The Center of the Anomaly

I watched a show on the History Channel this morning about Doomsday prophesies of the year 2012.  According to the Mayan calendar the End of Times is December 12th 2012.  There were others too that point to this same time period where there will be great geological and / or political upheaval.  Among those noted:  the I Ching, Hopi Indian prophecy, web-bots, Merlin, and of course, The Book of Revelation. Although I thought they kinda shoe-horned that one in since it’s rather vague about a specific date when it hits the fan.  Conspicuously absent was Nostradamus in the lineup.  I was surprised.  Perhaps he had a different date that would mess up their 2012 theme. 

That kinda sucks that they predict World’s End during the Christmas holiday week.  I’m always on vacation that week.  Anyway, we all have only 1,642.97 days to get our shit in order.  I’m marking my calendar.  How about you?

I don’t need any furniture, but by golly I’m going look at some a big ol’ buttload of it.  The World Market Center is open to the public for this weekend, and the Parental Units and I are going to wander around in it for a couple hours.  Check out the Wikipedia on the World Market Center.  That place is HUUUGE and it’s getting even bigger next month when they open the third building.  Rod Stewart will play the opening it seems.

Usually the place is only open to furniture dealers but twice a year they have a big clearance sale and they charge you 10 bucks a head just for the priveledge of walking through the doors.  Like I said, I really don’t need any furniture, but hey, who knows?  I might find a bargain I just can’t refuse.

****Update****

Shopping was limited to the first and second floors of buildings A & B.  Not all the displayers participated in the sale, but It was still HUGE.  We spent the better part of three hours there going through it all.  There were some deep discounts on the floor samples around (40 - 50%) but the vast majority wasn’t in a style that really appealed to me.  The stuff that did was still to expensive for me.  I didn’t really need any furniture anyway.  But…I don’t like my coffee and end table anymore, so I had my eye out for possible replacements.  I didn’t see anything that interested me though.

I did find something else that really interested me in one of the first showrooms we entered: a leather turtle tortiose ottoman.  It’s really, really cool but I can’t get the image to load for some reason tonight.  I’ll try again tomorrow.  Anyway, the price for it is $500+.  I have no place for it.  I don’t need it.  The cat would just scratch it up anyway.  My parents bought a really nice jewellry box there and my Dad found out that they were willing to bargain - $475 to $310 on the box.

I don’t need no damn leather tortise ottoman.

Following up on my hunch last night I soaked a smallish piece of the 300 lb paper in a bucket, half in and half out for about 5 - 6 hours.  I let the paper dry all night and went to work on it this morning.  I painted new swatches of color across both sides, paying particular attention to the phthalo and indanthrone blues, which seem to have it the worst problems.   There wasn’t any appreciable difference in the appearance once dried.  So much for that theory.  I’ve tried getting a good picture of the problem so y’all can see what the hell I’m talking about, but I can’t get this futzy camera to focus in close enough.  Anyway, I started fooling around to see what else I can do.  Pre-wetting an area doesn’t work.  I had an idea about using some gum arabic to pre-treat an area and that actually does work!  No specks!  Unfortunately, that makes the paint kinda glossy, which is okay by itself, but if I put another color next to it and don’t use the gum arabic it looks different.  Grrr.  I’ve just about come to the conclusion that I’m just not an “Arches” dude.  Oh well - it’s made in France anyway.

Been busy. I test-fired the Death Star trebuchet at work and I was disappointed at first. The instructions said to fill the bucket half-way with gravel or sand (I used sandy dirt and gravel) and it had no oomph whatsoever. The clay ball only went 5 feet or so. Filling it up more did little to boost the distance really. One guy suggested putting coins in and he had a bunch of pennies so we put a bunch of those in on the dirt. We started to get some distance finally - 10 feet or so. Still, not the 20 as promised. Obviously we needed more weight. I dumped out the dirt and rock and put all the pennies he had and tossed in a few more coins. I cast around for more metal stuff and eyeballed my paper clips. Then I found my screwdriver/socket tool - ha steel! I threw the sockets and screwdriver heads in. Coin Guy had a small faucet head and I put that in too. That bucket was a lot heavier now. I set it up and let her rip. MUCH better! Big height too! Too high though. I was launching off the top of a long table and the ball was hitting a ceiling beam. I put it on the floor and launched from there and got a distance of 15 -16 feet. I was still getting a lot of hight that should be going for distance. I played around with the string length and by lengthening just a little bit I got a nice ballistic arc and BAM! 20 feet! Huzzah! No, I didn’t get any video of it because I suck. Soon though! Plus, I want to get it finished so it looks pretty for the camera. This weekend, I promise.

On the watercolor front: I did a couple and they suck. Oh yes. They will not be posted. I wrote earlier about stretching a half-sheet of the Arches 300 lb in my new frame and I was really eager about trying it out. I also dropped a chunk of change ($130) on new paints that finally came in late last week. I fooled around with color swatches on some small samples of the 300 lb paper I was going to use and had some disturbing results. The colors went on beautifully, but as they dried they kind of “broke up”. White specks started popping through. It was fibers of the paper. When completely dry the darker color swatches were shot through with white specks. They looked really bad. I could get rid of them by re-wetting the painted areas, but that’s not such a great thing when doing watercolor.

Monday evening I went in to class but forgot my paper sample with the swatches. I did some more on another piece and showed the problem to one of the other advanced ladies. She didn’t know what the problem was, but she never paints on 300 lb paper. The other lady who does didn’t show up. The instructor was busy with the class and didn’t have a much time to look at it. Well, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time and effort planning a real detailed painting where this was going to be an issue so I just quick sketched another tree (with foliage this time) and painted that. The sky went in ok but I was doing wet-in-wet there and didn’t have much of “The Problem”. The tree went in okay, but I went over it a lot. It was very smudgy by the time I got finished. Meh. I’m not getting the real quality I’m trying to get. I didn’t like the result. I didn’t have a lot of problem with “The Problem” in the rest of the painting either though. I think the soaking and the stretching solved a lot of it. It was a beautiful stretch job though - that paper was completely flat the entire time and came out that way with a neat crimped edge.

I threw a piece of 140 lb paper from my Canson block in the next night. It wasn’t long enough though so it didn’t reach the stretchers on the short ends. I did a quick non-tree painting with the new paints, mostly just playing around and trying some new things. I had buckling issues on the unsecured ends as expected. There’s no trace of “The Problem” with the 140 lb paper.

The lady who works with the 300 lb paper showed up that night. She didn’t know what “The Problem” was either, but she works very wet when painting. Nnnn. Actually, as I type this up I think I know what is going on here. In another post Weasel talked about problems painting on papers with sizing. I just remembered the other women mentioning a while back that she typically soaked her paper in the bathtub for an hour or so and then drying it out. Hmmm. Anyway, she gave me a sheet of another brand of paper to try - Kilimanjaro. It’s softer and smoother. I’m putting it into the frame now.

Well, that’s it folks! I’ll type at you later.

I finally got around to getting this put together.

It went together fairly easily and it looks pretty good. Some of the stuff didn’t fit quite perfectly, but what the hell. I haven’t tried it out yet because the glue has to cure for 24 hours. Sometime next week I’ll take it over to my Dad’s workshop and put a nice stain and polyurethane finish on it.

Now, if I can just find a toy cow…

Hot damn!  These just might work:  Cows.

I found this interesting article about the problems with web standards and related whatnot:  Martian Headsets over at Twenty-Sided a few days ago.  It’s kinda long but worth reading the whole thing to get an idea why computer stuff never seems to work quite as well as you would expect them to by now. 

Remember those remote controlled mini-helicoptors I bought on-line a whle ago?  Yah, they were total crap.  The red one barely responded to the controls and the black one wouldn’t recharge - one flight and it was done.  The Engrish on the box and in the instruction manual was hilarious though.  I sent them back and asked for credit.  So, now I get to pick up some new stuff.  Check out ThinkGeek and suggest something(s).

Sometime next week I get my $2,000 - Uncle Sam’s pound o’flesh bonus check.  I also have a birthday coming up next month and I’ve been considering another gun purchase.  I am now reconsidering this purchase for something else - a nice bed.  Every morning I get up with sore hips and back and I don’t sleep very well during the night.  Hell, I don’t remember the last time I slept all the way through.  My current bed is a Serta Perfect Sleeper and it’s probably about 10 years old.  It has some sags in it and flipping the matress doesn’t work anymore.

Here’s what I’m looking at now:  Select Comfort 6000.  The configuration I’m looking at for that model runs about $2500.  Plus another $150 for delivery, installation and removal of the old bed.  Expensive?  Yup!  It would be worth every penny though if it would give me a decent night’s sleep.  My parents have a Select Comfort bed and they love it.  What about y’all?  Any opinions out there in the Peanut Gallery?

I got a strange call tonight.  It was from a guy with a thick Indian accent (dot, not feather) saying he was with Sprint telephone and he wanted to give me a free, promotional cell-phone with no strings attached, he just needed some information to “complete my application” and to send it to me.  I have caller id, and the number was a local one - but the name was blocked though.  I could tell by the background noise that he was in a busy call-center.  My bullshit meter went to one-quarter, but I went along.  He said the phone would be delivered via UPS and that they would call to schedule person to person delivery. 

Hmm.  UPS doesn’t normally do that. 

He went on to say that I’d need a picture id for UPS guy to confirm I’m really the person it’s supposed to be delivered to.  Really?  My BS meter was into 3/4 range now, but he already knew my name and address and other information.  Sprint used to be the local carrier here until another company bought them out and the stuff he knew seemed to be consistent with what would be in a typical customer database.  I let the call continue.  He asked what id I’d be using and whatnot, then he then asked if I had any outstanding debts with Sprint. I don’t and said so.  “Great!” he said.  “Would you please confirm your Social Security number with me so I can make sure that you have no outstanding debt with Sprint?” 

WTF?  BS meter pegs into the red-zone and breaks the needle off. 

I tell him I’m not giving my SS number over the phone.  He starts in with the “Oh, no no no! Your information is totally protected by blah, blah, blah, and encrypted in the system yada, yada, yada.”  I repeat that I’m not giving my SS number to him, and that I’m not interested in his cell phone anymore. “Oh, nononono!” 

Thnx, but noe thnx, k bai - click. 

Not even 30 seconds go by and I get another call.  Another local number, id blocked.  It’s the call center supervisor - also another Indian.  I don’t let him get past telling me this before I tell him I’m not interested in his phone anymore and hang up again.  He calls back almost immediately.  I don’t even let him speak before I tell him not to call anymore and hang up yet again.  They don’t call back.

I reviewed my caller id log and there are two numbers there.  Reverse phone lookup reports for these numbers are available online, but they want $15 for them.  One site shows a map of a location in downtown Las Vegas for one of the numbers.  No address though.

This is a nigh 100% certain personal ID theft ring going on, but I’m not sure where I go from here.  Police?  Sprint?  Call these numbers back and screw with them?

Yeah buddy!  Dueling Helicopters!  From one of the most awesome sites on the web:  ThinkGeek.com.  I’m having them delivered to the office.  These things are going to be a blast.