Sunday, June 30, 2013

Coolest Kid in Town...

Ran across this suave machine in the Old Port the other day, clearly belongs to the hippest of the hipsters.
Sex-Machine
Had a good weekend, I re-installed the carbs on my motorcycle Saturday but it is idling very, very high. I've been trying to adjust the throttle cable and the idle screw but haven't quite gotten it all to jive together yet. I probably would've been able to get it today but didn't want to be the neighbor who is literally revving an engine for half an hour trying to adjust stuff. I will probably just have to suck it up and do that soon so I can safely ride the thing. Hoping I don't have to uninstall the carbs again just to readjust stuff. We'll see... Good news is I am fairly certain that I fixed the original problem, but I've just created a new one in the process.

Made my way downstate today to catch up with Sean, Doug, their associated compadres and the one and only Joe Durgs. That's right folks, he's back from the dead and working full-time at Unum in South Portland. Joe is just as slick as ever and is the proud owner/operator/commander? of a herd/gaggle/flock of bees. I guess he plans to make some honey from them eventually. Either way I'm planning on giving him a tour of Pika (which is only a couple miles from Unum) and then hopefully incorporating him in a completely stacked Trivia team consisting of James and Josh Scrip. Hoping to hang out with Joe more actually though. In all honesty I haven't seen him in a long time, I really enjoy him and I was happy to learn he is in the area.

Hoping to start a regular regiment of rowing this week. We'll see how that goes. Also trying to acquire a cheap grill on craigslist, I've been seeing inexpensive grills that need replacement grates/ignitors. My dad just ordered some for his grill online, so it can't be THAT hard. Finally got a charger for the laptop I got from David a while back only to find out there is a login password. Hoping David has a good guess on what it is, either that or I'll be spending some time bashing around with a linux Live CD trying to break into it somehow.

Also one of our cats peed on my bed this weekend when I accidentally shut her in my room. I am taking this as a good omen for the week. SSSSSHHH Don't ruin my optimism.


Saturday, June 29, 2013

More 'Stralia

Neighbors Dog

Refracting waves off the sea wall

New Roommate... he was on sale!

Plaque is a photograph taken in the same place 131 years prior

Great Ocean Road

Tall Tree is Tall

Cantilevered viewing area

My Dad running back when he realized it was swaying

Chief export of Australia, cute fuzzy stuffed marsupials

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Craigslist for life!

The other day we moved the Bridgeport to Pika. I took one picture of it fully assembled next to our awesome new lather but it came out like crap, so instead I will show you an epic picture of it being unloaded.
And that was the last time the bottom of the milling machine ever looked that way again.

Just kidding, the move went pretty well. In all honesty I didn't have much to do with it.... I wonder if there is a correlation there. While I was taking pictures I figured you guys might like to see some of the stuff I do. This is the wind turbine dyno we have at work. Basically, we spin the turbine with an electric motor to simulate different wind conditions and then do a bunch of debugging and reliability testing with it. The power from the turbine is actually fed back through to the grid with our inverter too.

Givin' windymills the hot suppah! 
Ended up getting a pretty good deal on this rowing machine from craigslist. $75 for a rowing machine that is about $600 new, I didn't even haggle with the guy on the price because I'm fairly certain I could throw it right back up and sell it for twice what I bought it.

I'm currently thinking about some modifications to make it into a more legitimate rowing machine. Basically there is this one machine that all the gyms have that is super legit and like $1700. All the big rowing enthusiasts/snobs on the internet love it and stuff. After rowing on this one just once I can tell it is different from the one I used at Umaine. Also, tentative plans to hack into it and make it grid tied... more on this in THE FUTURE.

Checked out some garage space today that is about 2 miles from my place. Looked pretty good, not huge but big enough and seems to be the right price. If I can get this other fellow to go in on it with me it might become the bus' new home. This guy used to run a car detailing shop out of it, seemed like it was kinda under the table. Anyways, it's even insulated and the guy had a pellet stove in there for the winter. 

Only problem is it is kind of in a ghettoish area of Westbrook, but I think it would be fine. When I say Ghetto, I just mean weirdos mostly a lot of harmless weirdos. 

Looks like more rain coming up for the weekend... I will need to find a way to play this to my advantage somehow... 



Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Don't Lathe Me Bro

So, this arrived at work today.
Brand new lathe! It's like Christmas for dorks!
Had a fun time getting it uncrated and slowly lowering it to the ground using our ancient egyptian wooden lever arm techniques. The lathe is a Grizzly G0709 Gunsmith Lathe with 14" swing and 40" working length. It's fresh off the boat from China where all quality products are made. Hopefully we'll get someone (possibly me) on wiring it later this week, we also need to put in 7 liters of oil (that's a lot of oil). Basically it will be sweet when we get this thing up and running. We're also moving in the Bridgeport tomorrow morning. Hopefully no one is harmed in the moving of that behemoth. 

These machine tools are making me want to build a battle bot this year. I've got a 2.4Ghz radio I picked up from hobbyking a while back and I've recently found the old McCartney bot motors and wheels. I'm going to keep my eyes open and slowly accumulate some parts, maybe learn solidworks along the way. Either way, I basically have access to a lathe and milling machine now so.... uhhh... hell yes?!?!?! 

Struck out on buying a rowing machine on craislist today only to find an even better deal that was just posted today.... More on this soon, I hope. 

Waiting on some gaskets for my motorcycle before I can get it back on the road. Hopefully will be in by the end of the week, but that's no biggie because the weather is calling for thunderstorms all week. Go go gadget Maine June! 

Monday, June 24, 2013

More Australia

Lemon tree very pretty, A+ Chinese restaurant, my cousin Olivia, cargo ship.







Sunday, June 23, 2013

And Now Our House Smells Like Gasoline...

Went to this Beach called Ferry Beach in Saco, pretty sweet place with very few people. Found two hermit crabs and overall had a nice time. Trying to hit as many different beaches as possible this summer, it is very nice living like less than a 40 minute drive to all kinds of different beach options. I would highly recommend beachin' it, as it is wicked fun and super relaxing.

Anyways, after the beach I went to town on my motorcycle. It's been having this intermittent issue where I start it get into it a little bit (give it some gas) and the engine just kinda bogs down. This only happens sometimes and might be consistent over a ride and might not be. Since my bike no longer acts like a BP oil rig, I figured it should start acting like a more consistent motorcycle.

I took the gas tank off and checked for any blockages in the fuel line/valve. I also removed the carburetors in hopes of cleaning them.
Funny how awkwardly naked a motorcycle looks when it doesn't have a seat. 
 I couldn't removed a couple of the screws in the carbs, not to mention I didn't have much of a clue what I was really looking for or doing. I just knew I wanted to attempt to clean the carbs incase this was the source of my issue and also for my own education/edutainment. Anyways, so like any strong willed, independent young adult.... I kinda gave up and called an adult. I really needed a vice to hold everything and take it apart without stripping screws. I read online about folks breaking screws trying to get these things apart, I was hoping to avoid that.

Flash forward to today and after a trip home my carbs have been disassembled, cleaned and reassembled. Found some sand-like crap in the bottom (float bowl) of each of them, hoping that might be the source of the issue. Also learned how carbs work.... kinda sorta. I need to locate a couple of new gaskets and then I can reinstall the carbs and see if we fixed it. Hoping to do that by like Thursday...ish.

Since I was home and all, I took the opportunity to feed my ongoing desire to fill our basement with stuff, so I grabbed a bunch of my electrical stuff to setup.

Look familiar?
Yup, it's the same table I had in our old room and believe it or not... some of the stuff in that box has been with my since before then. It's pretty hard for me to part with good junk ok guys. The table is pretty lulz too and has epoxy stains from like forever ago. Lots of things have been created and destroyed on this table. Hoping to mess around with a fancy microcontroller board thingy at some point too. After I get a windows machine up and running that is. The board uses an ARM processor (similar to what is used in your cellphone) which means its BAMF and STMicro subsidized the making of this dev board for students so it's very cheap and packed with cool stuff. 

In other news, I got an interesting response on my craigslist ad. This guy is actually looking for a similar space to restore his mid 90's Mazda Miata. He was wondering if we could look together and maybe go in on a two bay garage if we can find it. The guy sounds pretty cool and I'm totally up for going halves on a space if we can find one, at the very least it will be nice to have another set of eyes looking. Best case scenario, we find a sweet place and have awesome car restoration adventures. 

Finally Sharron (Mrs. Gerrish) is in the are for the next few days and she'll be stopping by for a tour of Pika tomorrow. Should be a good time, I'm looking forward to showing her the place. I'd like to cobble together a wind turbine from our old scrapped revisions eventually and throw it up at her place. We'll see if that ever actually becomes reality but maybe I can get her fired up about the idea tomorrow. 

Also been oddly fired up about Wednesday after watching this video...

Australia Beaches

Beer is expensive here!






Saturday, June 22, 2013

Home Alone

Tony I am happy to see you are being proactive. Ian, good to hear from you again, glad to see you're out and about, seeing the world. I love reading all these Git-R-Done posts, because I get to respond with my tales of the lazy and uninspired. The thing is I feel like I was really productive today, but that is a relative term. You'll understand soon enough.

The weekend is upon us Gentlemen. As a result I have the house to myself as my Mother and Brother are both out rocking the County nightlife. As they are the only two people in the County who know me at this point, I did not join them in prancing off into the night. I was actually told by my Mother that she would not be back until the morning. I get the feeling that her forties have become like this wonderful sequel to her younger years, except this time she has income. Good for her. My brother is out being the Duke of County Nightlife as far as I can tell and that's neat, someone needs to do it.

So anywho, my life has been following a script since I got home. Wake up at two even though I set an alarm for eleven. Then I go knock on my brothers door since he has a job in society at 3:30. He doesn't say "Good morning" or even more appropriately "Good afternoon". He doesn't even just like sigh or something at the time or prattle on about his crazy night. No he opens his eyes and without even a hint of sarcasm in his voice says "MAKE FOOD".

Do you want to know the really sick part? I do it. I ask him what he wants. He doesn't give me a straight answer. I have to throw ideas to him while he lays in his queen size bed and pets his cats. The whole thing is a fucking charade anyway, I'm going to make Macaroni and Cheese. We are only 10 minutes from the border and that Kraft Dinner craving certainly nested in my brothers brain. Best bit is that he hates cheese. Gets his pizza without it. That should tell you something about the thing which Kraft has created.

This is followed by him going to work and me whisking away into my monks study to transcribe some ancient work or something. Note: I think I'm going to refer to Ctrl+C as the transcribe button now. Why did we ever let those silicon valley nerds pick out copy and paste for us, Jesus. Then my mom gets home and more eloquently asks me what we're having for dinner than my brother did. I cook something and my brother gets home with a look on his face of aggravation that I haven't finished dinner yet. He doesn't know it yet, but he is a purpose-built Father straight out of the 1950's. He wants his food made for him, yearns for the old music (given that's 90's alternative), keeps his Cadillac meticulously shined (full wax, every Wednesday) and holds the family traditions of Christmas sacred (one of which is he gets to open presents first, he just keeps reminding me it's tradition, this might be why I think traditions are bullshit).

Then I surf the internet until about midnight where I get too tired to keep it up and try to go to bed. That doesn't work, all god damned night. I just sit there and go crazy until about 10 AM when I finally conk out until 2 PM. Then I get up telling myself that it will be different tomorrow.

Anyway, today I broke script. Thats why I feel sort of accomplished. I woke up at noon (Holy shit, right?). I still made my brother food, this time. Then I watched the Daily Show. My brother got home, asked for food. I told him I wanted a SPAM sandwich. He said hell no. I said fine and made one for myself. He had Macaroni and Cheese. Then I got in my car and went to the movies because I wanted to see This is the End and I wasn't going to let my lack of social group from stopping that.

Pro-tip: Go to the movies alone. It's awesome. I don't really know why, but I enjoyed going solo. Funny as shit movie too.

Enjoyed the drive home with the top down. I actually haven't put it up on the ol' Jeep since I got home since I can just park it in the garage when it rains. Then I sat down in the living room and watched two more hours of stand up specials while drinking some beers and eating beef jerky. I was down right blissful. Looked out the window and saw clouds in front of the moon. Reminded me of the album cover to Coheed and Cambria's album In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. So I cranked the album on principle and lets it's groovy tunage run through the house. Ran out of beers so switched over to the box wine stored in the laundry room. Now I'm in my room cranking tunes and drinking box wine out of a mason jar and for some fucking reason I feel accomplished. Pretty fucked isn't it?

Oh well, still have the house to myself. I'll just sit here and as the title implies, await the arrival of Joe Pesci and the tall guy so I can doop their burglary with marbles and shit. In the meantime going to crank some heavy metal and pretend I'm Greg Puciato. Time to break shit.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Where all my Beaches at?!


Messed around in Portland tonight with Kevin and Kelsey (his lady friend). Grabbed some mexican food, got on a surprise ferris wheel and enjoyed some Gelato. Also avoided some creepy guy who was trying to put his pipe in people's mouths in the Old Port.... weird. Anyways, all in all a pretty solid day. Actually got some stuff fixed at work today, so I was pretty pumped about that. We're getting a pretty ghetto shower installed so folks can ride their bikes to work which will be cool. 

Woke up to this today.
I would solidly say that the cats and I are in an alliance of some kind at this point. 
Hoping to head to the beach tomorrow morning and beat some thunderstorms. Also going to investigate some issues on my motorcycle, I have a suspicion something is clogging the fuel line or something. Finally my housemate is house sitting for a place down the road that has a hot tub so.... tomorrow night looks like Bruins and hot tubbing, not bad at all.

In the meantime the bus is sitting idle at home and the engine guy hasn't called me back to continue work on it..... Hrrrmmmm. However, I am being proactive and trying to find garage space down this way, I even posted this super legit Craigslist ad! I also just e-mailed this group that is trying to start a hackerspace in South Portland. Time to get proactive bitches.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Summer So Far (Also an unintentionally lengthy rant about 8th grade promotionals)

Evening gents, sorry I haven't posted in a bit but I have been sort of living out of a suitcase for two weeks. I haven't had a job since I got home but have been busy dealing with family stuff. My grandfather had a stroke while I was graduating (don't worry, he does this every few months, stubborn bastard refuses to let it take him down). As a result he was a little more mentally discombombulated than usual. So the first few weeks of break I was heading out to the grandparents house pretty frequently to keep an eye on him while Gram ran chores in town. He keeps on forgetting that he can't walk good and getting out of bed and falling over. His head is absolutely covered in bloody scars from all his falls (as I said, stubborn bastard, refuses to admit it hurts as he bleeds out multiple holes in his face). One time he fell out of a chair at our house and went right through the sheetrock wall. Laughed it off as we pulled him out. So I'd sit over there and watch Deadliest Catch while he'd explained to me how women did all the work in Okinawa while the men just sat around and drank. Also they would apparently cut your lawn with scissors for $1 which one of my relatives informs me may be a metaphor for something. My mother is 100% convinced she has a Japanese half-sister she hasn't met. Korea was a neat war, MASH told me all about it.

Then I got on a plane for Detroit, MI to see my cousin Heather graduate high school. Not a very eventful trip, all the flights were on time, TSA was helpful and courteous and I ate a really big steak. The graduation ceremony was textbook, they wanted to thank family and friends who were present, the faculty, but most of all this graduating class of 2013. A bunch of stuff about how Davison was a unique high school, which is super touching when you went there and think of it fondly but when you're an outsider flown in to view the ceremonies it is hard to relate. At the end of the day their super unique local graduation ceremony looks like all the other several thousand super unique high school graduations happening all around America. Perspective can be a bitch. Flew back and was happy to get home to my desktop computer.

Side note: My family has referred to my desktop as my girlfriend for some time now. It doesn't help that I call her Linda. This is primarily because Linda is one of the finest female names, in my humble opinion, to yell angrily when the damned thing won't play The Matrix on Blu-Ray. Ended up watching Equilibrium instead, which is really the poor mans Matrix. Fuck you Linda, you Blu-Ray scratching cuntloaf. This side note got off track quick...

Side Note II: Adding this because the following rant got way out of hand really quick, I didn't even know I was going to rant about this, but I did. If you want to read this later skip down to the TL;DR, conveniently in bold.

Anyway, the day after we got back I went to my cousin Ian's Grade 8 promotional (my fourth godforsaken graduation in a month). I went because Ian is Grade A respectable folk and deserving of celebration. He ranks high on my Quality Related Peoples list. In spite of Sir Ian's qualities, this promotional was by far the most unbearable of the cavalcade of congratulatory ceremonies I had to attend this month.

First of all, hot ass gymnatorium or audinasium or whatever the official terminology, hot as hell ceremony. Bad start, poor air flow is never good. Then there were the awards. Everyone got like twelve, at least it seemed that way. The awards were frequently explained to be prestigious and incredibly difficult to obtain and then like 75% of the kids got it, which in my opinion is not very prestigious at all.

Then there was the fact that this 8th grade promotion was longer than most of the real graduations I attended, it took like two hours. It was lengthened by the horrendously inefficient awarding style. Even though every award had like 96 recipients they first would call out all the names, so they could form the line. They didn't call names to receive the award, they called them up to form the long ass line. Once this line was formed, they called all the names again and the recipients walked all the way from the left side of the stage to the right to receive the award. Keep this in mind, every student walking alone across the whole stage, it plays into the final nail in the coffin.

We had to wait until the end of each award, so all 96-ish 8th graders, before we could applaud in anyway. Would have been nice to break the monotony and maybe stir up a little airflow in this hot box they may or may not refer to as an audinasium (gymnatorium? It might be a cafeteria too, I just don't know) . So they called a name, that student walked across the stage, alone, awkward and in complete fucking silence. Each time they called a name the audience member was greeted with an 8th grader who would walk out and look out at the audience. They were trying to find their family whom they couldn't find because the family isn't allowed to make their presence known. Then they get awkward as they realize the only noise in this entire Cafetorsium (Audicafenasium?) was them walking across the stage. They usually sped up about halfway across, I mean that's only natural. Then there were some kids whose parents couldn't hold it in, so you'd hear a solitary whoo-hoo that was usually cut off before the hoo by a bystander. Therefore it came out as sort of at a "WHOO-Heeeeeyyy sorry..." which left that kid feeling more awkward and left out. They would resort to averting their gaze from the audience and staring at their friends with an eye roll. No matter what strategy the family/kid went with, it was awkward.

Then there was the sheer number of awards. Perfect attendance for the school year, perfect attendance for all of middle school, high score on reading section of exam A, high score on math section of exam A, high score on reading section of exam B, high score on math section of exam B, presidential fitness award, honor roll, high honor roll, presidential scholar award, citizenship award, community service award and fuck all just about everyone in that damned class won every damned award.

Also lets just break down the reality that they had a proper goddamned ceremony for 8th grade graduation. The parents around me were lamenting that this ceremony was more agonizing than the 5th grade graduation they had just attended. 5th grade graduation? Who are these ceremonies for? The kids don't like dressing up and sitting quiet, the parents don't want to sit in a crowded auditorium and none of those certificates will be remotely locatable in one years time. They said that the perfect attendance awards would look good to employers. Tell me how many middle school awards you list on your resume? Did the fact that you made high honors in middle school ever matter at all in day to day life? IT'S MIDDLE SCHOOL! The entire purpose of middle school academically is to prep you for high school and socially the purpose is to learn how to cuss properly and get into awkward prepubescent relationships! Nowadays it's main purpose is to create a generation of people with exceedingly embarrassing Facebook histories.

Now I want to rant about that, maybe later.

TL;DR Congratulations to Ian. Not you Ian. Congratulations to Ian, not Ian, Ian.








Monday, June 17, 2013

Seriously Long Walk On the Beach

This past Saturday my friend Liz and I went to Dungeness Spit (click for map).  It is apparently one of the best examples of a (nautical) spit in the world.




Moral of the story, it is a REALLY REALLY REALLY long walk.  Like 5.5 miles each way through sand long walk.  I really missed the memo on this one and wore jeans and converse and didn't bring any water.  Oops!  Even though I read the wikipedia page in my head I thought it was like a mile tops.


After spilling coffee all over my car and turning a cupholder in a coffee lake, we got in line for the ferry at Edmonds around 10AM.  We were on the ferry by 11, and off on the other side of the sound by 11:30.  I was very impressed with the size of the ferry (202 vehicles!!) and the efficiency of the crew at loading and unloading the boat.  Then it was an additional hour and change to the spit.  This included my favorite intersection ever, where Woodcock Road meets Kitchen Dick Lane.  I am not kidding.


This is the beginning of the spit.  There is a lighthouse at the end, but its so far away you can't see it.  When you can see it on the walk you are about halfway there.


This is the sweet sign out by the lighthouse.  Apparently I neglected to take a picture of the lighthouse, so you'll have to internet search it.  It was very pretty, and apparently you can volunteer for a week to be lighthouse keeper and maintain the place.  Definitely worth it, the views were just insanely gorgeous.



They also had one of the old Fresnel lenses from the lighthouse inside.  It was old (made around 1906 I think it said), and very brass and expensive.  You could see the toolmarks in the metal, amazing to think the old lathe that turned out some of the fittings...


After the 11 mile hike (did I mention it's hard to walk on sand?!) we headed back to Sequim (pronounced squim) for fish and chips and then caught the ferry back to our side of the sound.  Dumping our shoes out was fun, I think there was more sand and stones in there than there was foot.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Southern Maine Weekend

So it feels kind of strange to have a Friday night where not much is going on. It's been a while since there wasn't some sort of social gathering on a friday night. Anyways, I kicked off my weekend basically Saturday morning by going to the "Great State of Maine Yard Sale" which was kind of cool but also kind of a let down. It was $5 to get in and I wasn't that impressed with the stuff they had there. It was so commercialized that there were a lot of antiques, crafty things and stuff you generally would not actually find at a real yard sale. That being said, Kevin and I both scored towel racks for $5 each.... ehh I'll take it. I passed up on a pair of LL bean snow shoes for $35... and I will probably kick myself for it this winter but we'll see.

Anyways, after that we took off to the beach and enjoyed chilling in the sun. The water was pretty damn cold but it was fun to stand in it anyways. Got a couple small awkward sunburns in the places that I clearly missed with sunscreen. Overall not bad though for a beach outing. Hung around the old port for a bit late that afternoon and ran a couple errands. Also met a dude with a sweet 1972 honda 175 in the old port, ended up talking with him for a while about cool motorcycles and VWs. His bike was immaculate and the paint was in great shape for the year despite not being restored. He also had a helmet painted gold (same as the bike) which made him pretty easy to spot.

I went to several places to find the right coat hook setup. Basically I really wanted some hooks to put my coat on after I came inside (seems like a pretty natural thing to desire). For some reason our apartment doesn't have anything to fulfill this need. Anyways, since I live with two other roommates I discussed what I wanted and after disagreeing completely.... then realizing it was a good idea they allowed me to put up some hooks with one condition, it must have a shelf on top of it. Why? I have no idea. Oh actually there was another condition, it had to be black so it would match everything else in the living room. After striking out at two places I finally found an unfinished set of coat hooks with a shelf. Spent a little time this afternoon painting it and installing it. Feeling pretty Bob Vila right now, not going to lie. I also mounted the towel rack that I got at the yard sale, awhh yea!

Also went on a nice long motorcycle ride today, after fixing my bike earlier this week it has been kind of painful not being able to ride it due to loads of intermittent crappy weather. I actually rode out to Sebgao lake briefly which was kinda cool.

Chatted with Tyler today about starting a food truck and it has been on my mind all day after seeing this craigslist ad. Also been reading about it online. Seems kind of awesome but might be a lot more money to start initially than I realized. Some folks say like $60k but I find that pretty hard to believe because I would definitely just do all the retrofitting of the truck myself. Anyways, I've been thinking about cool little business ideas to put money towards as a kind of investment and a food truck or something similar doesn't sound like it is that far out of reach. Also, I know enough unemployed people that I feel like I could always find someone to work at it.


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Well, there is your problem...

So we're pretty legit, Pika even has a sign now.

Almost like we're a real, live company!
Anyways, it's been a slow past few days. Went to David Jameson's going away shindig which of course consisted of hitting up a bunch of some of the Old Port's finest establishments. I acquired a bunch of the stuff he was trying to get rid of before moving to Oregon later this week. Things like a laptop with no power cord, a broken printer that had been hit with a hammer, a broken and a working airsoft gun, a set of logitech speakers and some old books (grabbed a cool one on model rocketry for you Ian). So best of luck to David (who seems to have come full circle and made it back to the land of tried and true awesome gentlemen) on winning gay marriage on the other side of the country!

After last weeks motorcycle failure, I regrouped and found a replacement oil filter cover for a reasonable price on Ebay. Tonight, I went to town replacing the cover and oil filter.

Gee guys, I dunno why it leaks...
Started it up and seems to be running fine and not leaking. Great, this is just in time for ... an entire week of rain. Damnit. 

Since the bus is home and all I've been trying to find a couple little projects here and there to occupy my time when I'm in Westbrook. Also still keeping my eye out for garage space down this way. Part of the reason I got all that stuff from David was to try and fix some of it (no, not the special edition hammer time printer). I ordered another power adapter for the laptop hoping to start messing with that but it seems that the address where I live is far too complicated for FedEx. I'll be giving them a call tomorrow and probably having all packaged delivered to my work address from now on. 

Also keeping my eye out for another two-wheeler of the human powered kind to commute to work with. In other news I just sold my old boat yesterday for some cash money. Had a lot of good times on the lake in that boat when I was in middle school. Luckily it is going to a young chap a couple towns over who will probably love the crap out of it, definitely a win-win situation. Still trying to sell my outboard motor though, had a guy call me and low-ball me today... gotta love that craigslist. 

There is some construction going on in our new facility at work. It's pretty funny actually I left at about 6PM last night and I guess a construction crew showed up at 7:30. I came in this morning and they had completely framed and an entire wall right next to where I was working. We figured they were probably there  until about midnight. Those guys don't mess around! If they keep up this aggressive overnight work schedule, it will be done very quickly. 

Basically been bein' a lazy bum though. Hoping to get into some sort of routine to do after work. If last summer was any sign, posting here usually encourages me to do cool stuff so I'm gonna work on that. 

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Still Alive!

Doods,

Sorry it's been a while since I posted (March?!).  Life in the PNW has been going great.  Winter is over, so the sun is typically out and June has been surprisingly nice.  Been hitting the bicycle pretty hard, trying to do at least 100 miles a week.  I typically fall short, but its fun anyways.

Last night I went to a rooftop spot called Frolik with work people.  Pretty fun, they had ping pong tables and would just happen to give you 20 SOLO cups.  They also had real shuffleboard, which none of us knew how to play, so we made up our own rules.  We met up with some of our intern's roommates, and it turns out one of them is from Machias and really close friends with a dude who was in my cubscout troop... weird.


Last month I went to a major league soccer game, which was crazy fun.  It's basically like going to a hockey game, but the crowd is twice as big and you stand for the entire game. Also we got pamphlets on the way in saying that the league does not appreciate some of the chants, so you know it is going to be fun.

Also after going out the last few weekends, been making a point of stopping by Dick's, which is basically Seattle's hipster McDonalds.  No one ever told Dicks that the 1950s are over, and I am fine with that.  The food is super good (real fresh cut fries!), relatively inexpensive, and dang tasty.  Also, so many innuendos.


I also went sailling last weekend and saw Stefan.  That was fun, twas a pretty windy day.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Figured I'd Check In

Starting tomorrow at Pika, seemed like the right thing to make a post here.

Essentially all moved in to the new pad in Westbrook. I've been helping paint the soon to be new home of Pika. Painting stinks. I wouldn't recommend it. However the painting did give a little time for me to catch up with what has been going on over the past months. Also, we're apparently getting not one but two summer interns. One marketing guy and another mechanical dude. That along with myself an additional full-time employee and we've nearly doubled the amount of people that will be around daily. The new place will take a lot of work to setup properly but it'll be very cool once all the moving and setup is done. We'll actually have a place to assemble our products and start shipping them. Exciting times.

Speaking of exciting times... When I left our new facility Saturday evening my motorcycle began leaking oil all over the place. It was night time and I didn't realize this was happening for about a mile and when I did, I immediately shut it off and pulled to the side of the road. I recently changed the oil in the bike and when I did, I unscrewed this die-cast piece that holds the oil filter in place and as I took it out a small piece of metal fell off of it. I saw it, showed it to my dad and we both thought that it might not matter because it didn't immediately appear to screw up the gasket on the part so we figured it might seal just fine. When we started it and ran it, it did run just fine but not Saturday night gents. So, here I am on the side of the road about a mile from home with a motorcycle that I am certainly not going to run and my phone is very nearly dead. I tried to reach my boss who actually had a truck and a trailer with him, but no dice. I got in touch with another employee, fellow MSSM alum and all around awesome guy (Adam) who came and helped me out. After calling AAA and figuring out I did not opt for the RV and motorcycle package so I was not eligible for free service.... we decided to man up and push the bike.

So, we pushed the bike and it was pretty much really hard. I was able to coast on it for a little ways and Adam pushed me along to help. We actually gained a lot of distance this way but by the time we made it to my house we were out of breath and sweating bullets. It was well into the 80's that evening too. So after getting some water and thanking Adam profusely, I now have a bike in the garage with a pretty serious oil leak. Hoping to get on that this week and see about sealing it or getting a replacement piece.

Go figure that the largest malfunction my bike has ever had happens essentially my first night in Westbrook. I feel like life has this way of giving you bullshit just as you become an adult to try and mess with you. Another example is the dresser I own which has intermittent problems with opening/closing drawers. Sounds like no big deal right? No. That shit is fucking obnoxious. It would literally lock you out of certain drawers but only sometimes when this internal lock thing got messed up. I JUST WANT TO ACESS MY FRESH UNDIES, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?! WHO MADE THIS THING ANYWAYS?!

After messing with it last summer and before I moved it here, it started pulling more creative bullshit. Luckily life didn't plan on me bringing a fucking Dewalt power drill to the game. Solved that shit. That's right life, bring it.