Backstage

Random Sockets Anyone?

My family is very fond of attending auctions out in PA... They really enjoy a good farm sale on a Saturday... I've been going to these things my whole life, and I too have developed the love for them... You end up finding some of the strangest things at them, as well as some outrageous bargains... There are times you simply must purchase something, simply because its too cheap not to... For example, last weekend, my parents were at such a sale, while I was not... My dad knows I'm a tool junkie, and since I have tools at my shop, my garage, and a set I keep boxed to be road ready at all times, I tend to have at least 3 of everything... That's the goal at any rate... Some things I only have one of, and its never where it needs to be... So when my dad sees tools go cheap, and I mean cheap, they always make their way to me... He may not be able to identify exactly what it is (and he's a hell of a tool guy himself mind you) but he'll probably by it anyway... The thing that brought this post to mind was nothing quite so exotic... He picked up a container of 1/2" drive sockets... There must be 40 or 50 of them in there, but they're rusty... Some of them are so rusty I can't tell you what size they are... The rest I cleaned up while waiting on phone calls today... Wire wheel the outside until they shine, and then wire brush the inside too to clean out the rust... So it turns out that there are an awful lot of decent sockets there... There are a whole number of odd sizes though... Sizes I didn't even know they made... Sizes I don't know why anyone ever made... There are sizes there that simply do not exist on any nut or bolt that I have come across, or that I could find in a catalog. (I looked since I was confused) Mind you, this guy must have needed these things for something, because I have multiples of some of these sizes... I don't get it...

Will I toss them?.. Not on your life... They have been spray lacquered to stave off the rust, and they'll go in a drawer with all the other stray sockets I have... Some day... Some day I'm going to run in to a nut or bolt of those sizes, and I'm gonna be ready... 'course its more likely that I run across the nut/bolt, and the sockets will be in my other box/location...

The Surreal Dinner...

I came home tonight after staying late at the office since I'm dealing with a little show out in Las Vegas... That 2 hour difference makes for a pain in many instances since those folks don't mind calling at 10 to 7... At any rate, by the time I got home, talked to my girlfriend about her day, and headed to the kitchen, I knew damn well I not only didn't have much in the fridge/freezer/cabinets, and there's not much cash floating around these days to fill them, or go out to eat... So I recalled that I had a can of soup, so that figured heavily in the meal... Opening the freezer, I found a bag of frozen shrimp my parents had left from when they came down to dinner a week ago... So there it was... I sat down to a meal where I couldn't afford much, and I'm having canned soup, and shrimp cocktail...

Very weird...

Smoking Checkbook...

I finally got my truck looked at... Oh how I wish it was something so simple as a leaking injector or six... Hell give me bad high pressure piping and bad injectors... Noooo... I have to have a blown injection pump... That's basically the heart beat of a diesel engine... I'm looking at a few grand out the door now... A brand new one from Cummins is $5400... Rebuilt units are going for around $2600 for my year... While I found one site on the web that lists them at $1000, I've always been against the lowest bidder concept... I know what it take to be the lowest bidder, and that tends toward cut corners...

There is going to be a black smoking hole where the balance was in my checkbook...

How'd I Do That?

How I ask you is it possible for me to spend an hour calculating exactly where I need to drill two holes in the floor, and yet still manage to drill in the wrong fucking place?...

I am absolutely disgusted with myself for not catching the error sooner... I don't even want to imagine how much of a pain in the ass it is going to be to plug the cherry floor... I mean, its near the baseboard, and it'll be behind furniture, and nobody will ever see it, but for the rest of the time I own this house, I will know that plug is there... I will actually loose sleep over this, not just tonight, or into next week, but on and off for years... I know I shouldn't be that upset, but that's the reality...

I can't even say live and learn here... I already know better... I've already made mistakes like this in the past... This is just bad carpentry karma...

Ugh!!!

Designed for Women...

I just caught a short bit on an MSNBC video about a car (Volvo) designed for women, by women... Its just a concept car now, but there were a couple things that just seemed a bit wrong to me...

They had a floral pattern either silk screened, or embroidered in to the seats... Now that's pretty benign, but I don't know a single woman that wants everything in their life to be flowery... Naturally, that probably speaks to my taste in the women I spend time with, but it seems a bit too cliche...

The car also calls the mechanic automatically when it senses something wrong... Are we still living in an age when we feel that women can't deal with their car breaking down on their own?... I mean I don't expect them to crawl under the hood and fix everything, hell I can't fix most of what's under my relatively simple hood...

Now those were the two that jumped at me in the 30 second bit... There were some nice ideas too...

The gas cap is this cool rotating ball deal that opens with a button push. (keeping their dainty hands clean I suppose)

The seats were elevated more than normal cars as most women are somewhat shorter than guys...

The purse holder seemed a bit silly to me though... Conceptually, it's not terrible, but functionally it seemed like it would end up being a bit too small unless the woman in question was carrying a fairly small purse...

Now, I'm pretty sure not a single one of my female friends would go for this ride... Again that's probably a reflection of my personality determining who I spend time with... Most of the women I know tend to get disgusted by things like this... Not because the higher seat isn't a great idea, but its things like the floral prints, and mechanic phone call... This thing was supposedly designed by women... Don't they have enough respect for themselves to not let stereotypes creep in to the otherwise good design?...

Perhaps that's just me...

Empty House...

I was dog sitting for the last week while my girlfriend was in Ireland... She has possibly the sweetest mutt ever... Now that he's back down in Baltimore with her, the house is depressingly quiet...

Closure...

The Plumbing Is Sealed!!!

'Nuff said...

Marriage...

Yesterday, I had to attend a wedding... One of my cousins was getting married after dating the girl for years... This post hasn't a thing to do with that aspect, as I wouldn't think of developing an opinion on that... As usual, I sit in judgement of the "event"

The wedding itself, was in a church. The place looked nice enough outside, and I was shocked when I went inside and felt I had walked in to a funeral home... I wasn't the only one... Every member of the immediate family felt it... Very strange vibe... However, we proceeded in to the chapel (I guess that's the right word, being religiously ambivalent, I can't say) and it was quite nice... My only problem there with the facility was that when the couple was standing up on the stage(for lack of the proper word) it was impossible to see the priest unless you had a seat way over on the side of the room... Poor planning for weddings, but I'm sure this is a great space when just the priest is up there doing his thing... They had a decent sound system installed, and thankfully, they had someone on staff that could run it. The mics were run up and down smoothly, and there was not a single sound issue that they could control... Sound however was an issue to me... Let me explain...

There were perhaps 50 of us in the room... I suspect that 20 people minimum had cameras, beyond the two professional photographers. So there was a constant roar of shutters clicking, winders advancing, film rewinding after the last shot, that sound flashes make going off and beeping as people changed settings... I mean it was loud... Loud enough that the sound person had to turn up the priests mic... I swear I thought I was outside the academy awards, and I wouldn't have been surprised if the priest had sunglasses on due to flashes... Perhaps its just me, but if I ever get married, there will be no cameras allowed at the ceremony apart from the pros... I'd get a couple or three pros mind you so they'd get everything, but that would keep it down to a dull roar... Possibly I'd get 3 digital videographers, and eliminate all the flashes, film motors, and shutters completely... Something to think about...

So after that, we all went home for a couple hours before the reception... The reception was at a very expensive place in north Jersey... That side of the family has money, and I've been to one other wedding from that clan, so I knew it would be expensive.... The problems however started quickly...

As I got out of the car, the valet told me the room wasn't quite ready, and I could wait at the bar if I wanted... Well I was driving home later, and knew I'd have a couple at the reception proper, so I thought I'd wait the few minutes outside the room... Guess what?... Not only was the room not ready yet, but there was another reception still winding down in there... End result, was that all 190 of us in the reception had to wait almost 35-40 minutes while they got the other party out, and then turned the room around... That's not the wedding party's fault, but the facility is squarely in the wrong there... Fortunately, it was a beautiful day, so the wait which was outside was not big deal... Once we headed in, we were buried in food... They had enough food there to live on for a month or two, and this was just cocktail hour... Let me re-emphasize that Cocktail hour... Cocktail hour usually to me involves some appetizers, which we certainly had, and some drinks... Imagine if you will, 190 people trying to get drinks from 1, yes 1 bartender... Being one of the first in the room, I noticed that issue right away, and was third in line for a drink... I got 2 since I knew I'd never make it back again, and they were serving drinks in small rocks glasses... The liquor selection was lame considering I know what they were paying for the place, and I wouldn't use the beer they had even for a marinade... Poor planning again... Incidentally, there is no wheelchair access to this room... I have one relative that is confined to a wheelchair... They couldn't find the ramp... They had to carry her up and down the stairs... That infuriates me on two levels... First that my cousin picked that room, knowing the situation (though I imagine they told him they had a ramp). And more importantly, the facility guys didn't know where the ramp was... Its bad and lame enough that they don't have a permanent ramp, its unforgivable that it isn't sitting right there, all the time... Disgusting...

Off we all go to the main room... We do this by walking outside again since there is no indoor path to the atrium area... What the hell do they do in the rain?... I'll probably never know... Again, I sized up the room very quickly... The bar was on the far side of the room, but there were 3 guys waiting, so that looked better... There were also 5 tap handles, most of which I recognized, and was happier with the selection... (beer isn't that much of an obsession with me folks, it just goes to the planning of the event in my mind...) My table was in a corner, which I prefer, since you avoid getting bumped in to all night by people moving around, and it was as far from the DJ and speakers as possible... Personally I hate DJ's, but to each their own... Unfortunately apart from the annoying personality of DJ's, they now come equipped with their own little lighting packages... Typically they set these things up in front of their table, and they shine glaringly into the room... Yep, they did... I sat down with my back to them, and let my unknowing relatives get the bad seats... Note to DJ's... Point the damn wiggle lights up against the ceiling, or get them high enough to keep them down on the dance floor!!! And incidentally, there is no fucking way you should have a laser effect parking at eye level anyplace, keep that thing moving, and keep it up or down...

Over all, the event was fine to most people... I'm sure the bride and groom had a good time, and most of the people in attendance aren't bothered by things like I am... I can guarantee you though that if I ever get around to getting married, I will have a damn production staff involved, and it will be perfect if I go the "event" route... More likely, I'll do it all outdoors, with a barbecue, and if it rains, we'll all go bowling instead...

Press...

So I just watched the JetBlue plane land in LAX, with the screwed up front gear. The news people while seeming happy that nothing went wrong, seem almost as disappointed that they didn't get any gory footage...

I hate the press...

Lost Time...

I've been in a long distance relationship for some time now... Since January 2nd actually... Naturally that isn't fun... I mean the relationship is great, but the distance sucks... After a while you get somewhat used to it, but its never what you want it to be... One of the things that makes it far more livable is the phone naturally... There have been very few nights when we haven't spoken to each other... Its not always a long, deep conversation, but it still lets me connect with her... Currently, she is in Ireland... She flew out Saturday, and will be back Sunday... I haven't spoken to her since she left as that kind of long distance really adds up, and neither one of us is rolling in cash currently... I expect we'll talk tomorrow as its the half way point...

The nights before and after that call are awfully long, and lonely...

Standards...

Imagine if you will, that you are a manufacturer... Lets say of valves for example... (imagine that, a plumbing reference) Lets say that you have those valves manufactured in multiple plants, some in europe, some in asia, some in north america... Wouldn't you have them made all absolutly identical when you're talking about one type and size of valve?... Wouldn't that make sence?...

Apparently not... I have no less than three different flavors of the 1/2" sweat connection ball valve... I mean they all fit 1/2" tube, and they all sut off with a quarter turn, but the packing nut is a different size based on where they are made...

Aren't standards a lovely thing...

Fish Bait...

Arrrrgggg... In honor of the day of days, here be a link to some fish cams... Perhaps ye might be seein' the ghosts of pirates past walkin' by...

Update: It's cloudy as hell tonight on the fish cams... I'm guessing Rita is probably to blame for stiring up the sediment... Usually its nice and clear...

Arrrrgggghhhhh!

It be Talk Like A Pirate Day...

This be the home port of the ship...

This be the hoist from two years past... There you'll find the crossed roads of pirates, and stagehands...

That be all...

Moving Day... Sorta...

Since nothing else in my life was working out today, I thought I could at the very least move some of the stuff from my garage in to my house. Until now, the furniture in my house has been limited to my bedroom, a dining table, and my desk in the office. The garage contained all my living room furniture, the balance of my office, the bar, and the huge card table with associated chairs... Along with that, all the books, decor and anything else that I didn't actually need was out there in boxes...

I started by deciding to get the recliners in, as well as the bar in the interest of freeing up some space in the garage so I might be able to change the oil in my truck inside the garage... It seemed to be going so nicely that I kept at it, and currently, all the furniture is in the house with only a rocking chair, and two hard plastic "emergency" chairs left out there... I also managed to get almost everything else off to the side in fairly neat stacks... I am only a lawn mower, and a shop vac away from being able to park in the garage...

Since I will have some time between pumping the pipes full of air again after finding the next leak, I thought perhaps I will finally be able to install my garage door opener... Naturally since the previous guy was a hack, I have to re-build the support for the tracks, but that's basic carpentry... AKA no worry about leaking pipes... The electrical is also pretty easy, and I'm not worried about that...

Now if only the plumbing was so damn straight forward...

Mutual Support

In a stunning show of solidarity with my home's plumbing, my truck has decided to develop a leak someplace...

While I feel I can see the evidence of the leak, I do not have to equipment to test, nor the experience to fix the leak... Low pressure wouldn't really be an issue... I've done that type of work before... The issue seems to be at the injectors... 2 of 6 of them have staining around the injector... The high pressure side of this system runs at just over 2800psi...

So take it to a shop you say...

No kidding... There's a problem with that too...

I've been fueling the truck with home heating oil lately... I don't recall if I mentioned this before... I've been draining a fuel oil tank in the basement of someone's apartment because, their boiler died late last winter, and the landlord replaced it with a gas fired boiler... Naturally, the oil company had just filled the tank, so in the interest of financial sanity, I'm running it in my truck... #2 fuel oil is the same thing as diesel fuel... The difference is, they put a dye in the fuel oil so it can be easily seen that no road tax was paid on that fuel... If you are caught, the fine is pretty hefty, which means I really don't want to take it to a shop, where they will inevitably find out I have fuel oil in there... Would they make an issue of it?... Probably not if I explained the situation, but that's a big chance to take... So now I really need to burn off the rest of that tank, and then fill it with regular diesel before I can take it in... That wouldn't remove all evidence of the fuel oil, but it will minimize it to the point they may not notice...

More plumbing issues... What a joy...

What Will It Take?...

Sadly, the plumbing still has a minor leak... Someplace... I'm well past the point of being able to hear the leaks... Even with all the electronics off, and I even shut down the pilot light on my hot water heater, I can't hear the damn thing... I'm losing about 1psi of air every 4 hours... Its not much to be sure, but its still leaking someplace...

The leak is so slow that it doesn't show up with soap suds, which has been the best indicator after I stopped being able to hear them...

The current strategy is that I shut down all the valves to the individual radiators, as well as the valves on each main zone, and the isolation valves on the boiler... I'm going to wait a full day at the very least, and then I will open zones one at a time. When I hear movement of air, then I will know what zone I need to work on...

This small of a leak doesn't strike me as a bad solder joint. I'd guess its either a thread fitting, valve packing, or a bleeder not being quite shut...

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate plumbing?

Victory?

Its possible... Perhaps not probable, but possible that I got the last leak in the plumbing beat... I wouldn't bet the farm on it, but it feels right...

I bought a sample pack of various gasket material from my industrial supply and a gasket cutter so I wouldn't have any jaggy internal edges to fail... $40 later, I seemed to have the right material for the flow control gaskets... I can get no bubbles to form around the seals now with soap suds...

While this is about the time Murphy should show up touting his laws, I am simply not going to answer the door for the est of the day, and see if the air in the system stays put...

If you hear a man crying later tonight, that means that I didn't get it yet...

Getting Shelled

I live on an old street... Turn of the previous century at least... That means there are some old houses, and some really old trees in the area... My neighbors have a giant oak along the curb... I mean a GIANT, HUGE OAK!!! If just one of the main branches snapped and fell, I wouldn't have a house left to repair, I'd be starting from scratch... (as such I keep a very close eye on the health of said tree)

This year, the weather produced the ideal conditions apparently for the production of acorns from said oak... This leads to a number of issues, some of which I knew were coming, others, I hadn't considered before...

So these things start dropping... Either its the wind, or a group of twisted squirrels shaking them down... It doesn't matter which really, they're dropping... So a couple things happen.
a) Those bloody squirrels come, pick them up, and bury them all over the place, meaning I will have to start pulling up miniature oak trees from my gardens again next year.
b) They fall on my driveway and the squirrels ignore them.
c) They fall on the house

A needs no explanation... That's just nature planting new trees, and while those little saplings are a pain in the ass to pull unless you get them early, they do come up...

B leads to a couple things... Some of the acorns get driven over, and turned in to acorn butter... Now I have a tight driveway, that slops down toward my garage... Imagine if you will trying to navigate on a smooth surface, with a heavy vehicle, covered in something similar to peanut butter... This is disgusting, and I will have to power wash the driveway after most of the acorns are down... The other thing that happens is, the acorns land off to the side, and build up in numbers, waiting to attack my drainage system... Then when we get a rain, they all float down the driveway to the drain I had to install, and clog it, producing something of a miniature New Orleans effect... The water builds up, until it overtops the little stone walls around my garden, then it washes my top soil further down in the yard... Lovely...
C however is the worst of all... As I said, the tree is big, and therefor, tall... The acorns must be going at a pretty good clip just before they hit... I mention this because I have an aluminum awning/walk cover in the front of my place... Personally, I'm not fond of it, but its there, and I like the covered walk... (I'll replace it with a wood version some day... just not right now...) The thing is, when those acorns hit that sheet aluminum roof, it sounds like a shot... Not a big booming shotgun or anything, but something more than the pop of a handgun... We're in the .30 calibre range I think... So what I get (usually in the middle of the night, or early in the morning for some reason) sounds like a slow speed rifle battle... Now, I got used to hearing the occasional gunshot at night when I lived across the river in a ghetto, but that was never ATTACHED TO MY HOUSE... This has been going of for a few weeks on and off as they fall... Not frequently enough that I simply get used to it though... I jump out of bed every time... I can't wait until those things are finally down... Ugh!

And Another...

Somehow, the recent trend here has been plumbing, and so, and appropriate header is required... Pending I ever manage to get back to wood butchery, I'll get back to the other one...

Brights...

I was sitting in a pub tonight due to the fact that I was without power for a number of hours, and therefore couldn't see to make any food at home... It occurred to me while sitting there (there are lots of big windows in this place) that I can't for the life of me figure out why the NJMVC inspection checks for high beams on cars... (a busy road runs in front of the place)

Understand, I grew up here... I got my license here, as well as my first truck here... I had my NJ license and registration for something like 7 years before I had to change to Mississippi... Then I moved back 8 years ago (got a PA license and registration at the time due to insurance rates) to central rather than north Jersey... In those combined 15 years, I don't think I remember a single time I was ever really able to use the brights on my vehicle... There are just too many people here to be able to kick on the brights and drive around... In PA, sure... Mississippi, sure... In NJ?... Not bloody likely...

And yet, they still check their operation and where they are aimed at the inspection... That means I'm going to have to get the damn switch fixed in my truck... You see, for 5 years, the switch that flips from high to low beam has been bad... If I switch to brights, I risk losing all the lights when I switch back... For all these years, I didn't care, because I had PA registration, and inspection... My inspection consisted of the guy asking how the brakes were, and then asking if I minded putting the sticker on myself... Now, I'm trying to roll over to NJ registration as insurance will be cheaper when combined with my homeowners... The catch is this damn switch... I have to deactivate the air bag system to work inside the column... I do not want to tamper with the bomb that is inside my steering wheel, and I can't afford to pay a garage to do it... It'll get done soon since my PA registration is almost expired, but I'm not gonna like it for sure...

Missed It By That Much...

The plumbing hell continues...

I installed flow control valves in the heating system so I wouldn't get heat in zones I'm not supposed to... These things are about as simple a device as can be... Its basically a check valve, with a heavy brass plunger... Water is supposed to enter from the bottom of the valve, and when the circulator is running, then it pushes the plunger up and out of the way... Water is prevented from flowing the other direction since the weight settles back down... These things aren't high precision devices, and if they weren't there the system would still work...

So they were sweated in like everything else, and there are no leaks at the sweat fittings... They do however leak at the seal that connects the top of the valve to the body... Tighten them you say... Tighten them I did... Then I tightened them some more... Then I got a huge fucking wrench and tweaked them to within an inch of their lives, and still the seep air... So it was off to the plumbing supply since obviously I either got a bad batch of valves since they all do it, or I cooked the gaskets while sweating the fittings...

Fortunately the plumbing supply guys are getting used to me and my odd requests... Unfortunately, they didn't have what I needed... Home Desperate didn't have anything close either... So I tried the last option... The auto parts store...

Auto parts places tend to carry a few different kinds of gasket material you can make your own from... They also carry an assortment of gel type sealers...

None of the products I purchased is quite right, but we're talking low pressure, and only 200 degrees... They should have worked... Hell the originals should have worked... Nothing has worked, though I got very close with one of the gel products...

I am now going to leave it alone for the rest of the day... In the morning I will decide if I will try something different, or just cut the damn things out, patch the pipe and move on with my life...

I hate plumbing....

Safety First...

Why is it exactly that when I walk up to my quick check in the morning, I fear for my life due to the mothers of the kids that attend the grade school across the street?... I mean I understand why they may feel the need to drive their kids to the school. That's primarily because it sits on a fairly busy road, but I have been almost hit far more often by the mothers on the side streets than the vehicles on the main road... If these mothers can't manage to see a 6'2" tall person walking around, how is it that they haven't killed one of the kids?.. They all seem so preoccupied watching their own kid walk through the school yard as they drive away, that they aren't looking around them... Hell its tempting to let one of them clip me a bit and file charges... 'Course then I'd be the bad guy, going after the hard working mother that was just concerned about their kid... None of this would be a problem if the mothers on the other side of the main road would stay out of the parking lot.... Then, I'd drive like I used to...

Headers...

Yea, I know, its pretty damn basic looking... I'll work on that... I'm just happy I managed to get it in there without nukeing everything else... Now, I just need to find some decent imagry to work with... I've got way more graphics capability than I need to do a banner, its just a lack of raw material currently...

Update: That's a bit better now... Not quite fabulous, but good enough to stay for a bit...

How Far To Go?...

I'm in the middle of finishing the plumbing for my heating system, minus the living room wall panel... So I'm pressure testing currently... This is agonizing sorta... Down around 12 pounds pressure, I'm good to go... I'm pumping air in there around 43psi currently, and I get just the slightest bit of leakage around one of the auto bleeders... Now the problem is, this is a threaded fitting... The tread in this case is 1/8" NPT... That's the smallest pipe thread as far as I know... Usually you can tread these things together by hand, and be done... I've put a wrench on this unit now, and I still get the hiss... If I try to wrench it any more, I'll destroy the fitting... I just pulled it apart, and reapplied the thread sealing compound, so hopefully that will work...

I'm good down at the low pressure though... The emergency blow off valves are set at 30psi... Its not possible for this fitting to ever see 43psi, so what am I worried about?... Hell I don't seem to get any loss down at 30psi...

This is the reason I hate pipe threads... Pipe threads are 19th century technology basically... There are way better methods out there these days... The problem is for the most part you simply can not get basic plumbing fittings in one of those newer systems...

Modern plumbing is living in the past...

2+

It has been a long road seemingly since I started my blog over at Blog City... That was a little over 2 years ago... Back in late March of '04 through the efforts of a few of my now fellow Munuvians, I was offered this lovely little piece of real estate... Having just gone through dealing with the Blog-City interface while importing posts, I remember how annoying it was over there... I mean it worked, but, damn, what a pain...

Now, if I'd just get off my ass and write something decent... Or hell, learn MT and spruce the place up a bit...

We Hope You Enjoy Your Stay...

So yesterday, I was forced to interrupt my complete lack of work... I might normally be quite glad not only for the work, but for the change of pace... Our main client was doing a show in Jersey City with another production company. They wanted some of the scenery that we store for them, but they own. So we prepped the stuff, and sent it on the way. Yesterday however was when the gear went in... The production company in question does not do scenery apart from things like pipe and drape... That meant someone had to go... Sadly it fell to me.

So after driving up to Jersey City, I managed to miss the exit off the Turnpike Extension... I had to play loop-de-loop to get back to where I needed to be since I didn't have my large scale north jersey map with me that shows all the streets in the city... (where it is I can't imagine... probably still in a box from when I moved to the house) So back down the ramp, across town to the Hyatt, which is quite new, and should be nice... Drive up to the Hyatt, and find there is no parking deck associated with the hotel... What the fuck?... You build a brand new hotel, and put in no additional, convenient parking?... There is a deck 2 blocks away I'm told... That was full naturally... The next deck 4 blocks away didn't take oversized vehicles. (that's another rant folks, why is my truck oversized, and those fucking SUV's not?) So I ended up 9 blocks from the hotel... Fine, I'm in shape, and it was a fairly nice day... Hump my tools, and some little plywood feet that managed to miss the truck 9 blocks to the hotel... I'm not sweating lig a pig, but I'm there on time... Find the people I need to, find the room I'm going to, and then find the path from the dock to the room...

Remember, this is a new hotel that is pushing for big meetings, and convention type work... That means scenery, amongst all the other gear... Keep this in mind...

So the route goes from the dock, to freight elevators... The elevators are almost 8' deep... Almost... So instead of just rolling the 8' scenery in to the elevators, we're having to go in diagonally, killing tons of space... Stupid design... Dumb ass architects never actually speak to anyone that has to work in these places...
Anyway, up to the third floor, where those elevators go... Then all the way across the hotel through twisting hallways... Why are there 6' jogs in those hallways?... This is insane... Every 30' or so, there is a 6' offset in the hallway... Why are the hallways only 8' wide?... Everybody knows damn well that the hotel staff is going to store catering carts in the hallway, cutting the aisle down to 6' max, and often 4' wide... What the fuck?... So down the twisting, turning hallway, to the next elevator... Same dumb ass size elevator, up to the 9th floor.... Through more rat maze hallways in to the room... Thankfully, we only had 3 dollies of scenery, so it was a brief nightmare...

Once in the room, the production company guy didn't know where the units went... Great... These things are semi fragile once assembled... My shop didn't build them sadly... They were built by a couple guys that don't do scenery for a living... They look fine once together, but they're just not built to tour like this... So eventually we got them placed, and they decided to only use about 2/3 of what they brought... I got an ok, and headed for the door like a bullet... I've worked for this client a long time... I know that they were going to move those damn things 10 times before the reception... I made damn sure I wasn't going to get tied up in that crap... So, back out the door, walk the 9 blocks back to my truck, and pay the $15 for the hour and a half I was there... Get me the hell out of that city...

Ugh....

I just managed to get all my old posts over here from Blog-City... I hadn't heard that anyone had found a nice neat way to do so, so I did it the old fassioned way... Cut and Paste... Sadly, I should have just grabbed the public view of the page rather than what was in the admin page... I took me a few extra hours to go back again and track down code gremlins that the blog-city editor must have put in there, that MT didn't like...

It's all here now though... It all seems to work...

It's pretty amazing going through all your old posts... Way back when, it seems I actually had some decent content... How very strange...

And Again...

I spent another day reinventing yet a different wheel today... It seems to be an almost patented process at this shop...

I was welding leg assemblies from aluminum pipe... Nothing really special there... The annoying part was I had to weld 1/2" square plates on the bottom of each leg that had been drilled and tapped to accept a leveling foot... One of the guys I usually hire in my shop had spent a ton of time cutting, drilling, and tapping those plates...

Various supply catalogs sell inserts that simply slide in to the open bottom of pipe to accept the foot... They're pretty cheap...

Yet another chunk of wasted time...

Reinventing The Wheel, The Addendum...

Let me clarify a bit on this whole wheel reinvention thing... This is a painfully common issue we have to deal with in theatre all the time... Not quite in the same way as I mentioned below, but that plays a part...

Much of this stems from the fact that theatres are basically poor... Not poor in quality, poor financially... However, the people involved in theatre are almost always widly read, highly creative, highly motivated, and generally highly intelligent... What that leads to is sort of a situation of champagne tastes on a beer budget...

I'll pursue this from the scene shop perspective for the moment... Perhaps I'll do it from lighting later...

Now, since we're poor, we have to be creative, which is good since most of us are... The designer provides a design... The designer does not provide instructions on how to make that design... The best analogy is to architects and engineers... Architects draw pretty pictures, and make fabulous models... The engineers get stuck figuring out how to actually make the building... In the shop though, if you are affiliated with a specific theatre, you also often have to try to fit a given design in to a given budget... In my case its a little easier since I simply tell the designer what something costs, and they have to make changes or cut units to fit the budget... But back to the first version of a shop... Once you get the design and its approved, you are often stuck figuring out how to actually do it, as well as stay in budget...

Let me give you an example... I did a show some years ago when I just moved in to this area, and it was very early in my career in professional theatre... I was working for a theatre on the shop staff. The design came down approved, and we had to make it happen... In this case, the entire set had to travel up and down stage around 15 feet... The set was basically an old house or apartment, so there was a living room, kitchen, and offstage a bathroom, front hallway and bedroom... The offstage areas weren't flushed out much, but they had associated platforms, doors, and flats... All this boiled down to a big steel truss deck that everything had to ride on... I recall a conversation with the TD at the time where I suggested that we had to get new casters due to the loads... Unfortunately we couldn't afford new casters, so we used the old cheap ones hanging around the shop... We borrowed some electric motor traction drives from another theatre, bolted them on the back of the deck, and we were off to the races... One problem though...

That conversation I had with the TD about the casters?... Turns out I was right... The old casters simply were not up to carrying the load... Naturally we didn't discover this until the set was in the theatre... The problem was that when the casters didn't move for a period of time, they went from being round, to being egg shaped... The traction motors didn't have enough traction or power to force the casters to spin once egged, but given a good pull or push, they would rotate, and become circles again... It took me forever to figure this out, because they would call, I would go out, give the deck a little push, and then it would run back and forth as long as I was there... It only seemed to be an issue when I wasn't there... Now if we had big stagehands on staff, they could have given it a push, and it would have been fine, but we didn't... So what we ended up doing was an elaborate rigging system that involved sand bags and pulleys... The sandbags would get hoisted up in the air by the traction motors while they moved the set, since once the wheels were round the motors were plenty strong... When the wheels egged, the sandbags would provide the extra pull to get the unit rolling again, and the motors would pull up a different set of sand bags to give a pull in the other direction...
Bottom line?.. Well in that case we basically reinvented the wheel... We didn't have the money to do it right, so we did that nightmare rigging solution since we had the rope, pulleys, and sandbags, and most importantly we had the creativity to overcome the issue...
There are probably hundreds of times I've done some reinventing... There will be more in the future to be sure...
The problem is we get so used to doing this, that sometimes, as indicated below, we forget that someone beat us to the punch, and we end up costing tons more time, money, and effort... I would like to think I'm very careful not to get trapped that way... Usually, I'm pretty successful... Sometimes I find myself down on the shop floor with a chisel and a chunk of rock trying to make it round though so to speak...

Reinventing the Wheel

Things have been slow for the shop, so when another shop called and asked if I could come in for a couple days, I said ok... Now this place has a history of annoying me, but its just two days... 16 hours and I'm done...

My main project today?... Make hinges...

But wait you say, can't you buy hinges? I mean its not like I'm at the Stanley factory...

Well apparently the concept of purchaseing hinges has somehow elluded the guys running this place...They've only been in the business for probably 50-60 years combined...

I'll be the first to admit that sometimes you simply can't take something off the shelf and use it in theatre... We ask hardware to do things it wasn't designed for, or way beyond it's intended strength... We are an abusive industry... I accept all this... Hell I have people build custom stuff all the time in my shop...

The problem is, I spent 4-5 hours making hinges that I shit you not, I can buy at Home Depot... This is a union shop mind you... The pay isn't bad... So they paid me 4-5 hours, plus the cost of the material, plus the waste of space, and the wear on the tools, to manufacture these hinges that cost about $5 each at Home Depot... I made 12 hinges folks... 12 bloody hinges... I only needed 8, but I figured I'd do 12 so when they ask for an extra, I'm set... Now I can make hinges faster than that, but they kept changeing exactly what they wanted... I was also hamstrung by the way they wanted them made... There are far faster ways to do what I did, but they had to have them done a specific way simply because they got a bug up their ass...

Now I remember why I hate working for other people so much... This is one of the reasons I had to open my own place... Not only do I keep myself away from that insanity, but I end up providing a refuge for other stagehands that are trying to escape the insanity...

What a crazy business...

I remember This Differently...

First day of school... Yea, I remember that... Mom walked us to elementary school, and made sure we knew the way, and how to get there safely... It was not pleasant at that age, but the lessons were pretty simple... Stay on the sidewalks, don't walk through parking lots, cross at corners, preferably with a crossing guard... Basic stuff... Sensible stuff...

I was headed to my local Quick Check a couple days ago to get my morning coffee... I didn't know it was the first day of school... Not having kids, these things don't usually effect me much... My Quick Check however is right across the street from an elementary school... This should however not be a problem if things are still done the same way... Sadly that apparently isn't the case... We suffered major gridlock as there was the usual morning traffic of coffee seekers (who manage the parking ballet quite well normally), there was a crossing guard just past the parking lot entrance, the traffic light just before the entrance, and the parents walking their kids through the parking lot, then standing in the entrance to the parking lot to cross in the middle of the street, only to have to walk down to the corner where the crossing guard was since there is a damn fence around the school... Hello?... There are sidewalks... There is a traffic light...There is a crossing guard... Why the hell are you standing in the middle of the apron leading to the parking lot? There wouldn't be so many dangerous cars to navigate if you walked where pedestrians are supposed to walk...

It took me 15 minutes to be able to make the turn in to the parking lot... I could have walked from my house to the store in that amount of time, and probably managed to get halfway back... 15 minutes sitting there shaking my head at these idiot parents teaching their kids how to most annoy drivers, and put them in danger... Hell I don't like kids, but that doesn't mean I want to run them down... Their parents should be run down though... What the hell did their parents teach them?....

Flux This...

Note: All soldering fluxes are not the same...

Note: Use a tinning flux that contains silver...

Note: Failure to use good flux will result in massive headaches while pressure testing a system in the form of bad solder joints...

Note: Be thankful that 90% of the joints were done with the aforementioned tinning flux...

Note: There are a hell of a lot of joints here... 10% added up pretty fast...

No Sweat...

Well the plumbing is done... Almost...
It took us 3 days to cut, fit, clean, flux and sweat what we did. The only thing left is to install a wall panel radiator that comes in late in September, install a pressure regulator that is also on order, move a gigantic radiator in to the basement and plumb the two short connectors, screw in the air bleeders, and fix one elbow that we must not have used flux on... Not bad for a retired engineer, and a stagehand in my book... The system should work quite nicely, but naturally that remains to be seen... It does however look good in the basement... While that doesn't make any real difference functionally, it does make the house more a home... I've seen lots of plumbing where pipes weren't plumb or level, with odd angles everyplace, and you just sit there thinking, geesh, what were they thinking... You aren't really saving much that way in terms of fittings, or pipe, its just lazy... Sure running pipes through joists is a little harder than strapping them underneath, but it makes such a huge difference both visually, and in protecting the pipes that the effort is well worth it...

Let me sum it up with a quote, which as you know I never do...

"A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me. "
-Dan Holohan (writer, plumber, marketer of "Dead Man's Gear")

Yea, it should last that long.

Spring Cleaning... Sorta...

Ok... I'm re-entering the world of actually cleaning this place up... It's been a mess for ages, and that sucks... I've gone through and cleaned up what I found didn't work, and got rid of links to sites I ust don't seem to get to any more... Added a few as well... Let me know if you find something that doesn't work...

What He Said...

Yep...

The Classics...

My girlfriend and I have been on a tear lately, watching old movies... Think about it... There isn't much worth watching in the theatres these days, and you need to take a mortgage out just to see one... So off we go to Blockbuster almost every weekend...

We're looking for classics... Black and white often, but these flicks are well known... Can you imagine a store not having Casablanca?... How about something like Gone With The Wind?... We went looking for Key Largo this weekend... I should have known it wouldn't be easy, because it took us several months to find a store that had Casablanca, and Key Largo isn't quite that big... Still, it should be there... We looked, it wasn't there... We asked, and the kid that was probably in diapers when I had my first DMV experience looked blankly back before typing it in the computer... He told us they don't carry that old stuff... Ya know what?... It was old when I was a kid and the stores had it... The video stores were a third the size they are now, and the selection was always good... I understand that they can't inventory every movie ever made, but they don't even have a classics section in Blockbuster any more... You have to look under Action if you want to find a western... Yea, there's action in Rio Bravo, but its a western... Westerns are their own genre... They have the Sci-fi stuff separated... How about giving us a classics section?... How about not sticking 100 copies of a given new release out side by side so they take up a wall... How about inventorying things in depth so you can still have room for the timeless movies?...

Now before you tell me to go to the independent video places, I know... I however have enough free rentals due me from blockbuster to take me in to next year... Apparently they lost a class action suit against them for overcharging late fees, and they are refunding those fees in the form of coupons... Apparently I paid a lot of late fees that year in question...

As soon as I'm out of coupons, they're out of a customer...

The DMV Rides Still...

Some time ago, the NJ DMV decided to try to spruce up its image... For years, here in the garden state, we knew of the horror that going to one of those places was... Hell just about anyone that had ever driven by one of those places knew what it was about... It was about long lines, rude employees, bureaucracy , and usually not getting what you wanted or needed to get done...

Enter, some marketing guy that sells the government on the idea of giving the DMV a new name, image and feeling... There's one flaw in the plan... Its subtle mind you, but its important...

They didn't change anything except the name of the organization!

So now, we have the MVC where we once had the DMV... Hell when you walk in to them, there are still DMV signs in place... I shit you not...

So I finally decided to get a NJ license, along with my girlfriend. I've been here for years, but I kept a PA license since my insurance was cheaper out there... Now with the house, my rate will be better here... Technically, the PA license is illegal since I live here, but screw that, its a technicality, and I'm not hurting anyone except the insurance companies, and them not by much... As for my girlfriend, she needs a NJ license to get in state tuition for some credits she needs for grad school... She's working down in Maryland, but she is going to use my address since the MD gig is temporary...

So off we go to the new and improved MVC Saturday...

I had a feeling it was going to be bad when we got there and the line was out the door, and strangely enough the symbol next to MVC was the same as the old DMV one... So we got in line with the rest of the lemmings, and waited while some woman working for the new and efficient organization was performing paperwork triage, handing out forms, and generally being rude to anyone with an accent... I was getting that old DMV dread again, but still I trudged on in the line since I wanted to be done with this aspect of my life...

I got to the front of the first line and the idiot tells me that he doesn't think I'll make it through all the lines to get the process done before they close... Now mind you, I'd been in line an hour... The line behind me was as long as when I got there, and they were still letting people in the door without mentioning that they wouldn't even make it to the front of the first line... So I told him he should give it the old college try, and get on with his job... Apparently the certified copy of my birth certificate isn't good enough for them... For the record, I just looked, and its good enough to get a passport, but its not good enough for the new and efficient MVC... So that ended my chance to get the license that day... I fumed, and vented, and generally entertained the other lemmings in line by arguing with the idiot, but it only made me feel better, didn't get me in to another line...

My girlfriend got through the first line... She was also told that she probably wouldn't make it through the other lines... Lines... Plural... There were no less than 3 other lines that I knew she had to trudge through, and I'm guessing possibly a 4th... But she was here for the weekend, so we decided to try... So she stood in line, waiting to get a permit (keep in mind she has a valid Maryland license), which would then allow her to get in another line to take an eye test, before standing in yet another line to take the written test, before having to stand in another line for the picture, after which she would be assigned a number, and told to sit down... Then at some point at their convenience they would actually hit print on the license machine and produce her license... They would then call her number to a line, where she would stand until she got to the front and they handed her the damn thing...

With 10 minutes before they closed she hadn't gotten through the first line after the entry line... Now there is no way these state employees were going to close the doors and take care of everyone that was already in process... That's not how we do it here... They say sorry, and get out, try again another time... At that point, you have to start over because the dates on the forms you filled out are wrong...

I'm not making this up.

Would you like to know how long it took me to get my Mississippi license transferred to Pennsylvania?... 23 minutes... I remember because I grew up in NJ and dreaded every DMV in the world... It didn't matter if you called it DMV, MVC, DOT, whatever... I remember going in to the PA place, and looking at my watch, and when I came back out it was 23 minutes later... I was shocked... Every ensuing experience I had in Pennsylvania were on a similar par... I gave me hope that it was possible that the NJ DMV had actually reformed... I thought the move to digitally produced licenses might help ease the NJ system...

I was wrong...

What's the solution?... Fire every god damn one of those idiots first and foremost. Then scrap the system. I mean in a big damn bonfire right in the middle of giants stadium so they should charge admission and re-coop the costs... I'd pay... Then stroll across the border, and ask Pennsylvania, nicely, if they could explain how to run an organization that caters to 12,281,054 residents rather than NJ's 8,414,350... Then lets start the hiring process... Previous employees are free to re-apply... All new employees must be tested to make sure their head is not planted up their ass... This will preclude most of the previous employees, but to be fair, they can't all be morons right?....

Works Fine For Me...

Humphrey Bogart You scored 66% Tough, 4% Roguish, 33% Friendly, and 0% Charming!

You're the original man of honor, rough and tough but willing to stick your neck out when you need to, despite what you might say to the contrary. You're a complex character full of spit and vinegar, but with a soft heart and a tender streak that you try to hide. There's usually a complicated dame in the picture, someone who sees the real you behind all the tough talk and can dish it out as well as you can. You're not easy to get next to, but when you find the right partner, you're caring and loyal to a fault. A big fault. But you take it on the chin and move on, nursing your pain inside and maintaining your armor...until the next dame walks in. Or possibly the same dame, and of all the gin joints in all the world, it had to be yours. Co-stars include Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall, hot chicks with problems. Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the Classic Dames Test.