Father Frank Perkovich Presents Songs & Hymns from the Polka Mass
The Polka Mass? I am not sure I want to know. Scott from Post-Hip found this.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Chrysler Sebring Photos
Engine fully assembled and ready to go in.
The jack would not raise the engine high enough, so we used the engine hoist to lower the car. We go the two to meet somewhere in the middle.
When we dropped the engine, the steering column simply slid apart. Putting the engine back in, we align the stub from the steering rack with the hole in the firewall. Then we raised the engine up. The steering column did not complain, and we had plenty of other bits to worry about. Today I thought we ought to check, and surprise, surprise, the steering wheel spins merrily without turning anything. As you can see in the picture, the two telescoping sections of steering column completely ignored each other. Fortunately, with a little pushing and prodding we were able to wrestle the rear suspension cross member far enough to allow the two pieces to connect. We did have to loosen a dozen big bolts, but the engine stayed right where it was, which was very good. Here is how it is supposed to look.
Acetylene, or Out! Dang bolt!
When I was in high school I lived on a farm, an apple orchard actually, in Ohio, and on this farm, in one of the barns we found a ten-gallon-sized steel drum with a Union Carbide logo on the side. It was half full of rocks. The rocks were calcium carbide, and if you dropped one in water it would give off acetylene gas. We got a few good bangs out of it. I don't know why it was there, and I am pretty sure it was still there and still half full when we left.
Once upon a time I heard a rumor that acetylene tanks were full of acetone which made them really heavy, like they weren't heavy enough all ready. Supposedly you could store more acetylene by dissolving it in acetone than you could by just pumping it into the tank.
Today (two weeks ago actually) we were over at Jack's house using his oxy-acetylene torch to remove the previously mentioned uncooperative bolts from the exhaust header, and Jack mentions that acetylene tanks are full of balsa wood because acetylene is explosive under pressure. Okay, that explosive bit is weird, but back up just a second. How you could weld a steel tank around a big chunk of balsa-wood without burning it to bits?
All these rumors got me curious about acetylene, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found some very interesting stuff. I collected the interesting bits on a single page for your reading pleasure.
We tried just heating up the broken bolts and then drilling, but we had no better results than John and I got the other day using a propane torch. Next we tried an E-Z-Out, because Jack had some, but that went nowhere. Then we got out the cutting torch and burned out the remains of the bolts.
Cutting with a torch is a tricky business. It requires a steady hand and the ability to understand what you see. I think both of these come from practice, and I haven't used a torch since I don't know when, so I was a little rusty. I got the job done without destroying the flange, so good enough.
When you are cutting, you are looking through very dark glasses. This is to protect your eyes from the very bright light of the oxy-acetylene flame. But what you really want to see is the steel, which to start with is only illuminated by the light from the torch. But it quickly starts to glow red, and this red light is your clue as to what is going on. Do you have a big enough puddle to start cutting? Or is that only a fragment hanging in the flame? Pushing the go button too soon and your cut won't start. When the cut does start you have to be Johnny-on-spot, ready to start moving the torch in the direction you want to cut. Mistime that and you simply get a small notch and get to start the heating portion all over. It takes practice to be any good at it.
Jack's father worked in the shipyards during WWII cutting steel with a torch, 8 hours a day, five days a week for four years. The thickest thing he ever cut was a 24 inch diameter propeller shaft.
P.S. Google Documents has forgotten how to format a page of text to display on a computer screen, so I stuffed my acetylene story on my new-ish Google web page.
P.P.S. ahab showed me a trick to display Google Documents. So here's the link if you want the printer-ready layout.
Once upon a time I heard a rumor that acetylene tanks were full of acetone which made them really heavy, like they weren't heavy enough all ready. Supposedly you could store more acetylene by dissolving it in acetone than you could by just pumping it into the tank.
Today (two weeks ago actually) we were over at Jack's house using his oxy-acetylene torch to remove the previously mentioned uncooperative bolts from the exhaust header, and Jack mentions that acetylene tanks are full of balsa wood because acetylene is explosive under pressure. Okay, that explosive bit is weird, but back up just a second. How you could weld a steel tank around a big chunk of balsa-wood without burning it to bits?
All these rumors got me curious about acetylene, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found some very interesting stuff. I collected the interesting bits on a single page for your reading pleasure.
 |
| E-Z Outs |
We tried just heating up the broken bolts and then drilling, but we had no better results than John and I got the other day using a propane torch. Next we tried an E-Z-Out, because Jack had some, but that went nowhere. Then we got out the cutting torch and burned out the remains of the bolts.
Cutting with a torch is a tricky business. It requires a steady hand and the ability to understand what you see. I think both of these come from practice, and I haven't used a torch since I don't know when, so I was a little rusty. I got the job done without destroying the flange, so good enough.
When you are cutting, you are looking through very dark glasses. This is to protect your eyes from the very bright light of the oxy-acetylene flame. But what you really want to see is the steel, which to start with is only illuminated by the light from the torch. But it quickly starts to glow red, and this red light is your clue as to what is going on. Do you have a big enough puddle to start cutting? Or is that only a fragment hanging in the flame? Pushing the go button too soon and your cut won't start. When the cut does start you have to be Johnny-on-spot, ready to start moving the torch in the direction you want to cut. Mistime that and you simply get a small notch and get to start the heating portion all over. It takes practice to be any good at it.
Jack's father worked in the shipyards during WWII cutting steel with a torch, 8 hours a day, five days a week for four years. The thickest thing he ever cut was a 24 inch diameter propeller shaft.
P.S. Google Documents has forgotten how to format a page of text to display on a computer screen, so I stuffed my acetylene story on my new-ish Google web page.
P.P.S. ahab showed me a trick to display Google Documents. So here's the link if you want the printer-ready layout.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Tumblr Does Not Like CMYK
Just for grins, I opened a Tumblr account and posted a few of my pictures there. Then I tried to post one of Cedric Delsaux's photos, and Tumblr choked on it. After going back and forth with the Tumblr help desk for a while it came out that the picture was encoded using the CMYK color model instead of the more usual RGB (Red Green Blue). I was surprised, because I hadn't done anything to cause this. I did a screen capture and MSPaint to crop it, and I may have used Picasa to trim it further, and none of them complained about it being some alien artifact.
A little poking around and I find some stories that lend credence to Tumblr's claims, but no actual proof. I still don't have any first hand evidence that the photo is using CMYK. If I had some real photo editing software, like Photoshop, they might be able to tell me, but nothing I have has said boo.
A little poking around and I find some stories that lend credence to Tumblr's claims, but no actual proof. I still don't have any first hand evidence that the photo is using CMYK. If I had some real photo editing software, like Photoshop, they might be able to tell me, but nothing I have has said boo.
Heaven with Cate Blanchett & Giovanni Ribisi
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| Heaven with Cate Blanchett & Giovanni Ribisi |
The movie starts off with helicopter flight simulation, someone is training to fly a helicopter. The sequence ends with the instructor telling the student that you can't just fly straight up forever, which reminds me of a film I saw a long time ago that ends with a helicopter taking off vertically and flying straight up until it disappears, but that couldn't be this movie, because nothing else is familiar, except, wait a minute, haven't we seen that guy before? Why, yes we have. That guy turns out to be Giovanni Ribisi and he has been in a bunch of films (86 according to IMDB) and we have seen a bunch of them, like:
- Public Enemies (Johnny Depp plays John Dillinger)
- Flight of the Phoenix (the remake)
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (the best movie ever!)
- Gone in 60 Seconds (the remake with Nicholas Cage)
- Boiler Room (where he goes from his own little gambling house to sleazy stock dealing)
- Saving Private Ryan (where he says "Hey, think about the poor bastard's mother.")
There is a very clever escape, and now I am beginning to catch a glimmer of having seen this movie before. There is revenge, flight, and then penance. They both get all their hair cut off. No big deal for Giovanni, he's a man, men wear their hair as short as they want, but Cate! OMG! All your hair! It is an affecting scene, even for a tough guy like me.
By now I know we have seen it before and it ends exactly as I foretold. I just didn't expect this to be the movie.
But what about the drugs that started this whole thing? I don't think drugs should be illegal, mostly because I think that making drugs illegal creates more problems than it solves. Sometimes I wonder what society would be like if drugs were legal. Would we have a nation of stoners? Dope fiends? What we would do for plots for our movies? I know alcoholics can become so addicted that they will drink themselves to death. Can the same thing happen with heroin? Of course, not everybody who drinks becomes an alcoholic. Not everyone who tries an an addictive drug like heroin, crack or meth becomes an addict. I imagine that some people are more susceptible than others. It would be nice if there were some kind of simple test, like a blood test, that could tell you how susceptible you were to becoming addicted. But maybe it's not a physical thing at all, maybe it's entirely mental, and we are a long way from figuring out peoples brains work. We might know the generalities, but how an individual's brain actually functions, I don't see that happening for a long, long time. Maybe not ever.
Update: One of the sites in this movie was Orvieto which I recognized because I was looking at it a little over a year ago. I don't remember why, probably because it was referenced in something I was reading. Anyway, I collected a several photos or the place, and here they are:
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| Orvieto |
Update September 2021 replaced Google Drive link with Google Photos link.
Update January 2024 replaced missing image.
Romney -- "Corporations are People Too"
California Bob attempts to interpret politalk:
Actually, I didn't hear what Romney said. I seem to remember that he ran for President last time, and he might be from New England, or maybe it's Michigan. Or Texas. Somewhere East of the Rockies in any case.
We all heard Romney's statement. Interestingly, I first heard it one context, then re-visited it from another. And the two contexts gave me a completely different picture.
The actual exchange was something like:
Romney: "There are two ways to fix the deficit. One is to raise taxes on people."
Rabble: "Raise taxes on the corporations &%$#*@) !!!!!!!"
Romney: "Corporations are people too."
The first time I heard it, I thought Romney was saying that we should increase revenue to balance the budget (I should have known better). And that sounded to me like this:
Romney: "There are two ways to fix the deficit. One reasonable approach would be to raise revenue, by raising taxes on people."
Rabble: "Raise taxes on corporations &%$#*@) !!!!!!!"
Romney: "Corporations are people too. So my suggestion stands: a reasonable approach is to raise taxes, including those on corporations."
...and I didn't see anything controversial about this.
It turns out that Romney was using this line of thought to denounce tax hikes. So on second visit, it sounded like this:
Romney: "There are two ways to fix the deficit. One crazy, destructive way, the solution offered by tax and spend liberals, is to raise taxes on people (sneer)."
Rabble: "Raise taxes on corporations &%$#*@) !!!!!!!"
Romney: "Corporations are people too. And I will fight to protect corporations from any and all tax hikes."
And he came out sounding like a corporate apologist.
Exact same words, different picture. There are lessons here about prejudice, naivete, hidden agendas, rushing to judgement, context, common sense, etc. It would seem that pre-knowledge of a person and their agenda informs your interpretations of their behavior.
Actually, I didn't hear what Romney said. I seem to remember that he ran for President last time, and he might be from New England, or maybe it's Michigan. Or Texas. Somewhere East of the Rockies in any case.
Retail Oil
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| Castrol Motor Oil |
Going into the store (O'Reilly Auto Parts) I see a poster advertising Castrol motor oil and Fram Filters, I think big whoop, they probably still cost double what the generics do. Then I get inside and I find that the generic oil is $4 (FOUR DOLLARS!) a quart. They have five quart jugs which are handy, but there is no discount for buying the economy size.
I pick up a Fram filter because it's easy, they have one of those little electronic selection jobbies. They have some other brands, but nothing that looks like the discount generic, so the $4 Fram filter is fine.
I get to the checkout counter and guy tells me I can save $4 (FOUR DOLLARS!) by getting the Castrol oil instead of O'Rilley's house brand. The Castrol five quart jug is normally $24, so they are knocking off $8. Castrol must really want to sell some oil.
Yesterday I drove by one of those quickie oil change places and they were advertising oil changes for $18. Times must be tough. They must be counting on selling you some windshield wipers.
I think oil is somewhere North of $50 a barrel these days, but less than a hundred. A barrel holds something like 40 gallons, so if you buy it in bulk, a gallon costs about $2. Then you get to refine it, filter it, add a teaspoon of magic goo, and then bottle it. By this time it's now about $1 a quart, or $4 a gallon, same as gasoline. But for every gallon of motor oil they sell, the oil companies sell like 300* gallons of gasoline. So multiply by a factor of 4** to compensate for the smaller volume and you get $4 a quart, or $16 a gallon. Huh. Imagine that.
* 6,000 miles (distance between oil changes, which takes about a gallon of oil) divided by 20 miles per gallon for gasoline.
** Double the price for each factor of ten in difference in volume. A rule of thumb that I just made up.
September 2018 replaced missing picture.
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