Paid To Wait

I find myself in a very strange place tonight... waiting. Waiting for about 4 hours, and while I sit here waiting, the government is paying me. That's right, your local property taxes are hard at work tonight. I'm here, sitting on my duff, getting paid. In fact in about 30 minutes I'll be on overtime!

For all you out there thinking about an exciting job in the Information Technology field take note of me. I have been at this for almost 15 years, I'm near the top of my game. The lead network engineer at my place of employment. And here I sit, in an abandoned building waiting. Tonight I plan on being here waiting for 3 hours or more. It won't be till sometime after that when I actually am called upon to use my skills.

How did this happen? Simple. I caused it. At precisely 2:06 this afternoon a co-worker and I were talking about, "Maybe getting out early." After that huge breech in fate-tempting protocol, I took it even further. I said, "What would we do with all that free time anyway?" So there it is. It's clearly my fault. When the fates are tempted they rarely skip those opportunities to show you, "Exactly what to do with all that free time." So here I am, a victim of my own carelessness.

It seems the fates convinced a server to take vacation a little early.

"Call it a 'Holiday Bonus' for a hardworking domain controller."

"Honest?"

"Really. Seize up, blow up, whatever you want."

Whatever golden tale was spun, the server bought it, then kicked the bucket and called it quits. It bought the farm, threw in the towel or whatever you like. It did it...and did it real good! We tried to coax it out of that mood, but to no avail. So we brought in the big guns and called hardware support. A support tech is en route, from San Jose as we speak. I don't think I will tell him this is all my fault. People who drive 3 hours in the rain the night before a holiday tend to have a limited sense of humor. Go figure.

In this technicians magic bag of tricks, is a setup Dorothy's friend the Scarecrow would be salivating for. A new brain with all the bells and whistles. I'm also hoping for a very heaving hammer.

Once the tech gets here the real fun begins, but until then, I wait. So here I sit. Getting paid good money to watch the door, and try and keep busy. So far, this is all I've come up with.

Sacraficing to Oops

There seems to be no shortages of people places or objects to bestow your esteem, regard, respect, approval or reverence. So how is it that I ended up here? Recently I find myself making sacrifices to a god that I didn't even know existed until a few moths back. This god is now the ruling force in my workshop, second to none with the power to change the outcome of even the smallest of event. That's right, the god of Oops.

Somehow I have unknowingly allowed myself to be ensnared in the firm grip of this relativity low profile god. What many folks would dismiss as coincidence, I see as evidence to the etheranl hand of Oops. Oops is a very demanding god

Oops demands regular sacrifices of nearly all of my projects. Sometimes, he only wants a small thing, like a striped screw head, or stray paint drip on an otherwise clean job. Other times my reverence is tested with something of a slightly larger scale. As I noted in an earlier post, Oops was apparently drowning in wistful melancholy, just as I had almost completed a project. As such his demands were much more stringent. I had the largest Oops offering to date, as I dismantled every last joint of a project to lift his spirits and cement my everlasting commitment to this terribly vengeful god.

So goes my current religious experience. I decided after that last project, that I would limiting my devotion and be giving less to this rather impish deity. I had a job that was to be a set of lattice framed doors to cover the top of my mothers koi pond. The hope was to offer some relief to an issue she has been experiencing with some rather pesky fishermen. The raccoons had discovered a nice source of fresh fish and I was charged with fixing it so they couldn't readily get at their after midnight snack.

As I put the last finishing touches on the doors I realized I hadn't made any amends to Oops. In fact I was quite proud of the fact, and mentioned it in passing to my wife as she looked over my handy work. I walked back into the shop about an hour later to sweep up sawdust and move the items, when I noticed a chip of wood missing from a joint.

Apparently Oops got wind of my statement and wasn't interested in loosing another follower. I searched all over the shop for the sliver of wood that was missing. It had apparently vanished, as if snatched up by Oops in a display of power. A sort of forced sacrifice to affirm who in fact was in charge of my so called free will.

I spent an hour or so repairing the corner. It seems I'm still an unwilling servant. Hopefully in the future I can find a way to rid myself of this god. Until then, I will continue in my sacrifices and increase my supply of wood glue and sandpaper.

The Cult

I sit down, and shed all reason and logic, as I open my pamphlet entitled:

"So you've decided to do away with all that filthy productivity and join the cult."

It's not a good sign but I decide to keep reading. I flip open the hand folded tract and see what more information it has to impart to my longing soul.

"You don't have to live the repressed life of your narrow minded generation. Open your mind and breath easy. You have begun your first step towards a life without the domineering overlord of 3 phase wiring or mindless repacking of your wearing motor bearings. Can you imagine a world without concerns of blade drift or constant mechanical tuning? If yes, then I bid you welcome to the cult. Please remove your jeans and t-shirt and pick up a linen smock and a tasteful pair of dark breeches."

It turns out, that my new hobby has some rather bizarre fringe members. Like any other family, the woodworking clan has a number of relatives that most people just never talk about. The hand tool nuts. Electricity? Oh yes they've seen it. It doesn't matter. They shun it. Many of them started innocently enough. Purchasing a hand plane here, a set of chisels there and soon a rip saw, crosscut saw and before you know it, WHAM. They're a full blown cult member with knickers and a period ponytail, sneering at those of us with table saws and electric sanders.

"You know... you could do that be hand?"

"Make molding? By hand?"

"Yea. You would only need a spokeshave, and simple scratch stock, and couple of hand planes. Should only take 20 minutes per 3' foot board."

"My router can do that in like...oh I don't know...4 seconds."

"But it won't be handcrafted."

"By handcrafted, do you mean tedious and aggravating?"

For every hand tool there is now a new modern equivalent that came into use with that ridiculous dark period of our history known as, The Industrial Revolution. I'm not saying I don't appreciate learning the techniques and skills of craftsman gone by, but contrariwise I have zero plans of freezing time at 1865 when my back saw could be interchanged for cutting drawer joints or amputating infected limbs. I like this era and I welcome the inviting hum of whirring motors and spinning drive belts. For me, the machines are half the fun.

To me, when looking at a set of hand cut dovetails side by side with machined cut dovetails they look identical. One took 30 minutes, and one took 3 minutes. Unless of course we are talking about my hand cut dovetails, which look more like ragged New York City pigeon tails after being run over by a an angry cab driver. So take your pick.

I suppose this could all just come down to jealously, or possibly the countless hours I've spent at my workbench trying to do anything that looks slightly passable as craftsmanship with my hand tools. Nah, that can't be it.

So I took my leaflet, crumpled it up and threw it away. Anyone want a loose fitting set of dark breeches?

What A Bargain

There is something appealing about free. Free. Something for nothing.

"You want it? It's yours."

"What's the cost?"

"No cost. Nothing. It's free. Just take it."

I should have known better. There is nothing quite as expensive as free.

Two weekends ago I got a deal. A real honest to goodness bargain. As I was browsing through Craigslist looking for inexpensive power tools to feed my new addiction, I found this post:

"Free Vintage Sears Lathe"

Needless to say I mashed out a frantic email to aforementioned giver of free tools letting them know how much I wanted it. "I will come and pick it up TODAY. no questions asked." Within three minutes of the ad appearing online, I had a phone call from the owner letting me know where to pick it up.

For those not in "the know" a lathe has one purpose. To take a block of material, wood in this case, and spin it at near dangerous speeds. My lathe spins at four speeds ranging from approx 600 to 1800 RPMs. This is changed depending on how badly you would like to maim yourself with a flying chunk of hardwood. Once you have the death machine up to full speed you attack this innocent timber with sharp objects in a effort to mold the log to your liking.

So I haul this thing home, set it up and spend about 2 hours cleaning off rust, scraping off buildup and sharpening its spurs. At this point I'm ready to 'turn' wood. Right? Wrong.

First off I had a broken drive belt, but that was a measly $20 to replace. No big deal, twenty buck to get my free tool working! Now I can turn wood.

Not so fast there junior.

Second I needed to buy some chisels, gouges, skews, and other lathe cutting tools. Otherwise I'm just trying to cut the wood with my wit, which much to my chagrin, is not that sharp. So now that I've bought $50 worth of lathe chisels, I'm ready to cut. Right? Nope. I need a face shield. This apparatus, that is both the height of fashion and safety will protect me from flying debris. There goes another $20. Now I'm ready to cut? Not likely!

Turns out to really begin turning, I need a lot. I need a sharpening wheel to grind my new chisels, because although you paid $50 bucks for them they do not come sharpened. There goes another $100 big ones. Now? Not yet. It seems your older lathe centers, the part that holds the wood in place, are too worn down and need replacing. $15.

"Okay, now what exactly do you want to turn?"

"Pens?"

"Well then, you will need a 7mm mandrel, a set of bushings, a 7mm drill bit and barrel trimmer. $60. Oh by the way...."

"sigh..."

"Do you have a drill press?"

"How much?"

"At least $100. For the cheap one."

"What If I wanted to turn bowls?"

"Yes. You could do that."

"Great!"

"You need a bowl gouge, new chuck and a set if calipers and maybe a spindle adapter..."

Anyway. I got this great deal on a new lathe. It was free. You know, free? What a bargain!

Lazy Thursday Blues: The Movie Return

It has been a long time since I've done one of these... And in the interest of getting them started up again, this one will be in play for a number of days .Since it's been such a long time, this game should feel a bit new again!

I'll start the game with a quote from a movie. Whoever knows it can respond, with the movie it's from, additionally they will add a new movie quote to keep the game rolling. This continues till we all get stumped or bored.

Only two little rules
1.) No R or greater movies
2.) No cussing

"Daddy, I do not want a boat like this!"

Gone Phishing

My name is Dr William Monroe, a staff of a well-known bank, here in London, England. One of our accounts, with holding balance of £15,000,000 has been dormant and last operated three years ago. From my investigations and confirmation, the owner of the said account, a foreigner by name John Shumejda died on the 4th of January 2002 in a plane crash in Birmingham...

In Internet speak phishing is the luring of unsuspecting users in your scams. Whether that scam is buying a product that doesn't work or convincing them that you're a rich refugee from Nigeria. Whatever the ends are, the beginning parts of the scam is commonly done through phishing. Nigerian e-mail phishing aside, one of the best ways for companies to sell their garbage products on the Internet is raise their Google ranking.

The more people that link to a website, the more popular the website is, the higher ranked it will be by Google. Thus, the more likely it will be seen on the first page of searches for whatever product they sell. In the world of Internet marketing, search engine hits are the reigning lord. As such many companies are paying for links from blogs and websites. Websites with decent Google rankings. I was the proud owner of two sites that, until very recently, met those requirements.

And so for the past 16 months I've been a dirty nasty phishing blogger. The soiled companies paid me well to do it. I did it with a smile on my face and growing black spot on my filthy soul. In fact for the 232 posts that I typed up, while prostituting links from my websites, I was paid over $1800. It's not that its wrong, so much as it's despised. See, I'm still trying to to justify my habits! Okay... In general, it really is a low practice. I don't know anything about company xyz, and yet here I am, peddling their product and linking to a black hole website. All for a few bucks.

A few bucks that I took a vacation with, bought a new router, dovetail jig and table saw with, paid some bills with and still had some left over for investing with. Hum....I seem to be teeter-tottering here. Okay, I'm not going to pretend I didn't like having the extra cash. It's been really fun to know that I could spend money without guilt. I wanted it, I save for a couple weeks and bought it. It's hard not to like that! In the end though, it was tainted.

So called Internet morality aside... I've stopped. I've stopped for two reasons. One, well in all honesty, the market for my services dropped through the floor, at the same time both of my websites lost their high Google score. I was a little disappointed at first, but now I feel like it's a good thing. Because we then get to point number two. I really wasn't very proud of it. That of course was squashed out by my desire for 'free funds'. What can I say, I like spending money. It's always been a hobby of mine.

So I might not be able to buy that lunchbox planer next month, but at least I can rest in the knowledge that I am no longer sending poor unsuspecting grandmothers to their doom while searching for 'cheap mortgages' or 'quality online furniture". Anyone know what the next big Internet fad will be?

One good thing to come of this, is now I have two pretty cool websites recently cleaned of all my old paid postings. FusionRing my gadget site, and Legal Addictive Stimulants my caffeine blog.

Starting Over

There are few things as defeating as starting over. When you believe that you have completed a project, paper, blog or task to realized that something is not satisfactory. You sit there putting the finishing touches on it when it hits you like a ton of bricks. You begin to rationalize. It's not that bad, I can fix it. No matter how hard you try, you know the truth of it cannot be escaped. Life is about to teach you a valuable lesson that you will shell out for in heaps of wasted time. Buckle up.

So you just finished the most amazing wrapping job on Earth. Perfectly folded corners and the most delightful bow you've ever tied. I mean, honestly, when does curling ribbon ever curl that well? Only when curling ribbon knows what you don't. It knows that you've been a total stooge and left the "HALF-OFF CLEARANCE" sticker smack dab in the center of Aunt Betsy's gift.

I recently found myself at the end of a woodworking project. It wasn't anything horribly involved, but in my mind it was nearly complete. It took me about 10 hours or so to get to this point, and this point wasn't pretty. No sir. My design, with two floating shelves, looked great on paper, but as paper doesn't have to worry about real world physics, it can't be blamed for failing to support itself in real life. Turns out I should have known better. Well, I do now...

As I stood there staring at it, I knew I what I was going to have to do. I didn't want to. I was getting down on all fours looking at it from weird angles. "Well that looks fairly good." I wanted to bust out the duct tape and bailing wire. Have you ever been there? Pretending you can fix a broken levy with a bucket of paint? You begin reasoning with yourself.

"Well, when you kinda close one eye, and tilt your head to the left...it's really not that bad."

"Are we talking about the same cabinet? I'm looking at the one that's shaped like a 'V'. Where's the one your blathering on about?"

"Is it really that far off?"

"You could check it for square, if you'd like a good laugh...."

"-sigh-. I'm going to have to start over from scratch."

"No doubt! You might want to even burn your old plans, just to be on the safe side. Better brew another pot of coffee."

I knew I was going to have to start over and re-design it from the bottom up. So I just bit the bullet and dismantled the entire thing. In the end, I'm glad I did, it turned out much better, and much more stable. I'm nearly done again. And this time, it looks like it's suppose to. Sometimes starting over, is just a simple fact of life. That being said, if I find some major flaw that I've overlooked... you can bet I'll be reaching for my can of paint!

We're Back

The Internet has returned to the Brown house after a staggering six year drought. After literally years of us telling anyone who would listen, "We don't miss it", "It's no big deal", "We're happy without it", somehow, it's back. In 2002 I was laid off from a wireless ISP. At that time I had enjoyed working for ISP's for about 4 years or so. One major perk of working for the Internet provider was free access. I would guess it's like working at the M&M factory and getting to take home rejects!

As of 2002, I hadn't payed for Internet access since I bought my dial-up connection in 1996. In fact in I had a free 3Mb wireless link on my roof. At that time, this was unreal bandwidth. We had an office with 3 PC and both Patricia and I had laptops and a wireless LAN. What this meant was that ANYWHERE in our 2 story house Internet was accessible. Kitchen, living room, restroom, whatever. We were dripping in world wide webs.

When I was laid off, I was told I could keep the connection till the company asked for it back. Like a cheap severance package. I was so mad I darted up to the roof and ripped it off it's fancy chimney mount, and hauled it back to my old office, and we had been without broadband ever since.

We were genuinely happy without access for a long time. I would say it wasn't till I started blogging that I started saying, "Well this is a bit inconvenient." Either typing posts up at home and hauling them to work on a flash drive, or writing posts on company time.

As our friends blogging, Facebook and other social networking habits exploded out of control, my wife felt a bit out of the loop. She was starting to feel like some kind of a freak for her lack of access.

"Do you have a blog?"

"No"

"Do you Twitter?"

"No"

"MySpace?"

"No"

"Facebook?"

"No"

"Wow. Really? Well... what's your email address?"

"I don't have one."

"Excuse me?! Are you a real person!?"

Between Patricia and I, she is definitely more excited to be back online than I am. Though I must say, I'm very glad to be able to check my email, update my video games and blog from home. Of course now we have to worry about viruses and spyware for the first time in years.

All in all, now that we are both hooked back up to the Matrix, we have to ask ourselves, "How did we go that long without it?" Between, Netflix instant play videos, online gaming, eBay and social networking, we've got a bit of catching up to do. Yeah, we're back.

From The Editors Desk: Return of Fridays

Gentle Reader;

For those of you who read this posts title and were surprised to find out that Fridays had been missing, let me explain.

Fridays have yet to be removed from the calendar, but my old Friday posts or conversation Fridays, have been gone since April of 2007, save one post called "Tug of War" which was just an accidental conversation post.

I'm thinking I would like to try another stab at these. First because I was reading some of them, and they are extremely silly. I like silly. And second because I feel as though I might have some fresh ideas.

Any of you wishing to avoid any further silliness, might want to steer clear of Fridays. Additionally I cannot promise that there will be no further post about eating dogs or other unusual topics. Whatever pops in, will be typed. You have been warned.

Thank you for your continued patronage.

Kludge
Editor and Chief

Selling It All

eBay is awesome. Let's just start off by saying that. I love eBay. Like many good things that I've discovered, only after everyone else on the planet is bored with them, I wonder how I've gotten on this long without them. I would add things like, Netflix, woodworking, talk radio, and buttered popcorn jelly beans.

eBay apparently was named as a satirical nod to the Ebola virus, of all things. Apparently the programmer wanted it to spread in a similar manner. Well, it did. The first item sold is rumored to have been a broken laser pointer. It was snatched up for almost 15 bucks by someone who, "collected broken laser pointers." This first sale aptly set the precedent for the entire site. A great place to unload your junk on some nutter that you neither understand nor care to. As long as the payment comes through, you can consider them a ,"Good customer, who I would be happy to do business with again! A+ buyer!"

I have found that I can sell almost anything that I can put in a shipping box. Someone, somewhere wants it. No matter how small, worthless or inconsequential, someone will buy it. Those 'someones' all live on eBay. Due to this fact, I've totally lost my grip on reality. I'm a selling fool. What started as a method for me to sell off parts from a tool that I bought has grown into a full fledged sickness. I like money. There, I said it. I like getting rid of things I don't want and getting money in return.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!

It's like a new drug! I'm selling anything that's not nailed down. We were cleaning out the office a few weeks back. I sold, a board game, a set of salt and pepper shakers an old Game Gear I've had since junior high and bizarre piece of aluminum. I've sold both of our old Nintendo game systems, and I'm scouring the garage for more stuff that I can shove into a 5"x11"X2" flat rate box, and label in eBay as, "A great bargain."

It doesn't matter if it's needed, special or essential to my daily operation. If I think I can sell it and no one can physically stop me, it goes on eBay. I'm one small step shy of rummaging through the neighbors trash can, for great 'finds'. So there you have it. As with just about anything that I try, I've dived in head first and completely buried in obsession. Why is it that I can never address anything from a firm moderate stance? Who knows. "How Much Do YOu THINK I CAn GeT For My SpARe VIDeO Card CoLLECTION?!"