hey look at this thing i made: XIV

I'm trying out an experiment here. Instead of trying to mix the technical aspect of the project with the story behind the project, I'm going to split the two up. To that end I've created a sister site, Schrodinger's Appendix (site goes live 11/1/11). This will contain all the tools I used in the project as well as how they were used. It's going to be dead serious talk and probably not just ridiculous pictures of me. 50% chance. Maaaaaaaaybe. Feel free to let me know if this works or not.

Can I tell you a secret? I'm not *always* winging it. Really, I think with most of my projects, if you tried hard enough you could pull out these steps:

The Idea

I realize it sounds stupid to say that, it all starts with an idea, but these things don't just fold out. Somehow, someway, usually entirely at random, an idea pops into my head. Sometimes these are fairly concrete things. For example, I might get the idea that it would be funny to make a stained glass window that was a picture of an ass.

On occasions like this, it was a fairly abstract start. I had been talking to longtime mikey k associate andy veerman and he had thrown out the idea that I make some furniture for my apartment. I actually wrote that off at the time. I was still decompressing from the move and the idea of making something I had no use for seemed silly. Why would I make a table? Where's the value? First few weeks I was down here I was perfectly content to use upturned boxes. It seemed silly to make something that was just functional and anything bigger than a table that I might need seemed outside the scope of what I knew how to do.

That happens sometimes. Especially with something that abstract, it might be shelved forever. Or five minutes. Or like two weeks. After finally setting up (so to speak) my apartment I posted an album on the facebook and when my sister commented that I needed a couch or something, it all of a sudden clicked in my head and I decided in that instant I would make a couch.

Concept Design


Concept design is all about figuring out how to make the thing. I'll usually start by setting out the major requirements of the project as those will often dictate how the thing needs to be made. I had been of the mind that I personally had no use for a couch. I bought a somewhat nice office chair and it had worked just fine for all my seating needs. Of course, that only worked because I don't have any friends. Pre-couch, I had a grand total of two seats in the apartment, which really hurt my ability to throw lavish dinner parties. The point is, if I was going to make a couch, it really wouldn't be for me. That certainly changes things, because while I have a pretty high threshold for dealing with discomfort, I don't expect that of other people.

1) The couch had to be comfortable.

I don't have much of a system for picking what goes in my apartment, so while there wasn't any specific aesthetic it had to have, it couldn't be an eyesore.

2) The couch had to be better looking than a breadbox.

While there certainly were more design requirements than those two, they were the only ones likely to determine how it could be made. Comfort didn't concern me too much as I assumed that was mainly a function of the cushions. Looks on the other hand were tricky. I suspect I could make a comfortable couch by stapling enough pillows to a crate, but man would that look awful. The traditional couch model of fabric wrapped around a wooden frame would work, but that would be boring and I didn't really have the desire to teach myself how to upholster like that.

Exposed frame couch then. It didn't seem like it would be possible to make it out of wood as I lack the equipment to really do that right (and I didn't really want to buy it). The project floundered for awhile at this point. I don't actually remember how I got the idea that I could build a frame out of steel pipe, but one day it just clicked.

Feasibility Analysis

This is often done hand in hand with concept design. I touched on that a little bit with the exposed wood frame thought above. A fine idea, but wasn't really feasible. With regards to a steel pipe frame there were a couple things I had to prove out to be able to start on this:

First, given that it would be made out of hundreds of smaller fittings, I needed to be sure that they could be assembled in a way that would provide for consistency. To that end I went down to Lowe's, grabbed a selection of the ones I thought I'd use and assembled some test modules. Doing that showed me that I could make this in a way that would give me the look I wanted.

Next I had to be sure this could be done within a reasonable budget. Even if Lowe's stocked enough fittings at any given time to build this, the markup is so high that it would just be ridiculous. After spending enough time googling, I was able to find a place that I could buy the bulk quantities at a good enough price.

Initial Design

I say initial design because I don't think I've ever started a project with a perfect design. Things come up that just won't work how I planned. Sometimes there will be aspects of the design that I have trouble figuring out, but if I know I'll figure it out eventually and it's not immediately relevant, I'll just start.

Initial design here centered around just making the frame. Using the modules I'd made in the last section, I took measurements and figured out how many of each type of fitting I would need. I didn't really design it specifically to look a specific way, rather I came up with an idea that I was sure would be structurally sound. As is usually the case, design was done almost entirely in my head, with some very abstract concepts sketched out to help me visualize.

Initial Build

Once I have a solid idea of how it will be made and have parts in hand, I jump into it. Construction of the frame was pretty simple, sort of like a giant erector set.

Re-Design/Problem Solving

It's pretty inevitable that something comes up that I need to fix. With the couch, the first of things was the pieces of straight pipe. I had started this with the idea that I would make it using only standard size pipe, to make it build-able out of off the shelf parts. Unfortunately given some of the sizes I ended up using, I kept running into places where I needed custom cut pipe. This meant tweaking some of my original design ideas as well as figuring out how to get the pipe.

Fix Implementation

The process of fixing a problem and then going back to the build might happen twice during a project, or maybe twenty times. I will keep tweaking things until they're right, however long that takes. During construction of the frame I think I went through that cycle four times. Twice I needed to get a new tool and learn a new technique and then another two times required me ordering more fittings due to slight structure tweaks.

Secondary Design

This will only come up on a project like this. I started with an idea of how everything would be done, but since  the frame would need to be built before I could be sure how some other parts of this would go, I didn't think about the other aspects too much. I viewed the project as having four distinct parts: Frame, support web, cushions and arm rests. With the frame done I was able to go through and get everything else figured out.

Secondary Build/Re-Design/Problem Solving/Fix Implementation


These parts are no different than the initial build and design. Despite having so much more time to think about how they would be done, there were still a number of things that didn't go how I thought.

Pictures

Of course, once finished, I gotta document it (mike added for scale)

Post Construction Analysis

As I always say, success is all in how you define your goals, so lets check it out:

1) is it comfortable?

It is! I kind of wish the back cushions were a little softer (I may re-do them) but other than that, I would be perfectly content to sit on that.

2) is it an eyesore?

As is often the case with things I make, I would say that the appearance of it does not have universal appeal. It is definitely very industrial looking, which while I think looks good, your mileage may very. Considering that I'm the one who looks at it the most, I suppose that was a success as well.

This had the added bonus of being giant, so it almost seems like I'm using my space well!

Bonus shots!

hey look at this cook off i won

This is the story of how I won a cook off. I made some pizzas. On the grill. It's either one very complicated story, or a series of not too complicated stories, depends on how you want to look at it.


The Miller Part of the Story

I will often say that I like to personify my friends with stories about them. I then qualify that by saying I'm sure personify isn't the right word, but I'm too lazy to figure out what the correct word is. It's convenient for this post that Miller has one of the better examples.

I was unemployed, which had been by choice for awhile, but morphed into me just not being able to get a job (I'm not actually very good at things). Miller was the de facto manager at Cigarette Express. I say de facto manager because it was one of those bullshit things you come across in retail jobs where they say "we're gonna give you more responsibility but no raise and no official title." Regardless, he had juice and told me that if I wanted, come in and get a job.

It was kind of a bizarre employment situation there. There was something like eighty total hours available for work each week. Miller worked thirty or so of em, this other girl worked twenty which left thirty hours between me and this other guy. The amount I'd work would vary quite a bit, but I was mainly hired specifically to bridge the gap between when Miller got off (two) and when the girl showed up (four thirty I think). This was fine until about a month after I started and decided I was gonna go back to school. Class schedule meant that one or two days a week I wasn't going to be able to cover that specific two and a half hours. This meant they would have to hire someone to work an even smaller amount of time, which, prolly wouldn't work out. I mention this because it's what I assume the reason for the next part of this story.

The next part of the story is one day I was getting ready to go into work when my boss called me.

"Hey, your drawer was fifty dollars short last night, what happened?"

I actually just laughed when he said this. Math is kind of a thing with me and when it comes to counting out drawers at a job or just handling other peoples money in general, I'm kind of anal. There was really no way I was short, so, confused, I asked what he meant.

"Fifty dollars is missing from your drawer, do you have an explanation?"

It really just seemed comical to me. I had to entertain the possibility that maybe I messed up something, so I said as much and that I was about to come in and I was sure we could figure it out when I got in.

"If you can't explain it, then don't bother coming in, you're fired." *click*

I sat there holding the phone, very literally slack jawed. I'm not going to say I never lie. I'm not going to say I never steal. But to genuinely accuse me of that, with no proof, when I was doing neither of those things, well that's about the worst insult you can give me. Then this happened.

(I'm probably embellishing the details here since I wasn't actually there)

Miller was working at the time, but hadn't been informed by the boss that he was about to make that call. After he got done Miller goes to him and says "Two things. First of all, I know him, he wouldn't do that. Second, he's smarter than you, so if he had stolen that money, you never would have caught him." Gets up and walks out. (for those taking notes, that's how you earn my loyalty for life)

Then this other time, I was unemployed (again, not so great) when Miller said he could get me on at this place, The Upper Crust. It was kind of funny, they had five employees, two of whom were managers, one was an assistant manager and then you had me and Miller who were plain old drivers. This was my first introduction to the pizza world, which was fortuitous because one of the managers was a man by the name of Rockafeller.

The Rockafeller Part of the Story.

I very deeply hate people bullshitting me. A big part of this is that people are so rarely good at it. If you're obviously lying, then the fuck is the point? Now I know whatever it is you were trying to hide but now it's doubly fucked cause you get the annoyance of the lie tacked on. I'm also not very high up on people not speaking their mind and just saying "kalmbach, you're fucking up." I would, in every instance, prefer to hear what people really think.

I, at the time, fancied this girl. We were working at the Upper Crust together and after work would often go hang out at Rockafellers afterwards. I for the life of me can't recall if there was something specific that triggered this or if it was more out of the blue, but one day he just went off on her. The jist of it was that she didn't appreciate me and she was gonna fuck this up and someday realize what a huge mistake it was. I was rendered speechless. She stormed out. Truth be told I was pretty pissed at him for that, but it didn't last long, because he was right. Especially with some 2020 hindsight, its pretty clear that if we had dated it would have been a big mistakey. Here's the thing though, I am, without question, stubborn to a fault. Even if I know something is a terrible idea, I'll often just stupidly stick it through. Sometimes I just need someone to smack me upside the head and say "come on!"

So there's that.

And then there's this.

What it comes down to is, learning to make pizza from Rockafeller is pretty much taking a master class. It's more than just learning to sauce a pizza (paint it like a picture) or the malcolm-x cut (totally got me laid that one time). The number one thing Rockafeller teaches that you just don't get elsewhere, is the love. The man has held every job in the pizza world and has managed to take all that knowledge and distill it down to one key thing. Ask him what it's all about and he'll tell you:

"The pizza dance."

I'll tell you what the pizza dance isn't, it's not a native american ritual to make it rain pizza (HA HA HA THAT'S FUNNY). The typical pizza dance story goes like this: You're delivering a pizza to someone and while standing at the door giving them their order, you see a kid in the background and they just start dancing. It's the sort of dance that has no rhyme or reason, that will never again be repeated in that exact way. It's the result of someone reaching a state of joy that they just don't know how else to communicate so their body takes over in that primal way. Delivering pizza can be a shit job sometimes and it's certainly one that earns the respect of exactly no one, but for that kid, in that moment, you have the single most important job in the world. Giving someone a beaut (beaut is a technical term for excellent pizza) and knowing that their next half hour is gonna be bliss, bringing that joy, to that kid. It's kind of beautiful.

Because I'm not actually very funny, almost every time I bake something I make the joke that the secret ingredient is love. There's a lot to be said for that here though. Does it really matter if every piece of pepperoni is positioned perfectly? Maybe not, but if you wanna earn that pizza dance, it damn well better be.

Suffice to say, after I decided I was gonna do pizza for this cook off, there was really only one person to consult. This was somewhat unfortunate because he lives in Clinton and my lifes ambition is to never go to Clinton. Alas, if I was gonna do this right, it had to be done. Much to my shock he had never grilled pizza and had no thoughts on the subject. God. Damnit. Luckily he at least had thoughts on how to make my pizza of choice (bacon cheeseburger). So I hung out for a bit and watched some tv. Then, out of nowhere, he dropped, what I believe is referred to in the industry as, a knowledge bomb.

"What if you got a pizza stone?"

*mimes an explosion*

On the one hand that seemed so obvious, on the other hand, what a revelation. It's like, "whats that michael jordan? When shooting a jump shot I should jump?" Changed the game. During my test run (more on that in a bit) the biggest issue was the crust, this solved that easy. He had one other piece of sage advice that I probably already knew, but didn't want to accept. I tend to force homemade even when there's no compelling reason to do so. As such, my plan from day one had been to make my own pizza dough. For the test run however, I got a couple balls from my dough guy. Rockafeller said I should really just stick with that dough because I know how it works and starting with dough from scratch takes a ton of experimentation to get right. Well, when Rockafeller talks about pizza, you listen, so it was back to my dough guy.

The Nate Dogg Part of the Story

I don't actually have any idea why I'm friends with nate. Or wait, shit, I already told a story about him. That was all lies. Ignore the years we lived together. Ignore the times we worked together. Ignore the gaming. Ignore him being able to put up with my mopeyness like a champ. Ignore the fact that between the two of us we can probably recite the movie Tombstone in it's entirety. That's all like, whatever, you know? I feel like if you look past all that, the guy's kind of a tool.

Hmm, seem to be a lot of holes in that story, better just cut my losses.

Once upon a time Nate Dogg needed a job so I got him on at the Upper Crust. Then this other time he needed a job so I got him on at Rosatis. He kept that job, which made him the last person I really knew in the pizza world. So I was all like "sup on that dough?" and he was all like "werd son!" True story. As mentioned above, he actually came through twice, the first was for the test run.

The DonnyK Part of the Story

I had been tasked with sorting through some resumes at work. Out of forty or so, there was exactly one that jumped out at me as being an especially good fit. The only problem is that under "convicted of a felony" he said yes. I say problem, but I didn't personally have any issues with it. I mean it certainly could be a bad thing, but I saw no reason to not give the guy a phone interview, hear his story. I pitched that to my boss and he was all like "n'op."

Really? Couldn't it have been some sort of lame felony (I don't have any idea what would qualify as a lame felony, but I was at least prepared to listen)? It just seems fundamentally absurd to pass judgement like that. If, when I applied, they had called Cigarette Express, they would have been told I got fired for stealing. That almost certainly would have knocked me out, which would be ridiculous since a) see the above story and b) I'm, by a mile, the best at my job and they woulda missed out on that because of bullshit.

Anyways I was prepared to goto bat for this guy, but I figured I may as well look up what his felony was (that sort of thing is public record). Turns out he was pederast, which, personal disappointment there.

It seems kind of weird to say this, but it's almost harder to explain why I'm friends with someone that I've known since the third grade. Seventeen years seems like a long time to me, but that's probably just cause it's well over half my life.

I almost feel like there's only a finite number of times a person can come through for you before it just becomes expected. For example, at work a few weeks ago, a story that's far too boring to re-tell happened. I ended up getting bailed out by this guy. It wasn't exactly a shock that he came through, but I sure didn't see it coming.

I guess it just seems like when I turn the tap on my sink, I expect water to come out, if it was eighteen aught two though, people's heads would be exploding if you said you expected that, at some point it just transitioned to the norm.

Pet peeve is probably not the right classification, but, I don't particularly enjoy being judged. I guess the easiest way to accomplish that is to not throw stones myself. I put a lot of value in people taking me as I am, that's probably a common theme among places I frequent.

Anyways, back on topic.

Remember tuesday night wing night? Well that turned into sunday night wing night, which later turned into sunday night grill night. Given that we would be grilling regardless, this was the perfect place to try out the 'za. I had watched a Bobby Flay video about how to grill pizza. His method was to put the crust by itself on the grill for maybe a minute, flip, another minute, then dress the crust, put it on a pan and throw it back on.

I had known from the start that I wanted to do a bacon cheeseburger pizza and a s'mores pizza. For the bacon cheeseburger I made a marinara sauce that was a little heavy on the ketchup. Ground beef on top of that, american cheese on top of that. Then mozz and topped off with bacon. The s'mores pizza was a layer of graham crackers on top of the dough, then a whole jar of nutella on that. I broke up a hershey bar on that then put a whole jar of marshmallow fluff on top. After cooking I took my butane torch and browned any parts of the mellow that didn't look perfect. I learned some things.

Didn't love the american cheese (a thought Rockafeller echoed, he said just go with some montery jack on top). There was also going to be a problem with the beef. Since I wasn't willing to take a chance with any health risks, I had to pre-cook the beef far more than I would have liked. My solution there was just to double up the bacon, cause, that seemed like a good idea. As I mentioned above, I had some issues with the crust. Back in the upper crust days, I could cook a pizza to any point of doneness, because I knew that oven. Without extensive practice, there was just no chance that I'd get to that level with the grill (again, Rockafeller solved that problem).

On the s'mores pizza, as much as nutella is the money spread, it wasn't really what I was looking for. A big part of that is it's hard to spread over graham crackers on a pizza crust. That's the same reason I ended up vetoing the marshmallow fluff.

At the end of the day, after the test run and talking to Rockafeller, I felt comfortable going to the competition.

The Roberts Part of the Story

This was almost called the Roberts and Boyer part of the story. In fact, if you would like to pretend that it says the Roberts and Boyer part of the story, I won't stop you.

Have I talked here before about speech team and the impact it had on my life? I think I might have mentioned it (I realize I could go back and look, but that's just not going to happen, get over it), but I'm not sure I really went into too much detail. Not actually going to go into too much detail here. Suffice to say it had a big impact on my life and while it probably would have regardless, there was two guys who really pushed the experience over the top.

Roberts and Boyer had apparently at some point decided (presumably subconsciously) to make the speech team as fun as possible. You would be hard pressed to find two people who more embodied the concept of doing something for the love of it. Always joking and laughing. Always supporting their teammates as much as possible. I guess my point is this, if you don't bring a dancing santa to the extemp prep room at least one time, you're doing it wrong.

The summer after we graduated Roberts (listen, I don't know the whole story, if the official Bangin' BBQ historian would like to chime in with the correct origin tale, feel free) decided to have a Bangin' BBQ at Fairview Park on the 4th of july and it was indeed bangin'. So we did it again the next year and the next and the next until we had reached year 8 (this year). If I recall correctly (it's entirely possible I don't, I can't actually remember a single thing that happened to me 8 years ago) I went to all of them except the rained out edition that was moved to a garage. Four years ago, the annual cook-off was added. I didn't enter the first three, but number four? I believe the correct terminology is "it was on."

The Actual Cook-Off Part of the Story

Game day. Woke up, cooked the beef and bacon, assembled all my tools, got ice and packed the cooler and it was off to the park.

The cook-off is a pretty free form event, there's no set time that it starts at, judges aren't typically decided ahead of time, shit, there aren't actually any rules (well there's the one: rule one, there are no rules). Award winning photographer and three time cook off participant Tommy tends to have some involved dishes though, so a bit after he starts, other people tend to get going.

There's a secret about me, which is that I don't actually know anything about grilling. I'd really never grilled much before this past year and I'm still in the mode of anytime I do grill, I'm really just making it up as I go. Without much thought, set the grill up, pour in an arbitrary amount of charcoal, light and go. After enough time passed that I assumed the heat was going, I threw the stone on, let it warm up a bit and threw on my calibration pizza. I like to go with pepperoni to get a gauge of my "oven" since it tends to be the easiest pizza to cook. It ended up coming out fine, a little less done than I would have liked, but still good. Happy with that, I made and threw on the bacon cheeseburger pizza.
 
Five minutes later it was burned to a crisp.
 
Shit.
 
Pulled it off, threw that away and went to scrap the residue off my pizza stone. Which caused the stone to break in half.
 
Shit.
 
Luckily I had created a contingency plan for this situation. I got it out and it said:
 
"If shit goes awry, wing it."
 
Alright, I think I can handle that. Pulled the stone off, wrapped it a dozen times in foil and threw it back on. This time I tried to wait for the stone to be more consistently heated so when I threw the calibration pizza on, it would be a more accurate test. Oh and it was money.

Once again confident, I threw the bacon cheeseburger on and IT was money.

S'mores pizza? Were you wondering how it turned out? I think he said something about going to the bank....

That's not quite done there. The original plan called for me to use my torch to brown any parts that weren't quite perfect, but we were wingin' it. Finishing consisted of drizzling chocolate syrup on the s'mores and bbq on the bacon cheeseburger (which you might argue made it a bbq bacon cheeseburger pizza, but it was really just an accent).

I guess the title of this post was a tip off as to what happened next.

Now I have to fly back to stupid bloomington/normal for the stupid fourth of july because I'm contractually obligated to defend my title. There were more people I wanted to mention here, but the writing of this has been dragging on too long (not the length, the fact that this is well over a month in the making). So if you feel like you deserve a thanks, go ahead and pat yourself on the back.

Until next time.

hey look at this thing i made: XIII

So

*deep breath*

where were we then?

I have this vicious cycle. I will, for whatever reason, get it in my head to write something. Depending how that goes maybe I write more. This will go on for awhile before I write something that I think is just god awful. When that happens I come to the conclusion I'm a terrible writer and stop writing....until I get it in my head to write something again.

I think I've talked before on here about how I'm incapable of objectively judging any aspect of myself. It's probably more accurate to say that something just reallllllly needs to stand out for it to be apparent to me. In my writing this tends to mean I'll only acknowledge if something was especially good or especially terrible. That's probably the same reason I very rarely ever go back and read the things I write. Anyways, there's that.

Speaking of quirky character traits! I'm often (well, not as much anymore) oblivious to how my life experience differs from other peoples. An example I brought up the other day was how I didn't know for however long that a woman keeping her maiden name ISN'T normal. Since my mom did, I just assumed that was SOP, cause really, why wouldn't it be?

Another example, which seems more insane to have ever actually thought, is quilting. I had had it in my head that it was just a thing mothers did and they passed it on to their children. I really thought that that was the only way people learned how to quilt. Now, I didn't go around espousing this belief, but I held it in my head and I can remember the time, because we were sitting in the living room (or sun room? I have no idea what they call it) and my sister was talking about some sort of quilting program at a college. BOOM. Shattered my world.

I like to think this isn't as insane, since I did know other people whose moms quilted. Plus my grandma quilted to some extent and my aunt quilts quite a bit. In fact, they're having a quilt show! Sisters choice quilt show, is, I believe, the official title. Sisters choice eh? Psh, I can tell where I'M not wanted.

(gratuitous futurama quote)

Well screw them, I'll have my own quilt show, with blackjack and hookers, in fact, forget the quilt show!

Some of you might be quick to point out that I don't know how to quilt, which, would certainly inhibit my ability to enter a quilt show. Really though, when has not knowing how to do something ever stopped me before? Of course it probably wasn't realistic to think I could teach myself to quilt AND successfully make a quilt worth showing. The eureka moment came when I was reading an email from my uncle where he mentioned barn quilts, which is a thing I guess. Apparently all you really need to do is a make a thing and then attach quilt to the end and you can call it a, whatever, quilt. Stained glass quilt it is then.

To try and replicate the look of a quilt, I decided to make a bunch of blocks using the standard copper foil assembly method that all my other projects had featured, but then those would be assembled into the final piece using came (the stuff I used as a border on the last few). This would allow me to make the images in a way I was used to, but the rigidity of the came would allow for a cleaner looking finished product, more resembling a quilt.

I downloaded the program Electronic Quilt 5 (apparently it's very outdated) which served pretty well to help me rough out a concept. I decided to do a day and night theme.

Because of the way the program works I couldn't design the three blank squares (clouds and a tail to the comet) which tragically left them up to my drawering skills. The only thing really worth noting about this is how difficult the comet was to design for some reason. I for the life of me could not figure how to break up the circle to make it look like that. I ended up having to get out the ole sketchbook and draw it to see how it's supposed to look (for reference, all blocks are designed separately, so I couldn't just draw through all three squares on the screen).

The grid drawing there was to help me visualize how much came I needed to order.

I ended up going about this differently than most projects. Instead of doing all the steps in order, I made each block individually and pieced them together as I went.

It was interesting for me because I hadn't finished the entire design before starting on it, so the top half ended up being finished long before the rest. Anyways it came out like this:

I like it. Let's go quadrant by quadrant!

The sun was the first part that I designed. The general concept behind the piece as a whole was that each section of six squares would have one four block image and then two smaller things. I mentioned above that I couldn't draw the clouds in the EQ5 program. What I ended up doing was taking a circle (a teflon tape container to be specific) and then tracing it in an overlapping pattern. The sun was the first part of the piece finished and the clouds were just about the last thing finished.

The constellation power rankings looks like this:

1. Orion

2. The Big Dipper

3. All other constellations are for shit.

That would end up being a problem (more on that later). I had a similar problem drawing the moon that I had with the comet. Here it was a problem with getting the crescent shaped exactly how I wanted, not too bad tho.

The original plan called for a comet with two constellations underneath it. Then I consulted the constellation power rankings. Then I wept. Then I spent some time trying to come up with a different space thing I could stick down there. Then I said fuck it, I'm putting grass down there. I wasn't too happy about it, but I did like the idea of making it line up with the day (let's just jump to that).

The original plan was for this to be a sunflower. That was not practical so I ended up going with this tree. Originally the top four blocks were going to be the bottom four with no grass. I was going to do some birds for the top two blocks. I'd drawn them out and I felt it looked good, but this was at the same time I couldn't figure out what to do with the bottom night quadrant. When the best thing I could come up with was grass, I just went with it. I had wanted to do an animal on the grass and then it would be awake in one and asleep in the other. I had drawn that out as well when I remembered that these blocks are a little less than six inches on a side and it wasn't realistic to do the detail I could create on the computer in real life.

If you're wondering why there are lines coming out of the bottom of the leaves, it's because Hobby Lobby hates me. I had bought that blue glass there at the start of the project and for something like two months they couldn't stock more. The other stained glass store I goto didn't have any either and I wasn't going to try and order some. I don't throw out any glass scraps. If I deem a piece too small to be of future use, it goes in a bin. I ended up being so desperate, I put on the leather gloves and dug through there for every tiny scrap of that blue I could find. I ended up finding enough, but only if I cut those rectangles up into more bite size pieces.

Aside from that, I really was quite happy with how it all turned out. Which brings us to the quilt show.

I had neither the knowledge of how to find hookers nor the inclination to partake in services offered.

As far as the blackjack I had hired a guy to come over and deal. Everything was going great till I got dealt eights with the dealer showing six. I split of course and they each got dealt eights so I split again. Each of those got a three, so I doubled down winding up with two twenties, a nineteen and a seventeen. Dealer flips a ten, hits a five. I lost a thousand dollars on that hand and flipped the table.

This meant I had to find some other entries for my quilt show.

I said (and this is literally a word for word quote):

"Isn't that just colored paper stapled to a piece of wood?"

Bad idea. That guy was fucking pissed. We ended up going at it, but he had what I believe is referred to as a glass jaw.

I was ready to throw the guy out, cause I mean, that's a fucking taco bell wrapper. It occurred to me though that this would almost certainly be popular with the B/Nate Dogg set, so I went with it.

And then there was me. All in all a good day and I was glad to be a part of it.

hey look at this thing i made: XII

And then I said, "huh, haven't made any stained glass windows in awhile." I quickly came up with three projects. This is the story of none of them. During the concept phase for one of them, I came up with this idea and decided to make a weekend project out of it. Sadly I can't tell you the story without revealing part of the story of one of the three projects, which is strictly against company policy. So here's a story that has nothing to do with this stained glass window, with pictures inserted at random.

I find that there are things in my life I'm not capable of objectively grading. The movie I saw with someone, that song I heard at the exact right time. Hip Hop Hollas by Jerry Quickley is without a doubt one of my favorite poems of all time, but I don't know that it's necessarily that great or if it just speaks to me on a level past rational thought.

A scholar recently asked me about

the relevance of hip hop

I didn't know what to say to him

Let's do a by the numbers thing real quick here. My favorite album of all time (I'll sleep when you're dead by El-P) is a hip hop album. Twenty-two of the thirty-four songs that I've listened to in itunes more than a hundred times are hip hop songs (more on this in a bit). Every single album highlighted in, this thing i bought, has been hip hop (mark ronson, not entirely, but quite a few of the songs are). I'm listening to some right now. This is, I suppose, just a very drawn out way of saying that, I really like hip hop. Definitely was not always like that.

and there be moments like this

custom coach with 12 *people* on their first tour

gliding at 70 across the desert floor

and there be 12 faces pasted to the windows

instead a arguing about watching how the money goes

they be checking out the blooms of desert rose

and Arizona lightning smells of ozone

and sudden rain washes rocks that dwelled in the sea

and there's only the sounds of the engines rotary,

the bright cords of lightning

as heaven manifests subwoofers

ain't all that make the shit mad exciting

it's the snap crackle pop of Tupac

pushed out of Bose cubes

pressing the heart into this moment

and the scene is music

and this moment is an organ

and somewhere there is a

custom coach with 12 *people* on their first tour

For reasons I couldn't possibly explain, I like to trace things back to their start. The point at which everything changed. Seminal moments. The moment that me and hip hop intersect goes like this:

Growing up I can remember always telling people I liked all music except country and rap. I had no very compelling reason for this, but that statement covered all the music I was ever introduced too and since this was coming from people I took seriously, I had no reason to argue with it. The only rap I ever heard was what gets played on the radio. It's never a good idea to pass judgement on things based on what you hear on the radio.

Then one day I was driving somewhere with my brother and he tells me I should check out this group, Jurassic 5. I got home and listened to their song Quality Control and everything changed. That song gripped me the way almost no other music had (I'm gonna say this was when I was fourteen). I remember listening to that whole album and falling in love.

That's where it began, but the change really didn't happen for awhile. At first I reacted in the way most people do when being presented with something that goes their held beliefs, such as, that rap is bad. I remember thinking about it years later when I was leaving my apartment and I heard music coming from my roommates room, which, would normally not stand out, except it was the exact album I had been listening to, two floors down, not five minutes before this. The album was Dungeon Master of Ceremonies by MC Chris and when I went and asked The Godfather about this, someone who has always held that he does not like hip hop, he said "well this isn't really hip hop." Hey, whatever gets you through the night my friend, but make no mistake, it is hip hop.

and there be moments like this

four girlfriends driving out of the hood

going to a party in the oranges

this is the first time the youngest has been alone

in a car with her friends

they zoom across the GW

canopy of steel beams

paints the hoop de in fast blurs of shade and sun

and tires roar from the grates

and up front there's the sound of

bracelets and nails on the dashboard

and there is laughter and

there are no box cutters or police

and L'il Kim jumps through the speakers

and the youngest girl pushes herself

deep into the rear seat

as straining speakers conjure halos

she watches the world sway past

the tiny rear window

and this fat bass line will forever mark this turning point

and she has never felt so free

and she has never felt so strong and so loved

these are her *people*

and somewhere a young woman is going

on her first ride with her crew

It's all well and good to try and deny these things, "it's not really hip hop," but I couldn't really think it was the only album of its kind, there had to be others out there that sounded like it. I searched. I went through all of J5s offerings. I heard all of the collaborations they did. Looking around, I found some artists that sorta sounded like them, but there was a big problem. In addition to me fighting the hip hop, I still had this outcast mentality that popular things were bad. Ignoring even just the popular music I might have liked had I given it a chance, having that close-minded mentality runs over into other things. If you badly enough want to, you can find a reason to dislike anything. Having any kind of criteria like that meant that all too often I wouldn't give something a chance and maybe not because it was popular, maybe it just had one song featuring an artist I felt was too mainstream. Maybe for no compelling reason at all, but irrational things like popular is bad lead to other irrational criteria. Enter BobbyT.

In the internet age I am a person who can, uh, find things. Bobby had asked me to find him a copy of Kanye West's Late Registration. I can remember bringing him the cd and on the way I popped it into my cd player and wow. I mean I knew who he was, sure, but I didn't listen to the radio all that much and I had never been that big a fan of Jesus Walks. This was like J5 all over again. The album grabbed me. This was pretty close to the time when I had switched to using itunes almost exclusively. Heard em say, touch the sky, gold digger, roses, hey mama, celebration and gone are all part of the above mentioned songs that have had more than a hundred plays. Once again I dug through everything of his and then kept looking for other things. The difference was that this time I stopped having any preconceptions to guide, if I had any even the slightest reason to listen to something, I'd give it a shot. I'd check things out just because of the name. That lead me to getting I'll Sleep When You're Dead, because let's be honest, that's a name that stands out.

and there be moments like this

Nebraska farm boy sitting

on the edge of a quarry pit

all his crystal powder gone

he wonders about gravity

he wonders about his family

his sister writes to him from

a small town in the north

tells him of jesus and fewer black eyes

how he should visit in the summer time

because her boyfriend should be out of rehab

and how the yellin' ain't so bad

his pops tells him next year things will be different

and he wonders if he will ever escape next year country

and he feels weak inside his strong body

and gravity is making moves

and Jay-Z's Hard Knocks crow from the cab of his pick up

and for a few minutes he's lost in it

tales of a life closer than you think

close to the bone it unfurls like his own

runs to a neighboring corn field

he splits stars with his scream

he stands breathless in headlight beams

he smiles and he's high as a kite

and he knows that moonlight and beats have saved his life

and somewhere a farm boy

sits on the edge of a quarry

Atmosphere was one of the artists that cracked the original run of hip hop (interestingly enough, also by way of BobbyT). There's a hidden track on his collection of EPS, The Lucy Ford Eps that feature El-P. I always really liked the song and was sad I could never find any more songs of his. The thing was he was mainly a producer and didn't rap that much. Between that and the great name I was pretty much sold on I'll Sleep When You're Dead form the jump. Wasn't exactly love at first listen though. Up All Night was an immediate winner (we might have been born yesterday, sir, but we stayed up all night). It took awhile for the whole thing to really sink in, but that had more to do with me just not giving a very thorough listen. Even when I did it wasn't like those other albums. It took awhile for it to really click with me. Eventually it occurred to me that when I couldn't figure out what to listen to at work I was picking it. At home, it was the only cd that I really never skipped tracks on. Probably more than any other album, I was trying to learn the songs and having trouble with it (you'd probably have to have lived with me at some point to understand that that's really saying something).

In case you're curious, the title is a lyric in what may be the best song about suicide I've heard.

So how dare you assume that I'll sleep when you're dead

This is well outside the boundries of acceptable behaviour

I will not give you the go ahead and you will not be remembered fondly

I'm throwing down the gauntlet, fuck you this isn't your decision

and for all the holy fuck I give, your little spectacle is ended

But dont think for just one second you've honored your obligations to me

I'm serious look in my eyes, I don't find this funny

or whatever you imagine poetry and justice feels like when you combine them

I am not going to allow this on my watch buddy, nobodies impressed

with your imagined sacrifice device or insurmountable regret

You are not uniquely pained and if you go we won't be sorry

and who the hell are you to put me through the banality of watching this

Cause many better men have gone for clearly better reasons and I

starkly must remind you that you have not even been trying

And that's the only thing remarkable about you, stop me if I'm lying

and there be moments like this

with family and friends in the front room

a woman washes dishes at the sink

a mother with missing heart

buried earlier that same day

in the same casket with her young son

and across from their house

a yard party has broken out

and in this moment

her first moments alone

her chest is imploding

failure and loss have arrived

and they will stay for a very long time

and she didn't know hearts could break this hard

or what black magic makes her still draw breath

and in this moment

her first moments alone

De La Soul trickles in the window

and she begins to cry

as the brothers from the east

preach about how the Stakes is High

and somewhere there is an empty mother

washing dishes in a sink by a window

Hip Hop Hollas tells all these touching stories of people in these moments touched by hip hop, but the truth is it could be any kind of music. If country music is your thing I'm sure you could tell some story of when you heard a certain song at the exact right time. Or if for you it's rock. Or punk. Or jazz. Or what-the fuck-ever. For me I went from once upon a time thinking Weird Al was the only artist worth listening to and growing to where I love it all. Hip hop blew those doors open.

It's funny now. Of all those Kanye songs off Late Registration, roses, hey mama and gone are the only ones that still get any play. After listening to that album so many times, it sees almost no play these days. I honestly couldn't tell you how good I really think it is. Maybe it was good, maybe it was bad, maybe just average, but to me, whatever it was, it was important.

he don't know the price of the ransom

and doesn't recognize slippery slopes

or the sound of hope dipping out through the transom

swollen knuckles drift toward hip hop radio soon

as your hear it ump up the volume

pump that beat

pump that beat

pump that beat

and that's the fucking relevance

of hip hop

hey look at this thing i made: XI

I will often, when bored, browse watch auctions on ebay (more on this soon!). I have no real direction with this, just search for random things. Some years ago I found a watch on there that was apparently the movement from a pocket watch transplanted into a wristwatch case. For some reason this was entrancing to me and I really wanted it. Sadly so did a number of other people and it went way out of my price range. I wish this hadn't happened three years ago and I could bring up the auction, because it's hard for me to do it justice with the above description, but I don't have much to say for it beyond that. I have yet to see another like it.

I was on ebay the other day when that watch popped back into my mind. While I (currently) didn't have the means to make a watch like it, it occurred to me I could just take a pocket watch, then modify the case to make it a wristwatch. I was really high up on the idea because this was something I could do a line of, find some vintage pocket watches, attach strap dealies and make a strap. Of course I had no idea if that would look good, because I don't have a ton of control over the overall design of it. First I wanted to just get a pocket watch to do a proof of concept sort of thing. I ended up just getting the cheapest wrist watch I could find (that wasn't a cheap pos outta hong kong). It looked alright. There's not really too much to be said for the making of process. No real modification was done to the case, I just bent some brass stock and soldered it on. The strap was made in an almost identical process to the strap for HJ1.

It was actually pretty maddening. This managed to prove to me that it could be done, but while I think it looks pretty good, I now have to buy a pocket watch that I think looks really good and try again to see if it's actually a good idea. MY LIFE IS SO HARD.

hey look at this thing i made: -XIX

XIX is a money roman numeral. It got me thinking and I made a power rankings of 1-20 in roman numerals:

1. V. V is a strict upgrade over 5. Not only does it look better, but it's written in only two movements instead of three. Also V is for vendetta. This one time we were watching V is for vendetta at the big house and b was like, hey remember that scene where you see natalie portman's panties? No one did, so we watched and for less than a second you see it. Man has a sharp eye.

2. X. The thing that knocked X down was that it's not a strict upgrade over 10. Both require two movements to write. I suppose I'd argue that it wins in the aesthetics department, but the really compelling thing about X is it adds mystery. For example, if you see Rocky X, do you think it's Rocky 10? Or is it a mystery Rocky, like hacker X. See, I took this web design class in high school and we had to code some stuff in html. I went into other peoples code and while I didn't change anything, I added a comment that said "hacked by hacker X." I did this because my dream was one day someone would say "who is, hacker X?" Which they did, sadly without the news anchor inflection that it had in my head.

3. XIX. This was hurt by the fact that it sort of looks like an emoticon (you know, like, a dead guy with a big nose? I guess it would mean sorrow? I'd be sad if I was dead with a big nose). I'm morally opposed to non standard emoticons.

4. IV

5. VI. The main value in roman numerals is using them to up the epic quotient of something. For example, the only value of the new trilogy is to be able to write: Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope. FUCK AND YES. This doesn't necessarily scale though. In the roman numeral epic quotient power rankings, 1, 2 and 3 are V IV VI. I II and III are weak shit, stay tuned!

6. XIII. This might be entirely because I thought Red XIII in FF7 was badass.

7. XI. The great thing about XI is it's the name of a guy who visited my work from china. Somehow he didn't get any of my puns with the number 11 (no part of that story is true).

8. IX. I was really excited about Ledo and IX when I first read the description. Then I watched it and it was terrible. I just kept sitting there thinking "this has to get good eventually right?" It did not.

9. VII. This tends to be the limit of value when using roman numerals to label volumes in a series, after VII it's all downhill. Interestingly this is also the point where all the rest are downhill.

10. XII. A common theme in this bottom half is they're almost strictly worse than the number they represent. XII offers no improvement over 12.

11. XIV. Little too close to HIV. HIV is a touchy subject, don't let your numbers create unwanted drama.

12. XV. God that looks dumb. Doesn't that look dumb? God that looks dumb.

13. XX. While I've never tried dos equis, I hate it with a passion. As a result I hate things that I associate with it, like XX or interesting men.

14. II

15. III

16. VIII

17. XVI

18. XVII

19. XVIII. These all have the above mentioned problem of being strictly worse than the number they represent, especially XVIII. HOLY SHIT THAT'S DUMB. II almost gets a pass because I like to call people who are juniors the 2nd. For example, big KB II. Almost would warrant moving it up in the rankings, sadly it doesn't come up that often.

20. I. This is just terrible, if it wasn't necessary for making other numbers I'd question it's very existence. First of all, nothing warrants having the I talked on to indicate it's the first of something. You don't ever see Rocky I, that'd be dumb. Expanding on that, one of the other big problems is it duplicates an incredibly common part of the english language. Imagine if Rocky saw something that said Rocky I on it and since he's dumb he thought it was an unfinished note "Rocky I...am leaving you? Rocky I...need you to take out the garbage?? ROCKY I WHAT!?!" Underrated part of the Rocky movies is their lack of taglines. It's not Rocky II, The Rematch. Rocky by itself tells you all you need to know, someone is gonna get punched.

*ahem*

I have some sort of primal need to mod video game systems that I own. Here's the list of all systems I have/had that were able to play pirated games (not all instances required actual modding).

Playstation 1

Playstation 2

While I don't own it, I did mod a Playstation 3

Playstation Portable

Gameboy Advance

Gameboy DS

Nintendo Wii

XBox (original)

Xbox 360

There were three motivating factors in me buying a 360:

1. I thought Blue Dragon was gonna be awesome (it wasn't)

2. I had this coupon for 20% off.

3. It could be modded and as such was taunting me.

Of course the real appeal of modding it wasn't just winning another battle in the ongoing war of Mike Vs. Computers, it was a chance to practice for my dream project. Early 360s were plagued with something called the red ring of death (they might still be plagued with it, I'm no longer current on these things). This meant that your 360 stopped working and the ring of light on the front went red. There wasn't anything to be done about it in those days besides send it in to microsoft. I believe this was free, but took a long time, plus modding it voided the warranty, which meant I was kind of boned if that happened.

The overwhelming belief in the community at the time was that the way the heat-sink was clamped to the motherboard, it put undue stress on the soldered joints and when it got hot enough they would come apart, resulting in the RRoD (I'm not sure if this was ever proven conclusively). This led to a ton of after-market cooling products, fans you could strap on the back of it, replacement fans for in the unit. As far as I know they were mostly snake oil, but a sound premise in theory. The problem was that while heat might have been the nail in the coffin, the real problem was the stress put on the board by the X-Clamp (colloquialism for the clamp holding the heat-sink). People that I take seriously felt that the following things helped prevent RRoD: Replacing the x-clamp with a less stupid thing, replacing the thermal paste (thermal paste goes between a processor and heat sink to aid in the transfer of heat) with less shitty thermal paste (arctic silver baby!), replacing the in unit cooling fan and (and this is the part I kinda like) watercooling the system.

Computer chips get hot. That's bad. To combat that heat sinks are attached that wick away the heat and dissipate it. Different materials have different levels of effectiveness in this regard. Water is really good, but of course a sitting thing of water wouldn't get rid of the heat. The idea then in a water cooling system is that the water is continually pumped through a radiator, so that the water over the chip is always cool. In a normal desktop computer there's no reason to do this unless you're a serious over clocker (over clocking your CPU makes it get much hotter) really there's not a ton of reason to do it in a 360 either, but, fuck, it's cool innit? Ever since the first computer I've ever owned I wanted to have a water cooling system, just something about it made the whole thing seem more high tech to me I guess. Since any custom computer case I made would have a water cooling system in it, I figured this would be good practice. The to do list ended up like this:

1. Mod the dvd drive. This is how you play burned games on the 360, change some sort of software on the dvd drive, this is why you need to open the case up.

2. Replace OEM fan. People seemed to feel that this was a big plus in the fight against RRoD and if you have the case open anyway, it's really easy to do.

3. Move innards to a "custom" case. There are a number of replacement cases you can buy. I went with a clear one for two reasons. First, I've always loved visible man type shit, I like to be able to see what's going on inside. Second, I wanted lights in the thing (I ended up not doing that).

4. Install a water cooling system. Reasons described above.

Let's cover those in order. The modding of the dvd drive was an unbelievably nerve racking experience. This was pretty close to when it first became possible to mod it, so no definitive guide had come out. I was forced to cobble together bits and pieces and despite my best efforts managed to brick the unit. *Luckily* I had taken the necessary back up precautions and was able to fix it. Took a break, came back and managed to get it done. It was infuriating because it ended up being an incredibly simple thing, but I just couldn't find the exact right guide.

Again, the fan replacement is very easy when you have the case open. I don't remember the specific fan I bought, but it was recommended by people I take seriously.

God the clear case was a bad idea. I mean, it looks alright and wasn't terribly difficult to do, but the quality of materials is so bad. The OEM case is a quality piece and when I bought this replacement I was expecting similar things, alas. If I could do it over I would have just installed a window into the side. The main that made me end up so soured on the case was the decision to not put lights inside. I had bought some EL wire and I was going to line the edges, and, in my head, it looked awesome. In practice, when I had finally sat down to do all this work, between pitfalls of the dvd drive and the unexpected difficulty of the water cooling, I just wanted to be done.

I believe I've talked before about my inability to accurately gauge the difficulty of things (or rather, my ability to do things) I tend to either grossly under/overestimate how hard something will be. I believe I thought it was going to be very simple to install the water cooling system. Depending on how you look at it, there are a total of five components. The two blocks that go on top of the CPU and GPU. The radiator/fan assy. The pump. The reservoir. Putting those together outside of a system is easy, just a matter of attaching tubes. Working within the constraints of a case though, it becomes tricky. The physical logistics weren't so bad, I had based my "design" off something I'd seen online. The real problem was power. The pump and fan both required power and of course the 360 didn't come equipped with plugs that you could just attach them to. After a ton of research I came across a diagram some guy had made that told you what points you could solder on the motherboard to get various levels of power from. I then later read that you shouldn't do that because it's bad to sap power away from the system. This, once again, was an area lacking any definitive guide. Eventually I found that the thing to do is draw power straight from the plug. Of course then I was thwarted by my puny soldering iron. /sigh.

At the point I had finally done all this, it was very very late and I just wanted to be done, so having accomplished most of the list, I put it all back together. Looked like this.

Hopefully those aren't too dark, it's always hard to tell on this computer. All in all I was pretty happy with how it turned out and it certainly got plenty of use at that apartment.