Sunday, September 29, 2013

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! 

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

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 Rvalue 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.

Monday, September 16, 2013

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.