Journal entries for March, 2006

Today as I left work, I stopped by the bathroom to do the poop. As I approached, I heard a conversation going on inside the bathroom, and as I stepped through the door, the talking stopped abruptly. I could see there was one guy sitting in a stall, so it was fairly obvious that he had been talking on his cell phone while going to the bathroom. Now, I have no problem pissing with other people in the room, but I generally try to avoid summoning the Masters Of The Universe in the presence of others. The one businessman would have been bad enough, but I certainly wasn't about to poop into the ear of some unknown stranger somewhere in the world. I turned around and headed for the bathroom on the second floor.

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Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 05:01:12 -0800
From: "eBay Member: deusbovum" 
To: "eBay Member: kubus85" 
Subject: Re: Bericht van eBay-lid over object #6044802915

I'm sorry, I don't speak Dutch. Do you speak English? It sounds like you're saying that shipping costs will be high. It isn't that bad relative to the
cost of the helicopter itself. Shipping to Holland will be USD $107. I'll send you an invoice for the total amount.

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Inspired by some conversations on the photo.net forums, I decided to try to hack together a handheld 4x5 large format camera using parts from various old Polaroid Land cameras from the 1960s. Polaroid long ago discontinued the film for these cameras, so they're available really cheap on eBay. To most people, they're pretty much worthless except as a collectors' item, but with a little fearless application of a Dremel tool, they should quickly find themselves back in useful service. The resulting camera will not be a beauty queen — the main ingredient will be glue — but it should result in something only slightly less portable than the Holga, but with much higher quality results, and for roughly the same total investment (about $20).

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I've sold my R/C helicopter. I have no savings, and lately I've been growing more aware of how tenuous that financial position really is. I decided I wanted to get out of that position as quickly as possible. I still really like the helicopter and it was a really difficult decision to sell it (as I worked with it, cleaning it up and taking the pictures for the auction, I started to reconsider my decision), but the fact is, I've only flown it once in the last year. That $1000-worth could be put to better use.

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I was going through all my old camcorder tapes today, trying to locate the video of my brother and I almost getting hit by a plane at St. Barths. I didn't find it, but I did encounter a bunch of fun videos I had forgotten. In lieu of the propeller death video, I figured I'd put these up instead. Odds are they won't be amusing to people who weren't actually there at the time, but I figure that's probably most of you anyway.

My Xvid encoder was being obstinate, and would sometimes refuse to encode a video with anything other than the absolute lowest audio quality setting. Ah well, they're not too bad, and it's only one or two of them.

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According to the the generally accepted scientific understanding of the 18th century, all combustion was attributable to phlogiston, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, massless substance. At the time, the scientific community believed that all flammable materials contained a certain amount of phlogiston. The act of burning the materials was in fact merely releasing the phlogiston into the air. Once burned, the materials were held to be in their "true" form, the 'calx'. Thus the act of burning was known as 'dephlogisticating' a substance.

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Anyone who knows me is probably aware of my perpetual lust for Taco Bell's Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Sadly, it's not a regular menu item, and even when they do bring it back, it's seldom available in Puerto Rico. I ask for it from time to time out of vain desperation, but I always get the same response: blank looks and a shake of the head.

Today, I tried to get crafty. I noticed in the bottom left corner of the menu that they have something called a Dobladilla, which is a hard taco shell surrounded by melted cheese and then a soft taco shell. I realized it was quite similar to the structure of a Gordita Crunch. With little hope for success, I asked if they could make a Dobladilla but replace the soft taco shell with a Gordita shell. He replied, "Well, yeah, but that'd basically just be a Gordita Crunch."

As he said that, I glanced slightly to the right and realized that the entire right half of the menu was a large ad promoting the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Ah. I guess it's back.

Tonight I feasted like a king. A king who dines at Taco Bell. Life is good.

I have no idea how Jared could stand to eat at Subway continuously for so long. I've been going there almost daily for the past six months or so, because it's the only place around here that's open past midnight and has anything vegetarian on the menu. Unfortunately, even there, the only thing I can eat is the Veggie Max, so my daily meal there has become a terribly monotonous experience. Every time I consider the prospect of going to Subway to get another damn Veggie Max, my soul dies a little. It's a lot like how Mayor Quimby feels about his wife (1.3 MB WMV video). It's even worse because Subway is so much more expensive here than it was in Clemson. My daily descents into ennui cost me $7.45 apiece. I really need to start bringing my own food to work more often.

I just learned a fun fact: the lightsaber props in Star Wars were made from the flash guns for Crown Graphic cameras like mine. To make it look more high-tech, they slid the LED display from a pocket calculator into the mounting bracket on the flash gun. Apparently large format photography enthusiasts are bitter because the flash guns have become rare and expensive these days, since all the nerds have cut them all up to make replica lightsabers. Hee.

When I got my view camera, I worried about feeling ridiculous to stand out there adjusting a camera that looked like it came out of a cartoon. In fact, toady when I got out of work I took the camera to the park across the street to try out the large format Polaroid film that arrived yesterday, and the only attention I got was when one pretty cute girl came over and asked, "Is that a camera? I saw you standing there concentrating so intently." I said yes and showed her the image on the ground glass. She asked if I was doing it for a class and I said no, just as a hobby. We talked briefly and then she headed off. That wasn't so bad. Somehow I just can't imagine my next encounter will be equally pleasant.

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