Saturday evening – Klimt

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It's about 8pm on a sultry Saturday evening its been near 90 all day and the reptile In me has me moving very slowly. I know when I say 90 that readers in the south and southeast will sneer and say that's not so hot … Just realize that almost nothing p here is air conditioned,,,

Even with the heat, though it was a really pleasant day. We'd originally planned to be at a lacrosse tournament in rhode island this weekend gabe decided he couldn't participate, so that left us with a surprise weekend off with absolutely no plans. As always, when I have nothing I have to do, I revert to my natural state which is immobile. Actually.. We did go ano a cool hike today.. And I added a bunch of good new patterns to my programmable hula hoop (rotating rainbow, rasta flag, epileptic strobe ) but for the most part.. All I did was sit under a fan… And browse the Internet..

That's how I came to know that today marks the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt..

 

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. Probably the most recognizable artist of the fin de siècle Vienna. I have a deep attachment to Klimt because of the time I spent living in Vienna.. His almost kitsch gold leaf paintings and posters always put me in the mood for oil black coffee and sacher torte. It's funny how something like that can take you back so quickly and powerfully to a time and place (madeleines anyone 🙂 ?) I remember hours walking through the gallery just down the street looking at Klimt prints

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And Kokoshka
 
 
 
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And Schiele
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I don't look at art much anymore.. I think it was because I made a c in art history once.. Dunno.. But it's nice on the occasion of Klimts birthday to say.. Or at least think.. Hertzlich Gluchwunsch zum Geburtstag, Gustav !

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

 

Friday night – overheated

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Lonnnnnnng hot day today.. Went to bed at 2am last night after working in the lab.. First work call at 8:30… By the time I finished my work I looked up from my desk and it was nearly 8pm. The only good thing about that was that my office at work is almost air conditioned. It was about 80 inside.. But that was a ton better than the 102 my car thermometer told me at lunch.. It was so hot ( how hot was it .) it was sooooo hot that my iPhone disconnected from a work call 2 times because it was too hot to work. How the heck do they do it in places like Texas

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Stay cool everyone,

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

 

Thursday night – The Hole Story

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I had a complicated day where nothing went quite right.. I got lots done, but nothing came out as well as it should have.. so.. by the end of the day i was pretty beat.. it was about 90 degrees, I was hot and tired and looking for something useful to do.
The looming problem of the week has been our pool. It's been losing water at rate of over 600 gallons a day .. yet we couldn't find the leak. I'd re-tighteed all the pluming and searched the sides of the pool carefully for a leak.. no luck.. Then , this morning. Diane noticed a wet spot under the deck… .. I decided to check it out.. Indeed.. the ground was wet under the deck, but there was no visible leakage form the side of the pool.. the soil was only wet in a narrow band.. so I decided to look inside. I put on some goggles and dove to the bottom.. darn.. I couldn't see well enough without my glasses.. so I stuck them on top of the goggles.. I looked ridiculous.. but at least i could see.. I searched up and down the walls of the pool.. but nothing looked obvious.. Then I started thinking about how I'd find a vacuum leak.. When I was at MIT we'd use a variety of techniques to find leaks in high vacuum systems.. we'd hook up a mass spectrometer to the vacuum system then walk around with helium tubes squirting around joints.. when the mass spec detected soemthing.. the joint you were squirting was bad. I've seen them do soemthing similar with car air conditioning systems.. thought there you use colored smoke.. and pressurize the system with it and look for smoke ..
So I asked myself.. what would work like smoke under water.. ah-ha… an idea.. I grabbed a bottle of blue food coloring and dove back in.. I squirted it around the seams.. but it just dissipated.. I tried some of the creases on the bottom… then I saw a funny discolored space.. it was right under where the ladder usually is.. BINGO.. the dye got sucked into the hole.. by the speed of it.. there must have been a pretty sizable stream of water leaving the floor of the pool about 12 inches in form the side where the wet spot was.. I felt like Sherlock Holmes !

I wanted to get a picture of it to show diane.. so I rummaged around and found gabes underwater go-pro… curses.. the battery was dead.. and i couldn't find the charger.. not to be deterred, I took the battery out and grabbed a power supply from my lab. dialed in the voltage of the battery and clipped into it.. I charged it for about 15 min.. Then I clipped it together and took this movie.. you can see the dye get sucked into the hole..

 

I found soem underwater vinyl patch , cut it out, coated it with goo.. folded it in hal then exhaled all the air in my lungs and sunk to the bottom of the pool.
I opened the patch and quickly smoothed it over the hole. Then I put a nice piece of marble on it to help i stick.. (note: The marble happened to be the splatter guard on an old urinal.. Don't know why I added that detail.. but you have to admit it was interesting 🙂

so.. I accomplished at least one useful thing today..

lets see if it holds !

nght all. night sam
-me