Adrenaline Rush

I narrowly avoided an annoying fender bender today in the post office parking lot. I started to pull out and the woman in the space oppposite started to pull out. I was looking behind me, she was not. She kept coming towards our car which was just out of the space, so I slammed the car into drive and actually burned rubber (not just metaphorically, I was burning rubber!) back into my space. The woman didn't even notice and just pulled out of the parking lot.


Henry recreates the woman's abandon in pulling out.

Henry and Max, a calm microsecond...
We had Max's adoption papers notarized today at the bank. Only a few more hoops to jump through and unless we win the lottery we are done with this whole adoption michegas.

Henry was cleaning the bathroom mirror (which made more of a mess...), I went in to check on him and he was cleaning the electrical outlet with a wet rag. We do have GFCI, so it probably wasn't that dangerous, but I gave him a stern lecture on electricity...

I have been working on a little article for my webpage about 3D milling, here is a sneek preview:

3D model in Rhino, 1.125"x1.125"x.25"

Roughing pass on the CNC mill, coarse stepover.

Finishing pass, .002" stepover.

Finished wax.

Not much of a preview, that is pretty much the whole thing, but I'll flesh it out...

Links:
I need a Minisort. Ok, I probably don't need one, given what is probably an astronomical cost, but it would be handy...

Wooden Ship Modelling for Dummies (Mom, it's a Canadian site!)

This is the lake where I went to summer camp.

I like Potato Chips

I'm eating Kettle brand Salt and Pepper chips. I couldn't be more satisfied.
First, some pictures of the boys:

Hi Max!

Henry can fit into very small spaces. I should have him start training with David Blaine, or a ring of jewel thieves. I think I could mail him anywhere in a Priority Mail flat rate box.

Notice how white teeth are when you are young, and how dingy they are when you are old and decrepit.

Henry deploys his hair.


So, as I said I am eating Kettle brand Salt and Pepper chips. While I would have more black pepper taste, they are possibly the best chip flavour ever.

I almost had to serve jury on what promised to be a three day medical malpractice trial last tuesday but I was again cut from the team. I am beginning to think I am not the ideal juror in either the state's or the public's eye. I met a machinist (who is a friend of my friend Kent) who also was not selected and I went back to his shop to look at the work he is engaged in. He is lapping 2mm ruby spheres, after grinding 75% of them away, into little lenses. Fascinating, and taking place only a few miles from my house.

The previous saturday (Felice's birthday!) we went to a housewarming party, and that sunday we had an unbelieveably perfect and gut busting meal of Injera at our friend Yodit's house. The boys played with her boys and we ate, if I recall, at least 6 different dishes.

Last weekend was the annual used book sale given by the "Friends of the Library". I didn't buy that many books, probably only about 30 or so. I did buy a 2 volume mechanical engineering text, in swedish, that looks interesting. I say "looks" because I don't understand swedish. Other picks were a book on Piano tuning and repair, a Lao-english dictionary, and a book on electric furnaces.
Henry also bought a lot of books, guaranteeing that he will catch the dread disease of book acquisition.

Some links for you...
Some excellent mechanical crackpottery
How to forge (blacksmith) locks
Quality Gaging Tips articles from Modern Machine Shop

Delayed by cuteness

Yes, the kids are too cute, so I haven't been posting as I'm dazzled by them continously.

Well, I did photoshop out the coxsackie blisters on his hand and the nasal sheen...

This shows the great cooperation between Henry and Max as they work together to control us.

Yes, Max had some virus, probably coxsackie, which resulted in disgusting blisters on his hands. It must be fun to live in a town that has a virus named after it. I am getting skilled at removing disfigurements and mucus using a combination of clone stamp and blur tools in photoshop.

I showed up for Jury duty and was selected to serve on a jury, but they only needed 6 out of the 12 selected so I was sent home. I have to call in every friday night for the next two months in case they need me. We got to watch a film called "The Jury, Cornerstone of Democracy" or some combination of those words - it was so boring that I was unable to avert my eyes from the potential juror next to me, and her Sudoku puzzle.

Our neighbor sold our old van, which is kind of sad. He traded it in on a pickup, and then went to the auction to see if he could buy it back for less than the trade in value, but it went for a whopping $750.00. I had told him I'd buy it back for $200. I'll have to scan an old picture of the econoline sometime. Felice and I lived in it for 2-1/2 years...

My cousin Allan, who I often refer to as my genetic half-brother (by virtue of our mothers being twins), has started a blog. I hope it is lamer than mine.

Watched "The Aristocrats" last night (after the kids were asleep). Felice and I were unable to think of anyone we could recommend it to. I loved it, but I love the anthropology of comedy and I am hard to offend. It was a profoundly offensive movie if you have any sort of moral compass.

Yup, still alive...

So I have Jury duty for the next two months (or rather I am available for jury duty for the next 2 months). I checked the website for my orientation date and time and have to report next monday at 7:30AM.... 7:30AM! The only upside is that I'll drag myself in, haggard and ashen, gasping like a lungfish and they'll get the actual jury assignment out of the way. Why 7:30? I know that justice never sleeps, but given that the only people who can do jury duty are those with flexible schedules, why not a more civilized hour?
Do lungfish gasp?

We haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. Henry was being creative and stuck an alkaline battery in our charger, which is a bad thing, so the camera was uncharged for a while.
I would have taken a picture of the charger, but...

I bought an abacus last week. It is a Tomoe brand soroban (japanese abacus), i figured for $3.00 I couldn't go wrong and now I have a backup for my slide rule, which itself is a backup for my calculator.

Our friend Lori's son was featured in the local paper in a story about his podcasting. I find it humourous because they are somewhat luddite orientated, yet their son is on the bleeding edge of electronic self-publishing.

One of my milling machine customers, sent us a personalized piece of his jewelry, which was thoughtful. I wish more customers would shower gifts upon us.

These clock kits look fun, although I wish they sold the plans in electronic form so I could just mill my own parts on the CNC...I guess I should email them and ask.

Finally, here is a bibliography of Korean History, in case you need some reading material...

Still Alive!

Why is a lazy guy like me so busy? It's a curse I tell you. But really not much has been going on besides the work and the joy of parenting.

Here's the latest mundane project I did.

How to tell if Felice and Nick can drive to town

How to make polar panoramas
I just bought his book, Digital Lighting & Rendering, an excellent text on the subject.

Ancient history.

Less ancient history.

New Year

Max loves his balloon.


When life gives you lemons, make phone calls.


2 Dudes. With impeccable manners. Who never chew with their mouths full.


This a big saltine!

So it's a new year. Why didn't I blog about the last month of 2005? Because I was busy. Being busy is good. Too busy to talk about what is making me busy. So now I am slightly less busy, but still busy. But I'll try and be less busy so I can write more. Or something.

Henry is 3

Birthday!

Cranky!

Henry Turned 3 today. Yes i haven't posted in a while but apparently parenting two kids takes up a lot of your time. Go figure.

I have been saving up some thoughts:

Photoshop has a "red-eye" filter, but for us at least a "snot-nose" filter would be more useful.

I have, for the first time in my life, used up a whole box of paperclips. I also realized that if you have a big bottle of asprin (or tylenol, or whatever) and it is empty, you have a pretty good sense of how many headaches you have.

Here are a bunch of links:

World Atlatl Association

Microsoft has released all their "Express" programming languages for free this year. I'm trying again, when I have free time, to get Visual Basic under my belt.

We received a pamphlet from them with our new stove. I wasn't aware that it was a deadly enough problem to warrant an acronym.

Freda Utley.

Metalsmithing tutorials.

Look for more rapid posting after the new year, for now we're so busy I barely get time to breathe.

Jed Clampett

I had a bunch of funny stuff to write, I typically can't remember any of it...














Every time I deposit checks at the bank they take time, those dear souls, to remind me of the vast array of financial services the bank, my bank, is ready to fulfill for my benefit. I feel like Jed Clampett, with Mr. Drysdale breathing down his neck, yet ready to lay down his life, to keep his bank's hands on Jed's money.

I love America.

The picture above shows typical working conditions in my self imposed cubicle.

Sorry I haven't posted lately, the small human that is resting upon my hulk has not been sleeping well, and we have been working like dogs. Tired little dogs.



Henry has Teletubbie slippers.

Here are some tools I ought to have, ironically (iconically?)

Interesting stuff on micro-mechanical-machining...

Another Lego milling machine...

Mechanical stuff

Last night I went over to "Open Shop" at Kent's. He has been having problems with his Lagun mill for the last year or so, it wasn't cutting square. He had tried a bunch of things, cleaning the ways, adjusting the gibs, but still had a problem, and he couldn't afford to take the mill out of service completely and try a rebuild. What made things so hard to diagnose was that the mill seemed to be true in the x-axis, but when cutting along the y axis the cut wasn't square, out by about .001"/1" which is not precise enough for his work (or most work).

So last night we tried a bunch of measurements. Checking a cylindrical sqare butted against the z-ways showed that there was no error in either x or y. What could it be? I figured it was either the vise or the head. Checking the back jaw of the Kurt vise showed it was parallel to the x axis travel. Clamping a square down in the jaws of the Kurt also showed no error. But then we put the square up on some parallels so that it was gripped by the top 1/8" of the jaws (which is how he holds most work in the vise). The error then showed up. It was the vise all along, not the machine. Seems it was twisting the work, and while when unclamped it was true, under the pressure of clamping it was out.Kent put a different vise on and the machine cut perfectly square. What was odd is that the vise was one he bought when he got the mill, new, about 20 years ago. All the Kurt vises he has have a key retaining the back jaw, but this one didn't. Maybe they added one later just because of this sort of problem, or maybe it has nothing to do with it at all. But he's happy now.

George was there to keep us on the straight and narrow, he was a machinist at GE and knows just about everything, when he pronounced our different test setups correct we knew they were, and when he saw problems we eliminated them.

George related a tale about how for one job he had to put a slot in the face of a bar, with the slot centerline through the center of the face. About half of them would come out with the slot slightly off of center, and he couldn't figure out why. Each bar had the same diameter and the setup wasn't shifting, but on some of the pieces the slot would be above or below the center of the face. he then realised that the bars were actually pentagonally lobed, and although when measured they would show consistent diameter, when put in the vise some would be on a flat and some not, causing the height to be different.

As you can see from the picture at the top, Max is now able to pull himself up and "cruise", even though he is only 7 months (not even yet) old. Yikes. Henry can now catapult himself over the baby gates, and I am loath to top them with razor wire. Henry has an annoying tendency to crank the volume on his computer. I asked on the Make "Talk" forum, but the only reply I got suggested that I should break him of the habit, rather than suggesting a technical fix. Like a boy can resist twisting a potentiometer all the way to "11"...Anyone know how to limit computer volume, besides operator adjustment?

Virtual Mechanisms Animated by Java

The Dreadnought Project

A Finnish Live Steam Site (in english)

It's cold and rainy and Felice is probably going to play hooky from the market tomorrow. My dad sent a 4 volume DVD set of Warner Bros. cartoons, so I hope to watch some Bugs Bunny while supine. I have no idea why he sent it, but it's great.

Caught in some sort of act

I don't know what was going on but Max sure looks startled.

I went to an auction yesterday down in Springfield. It wasn't an amazing auction but I did get a few good deals, like two Tapmatic tapping heads for $80.00, and a KDK toolpost set for $25.00, which probably means nothing to most of the 5 readers of my blog. The auction was poorly attended which accounts for the low prices. Talking to the auctioneer afterwards about why there are so few auctions happening, he said that the business climate was good for machine shops right now, which is good news. As with most auctions there was a fair amount of BS-ing, typical whining from the auctioneer, and some meaningless conversation. As at most auctions the auctioneer figured out that I was the guy who bids $5.00 for almost anything, so I positioned myself close by and started a lot of the bidding. Auctioneers are optomistic - they'll start an item at say $200, then drop to $100, then $50, $25, then having not received a bid, they'll look to a cheap guy like me and say "$5.00?" in a pathetically plaintive way. They refer to this as "pulling teeth".

Kent's big purchase was typical for him, an insanely heavy shelf and all the items upon it for $40.00. I got to use an electric chain hoist when we loaded it on his truck. He also bought all the oil cans, as he is crazy-oil-can-collector man.

The only downside to the auction was that the auctioneers didn't get a lunchwagon (roach coach) to setup at the site, so Kent and I were completely famished by the end of the auction at 3:30PM. We found a restaurant on the way back in Juntion City, and I ate a huge bolus of cheese fries and about 4 cups of coffee.

Catching up

Nothing going on lately. Max is crawling all over the place. Henry is still cute.
I'm going to an auction tomorrow with Kent.

This is one of the last pictures of Henry with binky. He decided it was "broken" and hasn't used it for 4 days. He did look for it in his ear last night, as that's where daddy finds a lot of henry's stuff...

Here are a bunch of cool things:
Is this furniture too clever? (via Funfurde)

This book, reviewed in the New York Times, is probably not going to be a guide as we raise Henry and Max.

Check out the picture galleries, incredible photomicrography.

Everything you wanted to know about barcode. And here's a page that will generate barcode for your name (or any other word).

I should subscribe to this new robot magazine, but I'm too cheap.

Discipline

We are all about parental discipline. Henry always eats at the table, napkin on lap for every meal.

I just can't believe that some people will let their kids turn the living room upside down while shovelling mac & cheese into their gullet with a side dish of mindless TV. Philistines.

The folks at Freesteel emailed me back, they are working on an open source CAM module, not necessarily a high priced program as I thought, which is great in terms of potential pricing. I find that I use more open source software as my software budget goes down. You really don't have to pay for most types of software, if you don't mind some hoop jumping and problem skirting. That said, some software (like Rhino) is well worth the price.

I installed a 2nd hard drive in my new PC today. Nowhere in the Dell instructions did it mention that you have to go into BIOS and enable the 2nd SATA controller. Good thing I'm smarter than the average bear. I also bought a cheap USB drive, Cruizer Micro, it was only $15.00 after rebate at Staples and I thought I might need it someday.

Here's another great birthday gift to get me.

And for the true geeks: Lego machine tools that actually cut toast.

POVray

I played around with POVray today...

We also went to the local farm and picked pumpkins with the attendant hayrides, etc.

Good night...

Wonder of Nature solved.

I received the following email from the local (OSU) university:

The beetle is a burying beetle, family Silphidae, genus Nicrophorus. I can't tell what species it is because ID is largely based on color patterns, which are obscured (totally!) by the parasitic mites on it. The orange antennal club suggests it could be N. investigator, a very common species in Oregon. Burying beetles feed their young on carrion, making a nest in the ground below the corpse, and feeding the young with liquified carrion. The mites belong to the Mesostigmata. They use the beetles for transport between beetle nests, where they feed on carrion, fly eggs, and sometimes beetle eggs. By reducing fly infestations, which would compete with the beetle larvae for the carrion, the mites are believed to have an overall beneficial effect on burying beetle reproductive success. Although I could find no literature stating that the mites feed on the adult beetles, carrying such a heavy load of mites is probably deleterious to the beetle carrying them.

Here is a website with a picture of another happy beetle, and another one in german.

On to other subjects, here is a site about the computer I first used to get onto the pre-internet "The Source"

Here is a blog about developing CAM software, which is fascinating if you have an interest in both programming and CNC. The blog doesn't care about interaction though, and seems mainly to be a way for them to let off steam. They need to be a little more outgoing as they state that they wish to be found on Google more easily. I will never be able to afford their software.

I need to clean the bathroom

This is what I found in my sink today. Any entomologists out there? It looks like a beetle being consumed by tiny spiders to me...
The beetle was sluggishly trying to climb the sink (it came from the drain? eek). I scooped it up and put it and the 100 spider babies outside for nature, or perverse abomination thereof, to take its course.
The beetle is roughly 1.25" long or so.

No worries about overeating at lunch for me!

Internet boy

Henry now knows to hit the "Back" button in IE to navigate a site. He doesn't know "Forward" though. We'll work on that next.

Felice managed to spill a glass of seltzer water on her head today. I heard a noise, then laughing from the kitchen. She has some sort of logical story about getting the baby sling stuck and pulling too hard, but I suspect her brain was overheating.

(For the TV addicted)
"Lost" is now on at the same time as "Veronica Mars". Must suck to be Veronica Mars, although I suspect that program times mean less in the age of Tivo than they once did. Yes, I enjoy both shows.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I finally did a massive site update. Nothing like editing pictures for hours with a headcold.

I have tons of Henry & Max pics but I need a better way of uploading and showing them I suspect I'll start using the blog, but I have been unable to utilize Picasa to put anything up but the tiniest pictures. I'll keep working on it... Well look at that, I added a pic to this post...Joe and Henry having a drink.

So my latest frustration with the Dell is that the 1GB of memory is divided up into 4 256MB chunks, so if I add, say 1GB (two matched 512 GB, for no reason I can acertain, but that's how it's done), I would only be upgrading to 1.5GB, not 2GB...Good thing I don't have any money for an upgrade...

short little entry

I hate colds.

Henry can play the tambourine.

Here's a great blog about riding the steam trains of China (via BoingBoing)

Here is the web page of my latest customer.

Geodesic design software.

I haven't used it yet, and it was annoying to jump through all the hoops, but Acrylic is free and from the 5 minutes I've spent with it looks pretty cool...Oh, it's a vector/raster drawing program...Free is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying Illustrator or CorelDraw.


Night Night.

How my mind works

Henry and were just watching TV. On screen they were counting, 1,2, and then asked what comes next. Henry said "six", which is wrong, as the answer was three.
But if we take Henry's answer to be true, we get:
0,1,1,2,6,48,2592,6842880....

Computer Love

Yes, I'm blogging, stop holding the gun to my head. I have also re-enabled comments, please be nice.
I bought a new computer. Yes, dude, I got a dell. The price seemed low enough and my old Dell (750mhz PIII, Win 98se) just wasn't pulling its weight anymore. I figured out what I wanted and found a coupon code by searching for "Dell Coupon Codes" on Google. This resulted in a 35% off coupon code that saved a bit of money (but not 35% since they usually give you 10-20% off anyway). Dell also threw in a 19" flatscreen (analog) monitor.
Here's what I got:
Dell Dimension 5100 Series
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 w/HT Technology (3.0GHz,800FSB)
Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (4x256M)
Keyboard Dell USB Keyboard
Monitors FREE UPGRADE! 19 inch E193FP Analog Flat Panel
Video Cards 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory
Hard Drives 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition
Mouse Dell Optical USB Mouse
Network Interface Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
Modem 56K PCI Data Fax Modem
CD or DVD Drive Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capability
Sound Card Integrated Audio with Dolby Digital 7.1 capability
Total $791.20 (would have been closer to $1000 without the coupon code)

Annoyances:No recovery discs were shipped with the PC. They say you don't need them anymore as the hard drive has a hidden partition with the recovery software. This is fine unless your hard drive dies, in which case you are completely screwed (and it has happened to me in the past). So I asked Dell to send me some recovery discs and they did. I recommend asking the same if you order one.

The machine doesn't have a parallel/printer port. So my old printer didn't hook up. I could have bought an adapter but decided instead to buy a cheap HP 3 in 1 machine. It lacks the elegance of my old HP printer (still connected on the network), but is fast (it fairly vomits the pages in an orgy of violent clattering) and takes up less space. My old scanner connected fine but there was no way to turn it off (manufacturer wanted $$ for a disc that allowed me to run it on XP). I also hated my old scanner.

When getting the new computer up and running I had to restart it no less than 6 times during all the software registration, installation and updates. If you don't have high speed internet (I do)don't buy a new computer because you will never be able to update windows.
All told it took me 2 days to get it running to my satisfaction and with all my old preferences, etc.
The fonts seemed pixelated on the new screen. After some hunting I found I had to turn on "Clear Type"
I still am not 100% happy with my contrast and brightness levels on the new monitor. But it is big!
Other than those issues, I love the new machine. The 19" flat panel has much more real estate than a 19" CRT. The new machine isn't beige either. All my old peripherals were beige. The only beige left is the speakers from the old dell I'm using on this machine. It is incredibly quiet. XP is really cool. (yes, I'm late to the party) I'll probably never use all the media center features though. It is much faster on the graphics intensive programs I use.

I still need to get another gig of ram, Dell charges more than Crucial.com. I also want to install a 2nd hard drive for daily backups. Weekly backups get burned to DVD (4.7 gigs! amazing), and distributed to the network.

On to other matters.
Max has been sleeping better the past week, He is crawling (at 6 months!). Henry has been picking out which shoes he wants to wear for the past half hour.I am monumentally behind in my work. I have a book review to write, have to set up my new Taig CNC mill, make some new index plates and generally spiff up my web pages.

Henry has a knock-knock joke, his first:"Knock-Knock, who's there"
It peters out after that. He also can now boot up his PC, which is now in his room, start his games and play(learn). I never thought I would live in a world where a toddler has his own networked computer, but I do.

Here are some links I have been collecting:

I recently switched over to Thunderbird for my email, here is a good guide.
Here is a rather interesting surplus tool store, read the history.
This is the "Gallery of Transport Loss", wonderful pictures and stories of transport loss.
Kid's Web Japan has some good japanese lessons for kids (older kids)
Korea for Kids isn't quite as spiffy, but is useful.

deposit slips

I received some new checks today. The deposit slips that are supplied with the checks only have space for about 6 checks - the rest taken up by an itemized cash deposit section. You know, sometimes I have to deposit more than 6 checks at once! So I just wrote down the other check in a glaringly large blank space on the deposit slip. Now you say "You could get some more deposit slips from the bank", but they treat you like you're some sort of identity criminal everytime you ask for any forms, and rarely want to give you more than one at a time.
Bah.
People whinge about how medicine has become impersonal, but I am much more concerned about impersonal banking.

Max is still not sleeping. He is teething though, as evidenced by the full drool-bucket we keep around his neck.

Fran and Joe (Felice's parents) are visiting. Henry keeps calling her "Grandma June", because it's hard to understand that he has two grandmas, although when pressed he admits it.

Lazy Blogger

Yes, it's been a while. I lost a bit of steam with the whole comment fracas and then parenting Max kicked into high gear. I think posts will come more frequently now. Felice and I haven't been getting much sleep lately (any sleep) and that seems to effect my creativity/humour. But enough about me.

Nope, not enough. I'm 39 now and no one sent me any of the swell presents I asked for. Shame on you all. I did decide to buy myself a new computer (from Dell) that hasn't arrived yet. It should make my life more streamlined although I'm dreading migrating everything over from this machine. One thing to note, if you are shopping for a Dell (or anything else) look online for coupon/promo codes, I was able to cut about 35% from the price by using a code I found here.

I just switched over from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. OE was losing track of some of the larger email folders I have (the most used ones, for my business) and I decided to try out TB. It is much better in my opinion, although we'll see what happens when I switch to using XP on the new computer. Like Firefox you have to look all over the web for little widgets that make the program work the way you want, I found a preview pane button after a bit of searching.
TB does seem a bit safer than OE and the junk mail settings are useful.

Fran and Joe (Felice's parents) are coming for a week visit tomorrow. I think that means I'll be able to get more stuff done....

Oh and here's a paper crafts blog that has links to many new fun projects I'll never do...

The utility of Google maps

I just received an email from a customer who was awaiting a package in Metairie Lousiana
UPS tracking showed that it was signed for on the friday before Katrina (he had it delivered to a business), but the customer had intelligently decided to bug out to relatives in Austin that day (where he just emailed me from) and didn't know if the package had been delivered or not. By using Google maps "Katrina" button I was able to see that the business is above water, which is probably an insignificant bit of good news to the customer. This is as far as I know the first natural disaster that has recent publicly accessable satellite footage searcheable through the internet by address.

Are you prepared?

I've been too busy to blog lately what with both boys having colds and Max teething (which means not very much sleep, or rather none at all...) Anyway I just thought I'd mention that if you aren't prepared for something like Katrina (or the equivalent earthquake, fire, icestorm, etc) then nows a good time to get together some emergency supplies in the hope you'll never need them. Here's a good post from Winds of Change on what might be a good starting point. I wish everyone in NO had a water purifier on hand, but clearly they didn't. But you should have one, I do. Anyway, time to make dinner in what seems a comparitive luxury (kitchen, electricity, fridge, food, water).

Safe to post?

Ok, I'll just pretend nothing ever happened.

How much sleep did I get last night? Not enough. Why the heck don't babies get born with all their teeth? Having them burst through one at a time really seems to be a design error. We had Nome and Darrell over in the afternoon yesterday. Darrell brought Henry two toy motorcycles. Whenever Henry sees a motorcycle he says "Darrell" because Darrell has given Henry about 6 motorcycles over the past two years.

Later that evening Cassie, Jim, Michelle and Alexi brought dinner, which was lovely. I showed the women my St. Marks yearbook and they noticed that Storm Large went to school with me. They told me she is now up in Portland and has a band. Yet another old friend who leads a more exciting life than I do.

I'm probably going to go out tonight to hang with my shop buddies, which will be a nice break from the constant baby wrangling. I just hope I don't fall asleep driving over there and crash into a ditch.

Do you know enough about pumps?
What about planar machines and topology?

The Easy Off people sent me a $3.00 and a $1.50 coupon for any of their fine family of products to make up for my disappointment with the Stovetop Cleanser. I think I probably do qualify as a crank.

Tired of plain old square holes, how about some odd shaped cutouts?

Let's start again

I had to disable comments for a while. Some people have taken umbrage at the last few posts I wrote and rather than subject my friends to both my histrionic anger and the obscenity laden comments that followed I decided I would just erase the whole thing.
The internet is a wild beast, you never know when something you say will get transported around the world, raising ire. Ah well. I'll have to think first and post after counting to 10.

Yesterday was a great day. I was able to effectively parent both boys in spite of the onset of Max's teething. Lifting weights has helped prepare for the inevitable need to hold both boys in my arms at the same time. Eric came over with Marcel in the morning which was a great help until the ensuing meltdown. I did let Henry nap, which meant that he was up late again. Oh well.
Today is just a lazy day at home.

Not too tired...

To post a short entry...
Last night wasn't that bad - Max had one long screaming wakeup but the rest of the night was just some very short sleep interruptions. Henry didn't go to sleep until late and at one point I almost broke my collarbone when I had to intercept him en route to takling Max. Today was fine too, Henry is a tad jealous and a bit needy, but I can't say as I blame him. Max sleeps, eats and spends time being cute and awake. So far each episode of crying is solved with either food or a diaper change. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten of Henry's baby behaviour, but it is all coming back to me, especially how moist you get when holding a 4 month old. I'll probably go to sleep a bit early (like in 15 minutes) than I normally do. Work was light today which certainly helped. Last evening Ann and Eric brought food and today Ann and Siri (a different Ann, pretty common name in that generation) brought some dinner for us. We have been eating a diet high in carbohydrates. I put a small amount of pictures of max up. Although I know it can all go sideways any minute (like one of the kids gets a cold, or I do), so far it seems easier than when we were parental novices. I bet I get a colossal cosmic smackdown for my hubris.

Here is the best blog ever (via Althouse/Instapundit)

This gives you a sense of perspective when you think work is hard.

How to make a rope knurling tool, and a rope knurl. This blog is, if anything, all about knurling.

That New Baby Smell

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, here is Maxwell Aaron Yang Carter in all his glory:

Spam Filtering, redux

Peak has finally figured out how to completely eliminate spam. Their new Barracuda spam filter is filtering all email on their system. I'm all for clever names for products, and "Barracuda" sounds really efficient in killing spam. Let's face it though, no one has domesticated a real barracuda completely: "Hand-feeding of barracuda at this wreck has domesticated and emboldened the fish significantly. Never dive with flashy jewelry. Keep your hands clenched and close to your body, as the barracuda are known to snap at fingers (thinking they're being fed again)."

I called tech support and asked the guy if I would ever have email again, to which he replied "no, probably not" in the weary voice of a boy who has had his finger in a dike for several years, the city fathers having decided it's cheaper to employ a small boy's finger than repair a leak.

All of this reminds me that I wanted to provide a useful link for all who deal with situations that loosen the bowels, the Toilet Paper Encyclopedia.

Two days until we have our new son amongst us, many preparations going on, I have to reassemble the crib without the benefit of instructions. The camcorder batteries are charged. Henry is largely clueless in spite of our constant prattling about his new baby brother. Felice and I hope to avoid having aneurisms from the stress, at least until we get back from the airport.
The lack of email is certainly compounding the stress as I do need email to make money, and money to raise a family. I'm lucky in that I'm an optomist and confident that ill will all work out.

I was going to talk about "The Machinist" and "Steamboy" which we watched today, but I won't except to say that both are good movies with some flaws. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow about them as they marinate in my brain.

And here is a paper cut steam engine (via Make blog)

Baby coming! Stovetop cleaning and paper folding.

We received the call that our new child will be flying into Eugene on tuesday afternoon. I'm trying not to become panicked, although I have completely forgotten how to care for a baby. I'm sure it will all come back to me.

In an attempt to defer lunacy I spent come time cleaning our stovetop. I tried using "EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner", which is described thusly:

"EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner is specially formulated to clean tough cooked-on food spills and splatters, yet is gentle to your stovetop surface. It's ideal for use on glass-ceramic, enamel, and stainless steel surfaces. Plus, when used regularly, EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner helps prevent stains from setting, making future cleaning easier."

In reality is is a smelly blue goop that had absolutely no effect on the burnt on stains on our cooktop. The directions state:

"Shake well before using. For food spill and splatters apply EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner directly to the stovetop surface. With a clean damp cloth or paper towel, wipe the stovetop surface until clean"

I wiped it off, got a razor blade and scraped the burnt-on grime off, it took about a half hour. So razor blade good, easy-off bad.

Other than that I'm pretty much boring today.
Here is a cool article on unfolding paper polyhedra
And here is some paper folding software.
There are tons of Japanese sies that have downloadable paper projects, like this site from Yamaha. Good projects when the kids get older, and cheap!

Finally, for those unwillimg to get me either the BB machine gun or the Emmert vise for my birthday, is another perfect present: the Curta calculator.

Earthworm Tractors

On Friday I caught the movie "Earthworm Tractors" on
TCM. You can search the TCM site (do a "library search") for it and see some (or all?) of it online. It's a comedy:
Earthworm Tractors (1936)
CAST: Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Guy Kibbee.
Director: Ray Enright.
At the urging of his ambitious girlfriend, a salesman starts hawking tractors.BW-69m

It's based on the Alexander Botts stories by William Hazlett Upson that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post back in the 20's-50's

Anyway it primed the pump for us to head out to the Brooks Steam up. Here's Henry and Me, sweating in the heat (Eric and Marcel to the right) That big flywheel is whizzing around behind us:


It was a fun day and Henry had a meltdown when we left all the trains, tractors and engines. We didn't take a lot of pics as it took all of our energy to manhandle Henry in the (high 90's) heat.

At the flea market I found a Whitworth thread gage, which I'll never use but love to have just in case. Joseph Whitworth is one of those men who had an incredible impact on human history yet remain largely unknown (outside of their field) due people's ignorance of engineering history.

There was a cool woodworking multimachine there, lathe, tablesaw, bandsaw and? all powered by a big old engine:



Later on when we got home Henry discovered some boxes:


So it was another fun weekend for all.

I've been communicating with a long lost relative, related through my Great-great-grandfather Aaron Carter (click link for larger)


So I had my dad send me a picture of him. I threaten Felice that I'm going to grow sideburns like that someday...

Now it's Monday and I have to work....

Overweight

I saw this site in my page referral statistics: "Nick Carter Overweight Information and Resources" and I cried and cried.

Hot today and Henry is happy just playing in the house so I think we'll chill out here unless he gets really bored.

The Art of Motion Control is having a lot of fun using stepper motors for art.

I was doing some book keeping yesterday and noticed that one customer's bill was $48.02 and the other's was $42.08

The Canada-America society must have my name via UofT, I received an invitation to a Black-Tie "Canada Gala" in Seattle. I don't think I'll be going.

email problems

"Dear PEAK customer,PEAK Internet engineers will conduct ongoing maintenance on network servers during the hours of 12:01 am and 5:00 am each Wednesday morning. This window is designed for engineers to conduct periodic system checks, improve efficiencies, introduce new hardware and generally expand and secure all services.During these windows short interruptions may occur, but we use this low traffic time to minimize downtime. Interruptions will be limited to a few minutes."

Which is why I have no new email messages after 1:00AM wednesday and my email is still down as of 9:36AM. You would think that Saturday night would be better as they could then spend all of Sunday (a non-business day) catching the cascading errors that are bound to occur.

Hey, it's not like people run businesses on the internet, right?

A least I can access the Web, last wednesday morning I kept getting kicked off every couple of minutes.

I guess the upside is it does cut down on spam, what with not receiving any messages.

The Brooks "Steam Up" is happening over the next two weekends, we'll be going on Sunday.

What with all the fun people have been having with Google Maps, I found this neat USGS site with the national map (slow, but exhaustive). Why I can't download free USGS maps is beyond me - I did pay for them with my taxes after all.

Nothing Much

Henry is cute these days. The other night he was dancing and singing to Haydn's 68th symphony in B flat. He later stood at the piano and pounded on the keys while singing "Happy, Sad, Happy, Sad..." His funniest moment was when he woke up in the middle of the night and screamed "Stella!" for no real reason...

I took Henry into the shop last night and had him turn a part down on the lathe, and drill a hole with the drill press. He doesn't have quite enough strength to turn the lathe handwheel so I had to help. It was a bit of juggling as I also had to hold his safety glasses on his head and keep his free hand from zipping into the spinning chuck.

I guess it's stupid to observe that children are cute. But they are! When they're not trying to kill you.

Make magazine #3 was delivered to me today, with my article, somewhat cut down as I sense they didn't want to waste the space on my (insane) magnum opus, although they have (as I said in my previous post) put the rest of it up online. It's nice to see my name in print. I hope that the link to my website will drive some traffic.

I had a customer come by this afternoon to pay me for a CNC mill and see the one I have running. The part I was making came out ok, and while usually I get a spectacular crash whenever I demonstrate the mill, nothing went wrong.

Here's a good article on polishing aluminum

A Shop Too Far

Well I received a quote from my contractor for the shop building I'd love to have. The quote was unfortunately a little high when weighed against the amount of money I actually have. So it'll probably be a year or more until I get the funds together. What's really terrible is how rational the quote was, each item alone seems like a good deal, but none can be excluded. Oh well. I could afford the shop if I did without electricity, doors and a roof. And that would be good, because electricity without a roof is kind of dangerous.
Sales have been up this year, so we'll see where I am in the winter...There really is no rush, at least until Henry and sibling are old enough to demand more space.

On a positive note, Make magazine has published my article on square holes as bonus website content, so you can read it here.

What with it being so hot lately, here is some trance music made by a distant cousin of mine.
This morning wasn't hot, it was distinctly cool! We had thunderstorms all night that scared the dog and watered the lawn (as well as cutting down on the road dust). Now it's back to the 80's which makes me happy, as that seems the coolest weather in the country.

We went to yard sales this morning, I bought a tenoning tool, a threadbox, a 1/2" drill chuck, some punches, a dial test indicator with magnetic base and a small Lego Technics model/set/kit. I better list the stuff on Ebay to have any chance of ever having a shop.

Hot

Yes, it's hot. Not as hot as Death Valley but still quite hot. Yesterday I had to take Henry to the park while Felice had a doctors appt. She had arranged for me to meet another mom there. I waved at this mom and acted like she should know me, but it was the wrong mom. I think I scare people sometimes. The right mom showed up and all was well. She actually publishes a magazine about moms. In spite of this we got along quite well and the children played.
The rest of the day I spent sweating, motionless.

Today isn't as hot as yesterday, so I'm actually able to work without fear of sweat-related electrocution. My to-do list is uninspiring, I did all my book-keeping, backed up some files, faxed some orders and only had a couple of customer e-mails. I need to bake more muffins but I think I'll wait until the evening. I like to have a muffin for breakfast as it's quick and easy. It is not quick and easy to bake 24 muffins at a time. I figure it all averages out.

I read a great book over the weekend, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 by Leo Marks. It is about the code-makers of the SOE during WW2, the problems they have with "indecipherables", that is messages that they receive from agents which are garbled and unreadable in some way. Written in a lively, personal and somewhat profane tone.

Oh, by the way, did I mention what a nerd I am? I was delighted to watch the premiers of the latest season of Battlestar Galactica, SG and SG Atlantis. As others have said, the two SG shows are like candy, but BSG is like steak. I'm a vegetarian but I still concur. BSG is the best show on TV today. If you're a nerd.
Which I am.

Anyway, here is a great page all about Emmert vises. If you are shopping for a birthday present for me, look no further. Then again since no one bothered to buy me a BB machine gun last birthday I'm not holding out any hopes.

Terrible Ending

I like to read Sci-Fi novels when I have a minute or two, so I picked up my copy of Fred Saberhagen's "Century of Progess" (50 cents at the thrift store) and gave it a read. The book was great, right up until the climax when the novel abruptly ended. The novel ended so abruptly I scanned back through the last chapter to see if I'd passed over something or if a page was missing. But no, it just had a terrible ending.

My other reading, in cloaca, is "'Chips' and Slivers, 30 years of Logging Recollections" by Jim DeSautel. It's more a collection of tales, tall and otherwise, with salty language and ethnic insensitivity. It is a good little slice of a lifestyle that is vanishing in the Northwest.

I was able to pry myself away from the computer for a couple of hours today and went into Corvallis with Felice & Henry. I walked from the gym (where Felice and Henry stayed for an hour) to the OSUsed sale where I purchased a trackball mouse for a buck. I should have bought the other one there as they are worth money (I looked it up on Ebay when I returned home). They had some very cool classroom charts from the 30's of human anatomy but I couldn't figure out where the heck I could hang them up in the house so I didn't buy them.

Speaking of 3D computer graphics, look at this gallery of 3D models. They aren't real objects, just computer graphics...

Speaking of WW2, here's a great history site.

Ok, I wasn't speaking of either, but that should be obvious as you are reading this blog.

We have some birds nesting in our woodstove (probably chimney swifts) and the little babies are incredibly noisy (presumably) every time they get a feeding. It's like they built the nest on top of my head it's so loud. I guess I should rig up a webcam-on-a-stick and see if I can get some shots of them...

Too Busy

Geez I've been busy. I spent yesterday in the shop making a ring arbor and writing it up for my site, the day before was a fun day of grocery shopping. Monday and Tuesday? I have no clue what I did, but I must have done something.

We watched the movie "Hitch". Wow that was a boring movie. Felice loved all the romantic (crap) elements. Tonight we're having the neighbors over for dinner. I have a bunch of ingredients but no clue what I'll make. I better just make a whole bunch of unrelated side dishes.
Or frozen burritos.

Today we went to an annual yard sale. I bought a new spot welder for $65.00 which is a steal, and then traded it to Kent for a smaller one he had that will be of more use to me. I've always wanted a spot welder. Yesterday I scored a horizontal milling spindle for my benchmaster milling machine. (link is to James Riser's site, very cool, you should surf through it).

Anyway, here is a big timewaster of a stupid web game

And Here's a site on scanning Michelangelo's David

Purging

I have completely gone through, reorganized and reshelved all the books in the house. I purged about 2-3%, which still filled up about two large totes. I have also inhaled several liters of dust and expect to shortly go into some sort of total histamine shock. But it won't be as bad as the shock of actually discarding books.
I have a rather large reference library, most of which is redundant given the ubiquity of the internet in my life. But when a huge EMP pulse (caused by a martian invasion) destroys all the computers in the world I'll still be able to look up the atomic weight of molybdenum.

Why would I look that up? It's the intelligence test the invading martians will be using to determine who to eat(fail) or enslave (pass).

There are still a number of books I don't want, but are valuable enough that I won't flog them off on the local book pirates (dealers). I'll store them for a time such as I need money enough to list them on Amazon. Or I'll give them to the martian overlords to use as toilet paper, because believe me, they use a lot of TP after eating humans all day.

Henry has delighted me by becoming interested in Tintin. I took Adventures of Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh out of the library and he is obsessed with it. It's not the greatest cartoon, but relatively faithful to the globe trotting adventure of the book.

Speaking of Anime, which I wasn't, strictly speaking, I am obsessed myself, with "Paranoia Agent" Which I can't really describe. If you like to have NPR tell you what to think, here's their take on it.

If you are as dull as I am, you'll enjoy these manufacturing videos.

I'm sorry if I offended any Martians. You guys are ok, it's the folks from Uranus who I can't stand...Which is why you need the TP. Ha! Please don't vaporize me.

Waiting

Well I'm waiting for a customer to show up here, the third visitor to the shop this week. It's fun to show people things and help them out, but I am (as usual, mom) a bit tired today.
Henry is dreaming a lot now, and often shouting things in his sleep. Two nights ago he started shouting "Jump! Jump! Jump!" in the middle of the night, and jump we did. If we put a time lapse camera on him in the night you would see him orbiting all around the bed, and orbiting around his own center. The boy is active, and I think he burns more calories as he sleeps than when awake.
The neighbors are having a yard sale and I was compelled by the imp of perversity to buy a $20.00 dulcimer. I used to play the dulcimer a bit in my hippy(loser) days, and I figured it's a good instrument for a kid, as it plays in tune, just like my other fave kid instrument, the harmonica. A kid will make noise when given any instrument, but it's best if the noise is not dissonant. I hope I can maintain a no pennywhistly/recorder/violin rule as Henry and the sibling grow up.
Speaking of the sibling and of waiting, we found out that our paperwork is delayed by a spelling error, not of our making. The agency tells us not to worry, that it will all get ironed out, but we'd like to start being a two carseat family before Felice and I get put in an old age home.

turning gold

Our friend Miche came over today, she is a jeweler who transitioned from selling at the Saturday Market to selling entirely online. I sold her a Taig lathe several years ago and she came over to see if I could help her with some jewelry operations on the lathe. We worked at milgraining and truing some gold ring castings up. It was interesting work and I think I learned more than she did.
You will note that I didn't provide a link to "milgrain", which is because there isn't a lot of info out there on the web. Basically it is embossing a decorative pattern of dots with a rolling forming tool against the ring's periphery. It is somewhat like "knurling".

Did you catch the latest episode of "History Detectives" last night? The segment on the "poison pin" showed a guy running a Taig lathe. One of those moments that only excites me.

I meant to tell my mom about this page, and it is a great resource for those of us with old-condiment-phobia

Our e-friend Lorrie started a new blog, it's funny and much better than this one, in fact you should erase my blog from your favorites and add hers.

Tales of the City

We went to Portland on tuesday, first stop was the Oregon Metro Zoo. The directions were pretty good until I got to the part where they didn't tell me I had to cross 4 lanes of traffic to get the exit. The Zoo itself was somewhat uneven. Henry had a great time of course but often you wouldn't see any animal in a particular display, or if you did it was a partial view of their hindquarters:


Those are Rhinoceri.

We had several odd experiences, one was walking into the bat "cave" and finding it full of saffron robed buddhist monks. The other was walking from the already opressive heat of Portland into the 110 degree 1000% humidity of the "african swamp", which Henry loved and wanted to stay in until my head exploded. Many of the displays needed windex. Felice and I both loved the various otters, two of whom we saw sleeping/floating against the tank window. Damn they are cute! Here is a meerkat:


Henry got to pet some goats:


After we left the zoo (open until 6:00 but they don't chase you out until 7:00) we went into the city to eat and meet up with our friend Bev, who was putting us up for the night. Bev is in the Peasants , an urban country/bluegrass/rock/soul band. The lodgings were great, although being a reborn country boy the noise of the city seemed opressive. Here's a pic of Bev and Felice wrestling with Henry:



Bev will kill me, but I should mention that she is single, good looking, and ready for marriage. She is one of the finest people we know. Or at least that will put up with us.

We woke up the next morning, drove into the downtown area, parked, went to the federal building, returned to the car, placed Felice's swiss army knife in the car, reparked in a better spot, returned to the federal building, waited with a horde of other adoptive parents and then finalized Henry's citizenship paperwork. It was a huge waste of time and a bureaucratic moment.

We then walked over to Powell's Technical Annex and I bought Henry this cool toy (the Sparklz).

We then drove home and collapsed for the rest of the day.

Tantrum

Henry had two tantrums today, which officially marks the onset of the full "terrible twos" (which I've herad can go on for 18 years). He refused to wear a diaper and wanted his wet swim trunks. Consistent and good parents that we are we didn't give in and endured his screaming for almost 1/2 an hour. He finally calmed down and we got diapers on him. Now of course he needs to take his antibiotics, which he also refuses to do. We managed to sneak a dose in his juice earlier, but now he says the juice is "yucky juice". I hope I don't have to inject the medicine down his throat again. He's worse than the cat, but at least he doesn't have claws. If children had claws and fangs we'd all be screwed. What if it's not the opposable thumb that marks humankind, but the lack of claws and fangs?

I finally found the perfect fathers day gift. ...If your dad was a whaler.

I spent a while on Sunday going through these inventive pages. I need to ask him how his parents nurtured his zany creativity. I came across them via BoingBoing, which I now check daily.

Futuristic

This is a pretty futuristic announcement!
Better get Henry to start building robots while he's young, it'll probably be a case of you building them or them building you...

Busy/Lazy/Sick

I haven't done much in the shop lately and was enjoying the visit with my parents the last few weeks. Today we took Henry to the doctor and found he has a swollen parotid gland, which explains why he's been so cranky lately. He has been waking up almost once an hour the past few nights and had a low grade fever. We are praying the anti-biotics work quickly. Of course neither of us thought to check his glands - I remember as a child my parents and the doctor were always checking my glands, but somehow it never occurred to either of us. So if your kid is sick, check his glands.

Other than that here is a cool page on shooting through drywall and other substances with various pistols and rifles. For some reason it entertained me.

Yet Another Gear

Now that I have figured out how to use the Math Plugin for Rhino I am able to draw the involute of a base circle. Here is a rendering of a gear I drew:

As you can see I'm still not very good at making a rendering look pretty, but I think a 3D gear floating in space is really cool.
Now if I could only figure out how to make cool mathematical models out of paper plates...

Brio Electric Locomotive Cleaning

We have a problem with an excess of cat and dog hair in our house (next pet will be hairless, dog or cat). A further problem is that the hair ends up tangled in Henry's Brio electric locomotive, causing balky or no movement. So here is how I clean a Brio electric locomotive.

Remove the battery cover and battery

Grind the tip of an Allen wrench so it has a triangular tip that matches the screw heads on the underside of the train. It doesn't take much and a slight taper will help it lock into the screw so it doesn't strip the screw. They do not have a lot of torque and are easy to remove.

Invert the locomotive on a block and remove the screws. Notice the "Do Not Remove" warning sticker. Ignore it, it's a $15.00 toy and it will clog up all the time. Swedish engineering does not take poor housekeeping into consideration when designing a child's toy. I guess all the engineers have housekeepers. Elitist jerks! Making poor women slave away in drudgery so that their toys will run without a hitch.

See the geartrain, upside down. Notice all the hairs wrapped up in the gear train.

The bottom half of the train. You need to move the gear clusters over to it, starting with the drive wheel axle and continuing in order from back to front. Clean each gear cluster of hair and dirt as you go. If the gears fall off of a particular cluster, thank your lucky stars that you already have a digital picture. This is a good time to mention taking pictures as you go. The gear clusters will obviously need to be revolved 180 degrees so that they are a mirror image of the placement on the top half. (In other words, don't just move them over, flip them over)

Here the gears have been cleaned and replaced in the bottom half.

Here is another view of the completed assembly of the bottom half.

The ball of hair I removed and the tip of the Allen wrench.

Henry helps put the battery compartment back on.

All Done!

DIY

Ok, so everyone is talking about the DIY revolution. As I have posted before, people who write for a living are a little behind the curve, as this revolution has been going on as long as there has been the opposable thumb, or at least as long as americans have been americans...

In this context I thought about the people in my neighborhood, I have one next door neighbor who collects Econoline pickups, another that has a nitromethane dragster, a friend about a mile away who has built his own sawmill and cementboard shear (as well as hundreds of other items). I get together on thursday nights with a bunch of guys who have made all sort of interesting items derived from their lifestyles, including my friend Kent who makes sewing accessories, cookie cutters and machine tool accessories. Another Thursday nighter, George, who "has forgotten more than I'll ever know" (that old chestnut) has just finished an electric tricycle as well as replaced most of the plastic parts in his Geo Metro with hand finished aluminum parts. All around the state there are hundreds if not thousands of people who are making things unaware that they are part of any DIY movement or revolution.
Among my customers, who span the globe, most are engaged in the modification or production of items for their own use, whether it be work, hobby, life or all three.

I'm glad the mainstream has picked up on this, and those of us who were always there say "welcome to the party!" even if you are a bit behind the curve...