27 September 2008 I don't know why persistent cloudiness forewarns its arrival. Like that particular pattern of chilly mornings and still-warm afternoons. On the edge of seeing your breath in broad daylight, but being a little surprised to find that you just can't, quite yet. On days like this, I swear, I can smell October coming. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

22 September 2008 I always hated contrived methods and systems for completing day-to-day tasks. Then, after many years and many frustrations, their usefulness and necessity became horrifyingly apparent. And just when I was getting used to that idea, along came the need to make them adaptable. I mean, seriously. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

23 August 2008 Not long ago I said something about starting to live more deliberately. Ganymede surprised me tonight. I spent quite some time looking at Jupiter, trying out the filter set I bought last weekend. The day I bought the set was beautifully clear. By that night, the clouds had rolled in, erasing any chance of actually trying the filters out. And tonight was the first night since on which the sky was clear enough to observe. And so I set up in the backyard, moving the sand table and the little plastic slide out of the way to make room for the scope. Old Jove wasn't hard to find - it's pretty much the brightest thing in the southern sky right now. But looking through the eyepiece, I immediately noticed that I could only see three specks of light on a line running east-west through the planet, instead of four. One of the moons was missing. I thought nothing of it, as the moons weren't my quarry. The detail in Jupiter was better with the filters. The cloud bands popped out to varying degrees, depending on which colour I used. I switched back and forth for some time, staring at the planet at length, trying to discern any detail I had missed. The southern belt seemed thicker than the northern. The southern pole of the planet looked darker than the rest of it. I doubted myself a little when I thought I saw a speck of light to the east of the planet (all three visible moons were on the line to the west). I refocused and looked again, and sure enough, there was a very faint point that I didn't remember noticing before. I was to find out later that this was Ganymede, with its seven-day orbit around Jupiter and its liquid iron core. It began faint, as it moved from umbra into penumbra, slowly exposing itself to more and more of the sun, and in mere minutes hung in the broad daylight of space. It was the rate at which this occurred that struck me. I had seen it once before, nearly two months ago, when Martin and I watched another of Jupiter's moons disappear into its massive shadow. And now that I think of it, that might have also been Ganymede. And it may yet be a little too early to tell, but the sense is growing in me that I just might have escaped the umbra of "the shadow of things undone". The rate of change is unexpected and perhaps even alarming. But welcome. Like a little bit of daylight on my face. Not yet the whole blazing sun. In fact, for now just a sliver, maybe. But a widening one, made of intentions carried to fruition with an uncharacteristic regularity. For a while, I think I can handle the penumbra. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

23 June 2008 No comments on the last post. It was the Britney Spears comment, wasn't it? Knew I should have kept my mouth shut. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

10 June, 2008 A list of circumstances I never thought would occur simultaneously, but have: Our little boy is nearly fourteen months old. The price of gas is dumb. One of the hermit crabs has just molted. My tarantula is about to molt. Two of the fish are pregnant. I'm nine months away from being a journeyman. The latest Britney Spears album is actually not that bad. The basement is sort of tidy. Our property tax didn't completely screw us. I got up on time today. I have three websites I need to take care of. We're almost out of bread. The kitchen drawers need toddlerproofing. The weather is nice. This coffee is tasty. So far, today's looking pretty ok, really. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

30 April 2008 Does anyone else out there ever feel like the moment you manage to get up and dust yourself off, you just get hit by another effing truck? Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to get more sleep. Read Comments (4) | Add Comment

28 April 2008 I am tired today. Because after many years I may be just sick enough of living under the shadow of the things I have not done to start living more deliberately. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

23 April 2008 Generally, drilling is pretty near the top of the list of jobs machinists try to avoid. It takes pretty much no real action, very little knowledge or skill, and even less brains. Not to mention the sheer boredom; sometimes it can take an hour or more to put a single hole through a single piece, and there's really nothing to do for that whole time but stand there and listen for a sudden and telltale change in the shrieking noise that would alert you that your cutting tip has had it, and needs to be changed. But some days, I welcome the time it affords me to think. The machine itself is an old Warner & Swasey hex turret lathe. I browsed through the manual and documentation on it today, and the most recent material it contained was dated November of 1965. It's big, dirty (no one ever bothers to clean it), doesn't have a single surface where the paint isn't half worn off, and it's as solid as a rock. Brutishly powerful, its decrepit appearance and sheer aptitude for what it does make it beautiful in a romantically ugly kind of way. And at some point today, during one of several half-hour-long holes, sitting on my stool with empty hands, little bits of clarity fell into my head like the broken shards of steel that fall out of the hole as the drill pushes slowly and relentlessly through. Read Comments (0) | Add Comment

22 April 2008 "Mysterious light industrial wounds". That's what I call most of the cuts and scrapes I find on my hands. But the one hampering my typing efforts tonight was not so mysterious. It was innocent enough, just pushing a heap of metal chips down the bed of my lathe, force applied directly against the load so there would be no sliding motion against what one fellow machinist calls "ninja ribbon bladeness", wearing thick leather work gloves (of course, never while the machine is running). And yet, despite all of this caution, one little bit of ninja ribbon bladeness found its way right through the leather glove, slicing and embedding itself into my left index finger. And at about two inches long, I couldn't get my hand out of the glove until the chip came out of my finger. Oddly, my first thought was "Crap. Tell me I'm not gonna have to spend three hours in a waiting room to get stitches. It's already five to four, and dinner's at six." Luckily, the shop has a Vietnam vet, who served as a medic, on the payroll, and he put me back together in short order. No stitches necessary, just some specific instructions for care. The good in all of this is that it affirmed to me, in a strange kind of way, that I was cautious. This cut, probably almost a quarter inch into my skin, was the worst that could really have happened, and I knew it at the time. Cuts are acceptable risks, and cuts like this might happen one time out of a thousand. Life and limb weren't on the line, because I take great care not to put them there. Like I've said so often before: A cautious machinist has eight or nine scars. A careless machinist has eight or nine fingers. Read Comments (1) | Add Comment

9 April 2008 I'm still trying to get my website working properly on the new host, after my longtime and loyal host announced it would no longer be operating. Bear with me while I work the kinks out, especially on the comment functions. Read Comments (3) | Add Comment Just to see if this works... Read Comments (0) | Add Comment