Something Like 12 Years

Perhaps you recall several years back, I did a post about my cool lunch box. This post is about what happens to this lunch box if you use it five days a week for around 12 years (so, in a way, it's a 5-12 post!!!)

Remember that molded plastic Coke bottle handle??? Probably six months or so back, I saw that the plastic on the bottom of one end was almost worn through. I put a glob of epoxy on it to try and build it back up. It worked for a while. Then, a week ago, it cut loose as I was walking into work. I knew this day was coming, but now what was I to do??? If I were at my old job, I probably would have machined up some kind of cool aluminum handle.

No fancy CNC machine, or even the old school machine shop tools I cut my teeth on, but I should be able to come up with SOMETHING...

And, here's the result!!! Pretty much all I did was got a couple split shaft collars and a bar of aluminum. Drilled and tapped the ends of the bar, and melded the three into one. A bit of time with a file, and a 3M Scotch Brite pad to put a nice finish on it, and there it is!!! If I'd had access to the aforementioned equipment, no doubt it would be fancier, perhaps finger notches or more rounded edges, or even a Coca-Cola logo cut into the side faces, but this gets the job done in a clean, understated way.

No one I work with has noticed yet. Or at least not made mention, if they have.

Something I've not made mention of, my work issued everyone water bottles. Not only have they put in all new work stations in the newly remodeled offices, but also out in the area I work in. When they did this, they didn't want people spilling on the new stuff, and if you don't have a spill proof bottle already, now you have no excuse. The company colors are yellow and green (the company name is on the other side, they prefer employees to not share about them online for some reason) and while I like it alright, it looked the same as everyone else's. At first, I'd put my 512 on the lid, but it wore off pretty quick. Next, I took a couple of the yellow bands off. That distinguished it from everyone else, but I wasn't satisfied with it. The bands looked like they were the size of those rubber wrist bands, so I had my eye out for them. Eventually came across a green one, which went well with the text, but I only had one. Later, at my wife's doctor's office, they had a bunch of orange giveaway ones, so I grabbed a couple. They go together pretty nicely!!!

Ain't My First Dodecahedron

They did the design contest at my work that they have had the last couple years again. I had an idea to make a water dish for the cat with a pump that would activate a water stream when the cat would approach. I picked up a drill motor driven pump (because the actual full on pumps are pretty spendy) with the idea of using an old drill with a bad chuck I have. A couple weeks before, I finally got to trying putting things together, and found out it doesn't have the juice to get the water flowing with that one. OK, time for plan B...

As is well documented here, I've made a couple dodecahedrons. Making them is fairly easy, relatively speaking. Since we're kind of working on making the basement into a nerd cave, and all the light fixtures have bare bulbs, I had the idea to make up an acrylic dodecahedron. It took some doing, but the results are pretty cool!!! I'm thinking of trying a light sand blast to see if I can give it a frosted effect, as well as adding the numbers to the faces to give it a real D-12 look.

So, how did the competition stack up this year??? Considerably less so than last year!!! There was one other entrant!!!

They made up a board with the company name made of various things we sell.

My company doesn't like us saying stuff about 'em, positive of negative, on social media sites, so I don't make mention of them, and thusly I don't have a full shot of the other project, just a few of the characters.

With only two entrants, I figured my odds were better than last year. I was a lock for first or second place, I thought!!! A minor minus, they're doing a bit of construction (you can compare last year's shots with this year and see the carnage in the background) so the break room they held it in doesn't get much traffic these days from our department.

The next week they congratulated me, I got first place!!! I went to see the HR girl who was running it for my prize. She had a bag of hair products, some $10 gift cards, a pair of passes to Knotts Berry Farm (which, unposted as of yet, we've been to twice this year!!!) and this: A signed Dodgers jersey!!! She didn't know who'd signed it, but I figured it was pretty cool, and possibly worth some money (not that I'm planning on selling it). Also, I could make up a display frame for it and put it up in the basement to possibly counteract some of the geek!!!

Just one thing left to do, figure out who's signature that is!!!

Dodecahedron!!!

It's been a LONG time since I've posted any bar code artwork. There's something of a reason for that, back when I'd been doing those, eventually one of the supervisors came up to me and made mention about people making balls and "other shapes", and put an end to all my fun. At the time I'd been working on a boat. One of the other fillers had said I should try and make a ship, I think he was thinking of a three masted clipper, but what I was coming up with looked a bit more like an America's Cup racer. All I had at the time was the hull, which I brought home and considered making a post entitled, "They Sunk my Battleship!!!" Also at that time I made up a red circle with the slash logo over the word "FUN" and had that on the back of my tray. It resides there to this day, along with my Mystery Spot bumper sticker & a catalog headline for the Apocalypse Super Sale.

Fast forward a few years. All but one of the supervisors from that era are now gone, and that one has always been cool. I started in with balls again, only doing one a day. Next I started in on a rectangle to amaze all the new hires. After that I tried a pyramid again, once again to less than stellar results. Whilst I was doing that, one of the new guys throws out, "Make a dodecahedron!!!"

I had heard the line before, "One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains it's original dimensions". One hit attributes it Ralph Waldo Emerson, but most have it as Oliver Wendell Holmes. Well, I guess that's what happened!!! I had to see exactly how it went, and for some reason had it in my head that it had 20 faces, probably when I saw that it had 20 vertices. So here's what I figured to do, I made up 20 pentagons and laminated them kind of thick, like I'd done with the sword. It took a bit of doing before I came up with the proper 72 angle perfect pentagon. Had to stop by the area where we have protractors to check, and only one of my first 5 points was right, so I duplicated that one. Got up to the 20, & was assembling them in my head when I realized that 20 probably won't fit... looked it up again, and discovered the error of my ways. Actually putting it together was the easier part, and it came out fairly awesome!!! Everyone who saw it was amazed. Ironically, the guy who'd suggested this wasn't around while I was finishing it off, so he never got to see it.

The wrap up for all this??? I've got eight extra pentagons in my locker... As I'm walking out that evening, and I'm passing by the manager for warehouse, she asks, "Is that a ball of bar codes???" "No, it's actually a dodecahedron!!!" She asks how I did it, what's inside ("It's full of stars!!!") (actually a question I was asked several times after it was buttoned up) She was very impressed, and asked me if I could make one up for her. This will be made easier by the fact that I've got eight extra pentagons. Tell me something now, supervisors, I've been commissioned by the department head!!!