Shakespeare and Spam

I don't believe it...got a bill from my server for extra traffic. Great, I though, more web traffic, means more hits right? Um, no, this was email. "You mean this extra 8 bucks a month is to cover the email? But 90% of it is spam!" It was delivered nonetheless....and therefore you are stuck with it! (actually, I deleted 69 messages a moment ago, leaving four real email messages!
I don't think thats right.......lets tweak the spam filter up a bit! There, that should work!

But honestly, eight bucks a month! That is, like, an extra hundred bucks a year just so I can hear how the Hoodia Plant will...hmmm...what WILL it do? Thats over and above my regular half a grand a year service. OMG!

I will have to do something about this!


On a related note, has any of my loyal readers downloaded a "re-director" while blog surfing? Last week, it seemed that every second blog I surfed into was a variant on a porn site. They were interesting (No, not in THAT way!)because they could not be bookmarked, and when I tried to cut and paste the URL's into a complaint letter, my Windows would crash! This happened twice, and again on a Norton scan...so I do not believe it to be a co-incidence!
(A dozen times through with Adaware, Spycatcher, and Norton (oooh..it didn't like Norton or RegCleaner!) seems to have cleared it.



-------------------------------- Shakespeare on Spam (by Anonymous)

These several airy unnamed messengers
Do daily cram my inbox bursting full;
And with a battery of promises (Of manhood's lengthening, safe and natural;
Of sites whereat strange couplings may be seen,
Or beauties nubile as the law allows;
Of meetings with old schoolmates, none of whom I've spared a brace of thoughts for these ten years)
Make sifting out my correspondences A passing trial.
O, take care, my friends!
The rambling jest you send has like been seen Ten times, forwarded by some jackanapes;
And sooth, I'll not contribute to a chain
But risk the lapse in fortunes an I don't.
Of all conveniences, these are most meet:
The Bulk folder,
"Select All,"
and "Delete."
_________________Please help support BreakTheChain.org Visit the Chain-Breaker's Gift Shop

Helmets

Here are a couple of rough and ready helmets I am sending to Chicago and Wisconsin, respectively. Not by best work, but then, these are NOT the haute couture of armour making! Actually, I didn't like the size of the holes for breathing in the bottom helmet (imagine breathing through that!) and made them a little bigger since this pic was taken. The brass is a Scottish Thistle.

I was supposed to go across the border to to ship these today...I usually combine my trips over with stuff with picking up stuff Stateside. However, UPS (the USELESS PARCEL SERVICE) seems to sending my incoming packages all over the Eastern United States! Fascinating! I'll go Friday. Instead of going to see Harry Potter.

Steel buying Day

Monday. Time to get out and purchase some steel. Yesterday, I had to make a decision...either I pay 25 bucks to the dump to take all that brush in the trailer, or should I just burn it....and put the 25 bucks to a local kid to haul the brush down to the burn site.
So, needless to say, I lost my 1 tonne challenge...and contributed about another half tonne or so of Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere! The local kid now has some gas money, and I have an empty trailer. I also have about 10 kilograms of wet charcoal....

Anyway.... just for fun, a friend of mine sent me a pic of one of the Canadian Sea Kings. As most Canadians know, the Sea Kings have been flying longer than most airmen have been alive, and over time, have developed many flaws and cracks. A close examination of the Sea King helicopter will show that some of the cracks are quite visible, even to the unaided eye!

click on the picture to see a larger version.

Now, I'm outa here...off to pick up some 16 gauge.

Confidence

One of my favorite columnists in Toronto wrote about the latest kerfluffel in the schools there. It seems that a girl was sexually and emotionally abused by a small gang in her school. Not unexampled...though certainly the events were extreme. However, just to stir the pot, the parents of all these little darlings are grasping at the race straw instead of pointing the finger of blame at their own bad parenting. Hey, its a gang..it just happened to be black, okay! And its a "small G" sort of gang...the kind that forms in every high school in the nation, not really a "gang", but rather a group of kids who all sort of hang together. (thats a gang....duuh). And this led me to wonder about the nature of groups, gangs, and high school clusters in general. Lots of good books on the subject.
The big difficulty with these perps is that they had no idea where to draw the line. I suspect most of them are basically good kids, but they crossed several moral, ethical and legal lines in their behavior. This bahavior went on for what..a year and a half!


Great column...."follow my rules and you won't get expelled". Yup, that about sums it up!
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Blizzard_Christina/2005/11/16/1308676.html

As a boy going to school in the late '70s here in Ontario, I was heavily targeted by bullies. I went through years of soul searching, wondering why the teachers couldn't stop this nonsense. Like most boys, I skinned my knuckles a few times, got into a bit of trouble, got out of it, and eventually graduated. It was a traumatic time. However.........after I was grown up, I looked back on what was a pretty much miserable time, and tried to figure out how I could have done it better. Your contention that even the teachers have an unclear idea of just what behaviour constitutes bullying resonated, and I believe now that my misery was largely self induced. That as a boy of 15, I knew nothing about real abuse, real injury, real death, and reacted to unimportant things as if they were important.
I didn't think so at the time, but I was wrapped in cotton wool, and I had to make my own stressful environment. A very artificial environment. An environment where fighting, drugs, sex, rebellion and angst played a part, and the most important part was our over-reaction to what amounted to mild stimuli....a fight because somebody thought I wore the wrong colour socks for instance. This was pretty low level stress, but the reactions were all there! (reactions? yes, we had suicides, overdoses, pregnancies in our school...these are pretty severe reactions!) Its interesting looking back on it as an adult, and wondering "What was I thinking to fall for THAT!"
Most adults learn to cope with "jackasses" in high school. No point in expelling them all, or you won't have ANY students left! My school expelled the problem students, and their little "lieutenants" just stepped into their shoes! So there WILL be low level violence, (shoving in line, stealing pencils!) In fact, my dear old Ma always said that you didn't go to high school to learn Math, you went there to learn how to deal with the twits of the world! And maybe, just maybe, to learn how NOT be a twit yourself. If this was true though, how come it isn't on the curriculum? Something like "coping with angst 101"? Or, "the motorcycle, the road, the bridge abutment and you?" At least they taught us to drive! So you have to put up with the low level b.s., clamp down hard on the high level b.s. like riding motorcycles down the hallways of the school and gangstas.
I know, radical idea, encouraging the low level "violence" (boys interaction with boys, duuuh!) in order to give them the tools to cope. But NO! They drop the boxing courses. They drop the wrestling courses. They drop the Judo courses. They drop the shop courses (we made a hot rod in MY shops class!) They make zero tolerance policies on pocket knives and name calling. Is this sensible? Its not like this is a new problem here dudes!
Same students left high school where they terrorized the teachers, drove like maniacs, drank like fish, smoked up like Cheech and Chong, bonked like minks, and went into adult life. I went into the military with these guys, and discovered that all the stupid things I thought were important were, well, stupid. Can you imagine if any of them threatened a military instructor with a knife like what happened to a teacher friend of mine in Toronto last May! Oh My Dog! There is a difference though....the military treats people like adults, the school system treats people like high school students. Wrapping them in cotton wool.
(insert hit single "I'm an Adult Now!" here....play to fade...)

Snow!

Photo courtesy of http://othersiderainbow.blogspot.com/
(a fellow Saskatchewanite with a MUCH more interesting blog than mine!)

Okay, so it isn't quite so dramatic as this! But it IS a little annoying to look out and see an inch of the white stuff out there! Thank goodness my commute is a short one! I think the top picture is of Elgin Street in Ottawa. Typical Canadian going to work in the snow!

The problem with working at home is that actually you can NEVER leave work! There are times when I would just like to say "fuggit", I'm outa here! Got for a beer with the guys after work! Not an option...the problem will still be there when I get back! Another thing which I didn't think would be a problem is that there is no boss here to tell me to get to work! Who knew I needed that to get up off my fat behind and get things done! My self discipline has gone out the window! No immediate rewards, all I get for "being good" is sore feet, aching hands, and dust up my nose!
Ah well, a problem identified is a problem half solved. Now to get away from this keyboard and get to work. Boy, the boss is a real twit this morning! (Oh, and Ovonia Red, I have to agree with you about HMT!

30th Anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmumd FitsGerald

In Nov. 10, 1975, the Iron Core Carrier Edmund Fitzgerald went down in a storm just off Whitefish point in Lake Superior. The following year, an up and coming Canadian folk singer wrote this song, which has become a great Canadian classic, which has kept the story alive ever since. November 11th, for me, is doubly piognant because every year there are fewer and fewer vets at the centotaph, I stand parade with them, and think about families left behind, both on the sea and here at home. The men of the Edmund Fitz died struggling to keep their ship afloat in the face of too much adversity. they failed, and their families pay the price, same as my grandmother wept when her boy (the one I was named after) didn't come back from the Scheldt.

If somebody can find the mp3 and post the link to the tune below, I would be grateful. Every Canadian that reads this blog knows how the tune goes, but perhaps some of the US visitors would appreciate the talents of the incomparable Gordon Lightfoot.

Here is a link to the ship, and its history....http://www.mhsd.org/fleet/O/On-Columbia/fitz/default.htm



The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee'
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?
The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was the witch of November come stealin'.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the Gales of November came slashin'.
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind.
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'.
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At Seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
May have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!

with feeling from Gordon Lightfoot

Collaboration

Got a kind of interesting call last week...a fellow who ran a tai chi club and wondered why I didn't carry this particular brand of Tai Chi swords in stock. Actually I DO carry that brand, but not those particular swords...they are expensive niche market things, there are 4 different models, each in a different length of blade. For a guy who was awfully fussy about his tools, he didn't seem to know what he wanted! We discussed balance, customizing, and all sorts of pie in the sky ideas. Several emails back and forth, a lot of ideas and plans. His last words to me were "don't bring them in on my account, I found a store near to me which carries them." So those two hours making emails are like, totally gone from my life!

A day later, I get a call in my shop from a nice fellow who co-incidentely enough has begun studying Tai Chi. We had met a couple of years ago, and talked sword making, which I do. This fellow is in the trade as a millwright, and so we can talk "technical". He waxed lyrical on how wonderful the sport is, and how you can't get a proper TaiChi sword, and so he decided to try to make them. I asked him who his Sifu was, and guess what? Same guy who was wasting my time last week! Seems the Sifu is getting this fellow to look into making his swords for him. So the guy naturally asks the only person he knows who actually MAKES the things. Great, a collaboration.

So I chat with him for a bit, while my employees have downed tools, and talking and joking amongst themselves so as to not interrupt my phone call (clean up your work stations ya bums!) and the subject of money comes up. Seems his Sifu doesn't like the imported swords, and wants to have a sword specific to his club. Students will be required to purchase that sword. (you know, mine will be 500 bucks, the imports will be 100 bucks eh?) So I asked this nice millwright fellow how much he thought his employers would charge for tooling and such to make the swords, it cost ME about 4 grand. He was hoping to use mine! Ahhhh....it is becoming clear. He doesn't have the money. His Sifu doesn't have the money, but he wants a custom sword.

I am to "invest" 4 to 5 thousand bucks in machine tool costs to make swords which "might" be good enough for a TaiChi club to pick up. The slightest little problem in balance, fit, finish, or any other whim on his part would leave me with a pile of "rejected", and therefore unsaleable swords. You know, this happened to me once before! A Mr. David Cvet did much the same thing to me a few years ago, and then dropped me over an imagined defect. This would be different how?

Hey the story isn't over yet....stay tuned!

Cats

funny....tried to put this pic into the last post, but it wouldn't go. Anyway, here it is. I thought the chop sticks on the top of the cage to be a nice touch......

Cats....

Nothing special to blog about today...just finishing up helmets, getting ready for the season. Funny thing, this time of year, things seem to be picking up. I now have "Three" hours of work a day in my shop to keep up with the demand! I dunno, will have to be vary careful to keep those prices high, and stop advertising if I want to keep my slack and lazy lifstyle intact. I must remember to take a page out of my neighbour's cat's book...Sleep as much as you can, keep people awake all night, yup, sounds like a good life to me. Cept for the "eat rhodents" part.

English Wheel! Well, Almost....

Here are some pics of the frame I got Steve to weld up for me. Thank you Gary for the plans.... You will have to click on these images to see them full size I believe.

As you can see, it is essentially a great big "C" shape, up on caster wheels. The upper truck is sitting on top in the first picture...it is just sitting there, waiting for me to get a nice big old eight inch flat steel wheel. The bottom truck is not even there, but it will look much like the top truck, but will hold different shaped wheels depending on how I want the metal to look. it is a hand tool, and the way it works is this.....if I were to trap a wrinkled piece of metal between two rollers, it would flatten that metal out. If the bottom roller were to be rounded, like a bowling ball, the sheet of steel would find itself becoming hollowed out, like the inside of a motorcycle tank.

You can also see how excruciatingly cluttered my shop is! Well, the English Wheel frame is the big blue C shaped object in the centre! Just because, I mounted a saw set on it....best thing I ever found for holding steel sheet while you are filing the corners. It may not stay there though.


I'll post more pictures on this site as I finish building this tool, and as I learn to use it.

Road Block.....Head

Hunt Club road in Ottawa is a divided 4 lane 50 mph highway artery that goes right across the bottom of the city. Lots and lots of traffic, esp. at rush hour. When a guy is stopped in the right hand lane, and creating a bottle neck, I get really nervous. Why has the guy stopped "there"? Is there an accident perhaps? Is there something I don't know about? I stopped behind him because, well, there was no way to change to the left lane safely. Flicked on my signal, and waited for a break in the traffic.
Dumb ass right behind me peals out around me and the guy in front of me, blazing his horn! Its all my fault! He will be a little delayed getting to his donut shop. A few more cars pass on the left, and a few more dickheads lean on their horn as they pass. Finally, a break in traffic. I carefully move past the stopped car and see what the problem is....an injured deer, her leg folded under her, looking at the traffic going past. The guy causing the problem...was stopped...maybe he hit the deer, maybe he was just keeping it from getting run over. He had wisely left the vehicle!
You know, when there is an obstruction in the road, and the right lane is blocked, maybe there is a reason why! Honestly you bozo's who leaned on their horns and stamped on their long skinny pedals, did you get your licence in a Cracker Jacks box? What if that deer was startled by your stupid horn and stumbled up and into your fender? My oh my.....and you call yourselves adults!

Sorry...don't feel like joking right now!

Acrostic

I have always felt that I wanted something really nice on my tomestone...like "A Great Humanitarian" (innacurate) "A Lover of Fine Wine" (unlikely, though true), or even "My Wife TOLD Me It Was A Dangerous Snake, but Did I Listen....NOOOOO!" (My wife's favorite). This fellow John seems to have the right idea. A philosophy of life, and a philosophy of death. My oh my, can you imagine having that tombstone over you for all eternity?

This is one of the finest acrostics I have ever seen. Even better than the male deer as described by South Tower Armouring Guild.

Flexi pavement...

Now THIS is an interesting product! Found it while blogging http://www.ecosmartinc.com/catpavespecial.php. It is a recycled rubber product. Water goes right through it. It wears well. It is non slip. I wonder if it could be used as juitsu mats. Comes in several colours, can be used outside, and is reasonably inexpensive at under 8 bucks Canadian a square foot.

It is probably too heavy to use for armour. But I am thinking about padding for under the anvil...might cut the noise down a little!

Brenda, Shayne and Bill

The four of us....

Of course, I declined to wear a mask that night.....trusting to my own good looks...

Brenda's Hand to eye co-ordination stew....