¿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.

A big pile of ... something

I went out to feed Chance (my cat) this morning and noticed that my gate was in a different position than it usually is. The wind moves it on occasion, so I didn't think much of it. The tarp had also blown off of one of Charlie's D2 cats (a tractor) in the front yard, which only seemed to confirm my guess. On further inspection, it seems that the wind had blown a few new things onto the property as well. Half way to the barn I found a pile of horse...droppings. I also found a series of hoof-prints. Seeing as all the horses have moved to Washington, I was a bit confused. The pile of crap I could see flying onto the path if the wind was strong enough. Due to the size of the "leavings" it looked like it was a smallish horse, so with wind enough, that too might have flown in. Just because we haven't actually seen Pegasus lately, it doesn't necessarily follow that he does not still exist. So. The wind explains both the horse and the "deposit" he might have left. It does not explain the hoof prints though. I heard no horse coming clippity cloppity into my yard, or out of it again, nor did I hear a rider, nor find boot prints. I wear moccasins in my yard and around my place, so any boot prints would only be left by my visitor. This leaves me with a bit of a puzzle. If I heard no horse moving around, this logically means that he (or she) did not move about and could not possibly have left the hoof prints. The only conceivable way they could have gotten there is that the wind blew them there as well. I was not aware that wind could do such a thing, but now that I've seen the evidence, I know that it can. I love the proper application of scientific reasoning.

About time I got off my lazy butt

to go to work again. I haven't actually got the job, yet, but the possibility is there. I walked into a local jewelry supply/repair house to purchase a few small items and ask a question or two. I ended up in a rather informal, but informative, interview. By informal I mean that they didn't ask my name until I was walking out the door. By informative I mean that the gentleman in question told me quite a bit about his shop. Also, he asked me to call him on Saturday to find out if he wants to offer me the job. If I get the position, he wants me to learn wax carving, which can be a lucrative skill that might go far in creating those objects I see in my head. I am excited, but cautious. I don't want to build my hopes too much.

Too new to be annoying yet

The weather has just turned cool enough to light the first fire of the year. This early in the season I still have enough firewood to be both warm and comfortable with the fact that I'm not running out yet. Just for the sake of something different, I lit the wood range in the kitchen and cooked my dinner on it. For whatever reason, I never bothered to light the kitchen stove for heat last year. Due to the fact that there is another stove closer to my couch in the living room, the kitchen stove stayed cold. It really is a very good design. It heats the house quite a bit better than the caboose stove by the couch. It is more central, and considering that it was designed to get hot enough to cook food quickly, as well as circulate smoke around the oven box to heat it as well, it is far more efficient. It radiates far more heat into the room due to its oven draft design, rather than just sending it up the stovepipe, like the caboose stove. This thing is cool (hot), and it cooks food.

Train of Lights

Its time again for the Train of Lights in Niles Canyon. Last year was a good party, but this year promises to be better. There should be more elbow room, plus we are taking a 4:30 train. The train leaves early enough to see the canyon scenery before the sun goes down, then to see the lights on the train on the return trip. After all the fun of riding a nicely restored antique train wrapped in enough Christmas lights to be seen from low orbit, we will head off to get dinner at whichever fine restaurant seems best. Last year I had access to eleven tickets. This year I worked enough hours to earn the maximum of six free and the option for as many discounted. Now I need to start figuring out everyone's schedules to see who can join me. So far I am going, my mother has been invited, as have my dad, step mother, and little sister. Rich and Jeremy are also likely. Michelle has set the date aside already. Terran? I sent him an email. Manny? I'll start working on him directly in order to get him to commit before December has come and gone. There are one or two other invitations floating around out there as well. I've got a few spaces open still. Maybe Jen will join Manny this year. Everyone start thinking of what they want for dinner in two months.

Snapple

I was playing Pikmin2 today when my little vegimal space carrots dug up a Snapple lid. It was a very good likeness. So much so that I felt compelled to open my fridge and drink one. They were kindly, or perhaps accidentally, left in my fridge by the most generous and kind Sr. rLog. I shall have to thank him when he returns from Botswana or whichever such place he is now.

Retraction

After a few minutes perusing the jPg I have determined that we were not at the same beach, but very close. I now give you the jFrog's picture to compare.All the details of the gentleman's blog match rather nicely with what I recall of finding these ants. We found them in a tree just in front of the trail leading to the beach where we found the sand bubbler crabs. It doesn't seem that jFrog has any pictures posted of said crustaceans, misfortunately. However he does have a fine picture of the beach approaches.
My compliments to whomever took this photo of a sand bubbler crab burrow and surrounding demesne.

Sand bubbler crabs and green ants

In a search for information and identification of some strange little crabs we saw in Australia, I found this. Unless I am very much mistaken (I am counting on my friends to either confirm or deny), this gentleman took pictures of the exact ant nest and bubbler crabs on the exact same beach where we found them. For that matter, I think jFrog has a picture of that precise nest somewhere in his collection. This is just too weird.

If man were meant to fly, he'd have been born with wings

On my way to my mothers place today I thought I blew a tire or was destroying my car in some other new and interesting way. I was driving merrily along when suddenly there was a violent thumpity, thumpity, thumpity sound very much like that of a tire shredding and flapping about in the wheel well. Its a sound I've had to deal with on two separate, non-consecutive occasions. It isn't something you forget. Luckily I was very (150ft) close to my mom's driveway. The sound got quieter as I slowed the car down, but kept on going even after I killed the engine. After a very confused second examination of the facts I concluded that my car was fine, but that helicopter was flying way too close to the ground. Apparently the violence of the rotors tearing the air apart feel and sound very much like the violence of a car tire tearing itself apart.

Probably an old relative of mine

Our pyramids, fist-sized gold pendants, and burial llamas were always better than the neighbors. You just wish you had a country half as nice as mine.

Hey, it worked for that guy, and he's only been dead for 3000 years!

Holy prosthetic toes, Batman!Its an intriguing find, to be sure, but do we really need to try to make more? One can only presume medical science has improved since then.

Distasteful

As some of you may be aware, my neighborhood has become host to a litter of feral kittens. Sure, they are cute, but they are also a symptom of an increasing problem. Domestic cats that have not been fixed do on occasion procreate, and unfortunately there are not homes enough for these misbegotten fluff balls. Many of them end up in the hills living a precarious existence off of whatever they might find. There is the chance that instinct might give them what they need to survive, but coming from domestic stock, how much practical experience do they have? I don't know enough about how this really works. I do know that feral animals frequently make do by feeding off the scraps of humanity. In this case, by crowding Chance (my cat) out of his food bowl. Once I first saw the kittens (the misfortunate get of the ugliest cat in the neighborhood and the tom that picks fights with Chance) I chose to let nature deal with them. It seemed a better choice to me than to capture them and send them off to a crowded shelter where they would likely sit with hundreds of others waiting for the same cruel fate of either being ignored or put down. In the natural world I figured they would either find that the world around them would support them or they would not. It was a hard choice for me, but I had determined that I was in no shape, ideologically or financially, to support four more cats, in addition to the one I already care for. I am not a cat person. With the exception of mine, I do not like them. Nor, as chance would have it, do I like burying them. I found two of the kittens dead this morning when I went out to feed Chance. Taking a shovel out behind the barn I began to dig a resting place for them. The burial also required a trip to the shop for a pick, and yet another trip back for a breaking bar. Cinnabar clay is persistent stuff. I dug as deep as I was able without doing myself harm, then filled the hole and rolled a wooden cable spool over it to keep the rest of the wild world away. Digging gave me time to think about the law of unintended consequence. I had made a choice to do nothing about these kittens and to let the hills kill them, perhaps to relieve my own squeamishness. It hadn't occurred to me that I would have to face up to it in such a way. As I shoveled I had time to think that this was entirely my fault. I could have fed them. I could have taken them in somehow. The original decision to let the hills deal with them did exactly that, yet I found it easier to be harsh before I had to deal with the results of my (in)actions. The work has already been done.

I would ask any who have not already done so to spay or neuter their pets. For all of its barbarity, it is a far kinder thing we can do than to let their young starve, sicken, and die.

Only Adam West

I just watched an animated Adam West chase a pizza guy down the street shooting cats at him with a crossbow. It makes as much sense in print as it did on the tube. If not for the fact that I was too surprised to laugh, I would have shot root beer out my nose.

My cat has a thing for cars

I am not a cat fan. However. I do like my cat. He's just a bit off. Perhaps like his feeder. Note that I did not say owner. There is only a little doubt about who owns what around my place. I do not own the cat. The cat does not own me. He does own at least one car, and seems convinced that the others are his as well. His food bowl is on top of his Ford Escort, he sleeps under my Metropolitan, and just today I discovered that he is not only fascinated by the trunk of my BMW, he also kinda digs the engine compartment. I, meanwhile, was attempting to change the oil. Its normally a simple enough job, but having a cat climb all over you and the engine itself adds a whole new level. Concerned with his safety and the potential smell of shorted out feline, I tried to remove him from the battery, only to discover the elegant stiletto like qualities of his claws. Chance being a very persistent cat, and I a rather complacent human, he remained in the engine compartment. I figured (a method learned from my grandfather) that he would learn soon enough the fun of completing an electrical circuit with his flesh. Luckily for the both of us, it never happened. After quite a while walking about on both the engine and myself as I worked on the car, he decided he had had enough and went about his business, content in the knowledge that he had proven something to someone, somewhere.

Also, he snuck (past tense of sneaked) into the house through two different windows, the first having just been closed against him. Not content with just the windows, he also ran through the front door on several occasions and started exploring the house. Getting somewhat used to this, I no longer keep butter where the cat can lick it.