Sat, 08 Apr 2006

Here's my desk at work.
That's right, this is where the magic happens. There's some race numbers up on the wall, and a cup that Linda made me, and of course my monitor and keyboard. Some pictures of Linda, and one of me with Lisa and Holly. This is one of the first photos I took with my new Nokia 6682 phone (1.3 megapixel).

posted at: 21:41 | permalink | 100 comments

Fri, 07 Apr 2006

Linda's butterfly hatched.
She found him on her milkweed plants when he was a caterpillar, and she stuck him in the butterfly cage with some nice milkweed leaves to munch on. Then he turned himself into a chrysalis, and then we waited for three weeks. We were leaving the house on Thursday, when I noticed there was a butterfly in the butterflay cage. So Linda reached in and grabbed him (he didn't want to come out), held him for a moment, and then he flew off into the grapefruit tree. He rested for a couple minutes, and then he was on his way.


posted at: 22:07 | permalink | 100 comments

Thu, 06 Apr 2006

It was New Beer's Eve last night,
better known as the 67th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Yeast gave us all a history lesson, culminating in the New Beer's Eve FCAT. We met behind the Publix, with a good-sized turnout of 30+ people. In honor of New Beer's Eve, Yeast had provided Natty Lite. I got some photos as the sun was setting.

Yeast was away promptly at 7:10, and we followed him after a decent interval. The first half was mucho shiggy, winding through the Pinehurst mountain bike trails, and then crossing the street into the equestrian park. The pack had some idea of where they were going, so the pace was quick, with not a lot of time solving the checks. After just 3.27 miles we arrived at the beer check, on a secluded lake in the equestrian park. As we stood around refreshing ourselves we saw a curious site in the distance. It was the walkers, but they were ... running? Apparently there is a quite a push in the walker community to get properly trained for the upcoming 7 Mile Bridge run.

Pretty soon we left the beer check, for a more-or-less straight run back to the cars, where more Natty Lite awaited us. We had a decent circle, with Plop keeping the crowd under control. There were several returning NFHNs, and even a hash hottie. Things are going well in the new hasher department. Then Duffy's, then home.

For once my prediction was pretty close. The prediction is on the left, and the actual trail is on the right. I got the mountain bike trail and the equestrian trail, but Yeast opted to skip Okeeheelee after that.

posted at: 07:31 | permalink | 100 comments

I made up some prototype hash decals
and I took them out to the run last night. I thought they looked pretty good, but AC had to go and point out the mistake. Can you spot it? Hint: the phone number is wrong. D'oh! I used some laser printable labels to make them. Actually, Linda did most of the work. They seem to be mostly waterproof, but I don't know how long they will last in the sun. The initial plan is to take them down to the Keys in a few weeks, and slap them up in bars.

posted at: 07:18 | permalink | 100 comments

Wed, 05 Apr 2006

I wasn't sure what that was in the back yard when I got home today.
I could see some orange and blue, but couldn't make out any details. As I got closer it began to look like a cat sleeping on something. Then I saw it was Martha lounging on top of Linda.

posted at: 18:08 | permalink | 100 comments

Mon, 03 Apr 2006

I saw a really cool Audi this weekend.
I think it's an Audi TT, but I really don't know a lot about Audis. The wheels and the blacked-out trim give it a nice look.

posted at: 07:04 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 02 Apr 2006

The Island surf shop is sponsoring the hash.
At least it looks that way. I was downtown on Sunday afternoon to go by Fat Cat bike shop, and I saw this on Island's sign. I don't know what it really is, but it sure looks like they're saying "On On".

posted at: 20:36 | permalink | 100 comments

Sat, 01 Apr 2006

The Gators are going to the NCAA finals!
Again. We saw the game at the Old House on Saturday night. Just like the last time (in 2000) I didn't pay too much attention to the tournament, because I figured they would get knocked out. But when they were still in it after the quarters I figured I had to go see the semifinal game. They were in control pretty much all the way. They were in such good shape at the finish that the final three minutes went by quickly. I guess George Mason didn't think there was any point to fouling them to get the ball back. Finals are Monday night. Go Gators!

posted at: 21:31 | permalink | 101 comments

Thu, 30 Mar 2006

P-rick set another trail on Wednesday.
This was (I think) his fourth one, but it was probably his worst. He made the classic mistake of going way too long between marks. Add to that him using GH as a co-hare, and you have the recipe for disaster. I still would have been okay, except I ended up with a virgin hasher and an NFHN hasher. The virgin was pretty slow, and was walking by the end. After we had done six miles we finally got to where the beer check had been, but the pack had already left. Fortunately, at just that moment, Circumspector called to see where the hash was. So I asked her to come and pick us up and take us to the end. And she did. So the circle was okay, but there was a lot of P-rick abuse.
My GPS died after about a mile, because I forgot to charge it up, but I filled in the trail by hand. The pink is the GPS track, and the yellow is what I drew in. The start was at Run and Roll. AI was there, and he was ready to run.

These are the two hashers I was on trail with. I think they'll keep coming back. Although all of the pictures I had of the girl were of her sitting down resting. And finally a shot of the pack before the circle, as they dreamed up accusations against P-rick.

posted at: 07:41 | permalink | 100 comments

Wed, 29 Mar 2006

We destroyed my handcrafted steel pistol target last weekend.
I had previously chronicled making the target here, but I never got around to posting what happened when we shot at it.

Here's a shot of the target in my back yard. We painted the plates white, so we could see the impacts better. Once it dried we loaded everything up and headed out to try the target. On the way I called Chris, because I knew he had just gotten a Beretta 92 with laser sight, that he had not had a chance to shoot yet. He was all for it, so we stopped by his place. Once we got to the location, Rob slapped on a couple of stick-on targets. In the third photo you can see the target with two black circles on it, to the left of the washing machine. Chris got the Model 92 ready.

So the first thing that happened was that the stick-on targets blew right off the steel plates. I guess they're meant to be stuck on paper targets where the rounds pass right through, but in this case the fragmenting bullets just blew the targets right off. The second thing that happened was that Rob began blowing the heck out of the targes with his .44 magnum. And also the .357. The 9 mm's that me and Chris were shooting didn't have too much effect on the 0.25 plate, but the .44's really put some divots in it.

Rob continued to punish the target with the .44. And me and Chris took a few shots also. You can see the plates getting more and more warped in the next three photos. I stopped taking photos, but eventually Rob shot the target to pieces. First the welds holding the plates to the 1" schedule pipe arms failed, and then welds holding the arms to the pivot tube were shot away. I have to say that the penetration on the welds wasn't the greatest, and if I had spent more time prepping and fitting them they would probably have lasted much longer. The fourth photo is a close-up of one of the steel pipes. This was a piece of high-pressure hydraulic line in its former life. It's approximately 1" in diameter, with a very thick wall (3/16"?). It had lots of dents, but only one penetration.

Then we turned our attention to the washing machine. Those stick-on targets worked just great on it. I think the sheet metal must flex enough, and not provide much resistance to the bullets. These were the fancy targets that turn green when you shoot them. You can see on the lower right target a nice grouping of green dots. Anyway, a good time was had by all. I'll try to get motivated enough to weld up some more targets for next time. What would be really cool would be a pair of target frames, each with two or three hanging targets. Then we could have an informal competition to see who could hit three targets first.

posted at: 07:12 | permalink | 100 comments

Tue, 28 Mar 2006

I should have measured for overall length.
I just now thought of that, as I was writing this. Maybe next time I can get the tape measure out and measure the stretched-out cat Length Over All (LOA). Anyway, here's Martha relaxing, oblivious to her surroundings. And ignoring the fact that she's lying in front of the television, directly in the path to the laundry room. But why should she care? She doesn't do laundry.

posted at: 07:04 | permalink | 100 comments

Mon, 27 Mar 2006

I finally made it to a Whip It Out at the Ballgame hash.
At least I made the Ballgame part. Me and C. were doing yard work, so we missed the actual running part. I bet it was fun, though. We got there just in time to meet the hashers on top of the parking garage. And P-rick had a couple of extra tickets for us. Cool. The group wandered over and into the stadium, where we meet RedBushwhacker and his lovely wife. And some other Treasure Coast hashers. We all had seats in the bleachers, where we would watch the Marlins and the Reds play ball. It was really a nice day. Yeast and Nurse were already in the bleachers, and so were CA and Amy. We all had the obligatory hash shirts on.

There were some interesting people sitting next to us. I think they came on a really short bus. Anyway, we watched the Marlins thrash the Reds by a score of 6-1 or so. (I wasn't really paying a lot of attention). We had more fun singing "Staying Alive" everytime a Marlins batter got two strikes on him. The Reds fan sitting a couple rows ahead of us taught us the song.

Once the game was over we made our way back to the cars. Along the way a happy, jolly P-rick agreed to be the guest voice on the hash hotline. Here he is in the studio, recording his PSA.

posted at: 07:13 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 26 Mar 2006

I did a welding project this weekend.
It was mostly Rob's idea, though. He's redeveloped an interest in pistol shooting, so he wanted to make a steel pistol target. I Google's around and found some descriptions of simple hanging targets. But that wasn't enough for him. It had to have one target to shoot at, and one target to reset it. Fine. When he showed up I had already cut two 4"x6" pieces of steel plate, about 0.25" thick. I had cut some schedule 80 1" steel to suspend the plates from. That's when Rob showed up and began demonstrating his concept.

At least he drew it out first. I didn't really follow all the details, but I figured I'd let him make it work. He started looking at what I had already finished, and eyed the chop saw.

The design called for a fancy mechanism, with lots of little arms and levers and stops. Basically you would shoot at the top target, which would fall backward after you hit it. Then you shoot at the bottom target, which would knock the top target back upright. Repeat. It sounded like it might work. I had some rebar that would probably work for the arms and levers. Here's a rare picture of Rob using safety gear, as he chops up the rebar.

Once Rob had all the pieces cut I assembled them with the mig welder. There were a couple errors along the way, but a chop saw and a welder can fix a lot of mistakes. To make it stiffer we built a simple frame out of some 1" EMT conduit I had around. Once nice thing about this project was that it got rid of some of the scrap metal pile. We finished up, and drove the target frame into the ground to test it. It seemed to work. You could hit the top target, and it would topple backward, then hit the bottom target, and the top target would reset. The only questions were: would it stand up to being shot at, and would the reset mechanism work when hit by bullets instead of hands? Read the next installment to find out...

posted at: 11:47 | permalink | 100 comments

Sat, 25 Mar 2006

I forgot I took these photos of a pirate at the RennFest last week.
But then I found the photos in my phone. This guy just didn't fit in with the rest of the RennFest crowd. Later on when I saw the pirate encampment with a bunch of pirates they looked authentic. But this guy was walking around near the lords and ladies and beggars. We stopped to talk with him, and after about 30 seconds he flipped up his eyepatch and scratched underneath it. And he had a good eye under there! Dirty cheating unauthentic pirate...

posted at: 10:18 | permalink | 100 comments

Fri, 24 Mar 2006

I stopped by the beach yesterday.
I took the day off, and part of the afternoon's events was a cruise past the pier after lunch. It was a beautiful day. There were lots of girls on spring break, and people everywhere. The lifguard stands were flying a strange flag, though. They had a yellow flag for (I assume) caution, and also a purple flag. What the heck is purple for? Maybe the lifeguards are Lakers fans?

posted at: 07:32 | permalink | 200 comments

I saw the world's ugliest AstroVan recently.
Unfortunately it was night, and I didn't have a flash with me, so I couldn't capture the full ugliness of it all. Linda noticed it first, saying "Look at the brushtrokes on that van". Sure enough, it looked like it had been painted with a broom and some white latex housepaint. They had even painted over the AstroVan badge. At least they took a few minutes to mask off the door handles, or maybe they just painted around them. The picture really sucks, but at least you can see the white-painted badge, and the runs and drips nearby.

posted at: 07:22 | permalink | 100 comments

Thu, 23 Mar 2006

Last night's hash was a Bootlicker special.
And by that I mean an uninspired trail with a lot of beer. So it was a good thing overall. The runners could tell something was up when Boot kept juming and hawing during the chalk talk. Finally it became clear that the evening's entertainment was to be a pub crawl, but there would be a run first.

The run was everything I expected it would be: short, straight, and laid from a car. Well, I'm not sure it was laid from a car, but the checks were all at intersections and the marks were all in driveways. I didn't get a chance to examine Boot's car, but I bet there was flour on the steering wheel. After a three mile box run we arrived back at the shopping center where we started, to find a strange looking mark with three arrows. Nobody could figure it out, so we just went to the closest bar, where, surprise, the first beer check was. Boot doesn't like draft beer, so we stood around swilling Bud longnecks until it was time to go. Boy was that a loud jukebox. Boot didn't want any pictures.

Then on to the Peruvian restaurant for stop number two. They didn't speak a lot of English there, but Boot managed to make himself understood and get a beer for everyone. That new hasher with the fourteen names explained that they don't speak Peruvian in Peru, but instead they speak Spanish. Is that crazy or what? I wonder where they speak Peruvian?

The third stop of the evening was John D's, which used to be a craphole out on Okeechobee with some local character. Now it's just a craphole in a strip mall. We all had fried food and beer. Mmm. And then we went home. As I was going to my car I saw the hasher with all the names lurking in the parking lot.

Epilogue: I woke up about 3 am to violently expel the chicken wings I had at John D's. I thought it might just be me, but SMD said the same thing happened to him. How can you screw up chicken wings?

posted at: 13:48 | permalink | 100 comments

Here's an update on the Baby Truck
which was last mentioned here. You may recall that I saw it down in Delray on the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day. Well, the next Sunday Rob and I were returning from firing lots of 9mm out at 20 Mile Bend, when I spotted the Baby Truck up on a trailer, heading the other way at a high rate of speed. I was confused, but Rob explained that MudFest was that weekend out in Loxahatchee, and that the Baby Truck was undoubtedly on its way out there. This was confirmed a few minutes later when I saw a semi with a trailer full of cars heading west. It took me a minute to figure out what was wrong, but I finally realized that the semi wasn't towing a car carrier trailer, but instead had a big flatbed trailer, on which the cars were simply stacked. They were good looking full-size sedans, so I guess they were going to be fodder for some kind of monster truck. I did find a local mudder site at Stroid, but I couldn't find any photos of the Baby Truck on it.
posted at: 08:22 | permalink | 100 comments

Wed, 22 Mar 2006

I really like this photo.
Someone in Iraq has a sense of humor. If you look closely at the grenade you can see that there is a smiley face drawn on it. "Have A Nice Day!" I should probably link to the myspace.com page where I found this image.

posted at: 07:12 | permalink | 100 comments

Tue, 21 Mar 2006

We finally made it to the Rennaisance Festival on the last day.
It took a while, but we finally found time to make it down to Quiet Waters park in Boca for the festival. Linda's brother Al is their official photographer, so we met him there, and walked around with him. He knew everybody. And he kept taking pictures. In fact, when we got there he was up on top of the entrance gate, taking pictures of a king or something. You can just see his head in the top photo.

We had been there a few times before, so we saw our favorite shows. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I did snap a couple of the Dueling Gypsies, or whatever they called themselves. They were good with the swords and with the crowd.


The thing I kept noticing was that most of the trees were gone. That happened back during Hurricane Wilma last year. It was even worse in the south end of the park, where the mountain bike trail used to be. It had been badly battered by the hurricane, and then the park recently came in with bulldozers and leveled almost every tree that was left. Their explanation was that they were removing the non-native species, which has become a fetish here in Florida. I hope that someday we can get the mountain bike trail back, but I don't think we can make it like it was. Linda had to wear a hat because it was sunny.

We kept eating and drinking. I had a bunch of pina coladas, which apparently had a lot of alcohol in them. I don't even remember taking these photos. It looks like a character study of a couple pirates. I slept all the way back in the car, and when we got home I went out in the back yard and slept all afternoon in the hammock. I even missed Kevin's birthday party. Mmmm. Pina coladas.

posted at: 07:12 | permalink | 100 comments