Kevin's musings

Just got back in eariler tonight from the big thanksgiving
trip. Overall it was quite fun, but I sure am glad to be
home.

Here’s a recap of the travels.

Finished up the expen project tonight. Used some small bungi cords for
the hinges and the cloth netting with zip ties for the
nets. It seems to work pretty well. The netting is pretty
sloppy, so I will probibly need to redo it later. Here’s
merlin modeling the finished product:

I was going to pack and load up the car and such for my trip tomorrow,
but I should be able to do it tomorrow morning.

Project update: Did all the gluing of all the PVC parts for the
amazing traveling expen. There are 6 4′ x 3′ panels. Each one
requires 20 parts to be glued. Took me about 20min per panel
to glue them all. Some important lessons when gluing PVC:

• The Purple stuff is by far the nastiest. It’s the
  “primer” and it’s very easy to splash around. The
  applicator gets about a gallon at a time (way more than it
  should).
• Always apply both the purple (primer) and the glue to
  the inside part first (the joint). It’s less likely to
  leak out all over everything than the pipe part is to drip
  everywhere.
• Make sure you attach all the joints first and make sure
  they are on the same plane as each other before you attach
  the pipe sections between them.

Next on to the netting and the “hinges”. I cut a section of netting
tonight (it’s cloth netting and it says proudly on the label:
Never RUSTS!). I tried twist ties to keep it on there, but
that didn’t tighten it up very well. Next test was zip
ties. They seemed to work pretty well and I have a ton of them
to use. Will try and finish putting it together tomorrow.

Another pretty boring weekend here at the hermatige. Saturday I
managed to upgrade my mp3/dvd machine, my main machine
(scrye.com) and my firewall to Fedora Core 3 via yum over the
net. There were of course random broken bits, but over all it was
one of the most painless upgrades I have done on my machines.

A very nice couple came over to meet jessica. They have one hound and
5 cats. Monday, jessica goes to them for a trial run. It sounds
like it should be a very nice place for her. I’m glad she is
(hopefully) finally finding a good home.

Finished cutting all the pvc on my expen project. Now all I have to do
is glue the bits all together, attach the netting and make some
hinges. I managed to find some really nice cloth netting at Lowes
for quite cheap. I should be able to get it finished before
leaving for thanksgiving if I work on it tomorrow and tuesday.

Just a few short notes:

I’ve been working on a small project. A ex-pen for the dogs thats made
from PVC. I have about 1/2 the PVC sections cut out and
assembled. Next step will be finishing the cutting and then do
gluing. After that I need to find some netting or the like to cover
them and something to use for henges. (I was thinking velcro
straps). Hopefully I can get it all assembled before I head out on
my thanksgiving journey next week.

Speaking of the thanksgiving trip, I did some looking around and found
a hotel in Gallup, NM that allows more than one dog (costs $7 a
pet, but all the rest I looked at either don’t allow them at all,
or limit you to one per person). They also claim to have high
speed net. The plan is to wander down there Wed and sleep the
night and leave only a 4-5 hour drive thursday to
Phoenix. Hopefully it will all work out ok.

The GURPS game I am putting together is starting to jell. Looks like
we will have the first session the wed after thanksgiving
(December 1st). I have 2 definite players, and about 3 more
possibles. 4 players would be great.

Just got back from the railroad earth show. Some impressions:

• Times. ok. I was spoiled last week at the show in boulder
  that said it started at 8pm and then really started at
  8pm. This show, the venue said it started at 9pm. The bands
  website said they “headlined” at 10:30pm. We got there
  around 10 or 10:15. The opening act was just
  starting. Railroad Earth didn’t go on until around 11:15 or
  11:20. I didn’t even care for that kind of junk when I was
  younger.
• The opening act wasn’t bad. The sound wasn’t the
  greatest, and I never could hear what they were saying when
  they were talking between songs, but they were good. They
  did a cover of an asylum street spankers song!
  (“Breathin”).
• The Drunk/Trippin/Stoned hippy that was careening through
  the crowd was somewhat amusing, but when he caused me to
  spill 1/4 of my beer twice I wasn’t too happy with him. You
  would think I wouldn’t have been someone he would collide
  with, being the 6’3″ large guy with the steel toed boots,
  but he didn’t seem to care. After the first two times I kept
  an eye out for him and made sure to hold my place and my
  beer when he came by. He seemed to move accross from the
  left side to the right side of the stage every few songs.
• The show was in denver, so: smoke. I never notice it when
  I am there, hell a smoker could blow a big cloud in my face
  and I wouldn’t care, but when I get home I reak and just
  want to take a shower. It especially gets in my hair.
• Railroad Earth was quite good. They played long and
  hard. Lots of dancing going on. We stayed until about 1:20
  or so, and they were still playing. (although the bar would
  be closing before too long, so they were probibly near the
  end of their set). Would have liked to have stayed, but
  everyone was getting really tired.
• Shortly after RailRoad Earth started playing, this artist
  guy setup a light and an easel and started painting. It was
  pretty cool. The first painting he did was a railroad going
  out into the sunset. He did at least a few more, but I
  didn’t see what those were. Not sure if he was with the band
  or the venue or just someone who liked painting to live
  music.

Time to go wash my hair and sleep.

The
BLUG
meeting thursday night was quite excellent. It was a talk about a
nasty set of compromises and intrusions at NOAA. Very
interesting to hear how the attackers worked and what was used
to stop them. Hopefully he will be able to get his slides
approved to put up on the net somewhere.

Tonight I have just been hanging around the house relaxing. I should
be sleeping by now, but it’s nice to just sit around listening
to music. Had a nice shrimp and sausage gumbo for dinner (with
some fresh baked corn bread). It was quite yummy.

Tomorrow… er… today I am going to go to a nice
Railroad Earth
show down in denver. It should be fun. They were really good last time
they came through town. Nice venue and nice crowd and nice
music.

Last night I went out to dinner and a show in boulder. It was a nice
time. Dinner was at:
Cafe Gondlier
where they had some not too bad (and very nicely priced) homemade
spagetthi. Then it was over to the
Boulder Theatre for the
show. I haven’t ever been to a show there, but it’s a pretty
nice venue. Big bar in the middle, a bit of seating at tables
and the rest standing room.

Erin Mckeown was
the opening act. She wasn’t bad. She had a few songs that I
thought were really good, and a number that were kinda just
blah. She tried one song that was a “never before played” one,
and it started out very cool, and then sort of petered
out. Amazingly, its worth noting that the show was supposed to
start at 8pm, and it DID! That never happens anymore, and I was
very happy it did.

The main act was
The Waifs
They were quite good. They played for about an hour and a half. They
had a nice mix of louder rocking songs, quiet lounge type songs,
and others. They all had very nifty aussie accents and
interacted with the crowd quite well. I picked up their 2 cd
live set. If they are passing near you, they are worth seeing.

Finally got around to grabbing the pictures from my camera and writing
up some stuff about
nukestock
last weekend.

As
Jafo
pointed out in his journal, we are posting some items to a blog off the
tummy.com web site.
You can find the
journals here.