Yearly Archives: 2009

Saturday night – spoke too soon

Busy day today..  woke around 8 .. then Diane and I took the dogs for a walk with Tim and his dogs. As we came down to the pond we spotted this magnificent blue heron.  When we finally spooked it too much it flew away on it’s huge wings It looked positively prehistoric.

We dropped the girls off then headed out to David D’s for a whole day of workign on the Time Cycle vehicle for burning man.. We hd a steady stream of people there today to help. Our goal was to get one of the 20 foot wheels assembled.. we got that about half done today.. so tomorrows another all day work days.   Here’s the 4 inch pipe we had bent to make the wheels.

Everyone had a job.. Here’s duane grinding down the inserts that hold the wheel segments together.

Here’s Jerry G. doing the same.

Diane and I worked on cutting the slots out of the spokes. We had some technical difficulties.. but finally mastered it enough to finish nearly  20 spokes from 2″ pipe.

Around  12:30 qwe took a break for lunch on David’s porch which leans out over the New Haven river.. Diane andJen had brought yummy snack food. ! (thanks !)

Next task was to drill 3/4″ holes in the massive hubs.. it was hard going !

Then came the tricky part of starting to assemble the rims, hubs, struts and spokes into the huge wheel. It was hard to get everything to align… Here’s Duane, Homer and Chris scratching their collective heads abotu making things fit ..

Finally, we had a whole half a wheel.. and a whole lot of ideas on how to make the next one easier. We’ll finish this one up tomorrow.

We packed up abotu 6 then headed over to wish Mason a happy 21st.. then off to verizon to pick up a new phone.. My current blackberry needs another replacement. this one will be my 4th !.. They say I must use them hard.. guess I do..  After the phone shop, we made a quick, fun visit to Tom and Bets’. They were having a party for the GIV counselors who’d been staying with them this summer.   They showed us the cool things they’d built including solar cells, solar hot water/shower and a wind generator.Cool projects, cool kids !  Sounded just like The Colony !

That’s about it for the day.. We got some pictured from Gabe’s trip by way of Sue P. here’s Mt Hood, where Gabe’s been snowboarding this week..

..and here’s a cool bus they saw on the way..

Speaking of Sam… I was takign a bath yesterday when th exhaust fan in the bathroom clicked on once, then turned off,… then turned on again.. tehn off again.. then stayed off the entire night.. while the switch was firmly off the whole time.. Just Sam saying “hi” ..

I’ll say ‘gnite”.. gnite all ! gnite Sam
-me

Friday night – trickling in

It’s been an interesting day. I have been on the phone with work calls from 8AM until 6PM with only one 30 minute break.. Nearly every one of those conversations began with a someone making a comment about The Colony. The good thing is most folks I talk to seem to have liked the first episode of the show.. the maybe not so good part is that nearly everyone wants to talk about my shower scene. I’m guessing that’s going to be with me for a very long time 🙂 

As much as I’m kinda shy and embarrassed about that part of the show, I am pretty jazzed that people seem to like at least the first installment. I particularly like hearing that some folks are learning something from the show. The blogs have quite a few comments about the water filter we built.. several people said that they are  glad to know how to build such a thing. In that spirit I thinks will really like some of the builds that we take on later in the show. I also like seeing that we’re challenging peoples preconceptions about our professions.. I’m hoping that the three of us that are engineers (Me, Morgan. Vlad) are hopefully going to come off as more than one dimensional dilbert clones. . As one blogger put it.
  

Thursday night – naked santa claus

Oh man.. was today funny. I got so much good natured ribbing today about the last scene in the Colony first episode. To hear people talk you’d think that they never considered standing naked in front of 1.7 million TV sets (which is what I believe our audience was on Tuesday). I was… actually I still am… wondering if I put anyone off by doing that. I honestly didn’t think that scene would ever make it to TV  . I was so disgustingly dirty that day that when the rain started.. I didn’t even think twice.. I ran to the door,  threw off my clothes , peeled off my mike and ran outside.. I didn’t see the cameras until I turned around…. I quickly grabbed a sheet of plastic and continued to let the water cut through the grime. I was a little embarrassed..but I have to tell you .. it was worth it.. It was the first time I’d been clean in 4 days of heat, dust and LA river water.  I’ve never had a shower feel that good before….

One funny side effect of my impromptu  strip show is that I started getting called ‘naked santa claus guy’ in the forum about the show.  I really like that name !

Hmmmm.. not much else new to report tonight .. it was a nice quite day.. I really like that, too.. More tomorrow. Nite folks, nite Sam…

-me

ps. Heard a cool Sam story today. A friend of a friend of ours was recently visitng San Diego. He was walking down the street wearing his Sam shirt, A car pulled up and roled down his window and asked ‘is that a sam cohn shirt ?;.. the guy said yes.. the driver gave a big thumbs up and took off !  That boy gets around ..!

Wednesday night – trying not to look


Very funny day.. We left LA this morning on a 6:50 flight and already I was starting to get a ton of email. facebook, blog  and twitter feedback about the show. The shows casting producer.. and our spiritual guru and cast shrink Kristi has warned us all about getting too wrapped up in reading blogs and reviews about the show.  She says its not healthy.. you’ll always find folks who don’t liek what you did. I’m trying to keep to that.. but damn it’s hard. It’s so interesting reading stuff that’s out there.. Last night I was watching the Twitter feed for stuff about the show.. it was running almost 50:1 positive to negative.. but it was still hard ot read those negatives.. Same thing on Facebook. there are soem great comments on my Facebook and on the FB page for the show.

Some of the feedback and comments were pretty funny.. 

One reviewer called the show “preventative entertainment”..
Many on twitter called me ‘the naked dude”.   onr friend called me the naked Santa claus guy
One person mentioned that my shower scene was  far scarier than the shower scene in Psycho.
(everyone wants to talk about that last scene.. I’d be mortally embarrassed if I didn’t  think it was so funny !)

So far the reviews are pretty good.  some mixed but mostly very positive. I did see that we were the fifth biggest show on all cable last night with 1.2M households.. I guess that’s a good start.. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that folks will continue to like it..

I’m trying not to think of it right now.. I have so much on my plate it work and elsewhere that I can’t be obsessing about the show now.

So in that spirit.. I’m changing topic.. We had a productive burning man meeting tonight. Homer and dave have the bent pipe segments required to build the 20 foot diameter wheels for the Time Cycle.

Dave spent the evenign cutting out the spoke brackets out of 3/8″ steel using his magic water jet.. What an amazing tool. Here it is cuting a bracket.

Everyone was pitching in. Ben worked on the ski lift chairs and then did soem griniding on the brackets in prep for welding.

Seth. Diane and I held the pipes and brackets while Homer MIG welded them on. At this pace, we’re hoping to assemble the wheels this Saturday.. It should be fun !

Speaking of fun.. Sue P.. just sent us this picture pf Gabe with friends Dylan and Matt up in High Cascade in Oregon. Gabe’s been calling every day to tell us how it’s going.So far hes’ having a great time.. Man do I miss him !

OK.. I’m falling asleep. so I better sign off. More tomorrow. Gnite all. Gnite Sam !
-me