| Hunger Strike Force |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|12:21 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  exhausted | ] |
I saw these three words emblazoned on the side of a truck while driving home tonight. I'm not sure how to parse it. Is it a group of people who go around and do hunger strikes (Force as in Air Force)? Or is it an elite strike force which can inflict hunger on people? Or is it a testament to the power that hunger strikes can have? Or is it a company dedicated to causing people to hunger strike or forcing them to eat if they do hunger strike? Or something else? So many unanswered questions... maybe I need some sleep. |
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| boatswagen! |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|09:11 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
On my way to work this morning, I passed the boatswagen on the interstate. Very strange. |
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| fruit flies like a banana. |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|10:29 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
Yesterday I finally got around to making some zucchini bread with the zucchini we have gotten from the CSA this year (well, some of it, anyway). I tried two different recipes and the eggless chocolate chip one was preferred. I guess I'll have to make some more this week, to use up some more zucchini.
Today we went out to Bryant Grove on Percy Priest Lake in Long Hunter State Park to test out Ouida Mae's new dread flotilla. I guess she liked it. The water was quite warm.
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| polymer clay board game stuff |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|10:11 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
I wrote up a few more tutorials on bgg this week, following in the footsteps of my Code 777 postmortem.
I need to find the time to work on more track markers, and to take pictures and write up what I did for a game called 6x5. |
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| TFII |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|07:31 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | movie | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Went to see Transformers 2: Rise of The Fallen today with some coworkers. It was neat to go with them, but the movie wasn't all that great. Lots of effects, but not much in the way of good dialog or plot. Very MacGuffin rich, though.
I hadn't actually seen the first movie, which is kind of sad considering what a big fan I was of the animated series and the toys when I was a kid. I guess it met my expectations, which were low. Lots of explosions and fighting robots.
The one high point for me was the inclusion of Jetfire as an SR-71 Blackbird (my favorite aircraft).
2009 Movie Count: 11 |
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| Recent events? |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|09:44 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | ouida | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
A few weeks ago we "upgraded" blessed_lunatic's YMCA membership to add me and accommodate Ouida Mae. Since then I have been twice and they've been a few more times. The most recent time I went I got a couple of pictures...
( pool pictures )
I had planned to go hiking on Saturday but it was decided that it was too hot so I ended up taking Ouida Mae to Pla-za Art Supply, Trader Joe's, and, finally, Phillips Toy Mart, where I met up with blessed_lunatic and passed Ouida off so I could go meet with the origami club.
If you live in the Nashville area and haven't been to Phillips Toy Mart, you should take the time to check it out. It's really a neat place.
While we were there we saw another couple with a nine-month-old boy who appeared to be experiencing the pool for the first time. They had him in a big life jacket and he didn't like it because it forced him on his back. After a few minutes they took it off of him and he was a little happier...
This past Sunday we went to the American Artisan festival. It was nice, but it was really hot so we didn't make it through the whole thing. I did get a good picture of Ouida in her sun hat, riding on blessed_lunatic's shoulders.
Oh, I've also documented some more polymer clay board game stuff. In particular, small cubes for Pandemic and track markers for Age of Steam. |
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| Investment Genocide |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|11:11 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
If you invest in a Fidelity Investments mutual fund and recently got a letter about voting in the upcoming shareholders meeting, please consider voting for the anti-genocide provision (against the board of trustees recommendation.
I am also inclined to vote against the board of trustees (also against their recommendation...), but that may be due to the fact that I'd rather get a smaller return out of more ethical investments than the highest possible return and they apparently don't agree with that position. |
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| Sunday? Really? |
[May. 31st, 2009|09:30 pm] |
Wow, just... too much stuff.
If you want to know what I've been doing, besides the usual, here you go. |
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| origami lately |
[May. 29th, 2009|12:13 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Continuing my work on my business card web site, I folded the business card dragon that I found diagrams for on flickr. It's an interesting model. Not too complicated, although it does use box pleating and the card thickness can get a little unwieldy in some places. It also takes 5 cards that have to be glued together.
( dragon photo )
I also folded the pig with diagrams by the same author as the dragon. This one requires some judgment folds and gets very thick. I was only partly happy with my fourth try.
( pig photo )
I tried folding the Penta Flinger model from Wings and Things: Origami That Flies out of light card stock business cards. It worked out okay, but I ended up gluing it for stability, and regular thickness business cards wouldn't work well.
( penta flinger photos )
I also folded another six card orb then revisited the 4 card orb design.
( orb photos )
This is a tessellation based on Nick Robinson's Green Man model, folded from an 11 inch square of Thai mulberry paper with "3-D" dye.
( green man tessellation photos )
And finally a few small Tomoko Fuse boxes.
( box photos ) |
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| blargh |
[May. 28th, 2009|11:25 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | dog, ouida | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
I'm finding it hard to keep up with everything.
Last weekend I took Friday off and we went to visit family in East Tennessee. We were late leaving on Thursday so we didn't get to Greeneville until about 1am EDT. I went upstairs to go to sleep, but I left the light on for blessed_lunatic and Ouida Mae. About five minutes later, the dogs went nuts and Torgo jumped on the bed and started barking. I thought Freya was under the bed and they had a disagreement, so I glanced under the bed and when I saw a big black and white fur ball, I chastised Freya because I could still hear low growling over and over again. Then I put my glasses on. Looking again I figured out that it was my parent's black and white cat trapped under the bed, growling at the dogs. Oops. Sorry Freya.
Friday we sort of hung around the house. I went over to the shop with the dogs for a bit while blessed_lunatic and Dar went to town. JB showed me how to use the wet sandpaper he had set up and I experimented with sanding down some of the test tiles I had made for a project (to be documented later) while watching the dogs run down to the creek over and over again (and trying to keep them out of trouble, they only ran across the bridge twice).
We had a goal of spending some time up at The River, but as it turned out that was just a goal and not a plan. Instead of spending the night there, we just went up for a few hours on Saturday to visit with my grandmother, Rosa. It was her first chance to see Ouida Mae and she was very excited, although she tries not to let on. We had a nice visit and then we headed back to Greeneville.
Sunday we went up to Bristol to visit with blessed_lunatic's mother and grandfather. They were happy to see Ouida Mae, as usual, and the visit went well, although it started raining quite a bit making the back porch a bit too cool. After spending the day there, we headed back to Greeneville again.
On Monday we headed back home to Nashville, via Maynardville to visit with Kimberly's father and new step-mother. That visit also went well, although we left a bit too late to get home in time to mow the yard.
I'm sure there are some details I left out, and some stuff I just don't remember, like the weird dream I had Sunday night. Pirate legends and a cross between a Tolkien discussion group and a UFO support group, and someone making donuts that turned out to be bagels, and a road to a dark citadel (although I think that was just in a story).
Oh well, I guess the pictures will have to do the rest of the talking.
( pictures ) |
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| business card origami |
[May. 18th, 2009|12:40 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
This weekend I created a flickr pool for business card origami.
I also updated my business card origami page to add some models that I recently became aware of and to embed the images of models I have folded into the page as thumbnails. I should probably work on reverse engineering some of the models I haven't figured out yet. It's been a while since I've messed with that at all. First I want to fold and photograph some of the models that I know how to fold but haven't folded and/or photographed before.
I also recently added a favicon for the site, although it appears for all of the pages on the domain, which isn't exactly what I wanted. The idea is that it is a simple line drawing of a business card cube. Not sure if that really comes across, but at least I've got something going, right? I drew this one pixel by pixel. It could have been worse.
Since I originally created my page (has it really been over five years?), a new business card origami page has appeared. It has some good information that I didn't have before, and it also covers a lot of the same ground (and uses my site as a reference some, too, although they misspelled my name). |
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| orbs |
[May. 16th, 2009|11:29 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
This past week I finally got around to making some business card orbs. They are made from six cards scored with 2 inch circles. I didn't want to buy a $5 template and I couldn't track down a compass, so I just sort of eyeballed one and then cut it to use as a template.
( pictures ) |
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| Don't judge... |
[May. 15th, 2009|06:16 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
Recently, a friend of mine was doing some cleanup and remodeling at his house. The prior owners had apparently decided to screen in the back patio as a weekend project and they didn't do a very good job, so he was ripping out some of it with the help of his parents.
As he peeled away some of the cheap siding, he saw a spider that looked to him like a black widow. He called his dad over and he confirmed that it looked like a black widow. His mother then wanted to look and she also agreed with the consensus. Sadly, before he could take a picture of it, my friend's father killed the spider.
While relating this story to me, my friend made a comment to me that my family, being from East Tennessee, probably would have kept it as a pet. My response was, "...did I tell you that story before?"
When I was growing up my grandparents found a black widow in the wood pile behind their house. They captured it and kept it in a jar on the window sill in the kitchen, feeding it the occasional fly. I had not actually told my friend this story before, so it made it even more amusing that his "crazy" suggestion based on stereotypes of people in East Tennessee turned out to be true. That being said, my family is very atypical for East Tennessee... |
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| I never could get the hang of Thursdays. |
[May. 7th, 2009|10:58 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Seriously, just... so much stuff.
blessed_lunatic, Ouida Mae, and I went to Knoxville last weekend to attend blessed_lunatic's father's wedding. Aside from the outdoor wedding getting rained out, and the pretty much continuous rain that made driving a pain. We didn't get to Knoxville until 1am Saturday morning mostly due to weather related delays.
The wedding went well and it was nice to meet the new family. Everyone loved Ouida Mae.
Before we headed back on Sunday we stopped for lunch at Sitar with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ratjin and rainerrobin and then got to see their new house and visit for a while. We hadn't seen them since their wedding. It was good to see them. I hate missing old friends.
Along the way we found another weird GPS pronunciation. It told me to turn left onto "Northshore Doctor NorthWest". I turned left on Northshore Drive NW. We were amused.
This week has been typically busy. Tomorrow is work's "Spring Fling", though, were I'll watch soccer and softball and probably juggle, throw some Frisbee, and play some badminton. Huzzah! Or it might rain... |
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| Fiftieth?! |
[May. 1st, 2009|06:35 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
A few weeks ago, blessed_lunatic and I were driving around town and we were using her GPS to figure out how to get somewhere. I don't know if it's because we had the voice set to Australian, or if it's just a "feature" of the GPS, but it told us to turn left onto "George the Fiftieth Davis Boulevard"... I turned left onto George L. Davis Blvd shortly thereafter. We were quite amused.
I wonder what the range is for that. C? D? M? I guess I'll have to start looking for more interesting road names for it to guide me to. |
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| Well, yeah... |
[May. 1st, 2009|06:16 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
So, I was listening to an NPR story this morning about the town in Mexico which is suspected to be where the H1N1 flu outbreak started (with a 60% infection rate). It is near some pig farms and the residents were complaining that the farms are dirty and contaminate the town and make them sick all the time. One of the residents was saying something about how nasty the farm was, but the comment was translated as, "That hog farm is a pig sty..."
I feel like something was lost in translation there. |
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| reunions and introductions |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|12:33 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | ouida | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
ristoril and kitt79 came up yesterday and we got to meet Winry for the first time. ristoril, kitt79, baka_san, the_solar_lodge, gypsy_thief, and I met for dinner at Fulin's Asian Cuisine, which was good. It was fun to get together with old friends and to meet the new baby.
blessed_lunatic was running a little late, so we were partway through dinner when she got there with Ouida Mae. Ouida was a little cranky, and when I tried to show Winry to her, she started screaming. I'm sure we will remind her of this until she's sick of hearing of it.
Aside from that, things went pretty well. No Terrible Disasters.
( pictures from dinner )
Today, blessed_lunatic, Ouida Mae, and I ran some errands which included going out to the Dickerson Road Farmers Market, which sells plants, not produce. While blessed_lunatic wandered around looking for things to buy, I wandered around with Ouida Mae taking pictures.
( pictures, mostly of flowers ) |
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| No.22 The Larch |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|10:42 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Here is the tessellation I folded on Easter. It's No.22, Negative Space Stars from Eric Gjerde's book Origami Tessellations. I folded it from a large (8 inch?) hexagon of elephant hide/wyndstone marble paper. I kind of regret not doing another iteration of precrease divisions, but I was getting tired and it would have been difficult.
( pictures ) |
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