... 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.