KRUG

basically i bought my first tool box! the job i have now requires me to use tools that i don’t own. i have been able to borrow tools from people i work with or use the shop’s equipment for the most part while i accumulate my own collection. while i still don’t have very many, the number is growing and i was running out of places to put them.

the one i got is a kobalt brand from lowes and is really nice. it is definitely solidly built. it has 11 drawers with padding to keep tools from sliding around. it has a built in power strip and heavy duty casters for mobility. the entire thing is stainless steel. there is a half inch recess on the top that currently has a black foam pad in it but i plan on using some artistic flairs to dress that part up real nice.

all in all i am very pleased. there are more pictures at my flickr site.

i played a game on my iphone the other day. one that i am sure most people have played some variation of at the least. it consisted of a grid made up of 9 columns and 10 rows of marbles. there were four types of marbles displayed on the grid. the object of the game was to remove all of the marbles by discarding sets that contained adjacent, similar marbles. by clicking one of the marbles in such set, all marbles of the set would be removed from the board and the marbles above this set would fall to fill the void. the set of pictures shows this action in process for removing two such groups from the grid.

the challenge of the game exists in two forms. the first, and simplest, is removing all of the marbles form the board. with some forethought and a bit of luck, this can be done without too much trouble. however, while playing the game, i realized that at some point in the endeavour, there would be a point of no return where the game would be lost with no hope of winning. i thought that a mathematical approach to the task may provide a solution to the game everytime.

while i have not seriously pondered a solution to this idea, i do have several leads. i could assign each square a value to be differentiated from all others. the most obvious solution would be the cartesian plane. then, each variance of marble would be assigned a variable to group the marbles into their four classes. the last step (and the hardest) would be to devise a recursive formula that would run through all possible outcomes for the provided grid much like a chess program does to play a game of chess.

while i have never attempted such a thing, it is not beyond my means to do so. i have lightly contemplated the proposed program but have yet to sit down and produce a skeleton.

while playing the game some more after realizing that this could be solved with programming, i realized that the game also awards a score to the player which is the second challenge. this score is not just the result of how many marbles are left on the grid at the end of the game, but is strongly linked to the order in which the marbles are removed. deleting large groups is far more rewarding than completing the task of a clean grid.

this lead me to realize that my previous idea for an automatic solver could be further enhanced by figuring out the socring method of the game and incorporating it into the program. this algorithm could find two things: the solution that would yield the highest possible score with no concern of the number of marbles left and the solution that would allow for the largest score while ensuring a clean grid at the end.

i say all of this to say that i think i have a fun project on my hands. my biggest problem is that i have no means of programming right now. i have niethern server space for php or ruby (not that it would do me any good anyway since i know very little of either of those) nor any interface to code in C++ or C#. i can still accomplish my task in theory using pseudo-code even if i can’t actually create the engine itself.

i’ll post if anything ever comes of this. it may just be a fanciful thought that goes away.

Play the game here.

“so if a photon is directed through a plane with two slits in it and either slit is observed, it will not go through both slits. if it’s unobserved, it will. however, if it’s obsered after it’s left the plane but before it hits it’s target, it will not have gone through both slits.”

“agreed….what’s your point?”

“there’s no point. i just think it’s a good idea for a t-shirt.”

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“why don’t you just have breakfast in bed?”

“because i am niether an invalid nor a woman celebrating mother’s day.”

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“let me guess…you have a problem with this.”

“where do i begin?”

“it’s up to you. crazy person’s choice.”

“well first, we don’t have houseguests. frankly, if i could afford the rent, i’d ask you to leave.”

“your friendship means a lot to me as well. what else?”

“well…our earthquake supplies. we have a two man, two day kit!”

“so..?”

“so, if there is an earthquake and the three of us are trapped here, we could be out of food by tomorrow afternoon.”

“i’m sorry, are you suggesting that if we let penny stay here that we might succumb to cannibalism?”

“no one ever thinks it’ll happen until it does.”

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“ok this cereal has lost all of it’s moluecular integrity. i know have a bowl of shredded wheat paste.”

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“well penny you’re always welcome to stay with us.”

“oh terrific. now we’re running acute little b&b.”

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“well it’s all settled then, christy will stay at howard’s, penny can go home, and i will finish watching the last 24 minutes of dr. who; all though at this point it’s now more like ‘dr. why bother’ “.

i stayed home from work today because i am sick.  because of that, i’ve had a lot of time to think (maybe too much).  so today wound up being a day of purging.  or a day of moving on with life.  or a day of letting go of past things and looking towards what could be in the future.  call it what you like.

i deleted my myspace account as well as my ec account.  i cleaned my bulletin board so that it can start fresh and with new ideas, memories, and smiles.  i made a new list of goals and dreams.

those were pretty much all of the physical actions that took place but they symbolized inward emotions and thoughts that needed to be dealt with.  the outward manifestation was a long time coming and needed to happen.

I’m not sure what this means as far as the immediate future is concerned but i do believe that i am on the right track to being happier.

it’s really funny just how true that is.  not that this post is about some earth shattering change of events in my life.  that thought just hit me as very real as i decided to write this evening.

see, i haven’t posted in a while because i was planning on putting together a very large, in depth synopsis of my last major project at work.  we spent the better part of the last two months putting together a ship that was about 8 feet long and 2 feet wide.  with the amount of work that went into it and the transformation from plexiglass ribs to fully painted hull, i had imagined that i would post a long, detailed story of how it all went together complete with pictures at every stage.

now that it’s over, i really just don’t feel like doing it.  :)  the project just doesn’t seem as groundbreaking to me as it was when i started it.  it was fun and i was very pleased with the end result but the way this job works, as soon as one fascinating model is done, there is another one right behind it to be completed.

besides, if i posted everytime i worked on a cool model, we would all get tired of it.

short story is i still love my job and my desk is clean again.

in other happenings, freckles is coming out here to see me in a few days and i couldn’t be more excited!  i don’t have a detailed schedule of what were going to be doing but there is a small list of things that must be accomplished while she is here.  on that list is discussing a friend of hers she is trying to hook me up with.  we also have to find sushi somewhere, watch the matrix, get some friends episodes in, show her my work, stay up late, and sleep in.  it’s going to be an awesome weekend. 

i had my 90 day review at work a couple of weeks ago.  anyone who knows me knows that i am very self critical.  the positives that come out of that are quality work and the urge to achieve perfection in my tasks.  the negatives are that i always doubt the end result of things i do and i live in fear that what i do isn’t good enough for the people who make such judgements.  i feel that i am an asset at my workplace though.  i still feel like i make too many mistakes and work too slow but i am confident that i will grow out of those as time goes on.  i also believe that i have had a positive influence on the environment there.  while trying not to sound big-headed, i have brought an enthusiasm to the place that hasn’t been there in a while from what i can tell.  i have figured out that people seem to shy away from some of the dirtier, more involved projects and i have been giddy with joy when i get them.

i just lost my train of thought.  it’s 1:06 in the morning and i’m kind of tired but i’m waiting for these dvd’s to finish burning.

i know it’s been several weeks since my last post. i have been waiting for something big to blog about and it seemed that nothing was really happening.

i did finish the angel wings i was making though. a friend from work and i started building angel wings for the christmas drama at my church about 3 weeks ago. it all started when the cast went to the prop room to get fitted for costumes and i saw the wings that we had to choose from. there were those little, dainty fairy wings that strap on with the little elastic bands or these huge, 2 inch thick, styrofoam cutouts that are completely flat and had to be held up with a stand so the actor couldn’t move.

i decided that wasn’t even near good enough and that i could make some that would be much better. i shared my vision with clark at work and he got excited and wanted to help so i welcomed the added brain and modeling skills. we spent the next 3 weeks buying feathers (about 1000 total of different sizes), forming fiberglass understructures, and glueing feathers to it. it went through several design changes in the process but the end result is fantastic i think. besides the one picture on the blog, you can view two others at my flickr site.

i also put LEDs on my bike but i’m going to wait to blog about that until i get pictures. it looks amazing as well.

i love my job.

i’ve already given the background on how i got my job so in this post i’ll tell you a little bit about what i do.

an overview of the business is that we build models, miniature scale and full scale trainers, and conceptualize designs.  everything is done in house pretty much.  we have a machine shop with every piece of metal cutting machinery known to man.  in what we call the “high bay” there is a welding section with more gas cylinders than i have had time to count, a sealed and vented paintbooth, a woodworking section for building our own custom shipping crates, and room to build massive, full scale models and trainers.  right now there is an f-22 sitting in there which is being built as a fuel system trainer for the air force.  i work in the low bay (a.k.a. model shop) which is where we do all of our miniature modeling.  i work in there with 3 other guys: fred, john, and mark. we have access to every shape and size of acrylic made, a laser cutting machine, a 3-d printer (not kidding…it prints in plastic), and an assortment of pre-purchased stairs, fences, mall paneling and the like.

we get jobs by bidding on them.  for instance, an oil company may want to propose a new oil rig to be built and they want a detailed scaled model to increase hype or something.  we will bid based on man hours that it takes to finish the job including design, build, and finishing.  so we may allocate 100 hours to build this project.  the less time they give us, the less detail that goes into the model and the less it costs the client.

i went in on monday and basically got shown around the shop again.  i met the guys in the model shop that i would be working with and got shown to my desk.  it was covered with junk (including two microwaves that don’t work) and dust.  anybody who knows me knows that i cannot do any kind of work in a cluttered or dirty setting. so i was in the middle of cleaning it when the vice president of the company walks up to me and starts telling me about the two laser cutting machines that the company owns and how one of them is not working.  he continued by saying that he believes it is the tube that is messed up and has found one on ebay that he thinks may work.  to confirm this, he wants me to take apart this machine and compare the tube in hand to the one on ebay.  this caused me to spend 4 hours taking apart a high powered laser.  muchos fun indeed. 

it turns out that they didn’t match and the machine is actually just an outdated piece of junk now.  after lunch, i put it back together and then bugged the guys to let me put some stuff together.  i did get to glue one item together but the hard work had already been done which is actually building the pieces.  i also got a crash course in autocad from fred.

fred is the oldest of the three guys in the model shop.  i think he is the quietest and easiest to upset.  he pretty much is the only one who runs autocad and the laser machine because he has been doing it the longest and is pretty quick at it.

on tuesday i actually started learning how they do things as far as building is concerned.  i kind of latched onto john that morning.  he has been doing scale modeling for about 20 years and he is incredible.  i’ve seen his portfolio.  unreal.  he told me that he sees me as his retirement.  so he pretty much let me follow him around the entire day and watch how he did his work, what decisions he was faced with, and why he went with whatever course of action he chose.

on wednesday is when i actually started working on things.  i was given a small pulley system to build with the help of john.  we pretty much spent all day wednesday building these things.  i didn’t do a whole lot of the work myself but i did get my hands into it some.  i wound up lasercutting some things myself by designing the pieces in autocad and melting plastic a few times (i was told when i started on monday that if i’m not messing things up, then i’m not working.  they expect me to make mistakes in other words).  but i got the hang of it and turned out some pretty nice pieces.

on thursday, i was given another pulley system and told to build it.  so i spent thursday and friday designing and building it.  it took me two days when really, john could have finished it in about 4-6 hours.  but the exciting thing is that i designed, manufactured, and built the entire thing myself.  i did get his input and approval at certain steps but he never touched the thing except to examine it.

and that’s pretty much my job.  i actually laughed out loud on tuesday when i was glueing something together because i couldn’t believe i was getting paid to do something i would do for free at home at 3 in the morning when i should be sleeping.

i really believe that this is my career choice.  i have retirement plans, insurance, paid holidays, and room to grow in salary.  apparently there is way more money to be made in this field than i thought when i was looking into it.  john didn’t tell me how much he makes but he made sure i knew he does very well.  there is also job security because there aren’t that many young people looking to join this field.  but on top of all of that, it is fun for me.  i get excited about the idea of designing and building miniatures and then being able to learn anything else at the shop that i want.

this is absolutely a dream come true for me.  i couldn’t be happier right now.

i’m not exactly fond of just borrowing other people’s stuff to fill space on my blog. this is theoretically supposed to be about my thoughts and my life. but i guess this is related somehow because i thought it was great. anyway, here’s the video.  my job synopsis will be happening tomorrow evening after i sleep in, do errands, and enjoy my saturday.

i was surfing digg videos a couple of days ago when a video title caught my eye and peaked interest immediately. it made reference to a life-size x-wing rocket that someone had built and launched. so i watched it. here it is for you to enjoy.

i was a little disappointed when it broke apart but still gave mental kudos to the builder on the attempt. then this video popped up several days later.

i love creative people.  i really don’t need to say anymore.  by the way, i’m going to blog about my new job either friday night or saturday.

i’m getting the feeling that i’m not going to be able to make it out to atlanta for the HUB homecoming.  i was really wanting to go out there and spend the weekend with freckles and enjoy seeing all of my friends again.  i was going to stay with rissa’s family but i think her parents are going to be out of town that weekend and so staying at her house is no longer an option.  i wouldn’t mind staying at someone else’s house excpet that i would want to spend most of my time with rissa and i would feel bad staying and someone’s house and then not really spending any time with them.  i would be taking off pretty early saturday morning to go to the homecoming and not getting back til late saturday night, leaving for church sunday morning, anf then flying out that evening. i do have one idea that may work actually.  it just came to me as i was typing this.

i bought an iPhone.  i gave in and went ahead and did it.  it is amazing and i don’t regret it at all.  i am a little fearful that some of the horror stories i’ve heard will come true.  things like the screen not working for very long and such.  but time will tell and we’ll see.  i do think that it doesn’t do some things i think it should do though.  like bluetooth to my computer, old phone, friend’s phone or computer and so on.  i can bluetooth to my headset but that’s it.  i also think it should be able to send pics or music through texts.  i believe that iTunes is to blame for that though.  they are so restrictive on their music that my theory is they don’t want to free up the pathways for people to transfer music.  i also wish it could handle java and other web based scripting.

i think i’m going to stop writing now.  it’s kinda late and i am full of nyquil and when i started typing this seemed like a good idea.  not so much anymore.