So I get home from TaiChi last night at about 9:00 to find a strange man standing in my (messy) living room talking on my phone. Odd.
Being quick of eye and mind, I immediately notice the cardboard boxes stacked around him with the word "Kirby" blazoned on them.
"Hi Marla. Kirby. You let them in!"
Yup, our sweet (though messy) home had been invaded by Kirby salesmen!
It's my own damn fault. I expressed interest in their vacuum -- I wanted to see how it was put together, check out the craftsmanship.
It's a very nice machine. Very powerful, good suction, decent features, good access to the airways.
Can't say I like their sales tactics, though. It's the classic "shame you into buying their machine" system. The suck endless dust out of your carpet and scatter the little dust-covered filter pads around to illustrate how DIRTY you are.
They use your vacuum to suck an area of carpet as clean as it will get, and then use their vacuum to illustrate how DIRTY it still is! Dirty carpets, oh my god. Actually, I hope to remove the carpet entirely and go to wood.
They suck skin cells and dust mites out of your mattress, to show how you are wallowing in DIRT all of your life! I'm replying that I don't mind -- it keeps my immune system happy and excercised.
How can you live in such filth?
They try to get you to agree to their definitions. "How do you tell if your current vacuum is broken? When it stops removing the dirt from your carpet? Look! It's not removing all of your dirt! You must buy a real vacuum that actually works!"
I, of course, just wanted to look at their machine. Professional interest. My definition of broken was "when it makes ugly noises or no longer removes the cat fluff." My Dyson, which I think is the best consumer-quality vacuum you can find, works like a charm for my needs.
They were all like, "our vacuum works so much better than yours!" My reply was, damn, I hope so. It costs $2,000. It's a professional grade machine (really) and mine's a $300 (well, $500 with all the attachments and stuff) consumer device.
Love the machine, hate the sales pitch.
For $2,000, though, I would rather live with dirt and buy a build-your-own Gorilla kit:
http://www.boneclones.com/SC-028S-D.htm
Or perhaps a vacuum de-bubbler and spin caster from Rio Grande, plus a bunch of other jewelery-making supplies.
Or perhaps that metal lathe I want. Or a new NC mill! Ooooh... tools and toys. Cleanliness is overated, anyway.
The four day weekend is past. Normally, on a Monday after a long break, it's hard to go to work.
At least, that's what I remember. Working at home for as long as I did, every day was pretty much like any other.
Today, though, it was a pretty smooth ride in, emotionally speaking. I knew pretty much what fiddling I would have to do, and that helps. I like having a plan, having work to do.
I got in early (7:05 am) but couldn't really start DOING much until 7:45 -- that lockout from last week extended to all of my logins. Bastards. So I had to wait until I could get through to tech support to get it released.
I logged my hours and got caught up on this and that, so it was okay.
I've been working on the PMC item. After the rough form hardened, I did some cleanup on it. I found that I could scrape areas smooth and do some shaping with my favorite curved sculpting tool. I could burnish the clay to make it look silver, which was cool. I could lay new clay into rough spots from the syringe. I could use water to make a slip from the block of clay and paint it on with a moist brush to make it even smoother.
I hope to fire it this week sometime, this weekend at worst. It should be neat!
Then I'll do more work. I wonder what to make next?
The weekend was filled with food and games and quiet company. It was nice.
We went to Matt and Susan's Sunday to add priming sugar to a flat batch of cider. It turns out that, in all of our delays, it carbonated on the sly! Adding a 1/4 teaspoon of fine sugar to a carbonated beverage is a slick way of creating a fountain of foam.
Oh, and carbonated, this cherry cider is darned tasty. Mmmmm....
I dared to start working with the precious metal clay today.
It's interesting. Entirely unlike working with sculpey. I may have to play with sculpting with water clay someday, on a larger scale.
The rough form looks pretty good, though whether I will be able to make the finished form elegant remains to be seen. Also, it's flat on one side and I want to round that out in a second step. Plus add the finding.
Turkey day was pleasant yesterday. We went to Michelle's, which is a fine tradition. Also there were Bob and Mo, and Sophie and her daughter whose name I ought to remember.
Kathy dropped by late to say hi and share some yummy cookies.
Today, we go back and Marla will make Gumbo out of the turkey remains. It will be pleasant again!
Tomorrow, I hope to do more work on the sculpture.
Just as I was thinking that my work this Halloween was pretty neat, I spent some time wandering through some SFX websites.
Yeah, my stuff was neat, but I've got a LONG way to go...
I've got a decent grasp of the technical aspects (though there are still a few painting tricks I want to try), so now I need to learn how to sculpt and paint.
Nothing like a hobby to keep you busy! And humble.
I went home a bit early today... what a wasted day!
Not just because it was the day before Turkey Holiday, either.
I finally got away from fixing bugs and whatnot from the test days and got back to the USB project that I'm fiddling with. Not the fun USB project, the other one.
So I put a clean snapshot back onto the test machine and put on the usb code. It self-tests! Woot! Device reset... black screen reboot. Hmmm.
Reboot, turn on soft-ice, and try again. Aha! Accessing a null address or something. Oddly, the offending code on my side looks fine. A couple of runs through to get a feel for what is going on and I discover I need to install a debug version of a system library.
So, turn off the drivers and... hey! Damn it. When I try to turn off the driver, it crashes (makes sense, given the position of the problem) but won't let go of the code I'm trying to re-install.
I try the install anyway, but it won't do it.
So I go to push another clean snapshot onto the box, to find that my hard drive lost its mind. Wouldn't boot -- said it couldn't find the OS.
Screw that. I plugged in the other drive. It came up fine, so I pushed the snapshot onto it, a super clean one. One that didn't have the current passwords, because our IT department is on a security kick and everything got reset Tuesday.
So it boots, tries to access the drive and fails and my computer gets locked out. Normally, it takes two tries to lockout, and the drive setup steals two of them, but I must have had a third sitting from a previous boot. Sensitive little devils.
So I gave up. I'll rebuild my ghosts and all that on Monday.
To make matters more annoying, I think I found the problem flipping through the code while waiting for the ghost to push. But I couldn't test it.
Overall, the NI work has got to be the least interesting stuff I've ever done. I've written as much code these last nine months as I would normally do in one, and most of the rest of my time is spent in compiling, ghosting, fiddling, waiting, whatever. Argh!
I see potential for actual work in the future, but damn, so far it's just been fiddling. Except for the work I took on around architecture and documentation, but I don't really have free cycles for that right now, in spite of the boredom. The timing doesn't work well. I'm on a "hurry-up-and-wait" system, not a "put it down for a few hours and do something useful" system.
I'll give it until my one year anniversary and then I'll complain. There has got to be something that involves actual thinking to do here.
Michael or Whit, if you are reading this, I love National Instruments, the people I work with, the regular paycheck. But damn, the work is boring right now. I'll get over it, probably by getting work that isn't so tedious.
At 7:32 this morning, someone wiped my website.
I was not happy.
Thankfully, Blue Virtual (the best webhost in the known universe) tracked down the offending information in their log (so I could fix the vulnerability) and put the data back. And they didn't even charge me the usual $75! That was very nice.
Needless to say, I applied the necessary patch. And I've put a recurring task on my calendar to check for security updates for MT and TWiki, the two packages I use to manage the site.
Other than that, work continues to work, my second wedding anniversary went without incident (I bought prezzies! and got some too), and I'm SOOOOO looking forward to the Holidays.
The Holidays are coming! The Holidays are coming!
While Halloween is a sort of Holiday, it's mostly a time and energy sink.
Turkey Day and Present Day, however, are relaxing and a good time to catch up with friends and family.
I was able to clean the garage over the weekend. THAT took some work. The kiln is set up, and I got a new extension cord that can handle the amperage. That sucker is going to pull 12 amps out of what should be a 15 amp circuit. I'll have to turn the Halogens off during kiln time!
I poked and prodded the Precious Metal Clay a bit, too -- it's fairly soft and quite sticky. But you can use vegetable oil to lubricate your fingers and tools during use, and that works pretty good.
I also did some test sculpturing in Sculpey. I suck! Well, it actually went okay. It would be easier if the media was stiffer, to make smaller details easier to work.
I'm thinking I'll do the basic form with soft PMC then let it dry. It's supposed to dry "leathery". Then I can use additional PMC to round it out, and then dry that. Finally, I can do smoothing and details in the "hard" piece, then fire it.
We have some PMC paper, too, which is REALLY neat. A bit thick for origami work, not to mention darned small, but neat. I have some ideas for that stuff.
I'm looking forward to the first firing.
During the weekend, I also finished updating the Haunt section of this website, so drop in there and look at the pretty pictures!
Rio Grande totally rocks. It probably helps that they are just around the corner in New Mexico, but regardless -- the Kiln and supplies showed up on the doorstep yesterday.
Nice little kiln, and it is even ventilated on top for burnout. This little detail does not show up on the product photos or even the descriptions on the site, so it's totally a bonus.
Now, of course, I have to put my skills where my mouth is and sculpt that little piece I want to do. I hope it turns out well.
I actually have several ideas of how I want to do it, but I'll have to decide soon.
And even worse, I need to tidy up the workshop so I can place the kiln. I'll probably do the sculpture work at my desk, transplanting the magnifying light to upstairs.
Still not working on UnDead... much. Now I'm second-guessing my writing style in it. I'm thinking it's. Too. Choppy. Maybe.
Okay, not so bad, but I've shied away from long complex sentences and I think that might be a mistake. Now I have to re-read bits to see how they flow...
This will probably turn out to be a horrid, overworked story because of all this fiddling. But it will also work out a bunch of the kinks in my writing, so the next one should be better.
I was being a bit hard on myself yesterday. The script itself was pretty neat -- it just didn't play well with the audience and our format, as written.
But we recovered it fairly well after the test run. Next year, though, we should be running a traditional HT script. A tried and true formula; mess with it at your own risk!
Today is company meeting day, so I don't expect to get heaps of work done. Or maybe I will -- my best work is done in the morning.
Nice weather we're having, eh? Rain!
This weekend was my first "free" weekend since, I dunno, 2003 or so.
So, of course, it was filled with important tasks to do.
Saturday morning we spent cleaning the house -- we can actually see the bedroom floor again! It's really nice. In the afternoon we shopped for some goofy presents for that evening, which was the Haunted Trails wrapup party and awards ceremony.
Between the shopping and the party, various managers got together to do a "lessons learned" meeting. Whereupon we decided my script sucked, but everything else was surprisingly smooth.
Sunday I spent a bunch of time adding all of the 2003 project pictures in the Haunt section of this website. Check it out!
I also stubbed in 2004, but there are a million photos to sort through for this so it may have to wait till next weekend.
I've been busy at work and at home, so I haven't made much recent progress on the UnDead story... hope to get back to it soon.
And, finally, I started reading the TaiChi book I was supposed to read last year... it's really good!
Okay, I put in the order.
The Sierra 360F has been sold-out from Rio Grande and then discontinued... I wonder if this is because of their legendarily poor customer service and user manuals?
Anyway, I ordered the SC-2, which was $55 cheaper anyway. I got away with, kiln plus materials, less than $700! It will even ship out today, ground, so I'll probably see it by next weekend. Woot!
Now to visit the local clay store and see about additional sculpting tools... though I probably already have what I need.
Oooh, it's hard to decide on a kiln... I would like to spend the money and get a Paragon SC-3, but that is more than I want to spend. And for the type of work I'm likely to do, the Paragon SC-2 is more than fine.
http://www.riogrande.com/PMC/703-077.htm
The other kiln is a Sierra 360F, at about the same price (a bit more expensive), about the same size, and about the same capabilities.
http://www.riogrande.com/PMC/703-060.htm
Apparently, the Sierra was built by a designer who left Paragon, and it has some subtle design improvements that make it "better". It seems to be recommended more often than the Paragon, at least.
Both of them are sold by Rio Grande, my preferred supplier (see links above).
At lunch today, I hope to put together an order from the notes I currently have.... kiln, tools, materials...
Expensive!
And I don't have the cash on hand until the 15th, so I'll put it on the Visa and schedule a payment on the 15th to cover (almost all of) it.
I hope we find enough uses for it, to justify the expense! You can do all manner of activities in it -- precious metal clay, glass slumping, enameling, and probably even heat-treating. Small stuff. It's only 6" tall inside!
We have some friends who might be able to use it, too, so we can spread the joy around.
Okay, I give up! I confessed to Marla part of what I wanted to get for Christmas for her... to see if she would be willing to forgo presents for me, so we can actually afford this thing. Because, you know, it's at least as much a prezzie for my as it is for her.
It is an electric jewelry kiln, such as the Paragon SC-2 or Sierra 360F. About $500 to $600... expensive, but if split two ways, less than $300 each!
Of course, I won't show her what I intend to MAKE in the kiln until Christmas. And this way, I also get to keep up the tradition of making her gifts. We can buy books and videos any time, so I like to do something special for her for the Holidays.
A few days ago I got a letter from Park that really pissed me off... so I waited a few days to write this.
First off -- Park University, a school that originally provided education for people associated with the military, is a poor choice of a school. Use it only if you have to.
Here is why.
My experience with Park is that they are inflexible, rule-bound, and not open to working with their students to achieve their education. Bureaucracy is the order of the day and education is just a side effect of that.
So if you want to actually learn something, or if you desire some cooperation from your institution of learning, do NOT go to Park.
At the start, they were pretty anal about how they wanted to get my transcripts. A sealed envelope from the school, delivered by me, was not good enough. I balked and they took 'em anyway, but it caused them unhappiness.
Taking my class (speech), the teacher was okay but the class was not all that enlightening. However, the teacher lived in fear (okay, concern) about the class schedule and how the bean counting administration would view any early class dismissals. Twice, I think, during the class one of the admins would sit in to make sure things were going okay. I didn't think much of this at the time, but it does seem a bit excessive in the larger context of my experience.
Then I wanted to move on and take a math course. The prereq class was something I had in High School, so it didn't show on my transcript, and I've been using similar math for, oh, twenty years in my job. The teacher was fine with me taking the class.
When I asked the teacher, we CC'ed the admin as well. Normally, she never answers her e-mail when I have questions, but this one she snapped up within minutes. Motivated, apparently, by the horror of my actually asking a teacher if I could take his class. Apparently, the correct (and undocumented, as far as I can tell) process is to grovel before the administration and get their blessing.
Needless to say, they didn't. Have to jump through the prereq hoops to get in. Their thinking was that they are trying to ensure my success in the class. My thinking is that they can't cope with anything out of the ordinary. It's on MY head if I fail the class, and I am the one, as an ADULT STUDENT with EXPERIENCE, who can make that assessment best.
So onward.
I enrolled in Park early -- because I had a tidal wave of deadlines and work coming in (the book, Haunted Trails) and I wanted to get the paperwork done and out of the way. It turns out, my enrollment occured in the last week of the term. This, apparently, started a clock ticking. Then the next term I didn't take a class. THEN I took a class...
During my enrollment, I was told there was an August 1 deadline to get some validate learning experience credits in (prior learning). My thought was that schools are cyclic and school deadlines are equally cyclic. If I missed this deadline, I would have to submit to a later evaluation deadline... no big deal.
Turns out that was a drop-dead date, beyond which I forfit my VLE hopes.
I don't know what the purpose of that deadline was (they never explained that part), but those "two terms" where I was enrolled but not active in the school were ridiculous. I asked for an exception. I was refused.
At no point in my interaction with Park was there any flexibility, proper explanation of their inflexibility, or any support for me, the student and client, towards getting my degree.
So. Park Sucks. Don't go there. Tell your friends.
Woo, I went to a martial arts application workshop this Saturday... 10:15 to 5:00 with an hour lunch break.
At the time, it was just fun -- Master Bryant is awesome, funny, and a good teacher. He tried to compress a six week self defense course into just a day -- with some success.
As a wrap up, we explored how different styles of martial art deal with one situation -- TaiChi (yes, TaiChi has application, it's not just "dancing") and bunch of others I don't know how to spell off the top of my head. There are some funky styles out there.
It really increased my enthusiasm for it all!
But on the downside, I had sore muscles in the DARNDEST places. I found muscles I didn't even know I had, let alone how to stretch them out.
I spent Sunday afternoon helping with the Haunted Trails strike (not entirely done yet, but the Basin can cope with the last bit of cleaning), and then most of the D&D game trying to get the kinks out of my suffering body.
Now I'm back at work, doing stuff... nothing exciting today. Most of today, in fact, appears to be absorbed in meetings.
Ooh, and I decided what I want to give Marla for Christmas, but I don't know if I'll be able to. Can't say more here, though. Maybe in January I'll clue y'all in.
Next weekend, I hope to put up the last two year's worth of Halloween photos.
Ahhh, the cold crisp air is here, signalling the Holiday season!
I love the mental quiet that comes between Halloween and the New Year... I don't do anything strenuous these two months. I don't start any books under contract, for example.
We can putz around the house and clean up after the Halloween whirlwind. We can read books. We can snuggle up in the warmth of the comforter against the crisp air. Mmmmm.
Well, I *am* working on the UnDead story again. I'm cleaning up the 27,000 words I have, trying to make it tidy and get back into the story. And then, I guess, I'll try to write another 75,000 words or so to make it a complete novel. Woot!
And there is my day job, of course. And TaiChi, dancing... this and that. But that's all background stuff.
Oooh, I do need to work up a nice prezzie or three for Marla, for Christmas. Gotta put on my thinking cap.
So he won, finally -- an actual win it would appear. Yes, Chimpy McFlightsuit beat out ol' Coffin Face for the highest office in America.
It would appear that he won because of his morality and his fear mongering (as understood by those polled). From the CNN polls:
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE
Taxes (5%) - Bush 57%, Kerry 43%
Education (4%) - Bush 26%, Kerry 73%
Iraq (15%) - Bush 26%, Kerry 73%
Terrorism (19%) - Bush 86%, Kerry 14%
Economy/Jobs (20%) - Bush 18%, Kerry 80%
Moral Values (22%) - Bush 80%, Kerry 18%
Health Care (8%) - Bush 23%, Kerry 77%
Strangely, people who cared most about Iraq voted for Kerry. Also strangely, during Bush's reign, acts of terror have INCREASED. And I've always felt that his "morality" was highly questionable. He talks a good talk, I admit, but his actions tend to invalidate his words. Sorry guys. You voted for hypocrisy, not morality.
Likewise, the qualities people saw in Bush have an Alice in Wonderland kind of dissonance:
MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY
Cares About People (9%) - Busy 24%, Kerry 75%
Religious Faith (8%) - Bush 91%, Kerry 8%
Honest/Trustworthy (11%) - Bush 70%, Kerry 29%
Strong Leader (17%) - Bush 87%, Kerry 12%
Intelligent (7%) - Bush 9%, Kerry 91%
Will Bring Change (24%) - Bush 5%, Kerry 95%
Clear Stand on Issue (17%) - Bush 79%, Kerry 20%
I actually agree on one point. Bush is a strong leader. I just feel that he's also an ignorant leader, unable to manage the subtleties of world politics, and more than likely to strongly lead us in the wrong direction.
I am happy to be proven wrong, but until then I will nurture my sense of dread.
One thing at least is good from this. If their policies backfire, the Republicans have no-one to blame. They control all branches of government right now. I hope they make honorable use of their position... unlike, for example, those mouth-breathing bastards who redistricted Texas! Geez.
On the down side, if things go well, we will have to give credit to them. The sword swings both ways.
VOTE! DO IT NOW!
And may the correct candidate win.
So... tired...
Went to sleep about midnight last night. I knew better, especially after the previous three days, but I wanted to finish the book.
Darned Liaden stories. Darned Whit, who gave them to Richard, who gave them to Marla, who gave them to me...
At least that was the final book in the main storyline, so far. It is, of course, open ended and amenable to continuation.
So today I'm a sleepy zombie person. Bleh.
My toes apparently survived the Haunted Trails. Taping them up helped.
Saturday's run went well, and we only ended up 45 minutes behind schedule at the end. Which was not our fault. We had a TERRIBLE bus driver.
The drive from the parking/start area to the Basin proper has to take 15 minutes or less per round trip, or we fall behind schedule. It SHOULD be possible in about 12 minutes -- but this fine person was taking an average of 18 minutes (16 to 20, so they said).
So I asked Michelle, Georganne, Susan, and EVERYONE who interacted with him talk to him, to speed him up. Georganne swears that every time she talked to him, he slowed down.
Needless to say, I was NOT going to have my 5-hour haunt fall 100 minutes behind schedule because of this toad.
So I actually got on his bus and I actually unloaded on him. I made it extremely, pointeded clear that he had to make the run in 15 minutes otherwise we could fall two hours behind schedule (I rounded up) and that the guests would be screaming, the actors would be screaming, and I would be screaming. That this would make the Trail fail this year, and that this would be on my head, and that this was categorically unacceptable.
I wasn't screaming, but I was far from nice. I'm not sure that I could even SEE "nice" from where I was. In fact, I really would not have wanted to be in his position. I probably would have made myself cry.
Strangely enough, I never felt bad about it, not during or after. It was, all in all, a very odd experience.
We didn't fall much further behind after that -- and our later delays could be blamed on factors outside of his control.
I imagine that he didn't want to see me again that night. Or ever.
So, other than this little trauma, everything went well!
Yesterday we pulled the lights and electronics, Paul is returning the rentals today, and we tidied up a bunch of the personal items.
Strike continues through this week and into next weekend... and we'll be entirely done!
The wrap party is on the 13th, where we will learn how much we made and how much we spent.
Yay!
Then I desperately need to update my website.