Escape Velocity

Long time, no post.

There has been a lot going on in our lives, but at the same time, not much has been going on. Things are eating more time.

I've been working out since the beginning of the year. Three times a week, I go to the gym, and have a routine of nine exercises and three ten minute cardio workouts. I've lost weight, built a little muscle, and my blood pressure seems to be under control for the first time in a long while. Someday, I hope to do pull-ups again, which for some strange reason is becomming an obsession. One of the machines at the gym will even allow you to 'cheat' at pull-ups by counteracting some of your body weight with fixed weights until you are strong enough to pull-up unassisted. Its not part of my current routine, but I'm thinking that there isn't any reason why I shouldn't add it.

My real justification for working out is that I want to be on the show 'Survivor'. I have wanted to be on it since the applications were posted when they were starting to cast for the first episode. At the time, I couldn't afford the time off from work (and I wasn't in shape). Julie and I have watched almost every episode of every season, and I finally confessed to her my desire to be on the show late last year. We decided that I needed to be in better shape to have a chance. It's wacky that the remote chance of being on a reality show is what has finally motivated me to do what I needed to do all along for my own health.

(I REALLY wanted to be on the upcomming season of Survivor, which films this summer, since I have convinced myself that the location will be somewhere along the region where the longest solar eclipse of the twenty-first century will occur, which is southeast asia and the Pacific islands south of Japan, the island group that includes Iwo Jima. I had a great uncle who died there during the U.S. invasion during the second World War.)

We spent some time in Minnesota this month, visiting my brothers and their extended family. Julie and I fired up the kiln and raku kiln for the first time in a very long time to make a couple of gifts to bring with us. I made a tuna, and Julie made a tile with a weedy sea dragon. We both hope to spend more time in the studio in the comming months.

The thing that has eaten most of my time is Facebook, where I have a couple of games that I obsessively play. I spend a lot of time when I am home visiting and maintaining my games, and for the longest time that filled whatever it was that I used to do with my artwork and blogging. I miss the blog though, and I miss my artwork even more. I'm getting back to the place that I was years ago, where I am starting to crave the time spent throwing clay, or making rayguns, or any of the other hobbies that I've formed over the last twenty years.

Hopefully, I'll keep you posted.

Progress Report - Garage Door Opener

I have the old garage opener down, all of the mechanics of the new opener installed, and will work on the wiring for the sensors and the push-button tomorrow. We have guests coming over in a bit, so I need to get cleaned up and get ready so we can head out to dinner.

Scotopia - Eyes Adjusting to Twilight

I'm working in the garage again this weekend.

The bottom panel of one of our garage doors finally died of dry rot this fall. I'd applied mending plates to it some time ago, and it was serviceable, but the long board across the bottom finally split.

I had removed the lower panel, which measures a little over eight feet wide and about two feet tall, and used my wordworking skills and whatever tools we had on hand to replace the rotted wood. It was mainly getting a very strait two by four, cutting a groove along the length of one edge with a router, then rounding the corners along the length to fit into the rest of the door. Once that was done, it was a glue and screw project to attach it to the rest of the door panel, a little work with wood putty to smooth out the appearance, and then Julie primed and painted for me.

I finally installed the repaired panel last week end. I was relieved when I got the cable and springs working again, and the door opened easily along its tracks (while the panel was removed, I had to open the rest of the door by doing a 'clean and jerk'). The door only opens for projects, and to allow passage of the trash and recycling cans one day a week.

Today I'm working on replacing the garage door opener for the same door. It was broken when we moved into the house, and we just never got around to fixing it until now.

With the approaching holidays, I'm planning to use some vacation to take the last two weeks of the year off. My plan is to get some home repair projects done around the house, projects that have languished for years in some cases.

I also want to work on an sculpture project or two. I have a pair of rayguns that only need some hammer springs replaced to be completed, and another that needs a springs for its trigger and hammer, a paint touch up, and a finial added. Lastly, I have the parts for five rayguns, more along the lines of the Cinco de Mayo and Cereza Negra than the Honor of Coronado series that I want to do the design work and start fabrication. Our plan is to get some of my finished work up on our art site, and try to drum up a little business.

UPDATE:
I've added pictures of the raygun parts to my Flickr site.

Well That Sucks.....

I haven't posted in a while.

While checking out the sight today, I noticed that my link to the Earth Advisory Board shows that the Earth was destroyed on the tenth of September.

Dang.

That does explain a lot of things that have been happening in the news for the last forty days or so.

Hazy Hot and Humid Day

Yesterday was our first hot, hazy, and humid day of the summer. I worked in the yard for a couple of hours, digging up some bushes and a long strip of ground cover next to the garage. It had to take frequent breaks to go inside, get a drink, and cool down in front of a fan.

The central air in the house is on the fritz, and our service guy is coming out on Monday to get it working again.

I've been working for the last week on creating a space elevator simulation in Java. I will be documenting the work in Dornick 'n Gleipner.

Pollo Estupendo del Verde Chili

Publish PostThey are having a chili cook-off at work, in support of the food drive.

I tweeked my favorite recipe, using dark chicken meat this time, and made a triple batch. It included five pounds of chicken, ten poblanos chiles, seven cubanelles, six jalapeños, two long hots, a couple of spanish onions, ten tomatillos, six stalks of celery, six cans of habichuelas blancas, and six quarts of chicken stock, with some garlic and dark red chili powder to tweek the flavor.

Steph drew a picture of Super Chicken in green, with a little mustache, as the chili mascot.

Missed it By THAT Much

Article in New Scientist:

"...when Cassini's radar tracked surface features on the moon, scientists found evidence that Titan rocks slightly due to tiny shifts in its rotation rate. Currently, Titan spins an extra 0.36° over the course of a year beyond what it would if it were in perfect sync with the moon. The moon's rotation rate also appears to be slowly increasing."

That is approximately sixteen kilometers that the base of the ribbon would need to move each year.

Hyperion, the moon that the ribbon may need to periodically dodge, is three hundred and sixty kilometers in its longest dimension.

Cost to Open the Kashagan Oil Field

The Kashagan oil field is in Kazakhstan's sector of the Caspian Sea, and represents one of the largest oil fields discovered in the last forty years.

There is an article in Salon that states that the cost extimate to open the oil field ranges from $57 billion to $135 billion.