|
4-27-03
Replacing the rear brakes and cylinders and repacking the wheel bearings on the van was harder than I remembered. Unlike working on a web site, or drawing pictures with a pencil where you get an instant feedback when you do things right, doing complex mechanical work requires an entirely different mind set.
When I draw a picture, or write some html I can examine my work afterward and correct errors. Last night, after I finished the second wheel I found myself staring at the reassembled wheel, wondering if I had done it right. Never mind that it was 9 PM, it was raining and I was kneeling in the mud in my driveway after 6 hours of labor, it was not a job where mistakes are allowed.
Whether I had remembered to tighten the various bolts, or correctly hooked up all the little springs and adjusters, or inserted the bearings with the sloping side aligned correctly to the axle...or not, it didn't matter. It was too complicated to remember every little step, and I simply had to trust in my integrity.
I could remember a general sense of clarity, and continual amazement at how cleverly the steel bearings, springs and structural pieces were engineered to work in concert to stop the car, but I could not, for the life of me remember if I had done everything right. It's been so long since I did any mechanical work, I've become spoiled by the superficial nature of computer work. The drum brake on a car is a very complex little robot, taking it's commands from the driver. About the size of a two apple pies stacked on top of each other, it is a very tightly engineered assembly of about 40 different steel parts, all working in concert together to respond instantly to a command from the driver to stop the car.
When I compare the complexity of the brakes on my car to...oh, say, putting a picture on the internet, there is no contest. The brakes are far more complex. Screw up the brakes, and someone could die. Anyone with a textbook could put a picture on the internet, but doing complex mechanical work where there are layers and layers of tightly engineered and assembled moving parts, geez...maybe I should go back to printing. I'm good at it, slow maybe, but I have a gift for intense concentration that is rare in this 'give it to me now' society.
If I went back to printing, I could turn off this silly electrified plastic box and spend my spare time doing meaningful things, like improving my painting, and being a dad. It's hard to imagine a life without a computer constantly demanding my attention. Up until 6 years ago, that was my life. I hated working swing shift, but the job itself (running press) was fun. Other than the fact that I work day shift, my life is no better than before I switched careers.
I've got a bad attitude this morning. I need to get to work grading homework...or maybe not. When I went out in the sun to eat a sandwich, the birds were chirping and the tall pine trees were swaying in the gentle spring breeze. When Sue gets back, maybe we can go get some exercise, then drive to town to buy a new printer. I need to take a step back from working every spare minute. It's not healthy.
4-25-03
Haven't written in a while. I didn't want to weight down these pages with a bunch of belly aching, so I waited until the sun came out again. Today was a sunny payday, and thanks to the freelance work I've been doing, it was a nice check. I also got my refund back from the IRS. Instead of worrying about how I was going to pay the monthly bills, I was able to daydream a little about things that are optional, like a new printer, or the tune up on the cars we've been putting off since I began this odd part time teaching career a year ago.
Not that I don't like teaching...it's a cool job, and very rewarding at times...just not financially. With this temporary influx of money into our budget I plan to take at least one of the cars in for it's yearly tune up and examination. The Toyota has a light knocking sound as it rolls up to a stoplight, and I suspect a CV joint is going out. I'll do some of the work here at home, so they can focus on the tech stuff. I can do the spark plugs and the fuel filter. The fuel filter on this car is buried under 2 hours worth of disassembly. Under all that it's connected to thick copper tubing on both ends, not something to be approached with a heavy hand. I've done it once before and almost bent the tubing unfreezing the flange bolts.
I'm also planning to do a complete brake job on the rear end of the van. The brakes are original back there, nothing's ever been touched after 150K. I've done the front brakes twice during that time. Wheel cylinders were only $15 each, and the pads won't be much more. I need to remember to buy the bearing seals. I like working on cars when I have the time, and working 3 days a week this quarter, I have plenty of time.
My lessons are getting easier now that I am getting to know my students and can more easily tailor the lessons to match their skill levels. It's a delicate balance building lessons that keep the genius's challenged, while not overwhelming the people who are new to the software.
I spent a few hours reading the latest reviews on inkjet printers. I narrowed my choices down to the Epson 825, the Cannon 900 and the HP 5550. We currently have an hp 722c, bought back in 1997. It runs fine most of the time, but will occasionally stop printing halfway through a printing job for no apparent reason. Whether it is related to the router in our temperamental 2 computer network, or simply the old printer is anyone's guess.
Regardless of why it gets in a snit, I am overdue for a printer that can do photo lab quality printing. If it is network related, I can always simply run the new printer off the newer base computer, which runs XP and is much more robust than this old laptop running Windows 98. I found a tremendous resource of user reviews at cnet.com. There were at least 40 reviews on each of the listed printers, and the Cannon 900 had 200 separate 'user' reviews. I could tell they were real by the huge variety of different writing styles. No one would have the time and energy to phony up a database of that many individual entries.
If you've spent any time on the net, you quickly learn to take information found there with a hefty grain of salt. But the wide variety of opinions, both pro and con on the different printer models was an eye opener. After a couple hours I began to realize there is no perfect photo printer, or at least none that can do both photos and text, without compromising one for the other. The Cannon sounded like the best model, but I read a couple complaints about the inks fading over time, and a distressingly large number of complaints about mechanical problems.
Dad has the hp 5550, and I have ran some gorgeous prints off it, but it is simply built with too much thin plastic. Many people on cnet complained about the cheap construction. I kept coming back to the Epson 825. There were repeated complaints about it's slow speed, but they were usually followed with an "it's worth the wait" remark. I found very few complaints about mechanical problems. My friend RL has an Epson 925, and he has kindly let me run a few prints off, which looked stunning and suffered zero fading after 2 months in my car window. The Epson 825 is simply the 925 without the bells and whistles, which suits me fine.
I already have an Epson scanner and have been very impressed with everything about it, from the software to customer support. Epson is famous for sending replacement units to unhappy customers. Now, if I could just convince the wife that it's a good idea...
4-15-03
Had a good day in my Drawing class today. My students have been resisting buying the materials they need for me to teach the class. Last week, for example, I had a lesson planned around each of them having a two dollar plastic viewfinder on which they could draw with an erasable pen, rather like looking under the hood of an eighty year old view camera and tracing what you see of the landscape onto the ground glass. Artists have been doing variations on this theme this for a thousand years.
My students refused to buy the plastic sheets, so my lesson plan was in tatters last week. Over the weekend, I went out and bought enough plastic sheets to cover the class, along with an erasable marker for each student. My wife only laughed when she found out. She works in the public schools and sees teachers spend their own money on supplies all the time. The viewfinders were a great success. They allow the students to compose a drawing just like it's a camera, which they have just spent 2 quarters studying.
The viewfinders have a grid of 16 squares drawn on them. I gave each of them a sheet of paper with the same grid printed on the paper.They traced their hands by holding them under the viewfinder. Then they set the viewfinder down on a white sheet of paper and copied the hand drawing across to the paper grid, using the points on the viewfinder grid as reference points for where the same shape should cross the grid on the paper. It's known as a one to one transfer.
I did catch one student holding the paper over the viewfinder and then up to the light. With this clever shortcut, he was able to skip any real drawing. I gently let him know that this was kind of like shooting yourself in the foot as far as learning to draw.
After we all drew hands for while I got out a chair and pointed a spotlight toward it for drama. They did the same framing and tracing tricks with their viewfinders before settling in for the last 45 minutes of class. About half of them made some serious progress. Two of the girls were so dialed in to the the drawing that they kept working past lunch time. I was packing up the room and gathering my stuff together and they just kept drawing and drawing, totally absorbed in the magic of art.
Art has been one of the most important discoveries of my life, and watching my students discover the 'artist within' was very moving. I walked down to my office to make some copies, but when I came back they were still at it. The drawings were clean and accurately rendered with a clear sense of light and shadow. I taught them the "work light and dark from a neutral ground" technique today and they were making me proud. It was just a chair, but what a chair! And from people who didn't know they could draw until they took my class. Of course, when I got back to the office and sat down, I realized I had missed the noon staff meeting, but it was worth it.
4-12-03
Visited my son's high school the other night for an extravaganza called "Starry Night". I'd never been to it before, but I learned they've been doing it a long time. In addition to featuring music and art created and performed by the high school kids, there was music and art created by alumni of all ages. I didn't ask any questions, but it appears to have grown into more of a community wide celebration of the arts.
As I wandered down the typically plain jane government issue hallway I was steeling myself for a boring evening when I heard what sounded like a tape of a good steel drum band. The sound got louder as I approached the library and I started to wonder if it was not a tape. Sure enough, when I stepped into the room I saw a hundred people crammed into the small upper floor of the library tapping their feet and swaying to the beat of a 7 member steel drum band.
This wasn't some white bread imitation, it was the real deal. They were all black, or various shades thereof. The leader was dark as the night, but man could he play those steel drums. It looked like a family affair, since the ages of the members ranged from teenagers up through middle age, including a grooving woman with graying hair.
I watched in fascination at the awesome confidence they showed as they produced the music, lightly stepping back and forth between the 2 to 3 drums in each drum set.If you've never seen a steel drum band, you are missing a real treat.
They make them out of 55 gallon steel drums and produce the different musical notes by hammering the lids into concave shapes, with many smaller concave shapes formed out of the larger concave lid. It is hard to describe, but they have been doing it for generations and have it down to an art form. I'd come in a side door, so was only 15 feet away from the band, and slightly behind them so I could see the notes painted in various places on the tops of the drums. They each had two drum sticks, which appeared to be wrapped around the striking end in rawhide. Their sheet music was minimal: no notes, just a few words and what looked like maybe chords. It looked like the music came from the heart, not the head.
While they had the look of some hard living, the music was top notch. The unity and timing they displayed as they drummed their way through the long, melodic songs was something to behold. As they came toward the ends of the songs, the leader, without missing a beat, would turn around to look briefly over his shoulder to make sure they knew the last measure was approaching. His look was calm, as if he knew perfectly well everyone was with him, but he looked just the same, and the 7 musicians would stop on a single beat. Wow! Who woulda' thought that much talent would show up at our little high school?
In the cafeteria the high school band was backing up a middle aged guy who sounded a little like Frank Sinatra. He was OK, but not nearly as polished as the steel drum band. Sue had told me where my son's artwork was displayed and I found it easily in the entrance to the gym. He and 40 other kids from the high school and several of the middle schools had their matted paintings, drawings and sculpture hanging from some portable dividers. There was all kinds of art there, but most of it looked about right for high school kids. That is to say, none of them were experienced outdoor painters, although many looked like they had put a lot of time into painting and drawing from photographs.
Clint has been taking art for about a year now, and between the advice he gets from the two excellent art teachers there, and the questions I answer for him at home, he is showing some serious talent. This last quarter he was offered the chance to do independent study. He works on projects of his own choosing in the Art room, while at home he has taken over my still life box and lights.
I've got a whole counter full of props for him to pick from, and he doesn't seem to be afraid of anything. When I saw him putting 3 crystal glasses into the lit stage, I warned him it was overkill, and would change a good set up into one that was annoyingly busy, and ten times as hard to draw. Like the rebel teenager that he is, he ignored my well meant advice and plowed ahead.
The one smart thing he does is bring his drawing in here to the computer every few hours to get my opinion. He has a great eye for line, but like most beginners he is still developing his understanding of relative values. By showing him my drawings of the same subjects in different arrangements, I was able to explain how I made a white highlight on a white duck. I showed him how to hold his hand in a fist, and sight through the tunnel between the fingers, comparing the relative values of different parts of the stage.
He is making some incredible progress. This is one of his latest drawings. He got the glass pitcher from Sue's mom. I've had my eye on it for a few years, but she would never loan it to me. However, when her grandson asked if HE could borrow it, all of a sudden it shows up in my still life box...funny how that works. Clint was the only high school artist in the show to draw a believable environment. The other artists were doing stylistic renderings of fragments of faces, or a koala bear, stuff like that. I saw a couple hands; clearly they had been studying my favorite art book: Drawing on the right side of the Brain.
Clint draws a lot like me, which isn't surprising since has grown up watching me draw and paint. Sue thinks he has "almost caught up to you", but I think he has his own style, a slightly whimsical look, and is quite likely to pass me by. At his age I was a horrible artist. His work is as good or better than what I was doing as recently as 10 years ago, and he is only 18.
I talked to his art teacher for a few minutes. She is a dynamic woman of about my age, very good at what she does. The walls of her room were covered with student work. Clint had told me how she takes a picture of someone famous like Albert Einstein, cuts it up into little pieces and tells each student to draw just the one fragment of the photo, but scaled up 300 percent. By only drawing a fragment, they don't get hung up in symbols and are able to concentrate on shapes and values. The resulting montages from years of teaching this technique cover the walls in 6 foot murals. This lady has it going on! Through a door is a huge pottery room full of spinning wheels, or whatever you call those things they throw pots on. When I was in high school the art classes were all filled up. I was never able to sign up for one. Clint and Lisa don't realize how fortunate they are.
4-9-03
Found myself riveted to the morning news on TV when I woke up. They were running live coverage from Baghdad of a gang of Iraqi men trying to pull a 30 foot statue of Saddam with what looked like an old threadbare 2 inch rope of the type you see down on the waterfront. When the crowd of shouting Iraqis were unable to haul the stature down by sheer manpower, they began taking turns whacking at the 15 foot thick concrete pedestal with a sledgehammer.
We only get 4,5 and 7 here at home, but they were all running the same footage. The metaphor was extremely compelling as the people tore down the statue of the leader about whom we read so many terror stories. If even a quarter of the books describing his brutal regime are true, Bush, and the brave soldiers who serve us all may have done the world a huge favor. Whether the well educated Iraqi citizens will still love us in a couple months remains to be seen. I hear that they hated Saddam, but the hated us even more for intruding.
I heard the Russians captured the capital of Afghanistan with about as much resistance as our forces have seen in Iraq, but winning the hearts and minds of the local populace proved untenable. We'd like to think democracy is a no brainer for the entire world, but many poorer nations see America as a nation of opulent, heartless consumers, obsessed with wealth and power at the expense of the rest of the world.
It all comes down to per capita income. There are no easy answers here. You and I were born into this wealthiest of nations. I tried throwing it all away after reading about Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha and the rest, and while it was fun for a while, the tipi got moldy in the wet Puget Sound winters. I realized, after 3 years of living the simple life, that it was sink or swim...and I needed a job in a bad way. That was in 1974, and I've never looked back. I have a family to feed and bills to pay like everyone else. Can I change the world, make my fellow Americans send more money to the starving babies in India? Hell no! I can live as simple a life as possible; I can drive a small Toyota, I enjoy non-motor powered hobbies. Well, I guess I have to drive to the cliffs, so you could argue climbing is motor powered.
Still, even I, with my semi good intentions must appear an arrogant consumer to the starving Arabs in Palestine. Someday I'd like to travel to expand my knowledge of world affairs. But first, I need to get a full time job, begin saving some money for retirement and pay off some credit card bills before I can even consider an unnecessary vacation overseas. My family is planning a reunion in England this summer. Talk about a bunch of arrogant consumers. Don't get me wrong, I love my family, they are some very fine people of high integrity and firm moral standards. Still, I can see how they must appear to the less fortunate citizens of our planet.
Dad has a huge guilt trip about being well off. He turns all his lights off when he leaves a room, despite using the dim 7 year fluorescent, and walks downtown when he could drive. Unlike us, he has the discretionary income to contribute to charity and tithes regularly to his church. I feel tempted to tell him to lighten up and live a little, which he does by flying off to visit relatives. We, on the other hand struggle to stay current with the constant stream of bills. I know I could and should give a little every month to charity, but I should also save a little money for our retirement, and I do neither. We simply live too close to the edge of poverty.
I like to think that my year as a teacher is a way to contribute a little to society; I can't give away my money, but I've been generous with my time this last year. How much longer I can keep this up is the question.
4-7-03
Took a 1991 Toyota Extended cab V6 pickup to a mechanic in Tacoma for an inspection today. On the way to the mechanic Sue and I dropped by a body shop to get a ballpark estimate on the two dings in the driver side door. They
don't really show up that much, at least in the rain, but the estimate was $1200. He said it looked like someone had fallen against the door, or maybe even kicked it, then tried to poke it out from the inside.
In doing so they had distorted the door
to the point where it would have to be either replaced or "re-skinned". There was also a rusty egg sized dent on the left rear fender, and since all the damage was on one side, he said they would have to repaint the entire left side.
The mechanic at Lloyd and Wilson's in Tacoma spent forty five minutes going over the car while we waited anxiously out in the waiting room. It was an unusual feeling, watching the mechanic going over the truck with a fine tooth comb. I felt like an expectant father, waiting to hear from the doctor that everything had turned out right. The stakes weren't nearly as high of course, still, the comparisons were there. It was only costing Clint $60 for the inspection (we were acting on his behalf while he was in school), but he has been looking for just the right car for a year now, and this was the nicest one he had found.
The dings in the side are minor, despite the cost, and the rest of the truck was cherry. The engine had a ton of power, and with the 5 speed clutch it was almost a muscle car.
From the minute the mechanic pulled into the shop from the test drive, and walked up to the counter where Sue and I waited like expectant parents, the rain began falling on our parade. First off, he said he wouldn't buy a car with a couple bad dings. The door ding in particular he had seen before. He has seen cars come into the shop with such a bad starting problem the owner has actually kicked the car in frustration, and the damage from those cars bore a strong resemblance to the side of our truck to be.
This guy goes over the car like a detective pouring his knowledge into a crime scene. The knowledge, craftsmanship and patience he brings to the job are exceedingly rare these days. I brought that kind of encyclopedic knowledge to my work as a press operator, and I recognized a fellow craftsman. A year and a half ago, he first recommended, and then, after I'd found one, inspected my 1992 Corolla, and he's only gotten better since then.
He explained in detail how he was able to discover that the clutch was original equipment, with 118 thousand miles by the fact that the bolts on the bell housing were flawless, showing no signs of rounding from being used. He could also tell that the head gasket had been replaced during the recall a few years back for that engine. He wondered whether the timing belt had been done during the head repair, and I was unable to help, nor was the owner later that afternoon.
He also shocked us when he said that the big 3 Liter V6 would cost $7000 to replace (new, remanufactured or otherwise) if it ever had a serious problem, and that the' 4 cylinder 22 RE' was a far better and more reliable engine, with it's steel timing belt. Another plus for the four banger was the replacement cost: only $3000. We were relieved to hear that the oil in the V6 had been replaced religiously, and he patiently explained how he is able to detect poor maintenance by shining his special blue penlight inside the valve cover. He looks for goo, but saw only clean metal inside our engine.
We asked him if it would be better to buy a newer Ford Ranger, and it was as if we had pushed his hot button. What ever you do, he said, don't buy a Ranger, any Ranger! He went on to describe the wide variety of problems he's run into while working on Rangers and had nothing good to say about them. He said he would buy our V6 in a heartbeat over a Ranger. Last but not least was the clutch, which he was able to force into slipping by starting on a hill in second gear. He has an interesting technique for checking for bad rings: he drove it down a long hill with the gas pedal off, then floored it on the flat, and watched the exhaust for a cloud of smoke. He saw no smoke, then or ever and pronounced the rings fine.
When we talked to the owner later in the afternoon, he poo pooed all the negatives with one liners like: hell, a truck is supposed to have dings...it's a truck! As to why he hadn't changed the timing belt, he said he'd looked into it when he bought it six thousand miles ago, and, finding no record either way, forgot about it. When it came time to make him the offer, my hands began to sweat. This was my son's entire life savings, money he had earned with hard sweat and brute labor: throwing trees and bark into customers cars at the plant nursery over the last 3 years.
As I thought about how crushed Clint would be if the engine blew up and he had to walk away from $6000, I couldn't bring myself to offer the guy what he was asking. Instead, I made a low offer, $600 below what he was asking to help cover some of the $1300 of work the car needed. He stared at me in mild surprise for a few minutes, then said that he would have to call his wife, who owned the car and was in Phoenix. He said he'd call me if she wanted to go that low, but I don't think we'll hear from him. The whole experience left us with a bad taste in our mouth...on the bright side, Clint still has his nest egg, and the $60 we spent for the inspection was worth every penny.
4-5-03
My proud claim to be one of the few remaining people in western civilization who doesn't watch TV is suffering under the temptation to watch the Iraq war coverage. Talk about a windfall for the media! With the profits they are making from this war, the major networks will be tempted to sponsor a battalion. I can see it now: "The 52 motorized NBC battalion is approaching the capital of Beirut." We already have Safeco Field, and it seems a natural extension of the American Way for the bean counters to recognize the obvious benefits of funding a battalion. Hell, they might as well fund the war and save Bush the embarrassment of raising taxes.
I'm really not that much of a peacenik...Bush might even turn out to be right. I'm certainly not excited enough either way to join the crowds of people demonstrating on the street corners of our town. At the intersection approaching the Safeway store 200 people waved Flags and cheered at the honking cars. Prominent among the crowd were 20 women dressed in black and holding a banner reading "Women in Black". There was no explanation of what, or who the Women in Black were, or how they were connected with the war issue. I'm thinking I need to watch more TV to figure out who they are...but that is something I'm not willing to do.
The new quarter started this week. I'm teaching drawing again, along with a couple other classes. I've been busy getting up to speed with the new lesson plans. I've also been buried under an unusually high amount of freelance work for a couple different clients. I always welcome freelance work, but this kind of volume and complexity (high end all Flash business sites, huge government web sites) in my freelance work tends to soak up every spare minute of my time.
click here to go to last month
home | journal | landscapes | seascapes | structures | still
lifes | climbing
web design | art
statement | pricing | easel
places | site
index | photos | email
|
