A small challenge for the lot of you

For some time now I've been attempting to read the classics. In particular, I'm trying to read all the classic adventure stories that we presume everyone read as a child, even though it seems that few actually did. I'd like to fix that problem. Of course, this being reality, one problem is quickly followed by another. At this moment in time Swiss Family Robinson is almost half read, and quickly moving to the end. What should I read next? I'd like everyone to start suggesting those classic adventures for me. Try though I might, I just can't think of enough titles to keep me busy for long. I know many of them, I just can't recall them just now. Any help you could give me would be appreciated.

Lessons learned and answers pending

My cat just taught me a lesson on how to operate my computer. Some time ago I visited a website on a somewhat regular basis. One day the resolution of that one site went all wonky on me. To this day the resolution of that one page is still odd. I have never been able to determine what happened to it. Today the cat stepped on my computer and the page I was on exploded. It was almost completely impossible read due to the stupid size issues. Every other page retained original size. There were only two possible conclusions that could be drawn from this. Either there is a keyboard command of which I am not aware, or my cat is magic. Upon observation of the cat who was occupied cleaning his bum, I concluded that there must be a keyboard command. After several minutes attempting to locate the general region of the keyboard stepped on and further attempting to deduce any possible key combinations, I found the solution. To confirm, I reset that first page back to its original size, then rested content in the knowledge that I am not a complete failure. Also, where do cats keep their bones when they are not using them?

Getting a cat isn't like getting a lawn mower,

yet they sometimes come from the same sources. In this case, they come from Jeremy. A week ago I had one barn cat, yclept Chance, with whom I spent the most limited time. He is friendly enough, but rather pointy. I was quite content with just that one cat. I had no need for any more. Enter Sophocles; 17 pounds of orange, long-haired, affectionate, drooling, shedding chaos. He is inspecting the dust and spiders behind the couch, just now. I suppose there is some logical reason for a cat to play with spiders, but I've never found it. I don't like spiders. Too many legs. But then, cats start with rather more legs than I, so I suppose that they naturally have got a quarter less of a problem with the aforementioned spiders than I have. Of course, that still leaves three quarters of creepy spider to dislike. Lets think about that for a moment more, shall we? I have two legs and dislike spiders, which have eight legs. A cat has four legs, and likes spiders, which have eight. So. I have two, and a cat has four, so we need to subtract two in order to keep this whole thing logical. Thus, eight minus two equals six. So to a cat, a spider only has six legs. Most random bugs have six legs, but I hate them half as much as I dislike spiders. So, if a cat (equaling four) likes spiders (which now equal six) and six is half as offensive as eight, then to a cat, a spider must equal three (for the half of the bug that is objectionable). Now it is obvious that three is less than four, which makes it possible to like things with three legs one quarter more than something with four. With this said, we can logically conclude that cats like spiders a quarter more than we like cats because (by our entirely reasonable calculations) spiders have one less leg than a cat does. I assume that many people like cats. If I also assume that my above reasoning is correct, then it follows that cats like spiders one quarter more than people like cats.

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

I've recently set up my old phonograph and have started spinning my grandmother's records. The crisp sound and faint crackle please me though I am not entirely sure why. My grandfather's paintings are hanging on the walls, looking very familiar in their details, but very different on my walls rather than his. I cooked my dinner tonight using a pot from my grandmother's kitchen and I sit here eating it listening to her music. Earlier I looked up a word in the muckle great dictionary that two generations of my family have used as a booster seat. The night seems warm and comfortable. It is odd that these things remind me so much of the loss of my grandparents, and also that these things can comfort me and make me feel somehow as if they are standing here at my side.

What next?

The last several days have been interesting. Jeremy is slowly going insane and has decided to take me with him. Some years ago I worked with a college friend of mine who was into fish. He had the most fantastic coral reef tank in his living room. It was huge and colorful, and looked like it cost a fortune to build and maintain. I always did like aquariums. He gave me a small tank he wasn't using, and helped me set it up as a simple freshwater tank with a few fish. I learned it was possible to grow aquatic plants in a fish tank and decided I wanted to plant myself a little watery garden. A few years or so went by before he gave me a bigger tank to try. I retired the first small tank and planted up the larger one after joining a local aquatic plant community. Enter Jeremy. His house has a tank built into the wall in the entry way just below the stairs. I had brought him along to a plant club meeting and he came home with a large bag of cuttings. Since then, he has joined the club, and started gathering more tanks. He now has the built in tank, a small tank he once had a turtle in, a tiny tank to isolate pregnant fish, a 29 gallon I gave him, a ten he found on craigslist, and a five gallon tank he just started keeping frogs in. I had three as of a few days ago. A very large 55 gallon tank my ex-boss gave to me, and the two Manny gave me. I've been thinking that might be more than enough. The small tank I put back together just to breed a cherry red shrimp colony I had been given. I had meant to take it down again once they had bred out enough to populate the two larger tanks. Jeremy has other ideas. He just went out and picked up another ten gallon tank from craigslist, then bought a 20 gallon tank for cheap at a local pet store. He has also been gathering other bits of aquarium equipment for some time. I don't even want to know how much he spent gathering stuff he didn't even need. Now he has decided that I need more tanks. He found out I have another aquarium stand that I used to use. It will fit two small tanks. So. He's now given me those last two tanks. He came over today to put them together. Holy crap. That makes five tanks in my place. I like aquariums and zoos, but I am not sure I want to live in one. Not content just to slowly fill my house with fish, Jeremy decided he wanted to see what free stuff he could find on craigslist. He found a bunch of shit piled all over the south bay and decided that he might want it. I talked him out of most of it, but he did find one thing that I had to have. I juggle. I'm not very good, but I enjoy it. Some years ago, I bought a set of juggling clubs, which seems to impress him. I don't use them enough, probably because it really isn't an inside sport. They make messes indoors. There was a friend of ours at leland that had a set of juggling torches. They were made by the same company that made my clubs and have the same balance, so that if you could juggle the clubs, you could also juggle their torches or knives. Jeremy found a fellow on craigslist giving away a set of torches for free, providing you could prove you could juggle. We went to meet the gentleman in question in Milpitas. He was older, with grey hair and rather quiet. Businesslike, but quiet. He gave me many tips on how to use the torches, how to light them, put them out, and what fuels to use. His companion (wife? daughter? girlfriend?) made sure we learned who used to use these torches. He didn't juggle he said. He was a magician. Two of the torches had been modified to mount to either end of a staff. The girl again insisted he tell us who used the torches. He didn't seem like he really wanted to talk about it, so she did instead. The last person to use them was a trained elephant. It turns out he wasn't just a magician, he was also an elephant trainer. In one of his acts, he would hand the torch/staff to the elephant who would use it for who knows what. So now I have in my possession a set of antique juggling torches that were once used by a magician/elephant act in a circus.

Take that USGS

A good number of us just sat through one of the thrills of living in California. The light earthquake. The fun ones that are strong enough to get the lamp swinging, but weak enough not to break anything. It was fairly long though, it just seemed to keep on rolling. Once it stopped, I set the book down I had been holding over my head in case the window behind me decided to throw glass at me and picked up the computer. I went to the US Geological Survey site. They track these things. They didn't know the magnitude yet. I thought I did though. 4.6? No. Not quite. 4.4 then? Yeah that sounds better. Then the USGS confirmed it for me. Its good to be the king. It is a bit disturbing though. I would gladly trade that super power for x-ray vision or lickity-speed. Also, all the wild turkeys behind my place think the sky is falling. They keep gobbling away as if the world is still shaking.

Note: In the last few minutes the USGS has reviewed their data and rated the quake a 4.3

What is it with grassy knolls?

Todays adventures didn't involve lawn mowers, but they did involve getting one forklift, one truck, and one trailer with a car on it all stuck in the field behind my house. At the same time. Stupidity strikes again. Considering that I don't work right now, I tend to stay up late and get up even later. There weren't any real plans for the day yet, so I was taking my time getting ready for them. After sitting around for a bit I finally got into the shower sometime around noon. Just in time for the phone to ring. Figures. After a moment or so of thought I decided it wasn't worth running naked through my house dripping wet and possibly ruining my phone at the same time. Eventually I got around to returning the call. It was Jeremy. Not too surprising. He is good at hatching up things to do. Today he wanted to drive to Morgan Hill to pick up a few small parts for his MGB roadster. He wants to drive it to the same shop this weekend for an MG Owners Group tech session. These are half car-show, and half a bunch of gear heads tinkering with each other's automobiles. They are kinda fun though. It wasn't just that Jeremy wanted to drive down, or that he wanted me to go with him. It was that he wanted me to bring Dad's truck (which is being stored at my place) so I can bring a borrowed trailer home. Next question. Why do you need a trailer? "I don't," he says. "We need it for your car." My car? Its an MG show. "Yeah but I thought we could bring your Metropolitan." What? So. Some short time later Jeremy and I were on our way to Morgan Hill in Dads truck. Once we got there Jeremy sat down for an hour or so trying to exorcise a few demons from Bill's (the shop owner) computer. Eventually we got around to hitching up the trailer only to discover that we didn't have the right adapter to allow us to actually have working brake lights. Thankfully I live out on a country road where it isn't likely to be a problem. Home we went. We parked the truck in the yard pointing nose first out the back gate so the trailer would be in the right place. Its been a while since last I started the Met. To my surprise it started right up and ran well enough for me to drive it right up onto the trailer. We got it strapped down (with borrowed straps) and ready to go. The easiest way to get the truck and trailer turned is to drive straight through the back gate, make a wide turn around the field and come back through the gate facing the right direction. Didn't happen. I got three quarters of the way back to the gate and the foot and a half of grass turned slippery. I lost all traction and got stuck. Hmm. Perhaps if I take the trailer off, it will make it easier to get the truck out. No dice. Thinking quickly, I got the forklift running and went to pull the truck out, carefully not thinking of the fact that the forklift could get stuck on a perfectly dry parking lot with snow tires and chains installed. Some twenty seconds later the forklift was stuck too. Damn. I went back into the house for a few minutes, hoping that food would somehow magically transform itself into a solution. Every vehicle (other than Mr. S' antique tractor collection) was now stuck in the field with the possible exception of my thirty year old BMW. No way in hell I'm get that one stuck too. Now there is one truck, one antique clown car on a trailer, and one antique forklift all stuck in a perfect line in the same field. I called Charlie in a panic and asked his answering machine for advice. None came. Next I called my Dad and tried to explain how I got his truck stuck in my field while begging for help. He came out with his four wheel drive jeep. It worked wonders. First we got the forklift out, then the truck, then finally the trailer with my Met on it. Its amazing. No matter how much stupidity you throw at a problem, it doesn't get any better. Charlie called back less than five minutes after Dad and I got everything back out of the field. After he laughed at me for a good five minutes or so, he gave some good advice on how to get the forklift out if I get it stuck again. All in all, it was a fine day.

Endler's Livebearers and File Gumbo

Ricardo came by for dinner tonight. Its nice having company, easier to cook for several rather than one, and it is good to give something back to someone who has been so generous to me over the years. File gumbo was the experiment of the day, and it came out well. I'd never made a Cajun gumbo before, only okra and roux based Creole recipes. It was dark and smoky, though it would have benefited from a bit more chicken stock. Making new things is always exciting, and it was made even more so by the fact that I had a captive audience to mock me if all went wrong. I had thought it would be done by about seven or so, but was a bit off on my estimate. Only by two hours though.

Yesterday night Jeremy came over with a fistful of fish. It was rather a surprise for both of us. He had gone to pick up a few cuttings from a club member only to find he had an overabundance of Endler's livebearers. These little fishes have the most remarkable coloration and a nice background story. I happen to like stories. Come on over sometime and I will tell it to you. I like small fish, and I have a lot of open space in my new 55 gallon tank with way too few fishes to fill it. Endler's breed extraordinarily fast, so before long the twenty or so juveniles and the few adults ought to fill that tank nicely. I am rather looking forward to seeing the blinding colors flashing through that tank. After a bit of research I found that my little friends are a pure strain (which I desired) rather than a hybridized strain which is much more common in the fish stores. The colors look (so far) as though they breed a little too true. Dr. Endler reported that in the wild the colors of these fish seemed to have a huge variation, though after some few generations and the possible hybridization with guppies, the colors have started to breed true from parent to fry. It might be an interesting study to find another pure strain and try crossing them with mine in order to broaden the gene pool enough so that the random colors start popping again.

Two cherries and a plum

I did a bit more investigating of the slot machine this week. There is not much information out there on the internet about these old nickel slots, but there is something. Mostly I found a number of people talking about the machines and very little useful information on the workings thereof. After some time of poking around I did find a number of pictures. One of which showed a slot machine that was very similar to mine, with several small differences. I did more research and eventually came to a cautious conclusion. It is a Caille Cadet nickel slot made somewhere in the year 1936. It was one of the last machines made by Caille before they stopped manufacturing. Also, stuck in the works I found a nickel dated 1940. It had a bit of wear on it, so it wasn't new when it got lost, but still, it does remind one of the age of this toy.

Damn cat

My cat just tried to drill a hole in the back of my head. I brought him in for his dinner as I do every night, and as every night he decided that he didn't want to go back out again. We play around for a few minutes before I take him out, mostly as a means of getting me close enough to him to let me pick him up. After he finishes eating he does one of two things. Either he walks to the door and imperiously demands that I let him out, or he curls up beneath my jewelers bench and tries to fall asleep. Considering that he hasn't got a litterbox in the house, I refuse to let him stay for much more than an hour or so after he eats. Usually we play a little bit to get him out from under the bench. I had to get down there with him in order to hook him back out again. He stepped back when he saw my hand coming for him and put one paw quite firmly on the control pedal for my flex-shaft. I payed a bit more for the extra sensitive pedal upgrade, so it doesn't take a cat quite as heavy as Chance to activate it. I also hadn't realized that the hand piece of the flex-shaft was resting on the back of my head as I reached for my cat. I think it rather scared both of us when that thing went off.

Jackpot, almost literally

Dad came by yesterday when I was in the canyon building east toward Pleasanton. He dropped off a load of firewood for me. I didn't even notice. It was rather dark, seeing as the sun doesn't shine this far out in the country. I'm not that far out actually. It might just be because the sun went down. All scientific questions aside, I found the pile of wood after I listened to Dad's message on the machine. Dad doesn't usually give up all his firewood, but he's decided to move himself off to Willow Glen. That in itself is something I never thought I'd hear. He has a very comfortable house he spent thirty years getting just right, with a large beautiful yard and a swimming pool. Its just weird thinking he might leave it all behind. I called him back to thank him for the wood, and he asked if I could help him store his tent-trailer for a time. I happen to have a bit of empty barn space just now, so he came by with the trailer this morning. He also brought some odds and ends my grandfather picked up somewhere along the line. And a slot machine. It worked when he first brought it home, but somewhere in the early nineties, one of my sisters boyfriends broke it and it has been gathering dust ever since. Dad would never let me open it up and see if I could fix it, perhaps from the concern that I might damage something. Of course, I am a bit older now, and a metalsmith by trade. I happen to be qualified to fix or re-create anything I might break. Dad and I got the trailer and the wood into the barn and he helped tow me and the forklift out of the field when the wheels decided the grass was too slick for traction. It was good to spend a day with him. We don't take the time often enough. After he left, I spent the afternoon pulling the slot machine apart. There were several problems, but none of them major. The mechanism was full of old nickels, the jackpot reserve was overflowing, the coin advance was not advancing, and an adjustment was off. That last being the problem. I think sister's old boyfriend jammed the mechanism then kept pulling the lever, shoving the coin advance far enough out of whack that it could no longer tell if you had actually inserted a coin. All is well now, and the old machine has a place of honor in the entry way. I haven't been able to put a date to the machine yet, but I believe it to have been built in 1935 at the latest. Possibly a few years before, even. Very cool.

¿Qué?

I am the center of my own universe. Perhaps it is not proper to say it quite so bluntly, but the simple truths are sometimes unavoidable. We are all of us confined to linear time and are mostly obliged to live in the now. Linear time grants us an infinity of now, an endless present to do with as we please or are compelled to do. As time passes from yesterday to today, we gain our past one moment to the next. Our present exists only for one endless instant, but our past grows with each second that passes. Our past actions and the actions of those around us influence our actions in the present and give them additional meaning. Our personal perspective and our accumulated past lends new meaning to our present and influences our actions in the now. The past affects the present, and present actions that formed from the information provided us from that past catapult us into the future. Now there is irony in the fact that we spend so much of our present and have spent so much of our past worrying about and considering a future that has no physical existence. The future has not happened and never will. We cannot leave the now. Our future is only potential. We work towards our goals in the hope that they may become our present. As such, we are gifted with the rare ability to look forward out of the endless present into a land of pure fabrication. The future is made of what we desire or what we may fear. It may also be made of reality, but reality itself is bound to individual perception. As humans, it is not within our reach to effect change to the past, so we cannot manipulate physical reality once it has manifest, but we may perceive it from our individual perspective. We can only interpret the present reality by extrapolating out from our past. If this is true, then the only truths we may be sure of are those that we see, witness, or experience first hand. So. All one can be sure of is what one sees, and reality and time itself are functions of our own linear existence and limited perspective. As such, I am terrified that when I leave the room, all my friends will cease to exist. I know that this isn’t the way things work, but then, all the logical thought in the world can’t trump perception. Truth is only truth if we place ourselves in the proper place for it to appear so. Maybe this is the reason that I am afraid of the dark. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. The world itself winks out of existence every night when I go to sleep. Sorry about that; its nothing personal.

Yes, yes, I know. Lets just move along, shall we?

I've just purchased a kiln. I didn't know I wanted one until I heard the price. Its used, of course, and rather worse for the wear. The boss was attempting to get the unused or unnecessary crap out of the shop and offered an old derelict of a kiln to me for 50 bucks. Suddenly crap looks better. But then, even though I make my living by casting jewelery, tatooing machine parts, and motorcycle gang memorabilia, how much would I honestly do at home? Also, if I procure a kiln, will I then have to purchase a vacuum table, centrifuge, vulcanizer, wax injector and other needful items? Thats a heck of a potential bill to pay. No thanks. There isn't much else one can do with a kiln without these items. Plus the pyrometer on the kiln is busted, meaning I can't even tell the temperature inside. Translation: useless piece of junk at best, or oven to incinerate money. Never mind. I'll pass thanks. Meanwhile, my brain is working on the topic. I mentioned the lack of a vacuum table to the boss. The vacuum table can do several things more than what I use it for. Mostly I do centrifuge casting, but the vacuum table also serves as a unit for vacuum casting as well as vacuuming air out of my investment. This means that I don't need to spend the money on a centrifuge. Very nice. The boss then offers to order me a vacuum table at his cost (plus a very small bit, to be sure) saving me hundreds of dollars. I still don't have the money, but we're getting closer. I'd also be a very bad caster if I didn't know other ways to make rubber molds without possessing a vulcanizer. One can use a standard kitchen baking oven if one is willing to make some creative use of basic garage tools to vulcanize rubber. Hmm. Better still. The working price of this junk box of a kiln is coming down. But there are still a few needful details to address. Such as the busted pyrometer. After a good deal of looking, I found a brand name on the kiln and plugged it into the internet to see what might come flying out of that wacky place. As it turns out, the company is still in business and still manufacturing the exact unit. More than that, spare parts are still availiable. Perhaps not amazingly cheap, but still a far cry from the $750 the unit sells for new. I can do another 70 bucks or so for a new pyrometer. But then, what will I use it for before I get ideas and many hundreds of dollars of vacuum table? I can anneal the living crap out of anything now. I can enamel. I can heat treat things, and heat harden them. Holy crap. $50 is cheap. I'll buy the stupid money pit. I should be feeling stupid just now, but somehow, I'm still excited. All is well.

Pasta just tried to kill me

Not long ago I was given one of those fancy pots with holes in the lid for straining pasta water. After remembering that I had a bit of a particularly tasty sausage in the freezer and a jar full of arrabiata, I decided give the pot a try. I'll spare you the flavorific details of what I did with the food, and leave you with a warning. These fancy pots work rather well for draining pasta water, but they don't let steam out terribly well. Remember not to put your face over the pot when you open it after draining. Further remember not to breath through your mouth if you should forget to move your face. I just burned the crap out of my tongue.

Unforgivable

Now that Christmas and Boxing Day are past, it is time to take inventory in the shop. Mostly this means combat with heavily armed numbers in an unfortunately crowed urban setting. Case in point: I nearly lost my own life today in a misfortunate blunder. There I was, clipboard in hand, pen tucked safely behind my ear, running from one end of the shop to the other in a hopeless effort to save humanity from an untimely destruction by getting the computer to jive with reality, when I almost collided with a little girl petting a puppy. Of all the unforgivable war crimes possible in the inventory season, I cannot think of a more unforgivable sin than to kick the very personification of innocence. Perhaps tomorrow I will try to bump off a busload of nuns. Either that or I slow down and watch where I put my feet.

The new job

is rather interesting. I could not have predicted any of it. My first project was to draw out a bit of fine silver wire into six gauge half-round. That was simple enough. Then they handed me a dog collar and asked me to bezel set sixteen stones in sterling on it. Ten mother of pearl cabs, and six tiger's eye cabs. What next? Who knows? They tell me these projects are fairly common.