The Follow Up Random Post

I feel like I'm lacking content to blog about these days, so I'm going to post a few minor things somewhat related to previous posts!!!

A couple weeks ago, I bought myself a rechargeable battery type tire inflator. It's a no name deal, and wasn't very expensive, but I'm quite pleased with it. You can set your desired pressure and it'll turn off when it hits the correct pressure. The tires on the Falcon tend to lose pressure while it's sitting, and with the Moon hub caps, it's more involved than most to top them off. This is when I took off one of the caps, you can see the levels of receding waters from the rains of January!!!

I'd gone down to sweep up some of the constantly falling pine needles a couple weeks ago, and there was a ticket envelope on the Falcon, and the tires had been chalked, so apparently we've got a bitchy neighbor. I moved it, then topped the tires. Last week we took it to the car wash, and it cleans up nice!!! There was quite a bit of silt under the hub caps, so it took some cleaning out.

I had completely forgotten back when I did my Literary Stack post about a couple of books I'd read. The first was an autobiography of Mark Thompson of the Mark and Brian show, which had been one of my long time favorites. It's entitled, “Don't Bump the Record, Kid”, and I learned of it from Woody of the Woody Show. He was listening to it as an audio book, and was enjoying it. Of course, I prefer an actual book, but this appears to have been a limited release. When I first went looking for it, there was only one available, for over $50. I wasn't going that high. I checked back around a month later, and someone was selling a copy for around $20, and it was signed!!! I'd heard a lot of the stories, and lived a good amount of them, and I enjoyed the book quite a lot!!!

Another book I found in a give away box probably a couple years ago was the Jack Kerouac classic, “On the Road”. It was “The Original Scroll” version, and it had a lot of the history and told of the edits that were made for various publications. It's one of those I'd heard of forever, so I had to pick it up and check it out. It wasn't a great book, but it was an enjoyable read, and now I can speak of it from having read it.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a pack of Mountain Dew Baja Blast, thinking it was just the classic Baja Blast, not realizing it was Tropical Lime. It tastes better to me than the canned classic Baja Blast, but not as good as the on tap that you get from Taco Bell.

I took the younger to a dentist appointment the other day. In the stairwell, they've got one wall that's painted a little reminiscent of my license plate frame!!!

Last week we went to the beach with a huge and shifting group of friends. Surrogate son and his brother were there, a couple of other families, and a couple of our other friends. In the afternoon, one friend left to get his girlfriend when she got off work, which took more than an hour. The younger fell asleep for a bit while this was going on.

A couple more friends showed up around when the sun went down, and a little after that, SpaceX did a launch from Vandenberg!!! I'm pretty sure it was dropping off Starlink satellites.

I took a couple of pictures of the younger and a friend in the dark with no flash, and they came out kind of fuzzy, and each picture had one looking good and the other not so much, so I did a merge of the two pictures!!! You can totally tell it was two different pictures, but it's plausible!!!

Perseverance

Last week NASA & JPL landed the Perseverance rover on Mars. I don't know why, but it seemed like there was a lot more attention paid to it than previous landings. Of course, like all the others, it's going to find evidence of life on Mars.

The landing went off without a hitch. While it was supposed to be live webcast, all they showed was computer generated graphics, and frankly, I've seen better on video games!!! Several minutes after the landing (which was, of course, several minutes behind already, because of the signal lag) Perseverance sent back it's first picture from the surface. In black & white. What is this, the 70's??? Cool that they pulled it off, and it's supposed to do some neat tricks while it's there, but the whole event was rather underwhelming.

Anyway, we all know Mars is the red planet, so I took it on myself to colorize the first picture!!! Fixed it for ya, NASA!!! Your welcome!!!

A Legacy of Art

As I've mentioned a few posts back, my dad was a painter back in the 60's and 70's.

I suppose that, like his son after him, he's come up with various art at different points all throughout his life. He had mostly gone on a hiatus from oils on canvas. Now, as he's gotten on in life and it isn't as easy for him to do some of the things he would do some years back, he's broken back into it!!!

These are a few of what he's done. I've tried to get them in chronological order, but I'm not 100% sure that I've got it right.

The first one is simplicity. Sea and Sky, with no real distinction between (although, it appears there is, due to a shadow falling across it). Following that is the Danube, like many of the paintings he now does, he'll take a photo and then translate it to paint. Both of these are on the small side, around 5x7".

Amboy crater, followed by the coastline, looking North from the Huntington Beach pier (another unfortunate victim of shadows). The sizes on these are larger, around 10x14" and around 14x20" respectively, I'd guess.

Don't know where the imagery for the golden sea and sky came from, but it's an excellent painting!!! There's a junk floating on the sea, if you didn't pick up on that.

The last one is still a work in progress. Once again, from a picture he'd taken. Took him several tries to get the perspective right on the shack. It's supposed to have a water tower in the background, but he says he can't get the lines for it to come out straight. He gave up on that, and is adding in a flying saucer. I approve!!!

Design-A-Chime

You may recall WAYYYYY back I made reference to the design contest at my work yet again. Once again, it's an artwork design contest using industrial supplies sourced from the company. Finally, just today, I've gotten to the completion point on my design. A little late.

I'll start off sharing the other four entrants' creations. The copper wire "love" picture framed sampler was first, and I thought it was a good look and a worthy entrant.

Next up is this very fancy lantern. Other than mine, I thought it was the nicest example.

Then there was... this... A miniature set of monkey bars made of PVC pipe painted gold. My vote for least practical. I guess you could re-purpose it as a rack of some kind, or a plant rack or mini trellis... I don't know.

Then there was this kid's activity board. Pretty good, but I think some better colors would improve the aesthetic quite a bit. Paint, we sell that.

So, here's what I came up with. It's actually a redesign of something I made up probably close to 20 years or so ago. I had seen large, tubular wind chimes, and around that time somehow my then job had come into several lengths of surplus copper pipe. How hard can it be??? I cut three different lengths of 1" diameter, and three of 1/2". A disc of aluminum with some holes drilled in it, a small disc for a clapper, and a flat diamond shaped plate for a wind sail. Easy, huh??? Well, it turns out there's a bit more to wind chime design than just that!!! First, the different lengths caused a weight differential, and that caused it to hang lopsided. Furthermore, just cutting random lengths didn't make for an especially melodic tone!!!

My redesign was fairly complete!!! I ditched the different diameters, and mounted them linear. The lengths were adjusted to provide a proper chord. I also put the hanging holes a a proper location (who knew there was such a thing???). I used one rectangle of wood to hang them from, and another to make a clapper, with a series of holes cut in them lining the tubes up. That is how it was set up when I entered it.

Once again, I think everyone who entered won some category. They asked me what I would like for winning, and some time back I had seen a car with a SpaceX license plate frame. We do a fair amount of business with them, so I asked if we could get in touch with them and see about getting me one. I don't know if they ever actually got in touch, or if they just checked out their catalog pages, but they said they had no luck getting me one. They asked if I wanted one of the T-shirts they have, so I picked out the design I liked. Just checking back now, and I see they NOW have the license plate frame I'd wanted in their store!!!

All this was around nine months back, so I don't remember exactly. I liked the way it looked, but there was an issue. The clapper has little cross section to catch the breeze. A redesign is still in order. I cut the clapper into segments, and put them at closer proximity to the ends of the tubes, mounted to a couple of pieces of plexiglass. I liked the was it looked, but it still needed a little tweaking. The holes were just a little too big, so I added in a couple of tabs on either side. That took care of it pretty well!!! Finally had it where I wanted it, so just today, I finally hung it up.

Done The Impossible

It's been a while since I've done a completed bar code sculpture. Not for the reason that I haven't been doing anything in this vein, but because I'd undertaken what so far has been my most ambitious undertaking!!!

Another of those things where I wondered to myself if it could actually be done. I set out to make a spaceship (what I primarily told my co-workers when they'd ask what I was making this time).

More specifically, I set out to make a mid-bulk transport ship, classcode 03-K64 Firefly!!! Being as it was done almost entirely from memory, I think it came out pretty good!!!

I made it all in parts to be assembled at the completion. The part I started with was the main engine. I tried three times before I came up with a satisfactory result. The first two came out as cones instead of bulbous. Next I made the side engines, then cargo hold (in flat form, to be folded up at the end).

Next I did the front deck and finally the main deck. The final day, yesterday, I peeled the labels & stuck them down to wax paper to bring the whole rig home for assembly!!! It was coming out way too big to store in my locker. One of the failed main engine cones found a new home in the cargo hold, keeping the top from caving in!!!

I like the way the walls go out. Gives you an open feeling. Firefly’s a good design. People don’t appreciate the substance of things. Objects in space. People miss out on what’s solid.

They're having the design contest at my work again this year. I was considering seeing if I could put this and the dodecahedron in as non-judged entries, just to show them off!!! If I do, my son was saying I should get a couple dinosaurs to put in the cargo hold!!!

Crashed Star, Black Star

So last night I was going to log into Runescape for just a few minutes, to swap my 13 bones for bonemeal & ectoplasm and to do my mining for Managing Miscellania, keep my approval rating at %100, you know. When I got there, however, there was a crashed falling star!!! Size 6, and no one had found it yet!!! Tag!!! Not the first time I've tagged one, but every time I do I think to myself that I've got to get over to the observatory and get a screenshot of my name on the noticeboard... then I forget!!!

Last night was no exception. Of course, I was on a world with less than 150 players, so no one else came to help. Six layers to go through with no help. I got a good amount of experience, but it disapeared before I made it to the middle. Oh well. Stayed up a lot longer than I'd wanted to. This morning I remembered I hadn't made it over to the observatory, so I quickly did that and got my screenshot, just in time it would seem!!!

Whenever I go to do a post, I usually get distracted looking at the stats and traffic sources. Apparently having Black Star mentioned on the older's birthday post pulled in several views from Japan. Surprisingly. In a shameless bid for a few more views, here's a few more pulled directly from the WWW!!! Love to Japan, and WTF Japan!!!

One of my favorites from Soul Eater is that crazy moon!!! The sun isn't bad, either.

Never made mention of the time we were at a park, and the younger found a stick with three long branches going three different directions, and a handle branch coming out of the middle. He thought it a great Black Star throwing star!!! Should have had a camera with me... I need a pocket sized that takes good pics like the older has!!!

So, the referring site was a Yahoo image search page in Japanese. When translated, one of the lines was "Black Star do you satisfied with the sound and amplifier rattle change! The free gifts the quick fix of efficacy distinguished" I love translation software!!! An apparent refrence to Black Star tube amplifiers. Never heard of 'em, but I'll bet they sound awesome!!! Another line: "are selling now if this!"

I'll bet another show that'd get me a TON of views is "Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt"!!! Not great animation, but some pretty funny lines!!! They've got a Hummer they've named See Through. The line: "See through always gets us there in style!!!" Interestingly, it seems like if you were doing an image search trying to find actual pictures of panty and stocking with garterbelt, you'd likely be disappointed!!!

SPOONS!!!

This one tickled my funny bone!!! Know how comic strips will do a week or so long series??? This week, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! has been doing a series on an advanced race of aliens... a whole 20 minutes advanced!!!

I think I may have to start calling people that!!!

Piercings

A few weeks ago at lunch, the new girl noticed that one of the other guys with us has a tongue piercing. I don't remember what conversation ensued, but ensue it did. I said something to the effect of "Don't make me show you mine!!!" Now, I really don't have much cause to show it off at work (or very many other places, for that matter), so not many people there know I have it. I was sitting across from another of my favorite lesbians, and she was on about it. "Come on, lets see!!!" Duh, OK boss... I pulled my shirt open between a couple of the buttons and proudly displayed my nipple ring. She was a bit surprised, she thought I was putting them on. I asked her why she thought that another of our workmates often calls me "Wild Thang"??? He started calling me that after he found out about it.

The one who it seems to really have made an impression on, though, was the new girl. She's brought it up several times since then. She plays like it traumatized her.



Today this was in the paper, and with a couple of little modifications, it fits pretty nicely. I'll give it to her tomorrow, I think she'll be amused.