Life

[Lu]

In the process of finding a suitable pillow. I'm so damn tired. I haven't had a decent night sleep in a few weeks. Neck cramp ahooooy! Tried 3 different pillows so far and I've concluded I simply need a lower neck support. I will get there!

Happy New Year!

[Hermie]

Happy Chinese Dishonored New Years!

[Luftmensch]

The Dory: Part Two: Prime Time

This past weekend my dad was in town, so I was finally able to use his router to carve out a hole for the daggerboard.

I didn't take a picture, but at the time it was covered in bundles of stringy shavings.

Since we had to flip the boat anyway, we left it out upside-down on the ground for painting. This isn't the most comfortable level to work but it's incredibly hard to flip this boat. That's a good thing.

In this photo you can see the bottom of my boat, the boat trailer, and the daggerboard and rudder resting on the trailer. Fun fact, I also built the fence.

I dropped by the hardware store to pick up a bit more masking tape, which I'll need when I paint the navy blue accents. I decided to pick up some black paint to cover the foam flotation (which was just pink and not very nautical-looking), so I grabbed a couple cans of matte black spray paint which worked in a pinch.

Spray paint works best on a smooth flat surface. Because foam tends to get dinged up, all the exposed surfaces have a thick layer of epoxy, but the other parts are pretty ugly up close. Fortunately that's where nobody will by looking.

Finally I applied a final coat of primer on the bottom of the boat. The slot where the daggerboard slots is doomed to be ugly I'm afraid. No Shaker craftmanship here. I painted as deep as I could and resolved that the inside will just be submerged and out of sight so I'll have to deal with it. Besides that detail, I managed to get a good, thick, mostly even coat throughout. Painting the ridges was a slight pain because, with marine grade paint, you need to use a very thin foam roller, which means you have to go back and clean up details and ridges with a brush. That was tedious but not hard.

Even just on the boat itself.

Once this is all dry, hopefully by tomorrow morning (it's getting pretty soggy out) I can apply the first proper coat of paint. The boat is going to be white with accents of navy blue trimming which hopefully will be sexy. If we get any sunny days, I might be able to work in two coats of paint in the same day, and have this all done by the weekend. Then, my dad and I install the convoluted sailing rig and we'll be ready to go.

[Luftmensch]

For some reason I've had this idea in my head that, from watching tutorials and reading the release notes, that I more or less know how to use Blender? Anyway, I started working on making my character, and as I was doing it, it was this weird combination of knowing what keys to press and where the menus are and also realizing that I've never made anything from scratch with this software in my life (I've

a bit at best). Anyway, right now I have something that looks like this, which at this stage I'm surprised I just made without running my face into a wall.

Also the sun came out and I put the first coat of real paint on my boat. Yay!

Edit: I went ahead and changed the attached image to my last update for todayt. I still have next to no idea what I'm doing.

[Frenetic Pony]

Parents have trouble with long distance for unknown reason, well whatever, time to go for Vonage or something modern.

Sign up for Vonage, they've got DSL, 6.0mbps, should be fine.

Phone switches, ATT decides Vonage is a local phone company and not a VOIP company, cuts off internet to parents house.

They call up, explain that just wanted DSL, no phone plan.

"DSL no longer available, only more expensive U-Verse plans for equivalent speed. Also $200 installation fee."

Well fuck that noise, so I begin researching other options.

Sonic.net not available unless you have ATT phone line, which is not available anymore.

Comcast has a nice plan... except they won't tell you how much it actually costs, apparently $60 a month, plus fees for renting modem.

Freedom Pop? Not available in your area.

Begin to cry/cuss out US government/Oligopoly of US communications companies.

At least there aren't caps around here. Dear entire god damned planet, the internet is the basis for all communication, or damned well should be. So concerning practices and prices available in even first world countries pretty much EVERYWHERE... WTF?

[syntheticgerbil]

AT&T is one of the worst companies in the United States, they have almost all areas on lock down.

I don't know where you live but is Clear one of your options? Clear is certainly not the best but I don't pay too much and get much better speeds that I would have gotten on typical AT&T DSL, without going to a cable service or U-Verse (Which are both expensive). I don't really experience much if any lag in online games if that's any point of reference.

[Gormongous]

Ugh, I sympathize with anyone who has to suffer from comm company monopolies. About once a year, I have to call up Charter and threaten them in order to keep my cable connection unthrottled and uncapped. At least they mostly leave me alone outside of that. God forbid there are service outages, though.

One time a utilities service accidentally cut a street line and the tech support seriously recommended I upgrade from Windows XP to Vista in order to restore connectivity. The only time I've ever lost my temper and screamed at someone on the phone...

[Luftmensch]

It's been painted:

[miffy495]

I have an interview with the Board of Education! Two weeks from yesterday! Yay!

[Nappi]

Good luck with the interview, Miffy!

 

And nice boat Luftmensch!

[subbes]

Sweet life progress, dudes!

 

I'm writing in C.  I've never been good with memory management.  I'm sure you can join the dots together.  It's like boot-camp but instead of a Sgt. Major yelling it's CentOS squeaking about segfaults, also it probably won't improve my physical fitness much.

[tegan]

I made bonus! Plus. I'm in a bet right now to see who can go the lognest without taking any voluntary time off of work. As a result, this latest paycheque has been absolutely massive. It had to be deposited in two parts.

[80's Bad Guy]

Man, I haven't been here in years. Since then I've started a family, moved it from Taiwan to Austin, have had 3 different jobs and am finally getting settled enough to relax. Hungover from my birthday celebration. Congrats on the continued life, thumbs! It's like trying to juggle water while falling down a hill. 

[subbes]

I suddenly stopped being able to see the "Whole Organization" calendar on my company's GCal and had 2 minutes of terror that they'd shitcanned me.  Then I reloaded the page a second time and it showed up.  

 

Still have some residual panic.

[miffy495]

Yay for not being shitcanned, Subbes!

 

Also, holy shit, AkuMifune! I remember you from the day! Welcome back!

[Luftmensch]

Still lacking a name.

[osmosisch]

The Phaedrus, obv. You'll get sponsor"ship"!

[elmuerte]

Here are some ideas:

- Watery Wizard

- Baboo

- F. Nick

- Puffins

- Far Cry II

[Luftmensch]

If it were big enough to be a ship, I could call it The Fruitcake.

[Nappi]

How am I sailing?!

<Phone Number>

[Nachimir]

Nice work. I can't imagine how satisfying it must be to have put something like that together.

[Roderick]

The first week at my new job has passed (which is the reason I haven't been online - no internet in my new crib yet) and everything is splendid. What a wonderful company and the job is exactly what I studied for. Crazyyyy!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Who are you?

[subbes]

Still lacking a name.

 

 

The Seaward.

[Lu]

 

The joke!

 

I can still hardly believe the show is coming back this year!!