mah '65 volkes

Here she is a few months after I got her. Only thing I added were the Hella Fog/Driving lights.

And here she is after I installed the 3" narrowed beam with 2 1/2" inch drop spindles.

2009 Rebel

So, my good gramps pulled through once again and decided to give me his 2009 Honda Rebel 250 for absolutely free. Gotta love the old man. He's just too damn old to ride much anymore and he really hated the $140 registration fee, which is what I think got him to say 'to hell with it, its yours!'. Well, I am very excited about this bike because it runs, it was free, and it's fuck ugly, so I get to do some work on it to make it a little easier to look at. So here it is in it's current stock state.

The ride home from Kanab, Utah, was hell on wheels. I was on the bike and my dad and grandma were following me in my 4runner. The wind and rain kicked up as soon as we hit the road, which is bad enough on a bike, but is extremely shitty on a bike which weighs about 330 lbs. Every single piece of shit wind gust, no matter how small, threw me all over the road. There were a few gusts which nearly took me off the road completely. After one such gust, which nearly sent me into a ditch, I decided that I was through riding until it passed. We stopped off at some random, road side cafe near Panguitch and waited it out. Once the storm seemed like it had calmed down a bit, we headed out. The rest of the ride was alright, except for the occasional wind gust and the drafts from trucks, which were pretty gnarly on this tiny bike. We got on the freeway at some point, which wasn't too bad, until we got into Utah County, where the freeway was under construction. When I say "under construction", I really mean it was ripped to shit and a complete nightmare to ride on. There were 3/4" steel plates all over the god damn ground, which were hell to ride over. I officially hate Utah County and would like to nuke the shit out of that entire area. There is nothing good there and never will be. Fuck BYU, fuck Provo, fuck Krispy Kreme, and most of all, fuck the assholes who decided to tear into the freeway, thereby nearly killing me in front of my grandma. Fucking mormons. Anywho, after all of that horse shit, we finally got home around 1:00 am. I don't think I've ever been happier to see my parents' house.

Gnats ass away from ditching all forms of social media

In the grand scheme of things, why the fuck do I need to have contact with 200+ people? Unless I'm trying to get money from these people, there is no useful purpose at all to having these imaginary relationships. It's funny how selective the process of deleting 'friends' is. Realistically, these people are several degrees away from being mere acquaintances, let alone friends. I wonder how long we will kid ourselves with Facebook and blogs before we realize how fruitless it is to maintain our online presence. Fuck it, let the corporate shitbags take the internet! They can have it. As long as I can still get information and listen to Pandora, they can charge for the bandwidth taken up by Facebook and Shitter all they want, they'll never get a red cent from me. I don't know the details on the whole privatization of the internet debacle, so I'm probably out of my element, but damn, maybe we need to step back and begin focusing on what's real and tangible. When people can use the internet to find out your income, see what your house looks like, filter you out of the employee selection process, and so on, and so on, it's gone too far.

Spring '11

So here's what I'm up against; 3 classes currently registered for, 2 of which I want to drop, 3 classes I need to get add codes for, all while making sure I get the schedules not to conflict. Oh, and on top of this, I slept WAY too late today to even think about getting to bed at decent time, so I'm gong to be "out of my mind" tired. Dammit! Way to start the semester, eh?

The girl who had my heart for a moment

There she was tonight

Red hair, yellow cap

Facial expressions that make you believe in true joy

We locked eyes

We locked eyes again

and Again

Before the bass was finished with his 12 bar scale

She was gone

I said nothing

And finished my drink.

7 minutes of hell is all I could handle, appearantly

10 deadlifts, 10 burpees, 20 deadlifts, 20 burpees, fucking done.

Merry Christmas to me!!

All I wanted for christmas was a dead fucking battery, and I got it, right on the money.

SUCK ME BEAUTIFUL!!!!

First day at Crossfit NRG on the "basic" training cycle. It was pretty damn brutal and all I want to do is get rid of the tickle in my anus... err, I mean my lungs, and take a nap, but I mustn't. I shall warsh my ass, then warsh the inside of my car. I can talk about my asshole, balls, poop, etc... all I want because nobody reads this thing anyway. So, GO SUCK A FUCK!!! HA!!

It's finally here. After a good few weeks waiting for The goddamn Canyons to open, we finally got to shred.

Sorry, the only few shots I got were from the lift. I was too busy shredding the gnarwhal to take pictures like some kind of California pussy.

winter coats

It's growing in nicely. Bring on the snow, already!

Here's an update as of 11/9/11

I cheated and had a bit of a trim recently, but the mop groweth nonetheless

And GONE!

Fall Semester is coming to a close.... Thank you Jebus!

I really bit off more than I could chew, it seems. I don't know, maybe not. Maybe I'm just an illiterate dipshit, but I have not done well. Calculus and Chemistry kicked my ass and I'm pretty sure I may have to repeat one or both. *sad face* Actually, I'm not that bummed on it because I've realized I never really wanted to be an Engineer. It seems great, and the money is killer, but it just isn't for me. I don't enjoy the number crunching, I don't want to take a new math class every semester, and I fucking HATE robots! That's what the UofU's ME dept. is all about, robotics. I worked with automation for 3 years and was miserable, so to hell with that idea. So, I've decided to go after what I've wanted to do for years now, be an Architect. HAZZAHHH! God damn this indecisiveness.

Time for the beginning of my winter coat

August is a hot, and harsh month. Yet, it is in this month which the Mark of the Burton begins to grow his winter coat. Within a few months, he will display a bright orange mane, which will flow magically in the brisk fall breeze. This orange mane also serves as camouflage during the turning of the leaves so that he may hunt his prey to store away for the harsh winter ahead. He must prepare his coat of animal skin for protection from the cold whilst shredding the gnar.

I need to get to this!!!!

http://www.strictlybluegrass.com/

.

Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?

G-g-g-g-GHOST PIRATES!!!!!

Ok, maybe not pirates per se, but... Well, you decide.

This is a 35mm image my friends Justin and Jaime shot at the cemetery near the Univeristy of Utah. The two images below have been altered a bit to get some different perspective on the shot. The mist in the center of the film only appears in this shot, none of the other shots they took had anything like this. Whether or not you think there's something in this image FROM BEYOND THE GRAAAAVE, at least enjoy the fun shit you might find. Please comment on what you see.

Qualejje?

Well, here it is. My last week of a short inter-semester break, my very first, I might add. Now it's on to great bullshit like Chemistry, where I really want to learn how to make Meth, like the show, and Calculus, where I really want to be a super smart janitor with a ridiculous Bostonian accent, like the show. I also will be taking my first Mechanical Engineering class, which requires me to purchase some sort of electronic device used for.... I have no fucking clue. I think it's called a Response Card or something like that, so I imagine it's either a clicker deviceamabob like Jeopardy, or Celebrity Jeopardy, or Jeopardy for the mentally challenged, OR it's a shocking device that's used when you're response to a question is fucking stupid and you fucking get fucking shocked. I hope that it's the latter, I find I learn much better when I'm pissing my pants from being electrocuted a bit. I just hope I don't bleed from my eye sockets, because that would be UBER embarrassing. Shit, I still need to get books.

Some people's kids

Are you fucking kidding me?

The sad thing is; you're not.

This is how you really are

and you will never, ever change.

Orange Eames Armshell Resto

Hopefully, this will be this first of many projects I get to work on, but I have a feeling my pesky college education will get in the way. So, since I'm on a break tween semesters and have a little free time, I may as well make hay while the sun shines.

So, Herman Miller, like the dipshits they are, made a whole shitload of Eames armshells with wide mounts. This, of course, is unacceptable because you cannot put the iconic Eiffel, Rocker, etc... bases on the wide mount chairs. The only 2 choices you have are; cry, or remedy the situation. I chose the latter.

So, to get started, I removed the original mounts. The first few came off pretty easily by just tightening the screw down until it puts enough tension on the mount that the little bastard just pops off. However, the final mount I chose to remove with a chisel and a hammer, and I must say I was very pleased with the outcome.

After getting the mounts off, the remaining epoxy needs to be chipped and sanded away. I was able to get the bigger pieces of epoxy off with the chisel, but most of it needed to be removed by sanding. You can sand the remaining bulk of epoxy by hand, but I chose to use my friend the pneumatic sander.

I used 120 grit sticky paper on the sander and tried to keep the sander at about a 45 degree angle. Sadly, I did manage to rut out the surface a bit by digging in a little too deep with the sander, but it's nothing that can't be fixed with some follow on hand sanding, which I did with 80 grit.

The 80 grit does a great job of smoothing out the surface where the old mounts were, however, the original mount on this chair has some pitting that I don't think I'm going to repair, mainly because once I sand the entire chair down and cover it in Penetrol, the pitting will be barely noticeable. Besides, a little wear adds to the character of these iconic pieces. I managed to remove the back two mounts and sand down the back narrow mount surfaces in preparation for the new mount installation. I still need to remove the epoxy from the front mounts, and I need to get ahold of 3M to determine the ideal adhesive for this application. Here's a nice little shot of where I've gotten so far.

I'm not sure what I want to do about the original sticker in the lower center of the image. This is a really cool thing to keep, but since I've already modified this chair, it's no longer original, so having the original sticker isn't going to do much for resale (not that I would sale this beautiful bitch). Eh, we'll see when I get around to refinishing.

Once I got all of the remaining epoxy off, it was time to line up the mounts in their new homes. The best way, so I'm told, is to use a nice heavy base, attach your new mounts to the base, and use a sharpie to line mark the mount positions. Then, I decided to verify that the mount positions on the base I was using would match the positions on the new base. After I got that sorted, I placed the mounts on the new base and used that as my template. After measure twice (times 3 or 4) it was time to commit.

After some back and forth correspondence with 3m, they recommended this 2-part epoxy...

DP605NS (off white)

Which cost about $16 at Industrial Supply in SLC. This is a bit more expensive than the JB Kwik Weld method used by many, but I wanted to try something a little different.

One thing to note is this epoxy is designed to be used with a application 'gun', which I did not want to spend another $?? on, so I pushed out the two parts evenly by hand, which was a bit of a pain, but worth not spending food money on. I premixed it, like aso

The trick is, to put a dollop of epoxy in the center of the marked position about the size of a quarter. Because this particular epoxy has a 5 minute work life, I could get pics of that part. After which point, you want to apply pressure on the mounts. You want excess epoxy to seep out from under the mounts, which is something you will notice on any original Eames fiberglass chair with rubber shockmounts.

As seen here, three of the four mounts have a relatively even amount of epoxy visible after being pressed onto the chair. Sadly, I didn't get enough on the lower right mount.

After allowing the epoxy to cure for about 32 hours (which is more than necessary) I checked the adhesion. Everything looked and felt good, even the mount which didn't get the proper amount of epoxy. So, in the mean time, I will hold off on refinishing the surface and decide what I will do with that pesky fourth mount. I did mention this was my first time restoring one of these right? Good. Note, use at least 1/2 of the tube, if not more, when preparing for the mounting step.

Here she is in her current state, about 3 days after mounting the beautiful Modernica Rocker base, thanks to Ron at the ever impressive Green Ant on 3rd South, 2nd East in Salt Lake City, Utah.

(BTW, I didn't choose the color on the wall, that was my roomies : P)

I got a B!

Yeah! This is most excited I've ever been over a grade. A god damn B in Trig. Yeah!

Naps-They aren't my friends

I laid down to listen to some Buck Owens, Hank Williams, George Jones, etc... around 9:30 tonight, next thing I know, half of my face is covered in drool and it's nearly 1:00 am. FUUUUUUU!