Monthly Archives: October 2011

Sunday night – hands on

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11:30 and I just came in to the house dirty, burned, cut and with metal splinters.. and happy.. very happy. In keeping with one of my new year resolutions I’ve been trying to finish more project that have been lurking in the back of my mind.. or my lab for a long time.

 

 

Today was a double bonus.. I went over and picked up m small tesla coil.. longer term readers amy remember that I built that coil throught the fall and winter of last year.. after much struggling with the design I finally had the the thing up and unning.. It was n’t as powerful as my older coil.. but t ways about a fith of the older one.   .. Anywaythe new coild basically self distructed during one of it’s maden demo runs.. a large spark from the top must have hit the promary and it took out essentially every bit of electronics in the unit. I was pretty bummed.. I intended to rebuild it.. but hadn’t gotten aroudn to it . Last summer my biddy Soctt.. whoa’s an absolute genius and a tesla coil whisperer to boot.. offered to rebuild the elctronics for me.. He too struggled with the design (we’ve based it on a commercail desing and even bought the kit with boards an components).. he got it running ony to have it fail twice more..  It keeps blowing 3 0 dollar transistors.. no fun/ He finally reassembled it.. and turned the power way down.. .. so no 4 foot sparks.. but soem nice loud 2 foot sparks wich will have to do for now..  It’s nice to have it back !  Thanks Scott !

 

I came home from Scott’s in time to do a 2 hour Feldenkreis class our friend Uwe was holding in the yoga space.. as soon as all the blissed out folks from the class left.. i went downstairs and started cutting  welding again.. My goal was to complete the set of legs for the tables that Debra and Diane have designed.. well.. .I wasn’t thinking all that clearly.. I did two of them correctly.. and messed up the other two (instead of making 4 14″x16″ leges I made 2 14″x16″ legs 1 14″x14″ and one 16″x 16″.) . I forgot to measure and welded up the wrong sizes.. D-oh !. After dinner I went back in there and corrected my mistake.. Now we have 4 table legs ready to be mounted to the two slabs from our old maple.. Gabe’s going to take the meal over to Chirs’s and sandblast them to give them some texture.. then we’re going to let them rust a bit to give them a more natural patina.. then varnish them.. Should be cool !

 

 

OK. now I gotta sleep… more tomorrow..

 

Night all, nite sam

-me

 

Saturday night – metal

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in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on doing more and talking less… I’ve been clicking off a bunch of hands on projects that have been in the back of my mind gathering dust.. I’ve also been taking on some new stuff that I know I can get done in short order .. Deb and Diane are designing on some tables that will be made from some slices we took out of a big maple that we had to take down a few years back. Last week they bought me a bunch of steel to use to fashion the legs..

This morning Gabe and I worked to cut the 2×1 tubular steel and start welding the boxes that will be the legs. It was really fun working with Gabe.. he’s a very good craftsman..

 

Gabe did most of the cutting. once all the pieces were cut.. we ground them down and trued them up.

then it was time to weld. Gabe and I both took a few practice runs to get the welder dialed in.

here’s gabe griding down one of his test pieces..

one down 3 to go tomorrow..

tonight a bunch of us went to an art show at Heron Dance.. Heron Dance isrun by Rod MacIver.. an artist and writer in Monkton. he does very interesting work.. he sends out a near daily newsletter with his watercolors and his journal entries. Diane occasionally sends me one.. I’ve found several of them quite profound.  The show was nice.. I liked the art and enjoyed speakign with Rod and his guests..

Afterwords, we all went back to Jen and Tim’s for dinner and SamStones making.. It always feels good to come together to make stones for Sam.

ok.. now to bed.. I need to gt up early to finsh the welding.. More tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

 

Friday night – Haunted forest

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It’s almost 2AM.. I’m finally sitting down to blog after a busy day.. I’d planned to take the day off.. but ended up working until 5:00 ..

I was psyched because tonight Gabe and I and several of his friends were going to do Scareforce at the Haunted forest. It’s been a family tradition for abut 10 years..w e dress in black and then scare the @#$% out of folks going through the trails of the haunted forest.   We got there about 6 to find out that they were already full for the night. I had to use my full Jedi powers to get us a place in the forest..

 

First stop for me was to check out Project x and see if it was running.. it wasn’t. it’s arm had fallen off yesterday and none had fixed it.. we bolted and tiewraped it back on.. I tried to repair the pneumatics.. but one of the hoses appeared damaged.. even so.. we got the thing working.. and it performed quite well. They have it set up behind a wall. it’s really effective as it comes up and talks. They have a GREAT guy on the voice.. very convincing.

 

being here brought back so many good memories  of being here with all three boys.. all three kids were in scare force. Max was an actor.. and I believe  dinae , max and sam were all guides at one time or another.  I stuck a AmaStone on the beast because I was thinking of sam

 


here’s our fearless crew.. Ben and John and another gentleman .

 

I got away from tere after about an hour and went off to find gabe and his freinds at the other side of the trail

my job was to stand near the crowds and distract them so gabe and freinds coud jump out an scare.
here’ I am lit up lke an xmas tree.

here’s gabe in his stealth outfit ..

 

here’s me in my not so stealth outfit .. I’m wearning a paper tablecloth I found on the ground.

 

here’s our new freind star (aka morning star) .. a very interesting woman playing the saw.. very incredible.

 

It was almost idnight when the last group went throgh.. we were all exhausted.

OK.. now I just gotta sleep.. more tomorrow..

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

 

Thursday night – Bad hair day

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OK, I admit I have a Google query that flags me when someone posts soemthing on the interweb with my name on it.. I did it during the Colony days to see what people thought of the show.. .. or… more honestly.. what people thought of me on the show. Anyway never turned it off. Most of the time it gives me mention of talks I’ve done.. which I already know about.. occasionally it turns up something surprising … like today it turned up this..

Here’s the text of that article

Does a bad hair day = a bad manager?

Submitted by Adrian Gaskell MCMI on Thu, 20/10/2011 – 11:03

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Towards the back end of last year I wrote about a study investigating the influence our appearance has on our success at job interviews.  The research suggested that the prettiness of the candidate had a big impact on their success at interview, with the rate of success dependant upon the sex and attractiveness of those doing the hiring.

This followed previous research from Kent University proposing an ideal ‘face’ for management.  The study found that appearance was as crucial as attitude and looked at which characteristics were seen to be best for male managers and female managers.

For a male manager, a pronounced brow and forehead were found to be trusted more, while for women, thin eyebrows, wider eyes and fuller lips made up the face of a future inspirational leader.

What risks do we take by employing such stereotyping however, be they conscious or unconscious?  Have a look at the photo below.  It’s of a man called John Cohn.

john cohn

He’s an IBM fellow and all round inspirational chap.  See this article for some of his thoughts on leadership.  At first glance though, would you believe him to be an inspiring thinker?  Does he fit the identikit manager our subconcious forms for us?

After all, such prejudices are sadly commonplace.  For instance research earlier this year revealed how our weight impacts our earning potential.  Likewise height has been linked to earning, with taller men found to earn more than us vertically challenged ones.

In an age when we should be striving to get the very best talent working in our teams, are our in built prejudices hindering the chances of otherwise exceptional candidates?

LOL !..   Bad hair day ?!.. every day is a bad hair day for me… but I make do.. in fact.. the only reason I was told I got the job on the Colony was that I had ‘weird hair’.. I know I’ve talked about this here once before when I was called out in another article (cited above) for looking deranged. .. but I actually don’t mind the way I look.. would I like to be handsome and youthful. . sure.. but since I can’t change that.. I  don’t mind looking weird and crazy…..  especially if it gets people to listen to me 🙂

 

nite all, nite sam

-me