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A Budget Last Updated: My Resume! Wanna buy a pen? |
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Update At 2330 Ah. Well, the last sentence of that article is an understatement if I ever saw one. This does raise ethical issues aside from the "well, duh" thing. Personally, I think the idiot should be serving a pair of consecutive-life terms, and the child should be adopted well away from that environment. Clearly, the woman's an idiot, and clearly, the problem with idiots is they are self-replicating and need minimal resources to do so. Typically beer, hot wings, and tequila, from my experience... On a happier note, however, if it wasn't me, at least
[Link] Now the other good news - I've got twenty-nine pens to make - a fair number of those will actually end up as part of the case that's going to an expo at the Minneapolis convention center a week from this Friday - gulp. As I told the friend who offered, "I'd like to see twenty to twenty-five orders, but I'll be happy with 100". The office-supply store thing is still pending - the guy I need to see will be back on Thursday. This is a big-but-small outfit, so he doesn't have someone managing his schedule - so the appointment will be made for me, likely for early the following week (which is good, since the following week is when I'll have the samples done for the expo). There's also the chance that a local retail store near me may sell them. They do craft-like things. Wait, there's ... uh, about four of them. Time to get busy on that sample case... |
Update At 2100 Seriously, far as I know, St. Urho is a recent invention of a couple of whack-jobs up on derange - er, The Range (Iron Range) which is in response to those drunken folk who come out of the woodwork this time of year.
[Link] And speaking of, there are more pictures of some new pens I turned out - what the heck, I'll even show you them here.
This one's purpleheart in a slimline model. I swear, the wood looked purple before I finished it, and I guarantee you that I will not be turning out a lot of these. While the graining on these is utterly incredible, this wood is one of the absolute worst I've ever had the misfortune to be introduced to. It has a nasty high-pitched squeal in the drill press (take your average dentists drill and double the volume, and add to it about a half dozen teachers squeaking chalk on blackboards - I don't care how old I get, even typing those words causes the shiver up my back and the nausea in my stomach), it chips and cracks like my hands in January when turning it (yes, with sharp tools), and it stinks, too.
Contrast that with this pen, which is good old dymondwood - or in other words, sorta-sawdust. I don't know exactly what dymondwood is. I'm told it's thin layers of veneer that are impregnated with resins and dyes (think of the slivers) and then pressed together - and cut on an angle. In all fairness, when viewed edge-on, the veneer strips are perhaps 1/16" thick - or would that be thin? So when drilling or machining, they really just produce dust.
If you want a real treat, however, there's acrylic. I picked the ugliest-looking blank I had in the acrylics to see how this would turn out - then compounded the error by using a too-sharp tool to do some trimming, and created the gouge near the top - fortunately, I was able to turn it into a feature, which salvaged this pen. The color is nothing short of spectacular, but when you start working acrylic, there's one problem - no grain. No grain means the stuff you shave off comes off in one long strip. I frequently had to stop to clear away knots - strips of acrylic which had tied themselves around the blank. And yes - for the record, I used my standard chisels, and then sanded the thing. My usual routine is 150, 180, 220, 260, 320, 400, 600. With acrylic, I added 800, 1200, 1500, 2500, 4000, 12000, and then finished up with plastic polish. I was going to buff with a baby's bottom, based on the theory that the hind parts of an infant were going to be rougher than the acrylic, but instead I used a shop towel to do the plastic polish, and then buffed the piece with a polishing cloth I got yesterday. Wow. As a general rule, I don't think I'll be doing a whole lot with Acrylic. So far, I'm not at all impressed with the colors. No, seriously. The blank I had was mostly blue on one side, mostly yellow on the other, and it looks like it settled that way. Unfortunate. Most of the other acrylic blanks are similarly configured. Go figure... I have, however, been reading up on "marbleing". That's sometimes found in older books (or expensive books) inside the front covers - it looks to me a lot like multi-colored feathers. I'd love to find an acrylic mix that emulated that. Failing that, I've got some techniques for marbleing paper, and then transferring the dye to wood. Obviously, we're a year at least away from such foolishness, but it does indeed look promising. So that's what I did for fun... Other than deliver my first pen to a paying customer, that is. I then promptly spent the "profits" from that pen on wood and plastic for a box for displaying them at the expo next weekend, and then added to my misery by checking into ReTool - they have the bandsaw I need for $60. If all goes well, I'll get that soon and have a couple more products those of you who do not write can use... Because while you may not all write, you certainly do eat... 'Nuff said. |
Update At 1010 Sadly, I had one pen abort - or nearly so - in the last stages of assembly. The rollerballs have a two-piece construction with more parts than some Ford Trucks, so it makes it a bit tricky. Add to that the small print about "yes, and once you've gotten the whole thing machined nicely, then remember to cut off down to brass the section right here". You machine a "tenon" (not quite, as most tenons are solid internally, and this is simply removing material to get back down to the brass), and then slip the end of the cap (with the threads that attach it to the top or bottom of the pen), and Robert becomes your mother's brother - depending, of course, on if you want an Uncle Bob. My uncles are/were Dan, Bill, Larry, Gene, Jim, Ralph, Joe, Rommie, Rich, and Butch - not counting "Uncle" Mike, who was actually married to Mom's friend Ethel. But I digress. I have a scrap of the acrylic material, and some contrasting corian - might be a good experiment. I'll give it a shot in the salvage, and see what happens. We'll see how it turns out. It did prompt a new rule, however. No woodwork after 9 pm.
[Link] Yesterday morning, I saw a price of $1.489 for gas - which is quite low for around here. Last night the same station popped to $1.799. While cursing, my wife filled me in. Apparently, someone complained that the south metro (that'd be me, thanks) had "artificially low" gas prices. The state commerce commissioner said "Let's see the books". Because somewhere in the distant past passed a law which said that gas prices had to be AT LEAST 6¢ above your costs plus taxes, he has the power to enforce said law. While it sounds stupid, at the moment, much as I hate to say it, it does make sense. </Quibble> We have an 80,000 pound gorilla, locally, called "SuperAmerica". I think they're some 200 locations in the metro alone. I know you can't go for more than about six blocks without running into one. Most days, I pass within a block of at least five SAs (yes, dear, that includes if I go to Rockler). Compare that to 3 BP/Amoco, 1 Oasis, 1 Sinclair, 1 Fuel-n-go (or is it Fuel-n-Save? who cares), 1 Kwik Trip, 1 Mobil, 2 Amoco, and 1 Holiday. Yes, I know the route that well. SA tends to set the prices for the area. Typically, every other Thursday (this week was to be one such), they will boost prices - typically 22 to 29¢ per gallon. Then, over the coming week they drop rather aggressively, leveling off in the low $1.50 range. The other guys follow along, because it's in their best interests. The law was written to prevent 40-ton gorillas like SA from using profits from elsewhere to drive down prices, bankrupt or put out of business other sellers, and then control the market. So yes, I understand it from that sense. It sure doesn't help any when the price of gas takes a 27¢ a gallon jump, however. Especially before a long (for us) car trip.
Nuff for me - I now have six more pens to make than I did last night - yikes - this thing could get BIG...
[Link] Why look out? Well, with Coach Tice there, they'll make good progress, they'll move along smartly - the problem is they'll likely as not miss the parade-end by a fair margin - they'll make you THINK they'll be close, but ... well, you know. It's tough to march and drink with both hands around your throat... Now, go be Irish. Or, for those of you who haven't been practicing, follow these instructions.
And just in case someone should try to tell you otherwise, no, so far as I know there are NO jails with beer taps in-cell.
Update At 1030
Update At 2200 I wasn't able to salvage most of the rollerball I tried last night - odds are it'll be a mis-match somewhere along the line. I'd glued up a Corian and Acrylic blank, but the problem was the acrylic is far, far more sensitive to heat than wood. And the Acrylic melted while I drilled through the Corian. Clearly, wood's a better medium. Tomorrow seems likely to be a lost day - I've got a store to visit, and then there's a boatload of running around for conferences and the like. I'm also working on a new look for my resume (you remember that poor old rag?). Back to bullet points for me... We did have a little scare tonight on the way to get Ann from the bus. On the way over, we passed a Holiday station (Gas) with a whole lot of smoke pouring out from under the hood of a truck in their fueling area. The guys who owned or were driving the vehicle were smart enough to back it away from the pumps rather quickly. By the time we passed close by, the police officer on the scene had cleared people back from the area, and the gray clouds had cleared up a bit - now we could see flames on the ground below the vehicle and working their way through the floorboards into the cab. I was certain there would be an explosion, and cringed most of the mile we had left to get to Ann's bus stop. Fortunately for everyone (excepting perhaps Jack), there was no major explosion, or at least, not one we could tell from the clouds of smoke and the sounds. When we went back past the scene, not ten minutes later, there were two firetrucks on scene (not counting the Eagan Fire Chief), and the flames were out. The truck, however, was a total loss. Never thought I'd look at a broken ball joint and $1000 in car repairs as a good thing - but it's better than the car catching fire. |
Update At 2355 Earlier this week, some wise-... guy sent me an e-mail taking me to task for the hubris (my word, not his) I had in selling my pens. "Others have been at this longer, what makes you so special?" I'll tell ya, bud - today proved I'm doing something right. I was working a burl - which is fairly difficult wood. That's "fairly difficult" as in "dinner conversations were fairly difficult during the later term of the Clinton Presidency." Most wood is difficult. You're always cutting across or against the grain at least once per revolution - and at 1800+ rpms, that's a lot of cross-grain cutting. Burls are ten times worse. A burl, to be brief, is a knob on the side of a tree that was supposed to develop into a branch - and it failed, somewhere along the line. The grain patterns are swirls and spirals, and working them is a terribly fun, nerve-wracking time. Every single time I stop to look at the wood, it changes. It's ALWAYS beautiful, but some are truly ... well, exquisite is one of those underused words I have to trot out. Today I was working a burl, and had the unfortunate experience of having it "blow". That's the highly technical term for "big chunk of wood torn right out of the middle of this thing". I was nearly heart-broken. Then I looked down. I saw drops of CA glue on the floor in the sawdust pile which had become furry marbles - they had sawdust sticking out all over. Well, duh. I took the CA glue, and filled in the area around the break. Then I started layering wood shavings and CA glue. I'd pat it down with my finger (wrapped in waxed paper - I don't want to change my finger prints that badly), and repeat. Once I built it up, I sprayed it with the accellerator and let it dry for a few minutes. Can you find the blowout?
Yeah, me either. It reminds me of pictures taken of light filtering through underwater kelp farms. There's also this one.
And finally, this one - a walnut burl cigar pen.
Those were some of the successes. The failures? Well, I stopped in at three separate "handmade craft" stores today - not a one interested in carrying pens. Feh. The biggest success, though, came at conferences. Both kids are doing much better, but the one thing that really tugged at me was in the hallway. Jack's classroom had done a "who am I?" thing by naming their favorites. Favorite food, pet, TV show, game, what they wanted to be when they grew up... That sort of thing. I was reading the other children's, trying to guess. Lots of future NBA stars, two or three "hokey" players, a few horse trainers (hey, it's first grade, they get points for getting the point across!). Then I found Jack's. Favorite food? Choclit. Favorite TV Show? Star Wars. Favorite Pets? Daisy, Gillie, Tishy. When I grow up I want to be? A pen makr lik my dad. Swear to God, exact spelling and all. I will make this work, somehow, I swear - I don't dare let him down. |
Update At 1430
*Powell reassures India on technology jobs. Secretary of State Colin Powell, encountering the other side of a tempestuous debate in the United States, sought to assure Indians on Tuesday that George Bush's administration would not try to halt the outsourcing of high-technology jobs to their country. As far as I can tell, George W. Bush got NO votes from India. Money, perhaps. Votes, no - if he had, he probably could have actually won the election. But that's old news. He may have received a fair number of votes from former Indian citizens who are now U.S. Citizens and living here now, but I would think that Bush would be smarter than that - or that Powell would. Courting Indian technology companies is certain to cost him American votes. What pisses me off even more is the fact that this was a blurb I had to hunt down. It wasn't covered AT ALL by CNN, I only heard about it from my wife, who prefers MSNBC for her news site. Why this isn't being trumpeted about, I have no idea. It certainly does show where the priorities of the present administration lie, however. Morally bankrupt worthless moneygrubbing scum-sucking slack-jawed mouth-drooling Alfred E. Newman lookalike halfwitted rule-breaking rich boy suckups, to put it mildly. GRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr...
[Link] Way, way cool. Add to that the very slimmest of chances that I might get the opportunity to bid on a deal for an 85-pen order. Gulp.
[Link] |
Update At BALOO isn't the bear in The Jungle Book - or not exactly, I guess due to copyright infringement potential. BALOO is somewhat derived from the idea of Balu (how I'd learned it), the bear, who guides Mowgli through his experience in the jungle. In this case, however, BALOO stands for Basic Adult Leadership Outdoor Orientation. In other words, if you want to take your Cub Scouts camping, at least one of the schmucks leading the experince has to have this. So now I do. Aside from silly skits and other fun stuff, we did a lot with food. Aside from eating it, I mean. Special To Mom and My Wife - sit down before continuing, if you haven't already. Now - today we made "foil lunches" - or what one adult referred to as "hobo lunches" - screw the PC crowd. This consisted of a few leaves of cabbage (shut up and read, you), a quarter-pound of ground beef, some sliced potatoes (reds, too, dear), some baby carrots (yes, the orange ones, Ma), some onions (yes, Digestive Tract), some shredded cheese, some butter (sorry, Doc), some seasonings, and some more cabbage. Wrap it up in two fairly large pieces of aluminum foil (three feet by a foot and a half, making your final packet about the size of a dinner plate), with the layers as noted in the order above (well, not precisely - in doing it next time, I'll season the meat as well as the cabbage), and cook over hot coals for fifteen to twenty minutes. Yes, Ma - I not only ate cooked carrots - I ate the cabbage. It was that good. I didn't lick the foil (I was tempted, let me tell you - and I'd had breakfast!), but boy, that was excellent. That was lunch. After lunch, we did some more training. The fellow doing the cooking instruction brought out two bags of fritos - the 4 1/2 ounce size. He slit the bag on one side (as you look at the Fritos bag from the front, standing up, turn it 90 degrees to the left, then slit what passes for the top). Spooned in taco meat, add shredded cheese, and viola - walking tacos. Wow. Then there was the pizza in a dutch oven. Pita bread is the secret there, otherwise it's simple spaghetti sauce, pizza fixins, and a few minutes in that dutch oven. And I haven't even touched on the boiled scrambled eggs in a baggie idea, either. With onions, peppers, and sausage... Wrap them in a tortilla, and you've got your breakfast burrito. After that, burping and farting I went for an hour or so south to arrive in the town of St. Peter, find a parking space, and skid into the doorway of the gym of the St. Peter High School just in time for them to start the DI awards ceremony. Rhiannon's group came in third - out of six teams - in her region. Which means they won't be going to State, but they do have something to show for a lot of effort. Then we had dinner at Ruttles (think Fuddruckers - if you don't know Fuddruckers, more's the pity for you), then came home. To more pen orders. Thank you thank you thank you. Tomorrow, more eating (this time the DI team banquet), followed by .. I have no idea. Hopefully, a nap. No, wait - I've got pens to make. No rest for the wicked... |
Update At 2200 Twelve months later we've laughed to watch Daisy stick her head in a pool, or in a snowbank, and fling it at us. We've taught her to sit for a treat - the sad part is if we're ever digging in the fridge and we get out a ziplock bag of anything, she expects a treat. We get the happy dance when we're all home again - and I get the "you dumb SOB, you lost another one" look whenever I return home from dropping anyone off anywhere. We're a home, now. Especially after Bilbrey's rather poignant announcement of yesterday and the loss of their Sally, I can't at all say I did the wrong thing by picking out our Daisy. She's become another member of the family - and I can't imagine life without her. Even when she follows me to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or cuts the nasty cheese behind my computer chair. Even when she finds the occasional stray Kitty Tootsie Roll that's been kicked loose from the cat box - or destroyed someone's underpants. And especially even when I'm deep in concentration on the computer and a cold, wet nose hits the inside of my elbow, saying "come on, you, get up, let's DO SOMETHING."
[Link] We missed church this morning, partially due to the part about me waiting for someone to indicate she's awake, and partially due to someone waiting for me to indicate what we'd do with our day. So, there went church. Which, in a small way, was a good thing, as we'd have likely been guilted into going to a pancake breakfast for the Boy Scouts. Don't get me wrong - they make good pancakes (and sausage), but they're definitely in a rut. I gave them an idea last night which might be useful - might not. We'll have to wait and see. After some brief discussion regarding what the day would involve, I was sent, with small boy and big dog, to obtain more dog food. This being one of the few times Daisy is allowed to shop - or really go anywhere - with us. So we did. Jack and I, I mean. One thing about an eighty pound dog and a forty pound boy - the odds are in the dog's favor. She didn't abuse it often, but there were two cases where I was busy (one, grabbing dog food from shelves well over Jack's head, and two, paying for said dog food - neither job could he do. And so when said dog went to see a "new friend" Jack most definitely went along for the ride. We returned at a leisurely pace, got things unloaded, and I did a bit of work in the garage. At approximately 2:10 pm I looked up at the wall clock, stuck in the middle of trying to figure out how to attach cloth to wood (thin cloth, so Elmer's was right out - it would show through. Experiments with hot glue proved equally useless, so I had to puzzle it out), and headed downstairs to review resume targets, etc. Some five minutes later one of the neighborhood girls came to see if Rhiannon could come out and play. No problem, as we have a 3 pm get-together at school to mark the end (for most of us - not the two or three teams headed to state, but the rest of us are blissfully complete) of Destination Imagination. At 2:25 good friend #2 calls (I have so few I can number them on my hands), and says "say, have you looked at the handout? We thought the dinner started at 3, but it starts at 2:30". As Homer Simpson would say - "Doh!" Out the front door (while tossing a comment over my shoulder to Ann) to yell for Rhiannon. Ann had sent Jack across the street to inquire if Rhiannon had (contrary to standing orders) gone into the neighbor's house without asking us first - nope. Jack, meanwhile, starts heading down the street. I, after the sixth or seventh beller (that'd be loud yell, for you non-Minnesota folk) of "RHIANNON", see her (in her pink fuzzy imported coat that has come to us from Columbia by way of London and a special young lady there) wandering languidly out from behind the neighbor a long ways down the street. My darling genius daughter, ever the intelligent one, points at herself, as if to say "who, me?" Well, no, the other fourteen Rhiannons in the neighborhood (in all fairness, we have two "Cassandra"s, so there's some precedent for relatively rare names clumping, at least around us). I finally get the point across by yelling "COME!" Rhiannon stands there. Daisy, who had gone WITH Rhiannon, and was being held by Cassandra #2, came down the street at a dead run - so did Cassandra #2. Rhiannon gets in front of the house next door and fires the rather petulant teenage "What?" at me. "Your banquet starts at 2:30, not 3". "So?" "It's 2:30 right now!" "So?" Kids. They do, eventually, kill us. Of this I am utterly convinced. Finally, we reach a semi-compatible communications wavelength ("Get your butt in here right now, missy"), and we headed off to the banquet. Where we met one team parent who said "oh, we took the team picture last night - we couldn't find Rhiannon, so she's not in it." Gee, thanks. Wish we'd known that ahead of time. We did, however, find out that the food wasn't even scheduled to arrive until 3, so we caught a break there. After plenty of pasta, a little salad, and a couple of bread sticks (and three or four desserts - I couldn't decide), we had speeches, and then the season (for most of us) was done. We, meanwhile, headed to the grocery store to pick up the stuff we missed on Friday night plus a few additions. While there, Ann spoke with the Pharmacist on duty. Seems she'd awakened yesterday morning with a sore jaw and ear (no, nothing I'd done, sorry folks), and thought it might be a sinus infection. Shades of Rick Hellewell, it seems there was an ear-wax issue. Of course, this was not immediately apparent. We came home, put the freezer stuff into the freezer, and (with extensive experience in the many ways the health care system can leave you hanging) headed off to the Urgent Care. Only to find that the usual local Urgent Care - the place we'd taken Jack for his stitches some months back - was closed on Sundays. How is that possible? Okay, we have cell phones. We can call the "nurse line" for our health care provider. Yeah. That should work... Assuming said Nurse has managed to remove her head from whatever cold storage place it's been for the last few years. We're in Burnsville, see, calling a place which is supposed to be in Minnetonka asking about where we might find an open urgent care - First, the nurse is thinking "they need transport" - um, no. Not transport - we're in our own transport (This weekend, anyway), and need directions. Well, there's one in Buffalo, Minnesota - uh, wait - that's over an hour from us. Oh, there's another one in northwest Minnetonka - which may well be further after we find our way there. Okay, so we give up on Tweedle-dum the Nurse and head for the last known location of one of those extended-hour Urgent-care places. Which, sadly, is two doors down from a now-closed (due to business hours, not because of lack of business) woodworking store. The story of my life. After nearly two hours of waiting (see, we did plan well), we managed to learn that a good flushing is supposed to have cleared up our issue. So we're now home, hoping it worked.
[Link] Tonight I was cutting a piece of wood in the table saw. It was a part for my pen cabinet, which is needed by Thursday for the Friday/Saturday Expo. I'll make a long story short - I've got a nice gash across the tip of my thumb. At the moment, it hurts like an SOB, but the bleeding stopped rather quickly, and I do not believe it was particularly deep. No, I'm not poking around in it. It's been bandaged and right now looks like a cartoon character bandaged my thumb (I wanted a big, obvious warning not to use the damned thing - yes, it's my right thumb), but the tape isn't turning red - so that's a good sign. I'll look at it again tomorrow and at that point evaluate whether or not I need stitches across the thumb. That will be about as much fun as you might imagine. What pisses me off is that this is the very first time in my life that I've managed to draw my own blood with a power tool. The occasional walloped thumb or pinched finger or stupid move with a utility knife, sure, but never, ever, ever was I dumb enough to ding myself with the power tools. For the record, Ma - far as I know I've drawn no one else's blood with a tool, either - despite occasionally intense provacations to do so. And looking back I cannot see what I did - or might have done - to cause it, or prevent it. I was careful - I never, ever reach across the blade, and I keep one hand for each piece going through. So I don't know what I did wrong. I was careful - but something, obviously, went wrong. Hazard of the trade, I guess. Computers don't bite like this - their bites are far more metaphysical in nature - and, after the last two years, I guess I'll also have to admit much, much more painful. I'm sure, though, that in the future, I'll be using those stupid push sticks. I don't much care for them, but they're easier to fix than a thumb - you make a new one. The only new thumbs I can make come attached to some form of poop factory - which is definitely not what we need around here right now. |
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