend I trekked it up to Baxter State park with some of my ECE buddies and Chris in hopes of climbing glorious Mt. Katahdin. However despite our 4:30AM departure from Orono, we were too late to claim a spot to climb the mountain. Basically, you can reserve a spot to climb or you can forgo that, put your nuts on the table and just show up. Well that didn't work out very well. Gates open at 6AM, we showed up at 6:20AM and found ourselves in a long line of cars. Apparently people show up way before 6 to wait in line to claim their spots. Honestly, we shouldn't have been surprised as this was probably one of the best days of the year at Baxter state park. After being somewhat disappointed, we actually had a pretty awesome time! I am very sore. We essentially did the Marston Loop (one-minute hike my ass!), which involved a couple of cool peaks and some pretty sketchy awesome rocks to climb.

We landed at this parking lot about 4 miles from where we were parked but luckily a nice dude we met on the trail gave one of us a lift back to our car. I got stung by a bee and got a little banged up otherwise but managed to not roll an ankle or sustain any other injury which was pretty good because there were certainly plenty of chances! We got off the mountain around 3:30-4PM ish and started around 7:30-8AM so it was a pretty full day of hiking. We were all quite beat when we got off the mountain, everyone who wasn't driving promptly fell asleep due to pure exhaustion during the car ride home.

View of the backside of Katahdin

Those dark patches are shadows from the clouds, not lakes. It's so beautiful Lance has to avert his eyes. 

It was cool to see the shadows of the clouds move across the forests, it was a beautiful day and very clear. I should've taken more pictures. Oh, and don't pay any attention to Lance who was caught in a moment of struggle bus riding. 

After eating a Wendy's pretzel burger and making it back to Litchfield later that evening, I promptly slept for 12.5 hrs. Solid. Today, I painted some of my VW engine tins and helped my dad splitting some gigantic wood. Also, I made contact with one of the legendary VW enthusiasts in Maine by the name of Charlie Jordan. Like all BAMF Maine VW guys he is an old gearhead who has been working on aircooled motors for half a bazillion years and during that time has amassed a pretty awesome collection himself. I was looking for certain style heat exchangers for the bus and he responded to me with a better deal than I could've gotten basically anywhere else. That is one thing I really enjoy about VW stuff is the people I've met. I'm kind of digging into this really niche community of people and putting together the pieces of who has what and knows stuff. Between Charlie and Steve (guy who is doing my engine) they're responsible for rebuilding a good deal of the air cooled vehicles in the state but I don't think anyone quite realizes that. 

Anyways, Charlie has been restoring (slowly I might add) a Notchback. Which is a pretty sweet looking ride and very rare in Maine. Despite being an enthusiast and attending several VW shows in Maine I have yet to see one in person or even on craigslist (Maine)... and trust me I have my radar on. As luck would have it, Charlie's Notchback is in the body shop getting a minor detail on the paint job finished... so I didn't get to drool over it. I did, however buy his heat exchangers and chat with him a bit. He has been all over the place in old school VWs. He did Rt. 66 in his split window bus and he spent a bunch of time in Europe hiking and doing some car related things. That is the one thing about VW enthusiasts, they tend to have similar interests and personality traits. They're very detail oriented and by the book folks when it comes to anything technical. At the same time though they wear tie dye and draw naked women on their vehicles. It makes for interesting conversations. That's another thing.. they love to talk. Which is good because so do I and I am trying to trick them into giving me their years of VW knowledge.

This bus has been basically everywhere

3.5 bugs, 1 squareback, two vanagons and a split window bus

A few minutes after I arrived Charlie rolled up in a 72 bus (from California I might add) which he basically stole off some dude and has been running for the past several years with a rebuilt engine. Inside his garage are another few bugs, a Porsche or two and some other air-cooled car that I didn't recognize the name of. Charlie has all indicators of being a complete boss. 

Things at work have been cool, we're building some sweet test equipment that I probably won't talk about on the internet but if you're down my way I can show you what we've been up to. 

Anyways, hoping to possibly work on the engine next weekend but we'll see how that goes. For now I will keep myself occupied by trying to figure out why my motorcycle wants to run sometimes but not other times....

My Room is Clean

Quick Side Note: Tony brought up letting Sam blag on here, wouldn't hurt my feelings to have guest blags. How do you feel about it James? I know you're reading this shit you creepy fuck. In fact I'm going to go ahead and casually ask for a creepy fuck check-in down in the comments. We love you all. I think.

Let that title sink in. Then realize that this has been my rooms perpetual state for a month.

A whole month. Clothes don't get left on the floor. The bed is made upon waking up. I wipe my desk off, regularly.

Pictured: An anomaly.

Usually, this is not the case for the Tyler. Usually my room/living space looks like an IED had just gone off and took out a couple small rodents with it. This is usually because I am just too busy to maintain it. But this excuse has flown out the window of late.

So after a week of sort of being disorientated by the whole job thing I'm getting back on the hunt. I'm searching in the Aroostook county area because realistically I'm too damned broke to attempt moving anywhere without a hefty parental loan. I'd prefer to head somewhere with enough to begin an apartment hunt of some kind. There are actually several jobs locally that don't royally suck. Some even come with benefits. I'm putting in applications tomorrow. The nice thing is I have zero expenditures at home. I'll put all that money away and when there is enough to get the fuck out, I will promptly get the fuck out.

Also I just started on a diet type thing because apparently sitting at home doing nothing is bad for your health. I've put on 15 pounds this summer which is Grade A bullshit. I've also put together a strict list of daily to do's like wake up at 7, don't skip breakfast, move some part of your body more than the distance from your room to the fridge. You know, basic level human stuff that most people don't have to put on a checklist. I also put stuff on their like "read something about physics" to keep myself from getting stale on the stuff and "write a blog post" which is not necessarily here. I need to get back on the writing amusing shit train. Otherwise, what the hell am I doing?

The overall point is that I'm finally sort of tackling this massive case of apathy that has sort of ruled over my summer so far. I was more active today than I've been in weeks and I wrote a schedule for tomorrow and the next day. The other important point I've made is to tell people I'm doing all this so they can call me out on it when I fuck up. It's been sort of easy to do nothing when no one whatsoever is there to judge said lack of stuff-doing. Feel free to hard-ass in my direction at any time.

I've got about eight job apps to run through before bed and then a samurai sword based workout to try out in the morning. Also, I made a Vine.

We should do the Hangout thing sometime soon. I'll try to be showered...

Showering? Oh shit, add that to the list.

Picturesque

A truly spectacular picture of Emily taken by Cait Charles.  Found it creepin through old MSSM pictures after being inspired by posting the Solar Balloon to facebook.

Back To Square One

Just got done with my job at the fair picking up trash and shoveling horse poop for minimum wage. Surprisingly I was really enjoying the job. Everyone I was working with had a good sense of humor and we managed to make this literally crappy job pretty entertaining.

Well once that job was done I got a call from Elliot telling me that Nature's Classroom got a hold of him and told him that they had to rescind the offer for the job. Well this set me in a panic so I gave them a call. Turns out I don't have a job with them. This has sort of messed up everything I've had planned and I'm back to where I was last month, except now I know UMaine denied me. It's all rather disconcerting.

So I'm on the job hunt again. Grumble grumble. In the meantime I've been watching a hell of a lot of this show, The Thick of It. I started watching because they announced the 12th Doctor would be played by Peter Capaldi, who became famous playing Malcolm Tucker on The Thick of It. It's sort of like The Office, but set in the Minister of Social Affairs office and with a lot more cursing. Malcolm Tucker turns cussing into a high art form. Some of my favorites so far:

You are a real boring fuck. Sorry, sorry, I know you disapprove of swearing so I'll sort that out. You are a boring F, star, star, CUNT! 

Just fucking do it! Otherwise you'll find yourself in some medieval war zone in the Caucasus with your arse in the air, trying to persuade a group of men in balaclavas that sustained sexual violence is not the fucking way forward! 

Don't get sarcastic with me, son. We burned this tight-arsed city to the ground in 1814. And I'm all for doing it again, starting with you, you frat fuck. You get sarcastic with me again and I will stuff so much cotton wool down your fucking throat it'll come out your arse like the tail on a Playboy bunny. 

Does that not fit within your purview, Marie Antoinette? Why don't you just scuttle off back to fucking Cranford and play around with your tea and your cakes and your fucking horse cocks. Let them eat cock! 

Christ on a bendy-bus. Don't be such a fucking faff arse. 

Good fuckity bye bye! 

So at least we know this next Doctor can properly pull off angry. This fan trailer is also worth watching.

Well back to watching that and trying to ignore the impending doom that is my life currently.

Veeeedub Show!

Kicked off the weekend on Friday getting our first Beta wind turbine flying at a site in Bethel. Proud to say it was a very windy day in Bethel today and the turbine was killin' it. I sandblasted some more engine tins and saw the movie "2 Guns". If you're looking for a solid movie to see that won't disappoint, definitely see that one it has many memorable lines that will get you laughing. 

All primed up

Made my way our to the Acton fairgrounds (way, way west like further west than you ever want to go in Maine) this past weekend for the annual all VW car show. Saw some cool cars and some interesting people but struck out on finding any parts I've been looking for. It was a beautiful day and I actually had a damn pleasant trip out there, I didn't spend a whole lot of time at the show because it was pretty small and it is probably more fun if you actually bring a drivable VW. Anyways, I made my way around and chatted with some gearheads and some.... something heads. 

Sweet looking lowered beetle

One of the funniest things about these shows is how freakin' tacky they are. Everyone is wearing tie dye shirts and nearly every car has a vanity license plate, I think you can actually vote for the best vanity plate. A bunch of the cars have pretty offbeat/awesome bumper stickers/window clings/stuff written on them. My personal favorite was a bug that had a window cling on the rear windshield that read "Fucking Classy" in this awesome classy script font.

Jealousy. I have it. 

Two single cabs were at the show, one split window and one bay window. Both were in awesome shape and I was very envious of them. Also there is a small younger crowd that shows up to this show. They're all into the newer watercooled VW stuff and they tend to be a bit more abrasive?

Yup. 

Some of their cars are pretty cool. I definitely dig the hilariously lowered rabbit pickup trucks that they brings every year but it's just hard for me to get excited about cars that look like this: 

Cool story bro.

To keep things really in the VW spirit, there was of course... this guy. 

He wore a straw hat, no shoes, no shirt and seemed to be everywhere I was. Here's our friend reliving his glory days and checking out a pretty excellent Karmen Ghia (the only one at the show). 

I found myself actually gravitating toward the Vanagon stuff this year, which I usually don't spend much time checking out. There were four Vanagons at the show but three of them were sweet and totally customized out. One of them was a subaru conversion, another had a pretty large solar panel on it with a highly customized interior and the third had a diesel engine swap that was converted to run on vegetable oil.... and I think it was lifted too. That diesel bus was pretty sweet actually and it basically looked like the ideal vehicle to climb Mt. Katahdin and then deep fry some shit at the summit. 

Some serious stuff going on in that engine bay!

Finally on my way home I was gassing up and came across this old couple struggling to keep their MG B running. I took this opportunity to spring into action and use the tool bag that I've been optimizing for the past 4 years or so.... Honestly, I have gotten out of so many jams with that thing, it's ridiculous! This was no exception, they were leaking fuel out of this valve pretty badly and we were able to seal it off with some teflon tape and electrical tape (both were in my bag). It was kind of gratifying to help this guy who was probably about my Dad's age. He had a tool kit with him (I mean, he drives an MG) but didn't have space for much. Anyways, we got him running and I think he made it home so he can actually fix the problem.

D'awh Lil MG... 

Apparently the dude had purchased the car at the Owl's Head Transportation Museum auction a couple years ago. He was a big fan of Owl's Head, so as soon as I found that out we were buds. Pretty sure if they had a granddaughter my age that they would've willed her off to me right then and there. 

Late Weekend Update

Had a pretty productive weekend last weekend. Fixed this guitar amp that we broke during a kitchen dance.... yes, this thing has been in my parents garage taking up space, not working for the past 6 or so years. Anyways, I returned that to my main(e) man Cheney. Also got my motorcycle running to a good enough point that I'm basically like fuck it I'mma drive it till it falls apart. I also ordered a bunch of parts for my bus so they're on the way to the machine shop. I should be making a trip there in the next couple weeks to do more engine assembly.


ALSO, Sam Put-put-putney was home last weekend. So, I rolled out the red carpet for a limited edition Sunday morning tour at Pika.

Sam's Red Taco

It was awesome hanging out with Sam, he's a stellar guy. I actually proposed to him that we make him a member of the blag so he can post what he's up to which is pretty damn interesting usually. He was the ideal tour candidate and we got to geek out over all our awesome stuff at Pika and then we grabbed a quick bite before he hit the road headed back to NY.

Fixing the Queen's Windmill

It's been a while, so I'm just gonna dump some pictures and say some stuff.

So, this guy totally came over.

Yup, that's a bacon weave on my patio. 

That was a wild weekend and yes my roommates were a little perturbed by everyone staying over. We probably should've planned a little better, but it all worked out in the end. Ship it. 

I went to see Bare Naked Ladies, Guster and Ben Folds Five (which consists of 3 people). It was pretty awesome, the Havus were there (Sup James? I know you're probably reading this you creepy fuck) which was cool and Danny Friedman too. We were able to finagle our way up to some much better seats than what we paid for which was quite awesome.

Bare Naked Ladies

I wish the show was a little more Guster focused but Bare Naked Ladies were awesome and also hilarious. Definitely a good time. The only problem was the timing, it was on a Sunday night in Bangor... Let's just say I was dragging a little bit Monday morning.

I also bought a grill and a suburban fire pit/holder/enormoussaladbowl thing. Still need a gas bottle though, apparently a new one is like $45, which is kinda lame.

Gravity defying grill!

Visited the guy who is doing my bus motor, they should be finishing the heads in the next two weeks (sureee.....), I hope. In the meantime, we sorted out all of the tin and identified a few pieces I still needed to sand blast. So, I got a little bit of that done while I was home.

At work we've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off, which is standard operating procedure for any real startup. One of the cooler and more challenging tasks I've been involved with has been keeping one of our Alpha installations up and running. The cool part about this installation is the land owners also happen to own a certain high performance electric car... In other news, I actually saw TWO Teslas today.... I mean that might be all of the ones in Maine to be real. On my way back to work from the site we passed one on the road, my Tesla radar went off hardcore and I caught it turning the corner. WANT.

Hate it when I run into shit in my Model S... that'll buff out right?

Of course I've been making the rounds in and about Portland. Went to trivia this week and got some indian food. Also been keeping this damn kitten from tearing down the house. Oh, and my motorcycle is kinda sorta almost fixed.... After cleaning the carbs and finding sand in them, we put them back together only to find that we did something wrong. Took them apart again seeing nothing really wrong and then put them back together. Essentially we did the mechanical equivalent of turning it on and then off again and they kind of work now. So, I'll be adjusting that shit and riding to work when it doesn't threaten rain. 

Our software engineer has his last day tomorrow at Pika, kind of a bummer that he's leaving because he's an ultra cool guy (MSSM alum actually) and he's also very good at what he does. It will be interesting to see how the engineering team (me and this other guy) pick up the slack.

Ian's Back

Since returning to the US of A I have been doing a lot of work.  Upon my return I had the pleasure of being "the tentpole" holding up a very important document release, so I got to work 4 workdays in two actual days.  That was fun!

This video features Adam Savage using the same mini screwdrivers I stole from Tony.  Dang things are handy!

I have also started taking a series of pictures with Astronaut Roommate, who was gifted to me in Australia.  He's the best.  Not too good at paying rent though.

Furthermore, I hope you have all been watching the Newsroom and getting your Aaron Sorkin fill.  I also went hiking.  That was fun.